Faculty & Staff

Department of English

Chair and Staff

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Matthew Pangborn

Matthew Pangborn

Chair and Professor
3-05 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-5574
Education

Ph.D., English Literature, University of Albany, State University of New York
M.F.A., Creative Writing (fiction), Texas State University

Biography

Dr. Matthew Pangborn earned his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Albany, State University of New York and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing (fiction) from Texas State University.

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Melinda Martin

Melinda Martin

Administrative Assistant
3-03 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-4581

Faculty

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Nancy Beasley

Nancy Beasley

Assistant Professor
3-14 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-0518
Education

M.A., English Education, Georgia College & State University

Biography

Professor Nancy Beasley earned her M.A. in English Education from Georgia College & State University.  She teaches composition, world literature and utopian/dystopian worlds.

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Alex Blazer

Alex Blazer

Professor
3-05 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-5574
Education

Ph.D, English, The Ohio State University

Website

alexeblazer.com

Biography

Dr. Alex E. Blazer specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature and critical theory.  His publications include I Am Otherwise: The Romance between Poetry and Theory after the Death of the Subject; articles on contemporary American authors Paul Auster, Bret Easton Ellis, and Chuck Palahniuk; and an article on the cult film Donnie Darko.  He teaches modern and contemporary American literature, film, poetry, critical theory survey, focused studies in literary criticism (existentialism and phenomenology, reader-response criticism, Marxist criticism, psychoanalytic film theory), global horror film, and science fiction and philosophy.

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Randall Bonser

Randall Bonser

Limited-Term Lecturer
3-18 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-1188
Education

MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, Hamline University

Biography

Randall Bonser earned an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University in Minnesota. He is the author of several children's books, including "Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga: The Ultimate Teen Guide." He teaches first year composition at GCSU. 

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Joy Bracewell

Joy Bracewell

Director of the Writing Center and Assistant Professor
2-56 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-8724
Education

Ph.D., English, University of Georgia

Biography

Dr. Joy Bracewell earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia.  In addition to being the Director of the Writing Center, she teaches composition and first-year composition practices.

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Craig Callender

Craig Callender

Associate Professor
3-17 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-3178
Education

Ph.D, Linguistics, University of South Carolina

Biography

 

Dr. Craig Callender is a historical linguist and phonologist who works on Germanic languages, including English. He regularly teaches History of the English Language, Medieval English Literature (Middle English), Human Language, Structure of Present-Day English, and World Literature. His research is primarily on the evolution of sound systems in Germanic languages, where he is interested in how comparative dialectology can aid in the reconstruction of historical processes. He also co-directs the European Council Summer Study-Abroad Program in Berlin, and is always happy to discuss study abroad (in Berlin and elsewhere) with interested students.

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Dr. Jordan Cofer

Jordan Cofer

Associate Provost and Professor
Carl Vinson House
478-445-8753
Education

Ph.D., English, Texas Tech University

Biography

Dr.Jordan Cofer’s teaching interests include 20th century American Literature, Southern Literature, and Religion and Literature. He is the author of The Gospel According to Flannery O’Connor and co-author of Writing the Nation.

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Benjamin Elliott

Benjamin Elliott

Limited-Term Lecturer
3-12 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-8733
Education

M.A. English Literature, Valdosta State University

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Dr. Kerry James Evans

Kerry James Evans

Assistant Professor
3-10 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-3176
Education

Ph.D. in English, Florida State University

M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

B.A. in English, Missouri State University

Biography

Dr. Kerry James Evans is the author of the poetry collection, Bangalore, a Lannan Literary Selection. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee Writers' Conference, and he has taught poetry workshops, poetic forms and theory, and other courses at Florida State University and at Tuskegee University, where he was an Assistant Professor. His poems have appeared in Agni, Narrative, Ploughshares, and other journals. 

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Jenny Flaherty

Jennifer Flaherty

Professor
3-22 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-3180
Education

Ph.D, English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Biography

Dr. Jennifer Flaherty received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a Professor of Shakespeare studies, and her research emphasizes appropriation and global Shakespeare. Her work has been published in journals such as Borrowers and LendersComparative DramaInterdisciplinary Literary Studies, and Topic. She has also contributed chapters to the volumes The Horse as Cultural Icon and Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction. Dr. Flaherty regularly teaches courses in Renaissance literature, dramatic literature, film studies, adaptation, Milton, and Shakespeare for the Literature program. She also teaches courses for Women's Studies, GC1Y and GC2Y, and the Georgia College Honors College.

