Dr. Mark Watney

Mark was born and raised in South Africa and immigrated to the United States in 1977. He has also lived and worked in Japan (’83-’84), India (’87), Turkey (’92-’93), and Los Angeles (’93-’00) as a missionary and English high school teacher. After graduating with his doctorate from The University of Texas at Dallas, he and his wife Laurel (Director of the Mabee Library), moved to Sterling.

Mark has taken his students everywhere from Kansas to Kathmandu: his Devotional Literature classes have stayed overnight with the monks in Atchison KS, his honors classes have visited museums in Kansas City, and his English majors have presented papers at literary conferences across the Midwest and made bi-annual bookstore runs to Wichita. In addition, he has led Sterling College mission trips to Nepal (2011), Turkey (2013), and Oaxaca, Mexico (upcoming, 2025).  He has also sponsored the Sterling College Chess Club, the English Blend Writers Club, and the college’s literary journal, The Great Plains Review (2006 – present).  

 In his free time, Mark visits bookstores and coffee shops around Kansas and leads a weekly men’s Bible study at the Rice County Jail. He is currently working on a paraphrase of the 11th-century Old English Psalter. His academic interests include the literary origins of romantic love, C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, and Dante Alighieri.

Education

Ph.D. in Humanities (Literary Studies) from University of Texas at Dallas, 2006
           Dissertation: "Perplexed by Joy: Sensucht in C. S. Lewis’s Pagan Works:
           Spirits in Bondage (1919) and Dymer (1926)"
           Dissertation Director: Frederick Turner (D.Phil. Oxford)
M.A. in English Literature from California State University, Pomona, 2000.
B.A. in Social Science from Azusa Pacific University, 1984.

Literary Awards

The Jacques Maritain Prize for Nonfiction, 2017.
            First Place Award for “Torturing Jews and Weeping over Schubert: Have

the Humanities Failed to Humanize Us?”
            Dappled Things: A Quarterly of Ideas, Art, and Faith.
            

Publications

Theological/Philosophical Journals:

1. The Other Journal: An Intersection of Theology and Culture (2018)  
                     “The Strange Gift of Alzheimer’s: Lessons My Dying Father Taught Me.

2. Philosophy Now ((Issue 157, 2024)
                     “Being as Onion: A Heideggerian Parable” (Fiction)

3. The Anglican Theological Review (ATR 106.2, 2024)
                     “Five Psalms Inspired by the Old English Psalter”

           4. Dappled Things: A Quarterly of Ideas, Art, and Faith
                                “Torturing Jews and Weeping over Schubert: Have the Humanities Failed to Humanize Us?” (Jacques Maritain Award, 2017)
                           Essay Series on the Seven Deadly Sins:
                                 “Envy: The Only Sin With No Pleasure” (2020)
                                 “Lust: The Deadly Sin of Lesser Desire” (2022)
                                  “Gluttony: The Invisible Deadly Sin” (2023)

 

    Poetry Journals

            1. Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (2019).
           2.. St. Katherine Review (2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022)
           3. Cider Press Review (2021)
          4. Acumen: A British Literary Journal(2021)
          5. Ekphrastic Review (2020, 2021)
         6. Front Porch Review (2021)

 Editing/Advising
        1. The Great Plains Review—The Sterling College Literary Journal (2006-2016; 2019- pre
                                                         https://medium.com/sterling-college-the-english-blend
        2. Kansas Authors Club.         Poetry Judge (2019).

 

Academic Presentations:
 

  1. "What Weight is Sin?” The Ad Fontes Conference: Returning to the Sources of Christian Unity,” Newman University, Wichita KS, June 2022.
  2. “Inconsolable Yearning in C. S. Lewis and Wallace Stevens,” Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature,  Lee University, TN, June 2019.
  3. “C. S. Lewis: A Rift between Fairyland, Heaven, and Earth,” Culture, Criticism, and the Christian Mind Conference, Dordt College, IA, November 2017.
  4. “Comedy, Tragedy and Cynicism: A Tale of Three Shakespearian Couples,” Shakespeare Literary Festival, Newman University, Wichita KS, April 2017.
  5. “C. S. Lewis’ Concepts of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” C. S. Lewis Seminar: Sterling College, April 2014.
  6. “Song Culture of Athenian Drama: Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, Sophocles’ Electra, and Euripides’ Hippolytus,” Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington D.C, July 2013.
  7. “George Steiner and the Gap between Theology and the Humanities,” Southwest Conference on Religion and Language, Dallas TX, April 2006.
  8. “Charles Williams, Dante, and The Sacramentalization of Romantic Love,” Southwest Conference on Religion and Language, Dallas TX, April 2004.
  9. “The Tribe with the Greatest Story Survives,” Southwest Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature, Azusa Pacific University, March 2001.

 

Mentor for Student Academic Presentations:  

1. Derrick Hogan (SC ’18)

The Tempest: “Caliban's Opening Speech: Dramatic Interpretations,”

Shakespeare Literary Festival, Newman University, KS, April 2017.

2. Kaitlyn Little (SC ’18)

“Literature that Creates Faith in Quanzhou, China,” Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature, Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Ok. September, 2018.

“Do the Humanities Humanize: Applying an Aristotelian Approach to Lord of the Flies,” Culture, Criticism, and the Christian Mind Conference, Dordt College, IA, November 2017.

 

Office

Kelsey (2nd floor)

Contact Information

Phone: 620-204-0177