AUM Faculty & Staff
Directory
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.
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