As we bring 2021 to a close, I am reminded of the feeling of community and hope I felt during and after the 3rd annual Scheingold Lecture on Poetry and Poetics the department hosted last Spring, once again coordinated by Professor Rae Paris and featuring a conversation between poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. While “poetry” and “poetics” are conventionally understood as being about the art form and theory of writing poetry, the lecture series has highlighted that there’s also a… Read more
“Quaker Funeral” - William Matchett, 2013
Fairest one, folded in flowers,wrapped in the warmth of the hidden heart of the rose,while the cold hand traces the edges of empty hoursand the light comes and goes,help us, in this final meetingin a room blessed with the echo of words you have spoken,discover our peace in your knowledge that life, though fleeting,leaves love unbroken.Here, among friends, in sorrow,let the Living Love in the silence reveal the seedof your strength, that we may share… Read more
Stephanie L. Kerschbaum joins the department as Associate Professor and Director of the Expository Writing Program. She completed her PhD at the University of Wisconsin in 2005 and held positions at Texas A&M University and the University of Delaware before moving to UW in 2021.
Dr. Kerschbaum’s first book, Toward a new Rhetoric of… Read more
[The Spring issue of English Matters will feature the latest faculty books]
Staff colleague Judy LeRoux, our Academic Counseling Services Coordinator for the Creative Writing Program, has recently retired. The English Department is in debt to Judy for her dedication and years of service to the Creative Writing program, during which she advised hundreds of undergraduate and MFA students;… Read more
To misquote a famous misquoting of Mark Twain by biographer Albert Bigelow Paine, reports of the death of the Humanities have been grossly exaggerated. This applies more narrowly to the English department too -- we’re doing just fine, thank you very much! With leadership from Humanities division dean Brian Reed and thanks to a nimbleness enabled by the English… Read more
Memoir is a genre that takes life on a literary journey. Memoir’s transformation of life into literature doubles a common theme most memoirs engage: the transformation and often transcendence of the individual. Memoirs primarily focus on developing themes through a limited selection of real-life stories about their authors. This is what primarily differentiates memoir from autobiography, a more “life as history” oriented subgenre that tends to trace a life from beginning to end (the end… Read more
This fall, English Matters has directed attention to how our department interacts with STEM disciplines. Most of what has been covered concerns institutional initiatives and curricular design. While it is interesting to survey the forest of departmental interconnectedness, it is perhaps most important to understand how cross-campus learning opportunities benefit our undergraduate students as individuals. As such, we’re honored to introduce Zachary Datko, a declared Pre-Med student… Read more