Department of English and Philosophy
The mission of the Department of English and Philosophy at Auburn University at Montgomery is to prepare students for thoughtful engagement with diverse, multicultural communities and issues through high-impact, community-engaged teaching and learning and through advances in research in literature, rhetoric and composition, creative writing, digital humanities, and philosophy.
We offer an undergraduate major with concentrations in Literary Studies and Creative Writing, as well as three minors: Creative Writing, Language and Literature, and Philosophy. We also offer an undergraduate certificate in Professional and Technical Writing, with a distinctive focus on community-engaged projects.
Department of English and Philosophy Opportunities
Our students benefit from a varied and supportive environment that includes small classes and intensive, personal instruction from experienced professors who hold terminal degrees and have published significant research in their specialties. You’ll have a wealth of opportunities to develop intellectually while pursuing diverse academic, professional and personal goals.
We offer a Bachelor of Arts in English with concentrations in Literary Studies and Creative Writing.
We offer minors in:
Advising
Students are strongly encouraged to see their advisor every semester to ensure that they make informed choices that will keep them on the path to graduation and to discuss career options. English majors with 0 – 58 semester hours are advised in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Advising Center. English majors with more than 58 semester hours are advised by Mrs. Hillary Porter ([email protected] or 334-244-3892).
Department of English and Philosophy
Michel Aaij
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Michel Aaij is a Dutch native who received an MA and a Ph.D. with a specialization in Old English language and literature from The University of Alabama in 2003. Before that, he studied philosophy, physics, and English at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is co-editor, with Shannon Godlove, of the volume of Saint Boniface in the series Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition. In addition, he has published articles on the veneration of Saint Elisabeth (of Thuringia), on teaching the Old and Middle English versions of the biblical romance of Judith, and on the poetic language used by the Poets of the Confederacy. His interests include the Old and Middle English literature, world literature, the study of saints, and, a recent development, the use of medievalist tropes in the American South. He has taught most all the survey literature and freshman composition classes, Old English language and literature, Chaucer, Beowulf and Film, various linguistics classes including History of the English Language and Advanced English Grammar, and European Post-WW2 novels.
He is currently at work on a study of Sidney Lanier and his adaptation of the matter of King Arthur, and on a biography of Clifford Lanier, Sidney’s brother and at one time a well-known Montgomerian. He has also published book reviews on a wide range of topics including linguistics, review articles on Boniface and Elisabeth, and encyclopedic articles on authors ranging from Bede to Adso of Montier-en-Der, author of a well-known biography of the Antichrist.
Dr. Aaij likes his dog, and he likes food. He plays the air guitar, having hands that are too delicate for the real guitar. He is an administrator on Wikipedia where he acts against commercialization, sexism, online bullying, and ethnic hatred, and has blocked over 34,000 abusive editors and accounts; he is currently ranked 88 on the list of most active editors and has written over 1,600 articles.
Michelle Aitken
Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Michelle Aitken is a Lecturer in the Department of English and Philosophy where she primarily focuses on teaching English Composition. She earned both her Bachelor of Arts in English and Master of Liberal Arts with an English focus from AUM. She started teaching as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in 2019, before transitioning to her full-time Lecturer role in 2022. Her speciality is Gothic Lit and Dark Romanticism, with a specific focus on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. She also has a vested interest in Queer Studies. Additionally, she enjoys editorial work and has served in several editorial positions over the years, starting as a student editor on the Filibuster (now Common Thread). Since 2018, she’s worked as an Assistant Editor on Thirteen Bridges Review (formerly THAT Literary Review). She was also selected as an HHMI summer fellow in 2024.
Erin Boyle
Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Erin M. Boyle is an English Lecturer at Auburn University at Montgomery where she teaches all levels of English composition. Prior to teaching composition, Erin worked as a tutor in the AUM Learning Center, where she gained valuable insights into the unique needs of the student population. These experiences ultimately led to her decision to complete the Master of Teaching Writing degree in Fall of 2019.
