English – Faculty

Dr. Lindsey Banister recently completed her PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University. She received her MA in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from San Diego State University in 2012 and her BA in English from Pepperdine University in 2009. She specializes in sports and embodied rhetoric. Her research interests also include writing center studies, performance, and rhetorical historiography. In addition to teaching composition courses at FMU, Dr. Banister is also the Director of the Writing Center. In her free time, she participates on the Florence Masters swim team, travels, and enjoys drinking good beer with friends.

Education

PhD, Syracuse University

MA, San Diego State University

BA, Pepperdine University

Dr. Clark joined the Francis Marion faculty in 2018 after completing her PhD in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Arkansas. Her specialization areas include modern Arabic literature and translation, Classical Arabic literature, and ecocriticism.

At Francis Marion, Dr. Clark is the Assistant Director of the Writing Center. She regularly teaches composition as well as introduction to literature courses with themes like literature and the environment and multicultural American literature. Dr. Clark has taught themed honors classes at FMU on literatures and rhetorics of disaster and cultural studies in the 21st century Levant.

Dr. David Cowles earned his BA and MA in English at Brigham Young University and his PhD in English at the University of Chicago. He specializes in later English literature with emphases in the nineteenth century English novel, nineteenth century English poetry, and nineteenth century non-fiction English prose. Before teaching at Francis Marion University, he taught at Brigham Young University for fifteen years. While at BYU he was chair and graduate coordinator for Later British Literature and directed BYU’s Study Abroad program in London. His publications include a critical theory textbook, which is soon to be published in its third edition, a memoir, and articles in a Norton critical edition, Dickens Quarterly, The Dickensian, the Forum for Modern British Studies, the American Transcendental Quarterly, and the Saul Bellow Journal (also republished in a collection), among others. He has also been a research fellow at  the Yale Center for British Art. Along with teaching, David enjoys bird watching, playing piano, reading, writing articles, conference papers, and his novel, being in nature, and spending time with family.

Education

PhD, University of Chicago

Dr. Jo Angela Edwins is the Pee Dee Federal Savings Bank Professor of English at Francis Marion University. She teaches courses in composition, poetry writing, American literature, and general literature. She has published a chapbook of poems (Play, 2016), articles and reviews on the work of contemporary writers, and poems in various journals and anthologies. She has received poetry awards from Poetry Super Highway and the South Carolina Academy of Authors and is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Education

PhD, University of Tennessee MA, University of Tennessee BA, Augusta College

Dr. England teaches a variety of composition and literature courses while also serving as the Interim Composition Coordinator for FMU’s English Department.

She is a specialist in Victorian literature with research interests that include British marriage plots, the history of the novel, cultural studies, and gender. In 2013, she completed her dissertation, The Attraction of Imperfection: Depreciating Social Capital in Victorian Marriage Plots. Using her dissertation research, she recently published the article “Slipping into Marriage: How Heroines Create Desire by Risking Their Reputations” in Victorian Review.

Additionally, she co-edited a scholarly edition of Helen Maria Williams’s Peru and Peruvian Tales, which Broadview Press published in 2014.

Education

PhD, University of South Carolina

MA, University of South Carolina

BA, Wofford College    

Dr. Flannagan is a former Chair of English, Modern Languages and Philosophy and the former Coordinator of the English Program. Dr. Flannagan came to FMU in 1995. She taught many courses in American literature, poetry workshop, introduction to literature, as well as freshman composition. She was elected chair of the English, Modern Languages, and Philosophy and Religious Studies department in 2017. Beckie held roles in faculty governance, culminating as FMU’s Faculty Chair from 2012 to 2017.  She chaired the University’s Title IX Council. In 2004, earned the FMU Award for Excellence in Teaching. 2008, the Charlene Wages Shared Governance Award. 2018-2019 Distinguished Faculty Award

Education

A.B History, Western Kentucky University

M.A., English, Western Kentucky University

PhD, Southern Illinois University

Dr. Lynn Hanson retired in 2020 as a Professor of English at Francis Marion University (FMU) and a founding Co-director of the Belle Baruch Institute for South Carolina Studies (2017 to 2020).  During her 22-year tenure at FMU, she directed the Professional Writing program for 17 years, facilitating internships and teaching courses in business and technical communication. Her course projects and associated research often focused on Hobcaw Barony, the historic 16,000-acre research and education reserve in South Carolina.  Using primary sources like business and legal documents, Dr. Hanson’s research explores the people of Hobcaw Barony, most notably the life and times of Belle W. Baruch, the reserve’s benefactor.  In the past few years, she has worked to recover over 1,000 names of formerly enslaved people who labored on the property’s rice plantations up through the reconstruction period.

