David (“Mike”) Owens began teaching at Hope College in 2017 after retiring as a professor of American literature from Valparaiso University in Indiana. He has taught literature and writing courses while at Hope. Mike has also served as the founding/interim director of college writing.

Areas of Expertise

Mike’s primary area of expertise is American Literature from mid-19th until mid-20th centuries. He has additional areas of interest in American short fiction, African American literature, workplace and professional writing, and composition.

Education

• Ph.D, American literature, Purdue University, 2001
• M.A., English, University of Georgia, 1994
• B.S., arts and sciences, the United States Military Academy, West Point, 1977

Selected Publications

• The Devil's Topographer: Ambrose Bierce and the American War Story, University of Tennessee Press, 2006.
• “Diversity, Equity, and Exclusion: How Hope College Undermines Itself,” forthcoming in The Endurance of Hope: A Case Study of Christian Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century, summer 2025
• “Where the Ground was the Enemy: Setting as Character in The Things They Carried,” with Mikayla Zobeck, The Cresset: A Journal of Literature, the Arts, and Public Affairs, 83, no. 2, 2020
• “Back From ‘That Literary Hell, the Footnote’: Sarah B. Cooper's Overland Monthly Writings,” American Literary Realism 50, no. 1, 2017
• “The Last Campaign of John Brown's Body: West Point and America's Forgotten Civil War Epic,” with Martin Buinicki, War, Literature and the Arts, vol. 27, 2015

Outside the College

Mike is also a retired Army officer, having spent 21 years as an infantryman with many of those in the 82nd Airborne Division. He was a Master Parachutist and a Ranger as well.