A first-generation college student and a product of Mississippi public (state) schools, Shelby aspires to make literary education accessible to students through his research and teaching.
From the reception of classical epic and nineteenth-century British novels to revivals of musicals and plays from Broadway’s Golden Age to the teaching of literature, Shelby’s research interests across literary studies, theatre, and pedagogy stem from one question: how do writers, directors, and teachers render classic texts for a new generation?
At Jesus College, Oxford, Shelby’s doctoral research explores the teaching of Pride and Prejudice in UK classrooms using Austen’s classic novel as part of the English literature syllabus for the General Certificate of Secondary Education. Fusing reception theory from literary studies with empirical methods of the social sciences, his project offers the teaching of Pride and Prejudice as a test case to understand how knowledge functions in a literature class and the kinds of knowledge students need to comprehend and interpret complex texts. His research aims to develop a refreshed theory of interpretative reading that can guide literature teachers.
Shelby graduated valedictorian from the School of Education at the University of Mississippi, where he was a Taylor Medalist and a fellow of the inaugural cohort of the Mississippi Excellence in Teaching Program. As a member of UM’s Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, he defended his senior thesis on the need for a coherent high school literature curriculum in the United States and the current sources of incoherency that hinder this goal. During his final semester at UM, he was awarded the university’s outstanding student teacher award from the Mississippi Association of Colleges of Teacher Education.
After completing his BAEd. in English with additional licensure in French and theatre, Shelby taught in Mississippi public (state) high schools. He has teaching experience at every level of secondary education, including advanced, inclusion (special educational needs), mixed-ability, and traditional courses in city and county schools. As a literature teacher for the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, his classes achieved a 100 percent course pass rate based on composite marks from the IB’s series of assessments.
During the summer holidays, Shelby undertook graduate work at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. His work was supported by Phi Kappa Phi’s Love of Learning Grant, the Methodist Foundation of Mississippi Scholarship, and Bread Loaf memorial scholarships in honor of John M. Kirk, Jr. and Charles Orr. He completed his master’s degree in English at Bread Loaf’s Lincoln College campus, Oxford University, as an inaugural Roxanne McCormick Leighton Scholar. Each year of his doctorate, he has continued to further his subject knowledge by taking additional graduate seminars in English literature.
Shelby has presented research, served on, and/or organized roundtables at several conferences, including annual conventions of the Modern Language Association, English: Shared Futures in York (UK), Affiliations: Towards a Theory of Cross-Temporal Comparison at St. Anne’s College Oxford, (Re)Translation- (Re)Writing the Classics in the Twenty-First Century at Sorbonne-Nouvelle University in Paris, the Transitioning to College Writing Symposium at the University of Mississippi, and the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English. Last year, Shelby received a £1,000 grant to welcome Caroline Levine, David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of Humanities at Cornell University, for a series of academic events on the humanities, climate change, and extradisciplinarity in the Cheng Kar Shun Digital Hub.
In addition to research and conferences, Shelby has served as a Doctoral Teaching Fellow in English for the Department of Education’s Postgraduate Certificate in Education. Most recently, he was part of the curriculum development team for the new iteration of the International Baccalaureate Organization’s Language A: Literature course. At Oxford, Shelby co-chairs the Jesus College Education Network and co-convenes the humanities stream of the Developing a Christian Mind spring conference. This past summer, Shelby was a graduate pedagogy fellow of the Life Worth Living Program at Yale University’s Center for Faith and Culture.
His DPhil is generously funded by the Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership of the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council.
Shelby is a proud member of the honor societies of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Pi Delta Phi.
Publications
Knighten, S. R. “The Glitzy, Golden Gatsby” (under review, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review)
Knighten, S. R. “Like Father, Like Son? Reading & Rereading Homer’s Odyssey in Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey.” Classical World, vol. 116, no. 1, Nov. 2022, pp. 51–73. https://doi.org/10.1353/clw.2022.0024