 PhD, University of Georgia

MA, Auburn University

BA, Auburn University

Dr. Landon Houle teaches the creative writing: fiction workshop in addition to courses in literature and composition. Her writing has won contests at Black Warrior Review, Crab Creek Review, and Permafrost. Her story “Travelers” was named a Pushcart Prize special mention, and her essay "The Plains We Cross" was named a notable in The Best American Essays. Other work has appeared in Baltimore Review,Crazyhorse, Natural Bridge, Harpur Palate, River Styx and elsewhere. She is the fiction editor at Raleigh Review.

Visit her website at http://www.landonhoule.com. 

Education

PhD, Texas Tech University

MA, Sul Ross State University

BA, Sul Ross State University

Christopher D. Johnson is professor of English and  has been the director of the McNair Institute for Research and Service. A specialist in eighteenth-century British literature, Dr. Johnson has published A Political Biography of Sarah Fielding (Taylor and Francis, 2017), New Contexts for Eighteenth-Century British Fiction: Essays in Honor of Jerry C. Beasley (University of Delaware Press, 2011), and a critical edition of Sarah Fielding’s The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia (Bucknell University Press, 1994).

He has published recent essays on Henry Fielding, Philip Doddridge, Oliver Goldsmith, John Dryden and others and has served as president of the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The author of over sixty scholarly publications, Dr. Johnson reviews new work for a variety of journals and has served as a book review editor for XVIII: New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century. He is currently preparing a critical edition of Philip Doddridge’s The Life of Colonel James Gardiner (1747).

Dr. Johnson is also the editor of Carolina Currents: Studies in South Carolina Culture. Click here to learn more.

Education

PhD, University of Delaware  

Schedule a CASA appointment with Dr. Kunka HERE

Dr. Jennifer Liethen Kunka is Professor of English and the Director of the FMU Writing Center. Her primary research interests include writing center practice and administration, composition and technology, and assessment. She also has interests in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature and gender studies. Dr. Kunka is co-author of two textbooks, the Prentice Hall Reference Guide (9th ed.) and Writer’s FAQ’s (5th ed.), both published by Pearson. She has also published articles and delivered several conference papers on writing center research, composition pedagogy, and British literature.

In addition, Dr. Kunka has served as a member of the executive board for the Southeastern Writing Center Association and on several committees for the International Writing Centers Association.

Dr. Kunka is a recipient of the FMU Faculty Award for Excellence in Professional Service and the SWCA Achievement Award.

Prior to joining the FMU faculty, Dr. Kunka worked as the Assistant/Acting Director of the Purdue University Writing Lab, where she developed many online materials for the Purdue OWL.

Education

PhD, Purdue University

M.A., Marquette University

B.A., Marquette University

Meredith is a Professor of English, specializing in composition and writing studies, rhetoric and feminism, professional writing, and college and career readiness. Her research has been published in Rhetoric Review, Composition Studies, College Composition and Communication, Feminist Teacher, and Harlot.

Meredith joined the FMU faculty in 2003 after completing her doctorate at Miami University of Ohio with specialties in composition and rhetoric and performance theory. Meredith directed the first-year writing program at the university from 2005 to 2014.

Meredith teaches first-year composition, Business Writing, Theories of Writing, and Gender and Public Rhetoric.

Education

BA, Loyola University

MA, Clemson University

PhD, Miami University of Ohio

Dr. Marley specializes in Caribbean and postcolonial literature—and he regularly teaches global literature courses at Francis Marion. His research has been published in journals such as ariel, The Journal of West Indian Literature, MELUS, Criticism, College Literature, and Studies in the Novel.

