Faculty and Staff

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).

Associate Professor

English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Maj. 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. Maj. 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.

Maj. Atwell is the author of the novel 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. Her work is forthcoming in the anthology Paperback Writer: Literary Advice into the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave).

Assistant Professor

English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

The longest-serving faculty member in the history of Virginia Military Institute and a distinguished professor of the visual arts, music history, and architecture, Col. Bill Badgett graduated from VMI in 1953 and, following a tour of duty in the United States Air Force, joined our faculty in 1955. Except for his years in graduate school at Harvard, he has been teaching here ever since.

The range of subjects that Col. Badgett teaches is remarkable. Not only has he taught a wide variety of art history courses but he has also offered courses in the history of music, architecture, literature, studio art, and public speaking. An enthusiastic supporter of the integrated English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies curriculum, he has just developed two new signature courses—ERH 230 Artistic Responses to Social and Political Issues and ERH 370 Studies in Art and Culture: Propaganda as Art, 1785-1945—and has plans for others, including ERH 225 Visual Arts Studio.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Col. Badgett’s inestimable service to VMI has tended to emphasize cultural and aesthetic values. Examples include his curation of the Scott Shipp Hall Art Gallery (2000) and his organization of VMI’s much-admired Classical Music Concert Series (1992-present).

Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

In recent years, Col. Badgett has emerged as one of the most anticipated speakers at the annual joint meeting of the Popular and American Culture Associations in the South. Displaying a breadth of knowledge and expertise rarely found in this age of specialization, selected presentations.

Presentations:

• “Halina and Hitler: Distant Echoes of the Holocaust.” PCAS/ACAS, Nashville, Tennessee. September 2012.
• “Ghosts Within the Walls: Class Without Swank in the Presbyterian Church of Rural Southwest Virginia.” PCAS/ACAS, Wilmington, North Carolina. October 2009.
• “The Image of the Beseeching Woman in the Poster Propaganda of World War I.” PCAS/ACAS, Louisville, Kentucky. October 2008.
• “‘A Monotonous Crime’: Art Inspired by the Shelling of Reims Cathedral in World War I.” PCAS/ACAS, Jacksonville, Florida. October 2007.
• “Remembering the Lusitania: History, Propaganda, Memorial, and Myth.” PCAS/ACAS, Jacksonville, Florida. October 2005.
• “‘The Tiny Unimportant Self’: Images of Women in the Art of the Third Reich.” PCAS/ACAS, New Orleans, Louisiana. September 2004.
• “Giving Us the Finger: Kitchener’s Progeny.” PCAS/ACAS, Jacksonville, Florida. October 2003.
• “Christ in Khaki and Feldgrau: Christian Allusions in the Poster Art of World War II.”  PCAS/ACAS, Charlotte, North Carolina. October 2002.
• “Warrior Saints, Covert Crucifixions, and Succoring Angels: Religious Imagery in the Poster Art of the Great War.” PCAS/ACAS, Jacksonville, Florida. October 2001.
• “Virgin, Valkyrie, Floozie, and Nun: Images in Poster Art of the Great War.” PCAS/ACAS, Augusta, Georgia. October 1998.
• “The Roll that’s Called Up Yonder—or, rather, in the Roanoke Times Obituary Column: An Onomastic Study.” PCAS/ACAS, Columbia, South Carolina. October 1997.

Guided two award-winning cadet research projects:

• Noel, Vincent ‘07. Identity and Comradeship in the Art of the Great War. Institute Award for best Departmental Honors Thesis 
• Rende, Jessica M. ‘11. Kaethe Kollwitz’s Modern Dance of Death. Best Institute Honors Thesis in the Humanities 

Col. Badgett is the recipient of three VMI Distinguished Teaching Awards (1974, 1998, 2009), a VMI Distinguished Service Award (2008), and two VMI Achievement Medals (2001, 2007). This unrivaled record suggests the esteem in which Bill Badgett is held by the cadets he has taught for over five decades, by his Colleagues, and by the Institute to which he has devoted his entire professional career.

