Karen Leibowitz was a graduate student in the department from 2001 to 2008 and returned as a post-doctoral fellow during the 2010-2011 school year. She is now a food writer who has published in The New York Times, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, and Modern Farmer as well as a partner in restaurants including Mission Chinese Food and Commonwealth in San Francisco and Mission Cantina in New York City.
Recently, Stephen Booth’s work on Shakespeare was profiled by the journal Nautilus. The elaborate piece juxtaposes Booth’s approach to Shakespeare with discoveries in cognitive science over the last several decades.
READ MORE Stephen Booth on Shakespeare and Cognitive Science
Shannon Chamberlain is a seventh year graduate student in the department, specializing in eighteenth-century studies. Her dissertation is about Adam Smith and the rise of the British novel, and this summer, she had the opportunity to turn some of that research into a series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly. This is her account of what it was like to write on academic subjects for a non-academic audience.
Caitlin Lowe is a current student in the English Department at Cal (class of ’15). This summer, she was given the opportunity to pursue independent research through the Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) grant. SURF is a campus-wide award that supports student research under the supervision of a faculty sponsor.
Arianna Huffington, of The Huffington Post, recently devoted several paragraphs to a 2009 speech by Professor Kathleen Donegan, entitled “Finding the Story.”
READ MORE Arianna Huffington Mentions Kathleen Donegan in Piece for New Graduates
Hillary Gravendyk, an accomplished poet, scholar, and teacher, passed away in May 2014 after a long illness. This page gathers remembrances of Hillary from her teachers and friends at Berkeley, along with links to her online work, collaborative poems she wrote, and videos of her readings.
In this series on the blog, we explore the joys and the tribulations of being both a graduate student and a parent. Over the next several weeks, we will post pieces by graduate students from all stages of our program. Each has a unique perspective on parenting and academia.
In the following article, Emily Doyle (’14) considers the subject of her summer 2013 undergraduate research fellowship concerning Henry James and the phrase, ‘As if’. Emily will graduate from Berkeley this spring and is currently in the final stages of developing her research into an honors thesis focusing on the specific ways elements of fiction, grammar, and philosophy converge upon the...
Renowned documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley aired on PBS in January 2014, clocking in at 4 hours and 4 minutes long. The documentary centers on extended, intimate looks inside Berkeley classrooms and administrative meetings. Of these classrooms, two happened to hold classes being conducted by English Department professors: one by Professor Mitch Breitwieser and another by Professor Maura Nolan. Here,...
READ MORE “I have never seen myself teach before”: Maura Nolan on Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley
Second in the series is a post by Catherine Cronquist Browning, who is currently serving as a lecturer in the department, since completing her Ph.D. here last year.
In a new series on the blog, we explore the joys and the tribulations of being both a graduate student and a parent. First in the series is a post by Mia You, who helps run the website a.bradstreet, which publishes pieces on motherhood and poetics.
Lauren Mueller details the founding of the English department’s first undergraduate academic journal, The Folio.
In 2012-13, the English Department hosted Joyce Carol Oates, whose usual home is Princeton, as a visiting professor. While here, she taught a creative writing workshop on “short fiction” to a very lucky group of undergraduates. Our own Donald McQuade recently had the opportunity to interview Oates about her experience teaching and writing at Berkeley.
READ MORE Teaching and Writing at Berkeley: An Interview with Joyce Carol Oates
Professor Scott Saul’s recent New York Times op-ed (“The Humanities in Decline? Not at Most Schools”) actually began as a post written for our humble blog. When the New York Times expressed interest in Saul’s piece, the editors of the blog happily ceded our claim on it to the Times op-ed page. We now see the value in publishing what didn’t make it into the version published by the Times, and so are sharing Saul’s original post.
READ MORE The English Major, Secretly Resilient: The Case of UC-Berkeley
Recently, graduate student Joe Albernaz had the opportunity to talk with Professor Steven Goldsmith about his new book, Blake’s Agitation: Criticism and the Emotions. The result was a lively interview on William Blake, affect theory, and critical “enthusiasm.”
READ MORE Critical Agitations: An Interview with Steven Goldsmith
