Welcome Back from the Department Chair
Dear English Department students,
Welcome back to campus and to the 2024-2025 academic year, with a special welcome to first-year students and newly declared majors and minors! I’m delighted to greet you in my role as Chair of the English Department.
I return for my second year leading the department, rejoining an amazing group of English staff and program directors on whose behalf I also bid you welcome:
Taylor Dent, office administrator; Christine Dunn, finance administrator; Professor Patty Chu, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Vice Chair; Professor Lisa Page, Director of Creative Writing; Professor David Mitchell, Director of Graduate Studies; and Professor Alexa Alice Joubin, Director of the MA Program.
Please stop by our department home! Our faculty offices and administrative suite are located on the sixth floor of Phillips Hall. My own office is in 643A, and my email address is amlopez@gwu.edu. I’m always happy to meet with students, talk about your studies, and hear your thoughts on what’s happening in the world.
I also want to remind you that Phillips 620 has been set aside by the department as a special lounge for English students! Please visit while you wait for office hours or just drop by and hang out with your friends.
English faculty in literature and creative writing continue to do outstanding work in the classroom and in our research and creative endeavors. We write and teach about every aspect and period of literature and culture, and we publish poems, fiction, and creative nonfiction, bringing that creativity to the classroom with you. I want to draw special attention to a book published by one of our faculty members this year: that’s Annie Liontas’ Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery, which, as their publisher states, “uncovers the surprising legacy of brain injury, examining its role in culture, the criminal justice system, and through historical figures like Henry VIII and Harriet Tubman,” doing so in “affecting prose” through which “the reader can imagine this kind of pain” and the process of “having to claw one’s way back to a new normal.” Congratulations, Annie!
This semester, you might find yourself in 1320, Literature of the Americas; 2210, Poetry as Cover, Sample, and Remix; 3430, the English Renaissance; 6130, AI and the Humanities; or in any other of our other outstanding course offerings, led by your favorite professors or a faculty member you’re just getting to know for the first time. You’ll be getting ready to write your first papers, take in-class exams, or draft your first dissertation chapter. Whatever you’re doing, we’re here for you, and we know you’ll do great! Thank you for being a part of the English Department.
Check your email regularly for messages from us on the English majors and graduate-student listservs. Among other things, you’ll hear about department talks and readings, including literary readings by Lauren Russell on Wednesday, September 18, and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan on Thursday, October 17, and a talk on Modes of Cognition: Implications for AI by N. Katherine Hayles on Wednesday October 23 and How Should We Use LLMs with Literary and Cultural Texts? (also with Prof Hayles) on Tuesday October 22.