Lt. Col. Julie Phillips Brown is a poet, critic, painter, and book artist. After earning an M.F.A and a Ph.D. as a joint-degree candidate at Cornell University, she served as the N.E.H. Post-Doctoral Fellow in Poetics at Emory University’s Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. In both her critical and creative practices, she focuses on the intersections of 19th-21st C poetry and poetics, visual art, the history of the book and book arts, digital technology, and race, gender, and sexuality. Interdisciplinary inquiry and practice are also central to her courses, which include Genre Studies: Poetry, Visual Arts Studio: Painting, Digital Rhetorics, and American Literary Traditions. With Col. Jay Sullivan (Mechanical Engineering), she serves as Co-PI for their Jackson-Hope Grant for New Directions in Teaching and Research, “Fine Arts Collaborations with Engineering (FACE): 3D Scanning & Modeling for Artists & Engineers.”

Lt. Col. Brown is currently completing a scholarly monograph, Tactual Poïesis: Material Translation in Contemporary Women’s Poetry, an examination of tactile innovations in contemporary women’s poetry. Her first collection of poems, The Adjacent Possible, won the 2019 Hopper Poetry Prize and will be published by Green Writers Press in 2020. Other poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Borderlands, Columbia Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Contemporary Women’s Writing, Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, Harbor Review, The Fight & The Fiddle, interim, Jacket2, Nashville Review, The Oakland Review, Plume, Posit, Rappahannock Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Talisman, Vinyl, Yemassee, and elsewhere.

Associate Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Selected Publications

• The Adjacent Possible. Poetry manuscript, selected by Kathleen Heller as the Winner of the 2019 Hopper Poetry Prize (forthcoming from Green Writers Press, 2020)
• “Archival Theater: Susan Howe’s Tactile Elegies.” (forthcoming in the “Women and Archives” special issue of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature)
• “Return of the Disappeared: Cecilia Vicuña’s Saboramis.” (forthcoming in North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language. Eds. Lisa Sewell and Kazim Ali. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press)
• “Otherbreath: Bare Life and the Limits of Self in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen.” “Extreme Texts” special issue, ed. Divya Victor, Jacket2 (2019).
• “Hinged-Pictures: the Material Poetics of Punctuation.” Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics 46 (2018).

Adjunct Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Major Patrick Eichholz teaches courses in British literature, philosophy, and rhetoric. He joined the faculty at VMI in 2018 after earning his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  

In his research, Major Eichholz studies the effects of total war on various twentieth-century literature. His first publication examined the impact of the October Revolution on Russian literary culture, paying particular attention to the censorship of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We and the development of Mikhail Bakhtin’s novel theory (Extrapolation 56.3). Major Eichholz’s second publication (forthcoming in Twentieth-Century Literature) traces the odd convergence of dadaism and classicism in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Major Eichholz is currently at work on a manuscript that historicizes the formal experiments that define 1922 as the “Annus Mirabilis” of British modernism. The book contests the characterization of “high” modernism as escapist by accentuating the wartime exigencies that led Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, and Wittgenstein to break the formal molds of their respective genres.  

In his first year at VMI, Major Eichholz has offered courses on Joyce’s Ulysses, the British literature of the First World War, aesthetics, the British literary tradition, rhetoric, and writing. Major Eichholz encourages any cadet interested in modernism and twentieth-century British literature to stop by his office to discuss the development of future course offerings.  

Assistant Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Maj. Stephanie Hodde joined the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at VMI as an Assistant Professor in 2016. 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 Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She also has over twenty years of experience developing curricula and outreach programming for non-profit organizations, K-12 schools, and directing community theater projects.

Maj. Hodde teaches courses in community-based writing and fieldwork (ERH 411), contemporary drama and literature (ERH 203 & 230), technical communication (ERH 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 undergraduate projects include the Rockbridge Memoir Project and Girls Leadership Exchange S.T.E.A.M. Camp.

