- A Festival of Irish Women's Writing is a speaker series coming to the department (virtually) this Spring Semester
- Margaret Gibson, Connecticut Poet Laureate and UConn English Emerita, featured for her work on climate crisis poetry.
- The new young adult novel written by English and Journalism alumni Crystal Maldonado ('10). The book release was featured on NBC News for their Culture Matters series
English Department Statement on Justice for George Floyd
Hello everyone,
As a community, we stand with those demanding justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and an end to the police brutality, systemic racism, and anti-black violence that led to their deaths and the deaths of so many others. We as a department refuse to be silent about hatred, racism, and violence against communities of color, already disproportionately suffering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and we stand ready to fight actively all forms of white supremacy. We believe that the highest calling of English as a discipline is to serve as an engine of understanding, empathy, social justice, and change, and the department adds our voices to those of so many others at UConn and around the country and world, in calling for our country’s police forces to acknowledge and commit to dismantling a long legacy of racist abuse.
Here follow links to the study of anti-Black racism and also what we as a community can do about it.
- Ibram X. Kendi’s “An Anti Racist Reading List”: (https://www.ibramxkendi.com/blog/2018/10-cy55m-ms393-tsa64-9kb7c-t5e6w)
- https://www.innocenceproject.org/how-to-help-justice-george-floyd/.
Bob Hasenfratz (Head, English Department) and 2019-21 Department Executive Committee Members.
Why Study English?
"Perhaps the most powerful argument for why students (and their parents) might want to think twice about abandoning humanities is the data. The National Center for Education Statistics also keeps track of pay and unemployment rates by major.
There’s no denying that the typical computer science major makes more money shortly after graduation than the typical English major.
Contrary to popular belief, English majors ages 25 to 29 had a lower unemployment rate in 2017 than math and computer science majors."
Read the rest of this article and see more arguments for studying English.
Reopening Campus: ON, TOGETHER
Welcome Back, Huskies: The Plan to Reopen UConn for Fall 2020
The University of Connecticut is actively planning to welcome our new and returning students, faculty, and staff back to our campuses this fall. We are dedicated to working together with public health experts and our state to maintain a quality UConn educational experience while keeping our community healthy.
You can find more information about the University's plans here.
To contact the English Department, please email english@uconn.edu or call 860-486-2141.
Upcoming Events
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Mar
3
Fellow's Talk: Melanie Newport4:00pm
Fellow's Talk: Melanie Newport
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021
04:00 PM - 05:15 PM
Other online
UCHI Fellow's talk by Melanie Newport, with a response by Nicole Breault.
Registration is online via eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fellows-talk-melanie-newport-tickets-128517241529
This event is sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.Contact Information: uchi@uconn.edu
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Mar
3
Camille Dungy, Writers Who Edit/Editors Who Write 6:00pm
Camille Dungy, Writers Who Edit/Editors Who Write
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021
06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Storrs Campus https://bit.ly/36lh9Ns
Camille Dungy, newly-appointed poetry editor of Orion magazine, is the author of four collections of poetry, including Suck on the Marrow, winner of the 2010 American Book Award. Yusef Komunyakaa has called her writing “[e]arthly and visionary.” Her essay collection, Guidebook to Relative Strangers, was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the editor of the anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets. Tonight, Dungy will read from her work and then take questions from the audience about how she balances her roles as both writer and editor.Contact Information: anna.ziering@uconn.edu
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Mar
10
Fellow's Talk By Helen Rozwadowski4:00pm
Fellow's Talk By Helen Rozwadowski
Wednesday, March 10th, 2021
04:00 PM - 05:15 PM
Other online
UCHI Fellow's talk by Helen Rozwadowski, with a response by Betsy Athens.
