Mr. Alley is a lover of art and the artistic mind set. For Rob, “Art is not a genre, it is an attitude toward activity.” As a result, he enjoys learning rules. But he also really enjoys breaking them. Therefore, as a musician and an educator, he lives in and outside of convention, depending on his collaborators.

Rob loves working with other artists. He also loves showing so-called non-artistic people how they can recover their innate artistic capability.



“With understanding and practice, we can all infuse art into our everyday activities, recapturing the joy of freedom from childhood, responsibly and ethically. This feeling and these capabilities never leave us. We just learn to ignore them as we ‘grow up’.”

Rob maintains a robust performing career, having had the good fortune to have made music with some amazing people, including Jason Isbell, Paul Shaffer, Dave Douglas, Taylor Hicks, The Temptations, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Frankie Valli, Chad Fisher, Matthew Devine, Jay Frederick, Eric Essix, Rick Carter, The Arkansas Symphony and The Tuscaloosa Horns. He is also honored to have been awarded recognition for his efforts, including The Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist award (2008), The Alabama Council on The Arts Individual Artist award (2013), and Druid Arts Musician of The Year (2015).

All of these experiences have led Rob to the current step in his journey through life, as an instructor in The University of Alabama’s Honors College, where he teaches “Art for Life’s Sake”, “Leadership Lessons from Jazz”, and “Improvisation in Life Through Music”, courses which he created at the request of the College. Each of these focus on, and express, his philosophy on the arts and life in their own unique way.

Dr. Megan Bailey is an assistant professor and curriculum theorist specializing in experiential education and community-based learning. She received her BA in history from Birmingham-Southern College where she participated in their transdisciplinary Harrison Honors Scholars program. The experience honed an appreciation for ambiguity and a love for community engagement. After college, Dr. Bailey worked at the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, where she served as the assistant director, while working toward her Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Foundations of Education. Upon completing her Ph.D. in 2019, Dr. Bailey joined The University of Alabama's Honors College where she teaches transdisciplinary courses concerned with ethics, social problems, community engagement and methodology. In addition to serving on the Honors College faculty, Dr. Bailey regularly teaches Honors Action, facilitates the James P. Hayes Moral Forum Tournament, and is the president of UA’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Her research has been published in the "Engaged Scholar Journal," "The Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council," "Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education" and the "Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning."

Dr. Ross Bryan has been the associate dean (2022) and a professor in the Honors College since the spring of 2015.  Dr. Bryan holds degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill (PH.D.), The Florida State University (M.S.), and UNC-Asheville (B.A.).  His research interests include Construction of Social Identities, Experiential Education, Outdoor Leadership and Sociology of Education.  He is an affiliated faculty member in the departments of Higher Education and Social-Cultural Studies at UA.  He teaches courses that include "Power, Societies and Dissent" and "Rocketry"…something he likes to be asked about!  In his role as associate dean, Dr. Bryan works with Student Development and Student Engagement in the Honors College. He is originally from Wrightsville Beach, N.C., is married to Mary Bryan and they have two delightful daughters.

Thomas Herwig is assistant professor in the Honors College, teaching in the fields of History, Religious Studies, Ethics and Cultural Identity. A German theologian, Dr. Herwig earned with his first book on the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from the University of Bochum/Germany in 1997.  He is currently completing his third book, the English translation and edition of an early lecture of Barth in liaison with the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. Two more books are in the works, another volume with Barth’s correspondence in cooperation with the theological department of the University of Geneva and a textbook with Cognella Academic Publishing building upon his version of the Honors course UH 200 Life as a Scholar. Thomas organizes and leads study abroad trips to Germany, granting the participants the opportunity to explore benefits and challenges of intercultural communication and cooperation. He also enjoys working with students and student groups outside the classroom and has frequently mentored student initiatives organizing both public academic and discussion events.  In his function as former co-chair of the DEI sub-committee of the Faculty Senate, Thomas supported initiatives for safety and a welcoming environment for all students, staff and faculty on campus.

Dr. Anne Franklin Lamar earned her bachelor’s degree from the Mississippi University for Women and her master’s and Ph.D. from The University of Alabama. Her interests include women’s studies and storytelling, including non-traditional texts such as quilts, cookbooks, gardens and more.

Henry John Latta is originally from New Zealand, with a B.A. from Auckland University and his postgraduate degrees are from The University of Alabama. He spent a number of years as a journalist in New Zealand, Australia, England and the United States. He is chair of UA’s International Education Committee, in this case trying to send more of our students abroad to learn and to bring international educators into our own classrooms. His primary teaching and research focus is Thomas Paine. He is also editing an academic journal focused on honors pedagogy.

