Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, recently presented "Hot/Cold Ecosystems in the Americas: Recycling Trash Cinema from Santo to Dr. Humpp" at the annual conference of the Literature/Film Association in Missoula, Montana, Sept. 21-23, 2023. … [Read more...]
Levin Delivers Paper
Professor and Department Chair Jonathan Levin delivered a paper titled “'A tree is a passage between earth and sky’': Navigating Scientific and Animistic Frameworks in Richard Powers’s The Overstory” at the American Literature Association Annual Meeting in Boston this past May. … [Read more...]
Lorentzen Presents Paper on Dickens and Talk on “Dickens, Disney, and Popular Culture” Course
Professor of English Eric G. Lorentzen presented a paper entitled "The Sights/Sites of Dickens in 2023: Literary Tourism, Cultural Studies, and the University Literature Classroom" at the recent Dickens Society Symposium in Rochester (RIT). The talk included research he conducted in museums and other literary sites across England, as well as the pedagogical methodologies involved with his recent new course on Dickens at UMW, "Dickens, Disney, and Popular Culture," two sections of which ran for the first time during the fall 2022 semester. He was also one of six scholars to be invited to join the roundtable "Teaching Dickens," at which he presented the talk "Wisdom of the Heart: Dickens and Cultural Studies." Professor Lorentzen hopes to offer the course again during the fall 2024 semester. … [Read more...]
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...]