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After years of living all over the country (Maryland, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Connecticut, and New Jersey) with a few different countries (Scotland and France) thrown in for good measure, Patricia Armstrong has finally settled down in Nashville, where her perfect day includes going to Arnold’s for lunch, Las Paletas for a late-afternoon popsicle, and the Station Inn for some smokin’ bluegrass! A specialist in seventeenth-century French literature with a Ph.D. from Yale University, Professor Armstrong has taught introductory, intermediate, and advanced French at Yale, Princeton, and Vanderbilt. She particularly enjoys teaching writing, which she most frequently does as an instructor of French 201w, and advising students as they take on intellectual challenges at Vanderbilt.

Charles Bowie earned a Master’s of Theological Studies, a Master’s of Arts and a Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University. He likes to think about the intersections of religion, ethics and culture. When he’s not reading and writing he is movie going, weightlifting, drawing, and cooking.

Josh Epstein comes to CASPAR from the Department of English, which benevolently granted him a Ph.D. in 2008. He wrote his dissertation on music, noise, and modernist writing in the early twentieth century; related, if you hang out with him long enough, you will find that he gets songs stuck in his head on an hourly basis, and that he reflexively whistles back pitches from non-musical noisemakers (elevators, traffic signals, cell phones). Having experimented with English, music composition, classics, and linguistics as an undergraduate at the University of Puget Sound, he appreciates the College of Arts and Science's devotion to a broad liberal arts education, and encourages Vanderbilt students to try new things and take some intellectual risks during their courses of study. 

A native of Stillwater, Oklahoma, Andrea Bradley Hearn came to Nashville in 2001 to do a Ph.D. in English at Vanderbilt specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature. A lecturer in the English department since 2005, she’s taught writing courses in crime fiction, commodity culture, the Great War, poetry, and the romantic comedy; she’ll be teaching a First-Year Writing Seminar on Jane Austen in the spring. She’s been a faculty pre-major adviser since 2007. She loves to read mysteries, gardening memoirs, and children’s books with talking animals. Her favorite food is her mother’s chicken-fried steak.

Laura Taylor is currently completing her Ph.D. in Theology at Vanderbilt University. When she is not reading or writing in coffee shops around town, she can most likely be found running on one of Nashville's many greenways or park trails. Since starting graduate school, she has completed 7 marathons and is currently training for number 8. Laura also has an M.T.S from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. from Fairfield University (Go Stags!).

Christine Valiquette received her Ph.D. from the Department of Psychology in 2008. Her concentration is in cognitive (experimental), not clinical (“tell me about your mother”), psychology. She took a rather nontraditional route to her degree, with a five-year break from her undergraduate studies, and another five-year break between undergraduate and graduate school. She learned about psychology research, which quickly became her passion, in a required undergraduate course that she originally did not want to take. As a CASPAR pre-major adviser, she encourages students to approach their liberal arts education with a willingness to explore a range of possibilities for their futures.

A recently minted PhD in philosophy at Vanderbilt, Scott Zeman looks forward to working with students through the CASPAR and A&S Tutoring Services offices. Philosophically speaking, he's interested in the relation between "primitivity," aesthetic valuation, and the development of forms of culture. He enjoys bittersweet films but especially if they're terribly long and scattered with sly moments of joy. In his free time, Scott runs way too much as an ultimate Frisbee player and will happily complain to you about this or that nagging injury even if you don't want to hear it.

Eryn McGary was born and raised in the White Mountains of Arizona and moved to Nashville in 2009.  She lived in Austin, Texas for 7 years working as the office manager for the Real Estate Finance and Investment Center at the University of Texas. She also has over 8 years of experience working in the non-profit sector as a counselor, executive assistant, events coordinator and operations manager. She's been married to her best friend, Kris (who also works at Vanderbilt) for almost 9 years.  She has two horses and two Scottish Terriers, who manage her household. She loves to read, mountain bike, hike, ride dressage and play piano.