Who are we?
The Department of English and Linguistics (ENLI) is anchored by a large and diverse faculty, with expertise that includes (but is not limited to!) creative writing, digital media, disability studies, film studies, social and anthropological linguistics, gender/sexuality studies, linguistic theory, ethics and literature, history of the book, and the range of literary history, covering virtually all genres. The faculty of ENLI prides itself on its excellent teaching and its active professional life.
A snapshot:
- We are master teachers, and our faculty includes winners of the Grellet C. Simpson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, considered to be the university’s most prestigious teaching prize, and the Mary W. Pinschmidt Award, given to a faculty member whom the senior class believes it will remember for having the greatest impact;
- We have won prizes, grants, and fellowships from the Library of Virginia, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Folger Library, the Clark Library, the Harry Ransom Center, and the Jessie Ball DuPont fund, among others;
- We are affiliated with American Studies; Asian Studies; Digital Studies; Disability Studies; Social Justice; and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies;
- We maintain active research and creative projects, seen in professional conference presentations and publications;
- We have led regular study abroad programs in Bath, England;
- We are dedicated to undergraduate research, advanced creative projects, and meaningful professional experience, including sponsoring Individual Studies and Internships for our students.
Meet the ENLI Faculty
English
Antonio Barrenechea. Professor. Comparative literature; literature of the Americas; cinema studies; intellectual history; rare books.
Brenta Blevins. Associate Professor. Writing studies; digital studies; literacy; multimodality/multiliteracy; digital literacy and digital rhetoric; augmented and virtual reality.
Shumona Dasgupta. Associate Professor. Postcolonial studies; literature of the Partition.
Chris Foss. Professor. 19th-century British literature; disability studies.
Kate Haffey. Professor. 20th- century British literature; queer theory; narrative theory; women, gender, and sexuality studies.
Ben LaBreche. Professor. English literature and history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; related continental and classical literatures; politics; gender.
Jonathan Levin. Professor and Department Chair. American Literature, 19th century to the present; modernism and postmodernism; environmental studies and environmental writing; higher education.
Eric Lorentzen. Professor. 19th-century British literature; Victorian novel; Dickens; the Brontës; Austen; Wordsworth; Cultural Studies; critical pedagogy; the short story.
Maya Mathur. Professor. Renaissance literature; cultural studies; comedy and genre theory; gender studies.
Gary Richards. Professor. U.S. literature; twentieth- and twenty-first-century U.S. fiction and drama; southern literature; African American literature; gender and sexuality studies.
Mara Scanlon. Professor. Poetry 1850-present; literature of the First World War; ethics and literature; women’s literature.
Danny Tweedy. Associate Professor. African American literature.
English: Creative Writing
Laura Bylenok. Associate Professor. Creative writing, poetry and prose.
Colin Rafferty. Associate Professor. Creative writing, creative nonfiction.
Corley Miller. Visiting Assistant Professor. Creative writing, fiction.
Linguistics
Paul Fallon. Associate Professor. Linguistics; phonology; morphology; historical linguistics; writing systems; Cushitic linguistics.
Janie Lee. Associate Professor. Sociolinguistics; discourse analysis; linguistic anthropology; Asian American studies.
Affiliated and Part-Time Faculty
Vanessa Eslinger-Brown. Adjunct Instructor of English.
Lindley Estes-Thomas. Adjunct Instructor in Creative Writing.
Duncan Warner. Adjunct Instructor of English.
Zach Whalen. Associate Professor and Director of the Minor in Digital Studies. New media studies; digital textual studies; comics/graphic narrative; narratology.
Recent Emiritus and Emerita Faculty
Teresa Kennedy. Professor and Director, Simpson Program in Medieval Studies. Medieval literature; Renaissance literature.
Marie McAllister. Professor. Restoration and eighteenth-century literature; travel literature; literature and medicine.