This fall, the English Department launches a two-year initiative to encourage collegial conversations about the making and judgment of the literary arts. This Hurst Initiative recognizes that the MFA and Ph. D. faculty and graduate students in both programs have in common a commitment to the practice of judicious and constructive appraisal, innovation in the use of research and other academic resources, pedagogy that spurs creative as well as critical thinking, and managing sometimes quite different commitments to multiple communities within and beyond the university. "The Critic as Artist/Artist as Critic" invites suggestions for visiting writers who will contribute to this departmental dialogue, noting that a special Hurst speaker each semester will be invited to address, however broadly, the general topic of criticism and the making of art.
Welcome from the Chair
Welcome to the Department of English. We are a community of readers and writers, scholars and teachers, covering a global range of literatures in English. This range of literary production opens for you as students under the guidance of a faculty who are committed as teachers and mentors to you as students. We are ready and eager to guide your inspirations as literary writers, to enrich the questions you ask as developing readers and critics of literature. In our department you will feel at once welcomed and challenged—starting with the exceptional friendliness of our faculty and staff and stretching to the adventures in ideas that your teachers and colleagues will help to open up for you.