Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages

Professor and Chair Jeffrey Cohen has published a new collection of essays on the uneasy co-existence of multiple cultures in medieval Britain. Details are here and below. The book is in harmony with the English Department’s desire to explore how most literature emerges from within multilingual and culturally mixed contexts. The book is also related…

Summer Reading

For reasons that will become more clear very soon, may we suggest that you add to your summer reading list a work by Edward P. Jones? Perhaps his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Known World? Or maybe his breathtaking collection of stories All Aunt Hagar’s Children? These are books that are well worth your time…

Harvard English Department Changes Name to Be More Like GW

Harvard University possesses a department with the verbose designation “English and American Literature and Language.” At a recent faculty meeting, Professor James Engell spoke on behalf of his faculty colleagues and moved that this name be changed to “Department of English.” The rationale for this transformation has clearly been plagiarized from the GW Department of…

Robert McRuer and Jane Shore in the latest By George!

The June 2006 edition of By George! includes the following words about two overachieving professors of English, Robert McRuer and Jane Shore: Associate Professor of English Robert McRuer was researching and writing about lesbian and gay studies—or “queer theory”—and AIDS cultural theory when he was asked by a member of his local reading group to…