Muslim-American Undergraduate In the Spotlight
The following is a brief profile of Shaymaa Mahmoud, an undergraduate English major who was part of a recent photo essay on being Muslim-American. Read full post…//
English Major Follows Interests to Dublin, Law School
In what follows, Kali Peterson (pictured below) describes the circuitous path she has taken from her BA in English from Berkeley to her decision to study and practice law.Read full post…
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English Department Inaugurates Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowship in Poetry and Poetics
The English Department has recently launched the Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowship in Poetry and Poetics, a one-year position for recent PhDs that allows them to further both their creative and critical projects. This year we have three Fellows: Margaret Ronda, Jessica Fisher and Jeremy Ecke. In what follows, the three poet-scholars talk about their current projects, the importance of this Fellowship and what makes Berkeley an especially rich place to write poetry and criticism.Read full post…
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Department Starts New Publication Workshop for Graduate Students
This past semester, under the leadership of Professor Eric Falci, the department inaugurated a graduate student publication workshop. Designed as a forum for graduate students to receive feedback on their work-in-progress as they prepare that work for eventual publication, the workshop met five times in the fall 2009 semester, and plans to meet six or seven times this spring. Read full post…
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Restauranteur Leverages His English Education For Success
In what follows, Professor Nadia Ellis describes the singular role the English Department at Berkeley has played for alumnus Charlie Hallowell (pictured right, with his daughter Matilda) who owns two successful artisanal pizza restaurants in Oakland.Read full post…
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New Graduate Student Profile
Each fall the population of the English department is refreshed by an incoming class of graduate students. This year, we welcomed over 20 new students to Wheeler Hall. Richard Lee is one of the new PhD students who are making their way through the first semester of graduate work at Berkeley.[Read full post…]
Recent Alum Spends a Year at the Kennedy Center
In what follows, recent alumna Anna Inhofe describes the year she spent as an intern at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She describes the myriad tasks that an intern must take on and offers a glimpse into the glamorous Kennedy Center Honors event which she helped to facilitate. [Read full post…]
Graduate Students Explore Vitality of Oakland Through Poetry
Graduate students Charles Legere and Javier Huerta both live in Oakland and both write poetry. Now, after being approached by the website deepoakland.org, they’ve written some poetry about living in Oakland. [Read full post…]
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The English Undergraduate Association
As one of the larger departments at UC Berkeley (there are roughly 700 majors), the English Department can be a daunting place for an undergraduate trying to navigate the requirements of the major. While the Department has an Undergraduate Adviser on staff as well as a professor who counsels students, there is another resource for students that is somewhat less intimidating but no less “official,” namely the English Undergraduate Association (EUA).[Read full post…]
Notes from Postdoctoral Purgatory: A Recent PhD Reports
In what follows, Tiffany Tsao, who received her PhD in English this past Spring, reports on her life as a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech. She begins with an epigraph from Dante which, she feels, encapsulates her experience so far.
…what I sing will be that second kingdom,
in which the human soul is cleansed of sin,
becoming worthy of ascent to Heaven.
(Purgatorio, Canto I.4-6)[Read full post…]
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Professor Ian Duncan Returns from Sabbatical
Our first blog post of this year detailed some reading recommendations which members of our department had read over the summer. Having just recently returned from a year-long sabbatical, Professor Ian Duncan supplied a wonderful list as well. What follows is a brief account of Professor Duncan’s doings in Turkey interspersed with a bevy of titles which might catch your eye. [Read full post…]
The view looking out over the Bosphorus and our local Greek Orthodox church from the house where Professor Duncan stayed in Istanbul
Professor Namwali Serpell Included in Best American Short Stories 2009
The English Department proudly congratulates Professor Namwali Serpell on her inclusion in this year’s edition of Best American Short Stories. In what follows, Professor Serpell discusses her story, entitled “Muzungu,” as well as the relationship between her creative writing endeavors and her work as a literary critic.
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English Major Links Theory and Practice in Service Trip
What follows is a redaction of a report which recent English major graduate Caitlin O’Donnell wrote describing her experiences working on poverty issues in the Caribbean. Caitlin addresses the relationship between the “theoretical” study of literature and the “praxis” of the fight against global poverty.
Caitlin with two participants of the Barbados YWCA day camp
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As an English major with a minor in Global Poverty and Practices, I am on a quest to achieve the kind of praxis emphasized in my study of Global Poverty and Practices in conjunction with the study of English literature. I know that the longer I study and practice the two together, the more linkages I will be able to make and the closer I will […]
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Book Recommendations from our Summer Reading
To start up the English Department blog for the new academic year, we have asked some of the department’s graduate students and faculty to reflect on the reading they have done over the summer and to recommend a few titles (either academic or popular) that they enjoyed. Kea Anderson returned to Moby Dick this summer but also recommends The White...
English Department Faculty Summer Plans, Now Updated
As the spring semester draws the academic year to a close and the students start dispersing for home and summer jobs, the English Department’s faculty members are busy with plans and projects of their own. Many students wonder what it is that professors do in the long summer break, and what follows is a brief account of the way in...
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