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.

Bob Hasenfratz (Head, English Department) and 2019-21 Department Executive Committee Members.

 

Why Study English?

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"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

  1. Mar 3 Fellow's Talk: Melanie Newport4:00pm
  2. Mar 3 Camille Dungy, Writers Who Edit/Editors Who Write 6:00pm
  3. Mar 10 Fellow's Talk By Helen Rozwadowski4:00pm
  4. Mar 11 CWP Leadership Council5:30pm
  5. Mar 11 EO Smith Speaker Series: João Dall' Stella7:00pm
  6. Mar 15 Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize Submission deadline12:00am
  7. Mar 16 Ilya Kaminsky, The Aetna Visiting Writer-In-Residence6:00pm

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 Writing
    Racism 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 Writing
    This 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 Walker
    by 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 Catarino
    by 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 Booten
    by 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 Fairbanks
    by 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 […]