Meet Dr. Holly Spofford-McReynolds
Degrees and Experience
- Ph.D., English Literature, emphasis on Religion and Literature (Baylor University)
- B.A., English (Grove City College)
Biography and Professional Achievements
Dr. Holly Spofford-McReynolds joined CCU faculty in 2022. She grew up in Northern Virginia, and her time at Grove City College (as an English major, history minor, and D3 soccer player) ignited her love for Christian liberal arts education. She then spent several years in Waco, Texas, first completing her Ph.D. in Victorian poetry at Baylor University and then serving there as a postdoctoral teaching fellow.
While at Baylor, she won the Outstanding Graduate Instructor Award and the Most Impactful Educator Award. A teaching highlight was taking her British Literature survey students to the Armstrong Browning Library archives to look at nineteenth-century manuscripts. Her own research focuses on Victorian poetry, ecology, and religion.
In her free time, Dr. Spofford-McReynolds enjoys spending time at coffee shops, reading speculative fiction, doing yoga, and hanging out with her husband, Clayton, and their cat.
Publications
- "The Taming of Sylvia: Human/Nonhuman Community in 'A White Heron.'" American Literary Realism, vol. 53, no. 3, spring 2021, pp. 247-265.
Recent Presentations
- "The Unsettling Sea: Christina Rossetti and Apocalyptic Care." North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, Vancouver, BC, March 2022.
- "'Yonder': G.M. Hopkins's Geographies of Current Suffering and Future Bliss." Gerard Manley Hopkins International Conference: Hopkins & His Environments, virtual, June 2021.
- "Seeing the Missing Mundane: Discomfort, Agency, and the Ordinary in The Lifted Veil." British Women Writers Conference, Fort Worth, TX, March 2020.
- "Grieving in Sacred Places: Tennyson's and Hopkins' Structuring of Grief." Midwest Victorian Studies Association Conference: Victorian Religious Ecologies Special Seminar, Fort Worth, TX, April 2019.
- "Accepting an Unjust, Suffering God: Dorothy L. Sayers's Airman in The Just Vengeance." Christianity & Literature International Conference, Cambridge, MA, March 2019.