Dr. Andy Crank is an associate professor of American literature in the Department of English at The University of Alabama. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a featured contributor to the BBC and speaker on PBS’s Great American Read. He also is the host of […]
Category: The Scarlet Newsletter
Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies Symposium Focuses on “The Future of Teaching Shakespeare”
When the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies began in 1990, the University of Alabama and the discipline of literary studies were very different from what they are today. At that time, UA had a total enrollment of under twenty thousand students. Now commonplace scholarly methods like, the digital humanities, were either unheard of or […]
Tuscaloosa Through Time: A Local Journey with Serena Blount
Serena Blount earned her bachelor’s degree from Mississippi University for Women and her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Alabama in the field of American Literature. She lives in one of Tuscaloosa’s historic districts and is currently compiling historical documents relating to the settlement of Newtown, which slightly predates the establishment of Tuscaloosa, […]
Heather Wyatt’s New Book My Life With(out) Ranch
According to her publisher, Heather Wyatt is a “teacher and writer by day and food-TV junkie by night.” As an undergraduate, she majored in American Studies at The University of Alabama and earned her MFA from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Her poetry has been published in a number of journals including Number One, Puff […]
Welcoming UA’s New Victorianist: A Conversation with Professor Daniel Novak
Associate Professor Daniel Novak recently joined UA’s English department after previously teaching at Tulane University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Mississippi. He received his doctorate from Princeton University in 2002, specializing in Victorian literature. He is the author of Realism, Photography, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and co-editor of ‘Masculinity Lessons’: Rethinking […]
Public Statement to President Bell regarding Dean Riley’s resignation
Note from the Chair: On 9/23/19, the English department faculty voted unanimously to release the following statement. –David Ainsworth, Chair Dear President Bell, This letter is written on behalf of concerned faculty in the English Department in the wake of the recent departure of Dr. Jamie Riley, formerly Vice President and Dean of Students at […]
Writing Your City: Scott McWaters’ and Abraham Smith’s Book, Tuskaloosa Kills
Scott McWaters holds a BS in Secondary Education Language Arts from The University of Alabama and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Memphis. He has been an Instructor since 2002 and is a three-time finalist for the University’s Last Lecture Award, as well as a recipient of the department’s Outstanding Teaching Award by […]
Robin Behn: Poetry, Music, and Teaching
Robin Behn, originally from Barrington, Illinois, has served as faculty in the Department of English for the last 30 years. She is the author of five volumes of poems, Quarry Cross, The Yellow House, Horizon Note, The Red Hour, and Paper Bird, and two chapbooks. She is co-editor of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises […]
Freedom to Write: The University of Alabama Prison Arts Fellowship
The most direct route between the William E. Donaldson Prison Facility and Tuscaloosa, Alabama winds through the bucolic hills of the Cumberland Plateau, along the Black Warrior River. It’s a road that Brett Shaw came to know well while serving as a University of Alabama Prison Arts Fellow. In 2017, Shaw led a class on […]
Dr. Deborah Weiss Discusses The Female Philosopher and her Afterlives: Mary Wollstonecraft, The British Novel, and the Transformation of Feminism, 1796-1811
Deborah Weiss has taught in the English Department since 2008. She received her BA summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD from the University of Chicago. A specialist in the long eighteenth century, Professor Weiss is particularly interested in the engagements of women novelists with the ideas of the Enlightenment. […]