Page 20 - Academic Report FINAL VERSION WEB

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Dr. Andrew Reeves

School of Arts & Letters

Dr. Andrew Reeves is an associate professor in the School of Arts and Letters. He
joined the MGA faculty in 2013.
What do you do at MGA?

The short version is that I teach history (namely world history), but in point of
fact, there’s a little bit of everything else as well. I help my colleagues when they
need extra hands for work with student clubs, I advise history majors, I’ll help at
events like orientations, and really anything else that helps our mission of teaching
and building a community here.
What’s the worst job you’ve ever had, and what did you learn from it?

In my forty-two years of adult life, I’ve never had a job that I actively disliked,
but I can maybe describe my least pleasant job: When I finished graduate school
in the summer of 2009, I ended up without any academic work (since, as you may
remember, we had a little bit of a recession going on at the time). So I got a job in
a furniture warehouse. It was hot, it was sweaty, and it could alternate between long hours of hard work or
boredom when things were slow. But I learned a lot from the job. One of which is that you should always tip
the people who deliver your furniture. I learned that there are some incredibly clever people working jobs that
we often think of as “unskilled.” And I learned patience in applying for academic jobs every day after finishing
my shift at the warehouse.
What led you to this career?
I knew that I wanted to be a professor of medieval history ever since I was around sixteen and read T. H.
White’s The Once and Future King. It took a lot of twists and turns to get there. I spent five years as a Marine
after high school, held a few odd jobs in the months before and after my undergraduate training, and then
went on to the University of Toronto’s Centre for Medieval Studies, where I earned my Ph.D. in 2009. I spent
three years teaching for Troy University before joining the faculty of Middle Georgia State in the fall of 2013.
What’s a work-related accomplishment that you’re really proud of?
In 2018, I was at the Medieval Academy of America and I ended up talking to Harvard medievalist Nicholas
Watson, one of the key scholars in the study of later medieval religious literature. He casually noted that he
really liked my book and an article that I’d recently written and that he found my work impressive.
What’s one thing that surprised you about working at MGA?
I’ve been incredibly impressed by the level of community and collegiality of the faculty.
What would we most likely find you doing on the weekend?
It depends. I might be reading, I might be painting my Warhammer 40,000 figurines, I might be gathered
around a table with friends in a role-playing game, or I might be going to the range.
What book(s) are you reading now?
I’m reading the German translation of The Silmarillion in order to improve my German reading skill. I’m
about halfway through Michael Gomez’s African Dominion, a history of the West African empires of the Middle
Ages. For fun, I’m reading Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s The Emperor’s Gift, a novel about The Grey Knights, a unit
of Space Marines fighting for the Imperium of Mankind in the 41st millennium, and I should probably actually
stop there.
What’s something—big or small—that you’re really bad at?
My singing voice is unpleasant. This can be a problem for the people with an office next to mine if I’m
cheerfully singing along to a soaring power metal anthem.
Who are your favorite writers?
This changes depending on who or what I’m reading. I remain convinced that John Milton is the greatest
poet in the English language, possibly in all humanity. Tolkien was such a part of my formation as a reader that
I can’t not love his writing: I try to go back and do a re-read of Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion every few
years. When I was younger Dostoevsky was a favorite of mine, but these days I spend enough time mentally
engaged in the context of work that I prefer something a bit lighter when it comes to recreational reading.
Below that tier, I’ve got a list of genre fiction writers that I enjoy as good, pulpy fun: Charlie Stross, Kage Bak-
er, Dan Abnett, and the like for SF, Stephen King and the cheesy, and adolescent-feeling but deeply fun Brian
Lumley for horror, and the like.

16 mga.edu | finding greatness