Welcome

The English Department is committed to excellence in teaching, research, and service in the following disciplines: British, American, and global literature in English; business writing and technical communication; writing pedagogy and composition theory; teacher education; and creative writing. The department serves non-majors, majors, and graduate students by providing a wide array of courses that foster sound research; intellectual curiosity; critical thinking and reading; and clear, graceful, and persuasive writing and speaking. Through its programs, graduates, and faculty, the department contributes significantly to the cultural and academic enrichment and the quality of life of the campus, community, state, and region.

Department News

NEW CLASSES! FALL 2013

EH 380: Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century SATIRE 

Instructor: Dr. Anna Foy (anna.foy@uah.edu)
Course info: Tuesdays/Thursdays 9:35-10:55 AM 

Description: It has often been said that the English Restoration and early eighteenth century constituted the single greatest flourishing of satire in European letters.  Taking this rich period of satirical production as our centerpiece, this course examines an array of satirical strategies and vocabularies, with the idea that parsing eighteenth-century classics such as Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock, and John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera can help to illuminate and enliven a reading (or viewing) of modern productions such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Colbert Report.  Our analyses of important Greco-Roman examples (e.g., Horace, Juvenal) will provide the foundations for our discussions of eighteenth-century satirical practices.  We will become experts in eighteenth-century British libel law (which differed significantly from laws governing free speech in the 21^st-century U.S.).  We will examine several influential theories of satire’s capacity to educate and entertain its audiences.  In addition, one course assignment asks you to compare eighteenth-century satirical techniques to familiar modern satires on television, in film, and on YouTube.  Course requirements also include weekly responses, reading quizzes, midterm and final papers, and a final exam.  Prerequisites: Course is open to students who have completed the general education requirement in literature.  (Credit hrs: 3.0.  Grading system: A, B, C, D, F.)

EH 360: Shakespeare's Bad Boys and Good Girls 

Instructor: Dr. Chad Thomas (chad.thomas@uah.edu)
Course info: Tuesdays/Thursdays 12:45-2:05 PM, Morton Hall 324

Description: Shakespeare can be studied with numerous and multivalent foci. In this class, we will examine a number of Shakespeare’s works that deal explicitly with issues related to gender, performance, and performativity.  These include a selection of sonnets, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Antony & Cleopatra, and The Winter’s Tale. We shall examine the plays in relation to theatrical experiences, paying special attention to conditions of production in Shakespeare’s theater and to the possibilities for performance in our own time.  We will also consider the connection between performance (especially of gender) and multiple modes of meaning. Requirements include active and close reading, collaborative learning projects, and vigorous questioning of course texts. Assignments include three short (but formal) reading responses, quizzes, participation (online and in-class), a performance project, and two exams. Prerequisites: Course is open to students who have completed the general education requirement in literature.  (Credit hrs: 3.0.  Grading system: A, B, C, D, F.)

NEWS OF FACULTY

Dr. Eric Smith publishes book Globalization, Utopia and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope. This new book explores the aesthetic and historical conditions that inform the recent convergence of the seemingly incommensurable domains of the postcolonial Third World and the genre of SF, particularly as expressed in the recent phenomenon of visionary SF narratives originating from postcolonial national cultures. Read more

Dr. David Neff received the CLA Outstanding Faculty Award (2013). “’Invisible Hands’: Paltock, Milton, and the Critique of Providence in Frankenstein” was published in ANQ 25.2 (2012): 103-08.

Dr. Eric Smith's essay "'Fictions Where a Man Could Live': Worldlessness, Utopia, and the Void in Rushdie's Grimus" is published in the current issue of Twentieth-Century Literature 58.2 (2012): 267-295.

Dr. Joseph Taylor's article "Centralization, Resistance, and the Bare Life of the Greenwood in A Gest of Robyn Hode" appeared in the Spring issue of Modern Philology 110.3 (2013): 313-339. Also, Dr. Taylor's article "Sovereignty, Oath, and the Profane Life in the Avowing of Arthur" was published in the Spring issue of the medieval and early modern studies journal Exemplaria 25.1 (2013): 37-58.

Dr. Chad Thomas gave a lecture to the Gay/Straight Alliance titled "Queering Cleopatra; or Queer Shakespeare at the Citz' circa 1972" in March. He also presented a paper at the Shakespeare Association of America titled "The Comedy of (Qu)errors: A Study in Queering Campus Shakespeare" in April.

Dr. Angela Balla received a Humanities Center Faculty Research Grant for her project "Awakening to Tolerance: The Revelation of Mystical Community in Thomas Traherne's Verse." Dr. Balla will conduct research this summer at Lambeth Palace Library, London (the archive for the Church of England) and at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Laurel Bollinger’s essay “Narrating Racial Identity and Transgression in Faulkner’s ‘That Evening Sun’” appeared in College Literature. 39.2 [Spring 2012]: 53-72. Dr. Bollinger includes in the essay a note of gratitude to former students and a current colleague: "I would like to thank my Spring 2009 EH 631 students, who asked the right questions; the students in my 2009 Faulkner course, for letting me try out this interpretation on them; and D. S. Neff, who has been invaluable as a first reader."

Andrea Word and Department of Education Professor Jason O'Brien have been awarded a $1.1 million grant by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of English Language Acquisition.  The grant will support second language instruction training for Huntsville City School teachers and administrators over the next five years.