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

Dr. MaryBeth Drake is a lifelong learner and teacher with a BA in Special Education from Greensboro College, a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Hollins University, a Master of Science in Education from Nova Southeastern University, and a Ph.D. in Education from Walden University. She is especially interested in the experiences of first-year college students and the challenges they face. She has been teaching college-level English composition courses since 2005. Currently, she teaches Advanced Composition courses online for Johnson & Wales University. MaryBeth is also an artist and is a member of the Nelson Gallery in downtown Lexington, Virginia.

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.

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 

is an art historian who holds a bachelor's degree from Bradley University and a master's degree from Northern Illinois University. She also completed doctoral coursework and was admitted to Ph.D. candidacy in the Department of History of Art at the Ohio State University. Her university-level teaching experience includes lecturing in Introductory Art History course as well as leading seminars in Contemporary, Eastern European, Soviet, and Post-Soviet studies. Natalie’s research focuses on memory, socialism, post-colonialism, activism, globalism, visual rhetoric, national identity, and theories and concepts of space. In addition to working at VMI, she also teaches classes at Southern Virginia University, is a freelance graphic designer, and sits on the Boxerwood Volunteer, Events, and Promotion Board. In her off-hours, she enjoys reading, gardening, and cooking.

Gwendolyn G. Parson, Writing Center Consultant, is certified  by the Virginia Department of Education in English/Language Arts.  An educator for twenty years,  Mrs. Parson is proficient in student conferencing and writing instruction. Mrs. Parson earned a BS and MS in Education from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.

Mrs. Parson joined Virginia Military Institute's Writing Center staff because she enjoys the process of writing. She said, "Although many people do not consider themselves good writers, I seldom meet students who do not like to talk.  I believe that clear written expression begins with critical thinking and oral communication. It is through conferencing that students create concise writing that best communicates their thoughts and beliefs to their intended audience.  It is rewarding to be part of that conversation between the students and the assignment." 

Elise Sheffield has been a part-time member of the Writing Center team for thirteen years. A Rockbridge County native, she holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Brown University, a master’s degree in theology, and a second master's in conservation biology from Miami (OH) University. Previously a college instructor of composition and literature, she is also the education director for Boxerwood Nature Center just outside Lexington.  Over the past decade, she has secured over $2 million in grants for area non-profits as a result of her ability to write clear and convincing prose. “To me, good writing reflects good thinking and is itself an act of leadership,” says Elise, whose favorite part about her job is helping cadets to develop those same life-long skills.   

 

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