A product of Mississippi public education and first-generation college student, Shelby Knighten graduated valedictorian with a BAEd. in English (additional licensure, French and theatre) from the School of Education at the University of Mississippi, where he was a fellow of the Mississippi Excellence in Teaching Program’s inaugural cohort and a member of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College. During his summer holidays while teaching in Mississippi public schools, Shelby read for his MA at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English.

Rooted in his desire to increase accessibility to literary education, Shelby’s doctorate at Jesus College, University of Oxford, explores the teaching of Pride and Prejudice in UK classrooms and how the teaching of Austen’s classic novel can serve as a test case to understand the way knowledge operates in a literature class and the forms of knowledge students need to interpret complex texts.

Alongside his doctoral work, Shelby is part of the literature curriculum development team for the International Baccalaureate Organization and serves as a convener of the humanities stream for Oxford’s Developing a Christian Mind conference.

His most recent publication is “Like Father, Like Son?: Reading and Rereading Homer’s Odyssey in Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey” from Classical World.

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