George Abry (M.A., Johns Hopkins University) is an instructor in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies. Prior to coming to VMI in 2009, he worked as a professional writer and editor in New Orleans, where he was a regular contributor to The Times-Picayune and The Old House Journal, and covered New Orleans tourism for TravelAgeWest, a West Coast travel industry publication. In addition to feature writing, he has worked on a number of technical writing and public history projects for cultural resource management companies, including URS Corporation. Currently teaching ERH103, Mr. Abry lives in Lexington with his wife, Andrea, and their two daughters.

Instructor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Dr. Reshef Agam-Segal completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Born and raised in Israel, he moved to the United States in 2008. He taught philosophy at Auburn University (AL) before joining VMI in 2012. Dr. Agam-Segal specializes in the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and in moral philosophy, and he has special interests in the logic of figurative language, as well as the relations between philosophy and literature. He has published papers in several professional international journals, including Inquiry, Philosophy, Metaphilosophy, the Journal of Philosophical Research, and the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy. He is the co-editor of Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought (Routledge, 2017).

Professor

English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

MAJ Kimberly Anderson earned her Ph.D. in English from Florida State University in 2018. She taught at Wittenberg University before joining the faculty at VMI in 2020 as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Her scholarship focuses on gender in French and English Medieval literature and the pre- and early modern technologies of text production. She has published her work in Le Cygne and Neophilologus. At VMI, MAJ Anderson has taught extracurricular workshops on the production of medieval manuscripts and paper-making in the Renaissance period, and works closely with Cadence and Sigma Tau Delta.

Courses taught:

ERH 101—Rhetoric and Composition I

ERH 102—Rhetoric and Composition II

ERH 205 – British Literary Traditions

Visiting Assistant Professor English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Col. Mary Stewart Atwell came to VMI in 2015. Previously, she taught at Cal Poly State University and Missouri State University. She received her B.A. from Hollins University, her M.A. from the University of Virginia, and her M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. Col. Atwell teaches courses in British literature and creative writing, specializing in fiction. She serves as the Institute Pre-Law Advisor and the Alumni Network Coordinator in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies.

Col. Atwell is the author of the novels The Good Ones (Harper Books) and Wild Girls (Scribner). Her short fiction has appeared in Epoch and Alaska Quarterly Review, among other journals, and in the anthologies Best New American Voices and Best American Mystery Stories. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, and The Writer's Chronicle, and in the anthology Paperback Writer: Literary Advice into the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave).

Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Col. Julie Phillips Brown is an interdisciplinary poet, visual artist, literary critic, and editor. She is the author of The Adjacent Possible (Green Writers Press, 2021), winner of the Hopper Poetry Prize, and a recipient of the Freund Prize from Cornell University. Her scholarship focuses on the intersections of 19th-21st century poetry and poetics with visual art, the history of the book and book arts, digital technology, and race, gender, and sexuality. Her poems and essays have appeared in Ariadne, Borderlands, Columbia Poetry Review, Contemporary Women’s Writing, Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, interim, Jacket2, Nashville Review, The Rumpus, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Vassar Review, and elsewhere. A native of Philadelphia, Lt. Col. Brown loves living in Lexington and working with cadets to support their writing, visual art, and research projects.

Professor English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Maj. Adam Cody studies and teaches rhetoric as the art of effective communication. He earned a doctorate in Communication Arts and Sciences from The Pennsylvania State University in 2020 and joined the Virginia Military Institute’s academic faculty later that same year.

In his capacity as Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and Oral Communication, it has been Maj. Cody’s pleasure to teach ERH 103: Fundamentals of Public Speaking, ERH 201: Rhetorical Traditions I (covering the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance periods), ERH 202: Rhetorical Traditions II (covering the modern and post-modern periods), ERH 301: Rhetoric and Public Address, ERH 302: Civic Discourse, and ERH 421: One Text - Thucydides. Students in Maj. Cody’s classes may expect to encounter practical exercises and open discussions designed to hone their abilities with the transferable skills of communication.

