Dr. Marty Knepper earned a B.A. from Morningside College in English and theatre, an M.A. in English from the University of Arkansas, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska. 

On the Morningside campus, Marty holds various positions. She is the Chair of the English Department, advisor to the freshman women’s honor society Alpha Lambda Delta, and advisor to the theatre honorary society Alpha Psi Omega. A founding member of Friday is Writing Day, she has also served as a guest discussion leader for the Interdepartmental Honors program. 

She is a past president of the National Popular Culture Association, and she currently serves on the National Council of Alpha Lambda Delta. She has also worked with the Iowa Writing Project, Humanities Iowa, and The Great Plains Popular Culture and American Culture Associations. Marty received the Iowa Council of Teachers of English Literacy Award in 1993 and a Sears Roebuck Teaching Excellence Award.

Marty has written articles on a variety of subjects that have appeared in books and journals. Several recent articles have dealt with Iowa’s film history.

Marty resides in Sioux City with her husband, John, also a Morningside alumnus. She also has a cat named Frank. When Marty isn’t hard at work at Morningside, she enjoys reading, swimming, seeing movies and plays, and traveling to the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Publications

Contributions to reference works: The Encyclopedia of the Midwest (2007), The Guide to United States Popular Culture (2001), The Encyclopedia of Great Women Mystery Writers (1994), Contemporary Literary Criticism (1987), and Contemporary Authors (1985-86).

Book reviews have been published in Journal of Popular Culture, Theatre History Journal, Clues, Modern Fiction Studies, Prairie Schooner, and The Sioux City Journal.

“Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead: A Geographical Mystery Solved?”  Forthcoming in Clues 25.4 (Summer 2007).

With John Lawrence.  “Discovering Your Cinematic Cultural Identity” and “A Guide to Regional Portrayal in Film.”  Reconstruction:

Studies in Contemporary Culture 5.3 (Summer 2005).

 

With John S. Lawrence.  “World War II and Iowa: Hollywood’s Pastoral Myth for the Nation.”  Representing the Rural: Space,

Place, and Identity in Films about the Land.  Ed. Gillian Helfield and Catherine Fowler.  Wayne State UP, 2006.  323-39.

“The Curtain Falls: Agatha Christie’s Last Novels,” Clues: A Journal of Detection 23.4 (Summer 2005): 69-84.

With John S. Lawrence.  “Iowa Films, 1918-2002.”  The Annals of Iowa 62.1 (Winter 2003): 30-100.

“Visions of Iowa in Hollywood Films.”  With John S. Lawrence.  Iowa Heritage Illustrated Winter 79 (1998): 156-69.

“Celebrity Mysteries” (article/bibliography).  Clues: A Journal of Detection 19.2 (Fall/Winter 1998): 141-57.

“‘Easily the Worst Novel’? Agatha Christie’s The Blue Train.”  Clues 22.1 (Spring/Summer 2001): 33-39.

“Reading Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Series: The Thirteen Problems.”  Chapter in In the Beginning: First Novels in Detective

Series.  Ed. Mary Jean DeMarr.  Popular Press, 1995.  33-57.

“The Unresolved Mystery of Lucy Eyelesbarrow’s Matrimonial Future in Agatha Christie’s What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!” Clues

17. 2 (Fall/Winter 1996): 43-58.  Reprinted in the Agatha Christie Society Newsletter Spring 1997: 2-7.

With Tim Orwig, Jim Scholten, and Carolyn Rants.   Article on the Friday is Writing Day series at Morningside College.  Campus

Programming magazine (fall 1993).

“Interdisciplinary Seminar 300: Detective Fiction” (Course Syllabi and Handouts).  Murder is Academic: A Collection of Crime

Fiction Course Syllabi.  Ed. B. J. Rahn.  New York: Hunter College, 1993.

“Dorothy L. Sayers on Equality of the Sexes.”  Women and Equality: Proceedings of the 1988 Women’s

Research Conference at the University of South Dakota.   Ed. Susan J. Wolfe, Jane D. Bromert, and Catherine A. Flum.  U of South Dakota, 1989.

“Nancy Drew: Old and New.”  Excerpts of this paper were published in Rediscovering Nancy Drew.  Ed. Carolyn Stewart Dyer

and Nancy Tillman Romalov.  Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1995.

“Learning at the Learning Center: Reflections on Nine Years at the Lab.”  The Writing Lab Newsletter 12.3 (November 1987): 13-

14.

“Who Killed Janet Mandelbaum and India Wonder?: A Look at the Suicides of the Token Women in Dorothy Bryant’s Killing Wonder

and Amanda Cross’s Death in a Tenured Position.”  Clues 18.2 (Spring/Summer 1992): 45-58.

“Dick Francis.”  Thirteen Englishmen of Mystery.  Ed. Earl Bargainnier.  Popular Press, 1983. 

“Agatha Christie: Feminist?”  The Armchair Detective 16.4 (Winter 1983).