With the 2019-2020 academic year approaching, Hampden-Sydney is excited to welcome eight academic appointments to campus. Our new faculty members are eager to contribute their unique research interests and hobbies to the Hampden-Sydney community and to dive into the task of forming good men and good citizens.
Ashleigh Elser is an incoming assistant professor of religion. After receiving her M.A. in religion and literature from Yale Divinity School and her Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Virginia, she taught for two years at Valparaiso University as a Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanities and the Arts. Her research focuses on biblical hermeneutics and the history of biblical interpretation. When she's not in the classroom, Elser enjoys cooking, running, and reading fiction.
Lauren Eriks Cline, an incoming assistant professor of English, completed her undergraduate studies at Hope College and her doctoral degree at the University of Michigan, where her dissertation focused on narrative accounts of theatergoing in nineteenth-century Britain. Cline looks forward to teaching courses on drama and the English novel at Hampden-Sydney and to hiking around Virginia with her partner and her dog.
Jacob Euteneuer, an incoming assistant professor of rhetoric, received a B.A. from the University of Nebraska, an M.A. from Kansas State University, an M.F.A. from the University of Akron, and a Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University, where he wrote a dissertation titled The Ludic Garden: The Work of Play in Composition and Rhetoric. His research interests are in digital rhetoric and new media, play and game studies, ancient rhetoric, and visual literacy. When he is not reading, writing, or teaching, Euteneuer enjoys hiking, watching basketball, and playing video games with his family.
Matthew Christopher Hulbert, an incoming assistant professor of history, completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Florida and his doctorate at the University of Georgia, where his dissertation won the 2016 C. Vann Woodward Prize from the Southern Historical Association. Hulbert is the author or editor of three books, including The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory: How Civil War Bushwhackers Became Gunslingers in the American West, which won the 2017 Wiley-Silver Prize. His work on nineteenth-century America explores the Civil War, irregular violence, memory, and the western borderlands. Outside of academics, Hulbert is an unapologetic cinephile who also enjoys kayaking, hunting, fly-fishing, and backpacking with his family.
Andrew King, the newly appointed director of the Flemming Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, earned his B.A. from Sewanee, his M.S. from Oxford Brookes, and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. King worked at Darden for 12 years, where he studied entrepreneurial methods and co-authored the book Solving Problems with Design Thinking. Prior to his time at UVA, he studied and worked in the UK and Germany. King looks forward to teaching classes on entrepreneurial methods and running workshops for students at Hampden-Sydney. He enjoys living on a hobby farm and practicing the art of falconry.
Andrea Weatherman Kikkert, an incoming visiting assistant professor of modern languages, attended the Petrie School of Music at Converse College as an undergraduate, completed her Ph.D. in German at Vanderbilt University, and most recently served as a Mellon digital humanities postdoctoral fellow. In addition, Kikkert has taught German at Sewanee, supervised text encoding for the hybrid print/digital critical edition of Hannah Arendt’s collected writings, and conducted archival research of late 19th century short prose in Vienna. Her hobbies are similarly eclectic, ranging from camping to performing chamber music.
Tara Stephan is an incoming assistant professor of history who received her B.A. in history and Arabic from the Ohio State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in history and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies from New York University. In addition, she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow in NYU’s College Core Curriculum. Her research and teaching interests include medieval Middle Eastern history, Islamic literature, gender and sexuality, and minority religious groups. She is especially looking forward to teaching a course on the Crusades this fall. In her spare time, Stephan enjoys reading, baking, and taking walks with her dog.
Michael Strayer, an incoming assistant professor of mathematics and computer science, completed his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this spring, writing his dissertation on combinatorial Lie representation theory. Highlights of his time at UNC included mentoring students through the Association for Women in Mathematics and organizing the Triangle Area Graduate Mathematics Conference when UNC hosted it for the first time. Outside of math, Strayer enjoys swimming, golf, and roasting coffee; he and his wife, Rachelle, are expecting their first child this June.