Faculty & Staff

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

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.

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

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

Ph.D, English, The Ohio State University

alexeblazer.com

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.

MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, Hamline University

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. 

Ph.D., English, University of Georgia

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.

Ph.D, Linguistics, University of South Carolina

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.

Ph.D., English, Texas Tech University

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.

M.A. English Literature, Valdosta State University

Ph.D. in English, Florida State University

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

B.A. in English, Missouri State University

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. 

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

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 Lenders, Comparative Drama, Interdisciplinary 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.

Ph.D, English, University of Texas

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 Literature, South Atlantic Review, The CEA Critic, and South Carolina Review.

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

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 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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

M.F.A, Fiction, Chatham University

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

Ph.D, Folklore, Indiana University

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.

Ph.D., English, Georgia State University

Ph.D, Creative Writing, University of Houston

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.

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

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.

Ph.D., University of Alabama

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

peterselgin.com

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.

Ph.D., English, University of Georgia

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.

Ph.D, English, University of California, Berkeley

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 Culture; The Transparent Eye-ball; Eighteenth-Century Fiction; Women'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.

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

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.