Terry Graf
English Department
CLS 2026, x5826
e-mail t-graf@neiu.edu
Terry Graf hails from the bowels of the Paris Metro, where he subsisted on cruellers and leftover expresso
from the paper cups of transit passengers. From there, he went on to the Sorbonne. No, he didn't
matriculate there; he lived in a shed (two, actually, which is why for a time he was known as Terry
"two sheds") outside the Languages and Literatures department, where he developed a love for
languages. Well, actually, he developed a love for a certain graduate student, but that ended in
disaster, so enough of that. While living his meager existence, and scavenging through the university
garbage every night, he managed to pick up enough material to be able to sit for exams toward the
degree in Literature, and he passed with honors. When the University found out his true identity, they
offered to pay his way back to the US with the promise that he never reveal that his literary training
was de la poubelle, and that a prestigious salon like the Sorbonne could be hoodwinked
into giving a degree to a simple-minded subterranean dweller. He stowed away on a steamer to
America, and upon landing at ______New Jersey, he hitchhiked to Chicago. There, he held several jobs, until
one day, at Bughouse Square in Hyde Park, screaming about the rights of Togoan aboriginies, he was
spotted by UNI chairman John Clark, who was looking for a Shelley scholar, but found Graf to be
just the right person to handle most of the 101 classes in the English Department and offered him the
position of Visiting Lecturer. True to his roots, Graf has visited but never left, much the same as the
Belushi SNL character, "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave." To this day, Graf teaches seven Freshman
courses and, much to his credit, has only been hospitalized once for severe trauma resulting from
grading two hundred freshman a year.
Actually, Graf is a quite jejeune (judging by all those toys in his office), middle-class type from the
suburbs of Chicago who studied film-making at Columbia College, English at NEIU, was a gypsy-
scholar for five years, right-place/right-timed his way into an Instructorship at NEIU, and likes his
work immensely. He teaches some of his courses as computer-assisted, hopes to revise his contract
in a way that enables him to teach one literature course per year, and spends far too much time on
the Internet. In real life, he has played in the same band for fifteen years, is finishing a novel (would he be
much of an English teacher if he weren't?), is perpetually rehabbing his house, and even when the novel
goes best-seller, plans to remain at NEIU to teach freshmen that good writing isn't just a matter of
whether the comma goes inside or outside the quotation marks. He is currently working on a composition
reader/textbook that would incorporate the results of his years of experience in teaching composition.
Courses Taught:
English 101: Writing I (catalog description)
English 102: Writing II (catalog description)
(Click on any highlighted course name for a sample syllabus).