Rebecca Munson passed away on Friday, August 13th. Rebecca was a recent (2015) graduate of our PhD program, and had been working as Assistant Director for Interdisciplinary Education at Princeton’s Center for Digital Humanities. The Center has published a memorial notice, https://cdh.princeton.edu/updates/2021/08/15/rebecca-munson/. A contribution from James G. Turner. After hearing the shocking news I looked through hundreds of Rebecca’s...
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...
Karen Leibowitz was a graduate student in the department from 2001 to 2008 and returned as a post-doctoral fellow during the 2010-2011 school year. She is now a food writer who has published in The New York Times, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, and Modern Farmer as well as a partner in restaurants including Mission Chinese Food and Commonwealth in San Francisco and Mission Cantina in New York City.
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.”
Congratulations to the Young Adult Review Network (YARN), which has recently been awarded an Innovations in Reading Prize from the National Book Foundation. YARN was founded in 2010 as an independent online journal to publish fiction, poetry, and essays by teen-aged writers alongside the work of established and emerging adult contributors. Read full post…
READ MORE YARN Wins Innovations in Reading Prize from National Book Foundation
Berkeley English alumnus Ashley Dunn has been named California editor for the Los Angeles Times. Dunn is a veteran reporter and editor, having worked at the New York Times, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, the Danbury News-Times in Connecticut, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Most recently, he has worked as Washington editor for the Times.
Audiobook pioneer and Berkeley alumna Flo Gibson died in January at the age of 86. Gibson founded Audio Book Contractors in 1983 and personally recorded over one-thousand titles, including works by Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Leo Tolstoy. Born in San Francisco in 1924, Gibson studied dramatic literature at Berkeley, going on to New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse and a successful acting career, before beginning to record books for the Library of Congress in the 1970s. Her full obituary is available on-line at The New York Times.
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
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
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, 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…]
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…]
READ MORE Notes from Postdoctoral Purgatory: A Recent PhD Reports
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 […]
READ MORE English Major Links Theory and Practice in Service Trip
In what follows, San Francisco native Lisa Riordan Seville, a 2006 graduate from the English department, with a second major in Art Practice, talks about the importance of “reading” for her. Lisa currently lives in New York where she is finishing up an internship at the literary magazine Lapham’s Quarterly and also works as the Communication Associate at the International...
