By Dr. Kristin VanEyk, Assistant Professor of English, Hope College Hello! My name is Kristin VanEyk and I’m a recent addition to the English Department faculty where I teach writing and secondary English education courses. I’m a lifelong Christian educator. I’ve been teaching in Christian schools since 2006, first as a high school English teacher, and …
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An Act of Remembrance: Visiting Writers Sumita Chakraborty and Noé Alvarez
Written by Elsa Kim, Creative Writing major Sumita Chakraborty—essayist, scholar, and author of Arrow—strode to the podium. Setting down her sheaves of notes, she held up her phone. “I’ve set a duck noise timer,” she told us with a smile, “When the duck quacks I know I’ve run out of time.” Having introduced us to …
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Faculty Spotlight: On Martyrdom…and the Research Process
By Dr. Marla Lunderberg, Associate Professor of English, Hope College What words or images come to mind when you read the word “martyr”? Lions? Gladiators? Jeering crowds and public amphitheaters? Burning at the stake? A crucifix? The images you draw on probably depend on the context behind your quest. If you’re in a religion class, …
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Speaking Truth: Visiting Writers Melissa Valentine and Michael X. Wang
Written by Anna Snader, a freshman at Hope studying Social Studies Education with an interest in English Accompanied by soft piano music and the warm lights of Winants Auditorium, Michael X. Wang and Melissa Valentine read us their stories for the 40th anniversary of The Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series. First, we heard from Michael …
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From Literature to Lawyers: How I Used My English Degrees
Written by Ben Opipari, Ph.D., a Hope alum and business owner. What I really wanted to be was a rock star. I settled on starting a business helping attorneys at some of the most powerful law firms in the world perfect the art of clear writing. I wanted to be a rock star because I …
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VWS Preview: Ron Austin & Anjoli Roy
By VWS Intern Claire Buck (’22) The days are getting shorter, the tests are piling up, and everyone around me is becoming increasingly dependent on caffeine to power through the day. You can feel it in the air: we’re approaching the finish line of the fall semester. Before classes wrap up, though, we’ve got one …
Centering Black Voices
A book is not enough right now. We need more than a book to recognize, address, and reckon with the violence against Black lives which has long been ignored and normalized. Even so, reading is a place to start and bolster change. Literature aids us in educating ourselves, exercising our imaginations, enacting empathy, dispelling isolation, …
Pandemics in Literature
As we face our current time under the veil of COVID-19, the English Department has put together a list of texts that are pandemic-related.
#KeepingHope: Hosting the First VIRTUAL Michigan Medieval & Renaissance Undergraduate Consortium
by Marla Lunderberg “Thank you for your presentation. Does anyone have any questions?” A pregnant pause. The kind that sometimes tempts me to fill the silence with my own voice, my own questions. But after a moment, my computer screen shows a mic being unmuted. A student’s voice rings in my headphones. My student is …
“In the Meantime”: An Alumni Feature by Sam Mason ’19
March 2019 in the Midwest was a continuation of the previous two months: windy, gray, and bitterly cold. No promise of spring in sight. It had been two months since my graduation in December and I was immersed in the uncertainty that accompanies the great undergraduate unknown: the job search. As a recently engaged and …
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