Alan Lazer completed his undergraduate degree in New College at The University of Alabama with a depth study in the narrative arts. He went on to earn his M.F.A in screenwriting from the University of Southern California. One of his short screenplays, Bloodletting, was a semifinalist in the WeScreenplay 2020 shorts contest, and Drip, a film for which he received co-story credit, won Best Horror Film at the 2023 Snohomish Film Festival. He currently teaches Honors courses on Stanley Kubrick, as well as a Filmmakers and Their Philosophies course which rotates directors of particular philosophical and aesthetic import(ex: Satoshi Kon, Steve McQueen, Jordan Peele). Alan is particularly interested in how the medium of film can express and reimagine issues of philosophical importance, and can lead us to think more deeply and see more imaginatively. He is currently a co-sponsor of the Nolan Film Club, a student run film appreciation society, and he thinks about Stanley Kubrick movies more than may strictly be considered “normal.”

Dr. Tara Mock is an assistant professor in the Honor’s College. Professor Mock comes to the Honor’s College from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and an affiliated faculty member in Asian Studies. Her research and teaching interests include Modern Africa, Africa-China relations, diaspora, cultural identity and community formation, globalization and historical memory. Dr. Mock earned her Ph.D. in African American and African Studies at Michigan State University (MSU). Prior to MSU, Professor Mock studied international Business at H.E.C. Paris, received a MALD in International Communication and International Political Economy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and earned a BA in the History of non-Western Developing Nations at Louisiana State University. Go Tigers!

Dr. Mock is currently working on a book combining multimodal research methods with theories of diaspora, imagined community and cultural political economy to situate her investigation into conceptualizations of selfhood and other between African and Chinese people within an Africana Studies framework. Dr. Mock is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Amy Pirkle established Perkolator Press in 2005 and received her MFA in Book Arts from The University of Alabama in 2007, where she has been teaching book arts, design and interdisciplinary studies since 2007. She has taught letterpress at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina and taught Book Arts for the University of Georgia’s study abroad program in Cortona, Italy in 2019. In addition to teaching, Amy has been the faculty advisor for the "New College Review" magazine at UA since Fall 2008.

As a flipbook artist, Amy has received commissions from Amazon Prime, the American Red Cross, the BBC, Best Western, Callaway Golf, Crayola, McDonalds and NBC Universal, among others. She is an instructor for Craftsy and you can find her flipbook animation classes (FLIP OUT!) on their website (craftsy.com). Her fine press work resides in over 60 permanent collections across the United States, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Meridian Museum of Art and Yale University’s Robert B. Haas Special Collections.

Education

PhD, English, The University of Southern Mississippi, 2015

MA, English, Georgia Southern University, 2008

BA, English and Psychology, Mercer University, 2006

Teaching and Research Areas

Renaissance Literature; Shakespeare; Great Books; Children’s Literature; Childhood Studies; Gender and Race Studies; Adaptation Theory; Film

About

Dr. Sasser is an assistant professor of Honors at The University of Alabama, director of the study abroad program UA in Iceland: Vikings and Norse Mythology, and co-director of UA in Oxford: English, History, and Honors.

Between 2015 and 2021, he taught in the English Department, and he has been in the Honors College since 2022. He is the faculty advisor for Alabama’s Boxing Club.

He is co-faculty advisor for the Will Nolan Film Club. His first book, Teaching Shakespeare beyond the Major (under contract with Palgrave and forthcoming in 2024) is a collection of essays co-edited with Emma Atwood that focuses on how professors teach Shakespeare to undergraduate students who are not majoring in English or Theatre. He is currently completing his first monograph, “Shakespearean Boyhood: The Subversive Masculinity of Shakespeare’s Boy Characters,” which questions prevailing critical notions that the boy characters in Shakespeare’s dramas are trivial.

Dr. Sasser’s research appears in "Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England," "Shakespeare Bulletin," "The Tennessee Williams Annual Review," "Theatre Journal," "The Shakespeare Newsletter," "Children’s Literature Association Quarterly," "Children’s Literature in Education" and "Children’s Literature." He has contributed essays to "Liberating Shakespeare: Adaptation and Empowerment for Young Adult Audiences” (Arden 2023), “Shakespeare and Geek Culture” (Arden 2020), " Queering Childhood in Early Modern English Drama and Culture” (Palgrave 2018), and “Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction” (Cambridge 2017).

Prone to sudden bouts of wanderlust, Dr. Sasser is an avid reader, traveler, backpacker, caver, cinephile and amateur musician. He only rarely speaks of himself in third person.

Selected Publications

"Teaching Shakespeare beyond the Major," ed with Emma Atwood. Under contract with Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. (85,000 words)

“Trump and Children’s Literature.” Children’s Literature 51 (2023): 150-81.

