English - Faculty

Mary Baker has been a member of the English faculty since 2019 and serves as the coordinator of the interdisciplinary studies program. She regularly teaches Writing Studies I and Writing Studies II.

I recently completed a Ph.D. in English and Folklore, writing a dissertation on queer werewolf folklore, legends and literature. With a primary interest in monster studies and legend and belief studies, I have presented on several topics at professional conferences, ranging from foodways and taboos in the Delicious in Dungeon anime to demonic and werewolf language used to describe the Dogman cryptid to legend tripping in the Discovery Plus series Conjuring Kesha. I also recently had a chapter title ��It�s called acting! That�s the real magic here�: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power�s Nonbinary Character Double Trouble as Lens for Intersection of Identity, Performativity, and Acting,� published in the book New Queer Television: From Marginalisation to Mainstreamification, released by Intellect Books in 2025. Currently, I�m co-editing a collection entitled A Queer Presence: Queer Ghostlore in Folk and Popular Cultures, with some colleagues from Louisiana, and I�m contributing a chapter titled �Queerness, Devil Worship, and Small-Town Rumors in the Haunting Legends of Corpsewood Manor.� It is contracted with University Press of Mississippi, with a publication date forthcoming.

I grew up in a small town in west-central Indiana along its border with Illinois, and I was exposed to all things creepy, including the X-Files, at a young age. In addition to all sorts of spooky folklore, I study monsters, folklore pedagogy, storytelling as communication, queer theory, the Gothic and horror, and roleplaying games. Unsurprisingly, when not teaching folklore and literature, I�m an avid TTRPG gamer, currently DMing a weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. I�m also a dad to two cats named Chica and Baby.

Dr. Carr has won multiple grants to perform archival research and is currently planning a trip to Yale�s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to research the Jean Toomer letters. Her current research project, �But What Has Helga Crane to Do with the West Indies? Plantation Afterlives in the Black Atlantic� explores how Modernist Literature reckons with the plantation system�s impact on the natural world. She is a board member of the African American Literature and Culture Society and regularly presents her research at the American Literature Association Conference and the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture.

Dr. Carr specializes in African American Literature, Caribbean Literature, and Ecocriticism. She has a Graduate Certificate in Gender and Women�s Studies. Before coming to Lindsey Wilson in 2019, she was an Assistant Writing Program Administrator. Her teaching and research interests include Writing Studies, Writing and Culture, American Literature, World Literature, and Gender and Women�s Studies.

Caleb Dempsey-Richardson has taught at Lindsey Wilson since 2020. He teaches the first-year writing courses (Introduction to Writing Studies, Writing Studies I, Writing Studies II) as well as ESL. His research interests include narratology, the modalities of language, and how rhetorical appeals are effectively transmitted.

While not originally from Kentucky, he has lived the majority of his life within the Commonwealth and has deep family roots in the Lake Cumberland region. In his spare time, when not researching genealogy, he can be found pondering why The Simpsons is still airing and also wondering why is nevertheless watching these new episodes.

Dr. Loy has been published in the�Kentucky Philological Review�and recently served on the executive�board of the Midwest Victorian Studies Association. Her ongoing book project,�Practice Imperfect: Agential Repetition�in the Golden Age of Children's Literature, examines how Victorian juvenile fiction previews twentieth-century developmental psychology by emphasizing children's recurring play.

Dr. Loy specializes in both Victorian and children's literature, with concurrent interests in feminist theory, rhetoric, and popular culture. She has previously taught courses on banned books, vampires and gender, digital literacy, and introductory writing. When not at the office, she enjoys rock climbing and cooking.

Dr. Smith received the Graduate Dean's Citation for her dissertation. She has also served as an Appalachian College Association Fellow and in 2016 was promoted to Associate Professor.

Dr. Allison Smith is an associate professor of English and Women�s and Gender Studies and currently serves as Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities. She regularly teaches courses such as Introduction to College Writing, Writing and Culture, Advanced Writing, and Feminist Film. She has presented her research, primarily concerned with gender, narrative, and film, at national and regional conferences such as the American Culture Association Conference, CCCCs, and the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture. Dr. Smith is also the co-founder and organizer of the Dr. Kara Mollis Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Steffens has essays in The Routledge Research Companion to Ford Madox Ford (2019), Trauma and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and War and the Mind (Edinburgh University Press, 2015). She has also been published in the Journal of Modern Literature and The Journal of Popular Culture. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Modernist Affirmation, in which she traces trauma as one of the most prominent discourses of the 20th century alongside modernist and contemporary postcolonial fiction.

Dr. Steffens specializes in 20th and 21st Century British and Anglophone/World Literature. Her research and teaching interests include trauma theory, modernism, postcolonial literature, film studies, and contemporary world literature. She routinely teaches Writing Studies II, Literary Interpretation, and World Literature, along with upper-level English courses including British Literature II, Modern Critical Theory, Studies in Genre (Memoir and Testimony), Literary Cultures (Modernism), Ethnic Literature (Postcolonial Literature), Transnational Literature (The Anthropocene in Contemporary World Literature), and History and Literature of Empire (with Dr. Elizabeth Tapscott).

She has taught at Lindsey Wilson University since 2015. Dr. Steffens is currently serving as the English Program Coordinator. She is the co-faculty sponsor for Alpha Kappa Phi, the LWU chapter of Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society. She also serves as faculty editor for the Alpha Kappa Phi Review, the undergraduate scholarly journal in the Humanities.

Before he joined the English faculty in spring 2024, Kendall Sewell won multiple awards at other institutions for his teaching. His research interests include both literary and cultural studies and the scholarship of teaching and learning, and he regularly presents at conferences, the most recent of which have included regional conferences such as the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English Conference in March 2023 and the international Bavarian American Summer Academy (for American Studies) in June 2023. He is currently working to complete a Ph.D. in English through the University of Kentucky.

Prior to his coming to Lindsey, Kendall Sewell has taught a wide range of high school and college English, film, and humanities courses across the Bluegrass. Currently, he teaches Writing Studies I and Writing Studies II, as well as Literary Interpretation in fall 2024. His research interests include twentieth and twenty-first century American literature, ecocriticism, social movements, and the apocalyptic mode in media, narrative, and culture.