As a part of the English Composition Program, Erin has contributed to the development of a curriculum that focuses on reflection and teaching for transfer. One of Erin’s favorite parts of teaching composition is the opportunities she finds to learn alongside her students.
Outside of teaching, she enjoys writing poetry, crocheting, and spending time with her husband and four kids. She lives in Pike Road, Alabama, where she enjoys life in the country with her family.
Jordan Dominy
Assistant Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Dr. Jordan Dominy joined the AUM faculty in August 2024. His research and teaching expertise are in American and US Southern literature and culture. He has taught courses in those subjects, popular culture studies, and film, and so far at AUM he has taught courses in literary theory and criticism, African American literature, and first year composition. His book, Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America, was published in 2020 by the University Press of Mississippi and includes chapters on authors ranging from William Faulkner to Alice Walker. Dr. Dominy’s recent publications have focused on the work of the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023).
A Georgia native, Dr. Dominy enjoys learning about Alabama history, places, and culture from his students and colleagues. When not teaching, reading, or writing, Dr. Dominy dabbles in many interests, but he particularly enjoys woodworking and playing games or watching television with his family and friends.
Stephanie Dugger
Assistant Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Dr. Stephanie Dugger is a poet and creative nonfiction writer whose collection of poetry, Either Way You’re Done (2017), was published by Sundress Publications and chapbook, Sterling (Paper Nautilus, 2015), was winner of the Vella Chapbook contest. Dr. Dugger’s poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Baltimore Review, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, Poetry International, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tampa Review, and other journals. Dr. Dugger teaches Creative Writing, Composition, and Literature at AUM and also serves as Creative Nonfiction editor for Thirteen Bridges Review.
Angela Fowler
Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Angela Fowler teaches writing and literature courses, specializing in research methods and 19th century British literature. She likes to research and write about nineteenth-century literature, Sherlock Holmes, and gothic literature. She often injects popular culture themes into her composition courses, as she considers media literacy vital to critical thinking. A graduate of both Mississippi State University (undergraduate and Master’s) and Auburn University (PhD), she has enjoyed teaching at AUM since 2015. She is currently writing a scholarly companion to Arthur Conan Doyle for McFarland Publications. In her spare time, she loves traveling, reading science fiction and fantasy, watching horror movies, and trying out recipes from her mother’s recipe book.
Heath Fowler
Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Heath Fowler has taught English at Auburn University at Montgomery since Fall of 2013. He teaches composition courses as well as “Business and Professional Writing” and “Technical Writing.”
Heath graduated from Mississippi State University in December of 2003 with a B.A. in Communication and a double emphasis in Journalism and Public Relations. He worked in newspapers for 7 years, serving as a copy editor, page designer, and assistant copydesk chief at the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal for four years before working as a copy editor and page designer at the Montgomery Advertiser for three years.
He then left newspapers to continue his education at Auburn University, earning his Master of Technical and Professional Communication degree in May of 2013, minoring in Rhetoric and Composition. He continued his studies while teaching at AUM, earning his Certificate of Teaching Writing in Fall of 2019.
Outside of academia, his interests include music, travel, and attending sci-fi/fantasy conventions. He lives in Montgomery, Alabama, with his wife, Dr. Angela Fowler, and their dog, Goofy.
Jason D. Gray
Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
I received my PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Riverside (2013). My areas of philosophical specialization or interest are the metaphysics of free will and its relationship to moral responsibility, the metaphysics of death, the philosophy of addiction (my dissertation topic), and ethics. I am an avid football and baseball fan. I grew up in Tuscaloosa, AL (my BA is from the University of Alabama, where I also majored in history), so I am a lifelong (living memory) fan of the Crimson Tide. In my younger years I got to repel down walls (a few times), bungee jump, and I once stood on a glacier in Alaska. I’ve seen the glove Willie Mays made “The Catch” with in Cooperstown, NY (not interesting to non-baseball fans, sorry), spent a summer studying in England, and a Christmas in Bordeaux, France. My avocation is reading non-fiction books about 19th and 20th century political and military history.
