Dr. Brian Abel Ragen’s love of learning was nurtured by his aunt, a professor of history at San Diego State University, who was his guardian after the death of his parents. With this influence, he earned an MA and PhD at Princeton University in 1987 and 1983, respectively. Earlier, he received a Bachelor of Arts from Pomona College in 1980. While still pursuing his postgraduate degree, Dr. Ragen began teaching as a lecturer at Princeton University in 1984 and then at Bryn Mawr College. In 1988, he joined the faculty at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where he taught all periods of English American literature, the Bible, and the Great Books. He was appointed an emeritus professor in 2013. He has published books on Flannery O’Connor and Tom Wolfe, as well as essays and articles on many literary subjects and on heraldry, liturgy, and hymnody. He served as editor of the scholarly journal Papers on Language and Literature from 1992 to 2008. As a teacher, he most enjoyed the survey courses in which he could see students meeting and becoming excited about authors from the whole range of great tradition of English American literature for the first time.