As I wind down my year as Acting Chair, I am reminded of a poem by Lucille Clifton that a colleague shared with me soon after my birthday: “i am running into a new year/ and the old years blow back/ like a wind/ that i catch in my hair/ like strong fingers like/ all my old promises and/ it will be hard to let go/ of what i said to myself/ about myself/ when i was sixteen and/ twenty-six and thirty-six/ even forty-six but/ i am running into a new year/ and i beg what i love and/ i leave to… Read more
Profile of UW English Professor Wayne Burns (1916-2012)
by USNA English Professor Emeritus John M. Hill
Dr. John M. Hill’s (BA ’66, PhD ’71) first academic appointment after leaving the UW English Department with his PhD was at Smith College, where he taught for a few years while publishing essays on Spenser, Chaucer, language issues in medieval English poetry, Swift’s satire of natural philosophers, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (a psychological study). His next career… Read more
English Department Husky 100’s
Each year, the Husky 100 recognizes 100 UW undergraduate and graduate students in all areas of study who are making the most of their time at the UW Bothell, Seattle, or Tacoma campuses. We are proud to announce that English department graduate student Sarah Faulkner and… Read more
Three English Ph.D. candidates — Sarah Faulkner (a 2019 Husky 100 award recipient), Matt Poland, and Eric Morel — along with the… Read more
English Matters is excited to announce the Provost has approved the promotion of Nancy Bou Ayash to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure, a well-deserved accomplishment. Congratulations Nancy! And we’re just as pleased to announce good promotion news for Anu Taranath and … Read more
Colette Moore's coedited volume Teaching the History of the English Language was just published in the MLA Options for Teaching series. … Read more
It occurs to English Matters that reading is not the exclusive province of those of us who stand at the fronts of classrooms. The good people who staff our various offices are all-knowing regarding all things English Department, from managing programs, to managing facilities, to counseling and advising, to “I seem to have lost my office keys again.” So we decided to check in on what they’ve read lately and would recommend you check out. As expected, our staff didn’t disappoint… Read more
[English Matters thanks Professor Charles LaPorte for penning this retirement tribute to his friend and colleague Professor Joe Butwin. – Ed.]
Professor Joseph Butwin, beloved scholar of Victorian literature and Jewish studies, is retiring after 50(!) years of college teaching -- the past 49 of them here in Seattle at the University of Washington. (The first was as a graduate student at Harvard.)
Joe was raised in a profoundly bookish household; indeed, his mother owned and ran a… Read more
Isabelle Tully walks into a classroom with confidence. From the first day that Tully, just 17 years old and already a sophomore in fall of 2016, showed up to TA the English class I teach for the Robinson Center’s Academy for young scholars, she exuded poise. She strode to the front of the room -- head high, shoulders back, cool as the proverbial cucumber -- and seated herself at the other end of the table from me. This class, our class it… Read more
English Department Associate Professor Gillian Harkins has been awarded the Barclay Simpson Prize for Scholarship in Public for her decade of collaborative work in facilitating coalition-building among Washington state’s diverse range of prison and post-prison education programs. The Barclay Simpson Prize is meant to recognize UW faculty who practice humanities scholarship as a public good. You can read more about Gillian's award and the prison education coalition-building work… Read more