His recent book, Difficult Reading: Frustration and Form in Anglophone Caribbean Fiction (University of Virginia Press, 2023), examines how experiences of readerly confusion, frustration, and perplexity can bring about new ways of understanding colonial trauma in the Caribbean.  

Education

Ph.D. University at Buffalo

M.A. University at Buffalo

B.A. Rhode Island College

Christine Masters-Wheeler coordinates the Professional Writing Program at FMU and directs English internships. She teaches courses in professional and technical writing, multimedia writing, and first-year composition.

Education

PhD, Purdue University

MA, Western Illinois University

BA, University of Washington

Shawn Miller joined the Francis Marion University faculty in 2008; before that, he taught writing and literature in the University of Wisconsin system. He specializes in modern and contemporary American literature, with a particular emphasis in the literature of the American South, and he is especially interested in how Southern literature has been and continues to be defined. He has written and spoken on a range of Southern writers, including William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Cormac McCarthy, and Natasha Trethewey. He is currently working on two projects, one on Missouri novelist Daniel Woodrell and another on Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel.

Education

PhD, University of Mississippi

MA, University of Virginia

BA, James Madison University

Matthew Nelson came to FMU in 2004 from the Joint Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan.  His research combines perspectives from the fields of composition and rhetoric and qualitative educational research. Matt’s research projects include an exploration of the nature of the transition students make between writing in high schools and writing at the university. Matt teaches both first-year and advanced composition courses at FMU and serves as Co-Director of the Swamp Fox Writing Project.  Together with Dr. Meredith Love, he is also Co-Director of the Center of Excellence for College and Career Readiness at Francis Marion.

Education

PhD, University of Michigan

MA, Texas A&M University

BA, Texas A&M University

Meredith Reynolds joined the FMU faculty in 2008. She is a medievalist, interested especially in Sir Thomas Malory. She is a regular attendee at SEMA (Southeastern Medieval Association) and ICMS (International Congress on Medieval Studies). She is also the Director of the Writing Center.

For fun, she loves movies, both good (Mad Max: Fury Road, Atomic Blonde, A Room with a View) and bad (Tremors, Mega Python Vs. Gatoroid, Mammoth, Sharknado 1-3 and 5 [not 4: it was just plain awful]). She also loves to cook, to bake, and to hang out with friends. Finally, she owns four cats—Layla, Boo, Harley, and Cow—who are regular sources of both frustration and amusement.

Education

PhD, Baylor University

MA, Winthrop University

BA, Converse College

Dr. Pamela Rooks retired in 2020. She is an Emeritus Professor of English, and the former Coordinator of Gender Studies Program.

Pamela Rooks has studied and taught in Canada, England, Nigeria, Michigan, Iowa, and Georgia before coming to Francis Marion University in 1989. In May, 1999, she was appointed as Director of the Honors Program. In January 2013, she transitioned into coordinating the Gender Studies Program. Her teaching and scholarly interests are in modern British and postcolonial (particularly African) literature, and in Gender Studies.

Education

DPhil (PhD), University of York (United Kingdom)

BA, Carleton University (Canada)

Dr. Smolen-Morton joined the English faculty in Fall 2006. With a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts, he specializes in Film and Cultural Studies centered on gender issues. An avid bird watcher, Dr. Smolen-Morton is a freelance writer, and researcher for the National Audubon Society. His wife, Kate, teaches English at South Florence High School.

Education

PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts

B.A, Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Mrs. Tammy Sneed and her husband Robert are originally from Burlington, NC.  She has one son, Matthew, who is a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She joined the staff of the English Department in the fall of 2013.

Dr. Spear is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of Gender Studies. Joining FMU in 2014, she directed the First-Year Composition program from 2015 to 2021. Prior to FMU, she held the Interim Expanded Composition Coordinator position at the University of Southern Mississippi, taught general education courses at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington, and worked with Communication across the Curriculum at Louisiana State University. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature in 2010 from LSU, focusing on writing studies, and was awarded the Ann Veronica Simon Outstanding Gender Studies Dissertation Award.

Her research relies on an interdisciplinary approach to investigate women’s life-writing post-trauma and the transformative benefits of writing one’s story. Concentrating primarily on writing, cultural, and pedagogical studies, Spear has spoken at a number of conferences, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the Northeast Modern Language Association, where she served as Women’s and Gender Studies Board Representative. Publications range from creative nonfiction to theoretical work and include “Uprooted” in NOLA Diaspora and “Let Me Tell You a Story’: On Teaching Trauma Narratives, Writing, and Healing” in Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. At FMU, Dr. Spear primarily teaches first-year writing, upper-level writing courses, and courses affiliated with the Gender Studies program.

Education

PhD, Louisiana State University

EdS, Louisiana State University

MA, Louisiana State University

BA, Millsaps College

Dr. Jon Tuttle a 2013-2014 Distinguished Faculty, served as the Director of FMU’s Honors Program, and was a Board of Trustee’s Research Scholar. Jon is a specialist in Modern and American Drama, Playwriting and the literature of the Vietnam War. His own plays, which include The Hammerstone, Drift, Holy Ghost, The Sweet Abyss, The Palace of the Moorish Kings, and Boy About Ten, have been produced at Trustus Theatre (where he is Playwright-in-Residence) and at theaters across the country. His plays have been published individually, and in the collections: The Trustus Plays and Two South Carolina Plays. Jon retired 2024 after 34 years of distinguished service to Francis Marion.

Education

PhD, University of New Mexico, 1989

MA, University of New Mexico, 1984

BS, University of Utah, 1982

Chris Washington specializes in British Romantic literature, eighteenth and nineteenth-century British literature, poetry and poetics, and literary theory. He has published articles in European Romantic Review, Essays in Romanticism, Literature Compass, and another piece on teaching Jane Austen in Romantic Circles Pedagogies Commons. With Anne McCarthy he is the co-editor of Romanticism and Speculative Realism forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press. He has several other articles forthcoming as well. In his spare time he enjoys traveling, exploring, and drinking tea.

Education

PhD, Miami University of Ohio-Oxford, OH

M.A., English Literature, Marshall University

B.A., English Literature, Marshall University    

Dr. Lance Weldy is Professor of English and teaches classes in freshman composition and children’s and young adult literature. He has co-edited several collections of scholarship on children’s literature, including the C. S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia New Casebook and a special issue on Sexualities and Children’s Culture for the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. His current research interests include the social construction of childhood sexuality and the multivalent nature of queerness and its relation to Christian fundamentalism. His latest publications include “The Queerness of the Man-Child: Narcissism and Silencing in Astrid Lindgren’s Karlson on the Roof Series” and “Visual Identity and the Queer Aesthetics of Passing: Gay Teen Body Politics in Sebastian, Beautiful Thing, and Get Real,” both published in Barnboken: Journal of Children’s Literature Research. His most recent publication is the edited anthology, BJU and Me: Queer Voices from the World's Most Christian University, published by the University of Georgia Press (June 2022).

Education

PhD, Texas A&M University-Commerce

MA, University of Illinois-Springfield

BA, Bob Jones University    

Dr. Woosley’s main area of expertise is medieval aristocratic culture and justice in the 14th and 15th centuries, but she has a solid background in Old English and Anglo-Norman literature, language, and culture. She writes about the construction of medieval identity in literature, particularly identities of the emergent middle strata. She is interested in all things Robin Hood.

Dr. Woosley has taught courses on gender and identity in romance, women’s writers, monsters, and the body. She is interested in justice, the history of the English language, technology and composition, neo-medievalisms, outlaws and resistance, and medieval women. At FMU, she teaches courses on medieval literature, British literature, the History of the English Language, sections of composition featuring archival research and podcasting, and composition I and II.

Outside of the classroom, she spends her time in Hartsville where she lives with her husband, two children, and various small animals. She enjoys cooking, gardening, and traveling.

Education

PhD, University of Missouri

MA and BA, Southern Illinois University