Alumna Alicia McCartney Hired as Visiting Professor of Classical Liberal Arts

As a student, Patrick Henry College alum, Dr. Alicia McCartney, wanted to teach at a Christian liberal arts college like PHC. She is now halfway through her first semester as an instructor of Rhetoric at PHC and can often be found in the PHC Library researching, preparing for her spring courses (including the cornerstone course of the literature program: Literary Theory and Criticism), and providing additional academic support for her students.

Upon graduating from PHC in 2014 with a Journalism major, Dr. McCartney continued her education at Baylor University’s English Ph.D. program where her fascination with shipwreck literature resulted in her dissertation, “Prayers from the Wreck: Shipwreck Narratives and Imagined Spiritual Communities in Nineteenth-Century Britain.”

Working as a teaching assistant to Dr. Les Sillars for his Research and Writing course Dr. McCartney’s senior year at PHC reinforced her desire to become an educator. Her first year at Baylor, she was a graduate writing consultant in the Baylor Writing Center and her second and third years, she taught freshman composition to freshman undergraduate students, who subsequently nominated her as one of Baylor’s “Most Impactful First-Year Educators.” In Summer 2017, she spent two weeks conducting archival research at the Wordsworth Trust and teaching Baylor undergraduates about Wordsworth in his home at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, UK.

However, teaching is only one part of her professional life. Dr. McCartney is also actively involved in the greater literary discussion, regularly presenting her work at conferences. Her most recent presentation was at the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) on October 17-19, 2019. She was also published in the peer-reviewed journals Literacy in Composition Studies and Arthuriana.

Dr. McCartney is currently working a book project, Prayers from the Wreck, examining forgotten historical and religious realities that shaped 19th century writers’ sea encounters.

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