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.

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.

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 an Associate 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.

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, Creative Writing, University of Houston

Dr. Kerry B. Neville is Associate Professor of English in Fiction and Nonfiction Writing.  She is the author of Remember To Forget Me and Necessary Lies.  Her fiction and essays appear in journals, including The Gettysburg Review, Epoch, and Glimmer Train.  She writes for online publications, including The Huffington Post, Dame, The Fix, and The Establishment.  She is the recipient of The Dallas Museum of Art's Fiction Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters Prize for the Short Story.  She is Fiction Editor of Arts & Letters and also is faculty for The University of Limerick/Frank McCourt International 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.

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, Comparative Literature, Brown University

Dr. Stefanie Sevcik earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Brown University. She teaches African literature, composition, and world literature.

Ph.D, English, University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Katie Simon’s work focuses on issues of freedom and captivity in 19th-century American literature. Her book project is entitled "Something Akin to Freedom: Race, Space, and the Body in 19th-Century American Literature." Her work has appeared in ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture; Eighteenth-Century Fiction; Women's Studies: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal and in Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life. She teaches courses such as American Literature to 1865, Critical Approaches to Literature, seminars in Thoreau and Melville, and a freshman seminar entitled Public and Collective Memory. She was awarded Georgia College's Excellence in Teaching Award in 2014.

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.

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.