Department of English Rhetoric and Writing
Professor of English, Dr. Jim Watkins, has been teaching at Berry since 1995 and specializes in American Literature and Autobiography Studies. Dr. Watkins also teaches courses in U.S. Southern Literature, Native American Literature, Environmental Literature and First Year Writing. He is also the advisor for Berry’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honor Society.
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Dr. Whitney Jordan Adams is an Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric and Writing. As an educator and scholar, Dr. Adams’s diverse academic background spans business, rhetoric, communication, professional writing and literature.
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I specialize in Global Anglophone Literatures, with research and teaching interests that span modernist and postcolonial literatures, feminist theory, translation studies, and the intersections of sound, media, and politics in narrative form.
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Christopher Diller began his Berry career as Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing in 1999 and then became an Associate Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing in 2005. He also directed the Writing Center from 2005-2015. He became a full professor in 2014.
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Dr. Samantha Edmonds is an Assistant Professor in the creative writing program. She primarily specializes in fiction and nonfiction, with an emphasis on speculative writing, including fantasy and science fiction. She is the author of the story collection A Preponderance of Starry Beings. Her works appears in The New York Times, Ninth Letter, and Mississippi Review, among others.
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Mia Escott joined the faculty in 2022 as an Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric and Writing after receiving her doctoral degree in English at Louisiana State University. Her research and teaching interests include early modern British Literature, Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare, Critical Race Theory, and Women’s and Gender Studies.
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Jennifer Kellogg Kelley is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Writing.
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Melissa King is the Director of the Writing Center and a Lecturer in the Department of English, Rhetoric and Writing. Her research interests are in European fairy tales and folk texts, Illustration, and Translation Theory, as well as the role of Writing Centers in carceral settings.
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Colleen Mayo joined the Berry faculty in 2026 as an Assistant Professor in the creative writing program.
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Sandra Meek has taught creative writing at Berry since 1996 and is the author of six books of poems, most recently Still (Persea Books, 2020), named a “New & Noteworthy Poetry Book” by The New York Times Book Review. Her creative work centers on the environment and travel.
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Clinton Crockett Peters is the author of two books and over fifty published creative nonfiction essays, short stories, and long-form journalism articles. His teaching focus is creative writing, with an emphasis on nonfiction as well as environmental literature. He also teaches YA Literature and RHW courses.
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Dr. Vespa considers himself a poetry teacher who works in the classroom as a literature and writing professor as well as on the air and onstage as Supernatural Radio.
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