Registration is online via eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fellows-talk-helen-rozwadowski-tickets-128517815245
This event is sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.Contact Information: uchi@uconn.edu
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Mar
11
CWP Leadership Council5:30pm
CWP Leadership Council
Thursday, March 11th, 2021
05:30 PM - 07:00 PM
Storrs Campus virtual
LC meeting.Contact Information: cwp@uconn.edu
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Mar
11
EO Smith Speaker Series: João Dall' Stella7:00pm
EO Smith Speaker Series: João Dall' Stella
Thursday, March 11th, 2021
07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Other virtual
Talk 2 of an ECE, CWP and Dodd Center sponsored Speaker Series on Human Rights.
https://eosmith-org.zoom.us/j/92776362355Contact Information: anocton@eosmith.org
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Mar
15
Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize Submission deadline12:00am
Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize Submission deadline
Monday, March 15th, 2021
12:00 AM - 11:59 PM
Other virtual
The 2021 Wallace Stevens Student Poetry Prize
Award: $1000 Scholarship
Deadline to enter: March 15, 2021
See attached flyer or link
https://stevenspoetry.org/stevensscholarship.htm
Check Your Eligibility:
Are you?...
a) A junior or senior in high school who resides in the City of Hartford.
-or-
b) A community college student who resides in the City of Hartford.
If you said yes to a or b, you're eligible to enter.
It's easy to enter...
Send your cover sheet* and 3 poems to:
Professor Emeritus Dennis Barone
dbarone@usj.eduContact Information: dbarone@usj.edu
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Mar
16
Ilya Kaminsky, The Aetna Visiting Writer-In-Residence6:00pm
Ilya Kaminsky, The Aetna Visiting Writer-In-Residence
Tuesday, March 16th, 2021
06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Storrs Campus meet.google.com/rrz-xnmo-fhm
Ilya Kaminsky is the author of three books of poetry, including the widely acclaimed Deaf Republic, a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry. He is the editor of several anthologies, among them The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. With Jean Valentine, he has co-translated Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Born in the former Soviet Union city of Odessa, Kaminsky lost most of his hearing at the age of four after a doctor misdiagnosed mumps as a cold, and his family was granted political asylum by the United States in 1993, settling in Rochester, New York. The Philadelphia Inquirer observes that “[l]ike Joseph Brodsky before him, Kaminsky is a terrifyingly good poet, another poet from the former U.S.S.R. who, having adopted English, has come to put us native speakers to shame.”Contact Information: anna.ziering@uconn.edu
More






Letters About Literature
The English Department, Connecticut Writing Project, and Neag School of Education are the CT sponsors for this writing competition for grades 4-12. Connecticut Writing Project and Neag School of Education also sponsor the Connecticut Scholastic Writing Awards for grades 7-12.
Spotlight
- UCONN TODAY: Conference Tackles Racism in Teaching WritingRacism in the Margins, the virtual conference organized by Associate Professor Kathleen Tonry and graduate student Gabe Morrison, was featured in UConn Today last week in an article by Christine Buckley. Congratulations to Kathleen, Gabe, and all of the other collaborators for a successful conference!
- UConn Irish Literature to Host a Festival of Irish Women’s WritingThis semester’s Irish Literature Honors class (ENGL 3122) is hosting a series of talks highlighting Irish Women’s Writing and some of its contexts. All events are free, open to all, and from 12:30 to 1:30pm in the same Webex virtual classroom. The schedule of speakers this semester is below; if you are interested in attending […]
- Welcome Incoming Faculty: Alex Gatten and Paige Walkerby Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) Alex Gatten is a visiting assistant professor of English and the associate director of First-Year Writing at the University of Connecticut, where he also recently completed his PhD in English. His work explores the relationship between gender and sexuality and forms of writing, particularly in Romantic poetry and poetics, queer […]
- Creating Fast Funny Women: A Conversation with Nicole Catarinoby Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) When she was first hired by Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Gina Barreca in spring 2019, then-first-year student Nicole Catarino ’22 (CLAS) had no idea that she would soon help work on a book, let alone be featured in it. Fast Funny Women, an anthology of seventy-five flash nonfiction pieces […]
- Developing Digital Humanities at UConn: An Interview with Kyle Bootenby Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) Kyle Booten was recently hired as an assistant professor in the Department of English in 2020. Booten is a computational poet with research interests that include literacy and media, computer generated texts, and computer mediated texts. In this interview, we discuss Booten’s post-doctoral work at the Neukom Institute at Dartmouth […]
- Catching up with Hap Fairbanksby Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) After fifty years of teaching at UConn, A. Harris “Hap” Fairbanks retired from his associate professor position in Spring 2020. On a brisk and spotty-interneted December morning, I had the pleasure of speaking with him about his career, philosophy, and projects. Teaching, Researching, Writing According to Fairbanks, he knew […]