The English Department wishes everyone a safe and happy holiday. As the students depart for winter break, the department blog is also taking a short hiatus. We will be back online with our weekly posts when the new semester begins in mid-January.
Until then, we leave with you a classic holiday poem: Robert Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne.” Read full post…
Two members of the UC Berkeley English Department have recently made big splashes in the national news scene.
Professor Ishmael Reed published an oped in the Dec 11, 2010 New York Times on “What Progressives Don’t Understand About Obama.” Professor Reed has a recent book, Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media, out on the same subject from Baraka Books.
Aaron Bady, an advanced graduate student who studies African literature in the department, made waves in the national conversation surrounding the recent WikiLeaks case. The virtuoso close reading of Julian Assange’s personal philosophy that Aaron posted on his blog, http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/, became a viral phenomenon, drawing more than ten thousand readers and links from some of the most prominent news media outlets in the country. His influence prompted The Atlantic to call him “The Unknown Blogger Who Changed the WikiLeaks Conversation.” The University has also published an account here.
READ MORE UC Berkeley Graduate Student and Faculty Make National Headlines
Over this past semester, the Chernin Mentoring Program has organized a wide array of activities designed to enrich and support the English major experience at Berkeley. One particularly interesting activity was a new twist on the “campus tour,” an exercise in which the graduate student mentors showed the undergraduates how they can put the readings skills they learn in their English classes to work by reading the physical environment of the Berkeley campus. 
Read full post…
In what follows, Professor Elizabeth Abel remembers Janet Adelman, a long-time fixture in the English Department, who died last spring. Professor Abel gave these remarks at a memorial service that the English Department held for Janet earlier this fall. Read full post…
In March 2010, we wrote about the return to Berkeley of the wildly successful play The Domestic Crusaders, by Wajahat Ali. Ali’s play was recently performed at the premiere theater venue of the nation’s capital, the Kennedy Center — and to quite a response. This video from the production shows both the first act and Wajahat’s narration of the play’s Berkeley origin. Additionally, the script of the play will be published by McSweeny’s next month; copies can be ordered here.
READ MORE Update: Berkeley Alum’s Play Performed at Kennedy Center
In what follows, Margaret Boehme, who graduated from Berkeley in 2005 and now writes for the NPR program The Writer’s Alamanc, reassures her parents about her writing career. Read full post…
The English Department congratulates Professor Anne-Lise François, whose Open Secrets: The Literature of Uncounted Experience (Stanford University Press, 2007) was recently named the winner of the 2010 René Wellek Prize. Read full post…
This past September, Berkeley alumna Laura Wetherington (Class of ‘04) was notified that her manuscript A Map Predetermined and Chance was one of the five winners of the National Poetry Series’ Open Competition. Read full post…
Licensed marriage and family therapist Ilene Wolf is now the Director of the Bay Area’s Drama Therapy Institute, but she got her start as an undergraduate English major at Berkeley.Read full post…
READ MORE Alumna Makes a Therapeutic Career out of Literary Study
This past spring, at a meeting of the American Literature Association in San Francisco, Professor Cecil Giscombe was awarded the 2010 Stephen E. Henderson Prize by the African American Literature and Culture Society. Read full post…
READ MORE Professor Cecil Giscombe Wins Henderson Award for Poetry
For the third year in a row, the English Department has teamed up with the Aurora Theater, located on Addison Street in Berkeley, to offer a special event to the Berkeley community: in conjunction with a performance at the Aurora, Berkeley professors gather for a panel that discusses the play for an audience of alumni, faculty, students and other interested theater-goers. 
Read full post…
READ MORE English Dept and the Aurora Theater Offer Winning Performances
What follows is an account of a recent reading given by Georgina Kleege, a well-known essayist and a Lecturer in the English Department. This event was part of the Berkeley Writers at Work series, a forum in which campus writers can discuss their writing process. Read full post…
In what follows, Margaret Rhee, a third-year doctoral student in the Ethnic Studies Department, 
talks about the recent Holloway Reading given by Harryette Mullen. Read full post…
Georgina Kleege, Lecturer in the English Department, will be the guest author at the Berkeley Writers at Work fall 2010 event, on Wednesday, October 6 from noon to 1:30 in the Morrison Library, 101 Doe Library. The event is free and open to the public. Read full post…
What follows is an account of English alumnus Terry Borst (B.A., 1977) and the way his education in literature and creative writing somewhat unexpectedly placed him into a career involving computers and entertainment. Read full post…