As a scholar, Maj. Cody is a historian of arguments and narratives relating to topics of democracy, citizenship, and empire, with a particular focus on the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition. His most recent publication, “Dialectics, Post-Dialectics, and the Democratic Argument of Lysias XII,” argues that post-dialectical persuasive forces, such as fascistic argument, can be explained in dialectical terms as practices of strategic maneuvering. The essay goes on to identify the concept of “democratic argument,” a type of post-dialectical persuasion that seeks to control the terms of discourse by negating disinterested choice. Ongoing and future projects focus on the forensic speeches of 5th-century BCE Attic orator Antiphon of Rhamnus and on the 4th-century BCE textbook Rhetorica ad Alexandrum.

Maj. Cody also supports the Writing Center as the Oral and Digital Communication Specialist. He encourages any cadets who are interested in or would like help with public speaking to arrange a meeting with him.

Assistant Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

LTC Hodde joined the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at VMI as an Assistant Professor in 2016, and was awarded tenure in 2023. She previously taught at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, Mary Baldwin University, and Hollins University, where she offered undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education, literacy, children’s literature, and the humanities. She holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, with a concentration in Reading, Writing, Literacy, and Culture, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in English and Drama from William Smith College. She also has over twenty years of experience developing curricula and outreach programming for nonprofit organizations, K-12 schools, and creating community theater projects, such as A Wild Notion, funded by the VA Commission on the Arts, and performed at Boxerwood in October 24.

LTC Hodde teaches courses in community-based writing and fieldwork (ERH 411), contemporary drama and literature (ERH 203 & 230), writing for nonprofits and technical communication (ERH 312/314) and Writing and Rhetoric (101/102). She also advises students on Fieldwork opportunities for completing the English Major and enjoys designing projects in educational research and community writing with cadets. Recent cadet fieldwork includes the Rockbridge Memoir Project with local writers, and Expeditionary Learning with Rockbridge County Schools grades 5-12.

Her research and teaching explore intersections between creative discourse, pedagogy, and multimodal forms of social literacy, including community-based narratives, documentary theatre, and arts-based learning. She has presented scholarship at numerous conferences for the LifeWriting Conference, the American Education Research Association, the Modern Language Association, the Comparative Drama Conference, and is at work on several research projects in memoir and performance discourse. Her case study, “Dramagirls Worldcraft: Teaching Artist Platforms for Spectacle Theatre” appears in July 2023 issue of the International Journal of Education and the Arts (IJEA). Her chapter, “Up Close and Wide Awake: Participating in Anna Deavere Smith’s Social Theater” appears in the book, Teaching Critical Performance Theory in Today's Studio, Classroom, and Communities (Routledge, 2020).

Associate Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

MAJ Hoyle joined VMI as both the Writing Center Coordinator and an ERHS Instructor in Fall 2024. He previously taught composition and literature courses at several Virginia colleges, including the University of Virginia, Bridgewater College, and Mountain Gateway Community College. He holds an M.A. in English from the University of Virginia (2020) and a B.A. in English from Bridgewater College (2018). His master's thesis focused on characterization in the work of Sir Thomas Malory.

In his capacity as Writing Center Coordinator, MAJ Hoyle is always on the lookout for cadets who might do well in and gain from consulting in the Writing Center. He encourages those interested to contact him directly.

In addition to managing the Writing Center, MAJ Hoyle teaches first year composition (ERH 101 and 102) and summer session literature courses (ERH 203). Students enrolled in his courses can expect an emphasis on discussions and workshopping.

Outside of VMI, MAJ Hoyle is an active member of the Stuart Hall School Alumni Association and Shenandoah Latin Dance. His research interests include composition studies, poetics, and medieval literature. He is currently drafting a paper on Robert Frost's poetry and a conference presentation on late medieval Robin Hood texts. In his spare time, he enjoys swimming, dancing, learning new languages, and reading (over and over again) Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series.

Col. Catharine Ingersoll began teaching at VMI in 2015. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin, and earned a B.A. in Art and a B.A. in Music from Washington College in Maryland. Prior to her work at VMI, she held an Albrecht Dürer Fellowship at the Germanisches National Museum in Nuremberg, Germany.

