Faculty

Eric Caldwell
Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
B.A., University of Iowa
M.A., University of Illinois, Chicago
Ph.D., University of Virginia

Carter Hailey
Adjunct Assistant Professor of English

Tony Lilly
Assistant Professor of English
A.A., B.A., Simon's Rock College
M.A., Ph.D., Tufts University
alilly@sbc.edu

Professor Lilly teaches 16th- and 17th-century British literature, including Shakespeare. His research interests include religion and sexuality in Early Modern English literature and the construction of the modern gendered subject through language. His dissertation examined the influence of confession on gender and subjectivity in English Renaissance prose and drama. His current book project is titled The Queen of Proofs: Subjectivity, Gender, and Confession in Early Modern England.  Pictured with John Donne.

Cheryl Mares
Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor of English
B.A., University of Colorado at Boulder
M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University
mares@sbc.edu

Professor Mares teaches modern and contemporary fiction and poetry, including post-colonial literature. Her research interests involve connections between literature, history and politics in contemporary fiction and in works by modernist writers, especially Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust, on whom she has published a number of articles. Pictured with Virginia Woolf.

Lee Piepho
Sara Shallenberger Brown Research Professor of English
B. A., Kenyon College
M.A., Columbia University
Ph.D., University of Virginia

Professor Piepho, who retired from teaching in the spring of 2005, taught courses in Renaissance literature and culture. The recipient of several awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a senior research fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library, he is the author of numerous scholarly articles and two books, most recently Holofernes' Mantuan, a study of Renaissance humanism in England, published in 2001. At present he is at work on a series of studies of transnational cultural links between Germany and early modern Britain. At Sweet Briar, Professor Piepho twice received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Student Government Association, in 1991 and 2000.

Laura Reinert
Assistant Professor of English
B.A., Ohio Wesleyan University
M.A., Western Michigan University
Ph.D., Saint Louis University
lreinert@sbc.edu

Professor Reinert teaches courses in medieval literature and culture, covering British and continental European texts from the 7th through the 15th centuries. Her research interests include representations of direct speech in Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic literature; gender politics in medieval heroic narratives; and remnants of Celtic mythology in medieval tales, especially the Arthurian tradition. Her dissertation was a pragmatic study of female direct speech and female rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Marcia Robertson
Associate Professor of English
Chair of the Department
B.A., Augustana College
M.A., Ph.D, Washington University
robertson@sbc.edu

Professor Robertson teaches American literature, including African-American and Native American writers. She also teaches courses in autobiography, nature writing and, most recently, speculative fiction. Her research interests are in regional literature, especially the literature of the South. She writes extensively for Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. Pictured with William Faulkner.