Her research and teaching explore intersections between creative discourses, pedagogy, and multimodal forms of social literacy, including community-based narratives, documentary theater, and arts-based teaching. She has presented papers at numerous conferences for the American Education Research Association, the Modern Language Association, College English, and the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, and is at work on several publications. Her forthcoming chapter, “Up Close and Wide Awake: Participating in Anna Deveare Smith’s Social Theater” will appear in the book, Teaching Critical Performance Theory in Today's Studio, Classroom, and Communities (Routledge, 2020). 

Assistant Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Maj. Catharine Ingersoll has served as Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at VMI since 2015. She received her Ph.D. in 2014 from the University of Texas at Austin, where she also taught in the Department of Art and Art History and curated two shows at the Blanton Museum of Art. In 2011-2012 she held an Albrecht Dürer Fellowship at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, Germany.

Major Ingersoll’s research focuses on the art of northern Europe, especially 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. With Alisa McCusker and Jessica Weiss, she recently published an edited volume of essays, Imagery, and Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Chipps Smith (Brepols, 2018). Forthcoming articles include “Emblems and Hybridity in a Southern German Epitaph Sculpture,” in Hybridity in Early Modern Art, edited by Ashley Elston and Madeline Ristow (Routledge, 2020), and “An Incomparable Wife: The Rhetoric of Text and Image in the Epitaph of Anna Lucretia von Leonsberg,” in Rulers on Display: Tombs and Epitaphs of Princes and the Well-Born in Northern Europe 1470-1670, edited by Ethan Matt Kavaler and Birgit Ulrike Münch (Brepols, 2020). Her article, “The Patronage of the Annunciation Window at Ingolstadt Minster as a Response to the Protestant Reformation,” appeared in North Street Review: Arts and Visual Culture in 2015, and she has published book reviews in Sixteenth Century Journal, Journal of Northern Renaissance Art, and Historians of Netherlandish Art Review of Books.

Assistant Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

An Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies, Maj. Michelle Iten teaches courses in civic discourse, the history, and theory of rhetoric, language and style, and writing for military officers. 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.  

Major Iten specializes in rhetorical democracy and in the theory and teaching of written rhetorical argument. Her current 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.

Major Iten is particularly committed to undergraduate education in rhetoric and advancing student writers’ abilities to bring multiple pieces of knowledge to their academic and political lives.

Assistant Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

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
• “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

Dr. William D. Kimsey, aka ‘MacGregor,’ completed his Ph.D. in Speech at Southern Illinois University. Professor Kimsey’s background and experience include:

• Taught courses in speech and political communication at the University of Virginia and James Madison University.
• Served as a visiting professor of modern business communication for Viet Nam National University Hanoi School of Business and lecturer of public speaking and communication leadership for Ho Chi Minh City Development Learning Center.
• Member of graduate faculties teaching courses in strategic communication, propaganda, and persuasion for the University of North Carolina Wilmington program in conflict resolution and management and James Madison University program in communication studies. 
• Facilitated community disputes as a Commonwealth certified court mediator and published a variety of articles in national journals examining conflict, mediation, and negotiation.
• Co-authored a recent article in American Communication Journal. The effect of narcissism on conflict management message style preference: A look at millennials, 19(1):1-10, December 2017.
• Co-authored the book Mediator Communication Competencies:  Transformative and Problem-Solving Approaches, Pearson.
• Designed and managed US/Ireland student in-country programs examining The Troubles.
• Coached military commanders in strategic speech and negotiation and briefed soldiers and marines pre-deployed for conflict zones on verbal and nonverbal communication.
• Member of the US Marine Corp Marathon Runners Club.
• Own and operate with his wife Candace a small alpaca/sheep fiber farm. 
   

Instructor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Major Steven Knepper joined the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies in 2014.  He previously taught at the University of Virginia, the Miller School of Albemarle, and Erskine College.  He also held an associate fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.  He earned a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from UVA in 2012.  

At VMI, Major Knepper has taught Writing and Rhetoric, American Literary Traditions, Ways of Reading, Philosophy, and Literature, One Text: Moby-Dick, and period courses on Romanticism and Modernism.  He has also advised a number of capstone essays and Honors theses. Major Knepper received VMI’s Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award in 2016. 

