What’s New This Year in the English Department?

We’re starting the year with a record number of English majors, upwards of 120, a record. Our majors’ club, the English Society, led by a vigorous and imaginative cadre of literature students will sponsor a number of interesting activities this year, including visits by English major alumni to talk about life after UP. The English Society faculty advisor is Dr. Geneviève Brassard.

Also note that Dr. Lars Larson will again be the advisor for our student literary magazine, WRITERS. You can view copies of the last several year of WRITERS on the English Department’s website, under the link ―Resources and Opportunities.

New literature courses! This Fall, Dr. Lars Larson will be teaching a new course on the essay in English, American Nonfiction Prose: The Art of Constructing Truth (ENG 391, fall term). Come Spring, Dr. Cara Hersh will be teaching Signs of Otherness: Representing Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (ENG 491).

Professor Lou Masson is back from sabbatical leave. He will be able to advise all of his old advisees, plus several new ones. Of course, you can always see Dr. Asarnow, the Chair, with your program questions and any knotty advising issues you and your regular advisor need help with.

Professor John Orr continues to teach half-time in English while also being responsible for the Honors Program and for helping people apply for national fellowships such as Fulbrights, Marshalls, and Rhodes. His office has moved to BC 161. He remains Assistant to the Provost, as well as Associate Professor of English.

Save the date of Saturday, March 20, 2010 for  , our Department’s annual Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature! This year, submissions will be accepted from December 1, 2009 until January 15, 2010. NUCL accepts not only research papers, poetry, and essays, but also non-research, analytical/interpretive papers of high quality. So plan to submit one or more of your best papers and on being a part of our conference. We are very excited about this year’s keynote speaker for NUCL, Professor Mark Edmundson from the University of Virginia. His books many books include Kings of Rock and Roll (out this fall), Why Read? (2004), and Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference (2002). A noted public intellectual, he also has published many essays on education and other issues in The New York Times, Harper’s, and other national venues.

We’ll also be hiring NUCL interns this fall for Spring term, and many of you will be able to serve as panel chairs and respondents, too. See the NUCL website (on a link from the English Department’s site) for information about NUCL. Contact Professor Molly Hiro or Cara Hersh about NUCL.

Our English Readings & Lectures series and the Schoenfeldt Distinguished Visiting Writers Series will include author, translator, biographer John Felstiner (in October), poet Chase Twichell (in November), poet Matthew Dickman (in February), essayist Brenda Miller (in March), the NUCL speaker Mark Edmundson and two Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writers, novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux and travel writer Pico Iyer, both also in March.