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Another Great Year Learning Teen Shakespeare

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview the UA Department of English’s Dr. Natalie Loper. She earned her PhD. at UA in Renaissance Studies and teaches a class called, “Teen Shakespeare,” where students study contemporary takes on Shakespeare plays in current movies. She came to UA to pursue her MA and PhD through the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies. Loper explains, “I loved my Shakespeare classes in high school and college, and I was really excited to be a […]

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UA Crimson Spotlight: Get to Know Professor Jennifer Drouin

One of the vital cogs in the proud machine that is The University of Alabama Department of English is Jennifer Drouin. She is an assistant professor who teaches Shakespeare and Renaissance drama. We are extremely lucky to have a professor who feels as strongly about the arts, particularly Shakespearean literature. Professor Drouin also recently had a book published called Shakespeare in Quebec: Nation, Gender and Adaptation, published in March 2014. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Professor Drouin on […]

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Continuous Learning: An Interview with Abraham Smith

As an MFA student at The University of Alabama, Abraham Smith spent his time honing his craft as a writer. Now, as an Instructor in the Department of English, Smith says he continues to learn every day. When he’s not in the classroom teaching, Smith can be found writing. With plenty of publications under his belt, including four books of poetry, Smith practices what he learned while a student at UA. Recently, I sat down with Smith to chat about […]

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The Language of Writing: An Interview with Kevin Waltman

The office hours start early for Kevin Waltman. He leaves Coker, Alabama at the crack of dawn and arrives on campus in time to enjoy a silent office on the second floor of Morgan Hall. He prepares for his classes and even writes a few more pages in his novel Slump, the second in his Young Adult series. His commute to campus may seem long, but his journey away from his native Indiana was longer and ultimately triggered teaching and […]

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An Interview with Professor Emily Wittman

Dr. Emily Ondine Wittman is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at The University of Alabama. She is the Director of the Program in Comparative and World Literature, has served as a Distinguished Teaching Fellow in the College of Arts & Sciences from 2010 to 2013, and was the recipient of the university-wide Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award in 2010. She got her B.A. in Philosophy at Yale and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Princeton. A prolific […]

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Spring 2015: Masthead

The Scarlet Newsletter is a production of the Department of English at The University of Alabama. “An Interview with Professor Emily Wittman” By Ashlynn Long “The Language of Writing: An Interview with Kevin Waltman” By Melissa Pollard “Continuous Learning: An Interview with Abraham Smith” By Alice Deters “UA Crimson Spotlight: Get to Know Professor Jennifer Drouin” By Ty Pulliam “Another Great Year Learning Teen Shakespeare” By Claire Gallo “Brian Oliu: English Instructor” By Jack Sewell “Hali Felt: English Professor” By Nicole […]

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From the Chair

To the English Department Community, Here at the beginning of my term as Department Chair, I welcome this opportunity to share with you the current situation of the Department and our accomplishments over the past year. During 2013-2014 the English Department had 36 tenure-track faculty (12 Assistant Professors, 9 Associate Professors, and 15 Professors), although two of the professors served elsewhere in the University in administrative capacities. For the first time, we also had two faculty in Clinical Lecturer Track […]

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What We’re Reading

Ray Wachter After teaching the EN 102 “Advancing Mind & Body” course several years in a row, I became interested in researching and writing a general nonfiction book about the mind-body connection. Since then, my reading has expanded into some really fun areas. My first new author in this realm was Bruce Lipton, a former academic who taught Cell Biology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine. I’m really fascinated by his theories of “epigenetics” and its implications for […]

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What We’re Writing

Albert Pionke Of late, I have been writing about two mid-nineteenth-century novels: the first is a book that almost no one has ever read, William North’s The City of the Jugglers (1850); whereas the second is one that almost everyone has been assigned to read, Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854).  The first imagines a commodities market for human souls leading to a writers’ strike that precipitates the fall of the British government.  The second, written in the context of an […]

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The Robert Milton Young Memorial Lecture

In March, The University of Alabama Department of English hosted the Robert Milton Young Memorial Lecture, a bi-annual lecture that pays tribute to Dr. Robert Young, a beloved professor who passed away in early 2010. This year’s speaker, Dr. Robert Reid-Pharr (photo above) presented his keynote lecture at The University of Alabama on “Pagan Spain.” The organizer and host of the Robert Milton Young Memorial Lecture, Dr. Yolanda Manora, was a colleague and friend of Dr. Young. She offers a […]

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