Col. Ingersoll’s research focuses on the art of southern Germany during the late medieval and Early Modern periods, particularly in terms of the interdisciplinary intersections among patronage, politics, religion, and visual and material culture in the duchy of Bavaria. She has published numerous articles and book reviews; with Alisa McCusker and Jessica Weiss, she edited a volume of essays, Imagery and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith (Brepols, 2018). Col. Ingersoll routinely presents her research at conferences in North America and in Europe.

In addition to offering a regular rotation of art history and visual culture courses (such as The Language of Art and History of Art I and II), Col. Ingersoll is frequently sought out by cadets as an advisor to independent studies, Capstones, and Honors projects. She also spearheads the Art History and Visual Culture minor/concentration, maintains the @vmi_ahvc Instagram account, and is the faculty advisor to the Cadet Art Group.

Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

A Professor of English, Col. Michelle Iten teaches courses in civic discourse; the history and theory of rhetoric; language and style; rhetoric and democracy; writing for military officers; and writing for business. She earned her B.A. in English / Writing and M.A. in English / Rhetoric from St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, where she served as assistant director of the writing center and later as a full-time instructor teaching courses in research writing, creative nonfiction, business writing, and rhetorical theory. After career experience in corporate communications, public relations, and magazine publishing, she earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas Christian University, where she held multiple research and teaching fellowships.  

Col. Iten’s research areas are in rhetorical democracy and in the theory and teaching of written rhetorical argument. Ongoing research projects include the rhetorical nature of contemplative practices in democracy, democracy and the self, democratic time, and links between Kenneth Burke and John Dewey. Other research and teaching interests include propaganda theory and criticism, rhetorical approaches to political virtues, and emotional intelligence in everyday democratic interactions. An active member of the Rhetoric Society of Europe and the Rhetoric Society of America, she has published on social class in argument pedagogy, the rhetorical theorization of democracy, and contemplative practices as part of civic discourse pedagogy. Col. Iten is the author of an upcoming monograph, A Rhetoric for Expanding Democracy: Unleashing the Excess (Lexington Books: 2026).

Col. Iten is particularly committed to undergraduate education in rhetoric and advancing student writers’ abilities to develop democratic character, argue with rationality, and write with precision and power.

A Sample of Col. Iten’s Publications, Presentations, & Cadet Research Projects 

• “The First Discipline is Class: Aiming at Inclusion in Argument across the Curriculum,” The Writing across the Curriculum Journal, 2017 
• “Inventing in Our Own House: Theorizing Democracy from the Standpoint of Rhetoric,” Re-inventing Rhetoric Scholarship, Parlor Press, 2019 
• “Contemplative Practices as Rhetorical Action for Democracy,” Journal of Contemplative Inquiry, 2020 
• “Seeking a Democratic Self,” Journal of Thought, 2023 
• “Thinking with ‘Energy’: How Keyword as Method Illuminates Rhetorical Democracy,” Carolina Rhetoric Conference 2019
• “Becoming Symbol-wise in Democratic Relations: The Whole Self as Rhetorical Action,” Rhetoric Society of Europe Conference 2019
• English Honors Advisor for “A Theory of Rhetorical Appeals to Psychological Certainty: Audience, Motive, Strategies” by Cadet Emma C. Quirk, 2018
• English Honors Advisor for “Fascism as Faith: Nationalist Spain and the Rhetoric of Francisco Franco,” by Cadet Andrew M. Hunt, 2019  

Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

MAJ Brandon Johnson joined the Virginia Military Institute after completing his Ph.D. in Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University. In his scholarship, he studies presidential rhetoric, U.S. politics, and the history of the presidency. His essay on Herbert Hoover’s rhetoric of “rugged individualism,” which won the 2023 Kenneth Burke Prize in Rhetoric at Penn State, was published in Rhetoric & Public Affairs; his work also appeared in the interdisciplinary journal Politics. He teaches classes on the history and practice of rhetoric, public speaking, and writing, including ERH 101 and 102: Writing and Rhetoric I and II, ERH 103: Fundamentals of Public Speaking, ERH 201 and 202: Foundations of Rhetorical Traditions I and II, and ERH 301: Rhetoric and Public Address. He is an active member of the Rhetoric Society of America, National Communication Association, and the American Society for the History of Rhetoric.

