MH with a concentration in English

Stephanie Opfer, Ph.D.

Dr. Stephanie Opfer earned her Ph.D. in English Literature, with a specialization in Medieval Literature, from Northern Illinois University. Her dissertation was a linguistic analysis of the Old English elegies in order to find similar characteristics shared by the poems which would lead to a more specific genre definition. She earned her Master of Arts in English at the University of Toledo and her Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Criminal Justice and Political Science, from Ohio Northern University. She also completed the teacher certification program for Integrated Language Arts at Bowling Green State University.

Prior to Tiffin University, Dr. Opfer has taught grammar, composition, and literature at the University of Toledo, Owens Community College, Northern Illinois University, Kishwaukee College, and Rock Valley College. She has also been a fellow at the National Endowment for the Humanities “Teaching Beowulf in the Context of Old Norse-Icelandic Literature” Summer Institute at Western Michigan University. In addition to composition and general literature courses, her specific teaching and research interests include Old and Middle English language, Anglo-Saxon literature (Beowulf in particular), linguistics, mythology, Chaucer, and pedagogical techniques for teaching medieval literature.

Outside of Tiffin University, Dr. Opfer occasionally participates in summer “Shakespeare in the park” productions in Fremont, Ohio, and she enjoys playing the flute in various community groups.

Vincent Moore, Ph.D.

Dr. Vincent Moore has worked in a number of non-academic fields and has lived in eleven states while pursuing his educational and career goals. Growing up in Oberlin, OH, he earned his B.A. in Psychology at Oberlin College (1985). He studied for an M.S. in Exercise Physiology, but instead earned an M.A. in Creative Writing at Miami University (1992). In 1998 he earned his doctorate in English (main focus: Writing; secondary areas are 20th Century American Literature, Film, and Posthuman Literary Theory) at the University of Southern Mississippi. Since 1992 he has been teaching at the college level, first as an adjunct in Maryland and New York, then full time at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and later at St. Paul’s College in Virginia before coming to Tiffin University.

Dr. Moore has been at Tiffin University since August, 2002. His teaching interests are Composition, Creative Writing, Modern and Postmodern Literature, and Film.  He regularly teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, with courses such as History of Film, Film Genre, The Criminal Mind in Crime Literature, Genre Fiction, Creative Writing, a seminar on Sherlock Holmes, and introductory writing courses.  He's been a member of the Popular Culture Association since 2001 and has presented at their national conferences on masculinity, body dysmorphic disorder, science fiction, and posthuman theory.  As a freelance writer, his work has been in Jewish Currents, Inside Kung-Fu, Black Belt Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bulletin of Bibliography, and many other magazines and journals.  He teaches the novel-writing class in the Master of Humanities program and three of his novels are available on Amazon.com.