Category: News


A Classroom with No Walls

The world of online courses can be tricky. People take online courses due to scheduling conflicts such as work and family obligations. They cannot devote specific time every week to sit through a lecture. Because of this, students of these courses are often left with just a list of assignments to complete and a textbook to read. One teacher decided to use interactive technology to help her class learn and to help engage her students. Andrea Barton created an online […]

Read More from A Classroom with No Walls

English MFA Alumna Molly Dowd: Putting Her Degree to Work

Molly Dowd spent much of high school playing field hockey in tiny Fairfield, Pennsylvania, a town near Gettysburg. Her journey from that small town to advising athletes on the most prestigious college football team in the nation undoubtedly took some u-turns and last-minute stops. Perhaps the most important turn in that journey was being a Master’s of Fine Arts student at the University of Alabama. While paving her way to Alabama at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., graduating […]

Read More from English MFA Alumna Molly Dowd: Putting Her Degree to Work

What We’re Writing

Lauren S. Cardon:  After publishing my monograph in December 2012, I began work on a new project, tentatively entitled “Democratic Fashion”: Women’s Clothing and Social Mobility in American Literature.  I employ the term “democratic fashion” to convey the expression of American ideals of freedom and democracy through the American fashion industry, as reflected in the accessibility of fashion to all citizens, in fashion’s facilitation of individual self-expression or “personal style,” and in the comfort and ease of the clothes themselves, […]

Read More from What We’re Writing

What We’re Reading

Kirstin Bone:  I decided to take this semester for a bit of fun reading (being fresh out of grad school, my brain has appreciated the mental vacation). In that spirit, I have been reading Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series throughout the semester. The series has surprised me: I had expected it to be light reading I could breeze through without a worry, and boy was I wrong! Riordan manages to weave a lot of complex mythology, including imagery from Euripides’ Medea, […]

Read More from What We’re Reading

Jennie Vaughn: Ph.D. Candidate

How did you get you decide to attend UA? I was finishing my Masters in Secondary Education at Jacksonville State University when I decided that I’d like to pursue a PhD. Working in middle and high schools made me realize I wanted to try teaching at the university level. I enjoyed teaching high school and middle school, but I also enjoyed having time for my own research and writing. A PhD in English was more appealing than a PhD in […]

Read More from Jennie Vaughn: Ph.D. Candidate

Brock Guthrie: English Instructor

Brock Guthrie grew up in the acutely hip Athens, Ohio, received his B.A. and M.A. in English from Ohio University and his M.F.A. in poetry from Louisiana State University. His poems have been published in Cimarron Review, Iron Horse, Los Angeles Review, New Ohio Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere, and his first book, Contemplative Man, is forthcoming from Sibling Rivalry Press. He’s an Instructor of English at the University of Alabama and is the founding faculty adviser to the UA Club Golf team, who in their […]

Read More from Brock Guthrie: English Instructor

Joey Gamble: English Major

Joey Gamble, a senior at The University of Alabama majoring in English with a minor in Creative Writing speaks about his experiences here at UA. Through his involvement with Sigma Tau Delta as president, Gamble has been able to dive into all aspects of the English department. Gamble discusses his experience and love of the English department at the University, as well as advice for incoming students deciding on a major and their passion. What made you decide to major […]

Read More from Joey Gamble: English Major

Hunter Coward: English Minor Alumna

Beyond the Undergraduate Years Hunter Coward, raised in Mobile, AL, graduated from the University of Alabama as a Communication Studies major and an English minor in December 2010. Communication Studies, a general overview of communication theory and application, inspired her to study why people act and think the way they do, and how this contrasts with different races. “You can make it fit your interest and then you just look at whatever you’re interested in through a communications lens,” Coward […]

Read More from Hunter Coward: English Minor Alumna

From the Chair

Dear English Department community, As chair, I continue the pattern of encapsulating our achievements as a department during the previous academic year, 2012-2013. To give you an overview of our operation, during 2012-2013 the English Department had 37 tenure-track faculty (14 Assistant Professors, 9 Associate Professors, and 14 Professors), although 2 of the professors serve elsewhere in the University in administrative capacities. We also employed 44 Full-time Temporary Instructors and 35 Part-time Temporary Instructors. We had 5 office staff (Admin […]

Read More from From the Chair

2011 Symposium

In 2011, the departmental symposium was held April 15-17 and was entitled “Exploring the Boundaries and Applications of Corpus Linguistics”. The Department of English at the University of Alabama is pleased to provide this opportunity for scholars to explore the boundaries and applications of corpus linguistics, especially its relationship with and application to neighboring disciplines such as cognitive linguistics, comparative linguistics, discourse analysis, forensic linguistics, historical linguistics, language learning/teaching, literary analysis, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and writing (both academic and creative). Keynote […]

Read More from 2011 Symposium