Millard Kimery serves as Dean of Humanities and Professor of English at Howard Payne University. With 29 years of teaching experience, Kimery brings a deep appreciation for literature, writing, language, and the role of the humanities in helping students understand both the world and themselves.
Kimery teaches a wide range of English courses, including Foundations of Composition and Grammar, Freshman Composition I and II, Literature of Britain, 17th & 18th Century Literature, Romantic Literature, Victorian Literature, and Technical Writing. While he finds it difficult to choose a single favorite course, Literature of Britain is among those he most enjoys teaching because of the richness of its authors, ideas, and historical contexts.
One of the aspects Kimery values most about teaching at HPU is the university’s emphasis on quality instruction. He appreciates being part of an institution where teaching itself is treated as an important skill and responsibility. He also values the freedom that comes with teaching at a Christian university, where discussions do not have to stop when they reach deeper questions about meaning, character, belief, and purpose. For Kimery, literature creates opportunities to challenge students to consider how what they read applies to their own lives.
Kimery is passionate about English because he sees literature as a unique meeting place between ideas and lived experience. Questions involving philosophy, religion, tradition, society, grace, justice, and human identity can be explored through characters, settings, stories, language, rhythm, and imagery. In that way, literature gives abstract ideas a human form and helps readers encounter them through experiences that feel immediate and personal.
He also believes literature provides wisdom for everyday life. Writers such as Henry David Thoreau, John Ruskin, Alexander Pope, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wendell Berry, Robert Frost, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Graham Greene, and others have shaped the way he understands the world. Literature, he believes, can help readers recognize beauty, humor, meaning, and perspective even in ordinary moments.
Kimery also sees literature and Christianity as complementary rather than competing influences. Studying literature has helped him become a more attentive reader of Scripture by teaching him to listen carefully to what a text actually says and to recognize how culture can shape interpretation. He believes God can use a wide variety of authors and perspectives to challenge assumptions and deepen understanding.
Kimery earned a Master of Arts in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993 and a Doctor of Philosophy in English from Baylor University in 2012. He is involved with Brownwood Community Church.
Outside of the classroom, Kimery enjoys hiking, camping, visiting state and national parks, astronomy, model shipbuilding, weaving, and reading. He and his wife especially enjoy traveling to visit their children and spending time outdoors.
Through teaching, leadership, reading, and conversation, Kimery seeks to help students become thoughtful readers, careful thinkers, and people who engage the world with wisdom, curiosity, and attention to meaning.
