Humanities and Social Sciences

Fara Nizamani began her studies at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, majoring in Secondary English Education. She soon began teaching in Dade County Public Schools, where the middle school students captured her heart and taught her as much as she taught them. After obtaining both masters (Barry University) and doctoral degrees (City University) in English literature, a job offer in the Seattle area enticed her family to move to the Pacific Northwest in 1997, where they have lived since.

Nizamani has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in English, humanities, and education. Her specific areas of interest are graphic novels as literature, epic literature, and mythology, particularly non-European. In her spare time, she reads everything she can get her hands on (including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and manga), tends to her anemic garden, and practices a traditional style of Japanese martial arts called Shorinryu.

An avid but hopelessly inept gamer, Nizamani can often be found in front of her Nintendo 64 game console, cheering as Yoshi crosses the finish line in Mario Kart or watching a live stream Counter-Strike tournament.

As chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Dr. Nizamani oversees all of the courses in her department and coordinates course offerings with other departments and programs. She specifically teaches English courses, such as mythology, speculative fiction, epic literature, and the graphic novel. She strives to help students understand that great games often begin with great stories and the ideas that they give rise to, and seeing the students implement aspects of humanities courses into their games is one of her favorite parts of teaching at DigiPen.

Selected Credits/Publications

• Nizamani, F., “Addressing the Needs of Muslim Students in American Schools,” Phi Delta Kappa Conference, Seattle, August 9, 2002.
• Nizamani, F., “The Portrayal of Islam in Western Media,” Community Awareness Committee, Mountlake Terrace, WA February 7, 2002.
• Nizamani, F., “Accommodating Muslim Students in Higher Education,” City University Leadership Conference, Bellevue, October 13, 2001.
• Nizamani, F., “Addressing the Needs of Muslim Students,” National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, Seattle, June 3, 2001.
• Nizamani, F., “Muslim Students in America- Voices from the Shadows,” ASCD International Conference, Orlando, April 2-4, 2005.
• Nizamani, F., “Muslim Students in America- Voices from the Shadows,” WASAME 11th Annual Fall Conference, Seattle, Sept 30- Oct 1, 2005.
• Nizamani, F., “A Place for Me,” Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, http://www.wickedness.net/ej.htm. Volume 1: No. 2, July 2002.
• Nizamani, F., “In Good Faith,” WSASCD Newsletter. 2006.
• Review of Rural Life and Culture in the Upper Cumberland. The Journal of American Studies of Texas. 2006.
• Nizamani, F., “My Mother’s Beauty,” Crosscurrents, Washington Community College Humanities Association. 2009.

Dr. Calvery finished her undergraduate studies in philosophy at Trinity Western University before completing an MA in literature at Northeastern Illinois University. Her MAT and Ph.D. are both from Seattle Pacific University in the field of curriculum and instruction. Her work spans corporate roles and non-profit organizations, and she has been primarily focused on education innovation through practice, research, and strategy for the past 10 years.

As a member of one of Microsoft’s Global Training Partners, Dr. Calvery has trained districts and schools across the United States in effective and authentic technology integration. Her curriculum has been published by Microsoft, Canva for Education, and the WE “Tech for Good” challenge.

In addition to her role leading the online and distance education initiatives across the organization, Dr. Calvery is teaching storytelling and College 101 courses. She looks forward to learning with and from all the students who come through her sessions.

Catherine Kyle completed her undergraduate studies in English at the University of Washington before earning an MA in English from the University of Rochester, a Ph.D. in English from Western Michigan University, and an MFA in creative writing from New England College. She taught at the College of Western Idaho for a few years before returning to Washington to teach at DigiPen.

Dr. Kyle is particularly interested in the crossroads where pop culture and literature meet. Her research focuses on comics, children’s and young adult literature, video games, and animation, often with an emphasis on representations of gender, nature, and power. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction frequently include symbolic uses of magic and other elements inspired by fairy tales, sci-fi, and fantasy. A lifelong gamer, she can often be found playing an RPG, and she loves reading, especially poetry and manga.

As a teacher, Dr. Kyle delights in introducing students to texts that bend and defy genre categories. She enjoys taking an interdisciplinary approach to literature and creative writing classes, pairing short stories with paintings and poems with music videos. She is excited to explore with students what video games add to the ongoing adventures of art and storytelling. Seeing what students create is a highlight of her job, whether it be an essay analyzing a superhero movie or a short story that experiments with solarpunk.

Dr. Kyle has given talks around the United States, as well as in Europe and Australia, and her writing has been honored by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Alexa Rose Foundation, and other organizations. She was the winner of the 2019-2020 COG Poetry Award and a finalist for the 2021 Mississippi Review Prize, and her poetry collection Shelter in Place received an honorable mention for the 2019 Idaho Book of the Year Award. She is currently at work on a new poetry manuscript, a book-length lyric essay told in fragments, and a short story collection.

Selected Publications

• Kyle, Catherine. “Treacherous Fields and Bunny Girls: Representations of Nature in Yuu Watase’s Alice 19th.” Ecocomix: Ecocriticism and Comics Studies, edited by Sid Dobrin, McFarland, 2020, pp. 146-160.
• Kyle, Catherine. Shelter in Place. Spuyten Duyvil, 2019.
• Kyle, Catherine. Coronations. Ghost City Press, 2019.
• Kyle, Catherine. “Not Haunted, Just Empty: Figurative Representation in Sarah Oleksyk’s Ivy.” Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Michelle Ann Abate and Gwen Athene Tarbox, University Press of Mississippi, 2017, pp. 59-73.
• Kyle, Catherine. Gamer: A Role-Playing Poem. dancing girl press, 2015.
• Kyle, Catherine. Flotsam. Etched Press, 2015.
• Kyle, Catherine. Feral Domesticity. Robocup Press, 2014.

Courtney A. Druzak attended Chatham University in Pittsburgh, where in 2014 she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. By 2016, she had graduated from West Virginia University with a master’s in English literature, followed up by a Ph.D. in English from Duquesne University in 2021. She began teaching college-level writing and composition as a master’s student in fall 2014; taught composition, writing, and literature at Duquesne University from 2016-2020; and returned to her undergraduate alma mater Chatham from 2018-2019 as a literature adjunct. At DigiPen, she teaches courses based in writing, composition, literature, and research. As a scholar, Druzak focuses on early modern English literature (spanning the period 1550-1680) and contemporary fantasy and sci-fi novels, with a dedication to reading texts through an intersectional ecofeminist framework.

As an Assistant Professor of English at DigiPen, Druzak is committed to helping students understand writing, research, and reading as tools of self-empowerment, both in their personal lives and careers. She firmly subscribes to the dual notions of process writing and reflection, and helps students navigate these aspects of their learning in every class she teaches. She greatly enjoys getting to know her students as individuals and working closely with them to help them make the most of their time at DigiPen and in higher education more broadly. Further, she is committed to accessibility, inclusion, and equity in her lessons and classroom, and always hopes students leave her classroom both having learned something and having had fun.

When she’s not working, Druzak spends her time gardening, reading, watching k-dramas, and exercising to prepare for the upcoming zombie apocalypse. She has an abiding love for the arts and history, and greatly enjoys browsing art collections and museums, or attending the theater. She considers herself a gamer-lite, mostly due to her fixation on handheld gaming platforms.