Major Knepper studied American literature in graduate school, and he has recently published several essays and reviews on Robert Frost.  He also writes narrative poetry in the tradition of Frost.  His poems have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, The Rappahannock Review, Pembroke Magazine, The James Dickey Review, SLANT, and other journals. Additional research interests include contemporary poetry, tragedy, intellectual and literary history, literary form, aesthetics, and religion.   

Major Knepper first visited Lexington in 2005, when VMI hosted the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.  He was impressed by the discipline, integrity, and intelligence of cadets then, and he considers it an honor to teach them now. 

Outside of the classroom, Major Knepper enjoys gardening, hiking, and spending time with his family.  

Selected Recent Essays:

“Building with Birch: A Note on ‘Home Burial.’”  The Robert Frost Review, no. 27, 2018, pp. 95-102.

Co-written with James Tuten, “Easy Riders and Hard Roads in the Early Recorded Blues.”  The Road in American Music. Edited by Gordon Slethaug. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp.  39-55.

“Bridging Literary Studies and Rhetoric with Form.”  The CEA Critic, vol. 79, no. 3, 2017, pp. 304-308.

“George Steiner on Original Sin, Hope, and Tragedy,” TELOS, no. 178, 2017, pp. 169-189.

“The Counselor and Tragic Recognition.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal, vol. 14, no. 1, 2016, pp. 37-54.

“Political Foundations in ‘Mending Wall.’” The Robert Frost Review, no. 23/24, 2014, pp. 54-69.

Assistant 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.http://www.rockbridgeareahealthcenter.org/resources/Updates/Rockbridge%20Area%20CHNA_2012_Final.pdf 
• 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 Flathers created a website for the project: http://www2.vmi.edu/cadetprojects/flathersgw/.  
• 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 in the department as a professor of English and fine arts. Recent offerings include Southern literature, creative writing (nonfiction), and a special seminar—developed by cadet request—entitled 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). Since 2005, he has been editor 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 in four books: Birdhouses (2007), Birth Place (2008), Poplar Forest (2010), and—with Even Rogers (VMI ’10) and Sally Mann—Cy’s Rollei (2011).

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.

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.

Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Adjunct Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

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. 

Col. Miller is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the College of William and Mary. Although her graduate work at the University of Virginia focused on John Donne, she has spent the past twenty-five years teaching Shakespeare. In her capacity as Navas-Read Professor, she launched the VMI Undergraduate Shakespeare Symposium in 2007. Since 1999, she has served as organizer and key presenter for panels on teaching Shakespeare at the annual meeting of the American Culture Association in the South, and she has frequently featured cadet presenters in the program. 

Department Head
Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Cadet Research Projects:

