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.

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.

Dr. Robertson serves as her division representative to the Academic Affairs Council and the Library Committee. She also serves, by virtue of her position as the editor of the college's catalog, on the Graduate Committee. She has been the faculty advisor for the Student Government Association (SGA) since 2016 and to the Harry Potter Club since 2017. She is a past coordinator of the English program.

Dr. Robertson has been a member of the English faculty since 1996. In that time, she has taught a variety of both literature and writing courses for the program, including Shakespeare, British Literature I, British Literature II, History of the English Language, Major Authors, Women Writers, Studies in Narrative, The Teaching of Literature & Writing, Literary Interpretation, Intro to Writing Studies, and Writing Studies II. She is especially interested in the intersections of history and literature, using New Historicism as well as feminist and Marxist theory to inform her approach to the courses she teaches. In her spare time, she likes to garden, knit and read -- her Kindle is her newest passion -- and between April and September, she cheers the Cincinnati Reds and boos the St. Louis Cardinals. The Reds' too-early exit from the playoffs in October 2012 remains a touchy subject as does their terrible start to the 2018 season.

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 College since 2015. Dr. Steffens is currently serving as the English Program Coordinator. She is the co-faculty sponsor for Alpha Kappa Phi, the LWC 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.

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.

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.