English

David E. Curtis (Ph.D., University of Tennessee-Knoxville) is Chair of the English Department. Since coming to Belmont, Dr. Curtis has taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses in Early American Literature, African American Literature, and Critical Theory, including many online classes. As a professor, Dr. Curtis is interested in the ways new technologies intersect with scholarship, critical theory, and pedagogical practice.

Kimberly Balding (M.A., Belmont University) is a Lecturer in the English department. She teaches First-Year Writing, Third-Year Writing, First Year Seminar, Special Topics, and writing courses (Travel Writing and Third Year Writing) through Belmont’s Study Abroad program. Two of Professor Balding’s interests include the process of writing and the research and study of the Irish culture and Irish literature (often her course themes) and, of course, the points of intersection between the two. During the summer, she leads a study abroad group to both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, visiting cities such as Dublin, Belfast, and Galway. Her Irish interests have inspired her to learn to read and write Gaelic. She encourages her students to find the beauty and the power of the written word in all genres. Dia Duit!

Sarah Blomeley (Ph.D., Miami University) is an Associate Professor of English. Her teaching and research interests include composition, rhetorical history, women's rhetoric, literacy studies, and rhetorics of popular culture.

Heather Finch (B.A. Tuskegee University, M.A. and Ph.D. Auburn University) is an Assistant Professor of English. Her research and teaching experience and interests include Early American and African American literature with a specific emphasis on the fragmented narratives of pre-nineteenth century enslaved women and freedom. Her higher education professional experience also includes diversity and inclusion work. 

 Dr. Finch's Professional Site: www.heathermfinch.com

Susan Finch (Ph.D., Florida State University) is an Associate Professor of English. She specializes in Creative Writing with an emphasis in fiction. She writes both fiction and nonfiction, and her work has appeared in Carve, The Louisville Review, New Ohio Review, The Portland Review, Nimrod International Journal of Poetry and Prose, among other literary publications. Her fiction has been a finalist in many contests, including the Tennessee Williams Fiction Contest, the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, and in 2015, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Most recently, she was the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in fiction at The Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her research interests include the novel, the short story, creative nonfiction, and children’s literature.

Charmion Gustke's courses focus on the interdisciplinary practices of writing, reading, and social action. Her scholarly interests include transatlantic literary studies, South African literature, and the work of Willa Cather, on which Dr. Gustke has published articles. In the summer of 2015, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study Transcendentalism and Reform in the Age of Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller in Concord, Massachusetts. She is committed to community engagement and employs her service-learning classes to connect students to non-profit organizations such as The Next Door, Dismas House, and The Nashville Food Project in her continued support of sustainable food practices, social advocacy, and the liberal arts.

Kacie Hittel (Ph.D. University of Georgia, M.Phil. Trinity College, Dublin) is a lecturer of English. Her research includes twentieth- century --contemporary Irish and British literature and Gender Studies. She is particularly interested in contemporary Irish poetry by women, ecocriticism, feminism, and vignettes.

Professor
Ph.D. (English-Rhetoric & Composition), University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
M.A. (English), University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
B.A. (English), State University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA

Dr. Hobson has spent much of his career in pharmacy education, helping to develop curricula and instructional methodologies. At the Albany College of Pharmacy, he developed a nationally recognized model clerkship program in academic pharmacy, as well as a dual-focused residency program in ambulatory care/adult teaching and learning.

His service to the pharmacy community is varied and includes membership in the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). Dr. Hobson has chaired the AACP Liberal Education Special Interest Group, served as AACP Institute faculty, and was a member of the Best Evidence Pharmacy Education and Enhancing Communication Abilities task force.

Dr. Hobson has also been involved with curricular planning, development, and assessment. His research and faculty development activities are focused on student abilities development, curricular models, and their implementation and maintenance. He has had six books and more than 50 articles published on his research into issues of student motivation to learn, and reading and writing as essential communication and academic skills. His research has received the International Writing Centers Association's Research Award (1999) and the Robert J. Menges Research Award (2001) from the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education.

Dr. Hobson writes and leads workshops at colleges and universities around the country that focus on active and collaborative learning, student motivation, writing across the curriculum, abilities-based education, and outcomes-based assessment.

View Dr. Hobson's Curriculum Vita

View Dr. Hobson's areas of expertise and research interests

Amy Hodges Hamilton (Ph.D., Florida State University) is a professor of English at Belmont University. Amy's research and teaching interests center on personal writing, memoir, feminist theory, trauma theory, and healing and the arts. She is the University Capstone Coordinator and the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Peer Education Faculty Leader.  Amy is most at home when writing and collaborating with students, which is evidenced in "First Responders: A Pedagogy for Writing and Reading Trauma" in Critical Trauma Studies (NYU Press, 2016). 

