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The College of Arts & Sciences
Current Cornell MFA student, Shakarean Hutchinson, is the most recent recipient of the Hurston/Wright Foundation Award for College Writers.The Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers is presented annually to one fiction writer and one poet. According to the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the award was “initiated to support emerging Black artists in...
Professor and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Emeritus
Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Literatures in English
Dan McCall (1940-2012) was a beloved professor of American Studies and English at Cornell for forty years. He was the critically acclaimed author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction, including Triphammer, The Example of Richard Wright, and Beecher. His novel Jack the Bear was translated into a dozen languages and made into a 20th Century Fox...
On May 28, 2017 the Department of English recognized the achievements of our graduates at a diploma ceremony in the Statler Auditorium. Over 400 guests, faculty, and staff gathered to celebrate graduates and wish them success into the future.This year, 6 PhD graduates, 8 MFA graduates, 58 undergraduate English majors, and 54 undergraduate English...
The Department of English is host to many gifted student writers and teachers. Thanks to the generosity of various donors, annual prizes are awarded for outstanding work in poetry, fiction, critical writing, and instruction. We are pleased to announce our 2016 - 2017 student award winners below.The Shin Yong-Jin/Falkenau Graduate Fellowship, for...
Two world wars, colonialism, nuclear bombs, the Holocaust: uncounted millions suffered trauma during the 20th century. In the early 1990s, scholars seeking an ethical response to human suffering and its representations founded the field of trauma studies; one of the earliest, seminal works, “Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History,”...
Invited by the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) to participate in the 2016 Biennial, Abject/Object Empathies as Artist-in-Residence, Pepón Osorio unveils a new-site specific installation made through a year-long process of working with the university and downtown Ithaca communities.Visitors to the installation are invited into a personal world...
Assistant professor of English Ishion Hutchinson is one of Cornell’s newest recipients of a Guggenheim Fellowship.The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the 2017 winners on April 7. From nearly 3,000 applicants to this year's 93rd annual compention, 173 scholars, artists and scientists was chosen for their "prior achievement and...
English Assistant Professor and Poet Ishion Hutchinson describes his background, writing process, teaching approach, and the things that influence him, in interviews with Yahoo! India and The Wire.
The Spring 2017 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series begins Thursday, Feb. 9, with award-winning faculty writers Alice Fulton and Helena María Viramontes in the Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading at 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall.Presented by the Department of English Creative Writing Program, the reading is free...
On Feb. 3-4, the English department will host an international conference to address the theoretical impact and importance of Jonathan Culler’s groundbreaking “Theory of the Lyric.” Culler is Cornell’s Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature.“Theorizing the Lyric: The World Novel” conference will explore the relevance of...
Close to 300 faculty, staff and students are participating in the College of Arts & Sciences discussion about its core curriculum and graduation requirements. Numerous focus groups and meetings, held since August, reflect the college community’s ongoing discussion of the purpose an A&S education and the graduation requirements supporting...
Assistant professor of English Mukoma Wa Ngugi considers his second book of poetry, “Logotherapy,” to be more “playful and personal” than political.“As you get older, you mellow a little bit,” Mukoma said. “When you’re writing political poetry, there’s a sense of urgency. By the time I was writing this book, I had written a lot of political...
As the clock struck 5 on a Wednesday afternoon, a crowd of writers scurried into a bustling room in Goldwin Smith Hall, eager to meet with fellow writers and engage in an hour-long session of “critique speed dating.”The writers belong to the Quill Guild, a creative writing club at Cornell that aims to create a community for collaborative learning...
Fredric Bogel came to Cornell’s English Department in 1982 as director of the expository writing program, which later became the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines. On Nov. 4 and 5, his 34 years at Cornell will be honored in a conference exploring the texts, forms, genres and critical approaches that Bogel has brought to literary...
A series of events focusing on digital humanities – the use of digital media and technology in teaching, learning and research – aims to connect people and programs doing innovative digital work across Cornell.“Transmediating Knowledge” is the theme for this year’s Conversations in Digital Humanities, which begin Oct. 13 with a “Digital...
Professor Emeritus Lamar Herrin recently published his seventh novel, Father Figure. The Nervous Breakdown and The Quivering Pen recently caught up with him to learn about his creative process, Father Figure, and his first novel. Please visit the links below to read the full articles. Lamar Herrin: The TNB Self InterviewMy First Time: Lamar...
The entanglements of theology and sexuality will be the subject of the 2016 Paul Gottschalk Memorial Lecture, delivered by Jeffrey Masten of Northwestern University.Masten’s lecture, “Christopher Marlowe’s Queer Reformations: Heresy, Theory, Book History,” is Thursday, Oct. 27, at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall....
The College of Arts and Sciences is undertaking a yearlong conversation with students, faculty and staff, asking them to reflect on the college’s liberal arts and sciences mission and on ways in which the curriculum and graduation requirements support that mission.“It has been 15 years since we last covered this topic in a collegewide discussion...
The Fall 2016 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series welcomed Joy Harjo, Poet and Memoirist. Her eight books of poetry include Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave won several awards, including the PEN USA Literary...
Cornell professor Jonathan Culler was recently elected chair of the board of directors of the New York Council for the Humanities. Culler has served on the organization’s board since 2007 and will continue to be instrumental in the support and funding of public humanities programming across New York state.“Jonathan’s peers chose him because of...
Update: Further coverage of this lecture can be found in the Cornell Daily Sun.National Book Critics Circle Award-winning scholar Seth Lerer will deliver this year’s M.H. Abrams Lecture, “The English Lyric: Medieval to Early Modern,” Thursday, Oct. 20, at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, 132 Goldwin Smith Hall. The lecture is free and...
Almost 100 people gathered in Klarman Hall’s Rhodes • Rawlings Auditorium on Sept. 19 to kick off a yearlong conversation, “Freedom Interrupted: Race, Gender, Nation and Policing,” an interdisciplinary, cross-campus collaboration. Chief Sam George of the Cayuga Nation gave welcoming remarks, followed by a roundtable offering perspectives by...
Associate Professor
American Studies Program, Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Latina/o Studies Program, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies Program, Literatures in English, Performing and Media Arts
Cornell will celebrate the birthday of alumna and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison MA ’55 from 3-5 p.m. Feb. 18 with a screening of the film “The Foreigner’s Home” (2017), followed by a roundtable discussion.