Faculty

Adetayo Alabi

Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Saskatchewan
Teaching and research interests are Postcolonial studies with an emphasis on African, African-American and Caribbean literature and culture, Literary theory, and Autobiographical genre in Comparative Black Studies.
Office: C216 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-6948 | aalabi at olemiss.edu

Patrick Alexander

Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies
Ph.D. Duke University
Teaching Interests: African American literature, 19th-century American literature, and Critical Prison Studies.
Office: 315 Longstreet | pealexan at olemiss.edu

Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra

Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D., New York University
Teaching and Research Interests: Anglophone and Francophone African Literature, Latin American Literature and Culture since Independence, Critical and Political Theory (in particular: theories of aesthetics and politics), Genre and Narrative Theory, Postcolonial Literature and Theory, World literature and Translation Studies.
Office: C220 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7670 | marmilla at olemiss.edu

Jack Barbera

Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Research and teaching interests include Twentieth-Century Poetry, Twentieth-Century Drama, Film, Literature and Art.

Deborah Barker

Associate Professor
Ph.D., Princeton
Teaches American literature (with an emphasis on 19th and 20th century women writers), film studies (with an emphasis on gender and southern film), and gender theory. She is currently working on a book-length project on southern film and is editing, with Kathryn McKee, two collections of essays on southern film.
Office: C219 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7758 | dbarker at olemiss.edu

Lindy Brady

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Connecticut
Teaching and research interests are Old English, medieval Irish and Welsh, Old Norse, and Anglo-Latin languages and literatures; the role of the landscape in medieval tests.| lmbrady at olemiss.edu

Nic Brown

John and Renee Grisham Visiting Writer in Residence
Office: W111 Bondurant Hall

Robert Cummings

Associate Professor
Ph.D., Georgia
Directs the Center for Writing and Rhetoric and teaches composition, composition pedagogy, and courses exploring rhetoric and technology. Recent projects include Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia (Vanderbilt 2009) and Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom (Michigan 2008).
Office: 108 Somerville | 662-915-1989 | cummings at olemiss.edu

Leigh Anne Duck

Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Modern and contemporary literature and visual culture, constructions of race and nation, and theories concerning space, narrative, memory, and neoliberalism. Her current project considers how twenty-first century representations of the U.S. South provide a venue for contemplating the past and future of the larger nation.
Office: C217 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7684 | lduck at olemiss.edu

Chiyuma Elliott

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin
Teaching and research interests: African American Literature, The Harlem Renaissance/New Negro Movement, 20th Century American Literature, Poetry and Poetics, Modernism, and American Intellectual History.

Cristin Ellis

Assistant Professor
Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University
Teaching Interests: Nineteenth-century American literature and culture, American Romanticism
Office: W209A Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7183 | ceellis2 at olemiss.edu

Beth Ann Fennelly

Associate Professor and Director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing
M.F.A, University of Arkansas
Teaches poetry as literature and also teaches the writing of both poetry and creative nonfiction. She’s the author of three books of poetry and one book of essays.
Office: C104 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7914 | bafennel at olemiss.edu

Benjamin Fisher

Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., Duke
Specializes in Edgar Allen Poe, 19th Century and early 20th Century American Literature, Victorian Literature, Gothicism, Detective Fiction, and Turn-of-the-century women writers.
bfisher at olemiss.edu

Ann Fisher-Wirth

Professor
Ph.D., Claremont Graduate School
Teaches poetry workshops and seminars, 20th-century American literature, and a wide range of courses in environmental literature.
Office: C212 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-5929 | afwirth at olemiss.edu

Richard Ford

Visiting Professor of Creative Writing
M.F.A., University of California, Irvine

Tom Franklin

Associate Professor of Fiction Writing
M.F.A., University of Arkansas
Teaches graduate fiction seminars and workshops.
Office: W104 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7914 | tfrankli at olemiss.edu

Adam Gussow

Associate Professor of English and Southern Studies
Ph.D., Princeton
Teaches and writes about American and African American Literature, with a particular focus on blues cultural studies.
Office: C213 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7333 | agussow at olemiss.edu

J.R. Hall

Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., Notre Dame
Specializes in Old English and Middle English language and literature.
Office: 313 Somerville Hall | 662-915-7145 | jrhall at olemiss.edu

Joan Wylie Hall

Lecturer of English
Ph.D., Notre Dame
Teaches American literature, southern literature, and women’s literature. Her research interests are southern women’s writing and African-American literature.
Office: Somerville Hall 202 | 662-915-7286 | egjwh at olemiss.edu

Jaime Harker

Associate Professor of English and Assistant Chair
Ph.D., Temple University
Works on twentieth century American literature, with an emphasis on book history, gender, and sexuality. She has additional research interests in gay and lesbian studies, American studies, and the Pacific Rim.
Office: C214A Bondurant Hall | 662-915-3172 | jlharker at olemiss.edu