Caresse John (Ph.D., Northern Illinois University) is an Associate Professor of English who teaches American Literature, Composition, and Gender Studies. She is also interested in Modernist poetry, contemporary women writers, and literary theory, particularly feminism and narratology.

Jason Lovvorn (Ph.D., Vanderbilt; M.A., University of Virginia; B.A., University of Alabama) is an Associate Professor of English and currently serves as the internship coordinator for the English Department. His writing classes at Belmont often address issues of literacy and learning, and many of his classes involve a commitment to service-learning in the Nashville community. His academic and research interests include rhetorical studies, new media, new materialism, and higher-education pedagogy. He has published scholarly work on service-learning narratives, literacy histories, and online media including digital stories, video games, and discussion boards.

Carla J. McDonough (Ph.D., University of Tennessee, Knoxville) is an Instructor of English, teaching First Year and Third Year Writing. Her scholarly interests include Modern and Contemporary Drama, Twentieth Century Literature, Gender Studies and Film. She has published articles about various playwrights, including Sam Shepard, David Mamet, David Rabe, Adrienne Kennedy, and Christina Reid, as well as articles about teaching drama and about feminism and motherhood.  Her book, Staging Masculinity, analyzes issues of masculinity in American drama has had several of its sections reprinted in other scholarly venues.

Dr. Gary L. McDowell (Ph.D., Western Michigan University) is an Associate Professor of English.  He specializes in Creative Writing and contemporary American poetics.  His research interests include the prose poem, the lyric essay, disjunctive poetics, and creative writing pedagogy.  His secondary teaching interests include composition, hybrid literature, and creative nonfiction.  Getting students interested in writing, however possible, is Dr. McDowell's true passion.  In addition, he is a widely published poet and critic. He is the author of a collection of lyric essays, Caesura: Essays (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017) and five collections of poetry, including Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None (Burnside Review Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Press Book Award; Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014); and American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Orphic Prize in Poetry. He's also the co-editor of the best-selling anthology, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010).  His writing has won awards from Green Mountains Review, Burnside Review Books, Grist: The Journal for Writers, Zone 3, Minnetonka Review, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, Dream Horse Press, The National Poetry Review, and others, and his poems and essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including American Poetry Review, The Nation, Gulf Coast, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Colorado Review. Recently, his essay, “An Eye that Never Closes in Sleep: A Nightbook,” was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2015.

Maggie Monteverde (Ph.D., The Ohio State University) is Professor of English. A past recipient of the Presidential Faculty Achievement Award, Dr. Monteverde teaches Medieval Literature and History of the English Language, among many other general education courses (including ones on Science Fiction).  Having earned her MA in English Language and Medieval Literature from Leeds University in the UK, she also leads the Belmont Month in London Program each summer.

Douglas Murray (Ph.D, University of North Carolina) is a Professor of English. He gravitates toward British rather than American literature and feels most at home with works of the 17th-early 20th centuries. His favorite novelist is Jane Austen, whose works he has helped edit for the Oxford University Press. Favorite poets include Donne, Pope, Blake, Hopkins and Eliot.  His missions include teaching readers to feel poetry in their bones and to expand their reading beyond works penned in the last 15 minutes. He teaches Surveys of British Literature on the undergraduate and graduate levels, and advanced courses on the 18th century, the Gothic, Jane Austen and the British novel. He loves working with freshmen (First-Year Writing) and is always encouraging students to study abroad, especially in Britain and France.  He is also a musician, serving as organist at the Nashville's Second Presbyterian Church.  His musical specialties include improvisation in the French and baroque styles and all music associated with the Church of England.  He has been a prize-winner in three international improvisation competitions:  the American Guild of Organists National Competition in 2012 and 2014 and the University of Michigan Competition in 2016. He has been named a Visiting Fellow at the Chawton House Library in England fur June 2017. 

Major Publications

"The Musical Structure of Dryden's 'Song for St. Cecilia's Day,'" Eighteenth-Century

     Studies, 10 (Spring 1977), 326- 34.

"The English Teacher and English Song," College English, 47 (February 1985), 176-80.

"Classical Myth in Richardson's Clarissa: Ovid Revised." Eighteenth-Century Fiction,

     3 (January 1991), 112-124.

"Gazing and Avoiding the Gaze: Jane Austen's Persuasion Years." In Jane Austen's

     Business.  Ed. Juliet McMaster and Bruce Stovel. London: Macmillan, 1996. Pp 42-53.

