Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world. . . .
(from “Adam’s Curse,” William Butler Yeats)
How would you like to take a course from a published author and scholar of nineteenth-century literature whose nickname is “Mary Poppins on Speed”? Or perhaps you’d like to learn from a Miltonist who is memorizing all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets? Or from a scholar who has spent past summers studying medieval culture in York, England, and Vogogna, Italy? Would you like to study with a film buff who is training to be a century cyclist? Or with a poet who can recite poetry in French, Spanish, Russian, and Latin and who can, in addition, correctly answer just about any baseball trivia question? If you major or minor in English, you’ll be in just such good company. See below for more about us and how to contact us.
Jay Russell Curlin
Kathryn Maddox Professor of English
- B.A., Ouachita Baptist University, 1983
- M.A., University of Arkansas, 1985
- Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1993
Reared and educated in Arkansas, Jay Curlin wrote his doctoral dissertation, “By Dint of Argument”: Milton and the Poetry of Polemics, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. A portion
of that dissertation, “‘An Equal Poise of Hope and Fear’: A
Fraternal Harmony of Extremes,” was included in Arenas of Conflict: Milton and the Unfettered Mind, winner of the 1998
Irene Samuel Award for Distinguished Multiauthor Collection of Essays. Dr. Curlin served as an exchange lecturer from the University of Michigan to Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany (1988-89) and as assistant professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas (1991-97) and Southwest Baptist University (1997-98), before returning to his undergraduate alma mater in the fall of 1998. A member of The Milton Society of America, he has published articles in various journals and collections of essays on Milton, Shakespeare, Denham, Seth, and poetic meter and form, and has presented papers at numerous international, national, regional, and state conferences. A professor of both literature and creative writing, Dr. Curlin is also a practicing poet and has presented his poetry at conferences and poetry readings in Arkansas and Missouri. He and his wife Bonnie have seven children.
See Devoting One’s Life to Teaching Language and Literature to learn how Dr. Curlin came to teach English.
curlinj@obu.edu
870.245.5550
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Rosemary Flora
Lecturer in English
Director of the Writing Center
- B.S., Southern Illinois University, 1972
- M.A., University of Missouri, St. Louis, 1981
florar@obu.edu
870.245.5551
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Mary Beth Long
Assistant Professor of English
- B.A., Ouachita Baptist University, 1997
- M.A., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1999
- Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2004
Mary Beth Long’s scholarly interests are in medieval religion, women’s history, and reading culture, and more recently the history and politics of food. She has worked in manuscript archives in Belgium, England, Italy and France, has presented at literary and historical conferences in the U.S., Canada, Italy, and England, and has published articles in English Literary Renaissance, Milton Quarterly, and A Companion to Middle English Hagiography. Her current writing projects are a book chapter on teaching Dante’s Inferno and an online article about Christine de Pisan and English print culture. Mary Beth moved to Arkadelphia from Louvain-le-Neuve, Belgium, where she finished her dissertation, Reading Female Sanctity: English Legendaries of Women ca. 1200-1650, and gave birth to daughter Rosaria. Since joining the OBU faculty in 2006, she has discovered literature written after 2000 (as opposed to pre-1650), has begun a vegetable garden, and has had daughter Vivian.
See Why English? to learn why Dr. Long became an English major and professor.
longm@obu.edu
870.245.5336
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Stan Poole
Vice President for Academic Affairs
Dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies
Professor of English
- B.A., Louisiana College, 1981
- M.A., Tulane University, 1983
- Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1991
pooles@obu.edu
870.245.5196
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Beverly Slavens
Adjunct Professor of English
- BSE., Henderson State University, 1969
- MSE., Henderson State University, 1974
slavensb@obu.edu
870.245.5551
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Amy Sonheim
Director of the Carl Goodson Honors Program
Professor of English
- B.A., Wheaton College, 1982
- M.A., Baylor University, 1985
- Ph.D., University of Missouri, 1994
Amy Sonheim has taught college English for the last 26 years. Her training began when she headed north from Bolivar, Missouri, to Wheaton College near Chicago for her B.A. in English, spending a summer studying British literature in Oxford, England, at which point, on the banks of the Thames, she fell in love with Doug Sonheim. Together, they took M.A.’s at Baylor followed by two years of teaching at a women’s college in Japan. Returning to the States, both Sonheims finished their Ph.D.’s at the University of Missouri-Columbia, a pursuit that for Amy nurtured her interest in illustrated books. The year Dr. Mr. Sonheim came to Ouachita, Dr. Mrs. Sonheim’s book on the subject of the Jewish illustrator Maurice Sendak (Twayne, 1992) came out. Having completed her dissertation, Picture Miladies: The Illustrating of George MacDonald’s Fairy-tale Women by Arthur Hughes, in 1994, Amy was then also hired by Ouachita’s English Department. During her career at Ouachita, she has published more on illustrated books, one article concerning picture books about the Jewish Golem. Recently, in contrast to her early research, Sonheim has switched from studying picture books to tomes, presenting papers at conferences on Proust and Tolstoy. Last year she presented “A Proustian Experience of Racism: Queering the Dreyfus Affair” in Susquehanna, and this year she’ll be presenting “A Dickens of a Political Agenda: War and Peace as Dickensian Fairy Tale” in Seattle.
