Professor Sponberg joined the Valparaiso University English faculty in 1972.

He enjoys working with students and colleagues from all academic areas and therefore happily teaches in the Valpo Core. Professor Sponberg’s teaching philosophy is simple. He strives to be prepared, on time, audible, inquisitive, helpful, positive, and available.

Professor Sponberg specializes in twentieth century drama and theater. His publications include two books: Broadway Talks: What Professionals Think About Commercial Theatre in America (Greenwood Press, 1991) , and A.R. Gurney: A Casebook (Routledge, 2003). With the help of a Philip and Miriam Kapfer Family Research Award, he is researching the rise of nonprofit professional theater in Chicago. See his website www.chicagotheaterhistoryproject.org.   In the spring of 2009 he is teaching a new graduate course, New Ideas in Midwestern Literature, for which he has started a blog at http://blogs.valpo.edu/midwestlit

In addition to teaching, Professor Sponberg serves as chair of the American Studies Committee, and advises English majors and the Kappa Phi chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the national English honor society. With his colleague, John Feaster, he also serves as Co-Chair of Books and Coffee, an annual series of public book reviews. See http://www.valpo.edu/english/assets/docs/books2009.pdf

Professor Sponberg’s passions include theater, for its clarity and precision; the history of science, for its emotional and ambitious obsessions; politics, for its complicated rhythms and harmonies; music, for its democratic and inspirational vistas; football, for its graceful choreography; golf, for its brutal physicality; and religions, especially the Lutheran family, for their simple, heartbreaking mysteriousness.