Derrick A. Harriell

Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Teaching Interest: Blues Poetry, 20th Century Poetry, Harlem Renaissance Literature and Poetry
Office: Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7439 | harriell at olemiss.edu

Mary Hayes

Associate Professor of English
Ph.D., University of Iowa
Teaches Old and Middle English Literature and her research interests include the history of the senses/sound theory and magic and the occult.
Office: C121 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7456 | hayes at olemiss.edu

Gregory Heyworth

Associate Professor of English
Ph.D., Princeton
Insular and continental literature of the 12-th-14th centuries. Philosophy of language, poetic and cultural theory, vernacularity and the relationship of the graphic to the textual. Palaeography, codicology, multispectral imaging, spectroscopy, manuscript recovery, history of the book. Director of the Lazarus Project.
Office: C214B Bondurant Hall | heyworth at olemiss.edu

Blair Hobbs

Lecturer of English
M.F.A., University of Michigan
Teaches American Literature, Advanced Composition, Freshman Composition, Applied Writing, and Poetry workshops.
Office: 206 W Bondurant vhobbs at olemiss.edu

Shari Hodges Holt

Instructional Assistant Professor of English
Ph.D., University of Mississippi
Teaches courses in British literature, drama, and film studies. Her research interests include film adaptations of literature, Victorian Gothic and sensation fiction, and the works of Charles Dickens.
Office: Rm 332, Desoto Campus, Southaven | 662-393-1658 | shodges at olemiss.edu

Steven Justice

Professor
Ph.D.,Princeton
Teaching and research interests are Medieval European literary and intellectual history and criticism and theory.

Ivo Kamps

Department Chair and Professor
Ph.D., Princeton
Research and teaching interests include Early Modern literature, Shakespeare, Literary theory, Film.
Office: C128 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7439 | egkamps at olemiss.edu

Donald Kartiganer

Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies Emeritus
Ph.D., Brown

Colby Kullman

Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., University of Kansas
Restoration and Eighteenth Century Studies, American Drama, Tennessee Williams
egcolby at olemiss.edu

Ben McClelland

Professor and Holder of the Ottilie Schillig Chair in English Composition
Ph.D., Indiana University
Teaches courses in applied writing, in American modernist fiction, and in contemporary nonfiction literature and writing. His current research and writing projects are historical fictions about his hometown in Pennsylvania
Office: C216 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-5500 | wgbwm at olemiss.edu

Kathryn McKee

Associate Professor of English
Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Teaches and writes about United States literature and U.S. southern literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has particular interests in women’s writing, humor studies, film studies, and Global South studies.
Office: 216 Barnard Observatory | 662-915-3371 | kmckee at olemiss.edu

Chris Offutt

Associate Professor of English and Screenwriting
M.F.A., Fiction. The University of Iowa
Teaching interests: screenwriting, fiction, film
Office: C130 Bondurant | 662-915-7672 | offutt at olemiss.edu

Jack Pendarvis

Writes and teaches fiction, contemporary literature.
Office: W111 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-6510 | pendarvi at olemiss.edu

Karen Raber

Professor of English
Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
Writes and teaches early modern British literature. Her research interests include cultural and gender studies, animal studies, and ecocriticism.
Office: W209B Bondurant Hall | 662-915-5793 | kraber at olemiss.edu

Peter Reed

Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Ph.D., Florida State University
Teaches Early American Literature.
Office: C133 Bondurant | 662-915-7685 | preed at olemiss.edu

Gregory Alan Schirmer

Professor Emeritus
Ph.D., Stanford
Teaches Irish literature and British twentieth-century literature.
eggas at olemiss.edu

Natalie Schroeder

Professor
Ph.D., Northwestern University
Teaches nineteenth-century British literature, contemporary fiction, the novel, and world literature.
Office: C136 Bondurant | 662-915-76688 | nschroed at olemiss.edu

Ronald A. Schroeder

Professor
Ph.D., Northwestern University
Teaches British Romanticism, the novel.
Office: C218 Bondurant | 662-915-7673 |egras at olemiss.edu

Gary Short

Visiting Assistant Professor
M.F.A., Arizona State University
Teaching interest: 20th-century poetry
Office: W212 Bondurant | 662-915-6642 | gshort at olemiss.edu

Dave Smith

Professor of English
Ph.D., Ohio Univeristy
Teaching and research interests: 19th and 20th Century American and British Poetry, Poetry Writing, and Contemporary Literary Criticism and Non-Fiction.

Jason Solinger

Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Ph.D., Brown
Research interests include Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature, Transatlantic Literary Culture, Gender and Masculinity, and The Politics of Literary Form
Office: W207 Bondurant | 662-915-5837 | solinger at olemiss.edu

Beth Spencer

Instructor
M.F.A., University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Teaching interests include creative writing, especially poetry, environmental studies, nature writing, Southern literature, intersections of social justice and service learning, international learning communities, multicultural literature and composition
Office: C 132 Bondurant Hall | 662-915-7674 | ecspence at olemiss.edu