Darren Harris-Fain
Honors Professor; Distinguished Research Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Dr. Harris-Fain teaches and writes about British and American literature since the 1800s and popular culture. The topics of his publications include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Kate Chopin, H. G. Wells, Tarzan, James Bond, superheroes, Star Trek, Ray Bradbury, Ken Kesey, Kurt Vonnegut, New Wave science fiction, Harlan Ellison, Alan Moore, and Alison Bechdel, among others. His courses include surveys of British and American literature as well as upper-level and graduate classes on editing, American film history, and science fiction, fantasy, and graphic novels. Dr. Harris-Fain was a reference book editor and writer before beginning his teaching career and has taught at AUM since 2011. In 2015, he was a three-day champion on Jeopardy!
Shannon K. Howard
Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Dr. Howard loves exploring the tools people use when they write—from cuneiform to Chat GPT. Her favorite place is the first-year writing classroom, where she gets to play a part in setting the tone for the college experience. She also teaches upper-level coursework in the fields of rhetoric, literary/cultural theory, and basic writing pedagogy, among others. Dr. Howard is a proud slow runner who finds exercise necessary for stress relief. She also loves to explore strange places in Alabama that no one has found yet.
Joyce Kelley
Professor of English | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Joyce E. Kelley is Professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery where she teaches courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American literature, children’s literature, and poetry writing. After a childhood spent in Norman, Oklahoma, Dr. Kelley attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania, receiving degrees in English and music, and then pursued graduate studies at the University of Iowa where she received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English. Before joining the faculty at AUM in 2008, Dr. Kelley taught for one year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University. Dr. Kelley’s articles have appeared in a number of journals and collections, including The Journal of Narrative Theory, Victorians, Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Children’s Literature, The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts, The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914–1945, Politics, Identity, and Mobility in Travel Writing, Reading Transatlantic Girlhood in the Long Nineteenth Century, Virginia Woolf: Profession and Performance, and several Critical Insights volumes. She has published a monograph on the women modernists and travel, Excursions into Modernism: Women Writers, Travel, and the Body (Ashgate, 2015), and an edited collection, Children’s Play in Literature: Investigating the Strengths and the Subversions of the Playing Child (Routledge, 2019). Dr. Kelley received AUM’s Emerging Distinguished Teaching Professor Award in 2013 and the university’s Distinguished Research Professor Award in 2024. She is also a devoted member of the cello section of the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra.
Robert Klevay
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
I received a BA in English and Classics from Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI. I received my MA and PHD from the University of Delaware in Newark, DE. My PHD dissertation was on Henry David Thoreau’s satirical treatment of classical literature (Greek and Roman writers) throughout his works. I personally really enjoy the writing of 19th century American writers like Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Louisa May Alcott, and that’s why I chose a dissertation during this time period, knowing that it would mean teaching writers like this down the line. I’m also partial to Roman writers like Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.
I’ve taught several sections of English Composition II (most recently on Writing About Film, formerly on Travel and Tourism), Survey of the Literature of the Western World I and II (now World Literature I and II), Business Writing, and upper level courses on Transcendentalism and Travel, Thoreau’s Legacy, Greek and Roman Myth, Roman Literature, Thoreau’s Walden, Women and American Romanticism, Mythology and Folklore, Fantastic Voyages and Self-Discovery, Shakespeare in America, and most recently Rome and the English Renaissance since joining AUM in 2009. I’ve also taught several different variations of both American literature surveys. I’ve published work on Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, and Southern writer Barry Hannah. I recently published a short introduction to Mark Twain’s classical reading in The Mark Twain Journal and a short article on Thoreau scholarship and the Anthropocene for The Anthropocene: Approaches and Contexts for the Literature and the Humanities edited by my colleague, Seth Reno. I’ve also introduced several films (especially silent ones) for AUM’s CLASS Film Series.
