Dear English majors: A number of you have inquired about the deadline for applications to the English Honors program. I just wanted to give you all a quick update about the program, which is currently undergoing a period of reconstruction. Because the deadline for applications in previous years was the October of juniors’ fall semester,…
Help design a T-shirt for GWU English! The English Department is sponsoring a contest to design a T-shirt. Submit your (funny) phrase or design idea to chair@gwu.edu If your phrase or design is selected, you win a free T-shirt, and all the glory appertaining thereto. The winner of the T-shirt contest will be announced at…
English 40W: Myths of BritainSpring Semester 2008taught by Jeffrey J. Cohen Much great English literature turns out not to be so English after all: the action of the epic Beowulf unfolds in Scandinavia; King Arthur was a Welsh king before he was an English one; Shakespeare’s Tempest takes place on an island in the Mediterranean,…
Nadeem Aslam’s visa has been so delayed by government scrutiny that it will not be granted in time to enable our October and November events. Our inaugural GW-British Council Writer in Residence will therefore have to be postponed. We are attempting to reschedule the residency for February. Mr. Aslam is eager to come to GW….
I met last week with the staff of GW’s Advancement office to speak about projects with which they might assist the English Department in fundraising. I was surprised to learn that most of what we seek is so modest that donors probably would not be that interested: significant gifts are those above $25,000. As an…
Professor Margaret Soltan was interviewed last night on the Lehrer News Hour about Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. Here’s the interview: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ . Follow the link on the lower right of the page. For a full account of the adventure, see Professor Soltan’s blog University Diaries.
Jason Hipp writes: I currently work in the Development Department at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, a fairly small, 15-staff person non-governmental organization (NGO) with headquarters in New York and regional offices in Buenos Aires and Johannesburg. Basically, I help to make sure that the organization can still operate financially, through any…
Bruce MacKinnon teaches creative writing here at GW. His wonderful new book of poems is called Mystery Schools. Here are some endorsements and some information. “In his attention to detail and in his reverence for the smallest moments of experience Bruce MacKinnon compounds and intensifies the events of daily life. Mystery Schools sings with a…
As chair of the department I’m in frequent contact with our alumni, men and women who have gone on to an array of careers that — quite frankly — amaze me in their variety and their ambition. I noticed during my first year as chair, however, a puzzling phenomenon: our current majors and former majors…
The faculty of the English Department voted unanimously yesterday to adopt the following as our mission statement: The English Department of the George Washington University is a research-active community of scholars and creative writers. We prize excellence in teaching, publication, and service. We engage with a diversity of texts within a global and transnational context….