"Spectatorship in Mansfield Park: Looking and Overlooking." Nineteenth-Century

     Literature, 52 (1997), 1-26.

"A 'Serious Epidemic':  Frances Trollope and the Evangelical Movement."  In Frances

     Trollope and the Novel of Social Change.   Ed. Brenda Ayres, London:  Greenwood Press, 2002.  71-84.

"Jane Austen’s 'passion for taking likenesses':  Portraits of the Prince Regent in Emma.” 

     Persuasions. 29 (2007).  132-144.

“Donwell Abbey and Box Hill:  Purity and Danger in Jane Austen’s Emma.”  The Review

     of English Studies, New Series, 66:277 (December 2015), 954-970.

Editions

Austen, Jane. Catharine and Other Writinqs (in collaboration with Margaret Anne

     Doody).  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1993, 1998.

Trollope, Frances.  The Vicar of Wrexhill.  Vol II in The Social Problem Novels of

     Frances Trollope, 4 vols).  London, Pickering and Chatto, 2008.

Joy Nettles (M.F.A., Fairleigh Dickinson University) is a Lecturer in the English Department. She teaches First-Year Writing, Third-Year Writing, Creative Writing, and other speciality writing courses offered through Belmont's Study Abroad program. Her primary interests include compisition and creative writing with a focus in poetry and creative non-fiction. She has a passion for exploring the intersectionality of composition and poetry as well as encouraging her students to pursue purposeful writing that fosters deep connection and intentional thought that aligns with their passions. She has served as both a contributor and editor to numerous academic publications and institutions over the years, but her heart is for her students and making sure that their voices are heard and that their lives leave an indelible mark wherever their passions lead. 

Joel Overall (B.S. Abilene Christian University, M.A. Abilene Christian University, Ph.D. Texas Christian University) is Associate Professor of English specializing in digital writing, rhetoric, and design. He is particularly captivated by the intersection between music and persuasion through the fields of Sonic Rhetoric and Kenneth Burke studies. As an undergrad, he majored in Music, Journalism, and Marketing, but his interests in writing propelled him into graduate work in Composition and Rhetoric. These diverse subjects continue to inform his teaching and scholarship. At Belmont, he has taught courses in writing, the history of rhetoric, the art of the essay, and digital literacies while co-leading study abroad trips to Italy and Japan.

Dr. Overall’s professional website: http://joeloverall.com

Anne Malin Ringwalt-Johnson (M.F.A., University of Notre Dame) is a Lecturer in English who specializes in creative writing. Anne Malin's research and teaching interests center on translation theory, sound studies, memory studies, and hybrid forms. As a musician and a writer of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, her creative and critical work has appeared in Music & Literature, Jacket 2, Black Warrior Review, and Bennington Review. In the classroom, she is interested in listening as a mode of social and textual engagement, and how an ethics of listening informs the curriculum, the individual, and the community. 

Annette Sisson (Ph.D., Indiana University) I am Professor of English, specializing in Victorian Literature (in particular, the novels of George Eliot, a.k.a. Mary Ann Evans). Within the English major, I teach various versions of Victorian Literature, as well as Modern Fiction, The Novel, Senior Seminar in English Studies, and Understanding Literary Language. In addition, I regularly teach First-Year Seminar, Third-Year Writing, and also Literature & the Stage as a paired course with The Theater Experience, together comprising a Learning Community.

I have a long-term interest in the writings of Wendell Berry—his essays, poems, short stories, and novels—and have written about his work extensively. Recently I had the opportunity to teach an Honors Seminar (“’It All Turns on Affection’: Staying Grounded in a Virtual Age”) that explored the question “How shall we live in the world?” In this course Berry’s work was foundational, but we examined writers from many disciplines (Business, Urban Planning and Public Policy, Religion, Technology Studies/Sociology, etc.) to seek multidisciplinary insight about how to live well.

Since August 2015, I have been on the Board of Directors for Nashville Children’s Theater, where I currently serve as the Secretary and also on the search committee for a new NCT Executive Artistic Director. Promoting and working with NCT is one of my favorite projects. I am also an avid theatergoer, attending productions on Belmont’s campus and also throughout the Nashville community. Besides walking at Radnor Lake and participating in many ways at my church (including singing in the choir), I also love to play the piano, write poetry, and (of course) read.

I served as the first Director of General Education at Belmont (1998-2006) and also as the Director of the Master of Arts in English program (2010-2015). I have been President of the Faculty Senate (2014-2015) and served the university on many other campus-wide committees, such as Tenure, Promotions, & Leaves, Catalog & Curriculum, the Crabb Writing Award, the General Education ReviewTeam, and many more.

