Faculty and professional interests

Robin Metz, (chair Fall 2003); Director, Program in Creative Writing (on leave Winter and Spring 2004)
   Creative writing, modern and contemporary literature, Hemingway, Woolf, Beckett, multidisciplinary arts, environmental literature and arts
Lori Haslem, (chair Winter-Spring 2004)
  Shakespeare, Renaissance literature and culture, early modern literature and gender studies, Chaucer, literary theory
Emily Anderson
  Romantic literature, Enlightenment literature, film, composition theory
Monica Berlin
  Creative writing, modern and contemporary fiction, modern and contemporary poetry, Faulkner, composition
Gina Franco
  Creative writing, British Romantic poetry and prose, Victorian literature, modern and contemporary American poetry, Chicana/Chicano writing, translation
Robert Hellenga
  Romantic literature, classical mythology, creative writing, reader-response criticism
Nick Regiacorte
  Creative writing, poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, composition
Natania Rosenfeld
  Modern and contemporary literature, Woolf, postcolonial literature, Jewish literature, poetry, creative writing
Robert Smith
  American literature, literary theory, film studies, cultural studies, Dickinson
Barbara Tannert-Smith
  Creative writing, fiction, creative non-fiction, children's literature
Marilyn Webb
  Journalism

Alex Kuo (Spring 2004), Distinguished Writer in Residence
Joan Burbick (Spring 2004), Distinguished Scholar in Residence

Cooperating faculty from other programs
Neil Blackadder, Theatre
Ivan H. Davidson, Theatre
John Haslem, Center for Teaching and Learning
Frederick Hord, Black Studies
Paul Marasa, Educational Development Program
Elizabeth Carlin Metz, Theatre
Magali Roy-Féquière, Gender and Women's Studies  (on leave Winter-Spring 2004)
Robert Whitlatch, Theatre

The study of literature is essential to a liberal arts education. The introductory courses in the English department, with their emphasis on analytical skills, close reading and literary theory, prepare students to become active interpreters of the world rather than passive consumers of the interpretations of others. The period courses offer students an opportunity to look at the world through other eyes, to imagine their way into modes of thought and understanding very different from those of our own age. The courses in modern and contemporary literature help students articulate and clarify their own responses to the world in which they live. The creative writing courses and workshops challenge students to produce their own literature, to tell their own stories. The skills that are emphasized in all these courses—reading and writing: interpretation, analysis, the ability to look at the world from different perspectives, the ability to articulate feelings and ideas clearly and forcefully—are becoming increasingly rare, and therefore increasingly valuable, in business and in professions—publishing, advertising, law, and journalism—as well as in academia.

The departmental courses are supported by (a) strong library holdings, including the Hughes Collection of works by Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation; (b) a long tradition (strengthened by the recent creation of the John and Elaine Fellowes Fund for English Literature and Writing) of bringing to campus scholars and writers of the first rank (five of the last six U.S. poet laureates have presented their work at Knox), illustrated by the following partial list: Jane Smiley, Tess Gallagher, Larry Woiwode, Hilma Wolitzer, Bharati Mukherjee, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, David Ignatow, David Bradley, Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, Robert Haas, Brenda Hillman, Robert Pinsky, Jane Gallop, Eavan Boland, Alice Fulton, Gerald Sten, Leo Marx, David Bleich, Susan Gubar, Houston Baker, Marilynn Robinson, Maxine Kumin, Alvin B. Kernan, Rita Dove, Etheridge Knight, Wole Soyinka, Susan Sontag, Billy Collins, Richard Yates, Andre Dubus, Andre Dubus III, Grace Paley, Barry Lopez, R.V. Cassill, Tobias Wolff, Jonie Graham, James Galvin, Aimee Bender, Sharon Olds, William Gay, Mary Lee Settle; and (c) by a policy of recognizing outstanding student work: Catch, a national award-winning literary and art journal devoted to student work, is edited by students and published twice a year; the "Writers' Forum" provides an opportunity for students to read their own work; the Caxton Club, which meets four or five times a term, provides a similar forum for visiting scholars and writers and for faculty in English and in other departments; the Davenport Awards in Poetry, Playwriting, and Fiction; the Procter Fenn Sherwin Prize in Fiction; the Bev White Prize in Fiction, and the Howard Wilson Prizes in Literary Criticism are awarded annually, by outside judges, for outstanding student writing. The Elizabeth Haywood English Research Award is given annually to support a student project in England.

Students may major or minor in either literature or creative writing.

All 300 level literature courses in the department require the informed use of technology including information retrieval, MLA database use and the critical evaluation of Internet resources.

English Course Descriptions