Registration? Fear Not – English Department Has Your Back

Courses for Spring 2018 REGISTRATION! It strikes fear into the hearts of even the hardiest of students, but you, oh lovers of literature, have no worries.  Why? Because the English department offers so many terrific courses, you can’t go wrong!  Check out these unique offerings in literature and creative writing for Spring 2018: The Beatniks …

Faculty Feature: Welcome to Dr. Christiana Salah, Assistant Professor of English

What do you enjoy most about teaching? The number one thing?  Conversation. To me, there are few things in life more fun than discussing a good story. Maybe that’s because I grew up in a family of very, very talkative bookworms! I still talk to my sister and brother about books all the time, and—like …

Some Words For The Summer

A Flight for Time By Dana Lamers VanderLugt A friend once told me that if you really want to do something, first write down all the good excuses you’ve got not to do it. When it comes to writing, I’ve got a few: ● All the words have been said. ● I don’t have the …

Congratulations to our award winners!

  We’re SO PROUD of our English Department Award winners – many congratulations!           George Birkhoff English Prize: Rebecca L. Stanton Erika Brubaker ’92 Award for Promising Achievement in the Study of Literature: Morgan S. Boer, Melanie G. Burkhardt, Kellyanne E. Fitzgerald, Theaphania A. Patterson, Hannah J. Pikaart, Shanley E. Smith, …

Hope College Academy of American Poets Prize 2017

By Pablo Peschiera About the Prize The Hope College Academy of American Poets (AAP) Prize award is funded by the University and College Poetry Prize program of the AAP. The academy began the program in 1955 at 10 schools, and now sponsors nearly 200 annual prizes for poetry at colleges and universities nationwide. Poets honored through …

What the Ancient Poetics of Enigma can still do

    I admire writers who boil down to a (relatively) brief essay the arguments they have elsewhere explored in long books. This is my attempt to capture the gist of my new book, “Piers Plowman” and the Poetics of Enigma: Riddles, Rhetoric, and Theology. What kind of truth do we seek in literature? Readers …

The Vienna Experience

By Emily Martin ’17 Austria—home of an iconic singing family, towering snow-covered Alps, and Vienna, a sparkling gem of art, music, and architecture, and my heart’s new resting place.  Cheesy, I know.  But also true.  This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to study in Vienna for 3 weeks as part of the 65th annual …

New School Year and Other New Stuff!

Welcome to the 2016-2017 school year! We’ve just finished our first week of classes and whew! What a whirlwind of awesomeness. We have lots of nifty things coming up this year such as . . . drumroll please . . . a new Office Manager! So as we transition to a new year, we might …