Faculty and Staff Directory

“The beginning of the 2015-2016 school year will be a hallmark of sorts; it will mark my 20th year as a teacher of rhetoric and literature. Before beginning my tenure at SWU, I was an assistant professor of English at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla., for six years. At SWU I teach Composition, American Literature, Contemporary Literature and a variety of literature courses. I consider it a privilege to serve my colleagues in the English Department as the program coordinator.

My interest in American, African American and Middle Eastern literature is eclipsed only by my passion for the study of rhetoric in a digital information economy. In our over-stimulated, media-saturated culture, the discipline of reading critically and writing coherently has never been more important and has never been so difficult—reading of any kind is a tough sell. In this context my professional mission includes, not only teaching information literacy to students who live in a culture of distraction, but also equipping Christ-followers to be salt and light in a culture in decline.

If I could describe myself in one sentence I would offer the following: I’m a military brat, a professor of English who has the sentimentality of a poet and the temperament of a cop.”

Education 

- Ph.D. candidate in Literature and Criticism –
  Indiana University of Pennsylvania
  Dissertation proposal:  The Blithedale Romance: 
  America’s Imaginative Crisis and Hawthorne’s
  Pre-Civil War Epistolary
- M.A. in English – University of Dallas
- Certificate of Graduate Studies – Dallas Theological Seminary
- B.A. in English – Missouri State University     

Areas of Specialty/Interest 

- American Literature
- Middle Eastern Literature
- African American Literature

View Tim Kirk’s Vitae