Dr. Kimsey has taught speech and political communication at the University of Virginia and James Madison University, as well as modern business communication at Vietnam National University’s Hanoi School of Business and public speaking at Ho Chi Minh City’s Development Learning Center.

He has served on graduate faculties at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and James Madison University, teaching strategic communication, propaganda, and persuasion. His research, published in national journals, explores conflict, mediation, and negotiation. He co-authored Mediator Communication Competencies: Transformative and Problem-Solving Approaches (Pearson) and the article The Effect of Narcissism on Conflict Management Message Style Preference: A Look at Millennials (American Communication Journal).

As a Commonwealth-certified court mediator, Dr. Kimsey has facilitated community disputes and designed U.S./Ireland study programs on The Troubles. He has coached military commanders in strategic speech and negotiation, and prepared soldiers and marines for deployment with training in small group communication.

Outside academia, he is a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Marathon Runners Club and, with his wife Candace, runs a small alpaca and sheep fiber farm. 

Instructor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Col. Knepper arrived at VMI in the fall of 2014. A recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award and holder of the Bruce C. Gottwald, Jr. ’81 Chair for Academic Excellence, Col. Knepper teaches a wide range of courses, including American Literary Traditions, Ways of Reading, the ERHS capstone sequence, and a seminar on Moby-Dick. He especially enjoys teaching Philosophy and Literature, where he can discuss big questions with cadets, and American Modernism, which features favorite authors such as Claude McKay, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He has directed capstone projects, SURI projects, independent studies, and honors theses on a variety of topics, from the poetry of Langston Hughes to the philosophy of Simone Weil, from Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic conventions to Byzantine iconography. Col. Knepper is the faculty adviser of VMI’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society, and helps organize an annual trip for cadets to the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. 

Col. Knepper studied American literature in graduate school at the University of Virginia, and this remains a major teaching and research interest. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Robert Frost Review. He writes metrical poems in the tradition of Frost and is the founding editor of New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry.

Since arriving at VMI, he has become increasingly interested in the intersection of philosophy, aesthetics, and religion. He is particularly interested in the contemporary philosophers William Desmond and Byung-Chul Han. In 2022, SUNY Press published his book Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond. In 2024, Polity published Byung-Chul Han: A Critical Introduction, which he co-wrote with Ethan Stoneman and Robert Wyllie. He also edited the volume, A Heart of Flesh: William Desmond and the Bible, which was released in 2023 by Cascade Books. 

Professor  
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies 

Col. Christina McDonald joined the VMI faculty as the first Institute Director of Writing in 2002. In addition to teaching courses in first-year and advanced composition, the history of rhetoric, and the rhetorics of particular discourse communities, she is responsible for ensuring the integrity of writing instruction in the disciplines across Post to ensure that VMI graduates are able to communicate effectively for a variety of occasions and purposes.

For nine years before coming to VMI, Col. McDonald taught undergraduate and graduate courses in both literature and writing at James Madison University, where she served as director of composition and founding head of the Writing Program, an independent academic unit in the College of Arts and Letters. An honors graduate of Rollins College, she earned her Ph.D. in English, with a specialization in rhetoric and composition studies, at Texas Christian University under the mentorship of Gary Tate, Winifred Bryan Horner, and Jim Corder. 

Col. McDonald organizes VMI’s nationally recognized Spilman Symposium on Issues in Teaching Writing, and she has become a popular invited speaker on using writing to promote reflective learning, particularly in electronic environments. Her publications include two books, Teaching Writing: Landmarks and Horizons (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002) and Teaching Composition in the 1990s: Sites of Contention(Harper Collins, 1994).

Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Cadet-initiated Research on rhetorical analysis and application:

• Cadet Michelle McCusker ’14 (English major), Institute Honors Thesis, “Why Aren’t We All Healthy? A Rhetorical Analysis of the Dominant Narrative of Health,” (in-progress). 
• Cadet Kylen Schmidt ’15 (English major), Summer Undergraduate Research Project, “An Ethnographic Study of Cowboy Culture in the American West,” a rhetorical study of how the language, literature, art, and music of cowboys intersected and influenced one another and contributed to the identity of the American West and the iconic figure of the cowboy, Summer 2013. 
• Cadet Michelle McCusker ’14 (English major), Summer Undergraduate Research Project: “Rhetoric, Community, Advocacy: Making the Case for a System of Sustainable Health Care in Rockbridge County,” the first research with a service-learning orientation to be funded by V-CUR, culminating in a published strategic plan for the Rockbridge Area Health Needs Assessment, Summer 2012.
• Cadet Cabell Willis ’14 (History major with writing minor), Summer Undergraduate Research Project. Archival research and an ethnographic study, “Writing Under Cover: The Literacy Practices of VMI Cadets,” Summer 2012. 
• Cadet Matthew Waalkes ’13 (Biology major with writing minor), Independent Study project, a written and visual documentary of VMI’s of Engineers Without Borders chapter’s inaugural trip to Bolivia, Fall 2011.
• Cadet Alex Houser ’10 (Biology major with writing minor), Independent Study project, The Rhetoric of Medicine, culminating in a research paper, “Alternative Medicine in America,” Spring 2010. 
• Cadet Josh Kenny ’09 (Biology major with writing minor) and Cadet Alex Snyder (Chemistry major with writing minor), joint Independent Study project, Rhetoric and Scientific Discourse, Spring 2009.
• Cadet Dominik Wermus ’10 (Physics major with writing minor), Independent Study project. Contemporary Rhetoric and Physics, which led to a 10-page research paper, “Scientific Rhetoric in the Modern World,” Fall 2009.
• Cadet Will Flathers ’08 (Electrical Engineering major with writing minor), Independent Study in Reading Classical Rhetoricians: Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, Spring 2008. 
• Cadet Will Flathers ’08 (Electrical Engineering major with writing minor), Independent Study project, “Bombs Away! Portrait of a World War II Pilot.” A research-based nonfiction narrative account of George William Flathers’s wartime service as a B-17 pilot, from 1942 to 1944, Fall 2007.
• Cadet John Terminato ’07 (History major with writing minor), Institute Honors Thesis, “‘Testing’ the Goals of Education: One Student at a Time—A Case Study of the No Child Left Behind Act’s Effects on the Future of Education in Pennsylvania.”
• Cadet Matthew Sharpe ‘04 (Computer Science major with writing minor, Class of 2004), Institute Honors Thesis, “The Role of Rhetorical Studies in Software Engineering and Human Computer Interaction.”

Col. McDonald received the VMI Distinguished Teaching Award in 2006 and was elected as a faculty initiate to the VMI Circle of Omicron Delta Kappa in 2010. In 2011, the Superintendent presented her with the VMI Meritorious Service Medal.

Colonel Rob McDonald joined the VMI faculty in 1992. While serving as Associate Dean of the Faculty since 2001, he has continued to teach as a professor of English and fine arts. Recent offerings include Southern literature, creative writing (nonfiction), and a special seminar—developed in collaboration with cadets—titled Text + Image.

Colonel McDonald is a widely published scholar whose books include Reading Erskine Caldwell: New Essays; Teaching Writing: Landmarks and Horizons (ed. with Christina Russell McDonald); Southern Women Playwrights: New Essays in Literary History and Criticism (edited with Linda Rohrer Paige); Erskine Caldwell: Selected Letters, 1929-1955; The Critical Response to Erskine Caldwell; and Teaching Composition in the 90s: Sites of Contention (edited with Christina G. Russell). From 2005-2015, he served as editor of of the journal Studies in American Culture.

For more than a decade, Colonel McDonald has been exploring photography as a creative extension of his academic interests in the literature and culture of the South. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and book publications.

Colonel McDonald’s photographs are in the collection of numerous private and public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. In 2013, he became the Institute’s first recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2019, he received a professional fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

VMI has recognized Colonel McDonald with several awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award (1997), the Matthew Fontaine Maury Award for Excellence in Faculty Research (1998), the VMI Distinguished Teaching Award (2001), and the Wilbur S. Hinman, Jr. Award for Undergraduate Research (2009 and 2010). 

