Welcome
The English Department at the University of Georgia is a diverse scholarly community of over 40 faculty, 100 graduate students, and more than 600 undergraduate majors and minors held together by a common commitment to preserving, transmitting, and extending the rich cultural legacy of the English language. At the core of our discipline lie the complex skills of reading and writing, and though these can be productively applied to a wide range of professional goals our own work as scholars and teachers strives to deepen our understanding of the critical and creative imagination.
A sympathetic participation in the verbal worlds of other times and places, drawing on the full range of linguistic tools, historical knowledge, and interpretive experience at our disposal, allows our students to enhance their appreciation for expressive possibility. The diversity of the faculty's interests and research methods helps ensure that an English major at the University of Georgia develops a sophisticated, practical grasp of the central role that language plays in the preservation of human institutions.
A sympathetic participation in the verbal worlds of other times and places, drawing on the full range of linguistic tools, historical knowledge, and interpretive experience at our disposal, allows our students to enhance their appreciation for expressive possibility. The diversity of the faculty's interests and research methods helps ensure that an English major at the University of Georgia develops a sophisticated, practical grasp of the central role that language plays in the preservation of human institutions.
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Department Newsletter February 2013
The English Department had had an exciting summer and fall.
In November, Natasha Trethewey, the Poet Laureate for the Library of Congress, delivered the Charter Lecture and read from her recent book of poems, Thrall, in UGA’s chapel. The reading was also the inaugural event of the university’s Spotlight on the Arts festival. Trethewey is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University. The Department is particularly proud of Professor Trethewey because she graduated with a B.A. in English from UGA in 1989.
The English Department had another visitor, this one during the summer, when Dr. Lioba Simon Schuhmacher joined us as a visiting researcher from the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain to work in her area of specialization, Eighteenth-Century British Literature. The department is currently working to develop an exchange program with Ovieda, one of the top universities in Spain, so that our faculty and students can teach and study there.
We have continued our international emphasis by reconceiving our British-Irish Studies Program. This is an interdisciplinary effort to help faculty and students explore the history, art, literature, and culture of Ireland and Great Britain. Undergraduates can take a certificate in the area which helps prepare them for graduate school and for careers in international relations.
The department continues to hire new faculty members. Last year we hired specialists in British Romanticism and American literature. We are now searching for a tenure-track assistant professor of creative writing. Our Creative Writing Program is one of the best in the nation, and we hope to add more depth and breadth to it with our new hire. We are also beginning a search for a lecturer to teach in our award-winning First-Year Composition Program.
For more, please read the latest version of the Park Hall Monitor, the department's newsletter.
Spotlight
Judith Ortiz Cofer receives SEC Faculty Achievement Award
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Regents and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has been named the University of Georgia's 2013 recipient of the Southeastern Conference Faculty Achievement Award.
Meet John Wharton Lowe, Distinguished Professor of Southern Literature
John Lowe has completed his first semester as the English Department’s new Barbara Lester Methvin Distinguished Professor. In addition to teaching a graduate seminar focused on “Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha,” he has been very active these last few months at the national level. In October, he attended “Sheer Good Fortune: Celebrating Toni Morrison,” which was held at Virginia Tech. While there, he was videotaped for a new documentary film on the Pulitzer-Prize winning author Toni Morrison and her critical reception. Created and distributed by the Furious Flower Poetry Center, the film is directed and produced by Judith McCray with Joanne Gabbin (associate producer). In addition to Toni Morrison, other featured scholars and writers in the film are Maya Angelou, Edwidge Danticat, Sonia Sanchez, Angela Davis, Nikki Giovanni, Akasha Hull, Opal Moore, and Daryl Dance. In November, Dr. Lowe also presented his paper, “Using 19th-Century U.S. Theatre to Teach the Dynamics of Race and Ethnicity,” at the American Studies Association Conference in Puerto Rico. He is a recipient of the MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Ethnic American Literatures. Read more...