Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois


Illinois Department of English Blog

.

.
Welcome to the Department of English blog.



My name is Vicki Mahaffey and I took over as
head of the department on July 1, 2016. I'll be using this site to post updates and information of interest to our faculty, students, and alumni,
along with reflections about our discipline(s) in particular and the humanities in general. As anyone who has ever worked or studied here knows, the Department of English is a vibrant place. If you have something you'd like to see posted here, or if you want to contact me about the content of this blog, drop me an email at vmahaffe@illinois.edu.


Thursday, August 27, 2015

Welcome to the New Academic Year

It’s the beginning of the academic year here at the University of Illinois, a good time to welcome new members of the department and to recognize the achievements of our excellent corps of teachers!

I am pleased to report that we are joined by a number of new colleagues as well as a new class of graduate students and over 100 new majors.

Last night was the New Faculty Reception sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Dean and Acting Chancellor Barbara J. Wilson and her LAS team—which includes our colleague, Associate Dean Martin Camargo—introduced all the new tenure-stream faculty in the college, including Ramón Soto-Crespo and Tim Dean, who are joining the English Department from SUNY-Buffalo. Ramón was our choice for a position in Global Anglophone Literatures; he works on Caribbean and inter-American literatures. Tim was a colleague of many in the department in the late 1990s and early 2000s and is a noted queer and psychoanalytic theorist as well as a scholar of modern poetry; it’s good to have him back and to be joined by Ramón as well.

Tim Dean, Acting Chancellor Barb Wilson, Ramón Soto-Crespo

Two colleagues who have already been affiliated with English will now play a bigger role in the department. The poet Joy Harjo joins our Creative Writing program after moving over from American Indian Studies, and the critic and theorist Jodi Byrd has also moved more of her line from AIS to English.

In addition, we welcome two visiting faculty members. Lucinda Cole joins us from the University of Southern Maine as a Visiting Associate Professor, and Nafissa Thompson-Spires will hold a 25% appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor in English/Creative Writing with the remainder of her appointment in the Department of African American Studies.

The department is pleased to welcome (and in some cases welcomes back) eight new Instructors and Lecturers: Michael Don, Ryan Flanagan, Kyle Garton-Gundling, Ceridwen Hall, Roya Khatiblou, Aaron LaDuke, Alaina Pincus, and E. Jordan Sellers.

We also have a new Director of Graduate Studies, Eleanor Courtemanche, and a new Associate Director of Rhetoric, Kristi McDuffie. I am looking forward to working with Eleanor and Kristi and the rest of our team of departmental officers and administrators.

Our new colleagues join a committed group of teachers. We are a department that believes that teaching and research enhance each other and we are dedicated to excellence in both areas. One indication of that excellence is the yearly List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students. As always, I’m pleased to see that so many of our courses and instructors are recognized for their quality by our students.

Here is the list for Spring 2015 courses:

Iryce Baron, Manisha Basu, Paul Beilstein, Jodi Byrd, Maria Carvajal Regidor, Debojoy Chanda, Jill Clements, Mary Rose Cottingham, Carrie Dickison, John Dudek, Dennis Dullea, Ashley Emmert, Christopher Freeburg, Shawn Gilmore, Philip Graham, Nolan Grieve, Joseph Grohens, Andrew Hall, Jim Hansen, Janice Harrington, Christine Hedlin, Marilyn Holguin, Irvin Hunt, Michael Hurley, Candice Jenkins, Kyle Johnston, Maggie Kainulainen, Katherine Kendig, Allison Kranek, Linda Larson, Mary Lindsey, Trish Loughran, Joshua Lynch, Michael Madonick, Vicki Mahaffey, Helen Makhdoumian, Michelle Martinez, Tom McNamara, Zach McVicker, Jessica Mercado, Natalie Mesnard, Matthew Minicucci, Dave Morris, Andrew Moss, John Musser, Richard Nardi, Katherine Norcross, Valerie O’Brien, Michael Odom, Samantha Plasencia, Anthony Pollock, Joseph Post, Julie Price, Rebecah Pulsifer, Isabel Quintana-Wulf, Scott Ricketts, Anna Robb, Michael Rothberg, John Rubins, Steve Runkle, Lindsay Russell, Ted Sanders, Julia Saville, Michael Shetina, Kaia Simon, Carol Spindel, Christine Sneed, John Stone, Sarah Sutor, Alison Syring Bassford, Elizabeth Tavares, Eric Thomas, Debora Tienou, Renee Trilling, Wendy Truran, Ted Underwood, Gregory Webb, Rebecca Weber, Kirstin Wilcox, Kelly Williams, Zachary Williams, Jess Williard, Elaine Wood, Charlie Wright, David Wright