We know that you are going to see Rosemarie Garland-Thomson on Friday. We offer the following quotation from her brand new book Staring: How We Look to whet your appetite. Staring is profligate interest, stunned wonder, obsessive ocularity. The daily traffic reports capture staring’s disruptive potential with the term “rubbernecking,” a canny summation of our…
He is one of the most famous egomaniacs in literature. He is also one of the most famous disabled characters in literature. Who is he? Chances are Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab was not your first guess. Although the character’s missing leg is one of his most defining features, the crazed captain of the Pequod is…
Check out this shout-out to literature at GW, from an OpEd piece published in today’s GW Hatchet. President Knapp composed the piece about a task force to which he has appointed (among many others) the chair of the English Department and Director of the GW Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute — a person who…
We are honored to have Sarah Werner of the Folger Shakespeare Library teaching a seminar for us this coming spring. Though the seminar is offered at the graduate level, we are opening five spots in the class to undergraduate English majors who are interested in the subject and who would like to do some advanced…
What do the two people in our blog post title have in common, besides serenity and good looks? Funny you should ask. Both the Dalai Lama and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson were just named in the Utne Reader list of “Fifty Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is, of course, our inaugural GW English Distinguished…
On October 23 at 5 PM in the Marvin Center, we will hold our inaugural GW English Distinguished Lecture in Literary and Cultural Studies. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson will present. Complete information is here. I urge you to come. We are trying to build a better sense of intellectual community at GW, especially for those of us…
Friday October 23 5 PM Marvin Center Continental Ballroom800 21st Street, NWWashington, DC 20052 Rosemarie Garland-Thomson delivers the inaugural GW English Distinguished Lecture in Literary and Cultural Studies “The Gas Chamber and the Metro: Space, Mobility and Disability” Introduction by José Muñoz, Wang Visiting Professor of Contemporary English Literature University welcome by President Steven Knapp…
I know I talk and write about this issue a great deal: I am passionate about it, because it is so central to my department’s mission and future. The English Department has everything in place to be the envy of the Ivy League: excellent undergraduate majors, a world-class faculty whose research and creative work are…
In 1894 literary scholar George Saintsbury coined the term “Janeite” as a devotée of Jane Austen. Professor Maria Frawley (pictured with her cat Zeke) is a self-proclaimed Janeite, although she would like to emphasize that Janeites are scholars as well as devotées. You cannot deny this fact when meeting with the witty and warm Frawley…
It is not uncommon to walk into college with one major and come out with an entirely different one and luckily for 2002 alumna Ayanna Jackson-Fowler, that major was English. Although Jackson-Fowler entered GW as a pre-Med major she quickly realized her real passion. She said, “I really enjoyed studying and creating literature. So, I…