Amy Lee Marie Locklear
Distinguished Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Dr. Amy Lee Locklear is a Distinguished Senior Lecturer and Honors Faculty in the Department of English and Philosophy. She specializes in digital writing and rhetoric, composition pedagogy, and learning sciences. Her research interests include teaching rhetoric in the composition classroom, cognitive science and education, digital writing spaces and rhetorical practices, and research writing. She has published a number of works related to the intersections of cognitive science and critical thinking and learning, especially in terms of writing pedagogy. In addition to her teaching and research pursuits, Dr. Locklear is a fan of science fiction, cats, and dragons.
She teaches first year writing courses, Advanced Writing, and first-year Seminars for the Honors Program (The Hero’s Journey Into Thinking – Honors 1757).
Dr. Locklear earned her BA in English Literature from the College of William & Mary in Virginia. From there she moved around the country as an Air Force spouse, ending up in Alabama in 2000. She earned her MA in English from Auburn University, specializing in rhetoric and literature, and her PhD from Old Dominion University in Digital Rhetoric and Composition. Her dissertation, “Concept Maps as Sites of Rhetorical Invention: Teaching the Creative Act of Synthesis as a Cognitive Process,” is based on interdisciplinary research on the brain, active learning, and writing pedagogy.
Luke Manning
Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Luke Manning grew up in upstate New York and rural Michigan. He completed a BA in Philosophy at Michigan State University, then earned a PhD in Philosophy from UC Santa Barbara. His research specializations include Philosophy of Language, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Art, and Philosophy of Fiction. He previously taught at Western Michigan University and at Auburn (main campus), and he joined AUM in 2020. At AUM he has taught courses including Applied Ethics, Introduction to Logic, Reasoning and Critical Thinking, Philosophy of Art & Literature, and Social & Political Philosophy. His other interests include music, chocolate, and Mexican food.
Kent Quaney
Assistant Professor, Coordinator of Creative Writing | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Kent Quaney is the coordinator of AUM’s Creative Writing Program, the managing editor of Thirteen Bridges Review, AUM’s professional literary journal, and the faculty advisor for AUM’s Creative Writing Club. Dr. Quaney holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of Sydney, and a BA in English from Weber State University. He teaches beginning and advanced fiction workshops as well as Introduction to Creative Writing and Creative Writing Appreciation. His novel, One Breath from Drowning (University of Wisconsin Press), won the Brodie Award for fiction in 2022. His short stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review, BULL, The McNeese Review, Literally Stories, RiversEdge, and other journals.
Seth Reno
Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Seth T. Reno is Professor of English and Distinguished Teaching Professor, specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, ecocriticism, affect theory, climate fiction, and the environmental humanities. He regularly teaches classes in these areas, as well as literature surveys and writing courses. Dr. Reno hails from Ohio, where he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Before joining AUM in 2013, he taught at Wittenberg University, Ohio State, and Columbus State Community College. He is author of Early Anthropocene Literature in Britain, 1750–1884 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and Amorous Aesthetics: Intellectual Love in Romantic Poetry and Poetics, 1788–1853 (Liverpool University Press, 2019); editor of The Anthropocene: Approaches and Contexts for Literature and the Humanities (Routledge, 2021) and Romanticism and Affect Studies (Romantic Circles Praxis Series, 2018); co-editor (with Allison Hamilton) of William Delisle Hay’s The Doom of the Great City (COVE, 2022); and co-editor (with Lisa Ottum) of Wordsworth and the Green Romantics: Affect and Ecology in the Nineteenth Century (University of New Hampshire Press, 2016). He has also published dozens journal articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and book reviews.
Dr. Reno is currently working on two book projects. The first is an anthology of lesser-known industrial writ, titled Popular British Industrial Writings: A Critical Anthology. It contains hundreds of relatively unknown (and often unpublished) poems, essays, and other forms of writing that chronicle the British Industrial Revolution.
