Faculty & Staff

Department of English

Chair and Staff

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Kerry Neville

Kerry Neville

Interim Co-Chair and Associate Professor, Coordinator of MFA and Undergraduate Creative Writing Program
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 memoir, Momma May Be Mad, is forthcoming in 2025. 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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dr manian

Dr. Sunita Manian

Interim Co-Chair, English, Chair of Philosophy and Liberal Studies
Beeson 337
(478) 445-2283
Courses/Topics

Gender and Sexuality in South Asia; Muslims in Europe; North Africans in France; Gender and Development; Multicultural Britain; Women and Economic Development; Ethics of Global Inequalities; Colonialism and Neo-colonialism; Global Economic Crisis and Future of the Euro.

Biography

Dr. Sunita Manian has a PhD in Economics and specializes in issues of Gender in South Asia.  Her publications relate to gender and sexuality in South Asia, migration and diasporic dislocation in Europe, sex trafficking between the Maghreb and Europe, and most recently her book HIV/AIDS in India: Voices from the Margins (Routledge). She is currently the Chair for the department of Philosophy and Liberal Studies.

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Melinda Martin

Melinda Martin

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

Nancy Fullilove

Part-time Administrative Assistant, Graduate Programs in English
3-29 Arts & Sciences
(478) 445-3509

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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Benjamin Elliott

Benjamin Elliott

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

M.A. English Literature, Valdosta State University

Biography

Benjamin Elliott earned a Masters of Arts in English Literature from Valdosta State University in 2022. He teaches first year composition. Previously, he has edited for research journals Study and Practice of Undergraduate Research and Omnino. Research interests include multimodality, composition in a post-A.I. world, Jungian analysis, and science fiction. Most recently, he published “‘A Fountain by Another Name’: Communication Breakdown, Language, and Meaning in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” for the Journal of the Georgia Philological Association’s 2022-23 Volume. 

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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, MA Coordinator and Literature Coordinator
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 Emeritus
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 has served three times as co-director for NEH Summer Institutes on O'Connor, most recently in 2023. Other publications by Gentry include Better to See You With: Perspectives on Flannery O'Connor, Selected and New, with Mercer UP, 2022.  Along with Katie Simon and Kerry Neville, Gentry is on the Organizing Committee for the conference honoring Flannery O'Connor's 100th birthday at a conference scheduled September 12-15, 2024, entitled "Flannery O'Connor's Second Century: Looking Forward, Looking Back." (see gcsu.edu/oconnorinstitute for details)

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Julian Knox

Julian Knox

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 Global Romanticism, literature and visual culture, Romanticism and popular music, children’s literature, theories and practices of translation, and the philosophy of time. He has published articles in the journals European Romantic Review, The Wordsworth Circle, The Coleridge Bulletin, Grave Notes, and The New German Review, and has contributed chapters to The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Memory in German Romanticism, Rock and Romanticism, and David Bowie and Romanticism. He is co-editor of the forthcoming essay collection Romanticism and Heavy Metal.

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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 (including courses on myths and fairy tales), Native American literature, popular culture and women's and gender studies, all with multicultural focus. She 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 has traveled or lived in over 30 countries so far, including time in the Peace Corps in Senegal and in Croatia on a Fulbright. She focuses on culturally-based approaches to studying human artistic expressions.

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Kerry Neville

Kerry Neville

Interim Co-Chair and Associate Professor, Coordinator of MFA and Undergraduate Creative Writing Program
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 memoir, Momma May Be Mad, is forthcoming in 2025. 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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James Owens

James Owens

Limited-term Lecturer
3-52 Arts & Sciences Building
Education

M.F.A., Creative Nonfiction, Georgia College & State University
M.A., Creative Nonfiction, University of Alabama, Birmingham

Biography

James S. Owens specializes in Creative Nonfiction and the works of Flannery O'Connor. James earned his M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Georgia College, an M.A. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and is a graduate of Auburn University. At Georgia College, he was an assistant to Dr. Bruce Gentry at the 2014 NEH Institute Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor and has participated in several O'Connor conferences such as Flannery O’Connor and Other Southern Women Writers, and James joined a roundtable called The Objects of O'Connor at SSSL’s The South in the North in Boston, MAAs well, Flannery O’Connor studies have taken James across the Atlantic to Seville, Spain where he presented "O’Connor’s Dirt" at the international conference Andalusia in Andalucía hosted by Loyola University. 

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Blue Profitt

Dr. Blue Profitt

Lecturer
3-02 Arts & Sciences Building
478-445-8692
Education

Ph.D., English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Biography

 Dr. Profitt is a Lecturer of Film Studies in the Department of English at Georgia College.  She teaches courses in global film history, classical and contemporary film theory, and gender & sexuality studies.  Her research focuses on Reagan Era film history and youth-oriented media.  In particular, she concentrates on popular youth films and culture in Generation X, with emphasis on delinquency and gender performance. Her work has been published by The Association for the Study of Buffy+ and Wayne State University's Popular Culture Consortium. Dr. Profitt earned a Ph.D. in English (concentration in Cinema Studies) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she was twice awarded the Chancellor’s Award for excellence in English Studies, and a BA in English from the University of Michigan-Dearborn.  Dr. Profitt is excited to work with students interested in film, U.S. history since 1945, coming-of-age narratives, gender & sexuality, celebrity studies, and other topics in U.S. popular culture.

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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

Peter Selgin is the author of Drowning Lessons, winner of the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction, two children's books, three books on the writer’s craft, and two essay collections. His memoir, The Inventors, won the 2017 Housatonic Book Award. His 2020 novel, Duplicity, won the Best Indie Book Award and the Indie Excellence Book Award. His full-length drama, A God in the House, based on Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his “suicide machine,” won the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. His novel, A Boy’s Guide to Outer Space, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in the Fall 2024.

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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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Shannon Skelton

Shannon Skelton

Limited-term Lecturer
3-52 Arts & Sciences Building
Education

M.F.A., Creative Writing, Georgia College and State University
M.A.E., English/Language-Arts Education, The University of Alabama at Birmingham 
B.A., English, Samford University 

Biography

Shannon Skelton holds an MFA in fiction from Georgia College and State University and an MAE in English education from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has written a collection of short stories, and her writing has been published in The Flannery O’Connor ReviewImage Journal, and Ruminate Magazine. She teaches composition, literature, and creative writing, and she is currently working on creative nonfiction writing projects. Recent research and teaching interests include: writing toward health and healing, grief in literature, the essay, and the intersection of creative writing and composition pedagogies.

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Jonna Smith

Jonna Smith

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

M.F.A., Creative Writing, Georgia College & State University

M.A., English Literature, Mississippi State University

B.A., English Literature, Delta State University

Biography

Jonna Smith (they, them) earned their M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Georgia College & State University while writing their memoir-in-hybridity Wild Animal. They teach first-year composition, including Monsters and Horror for ENGL 1102, as well as World Literature and American Literature.

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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
Amy Zipperer
Seth Tomko

Graduate Assistants and Teaching Fellows

Jordan Crider
Christian Gurrola
Alexis Calhoun
Emma Garcia
Sarah Neilson
Christina Faber
Kai Beck
Katelyn Moorman
Michael Sevcik
Ash Earnhardt
Noah Lorey
Isabelle Anderson
Elissa Williams
Richard Lassiter
Kay Hammond
Serena Kerkstra
Kate Goud
Olivia McDuffie
Connor Moore
Anna Durden
Ridgley Fenters
Benjamin Circle

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

Arts & Sciences 1-53, CBX 044