Big Reading WEDNESDAY

Our new departmental website is being rolled out as I write. At the moment, it’s a work in progress, so please be patient with us as the kinks get worked out and various aspects of the website become operational. But we’re thrilled to be the first humanities department in Columbian College to have our website…

Come experience the work of an award-winning writer who grew up in a traditional community in Jerusalem. Pearl Abraham grew up in Jerusalem during the 1960s; her family later moved between Hasidic communities in Jerusalem and New York. Her first novel, The Romance Reader, won praise from the New York Times, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly,…

In February, GW English Professor Thomas Mallon’s new novel Watergate will be published by Pantheon. (Go here to pre-order your copy.) A historical novel that “conveys the drama and high comedy of the Nixon presidency through the urgent perspectives of seven characters we only thought we knew before now,” Watergate is a highly anticipated work–and the first…

Check out “Set in Stone: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Memory” in this week’s New Yorker (October 13 2008). A review of Looking for Lincoln, the essay is also a meditation upon “the first [president] with a psychology, a delicate mental makeup that suggested itself to anyone who saw his picture in a newspaper,…

Dear English majors, The plenary lecture given by Stephen Greenblatt this Wednesday at 10 AM in the Marvin Center is an important moment for all of us who work in and value the humanities. It is, to my mind, a major public acknowledgment that the humanities matter at the George Washington University. PLEASE register for…

I know that all of you have already registered for your spring courses … but if you are not quite happy with (say) that boring class in international relations that you signed up for because you thought it would enable you to relate internationally, here are some great ENGLISH DEPARTMENT courses seeking students: 171W.10 Willa…