• Hall, Kacey. “Hamlet: A Struggle Between Reason and Rashness.” First Place, Writing Across the Curriculum, 2013 Academic Writing Contest.
• LaMagna, Joseph. Electronic Portfolio in HNL 380WX Shakespeare: Power and Politics. First Place, ePortfolio Project, 2013 Academic Writing Contest.
• Singleton, Michael. “’What ish my nation?’: The Presentation of Emerging British Nationalism in Shakespeare’s Henry V.” First Place, Writing Across the Curriculum, 2012 VMI Academic Writing Contest.
• Dawson, Frederick M. “Martial Law in Elizabethan England and in Henry V.” Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, New Orleans, 2011; 2012 VMI Undergraduate Research Symposium. Published in the 2012 New Horizons.
• Gragg, Kimberley M. “Feminine Power in Shakespeare.” Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, New Orleans, 2011. Published in the 2012 New Horizons. Third Place, Writing Across the Curriculum, 2011 VMI Academic Writing Contest.
• Willis, Cabell F. “Manipulative Persuasion: Shakespeare’s Use of Rhetoric in Henry V as a Window to Early Modern England.” Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, New Orleans, 2011. Published in the 2012 New Horizons. First Place, Writing Across the Curriculum, 2011 VMI Academic Writing Contest.
• Dawson, Frederick M. “A Powerful Fear: How Early Modern England’s Fears Developed Into a World Power.” Second Place, ePortfolio Project, 2011 VMI Academic Writing Contest.
• Johnson, Kayla A. “God’s Lieutenant on Earth? Concerns about Kingship in Macbeth.” 2010 Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, Savannah, and the 2011 VMI Poetry Conference. Published in the 2011 New Horizons.
• Rende, Jessica. “Marriage and Power in Shakespeare’s King Henry V.” Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, Savannah, 2010. VMI Academic Writing Contest, Second Place in Writing in the Disciplines. 
• Brush, Alexander C. “Justice, Deceit, and Language in the Eyes of Shakespeare—The Darker Side of Rhetoric.” 2008 Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, Louisville, and the 2009 VMI Undergraduate Research Shakespeare Conference.
• Snyder, Alexander J. “The Merchant of Venice: Shylock—An Analysis of the Influence of/on Culture during the 17th, 18th and 19th Century Performances in England and Germany.” 2008 Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, Louisville, and the 2009 VMI Undergraduate Research Shakespeare Conference.
• Dommert, Christopher, “Mercy and Justice in Measure for Measure.” 2008 Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, Louisville.
• DeVerna, Kyle. “Images of Authority: Henry’s Evolution as a Leader.” 2007 Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, Jacksonville.
• Adams, Jeremy, “Henry V’s Order to Kill the Prisoners.” 2007 Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, Jacksonville.
• Rogers, Even. "Henry V: Pragmatic Motivation Behind Inspirational Leadership.” 2007 VMI Undergraduate Research Shakespeare Conference.
• Rogers, Even. “Leadership, Politics, and Moral Ambiguity.” 2007 Conference of the American/Popular Culture Association in the South, Jacksonville.
• Moreira, Nathaniel, "Aaron and Titus: The Problem with Patriarchy in Titus Andronicus.” 2005 VMI Undergraduate Research Shakespeare Conference. Award for Best Paper in Session and for Best Paper in Conference (tie). 
• Foran, Timothy. "What 'ish' Macmorris?: A Study of the Loss of Identity Created by Colonialismonialism in Henry V.” 2005 VMI Undergraduate Research Shakespeare Conference.

In 1992, Col. Miller became the first woman to head an academic department at VMI, and to date, she is the longest-serving department head in the school’s history. In recognition of her distinguished service to the Institute, she received the 2007 VMI Achievement Medal.

Dr. Duncan Richter is the Charles S. Luck III ’55 Institute Professor. He teaches courses on ethics, religion, and poverty. 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 philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is the author of five books: Anscombe’s Moral Philosophy (Lexington Books, 2011), Why Be Good?: A Historical Introduction to Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2008), Wittgenstein at His Word (Continuum, 2004), a Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (Scarecrow Press, 2004), and Ethics after Anscombe: Post “Modern Moral Philosophy” (Kluwer, 2000). He has also published papers in Philosophical Topics, Erkenntnis, Religious Studies, Philosophy, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Papers, and other journals. 

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.

Charles S. Luck III ’55 Institute Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Micah Schultz is an Instructor in the ERHS Department. Prior to coming to VMI in 2012, he taught for several years at James Madison University as a graduate student and adjunct faculty member. Currently teaching ERH 101 and 102, Micah enjoys the opportunity to encourage and facilitate thoughtful, deliberate student writing. He is a graduate of Bridgewater College and James Madison University, where he earned his BA (2009) and MA (2011) respectively. He lives in Staunton, VA with his wife, son, and dog (in that order). When he is not in the classroom or in his office, you might find him camping or hiking in the mountains, playing tennis or ultimate Frisbee, or simply playing in the yard at his house.

Instructor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Adjunct Instructor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Mattie Quesenberry Smith is an instructor of American Literature, rhetoric, composition, and creative writing who recently joined V.M.I.’s Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies after teaching and writing in various professional, academic, and local capacities throughout the years. She has served as a legislative assistant for a United States Congressman, managing his Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee duties, writing articles, and creating public relations materials; an editor for Conservative Review; and a reviewer for the Hollins Critic.