See Why Did I Plant Myself in English? to learn what drew Dr. Sonheim to her vocation.
sonheima@obu.edu
870.245.5552
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Doug Sonheim
Clarence and Bennie Sue Anthony Professor of Bible
Humanities and Chair of the Department
- B.A., Wheaton College, 1982
- M.A., Baylor University, 1986
- Ph.D., University of Missouri, 1993
A graduate of Wheaton College, Douglas A. Sonheim earned his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1993, with a dissertation on the philosophical and rhetorical theory of George Campbell, an eighteenth-century Scot who was famous in his day for his reply to David Hume’s attack on the validity of miracles. In 2001, Sonheim edited the three-volume Lectures, Sermons, and Dissertations (Thoemmes Press), a collection of some of Campbell’s most important works. Other publications include two reviews inThe English Journal, one of Andrew Hudgins’ poetry (November, 1990) and one of Robert Scholes, Nancy R. Comley and Gregory L. Ulmer’s Text Book: An Introduction to Literary Language (September, 1990). While teaching in Japan, Sonheim published a chapter from his master’s thesis as “Altered Comic Conventions in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer” in the Baiko English Journal (1987). Current research interests include modern memoirs, the intersection of film with faith, and the rhetoric of sports narratives. Most of his time, however, is spent (1) coordinating the College Society, a program devoted to encouraging Ouachita’s bright and motivated students to integrate their faith and learning as they consider a vocation in the academy and (2) chairing the English Department. He is married to Dr. Amy Sonheim, and they have two sons, Joe (a sophomore at Calvin College) and Will (a sophomore in high school).
See Why I Majored in English to learn how Dr. Sonheim justified his love for reading as a lifelong pursuit.
sonheimd@obu.edu
870.245.5554
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John Howard Wink
Betty Burton Peck Professor of English
- B.A., U of Southern Mississippi, 1966
- M.A., University of Arkansas, 1970
- Ph.D., University of Arkansas, 1973
For many years, Dr. Wink’s passion has been reading, writing, memorizing, thinking about, and talking about poetry. He has published a volume of poems, Haunting the Winerunner (August House Press, 1982) and has had roughly fifty poems appear in various publications (e.g., The Christian Science Monitor,The Plains Poetry Journal, The Kentucky Review, The Kansas Quarterly, Moondance, and Christianity and Literature. For twenty years, Dr. Wink has done a lot of speaking on the topic of poetry. He has addressed various branches of the Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas, sundry Arkansas Arts Councils, and a good many elementary, junior high, and high school classes. Dr. Wink believes poetry gets a bad press in our culture; therefore, through his work he strives to reverse that trend.
See Getting Started for an account of Dr. Wink’s very first experience as a teacher of English.
winkj@obu.edu
870.245.5555
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Susan Wade Wink
Emerita Professor of English
- B.A., Texas Western College, 1966
- M.A., University of Arkansas, 1970
- Ph.D., University of Arkansas, 1978
Since her retirement from full-time teaching in 2003, Dr. Wink
has continued to teach the three linguistics courses regularly offered by the department of English: Advanced Grammar (syntax), Introduction to Linguistics, and the History of the English Language. If space permitted, she could deliver a sermon on the value of studying linguistics, as it is “the ultimate interdisciplinary discipline, combining science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, philosophy — in a word, all disciplines, since language is at their core, and each has at least one branch that is directly concerned with linguistics. And language, regardless of the ends for which it’s used and in spite of its limitations, is still our best window into how the human mind works.”
winks@obu.edu
870.245.5557
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