Tom Mallon @ Politics and Prose

From the University of Nebraska Press website: Willa Cather’s twelfth and final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, is her most intense fictional engagement with political and personal conflict. Set in Cather’s Virginia birthplace in 1856, the novel draws on family and local history and the escalating conflicts of the last years of slavery—conflicts in…

Congratulations to our 2010 graduates! I had the pleasure of marching with students at Saturday’s CCAS Celebration, which went amazingly smoothly, given the challenging logistics. (In the photos posted here, we’re in Funger Hall, eagerly awaiting the call to march into the Smith Center.) Most people’s names were pronounced correctly, and there were photo ops…

Follow this link and fan us on Facebook. That was an imperative to be obeyed, not a request. And if you are reading this during class, close your laptop and pay attention to your instructor. Geesh. Share on FacebookTweet

Congratulations to Tom Mallon for the excellent review of Yours Ever: People and their Letters in the New York Times Review of Books. An excerpt: It is next to impossible to read these pages without mourning the whole apparatus of distance, without experiencing a deep and plangent longing for the airmail envelope, the sweetest shade…

Judith Plotz is amazing, but you already knew that. One of our most beloved faculty members is retiring this year because, as she puts it, “Well, I thought I better retire when people were surprised I did rather than when it wasn’t surprising.” Jokes aside, Prof. Plotz has been inspiring students to follow their passions…

On Monday, March 3, Prof. Gayle Wald participated in Woolly Mammoth Theater’s panel discussion for its new play, “Stunning.” Prof. Wald was invited to contribute her scholarly insight into the play’s themes.Here is what Prof. Wald had to say about the event: The evening consisted of a reading of a scene from the play by…