The second project is a monograph, titled Alabama Banjo: A New History of America’s Instrument. As the title suggests, this book highlights the importance of the banjo and banjo music to the history and culture of Alabama—and, by extension, to the history and culture of America itself. Dr. Reno does this by tracing the history of the banjo—its songs, depictions in art and media, and notable musicians—from the nineteenth century to the present. From minstrel songs about “Alabama Joe” to Civil War-era banjo tunes traded between soldiers to poems about banjos to contemporary banjo players continuing the old-time music tradition, Alabama Banjo offers a new history of the banjo specific to the state of Alabama.
In addition to literature, Dr. Reno has a passion for music, food, and travel. He plays banjo, guitar, trumpet, and percussion; he has self-released two albums of original music; and he has a banjo YouTube channel. He also loves cooking and has taught courses on food and culture. Dr. Reno has also undertaken many domestic and international research trips, as well as study abroad courses, and he once came in fourth place at a burger-eating competition (he has since given up his professional food-eating aspirations).
Jason Shifferd
Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Jason Shifferd is a senior lecturer of English who teaches composition and literature. He also tutors writing at the Learning Center. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in English in 2009 and his Master of Liberal Arts in 2014, both from AUM. His thesis, available online and at the AUM library, is entitled The Case for Humor in the Classroom: An Annotated Bibliography, which served as the basis for his 2025 HHMI seminar “Crayons in College? Using Play to Reinforce Learning Goals.” He has published literary essays for Critical Insights, including “Humor in the Autobiographical Writings of Maya Angelou: Maya Meets Mr. Julian” (2016) and “Maxine Peake’s Female Hamlet: A Survey of Responses” (2019). As a graduate research assistant in 2013, he contributed to the article “Who Lives Where: A Comprehensive Population Taxonomy of Cities, Suburbs, Exurbs, and Rural Areas in the United States” (2016) for The Geographical Bulletin. In 2019, he co-led a presentation at CCCC in Pittsburgh entitled “Performing TfT at the Composition Program Level,” and in 2023, he did a live reading of his creative writing at ACETA in Clanton. He writes fantasy and science fiction and intends to publish within the next few years.
Eric Sterling
Distinguished Research Professor, MLA Program Director | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Eric Sterling earned his PhD in English (Renaissance and Eighteenth-Century Literature), with a minor in Drama and Theatre, at Indiana University. He has taught at AUM for 32 years. Dr. Sterling was the AUM English student advisor for 28 years and is Director of the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) graduate program.
Dr. Sterling has won the following awards:
- AUM Ida Belle Young Endowed Professorship Award
- AUM Distinguished Research Professor Award
- AUM Distinguished Teaching Professor Award
- AUM Distinguished Faculty Service Award
- AUM Alumni Association Professor Award
- AUM Alumni Association Service Award
- College English Association’s Robert E. Hacke Scholar-Teacher Award (national award)
- University of Wyoming’s Amy and Eric Burger Essays in Theatre Award (national)
- Association of College English Teachers of Alabama’s Eugene Current-Garcia Award
- Association of College English Teachers of Alabama’s Calvert Scholarship Award (twice)
- Association of College English Teachers of Alabama’s Woodall Pedagogy Award (five times)
Dr. Sterling has published four books and more than 100 refereed articles in academic journals. His four books are entitled:
- Life in the Ghettos during the Holocaust
- The Movement towards Subversion in Renaissance History
- Play Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman: Dialogue.
- The Seventeenth Century Handbook
Dr. Sterling lives in Alabama with his wife. They have two children and three grandchildren.
Heather Witcher
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Heather Witcher is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy. Her teaching and research focus on nineteenth-century British poetics, collaboration, and sociability, as well as archival theory and digital humanities. Alongside British Literature II, she teaches courses on Victorian poetry, with special focus on archives and digital creation. She is the author of Collaborative Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century: Sympathetic Partnerships and Artistic Creation (Cambridge, 2022), and the co-editor of Defining Pre-Raphaelite Poetics (Palgrave, 2020). She was the 2016 Amy P. Goldman Fellow in Pre-Raphaelite Studies. Her current projects focus on Pre-Raphaelite poetry and mapping Pre-Raphaelite influence in 19th century Chelsea.