In addition to teaching at V.M.I., Smith serves as an instructor at Dabney S. Lancaster Community College and a mentor for writers in Rockbridge County by mediating Sub Terra, a local creative writing workshop. She also coordinates Writers at Studio Eleven with Professor Lesley Wheeler at Washington and Lee University; this is an evening reading series for writers drawn from various communities and proficiencies, including V.M.I. faculty members and students.

Recently, Finishing Line Press nominated Smith’s chapbook, Mother Chaos: Under Electric Light, for a Library of Virginia Literary Award, and Ruminate editors nominated her poem “To a Fishing Father” for a Pushcart Poetry Prize. Her work in appears in publications such as Diagram, Dappled Things, Southern Poetry Review, Floyd County Moonshine, and Avatar. As a screenwriter, Smith shares numerous awards with her husband, Douglas N. Smith, for their documentary film, Between Two Fires, and a screenplay, Once to Every Man—including a CINE Golden Eagle and New York International Independent Film and Video Festival’s Best Documentary of the Show.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Hollins University who was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa and awarded several creative writing and science honors, Smith focuses on the influences of science and technology on the poetic voice, and she explores the intersections between science and the composition of metaphor. Also interested in the impact of natural events on the history of humankind, she is contributing to a feature film project and related graphic novel series adapted from Eagle in the Snow, a novel written by Wallace Breem and set on the Rhine River, 406 A.D., when barbarians crossed that frozen river on New Year’s Eve to catalyze the fall of Rome.

Instructor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Ms. Sydney Tammarine joined the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at VMI in 2019. She holds a B.A. in Spanish and English from Otterbein University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Hollins University, where she was the two-time recipient of the Melanie Hook Rice Award in Creative Nonfiction.

Ms. Tammarine’s writing interests include research-informed memoir, literary translation, hybrid and cross-genre texts, and reception theory. She is the co-translator of Christian Formoso’s The Most Beautiful Cemetery in Chile (poems in translation), and her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Missing Slate, Pithead Chapel, Cleaver, Gravel, The Hollins Critic, and other journals. She serves as Creative Nonfiction and Flash Fiction editor for international literary magazine Cleaver.

Ms. Tammarine has taught Introduction to Writing Poetry and Fiction, Early American Literature, English Fundamentals, Composition and Rhetoric, and Composition and Research at Hollins University, Ferrum College, and Virginia Western Community College. She looks forward to teaching first-year writing courses at VMI, with an emphasis on communication and critical thinking skills that cadets can take with them wherever their careers may lead—no matter how far-reaching.

When not in the classroom, Ms. Tammarine can be found camping, hiking, or reading at the local dog park with her rescue hound puppy, Ernie.

Instructor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Selected Publications

• “Experiencing Experience: Translation and Reader-Response Criticism in Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station.” Forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Oct. 2019.
• “My Second Year of Teaching, I Bought Green Grading Pens.” Gravel, Sept. 2017.
• “Yellow Leaves.” Pithead Chapel, Sept. 2017.
• “Barycenter.” Cleaver, Mar. 2017.
• Co-translated with Terry Hermsen, The Most Beautiful Cemetery in Chile. By Christian Formoso, Green Fish Press, 2016.

Lt. Col. Ticen is an Associate Professor of English Literature in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies. She taught at The University of Montevallo, in Alabama, where she was active in the formation of their program in undergraduate research, before joining the VMI faculty in 2003. Her service in support of VMI’s co-hosting of the Nineteenth National Conference on Undergraduate Research (with Washington and Lee University) earned her a certificate of excellence in 2005.

Lt. Col. Ticen’s graduate work focused on the use of myth and epic in the works of James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, and Derek Walcott. As a specialist in twentieth-century British Literature, she has taught courses in modernism, post-colonial literature, South Asian Indian literature in English, African literature, Caribbean literature, and contemporary literary theory. Her current research centers on the use of the essay by post-colonial writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Salman Rushdie, and Arundhati Roy. She has been awarded faculty development grants to attend the Wye Faculty Seminar in 2006 and the Jessie Ball DePont Seminar for Liberal Arts College Faculty in 2003.

Lt. Col. Ticen has been active professionally within her field as a referee/reviewer for scholarly articles that have been published in Currents in Teaching and Learning, College English, and South Atlantic Review. She has been an active member of the South Asian Literary Association for twelve years, serving on its governing board as an executive committee member, organizational treasurer, and conference co-chair in 2004, when she was also co-editor of the conference proceeding.

Associate Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies

Publications and Presentations:

• “’ We’re Not Adversaries’: An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee”, with Dr. Robin Field, in South Asian Review, 2010 Special Topic: Postcolonial Considerations, 31.1, 247-261.
• Book Review. Rhetorical Investigations: Studies in Ordinary Language Criticism by Walter Jost, in Studies in American Culture 28.2 October 2005, 2002-2005.
• “Demanding Center Stage: Salman Rushdie’s Essays as Public Performance”, South Asian Literary Association Conference, Seattle, WA, 2012.
• “Skeptical Belief and Faithful Questioning: Interrogating Realism and Bolstering Mythology in The Satanic Verses”, South Asian Literary Association Conference, Los Angeles, CA, 2010.
• “’ because fate has conspired to make my voice heard’: Voicing a Woman’s Rage in the Essays of Arundhati Roy”, South Asian Literary Association Conference, San Francisco, CA, 2008.
• “Exploring the Rhetoric of Social Justice in the Essays of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy”, South Asian Literary Association Conference, Chicago IL, 2007.
• “’ Lines in the Dirt Were All Very Well but They Only Delayed Matters’: Smudging and Blurring the Hard Lines of Nation and History in Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown”, South Asian Literary Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 2006.
•  “Ignorant Armies Clashing by Night?: Dueling Paradigms on the Undergraduate Research Landscape”, Modern Language Association Conference, Washington DC, 2005.
• “’ half strange and half strangely familiar’: Love in Pico Iyer’s The Global Soul”, Modern Language Association Conference, Philadelphia PA, 2004.
• “Reading What We Are Not: White Male Readers in the Lands of the ‘Other’”, Modern Language Association Conference, Philadelphia PA, 2004.
• “’ As for myself, the migrant, the man without frontiers’: Exploring Transnational Politics in Salman Rushdie’s Essays”, Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference, Savannah GA, 2004.
• “’ Where the false barriers go down’: Resistance Opportunities in Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry”, South Atlantic Modern Language Association Convention, 2003.

Since arriving at VMI, Lt. Col. Ticen has immersed herself in cadet life through her service as Assistant Officer in Charge in Barracks and as a facilitator with Cadet Counseling’s CTT Training Time for Rats. She has led groups of cadets on study tours to London four times in the past decade, helping them to more deeply understand British Literature through cultural immersion via theater, museums, historical landmarks, manuscript archives, and contemporary cuisines. In addition, she has served as a mentor for a number of cadet research projects and presentations, including the following:

• Franzino, Rob: “Energizing Cameron Hall,” Second Place, First-Year Composition, 2012 VMI Academic Writing Contest.
• McCarron, Gabi: “Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses: A Text Intended to Challenge the Level of Man’s Consciousness”, Independent Study, 2011.
• McCauley, Sean: “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all: Shakespeare’s Commentary on Man’s Nature in Hamlet and Othello”, VMI Poetry Symposium: The Power of Poetry, 2011.
• Resetar, Laura: Poems, VMI Undergraduate Research Symposium, 2009.
• Resetar, Laura: Poems, VMI Poetry Symposium, 2009.
• Edwards, Travis: Poems, VMI Undergraduate Research Symposium, 2009.
• Resetar, Laura: Poems, VMI Poetry Symposium, 2008.
• Jones, Shaun: “Reading Conrad: History, Duality, and Imperialism,” National Conference on Undergraduate Research, Virginia Military Institute and Washington & Lee University, 2005.
• Jones, Shaun:“Reading Conrad: History, Duality, and Imperialism”, Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference of Undergraduate Scholarship, Sweet Briar College, 2004.
• Jones, Shaun: “Conrad: A Look at Modernism and Post-Colonialism in Early Twentieth-Century Literature”, SURI, 2004.

Assistant Professor
English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies