Lt. Col. Pennie J. Ticen, Ph.D. - Virginia Military Institute
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Lt. Col. Pennie J. Ticen, Ph.D.

Lt. Col. Pennie J. Ticen, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Office: 467 Scott Shipp Hall

Phone: 540-464-7479

Email: ticenpj@vmi.edu

Fields: Modern and Contemporary British Literature, South-Asian Indian Literature, Irish Literature, Caribbean Literature

Lt. Col. Pennie Ticen has been a member of the English faculty at VMI since the fall of 2003. She earned her graduate degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she focused on modern and contemporary British Literature, writing her dissertation on post-colonial epics. One of her focus areas is in South-Asian Indian literature, especially the novels of Salman Rushdie, various retellings of the Indian epic The Ramayana, and the essays of Arundhati Roy. She has been an active member of the South Asian Literary Association for 25 years, where she has presented papers, co-chaired conferences, served as treasurer and been a member of the executive committee.

Lt. Col. Ticen regularly teaches courses in Writing and Rhetoric, British Literary Traditions, Literature of Indian Independence, and Empire Writing, as well as seminars on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Salman Rushdie. She also teaches Fieldwork courses, with recent sections focusing on Cadet Life at VMI and Women and African-Americans at VMI. She enjoys working closely with cadets and has shepherded them through SURI projects, conference presentations, department honors theses, capstone projects, and independent studies on a variety of topics.

Associate Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Sample of Lt. Col. Ticen’s Recent Scholarship:

  • Forthcoming 2024, Encyclopedia of Indian Writing in English, entries on “Salman Rushdie,” “Imaginary Homelands,” and “The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems, Agha Shahid Ali”
  • “’where hierarchies melt and curiosity takes precedence’: Using Yengde’s Caste Matters to Complicate Student Ideas of Caste,” South Asian Literary Association Conference, 2022
  • “Rushdie’s America,” Interviewed on “With Good Reason,” for “Reading and Writing Ourselves,” September 2021: https://www.withgoodreasonradio.org/episode/reading-and-writing-ourselves/
  • “Trained in Post-Coloniality, Hired in World Literature, Revised into Cultural Rhetorics: Situating South Asian Literature within a Changing Curriculum,” South Asian Literary Association, 2020
  • “Updating the Interregnum: Salman Rushdie’s “Anti-chutnification” in The Golden House”, South Asian Literary Association, 2019

Sample of Cadet Research Projects:

  • SURI Advisor for “We Take What We Want: Kipling in the Postcolonial Age,” Cadet Chris Hulburt, 2020
  • Conference Presentation Advisor for “Cast Between Two Worlds,” Cadet Chris Hulburt, MARCUS 2020
  • English Honors Advisor for “Modern Eve: A Female Cadet’s Critique of Feminist Criticisms of Paradise Lost,” Cadet Kate Dixon, 2018
  • Capstone Advisor for “Frankenstein in Film,” Cadet Mason Day, 2020
  • Capstone Advisor for “Allegory in The Lord of the Rings,” Cadet John Stann, 2020
  • Independent Study: “Robert T. Kerlin Resources,” digitized on Preston Archives, Cadet Fredrick Walker, 2014: https://www.vmi.edu/archives/genealogy-biography-alumni/featured-historical-biographies/robert-t-kerlin-resources/