Each academic year, The English Department’s Holloway Series in Poetry welcomes several renowned and rising contemporary poets to campus to share and celebrate their work. This week, the series welcomes Vancouver poet George Stanley. His books include Vancouver: a Poem, Gentle Northern Summer, Opening Day, The Stick, and You. He is the recipient of the 2006 Shelley Memorial Award for Poetry. Below you will find his poem,...
When Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany scored a surprise Emmy Award this week for Outstanding Actress in a Dramatic Series, there was one Berkeley alum who could take a bit of writerly credit for her victory: grad alum Lili Loofbourow, whose New York Times Magazine profile of Maslany sketched the genius of the show and of Maslany’s performance in it. On...
This academic year has proven itself to be an exciting one for Professor John Shoptaw; after publishing his book of poetry Times Beach in late 2015, he received both the Notre Dame Book Review Prize, as well as the 2016 Northern California Book Award for Poetry for his work. Earlier last month, English Alum (’13) and current English PhD student at...
READ MORE John Shoptaw wins 2016 Northern California Book Award; discusses winning book, Times Beach
Graduating senior Brian Yu (’16) was chosen to speak at the English Department’s 2016 Commencement Ceremony on May 21st, 2016. What follows is the text of his address. Dear Parents, Family Members, Esteemed Faculty, Staff, and the UC Berkeley English Class of 2016! Welcome to the 2016 English Commencement. I was sitting in an English class recently when a classmate turned...
Chocquida Roekell Robins (’16) was chosen to speak at the English Department’s 2016 Commencement Ceremony on May 21st, 2016. What follows is the text of her address, titled “Granite.” As a child I wanted to learn how to compare my life to granite––the falling grains of construction. The deconstruction of things that coalesce into something beautiful. I watched pebbles on...
READ MORE Granite: A Commencement Address by Chocquida Roekell Robins (’16)
Each year, the Department Citation is awarded to one outstanding graduating senior who is recognized by faculty nomination as having produced exceptionally high caliber work as an English Major. The following speech was given by this year’s winner, Maris Emily Dyer, at the department’s May graduation ceremony on May 23rd, 2016. Hi, Class of 2016. Wow. I can’t believe I’m here talking to you today—I don’t...
READ MORE Maris Emily Dyer Delivers 2016 Department Citation Address
The following speech was given by Professor Eric Falci to the graduates of the English Department of the University of California, Berkeley, at their Commencement, on Saturday, May 21st, 2016. Professor Falci has published two books, one on contemporary Irish poetry, Continuity and Change in Irish Poetry, 1966-2010 in 2012 (Cambridge University Press,) and The Cambridge Introduction to British Poetry, 1945-2010 in 2015; he is currently working on...
READ MORE The 2016 Commencement Address by Professor Eric Falci
Every May, The English Department awards the Hugh and Velma Richmond Prize for the best essay of the year on Shakespeare by a non-senior English major. Below is the winner for the 2015-2016 academic year, an essay written by Miyako Singer for Professor David Marno’s Fall 2015 Shakespeare 117S course. The Dark Side of the Moon: Dew and the Breakdown of Illusion...
READ MORE Miyako Singer wins Hugh and Velma Richmond Prize for best Shakespeare essay
Last November, a delightful present arrived in my departmental mailbox: America Dancing: from the Cakewalk to the Moonwalk (Yale University Press), by graduate alum Megan Pugh (PhD, ’12). America Dancing rewrites the history of dance in this country by drilling deep into revealing moments of artistic innovation, and it does so with a tap-dancer’s panache and a poet’s gift for...
READ MORE ‘America Dancing’: an interview with Megan Pugh (PhD, ’12)
Tomorrow, English Department students, faculty, and alumni will crowd into the Maude Fife Room on the third floor of Wheeler Hall for the annual Charles Mills Gayley lecture, the department’s highest honor. The 2016 lecture, “Historicism: a Eulogy,” will be given by Professor Steven Justice and will begin at 7:00pm. On the eve of this occasion, we thought we would look to...
Professor Lyn Hejinian released her book of poetry, The Unfollowing, in early April 2016; the work is intended as a set of elegies, both personal and political. The work flirts with structure and logic; all 77 of the book’s poems are fourteen lines each, evoking the sonnet – a comparison that Hejinian states, “wouldn’t be inaccurate-or it would be entirely so.” ...
Each semester, the English Department hosts dozens of literary events, from fiction reading to critical lectures, and from scholars and writers all over the world. Spring 2016 is no exception to this, and will be hosting a particularly high number of literary readings. Below you’ll find a few highlights from our events calendar this semester; for a complete listing of...
The English Department is proud to offer over 100 courses to both graduate and undergraduate students this semester. A quarter of the classes offered this semester are those are designed specifically to meet the University wide Reading and Composition requirement – these course are typically taught by grad students and are taken by Freshman or Sophomore students both inside and...
READ MORE Spring 2016 brings over 100 courses to UC Berkeley students
Keanu Cohen is a current student in the English Department at Cal. Last summer, he was given the opportunity to pursue independent research through an English Department Undergraduate Archival Travel Grant. The English Department encourages its undergraduates to pursue serious archival research, offering seed grants of $150 to any student with a research proposal that requires travel. What follows is Keanu’s reflection on his summer of...
READ MORE The Lure of the Archive: The Novella That Took William Gaddis 50 Years to Write
When it comes to our alumni, the richness and diversity of the stories they study during their time on campus is mirrored in their lives after they leave Cal. The Alumni Stories series seeks to share these stories. This piece is from Megan Bradshaw (’09). A brief snapshot: I graduated with a BA in English Literature from Berkeley in 2009, with minors in Spanish and French. I...
