Rate My Professor Ty Hawkins

Ty Hawkins is an Associate Professor of English who served as Chair of the Department of English and Director of the School of Language and Literature at the University of Central Arkansas from July 2019 until August 2025. He earned his Ph.D. in English from Saint Louis University in 2010, with primary areas in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, and secondary areas in American cultural rhetoric, American war literature, and writing pedagogy. His dissertation, 'Combat’s Implacable Allure: Reading Vietnam Amid the War on Terror,' passed qualifying exams with Great Distinction. Prior to UCA, Hawkins held positions at Walsh University from 2011 to 2019, advancing from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, and serving as Director of the Honors Program from 2015 to 2019, Coordinator of the Composition Program from 2012 to 2014, and Incoming Director of the Honors Program. Earlier roles include Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield in 2011 and Instructor of English and Honors at Saint Louis University from 2003 to 2011. He holds an M.A. in English from Saint Louis University (2005) and a B.A. in English and Spanish from Westminster College (2002, magna cum laude).

Hawkins specializes in literary form, cultural rhetorics of national identity, violence, gender, and justice in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature and culture. His monographs include Just War Theory and Literary Studies: An Invitation to Dialogue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, co-authored with Andrew Kim), Cormac McCarthy’s Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and Reading Vietnam Amid the War on Terror (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Key articles feature 'The Eruption of the Sordid: Cormac McCarthy’s Resistance to Modern Ideology' in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (2014), 'Bobbie Ann Mason’s The Girl in the Blue Beret' in War, Literature & the Arts (2015), and 'Vietnam and Verisimilitude' in War, Literature & the Arts (2012). He contributed chapters such as 'War and Morality' to War and American Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and 'When the Sun Sets in the East: American Manhood and War Since Vietnam' to The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture (2021). Hawkins co-edited a special double issue of LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory on 'Reading Contemporary American Warfare with Just War Theory' (forthcoming 2023). His awards include the Ohio Magazine Excellence in Education Award (2015), Faculty Scholar Program Awards from Walsh University (2017, 2014), Faculty Fellow Awards (2016, 2015), and the Walter J. Ong, SJ, Award from Saint Louis University (2009).