In 2007, the Superintendent presented Colonel McDonald with the VMI Achievement Medal in recognition of his contributions to the Institute.

Col. Emily Miller is the Navas-Read Professor of English Literature and Head of the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies. She taught at Wake Forest University and Washington and Lee University, where she directed the Writing Center, before joining the VMI faculty in 1988.

After earning both a B.A. and an M.A. at the College of William and Mary, Col. Miller attended the University of Virginia, where she completed her doctorate in English. During her thirty five years at Virginia Military Institute, she has taught Shakespeare as well as British Literature and freshman writing, among other subjects. One of her most popular courses has been an Institute Honors Seminar titled “Power and Politics in Shakespeare.” She has regularly arranged for cadets from her Shakespeare courses to present their papers at professional conferences. Her own research has focused on Shakespeare, assessment, and curricular development.

The first woman appointed to be a department head at VMI, Col. Miller has served in this capacity since 1992. During the last decade, her department implemented a new interdisciplinary English major. While national trends have shown sharp declines in the number of English majors, VMI’s English major is thriving. Col. Miller, along with colleagues, has made numerous presentations at national conferences on the curricular design and ongoing development of this program.

In addition to being a member of VMI’s Academic Board, she has served on many Institute committees, e.g., the Academic Planning and Review Committee, the Professorships and Chairs Selection Committee, the Academic Policy Committee, SACS Self-Study Committees, the Institute Honors Committee, the Core Curriculum Oversight Committee, Dean and Superintendent Search Committees, and the Institute Planning Committee.

Col. Miller’s contributions to the Institute have been recognized with the 2007 Virginia Military Institute Achievement Medal, the 2018 Jackson-Hope Prize for Excellence in Academic Advancement, and the 2021 Virginia Military Institute Meritorious Service Award.

MENTORED STUDENT PROJECTS  2018-22

Delaney, John. “A Comic Community in Conflict: The Struggle Between Comedy and Seriousness in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.” 2022 Honors Thesis.

Butler, Colin, “Shakespeare’s Henry V: Honor Is What You Put In; Honor Is What You Put Out.” Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual, November 2021.

Diller, Zachary, “Hamlet and Early Modern Attitudes towards Suicide.” Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual, November 2021.

Hamner, Daniel, Henry V and the Education of Women. Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual, November 2021.

Rezendes, Rhett, “Ophelia’s Death and Early Modern Attitudes towards Suicide.” Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual, November 2021.

Wegrzyn, Thaddeus,“Henry IV and Royal Rebellions in Early Modern England.” Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual, November 2021.

Delaney, John, “Portia’s Challenge to Early Modern Views of Women in The Merchant of  Venice.” Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual, November 2020.

Hoffman, Michael, “Henry V as the Ideal Military Leader in Early Modern Culture.” Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual, November 2020.

McKee, Brendan, “Shylock and Early Modern Views of Jews.” Conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Virtual, November 2020.

Gummo, Joseph, “Strong Women in Shakespeare’s Plays: Challenging and Reflecting Early Modern Views.” Conference of the American/Popular Association in the South,    Wilmington, NC, September 2019.

Hughes, Joseph, “Suicide in Hamlet.” Conference of the American/Popular Association in the South, Wilmington, NC, September 2019.

Smilie, Bryant, “Et Tu, Queen Elizabeth?: Fears of Tyranny in 1599 England.” Conference of the American/Popular Association in the South, Wilmington, NC, September 2019.

Wainwright, Nicholas, “Natural Power: How Women Exercised Power against Institutionalized Constraints in Early Modern Theater.” Conference of the American/Popular Association in the South, Wilmington, NC, September 2019.

Wilkinson, Reid, “Melancholy: the True Killer in Hamlet.” Conference of the American/Popular Association in the South, Wilmington, NC, September 2019.

Johnson, Carter, “Wrestling with God: Hamlet and the Divine.” Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South. New Orleans, October 2018.

Worsham, Rives, “Shifting Attitudes of Honor and the Victory of Nationalism in Henry IV, Part One.” Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South. New Orleans, October 2018.

