Welcome!

I'm the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of English at Bridgewater College. I have been teaching here since 1988.  With me in the picture here on the left is my wife, Kathy Elick (who also teaches English at Bridgewater and serves as Dept. Chair).  We were married in the summer of 2000 after having been colleagues and friends for many years. Since then, Kathy has helped me raise my three children from a previous marriage, only one of whom, Hannah, currently lives with us during the school year. Rebecca, our oldest, is twenty-two.  She graduated last year from McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. She double majored in psychology and sociology but is thinking about going to graduate school in forensic science. She now lives in Newport News, VA. John will soon be twenty and starting his sophomore year at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA.  He's interested in Political Science and English, as well as computers and technology.  Hannah will soon be eighteen, a high school senior. She loves all our animals and is an extremely funny and talented storyteller.  She's hoping to get a big part in one of the school productions this year. All of the kids are bright, they all do (or did) well in school, and they're all very loving, and surprisingly well-adjusted people, despite their parents' divorce and despite their (somewhat) eccentric old man.  

Here's a picture of me, Kathy, John, Hannah, and two of our dogs, Maxie and Adolf (who has since died, unfortunately):

Here's a separate shot of John and Hannah.

Here's a shot of Rebecca during her recent trip to Guatemala where she worked on a Habitat for Humanity house:

Here's a shot of her and me at her graduation from McDaniel this past spring:

Here's a shot of Rebecca and John chowing down before graduation--what a bunch of hams!

Here's a picture of John moving into his new digs at Juniata College.  he's renting a duplex with a bunch of guys he works with.

Here's a recent picture of Hannah and me in front of our house:

Here's a couple of shots of our newest little car, a 2002 Mini Cooper.  We love tooling around the Valley in it.

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 Pre-surgery Weight: 375 lbs.

  3 months later: 290 lbs. 

6 months later: 260 lbs.

I've lived in Virginia for twenty years, but my hometown is North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina... specifically I grew up in the Cherry Grove section in an area called Little River Neck (named that because it is a peninsula between the salt-water marsh at Cherry Grove and Little River Inlet).  I have always had and always will have a love for the Atlantic coast.  Some of my best memories are of deep-sea fishing with friends back home.  In the picture below, we are some eighty miles offshore.  My friends and I had intended to fish for yellowfin tuna, or perhaps wahoo or mahi mahi, but instead landed this whopping blue marlin.

I don't get out as often as I'd like anymore (especially in the last few years), but I try to make it as often as I can. For me, it's really not about the fishing anyway, it's about being out on the ocean.  That's what I love. For all the jokes some of my students make about him, Melville was right about this much: there is really nothing quite like the ocean for giving you the proper perspective on life...the proper humility.  Being out there is, for some of us, a very spiritual experience.

Another long-standing interest of mine is American Indian cultures. I teach a course in American Indian literature and culture(s) here at Bridgewater, and I have published a collection of American Indian tales, as well as essays in the field of American Indian literature.  Often I'm asked how my interest in Indian culture began, but I never quite know what to say in response.  For one thing, growing up in Cherry Grove Beach when I did meant that every fishing season (late September through early November when the spots, whiting, and mullet run), lots of people from the Carolinas would congregate at the coast, including a large number of Lumbee Indians.  That, I suppose, was my first acquaintance with an American Indian population. 

My real interest in American Indian cultures began, though, when I first encountered the field of Anthropology at Coker College, where I was an undergraduate.  Even though I was an English major, I love Anthropology (and probably would have majored in it had Coker offered it as a major).  When I applied to graduate schools, I applied to both English and Anthropology departments and was accepted in programs in both fields.  But in the end I choose English.  

I attended the University of Iowa from 1982-1988.  While there, however, I was able to continue my interest by taking courses in the growing field of American Indian literature.  And it was that area, along with American primitivism and the poet Walt Whitman, which became my primary areas of academic study, at least as far as my own scholarship is concerned.  But my academic interests are pretty far flung, which happens when you teach at a small school.  

For more information about my academic work, my curriculum vitae and so forth, see the link above called "Research."

Along with my academic work, I also write fiction.  My new novel, Künstler and the Terrible Monster, came out in the fall of 2007.  Here's the cover:

We had a book signing and launch at our local Barnes and Noble on November 10th last year.  It was my first book signing, so it was very exciting. Here are a few pictures from the event:

Here's a link to book on the publisher's web site:

Künstler and the Terrible Monster

Here's a candid shot of Hannah and Kathy at last year's Children's Literature conference in Bloomington, Illinois. We had a really good time on that trip. 

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      1 month later: 330 lbs.

   4 months later: 275 lbs.

One year anniversary: still 260 lbs.

Additional Links

• Künstler and the Terrible Monster
• Tales of Native America
• The University of Iowa
• Coker College