Mathur Publishes Book Chapter and Presents Paper

Professor of English Maya Mathur's essay, "When Students Recognize Gender but not Race: Addressing the Othello-Caliban Conundrum," was recently published in the collection, Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide, edited by Matthieu Chapman and Anna Wainwright, ACMRS Press, 2023, pp.15-33. Professor Mathur also presented the paper, "The Ballad of Tom and Greg: Comic Masculinity, Aspirational Whiteness, and Succession," in the seminar, "Shakespeare and Race in Popular Culture," at the Shakespeare Association of America's annual conference, which was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota from March 30 to April 1, 2023.   … [Read more...]

Richards Leads Fifteenth Discussion at the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival

Gary Richards, Professor of English, led a discussion of six of Kate Chopin's representative short stories at the sold-out special event "Books and Beignets with Gary Richards" at the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival on Saturday, March 25. Richards has presented in this series fifteen times since 2007, lecturing on authors that include Ellen Gilchrist, John Kennedy Toole, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, James Baldwin, and, in multiple sessions, Tennessee Williams. Richards teaches such English courses as Southern Short Stories (Summer 2023), Writing About the South (Fall 2023), and Global Issues in Literature (Fall 2023) and also offers WGST courses as Perspectives in Sexuality (Summer 2023). … [Read more...]

McAllister Presents Paper at Health Humanities Consortium

Marie McAllister recently presented "Race and Medicine in the Physician Memoir: Stories and Silences" at the March 2023 Health Humanities Consortium national conference. McAllister's research addresses the intersections between literature and medicine. She teaches in the Department of English and Linguistics such courses as Writing about Medicine, Birth of the Novel, Jane Austen, and more. Her Literature of Death and Purpose will be offered in Fall 2023.   … [Read more...]

Lorentzen Presents Conference Talk on New Dickens Course

Eric G. Lorentzen, professor of English, recently gave a talk entitled "Interdisciplinary English as Social Justice: Dickens, Disney, and Popular Culture," at the Virginia Humanities Conference. The talk was based on a new class Lorentzen taught in fall semester of 2022, in which the goal was to mark, as an intellectual community, the tremendous on-going, and often not readily perceived, influence that Dickens’ work has on a multiplicity of genres in the 21st century. The course included materials as diverse as: 20th- and 21st-century literary texts, such as Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, and the Harry Potter books. films/shows like Ridley Road, It’s a Wonderful Life, About Time, The Game, The Time Traveller’s Wife, The Last Tree, and Disney’s Christopher Robin. literary societies, reading groups, social clubs, and online serial novel projects. Dickens festivals, holiday fairs, walking tours, and other elements of literary tourism that … [Read more...]

Mathur Presents Paper at Shakespeare’s Globe

Maya Mathur presented the paper, "Strange Fish: Laughter and Race-Making in The Tempest" at the academic symposium, "Shakespeare and Race: Spoken Word(s)," which was held at Shakespeare's Globe, London, on November 4-5, 2022. The conference was organized by the Shakespeare Center, a collaboration between Shakespeare's Globe theater and King's College, London. … [Read more...]

Foss Presents Paper on Oscar Wilde

Professor of English Chris Foss recently presented a paper, "‘We are the zanies of sorrow’: Oscar Wilde's Post-Prison Relationship to Mental Disability,” on Sat. Oct. 15th at the Anniversaries and Auguries: The Victorians Institute’s Golden Jubilee Conference in Spartanburg, SC. … [Read more...]

Barrenechea Presents Conference Paper

Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, recently presented "Alucard and Alucarda: From Universal to Hemispheric Horrors” at the Literature/Film Association Conference in New Orleans, October 20-22, 2022. … [Read more...]

Rafferty Participates on Literary Festival Panel

On March 22, Associate Professor of English Colin Rafferty participated in a virtual panel at the literary festival SMOL Fair, titled “Baobab Press Reintroduces Spring 2021,” with the poet Jesse DeLong and the novelist T Cates. Rafferty read from his new book, Execute the Office: Essays with Presidents, and discussed working through the pandemic with the other authors. The recording is archived here. … [Read more...]

Blevins Presents at Flagship Composition Conference

Assistant Professor of English Brenta Blevins recently presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication 2022 Virtual Conference. Blevins presented as part of the cross-institutional panel “Informal Reading Groups as Inclusionary Practice for Facilitating Graduate Students’ Disciplinary Access and Professionalization.” Analyzing an informal, multi-year reading group, the panel identified how professional reading groups produce multiple disciplinary preparation benefits and provided suggestions for implementing reading groups. … [Read more...]

Mathur Presents Paper on Teaching Shakespeare

Maya Mathur, Professor of English, recently presented the paper “Intersectionality, Inclusion and the Shakespeare Survey Course” at the 53rd annual convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association, which was held in Baltimore, Maryland March 10-13, 2022. Her paper was part of the seminar “After the Plague Year: Caring for/with Shakespeare in Text and Performance.”     … [Read more...]