Dr. Duncan Richter is the Charles S. Luck III ’55 Institute Professor. He teaches courses on ethics, religion, and aesthetics. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1995, his M. Phil. in Philosophy from the University College of Swansea in Wales in 1989, and his B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University in 1988. 

His research focuses on ethics and the philosophical work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Elizabeth Anscombe. He is the author of seven books and numerous papers.

His teaching has won him two awards at VMI, and in 2008 he won an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

Instructor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

In the fall of 2013, Mattie Quesenberry Smith joined the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at VMI where she teaches Introduction to Writing and Rhetoric I & II.

In December 2024, Smith earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI & SU) where she concentrated on ways to design integrative STEM instruction that supports learning transfer across disciplines and practices. Smith is enthusiastic about integrating STEM and humanistic studies instruction to support critical thinking in hands-on design-based technology and engineering classrooms. Her qualitative research explores ways to instrument critical reflective writing to identify, describe, and support design-based critical reflection within the iterative phases of technology and engineering design thinking necessary for project-based learning.

Smith is a poet, and her poems have appeared in Poetry X Hunger, The Timberline Review, Phi Kappa Phi Forum Magazine, and New Verse Review. Her poems also appear in several anthologies, such as Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Anthology, Poems from the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, and Elvis in Oz. Finishing Line Press distributes her chapbook Mother Chaos: Under Electric Light.

In November 2024, Governor Glenn Youngkin appointed Smith Virginia’s Poet Laureate, and she serves the Commonwealth in that role through June 2026. On July 31, 2025, the Academy of American Poets awarded Smith an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, 2025-2026, which funds “Perseverance and Resilience: Supporting Veterans through Poetry,” her proposed veterans poetry project (VPP). This statewide program engages and supports veterans through a poetry contest, ten regional poetry workshops in Virginia, two public poetry readings, and an anthology publication opportunity for veterans’ poetry and artwork engendered by the contest, workshops, and a call for veterans’ art. 

As a screenwriter, Smith shares awards with husband and colleague, Douglas N. Smith, Instructor of the Fundamentals of Public Speaking at VMI. Their documentary film, Between Two Fires, garnered a CINE Eagle and Best Documentary of the Show in the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also awarded this documentary film a Bronze Oscar for excellence in graduate student filmmaking. International Historic Films distributes Between Two Fires.

Altogether, Smith’s creative writing explores the influence of science and technology on the poetic imagination, especially figurative language. Intrigued by dynamical systems and emergent complexity, she and her husband have been writing about unforeseen, chaotic impacts natural events have unleashed throughout the history of humanity. Their recent collaboration includes a completed screenplay for a major film project, “Eagle in the Snow,” adapted from the novel Eagle in the Snow, written by Wallace Breem. This Roman epic is set on the Rhine River, New Year’s Eve, 406 A.D., when the river froze, and five barbarian tribes crossed, catalyzing the fall of Rome. Most recently, this project appears re-imagined in four twenty-two-page comics distributed by comiXology.com.

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/

A 2005 graduate of the Institute, Maj. Henry Wise taught for several years in Taiwan, where he worked for the ROC Military Academy in Fengshan, selecting, instructing, and training cadets who would go on to study in American military institutions, including VMI. In 2015, he earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Mississippi, where he continued to teach creative writing and composition until he joined VMI’s English faculty in 2017. At VMI, he teaches American literature and creative writing and serves as faculty adviser to Cadence (formerly The Sounding Brass), VMI’s annual fine arts journal, which he edited as a cadet. He has taught a variety of courses, among which are those of his own design on the subjects of Frontier American Literature and the works of Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner. Maj. Wise has advised several independent cadet projects on topics as varied as environmental anxiety in Cormac McCarthy’s novels, Mark Twain’s challenging of romanticism in Roughing It, and reconciling Ralph Waldo Emerson’s surprising involvement in the Abolitionist movement with his skepticism of society in “Self-Reliance.” A writer across multiple genres, his poetry has been published in Shenandoah, Radar Poetry, Clackamas, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere; his nonfiction can be found in Southern Cultures. His debut novel, Holy City, will be published by Grove Atlantic in 2024.

Assistant Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies