Department of Language and Literature
Faculty
Professor Thomas J. Richardson (Ph.D., Vanderbilt)
Richardson’s academic interests include American literature, especially Mark Twain and his contemporaries, and southern literature and culture. He has written on George W. Cable, Twain, William Styron, Larry Brown, Tennessee Williams, and Shirley Ann Grau, among others. His work includes articles on local color and southern humor for the History of Southern Literature (LSU, 1985) the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (North Carolina, 1989) and the Companion to Southern Literature (LSU, 2002) as well as a chapter on Mississippi writers for Mississippi: Portrait of An American State (Clairmont, 1995,1998, 2004), a textbook for high school use. He has taught and worked at Southern Mississippi, Alabama, Auburn and Vanderbilt, in addition to Carey, where he teaches a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses in writing and literature.
Associate Professor Allison C. Chestnut (Ph.D, Louisiana State University)
Under the supervision of Lewis P. Simpson, Chestnut wrote a doctoral dissertation on Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor and the creation of the parable of the American South. Her scholarly interests include interdisciplinary studies of literature, religion and music. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in comparative mythology, renaissance literature, drama, contemporary literature and creative writing. Her poetry and scholarly works have been published by and/or presented to the Conference on Christianity and Literature, the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and the Mississippi Philological Association.
Associate Professor Rebecca M. Jordan (D.A., University of Mississippi)
Jordan studied with Ben Fisher at Ole Miss. Her academic areas include grammar and composition, pedagogy, and criticism. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the Enlightenment, the Romantic and the Victorian eras, and in traditional and transformational grammar. She has made presentations at numerous academic conventions, including National Council of Teachers of English international meeting in Paris, France.
Associate Professor Emeritus Glenn R. Swetman (Ph.D., Tulane)
Swetman, the author of eleven published volumes of poetry, serves as the university writer-in-residence. His works have appeared in such publications as The Prairie Schooner, Kansas Quarterly, Trace (England), Poet (India), A Semena (Brazil) and Tributes (Japan). Although primarily a poet, Swetman has also authored numerous short stories, articles and plays.
Assistant Professor Iris C. Easterling (M.Ed, William Carey College)
In addition to coordinating the Sarah Gillespie Collection of Art, Easterling teaches undergraduate students in composition, drama and world literature classes. She also administers the university-wide English Proficiency Examination.
Assistant Professor Cheryl Maqueda (M.A., University of Southern Mississippi)
Mrs. Maqueda earned 32 undergraduate hours while living for one year in Seville, Spain, where she became fluent in Spanish and has returned to Spain for short visits seven times. She received her Master of Arts in Teaching Languages with a concentration in Spanish from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1996. At Carey, Mrs. Maqueda teaches all levels of Spanish, including a repertoire of eight upper-level classes for Spanish minors. Her related activities include participating in mission trips to Mexico and Chile, helping with the Hispanic church in Hattiesburg, translating for Forrest General Hospital, translating documents and meetings for Hispanic residents and for the Salvation Army, sponsoring the International Student Organization at Carey, and presenting at foreign language teachers’ conferences. She is also a sponsor of the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society here on campus.
Instructor Josye Brookter (ABD, University of Southern Mississippi)
A William Carey University alumna, Brooker is working on a dissertation in the field of Race Theory in Composition Practice. Her academic interests include African-American literature, expository writing, and composition theory. She has made presentations at the Conference on College Composition and Communication. She is currently interim director of the Vernon Dahmer Collection and the coordinator for the university writing center.
Instructor Edison Williams (ABD, Louisiana State University)
Williams serves the university in both the department of language and literature and the department of philosophy. His academic interests include comparative literature, and he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in medieval literature, history of the language, world literature and the novel. He is writing a doctoral dissertation examining a dialectic of cultures: specifically world literature and the shifting frame of hermeneutical perspective. The subject area involves defining “World Literature” as a concept within a Heideggerian understanding of art and world. Other concerns touched upon in the dissertation are Post-colonial theory, Gadamerian Hermeneutics and Ricourean Hermeneutics.
Adjunct faculty:
Associate Professor Linda McDaniel (Ph.D. University of South Carolina)
(literary criticism and theory, the novel, classical mythology and world literature)
Instructor Valorie Pahlman (MEd, William Carey College)
(creative writing)
Instructor Frances Weathers (French)
Instructor Maria Crawford (German)
Administrative Assistant:
Dolores O’Mary
601.318.6592
FAX: 601.318.6135