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Department of English and Philosophy
The mission of the Department of English and Philosophy at Auburn University at Montgomery is to prepare students for thoughtful engagement with diverse, multicultural communities and issues through high-impact, community-engaged teaching and learning and through advances in research in literature, rhetoric and composition, creative writing, digital humanities, and philosophy.
The Department of English and Philosophy offers majors courses ranging from Victorian Poetry and Prose to Children’s Literature to Shakespeare to Women in Literature to Applied Ethics to Critical Reasoning. Majors may also take courses in rhetoric and composition, language and linguistics, literary criticism, and creative writing. A cornerstone course, English as a Field of Study, introduces students to career possibilities and to the English faculty. Learn about the Composition program at AUM.
Department of English and Philosophy Opportunities
Our students benefit from a varied and supportive environment that includes small classes and intensive, personal instruction from experienced professors who hold terminal degrees and have published significant research in their specialties. You’ll have a wealth of opportunities to develop intellectually while pursuing diverse academic, professional and personal goals.
Our offerings include a Bachelor of Arts in English and minors in:
We also offer a certificate in:
English as a Pre-Law Degree
Did you know English is a great degree for law school?
Law schools are looking for students who can:
These are the same skills that are fostered in the English program at AUM. The Philosophy minor is also useful for students pursuing law studies, for its use of analytical reading and writing, and for the training in Logic, which can be especially helpful on the LSAT. The American Bar Association recommends an undergraduate education with a broad scope of education in English language and literature, philosophy, history, human behavior and social interaction, and basic mathematical competence.
Advising
Students are strongly encouraged to see their advisor every semester to ensure that they make informed choices that will keep them on the path to graduation and to discuss career options. English majors with 0 – 58 semester hours are advised in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Advising Center. English majors with more than 58 semester hours are advised by Mrs. Hillary Porter ([email protected] or 334-244-3892).
The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences offers students a traditional liberal arts education to meet the needs of the 21st century, allowing them to compete for a variety of careers in an increasingly complex and evolving world.
Department of English and Philosophy


Aaron Cobb
Chair, Professor of Philosophy | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
I began working at AUM in 2010. Prior to that, I completed a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Saint Louis University, a M.A. in Philosophy from Western Michigan University, and a B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from Greenville University.
My dissertation focused on 19th-century British philosophy of science. I was interested in debates among these philosophers concerning the role of experiment in the justification of scientific knowledge. Although my research focused in this area, my teaching experience at Saint Louis University focused broadly on applied ethics, the history of philosophy, and in philosophy of religion. Since coming to AUM, I have continued to teach courses in these areas. And my research interests have shifted to focus broadly on virtues and vices in both ethics and epistemology. I have written two books: A Virtue-Based Defense of Perinatal Hospice and Loving Samuel: Suffering, Dependence, and the Calling of Love, a philosophical and theological memoir on the life and death of his son. I’m currently working on a third book, under contract with Cambridge Elements series The Problems of God, tentatively titled Suffering, Virtue, and God.
In addition to my teaching and research within the Department of English and Philosophy, in 2017 I took on the role of coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Studies degree plan. In this role, I oversee all aspects of the program including advising students and teaching the Interdisciplinary Studies Capstone course.


Michel Aaij
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Michel Aaij is a Dutch native who received a Ph.D. with a specialization in Old English language and literature from The University of Alabama in 2003, and now teaches in the English and Philosophy Department at Auburn University, Montgomery. He has presented and published on various subjects, most recently hagiography and is currently at work on a book-length study of the modern veneration of St. Boniface in Germany, the Netherlands, and England.


Michelle Aitken
Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Erin Boyle
Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Elizabeth Burrows
Interim Director of Composition, Distinguished Senior Lecturer

Elizabeth Burrows
Interim Director of Composition, Distinguished Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Angela Fowler
Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Heath Fowler
Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Jason D. Gray
Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Darren Harris-Fain
Honors Professor; Distinguished Research Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Dr. Harris-Fain teaches and writes about British and American literature since the 1800s and popular culture. The topics of his publications include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H. G. Wells, Tarzan, James Bond, superheroes, Star Trek, Ray Bradbury, Ken Kesey, Kurt Vonnegut, New Wave science fiction, Harlan Ellison, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Alison Bechdel, among others. His courses include surveys of British and American literature as well as upper-level and graduate classes on editing, American film history, and science fiction, fantasy, and graphic novels. Dr. Harris-Fain was a reference book editor and writer before beginning his teaching career and has taught at AUM since 2011. In 2015, he was a three-day champion on Jeopardy!


Shannon K. Howard
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Joyce Kelley
Professor of English | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Robert Klevay
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Amy Lee Marie Locklear
Distinguished Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Luke Manning
Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Kent Quaney
Assistant Professor, Coordinator of Creative Writing | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Kent Quaney is an Assistant Professor of English and the coordinator of the Creative Writing program at AUM. His areas of expertise include fiction writing, postcolonial criticism, and the contemporary literature of East Asia and the South Pacific.
Dr. Quaney has published several short stories in journals such as Literally Stories, Polari, Riversedge, and Chelsea Station. His first novel, One Breath from Drowning, is forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press in 2022.


Seth Reno
Distinguished Research Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Seth T. Reno is Distinguished Research Associate Professor of English, specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, ecocriticism, affect theory, climate fiction, and the environmental humanities. He regularly teaches classes in these areas, as well as literature surveys and writing courses. Seth hails from Ohio, where he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Before joining AUM in 2013, he taught at Wittenberg University, Ohio State, and Columbus State Community College. He is author of Early Anthropocene Literature in Britain, 1750–1884 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and Amorous Aesthetics: Intellectual Love in Romantic Poetry and Poetics, 1788–1853 (Liverpool University Press, 2019); editor of The Anthropocene: Approaches and Contexts for Literature and the Humanities (Routledge, 2021) and Romanticism and Affect Studies (Romantic Circles Praxis Series, 2018); and co-editor (with Lisa Ottum) of Wordsworth and the Green Romantics: Affect and Ecology in the Nineteenth Century (University of New Hampshire Press, 2016). He has also published dozens journal articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and book reviews.
Dr. Reno is currently working on two projects. The first is a critical edition of William Delisle Hay’s novella The Doom of the Great City (1880), which imagines an environmental catastrophe caused by a poisonous London fog in the late nineteenth century. He is co-editing this story with Allison Hamilton, a current graduate student in AUM’s Master of Liberal Arts program. The second project is an anthology of lesser-known industrial writers, tentatively titled Popular British Industrial Writings: A Critical Anthology. It contains hundreds of relatively unknown (and often unpublished) poems, essays, and other forms of writing that chronicle the British Industrial Revolution. He received a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society to fund this project.
In addition to literature, Dr. Reno has a passion for food and travel: he loves cooking, he teaches courses on food and culture, he has undertaken several domestic and international research trips and study abroad courses, and he once came in fourth place at a burger-eating competition (he has since given up his professional food-eating aspirations).


Jason Shifferd
Senior Lecturer | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences




Eric Sterling
Distinguished Research Professor, MLA Program Director | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Shirley Toland-Dix
Associate Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences


Heather Witcher
Assistant Professor | College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