“The Pattern of Trauma in YA Adaptations of Shakespeare.” Liberating Shakespeare: Adaptation and Empowerment for Young Adult Audiences. Eds. Jennifer Flaherty and Deborah Uman. London: Arden, 2023. 92-106.

“Beyond The Snowy Day: The Politics of Ezra Jack Keats’s Seven Peter Books.” Children’s Literature Association 47.1 (2022): 64-82.

“The Bard of Boys’ Life: Shakespeare and the Construction of American Boyhood.” Shakespeare and Geek Culture. Eds. Peter Holland and A.J. Hartley. London: Arden, 2020. 205-25.

“Moth and the Pedagogical Ideal in Love’s Labour’s Lost.” Queering Childhood in Early Modern English Drama and Culture. Eds. Jennifer Higginbotham and Mark Johnston. New York: Palgrave, 2018. 153-69.

“Hamlet and Contemporary Boys Fiction.” Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction. Ed. A. J. Hartley. New York: Cambridge UP, 2017. 81-100.

“‘the boy that I gave Falstaff’: The Page Boy and Early Modern Manhood in 2 Henry IV and Henry V.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 30 (2017): 147-64.

“The Binding of Isaac: Jewish and Christian Appropriations of the Akedah (Genesis 22) in Contemporary Picture Books.” Children’s Literature 45 (2017): 138-63.

“Unraveling the ‘Desdemona Thing’ in Tennessee Williams.” The Tennessee Williams Annual Review 15 (2016): 147-63.

“‘No one queens it like himself’: Performing Unconventional Boyhood in Historical Shakespearean Fiction.” Children’s Literature in Education 47.1 (2016): 50-65.

“The Snowy Day in the Civil Rights Era: Peter’s Political Innocence and Unpublished Letters from Langston Hughes, Ellen Tarry, Grace Nail Johnson, and Charlemae Hill Rollins.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 39.3 (2014): 359-84.

“Interview with Drew Reeves as King Edward III.” The Shakespeare Newsletter 62.1 (2012): 19-22 (double column).

Cassander (Cassie) Smith joined the Honors College in May 2021 as the associate dean for academic affairs. She also is an associate professor of English, specializing in critical race studies and early Black American culture. She earned an MFA in fiction (2005) and a Ph.D. in early American literature (2010) from Purdue University. She has published a number of books and scholarly articles that address the cultural contributions of people of African descent in the early Americas. Those publications include "Black Africans in the British Imagination: English Narratives of the Early Atlantic World" and "Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic." Her current work in progress, tentatively titled “Wasteful Bodies: Conservation, Preservation and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” examines a discourse of sustainability that shaped the transatlantic slave trade in the 16^th-18^th centuries. Smith is affiliated with the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies in the English Department, the Department of Gender and Race Studies, and the Summersell Center for the Study of the South.

Darren Surman is an assistant professor. He holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies, and a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from The University of Alabama.  His primary research interests are the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, the political theory of love, ancient and contemporary political theory, political theology and the politics of transdisciplinarity. He teaches a wide range of courses that explore the intersections between these schools of thought such as, “Political Theories of Love”, “Existentialism, Race, and Gender”, “Work, Play, and Meaning”, and “Green Political Thought”.  His work has been published in the "Soren Kierkegaard Newsletter" and the journal, "Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica."

Dr. Tuggle is associate professor in the Honors College at UA, which is also his alma mater. After earning a Rhodes Scholarship, he studied Renaissance English Literature at Oxford University (M.Phil.) and the University of Virginia (Ph.D.). His research has been published in "Spenser Studies," "Sidney Journal," "Explicator" and elsewhere. In 2019, he completed a book that shows how Sidney and Spenser reimagine and rethink how humans relate to non-humans: other animals, geologic forces, and human constructs such as buildings and fictions. His current book project takes marriage as its theme, and shows how the works of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare participate in the exciting and necessary reconceptualizations of marriage in late sixteenth and early-seventeenth century England, by showing characters who experiment with alternative arrangements of heterosexual contracts. In the Honors College, he teaches courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance English Poetry, and Great Books. He also recruits and mentors student candidates for prestigious post-graduate scholarships, including the Rhodes, Marshall, and Gates-Cambridge scholarships.

Dr. Robert E. Witt is a professor and president emeritus at The University of Alabama. He completed his B.A. in Economics at Bates College, his MBA at Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School, and his Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University. Prior to coming to UA, Dr. Witt served 27 years in the Business School at UT-Austin, the last ten years as dean. He was the president of UT-Arlington before becoming president of UA in 2003. In 2012, he became Chancellor of The University of Alabama System. After serving four years as chancellor, Dr. Witt retired from administration and joined the faculty of the Honors College. His Honors College seminars, “A Republic if You Can Keep It” and “Restoring our Divided Nation,” focus on our country’s political, economic and cultural environment.