The Holloway Poetry Series began its Spring program with Dawn Lundy Martin on Tuesday, January 29th, who was brought to campus in collaboration with the Mixed Blood Project.
READ MORE Holloway Poetry Series: Dawn Lundy Martin + Hugo Garcia Manriquez (Mixed Blood Project)
Professor Norman Rabkin, who joined the department in 1959, passed away peacefully at home on June 21st, 2012, at the age of 82.
On April 25, 2012 the English Department hosted the latest event in the “Conversations with Distinguished Alumni” series. The celebrated chef and restaurateur Charlie Hallowell (English ‘02) spoke with Professors Samuel Otter and Stephen Best about his Berkeley education, as well as the business and pleasure of food in Northern California. Posted by Jeffrey Blevins
On the weekend of October 15, 2011 former students of Cathy Gallagher from around the country convened to pay tribute to her mentorship and scholarship. Speakers — all of whom gave short, provocative, or poignant talks — included Mark Allison, Miriam Bailin, Trisha Urmi Banerjee, Ayelet Ben-Yishai, David Brewer, Ian Burney, Julie Carr, Arianne Chernock, Tina Choi, William Cohen, Alison Conway, Oz Frankel, Laura Green, Nicoletta Gullace, Daniel Hack, Cheri Larsen Hoeckley, Peter Logan, Annie McClanahan, Catherine Mitchell, Leslie Monstavicius, Maura O’Connor, Catherine Robson, Simon Stern, Rachel Teukolsky, Irene Tucker, Vlasta Vranjes, Toni Wein, Benj Widiss, Elizabeth Young, and Susan Zieger.
Click here for the full text of those speeches and photographs from the conference.
READ MORE “Somebody’s Story”: Twenty-Eight Ways of Being Taught by Cathy Gallagher
On February 2nd, the Maude Fife Room filled for poets Samia Rahimtoola and Claudia Rankine. “So I was telling Louise… about how I’ve been writing poems I’m afraid to read,” Rankine began….
Joanna Picciotto, Associate Professor of English, received the Distinguished Teaching Award at a ceremony on April 26, 2012. This is the 26th Distinguished Teaching Award won by members of the English Department. We have won more DTAs than any other department, a record of which we can be justly proud. Read her acceptance speech here.
READ MORE Professor Joanna Picciotto’s Speech at the 2012 Distinguished Teaching Award Ceremony
On November 1, a month before the announced release date, and because they were too excited to wait, Foxhead Books released The Drowned Library, Paul Kerschen’s first collection of short stories. I had the distinct pleasure recently of talking with Paul about The Drowned Library, and about writing in general, which he calls, “the least oppressive labor I have ever performed.”
Occupy Cal and the Open University are just two ways students and faculty on campus have been choosing to meet some of the crises in higher education: diminished state funding for public higher education, the financialization of the public, and questions about the nature and function of education as a public good. In the English Department, we’ve redoubled our commitment to the study of language, believing this task to be central to protest …
On November 22, the English Department sent a petition to Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau and Chief of UC Police Department, Mitchell Celaya, strongly protesting the police violence against non-violent protestors on November 9.
We asked our most recent graduates to submit entries to an essay-writing contest on the topic of what they’ve done with their B.A. degrees in English, and we received over thirty entries. In her winning essay, “A Tale of Two Cities,” Lindsay King (Class of 2010) writes, “I have never been more convinced that literature is profound and sublime extension of the people and cultures which produce it, and had it not been for my undergraduate experience in both English and French, I do not know if I would have been able to come to appreciate or understand this reality as deeply as I currently do. Had I simply focused on what I was planning to do with my degrees rather than on who I was going to become, I know that I would not have grown into being the young woman that I am today….” Read the complete texts of Lindsay King’s winning essay and second place essays by Kaelan Connella, Adrienne D’Luna, and Ben Kahane.
Each year in the “Faculty Notes” section of the department newsletter, we list the most recent faculty accomplishments. In the same spirit of recognition and congratulation, here are only some of the many accomplishments of our graduate students from this past year.
On November 14, the English Department held this fall’s event in our “Conversations with Distinguished Alumni/ae” series. Jeffrey Berg (English ‘69), Chairman and CEO of International Creative Management, one of the world’s largest talent agencies, joined Professors Samuel Otter and Kevis Goodman in a lively conversation.