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Dr. Bruce Gentry

Bruce Gentry

Professor
3-67 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-6928
Education

Ph.D, English, University of Texas

Biography

 

Dr. Bruce Gentry, Editor of the Flannery O’Connor Review, received GC’s Excellence in Scholarship award in 2013. He is the author of Flannery O'Connor's Religion of the Grotesque, editor of The Cartoons of Flannery O'Connor at Georgia College, and co-editor of the oral history At Home with Flannery O'Connor. Gentry twice served as co-director for NEH Summer Institutes on O'Connor. Gentry has also hosted four O'Connor conferences in Milledgeville. Other publications by Gentry include Conversations with Raymond Carver and articles on Doctorow, Roth, and Carver in Contemporary LiteratureSouth Atlantic ReviewThe CEA Critic, and South Carolina Review.

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Julian Knox

Julian Knox

MA Coordinator and Associate Professor
3-04 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-8687
Education

Ph.D., English, University of California, Los Angeles

Biography

Dr. Julian Knox earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. His teaching and research interests include British and World Romanticism, literature and visual culture, Romanticism and popular music, theories and practices of translation, life-writing, and philosophies of time. He has published articles in the journals European Romantic ReviewThe Wordsworth CircleThe Coleridge BulletinGrave Notes, and The New German Review, and has contributed chapters to The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Transnational England: Home and Abroad, 1780-1860. His latest article, "Ashes Against the Grain: Black Metal and the Grim Rebirth of Romanticism," appears in the collection Rock and Romanticism.

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Roberto Leon

Roberto S. León

Assistant Professor
3-11 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-8157
Education

Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland College Park

Biography

Dr. Roberto León earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland College Park.  His teaching and research interests include theories and histories of rhetoric and composition, comparative rhetoric, technical and professional writing, second language writing, writing program administration, writing across the curriculum, religious rhetorics, and argumentation.

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Kathryn Livingston

Kathryn Livingston

Limited-Term Lecturer
3-20 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-8595
Education

M.A. in English Language & Literature, Georgia College & State University

Biography

Kathryn Livingston earned her M.A. in English Language & Literature from Georgia College & State University. She specializes in English as a Second Language, international education, and composition. Her debut novel Epoch was published in May 2023.

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Jeffrey MacLachlan

Jeffrey H. MacLachlan

Senior Lecturer
3-09 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-5571
Education

M.F.A, Fiction, Chatham University

Biography

Mr. Jeffrey MacLachlan earned an M.F.A. in Fiction from Chatham University. His work has recently been published in New Ohio ReviewEleven Eleven, and Minetta Review, among others.  He teaches composition, world literature, and war literature.

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Mary Magoulick

Mary Magoulick

Professor
3-21 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-3177
Education

Ph.D, Folklore, Indiana University

Biography

Dr. Mary Magoulick teaches folklore, Native American literature, myth, popular culture and women's and gender studies, all with multicultural focus. She writes on the interrelationships between literature/texts and culture and has published in The Journal of American Folklore, The Journal of Folklore Research, The Journal of Popular Culture, and more. Her book, The Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: A Feminist Critique was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2022. She enjoys traveling (over 30 countries so far) and contemplating cross-cultural connections and culturally-based approaches to studying human artistic expressions. She has done fieldwork with Nishnaabe people, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal, studied in France, taught in Sweden, Italy, England, Ireland, for Semester at Sea (going around the world), and in Croatia, the last on a Fulbright.

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Bailey McAlister

Bailey McAlister

Lecturer
3-24 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-5554
Education

Ph.D., English, Georgia State University

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Kerry Neville

Kerry Neville

MFA Coordinator and Associate Professor
3-27 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-4018
Education

Ph.D, Creative Writing, University of Houston

Biography

Dr. Kerry B. Neville is Associate Professor of Fiction and Nonfiction Writing. She is the author of two collections of stories, Necessary Lies, which received the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize in Fiction and was named a ForeWord Magazine Short Story Book of the Year, and Remember to Forget Me. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Gettysburg Review, Epoch, Triquarterly, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Her fiction and nonfiction have been named Notables in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. She is a nonfiction editor for Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature. In 2018, she was a Fulbright Fellow at University of Limerick in Ireland, where she was Visiting Faculty in the MA in Creative Writing Program.

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Laura Newbern

Laura Newbern

Associate Professor
3-28 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-0963
Education

M.F.A, Creative Writing, Warren Wilson College

Biography

 

Professor Laura Newbern earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. She teaches intermediate poetry writing, poetry workshop, and creative writing senior seminar.

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Emily Jane Pucker

Emily Jane Pucker

Assistant Professor
3-08 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-5557
Education

Ph.D., University of Alabama

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Peter Selgin

Peter Selgin

Professor
3-26 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-0963
Education

M.F.A., Creative Writing, New School University

Biography

 

Professor Peter Selgin is the author of Drowning Lessons, winner of the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. He has written a novel, three books on the craft of fiction writing, an essay collection, and several children’s books that he illustrated. His novel, The Water Master, won the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for the Novel, and his memoir-in-essays, Confessions of a Left-Handed Man, was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize. A visual artist as well as a writer, his work has been featured in The New Yorker and other publications. He is the art director of Arts & Letters.

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Sidonia Serafini

Sidonia Serafini

Assistant Professor
3-08 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-3181
Education

Ph.D., English, University of Georgia

Biography

Dr. Sidonia Serafini earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia. Her teaching and research interests include early African American literature, multiethnic American women’s writing, periodical studies, and public history and humanities. She co-edited The Magnificent Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Transatlantic Reformer and Race Man (UGA Press, 2020). Her essays have appeared in the Southern Quarterly, Women’s Studies, and the Journal of Transatlantic Studies. She is the Co-Director of Black Activism: A Transatlantic Legacy, a website that examines the imprint of Black activism in the US and the UK, past and present. She has secured grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and her research has been recognized by the National Council on Public History.

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Katie Simon

Katie Simon

Associate Professor
3-13 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-5564
Education

Ph.D, English, University of California, Berkeley

Biography

Dr. Katie Simon is an Associate Professor in the English Department and the Coordinator of the Program in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on American literature, critical theory, and the environment—with special interests in issues of social and environmental justice. Current projects include an anthology of essays on Ecocriticism and Social Justice in the U.S. South, as well as a research initiative on Race and Nature. Her articles appear in ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Literature and CultureThe Transparent Eye-ball; Eighteenth-Century FictionWomen's Studies: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal and in the anthology Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life (Pluto Press). Dr. Simon has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, and was awarded GCSU’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

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Dr. Chika Unigwe

Chika Unigwe

Assistant Professor
3-23 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-3508
Education

Dr. Chika Unigwe earned her Ph.D. from the Universiteit Leiden, Holland, and her M.A. from Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium.

Biography

Dr. Unigwe's novels include On Black Sister Street (Random House, 2011) and Night Dancer (Jonathan Cape, 2012). Her debut collection of short stories, Better Never than Late (Cassava Republic),  was published in 2019. Widely anthologized, she has also placed work in different journals including the New York Times, Guernica, Kenyon Review, the UK Guardian, Aeon, Wasafiri, Transition and Agni.

Emeriti Faculty

Peter Carriere

Professor Emeritus

Sarah Gordon

Professor Emerita

Marty Lammon

Professor Emeritus

David Muschell

Professor Emeritus

Eustace Palmer

Professor Emeritus

Michael Riley

Professor Emeritus

Part-Time Lecturers

Ruby Holsenbeck
Shannon Skelton
Amy Zipperer

Graduate Assistants and Teaching Fellows

Benjamin Benson
Jordan Crider
Christian Gurrola
Crystal Jackson
Rachel Kerger
Aron Liebig
Julia McCool
Cas McKinney
Jonna Smith
Nathanael Williams

The office for Part-Time Faculty, Graduate Assistants, and Teaching Fellows is:

Arts & Sciences 1-53, CBX 044