Dr. Shanti Weiland I am currently editing my poetry manuscript, “Cracked Planet,” which is a dark, modern fairytale that explores the relationship between time and memory. I imagine the manuscript as a photo album of relationships (romantic and platonic) that emerge from the understanding of familial experience and the balance (and, at times, incongruent nature) of religion and enlightenment. Last year, I started a literary blog called, The Poets That You Meet, that discusses poetry and provides writing prompts. I am interested […]
Category: News
Going to Bat for Writers: An Interview with Melinda Fields
Since 2004, Melinda Fields has been an invaluable part of the First-year Writing Program, serving as a liaison between students, teachers, and the Director. One of her many tasks includes helping students register for 100-level courses, a duty that she balances with her work as a Well Bama Ambassador. When I first walk into Fields’ office for this interview, she has heated her lunch, and the aroma of chicken and steamed vegetables fills the room. “Sorry I have to eat […]
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Michelle Dowd: New Director of the Hudson Strode Program
Michelle Dowd joined the University of Alabama in the fall of 2016 as Hudson Strode Professor of English and Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies. Before joining the faculty at Alabama, she taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and at Fordham University. Her work primarily concerns the intersection of economics and gender in Renaissance drama. Her last book, The Dynamics of Inheritance on the Shakespearean Stage, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015. […]
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Cassie Smith’s New Book: Black Africans in the British Imagination
“Early” is the keyword when talking about Cassie Smith. Smith describes herself as an “early African Americanist and an early Americanist and an early Modernist.” Her new book, Black Africans in the British Imagination, explores representations of black Africans in the early Americas. Smith is interested in the narratives that lie outside the realm of typical slave narratives readers have come to expect. She explains, “Conventional wisdom says that the story of black Africans in the early Americas was about […]
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Shanti Weiland’s Sister Nun and the Zen of Typing
Shanti Weiland earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Mississippi and has been an Instructor in the Department of English since 2008. Her book, Sister Nun, recently appeared from Negative Capability Press in 2016. Did the poems in Sister Nun create a theme for you, or did you envision a theme and then begin to write? In 2010, I was hanging out in a friend’s pool, on what was probably the last reasonable pool-day-weather, and lamenting […]
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Report: English Major Recruitment Task Force
In the fall 2016, Department Chair Joel Brouwer put together an ad hoc committee, or task force, to look into recruiting new English majors. This faculty group, including Lauren Cardon, John Estes, James McNaughton, Luke Niiler, Deborah Weiss, Duncan Yoon, and, in fall semester, Ray Wachter—has extended its purview to increasing minors as well as majors, and has come up with improvements and suggestions for current practice. For instance, this semester, task force members have recommended creating a better sense […]
Report: Diversity Committee Achievements
The Diversity Committee is comprised of five members—two tenure/tenure-track faculty, one instructor, one graduate student, and one undergraduate major. These members are Dr. Cassie Smith (chair), Dr. Nikhil Bilwakesh, Dr. Mary-Margaret Popova, Stephanie Parker (graduate student representative), and Maya Perry (undergraduate English major). Our basic charge is to keep track of all the ways the department promotes diversity in terms of the classes we teach, the lectures and symposia we sponsor and academic advising. At the end of the academic […]
2017 Symposium
Black/White Intimacies: Reimagining History, the South, and the Western Hemisphere Department of English, University of Alabama Hotel Capstone, Tuscaloosa, Alabama This two-day symposium explores interracial interactions and the forming of American culture during the antebellum period and beyond. We will be joined by a host of emerging and established scholars from academic institutions in the United States and France, who will help us address questions such as the following: What were the limitations of interracial intimacies and how might people […]
Interview with Dr. Michael Seth Stewart
“The key to editing and compiling someone else’s work is love,” says Dr. Michael Seth Stewart, a graduate of The University of Alabama’s New College as well as The Graduate Center of The City College of New York. “You really have to love the writer and want to put them out there,” he continues. Dr. Stewart explains, while leaning back on a bright red couch in the corner of the Ferguson Center, where he spends his office hours. Music hums […]
Seeing it from all Sides: Sarah Sides Transitions into New Position with Department of English
Most UA undergraduates rarely see Sarah Sides even if they are the direct recipients of her hard work, scheduling their courses and classrooms. It’s easy to wonder how this UA alumna with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and French found herself working in the Department of English but to Sides, her arrival in Morgan Hall is no mystery. “I love Alabama,” she said. “I’ve always really liked the atmosphere, and I couldn’t think of a better place to work.” Sides […]