I have participated in Study Abroad several times (London!) and am currently planning a Maymester trip with my Learning Community teaching partner for May 2017, as well as a solo return to the London Summer Study Program in Summer 2018. (Which one sounds good to you?!) Past Study Abroad courses have focused on Dickens and Hardy, but recent courses have focused on Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, Detective Fiction, and Theater.

Bonnie Smith Whitehouse (B.A. Sewanee: The University of the South, M.A. University of Tennessee, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) is a Professor of English specializing in writing and rhetoric. She writes in the genre of creative nonfiction, and she studies how reading and writing inform understandings of politics, nature, and identity. As a citizen, she has a special interest in educational access and equity, and this interest has led her to integrate service-learning with a local adult literacy organization into several of her classes. Dr. Smith Whitehouse cares deeply about the English major and Belmont's core curriculum, and she appreciates crafting a First-Year Seminar syllabus as much as she values mentoring an M.A. student writing a thesis. She has written about ways so-called common readers report reading popular novels have "changed" their lives in the context of mass literacy movements.  Her book, Afoot and Lighthearted: A Mindful Walking Log, will be published with Clarkson Potter (Penguin Random House) in 2019 and is designed to unleash the power of walking for creativity, well-being and adventure in the digital age. Afoot and Lighthearted is inspired by Dr. Smith Whitehouse’s experience teaching a BELL Core Interdisciplinary Learning Community Course, The Adventures of Writers Who Walk, a course paired with Dr. Holly Huddleston’s Health & Fitness Concepts. Dr. Smith Whitehouse serves on the boards of the Hillsboro West End Neighborhood Association and St. Augustine’s Episcopal Chapel at Vanderbilt.

Bonnie Smith Whitehouse’s professional website: https://www.bonniesmithwhitehouse.com

Dr. Andrea Stover (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts) is a Professor of English. She earned her B.A. at the University of Vermont, her M.A. in English literature at Boston College, and has been teaching at Belmont since 1999. Her dissertation, Resisting Privacy: Problems with Self-Representation in Journals and Diaries, analyzes the practice of private writing by people ranging from first-year college students to literary figures such as Virginia Woolf. Her extensive work in autobiography, memoir, and diary studies draws upon interests and concerns in both literature and composition. In her teaching, she highlights the link between students' lives and the particular authors, topics, and genres studied in a given course. The courses she teaches range from The Art of the personal Essay and life Writing to Peer Tutoring, Creative Non-Fiction, and Women's Writing.

Beyond her interest in autobiography and other forms of life writing, Dr. Stover's teaching and research interests include Japanese literature, storytelling, oral history, and the oral interpretation of literature. She is also interested in general education, especially first- and third-year writing and the linked cohort courses which pair writing and literature with art appreciation.

Dr. Thorndike is Professor of English and Senior Fellow in the Honors Program.  He served as Director of the Honors Program from 2012-2018.  In addition to Honors core and General Education courses, he teaches a Study Abroad course at King’s College-London on C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings.  Thorndike previously taught at Alma College, Rocky Mountain College, Lakeland University, and the Japan Center for Michigan Universities. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Michigan State University. As an undergraduate, he spent one year doing mission work for a Presbyterian school for Native Americans in Sitka, Alaska.

Thorndike has led Study Abroad trips to Ireland, England, Japan, China, Greece, and Italy. He completed NEH seminars at the University of Arizona, at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, and at Harvard University. He published one book on James Joyce, two books on American history, and over 50 essays on Japanese and British literature. Thorndike’s book Epperson vs. Arkansas won a state library book-of-the-year award, and he appeared on a panel with the novelist John Grisham. He was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Award at Lakeland University and Belmont’s Presidential Achievement Award.   For ten years, he served as the Secretary-Treasurer for the southeast region of Alpha Chi National Honor Society and received Alpha Chi’s Distinguished Service Award. Working with colleagues at the National Collegiate Honors Council and area universities, Thorndike created the first consortium of Nashville Honors Colleges. Thorndike is a New American Colleges and Universities Ambassador responsible for reporting about NACU initiatives and facilitating campus participation in NACU. He is passionate about empowering students through education. He loves his family, church, hiking, cycling, and running the marathon including Boston. He plans to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail one day and visit every good coffee shop and Asian restaurant in Nashville.

Sue Trout (M.A., University of South Carolina) is an Assistant Professor of English. She teaches American literature, especially Southern Literature, Critical Reading and Writing, Junior Seminar, and composition. She is the faculty sponsor of the English Club.

