A Note from the Chair
I was hired as an assistant professor by the George Washington University in 1994, and have been happy to be a part of the English department from the very first day. Now as a full professor and new chair, I am daily filled with wonder at the excellence of our undergraduate students, at the vigor of our graduate program, at the teaching and writing strengths of our faculty.
Although this website is young, I hope that it provides you with a small glimpse of the intellectual liveliness that flourishes in the department. I hope, too, that whether you are an alumnus or just an interested friend of literature, you will consider — now or at sometime in the future — making a contribution. No doubt you have heard what GW charges for tuition, and that the endowment is doing well. Unfortunately these facts matter relatively little to our department. We rely upon the generosity of our benefactors to be able to grow our cultural and academic activities.
All gifts made to the department directly benefit its scholarly and pedagogical missions. Through funding such as yours our faculty are able to travel to conferences and present their research; to use archives in the United States and abroad in order to further our knowledge of topics as diverse as the life of Willa Cather or the world that Shakespeare inhabited; to shine new light on African American or postcolonial or medieval literature; to bring into the classroom the excitement of being at the forefront of the scholarly field. In the past donations from alumni and friends have endowed visiting scholar series like the Jenny McKean Moore professorship; have provided our undergraduates with prizes that reward excellence in scholarship and creative writing; have made possible research and writing in our graduate program and among our faculty.
In the future we would like to expand these programs and bring new ones to GW.
I urge you to consider using the CONTRIBUTE link at right, and designating your gift to the Department of English. Please also see this note. I thank you in advance for your generosity.
Yours sincerely,
Jeffrey J. Cohen
Chair
PS I look forward to hearing from you. Please drop me a line at chair@gwu.edu
