John E. Alvis is presently Professor of English and Director of American Studies at the University of Dallas where he has taught since 1969. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Understanding of Honor, Divine Initiative and Heroic Response: The Political Plan of Zeus in Homer and Virgil, and Nathaniel Hawthorne as Political Philosopher: Revolutionary Principles Domesticated and Personalized. He is also author of three political dramas: Publius 1804, portraying Alexander Hamilton’s decision to confront Aaron Burr in the fatal duel of 1804 (The St. Johns Review, 1987); WW, depicting Woodrow Wilson as President of Princeton and as U.S. President campaigning for the League of Nations (panel of the APSA Annual Convention, 1999); Shakespeare’s Thomas More, exploring Shakespeare’s role on the eve of Essex’s rebellion in writing a play dealing with More’s opposition to Henry VIII (forthcoming). He is editor of Areopagitica and the Political Writings of John Milton with Thomas G. West (Liberty Fund Press, 1998); Shakespeare as Political Thinker with John Murley (Carolina Academic Press,1979); Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatism (Lexington Press, 2006). He has published critical articles on literature ranging from Aeschylus, Virgil, Thomas More, Shakespeare, and Milton, to Melville, Whitman, Eugene O’Neill, Caroline Gordon, and Madison Jones. As well, he has published articles on American constitutional issues, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and his debates with Stephen A. Douglas of 1859, and articles on higher education in America.
Daniel H. Arioli holds a BA in Philosophy and English literature from Assumption College, in Worcester, MA, where he also worked as a tutor and teaching assistant. He is currently a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Dallas, where he also teaches as an Adjunct Instructor of Philosophy. His academic interests include the ethical and epistemological writings of Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Bernard Lonergan.
John C. Briggs is Professor of English at UC Riverside, where he is also Director of the University Writing Program and holder of the McSweeny Chair in Rhetoric and Teaching Excellence. He is the author of Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature and Lincoln’s Speeches Reconsidered. He teaches and publishes in the fields of the history of rhetoric, Shakespeare, Milton, Lincoln, Elizabethan literature, and the study of human flourishing. He is working on a book about Shakespearean catharsis.
Jared R. Brown received a BA from the University of North Texas and an MDiv from Westminster Theological Seminary. Also, he recently completed an MA in Humanities at the University of Dallas. His thesis was on the "obedience of faith" in Romans. He hopes to begin a PhD in New Testament in the fall of 2013. He lives in North Richland Hills, TX, with his wife and two children.
Adam Cooper is a student of Literature in the University of Dallas’s Institute of Philosophic Studies. He is also an Adjunct Instructor of Classical Languages at the University. He believes that literary works arising from traditional cultures in crisis offer a peculiar wisdom, one necessary in our time: an experiential pattern for the life of the mind and spirit. He is endlessly interested in poetry’s nearness to thinking and prayer.
Sarah Francis received her BA from Trinity University with a double major in Art and Spanish. She is currently working on her Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Dallas and will graduate in the spring of 2013. She received her Master in Arts from UD in the fall of 2011. Her concentration is in Printmaking with an emphasis in screenprinting and papermaking.
Andrew Osborn, Associate Professor of English at the University of Dallas, is the author of several articles on poetic difficulty, significant unclarity, and "fuzzy rhyme" as well as a short book of poems, Plato’s Aviary (2003). His poetry has appeared recently in Southwest Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Columbia.
Nathan Sheely received his MA in Politics from the University of Dallas and is continuing his PhD studies. Before coming to UD, he worked on a number of local and national political campaigns. He was also employed as a Federal Liaison in the Washington, DC, office of the Governor of Ohio, and as a Research Fellow at a Washington-based education policy thinktank. He received his BA from St. John’s College (Santa Fe, NM), and has taught as an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Dallas.