A staged reading of English department graduate Wajahat Ali’s critically-acclaimed play Domestic Crusaders will be performed in Berkeley on April 10 and 11 as part of the ongoing “Islam Today” program run by Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for South Asia Studies, and Center for Southeast Asia Studies. Read full post…
READ MORE Department Graduate’s Acclaimed Play Returns to Berkeley
What follows is an account of the way one alumnus, Peter Garland, who received his BA in English in 1977, has continually found new ways to investigate and enjoy literature, the latest being a new board game on Shakespeare, “That is the Question.” Read full post…
READ MORE Alumnus Follows Love of Literature to new Shakespeare Board Game
Some links about alumni and faculty:
1. Young Jean Lee (who visited the Department as a Distinguished Alumna last Spring) has a new play out, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It has gotten a lot of attention from critics of all stripes who have been polarized over the piece. A sample of reviews can be found at the following links:
http://travsd.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/lear/
2. Professor Scott Saul is making his own press as a commentator on the recent death of J. D. Salinger. The blog for the SFWeekly quotes Professor Saul in their piece on the significance of J. D. Salinger, and you can hear an conversation with him on the same topic here.
With typical virtuosity, English Professor D. A. Miller brought an audience that filled the Nestrick Room in Dwinelle Hall all too close to Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train on Friday February 12 as part of the Berkeley Film Seminar. Read full post… 
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…//
In what follows, graduate student John Lurz reports on a recent event held at University Press Books at which Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer spoke about their new book, Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory.Read full post…
READ MORE Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory
In what follows, graduate student Andrea Lankin reports on a recent talk given by Professor Vincent Gillespie on “Meat, Metaphor and Mysticism,” a provocative and enigmatic title for a talk that explores the role of the body in medieval culture. Read full post…
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…
READ MORE English Major Follows Interests to Dublin, Law School
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…
READ MORE English Department Inaugurates Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowship in Poetry and Poetics
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…
READ MORE Department Starts New Publication Workshop for Graduate Students
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.”
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…
READ MORE Restauranteur Leverages His English Education For Success
In what follows, graduate student Rebecca Munson gives a brief account of the talk Professor John Kerrigan recently gave on “Shakespeare, Oaths and Vows.”Read full post…
READ MORE Cambridge Scholar John Kerrigan Lectures on Shakespeare
On Friday November 20th, Wheeler Hall, the home of the English Department, was the scene of protest, as students took over classrooms on the second floor, and of a standoff between police and demonstrators across barricades in front of the building. The day was tense, and there were outbreaks of violence but, it appears, no major injuries. There will be inquiries into the use of force by the police. The following links to The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Daily Cal (with photos and video) provide details about the day’s events.
READ MORE Wheeler Hall Protest, A message from Department Chair Samuel Otter
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…]
