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.
Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of two poetry collections: Far District and House of Lords and Commons. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others. He is a contributing editor to the literary journals The Common and Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art.
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George Hutchinson’s teaching and research concern nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, American racial culture, and more recently literary ecology. He also directs the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines. His most recent bookisFacing the Abyss: American Literature and Culture in the 1940s,a 2019 finalist for Phi Beta Kappa’s Christian Gauss Award and the MLA’s Matei Calinescu Prize for 20th and 21st century literature and thought. His book In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line, won the Christian Gauss Award, was named one of the Best Books of 2007 by the Washington Post, and was an Editor’s Choice of the New York Times Book Review and Booklist. It also won a bronze medal for Biography in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, and was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice. His book The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White, was a finalist for the Rea Nonfiction Prize and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in History. He has also won the Darwin Turner Prize of the African American Literature Division of the MLA. He has edited four books and a journal special issue concerning African American literature, most recently the Penguin Classics edition of Jean Toomer’sCane, an Editors Choice of the New York Times Book Review. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. He is currently working on a memoir of well-digging in the village of Zéguedéguin, Burkina Faso, in the 1970s; and a biography, Jean Toomer: An American Life, for Yale University Press.
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Literatures in English Department Faculty
Department of Literatures in English Recent Faculty Books
Literatures in English Academics
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Creative Writing Program in the Department of Literatures in English
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English Graduate Field Faculty
English Graduate Students & PhD/MFA Lecturers
About Literatures in English
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Anastasia McCray was born in Augusta, GA but raised all over the world due to her military family background. She attended Agnes Scott College for her undergraduate and was published in their Writer’s Festival Magazine ‘17 in both the poetry and nonfiction categories. In the future, she hopes to return to her mother’s home country of Nigeria to study and preserve her culture and family’s oral traditions.
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Tom Hill was educated in private schools in Florida, received his BA from Harvard University in 1961, his MA from the University of Illinois in 1963, and his PhD from Cornell University in 1967. He has taught at the University of Illinois and Cornell University and at NEH Summer Programs at Harvard University. He is a medievalist who works on Old and Middle English, Old French, Old Norse-Icelandic and Medieval Latin literature. Among his current interests are patristic and medieval Biblical exegesis, medieval folklore, and Old English and early Germanic legal texts.
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Maya Phillips, a critic at large for The New York Times, has been named winner of the 2020-21 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. The award committee comprises the heads of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton and Yale Universities.
Juan Rulfo: Pedro ParamoGabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of CholeraJames Joyce: The DublinersMaxine Hong Kingston: Maxine Hong KingstonToni Morrison: Beloved Marilynn Robinson: Housekeeping
Jane Austen: EmmaDonald Barthelme: AmateursGiuseppe Gioachino Belli: Sonnetti/Sonnets, tr. Miller WilliamsLucia Berlin: A Manual for Cleaning WomenElizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems: 1927-1979Raymond Carver: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?Willia Cather: My ÁntoniaWilliam Faulkner: Absalom! Absalom!Denis Johnson: Jesus' SonJamaica...
The Bible/KJVLucille Clifton: The Collected PoemsJune Jordan: Directed by DesireGwendolyn Brooks: BlacksZora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching GodToni Morrison: SulaWilliam Shakespeare: Complete WorksOctavia Butler: KindredOctavia Butler: Parable of the TalentsElizabeth Alexander: American SublimeCharlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre...
GilgameshGenesisJohn Milton: Paradise LostMarianne MooreH.D. TrilogyAdrienne Rich: Of Women Born, poems & essaysHerman Melville: Moby Dick, Benito CerenoNathaniel Hawthorne: Scarlet LetterWilla Cather: Death Comes for the ArchbishopWilliam Faulkner: As I Lay DyingZora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching GodRalph Ellison: The...
Alice Munro: any & allJorge Luis Borges: Collected FictionsChris Ware: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on EarthFlannery O'Connor: Collected Stories &The Habit of BeingColson Whitehead: The IntuitionistRuth Rendell: Road RageLydia Davis: Collected StoriesJeff VanderMeer: Area X trilogyJames Joyce: UlyssesMarilynne Robinson:...
KJV/Tyndale BibleThe IliadRobert Louis Stevenson: Treasure IslandGwendolyn Brooks: Annie AllenWilliam Shakespeare: The TempestBliss Carman: Songs of the Sea ChildrenJames Baldwin: Just Above My HeadJohn Milton: Paradise LostGabriel García Márquez: The Autumn of the PatriarchAlejo Carpentier: The Kingdom of this WorldGertrude...
Creative Writing Faculty: Books to Inspire
Ellis Hanson joined the English department in 1995. He teaches courses on Victorian and Modernist literature, visual studies, critical theory, and gender and sexuality studies. He is currently working on two books, one on Aestheticism and the erotics of style and the other on the visual representation of child sexuality in contemporary American culture.
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L.A. Times reporter Molly O’Toole ’09 is currently tracing a 9,000-mile route to the U.S.’s southern border.
With contributions from his family, former students and colleagues, the fund honoring Isaac Kramnick will support students beginning this fall.
Sianne Ngai, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at the University of Chicago, will explore this question wrong ways of thinking in this Society for the Humanities event March 9.
Application to the Honors Program in English
To be admitted to the Honors Program in English:
- Calculate your GPA for courses that count toward the English major. To qualify for the Honors Program, students should have a minimum English GPA of 3.7
- Confer with the Director of Honors and receive preliminary acceptance to the Honors Program. The Director of Honors is listed on the faculty page.
- Ask an English professor to be your honors thesis advisor and obtain email confirmation that they have agreed. Send your thesis advisor’s confirmation as an attachment (or have them email directly) to the Undergraduate Program Coordinator (Aurora Ricardo, ar2368@cornell.edu).
- During pre-enrollment or the Add/Drop period, you will be sent a permission number to enroll in your thesis advisor’s section of ENGL 4930 Honors Essay Tutorial I through Student Center.
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