Jayme Yeo (Ph.D, Rice University) is an Associate Professor in English. Her work focuses on the affective, political, and religious dimensions of discourse communities in the medieval and early modern period. Her current project applies these interests to regional adaptations of Shakespeare in the U.S. Her research has inspired topical courses that include Shakespeare and justice as well as poetry and activism. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the Folger Shakespeare Library, and her work has appeared in Exemplaria, Teaching Religion and Theology, Intersections: Yearbook for Early Modern Studies, and Literature and Theology.

Devon Boan is an author, cultural critic, and playwright who grew up in the foothills of North Carolina, working in furniture factories, movie theaters, and the city recreation center. He studied philosophy at Lenoir Rhyne College and explored a career in parish ministry before discovering he had a talent for telling stories and an interest in mining their insights. Seizing the day, he earned an M.A. in creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and a Ph.D. in African American literature at the University of South Carolina.

His book The Black "I": Author and Audience in African American Literature posits a new approach to interpreting 20th century African American literature and has been called “an original and theoretically sophisticated analysis” and “an important contribution to our understanding of ethnicity and modern American culture.” His play “Darkroom” was the opening-night finalist at FutureFest, a new play festival in Dayton, Ohio, and the keynote presentation at the Midlands Tech Multicultural Symposium in Columbia, South Carolina, and his play "No Man Knoweth His Sepulcher" was named Best Play in Gardner-Webb University’s New Play Competition. He has published stories, poems, essays, and articles in more than a dozen journals, anthologies, and newspapers. His latest project is a novel, The Fabulist d’Artagnan in Harlem.

Devon has taught literature, cultural and artistic criticism, creative writing, and sociology at three universities in North and South Carolina and, for the past twenty-four years, at Belmont. He lives outside Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife Kay, an educational administrator.

Linda E. Holt (Ph.D., Louisville University) is Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and has been has been teaching English at Belmont since 1990. She earned a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Louisville, and her dissertation examines student-centered teaching and research practices through the lens of cultural studies. An ardent supporter of writing as reflective practice, she has proudly watched many students begin to discover their own strengths as writers.  Dr. Holt especially enjoys working with students who are new to the university, and one of her favorite classes to teach is First Year Writing.  She has also taught Theories of Writing, Writing about Place, and Perspectives on Literacy, and she frequently teaches a Learning Communities writing class linked with chemistry.

Marcia A. McDonald (Ph.D, Vanderbilt University) is a Professor of English.  She teaches Shakespeare and early modern literature courses, in addition to writing courses, a range of literature courses and First Year Seminar. She is committed to General Education, study abroad, and service learning as particularly strong learning experiences; she has expanded her own areas of interest through teaching these kinds of courses. 

John H. E. Paine (Ph.D., Emory University) is professor of Literature. Dr. Paine has been fascinated by European languages and literatures since early childhood. He has done research on European, American, and Asian fiction and literary theory and criticism. He has taught German and Humanities at Emory University, French at Georgia Tech, English and American Studies at the Universitat Regensburg, and American Literature and Culture as a Fulbright Fellow in Angers, France. He has also studied contemporary trends in literary criticism and philosophy, the literature of the South, and Homer and the oral epic during summer faculty development seminars. In recent years, he has participated in Faculty Development seminars in Honolulu, sponsored by the East-West Center and the Freeman Foundation, on Chinese and Japanese literature and culture. In 2008, he was facilitator and participant in the faculty seminar Fukuoka Crossroads in Fukuoka, Japan.

Robbie Clifton Pinter (Ed.D., Vanderbilt University) is a Professor of English. She teaches courses in most genres of life writing, such as The Journal, Autiobiography, and Memoir. Dr. Pinter also focuses on teaching writing that connects the writer's inner urge to write with community needs such as the environment, faith, education, and spirituality. In all her courses, she works with students to give them real life writing practice. She publishes about life writing and its connection to contemplation and action in both academic and non-academic publications. in 2004, she published For This Child I Prayed, a memoir that tells the story of open adoption. Her most recent writing and teaching interests focus on how writing works in social change and spirituality. Some of these course topics follows: "Faith-Fire Writing," "Writing Matters: Community Writing with a Refugee Resettlement and 12S Public Library," and "Writing to Change the World." Her work as a spiritual director supports her teaching. Dr. Pinter won the campus-wide presidential Faculty Achievement Award in 2006 and was one of three faculty members to receive the first Tower Award for her contribution to campus life in 2003.