Department of English

Ms. Shirley A. Mathews, Lecturer, spent more than two decades writing for newspapers and magazines, winning numerous awards from The Associated Press, United Press International, the Society of Professional Journalists and other organizations. Most recently, she spent four years as the managing editor of a health news wire service, reporting and writing on the latest developments and interviewing the foremost experts in every aspect of science, nutrition and medicine and is herself the author of a nutrition book. In her multi-layered career, she has been a police reporter, night city editor, humor columnist, travel writer, arts/entertainment editor, magazine writer, editor, photographer and Web master. She has a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Mr. John P. Walter,Visiting Lecturer, is finishing his Ph.D. work at Saint Louis University. His dissertation, “Remembering That Which We Forgot: The Canon of Memory and English Studies” examines the role memoria (the rhetorical canon of memory) plays in the study and practice of rhetoric, composition, and literary studies by focusing on the connections between memory and mental, verbal, and graphic imagery and how such imagery is used to make meaning; on mnemonic practices and technologies as compositional tools; and on the role social memory plays in rhetoric and literature. His teaching and research interests center around a historical and comparativist study of traditions, with a focus in the intersections of the history and theory of rhetoric and composition, orality-literacy studies (oral, chirographic, print, electronic and digital technologies and cultures), medieval studies and medievalism, social memory studies, and science fiction and fantasy. For the past three years, he has been the processing archivist of Saint Louis University’s Walter J. Ong, SJ, Manuscript Collection. Currently, in addition to serving as a consulting curator to the Ong Collection, he serves on the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication and on the editorial board of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.

Mr. Jesse B. Waters, Lecturer, earned both a BA in English and an MFA in poetry from UNCW. Having been Department Chair for General Studies at Miller-Motte College for the past five years, he has now returned as a Visiting Lecturer in the English Dept. for the 2007 - 2008 academic year.