The Zachary Cruz Memorial Foundation has announced that Christina Teslich (English ’13) will be one of five UC Berkeley undergraduates to receive its 2012-13 scholarships.
READ MORE Christina Teslich (English ’13) Wins Zachary Cruz Memorial Scholarship
Second in the series is a reflection from Kathleen Miller (’13), who visited the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University.
READ MORE The Lure of the Archive (II): Kathleen Miller visits the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies
On February 25th, spectators filled all 150 chairs in Wheeler’s Maude Fife auditorium to catch a glimpse of esteemed novelist and critic A.S. Byatt.
READ MORE The Function of Criticism in the Present Time: A Conversation with A. S. Byatt
The Holloway Poetry Series hosted a reading by Major Jackson on Tuesday, February 19. This was Holloway’s second event of the Spring semester, and around 40 professors, graduate students, undergraduates, and Berkeley residents showed up to make it a success.
READ MORE Holloway Poetry Series: Major Jackson + Allison Neal
Kicking off a new series of archival reflections by our undergraduates is a short piece from Amanda Licato (’13), who visited the Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe and the Jean Toomer archives at Yale’s Beinecke Library.
In February 2012 Arden Shakespeare, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, brought forth a festschrift of essays in honor of Professor Emeritus Stephen Booth: forty short essays demonstrating various sorts of close reading in honor of the closest of all close readers.
READ MORE New Volume of Essays Published in Honor of Stephen Booth
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.
