T-Shirt Tuesday is TUESDAY

Each year I am asked by the university to compose a report on the goals and achievements of the English Department. I thought that readers of this blog might be interested to see the document I’ve sent to the dean. It’s been a good year! ———– English Departmental Annual Report (2007-08)Prepared by Jeffrey J. Cohen,…

[photo by Calder Stembel] First, THANK YOU to all of our readers who attended the Edward P Jones Inaugural reading last Thursday. The previous evening I had had a nightmare in which the only people in attendance at the event were me, Edward Jones, Steven Knapp, and the English department secretary. I imagined that President…

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,…

English major Joe Mancinik with Prof. Toni Morrison Prior to her appearance at Lisner Auditorium Wednesday night, our English Department blogger Joe Mancinik, along with a few other lucky English majors, sat down for a dinner and conversation with legendary writer, teacher, and intellectual Toni Morrison. This piece is about the experience. She speaks softly,…

Two faculty members and a student helped us to raise more than two thousand dollars in the last cycle. The money will help with a readings series and with undergraduate and graduate students research projects. We deeply appreciate the generosity of: Natalie Carter (student) David McAleavey (faculty) Tara Wallace (faculty) If you have not contributed…

According to Howard Jacobson, being a British Jew is always a struggle. Especially when you arrive in Washington on the very last international flight to Dulles last Friday and then find yourself stuck in your hotel for six days. Jacobson joked he was beginning to wonder if GW even existed since all he had seen…