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Members of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival Educational Outreach Program and Young Company converse with students after their presentation in our Shakespeare class.

Department News: 

• The first Seth J. Kittay Poetry Contest was held in spring 2006. First prize of $400 was awarded to Tania Cleaver; second prize, of $200, to Meredith Creek; and third prize, of $100, to Monique Duron. The Bowman Literary Prize for Short Fiction was awarded to Audra Hilterbran, first prize of $100; Kalya Hensley, second prize of $50; and David Black, third prize of $25.00. Almost eighty entries were received for the two competitions. Thanks are due to the donors, the judges, and to all of the contestants for making this year's competitions such a success.
• Alumnus Richard Barish (2002) has graduated from law school at the University of Dayton. Why may English be your best choice for a pre-law major? See this link from the University of Toledo for a list of reasons.
• For Fall 2006, WC English welcomes our new faculty member, Marta Wilkinson, who is completing her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Wilkinson's work focuses on the modern novel of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with works drawn from French, Russian and Latin American literature.
• James McNelis's article, " 'The tree took me up from the ground and carried me off': A Source for Tolkien's Ents in Ludvig Holberg's Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground" has been published in Tolkien Studies 3 (2006). He participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, "Anglo-Saxon England," held at Kings College, Cambridge University from July to August, 2004. The Institute facilitated advanced study in and teaching of the language, literature, and culture of Anglo-Saxon England (ca. 600-1100 C.E.). Most recently, he organized and presided over a session on the management of medieval manuscript collections in libraries at the 41st Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI in May 2006.
• Steve Spencer published an analytic in Mary Jo Bona and Irma Maini, eds., Multiethnic Literature And Canon Debates (SUNY, 2006). He taught at the University of Madrid as part of a Fulbright Fellowship during academic year 2003-4.
• Charlotte Fairlie published an article, "Seeing Scotland: Creating Visual Imagery in an Ohio Classroom," in Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, vol. 11 (2004): 205-11.

The content of English studies is comprehensive. Its literature encompasses works written in English or available in translation: essays, plays, poetry, stories, novels, films. Study of selected literature gives the opportunity to encounter other cultures, other places, other times; it offers a chance to become intimately involved with "the best that has been known and said in the world"; to experience, to understand, to challenge the ideas and values of the very finest minds; and to empathize with the universal human condition that, at base, we all share.

English studies also include learning the skills--reading, writing, and thinking--needed to approach and master these ideas and other contingencies of life.

An English major meets the needs of students desiring a general background in the discipline as well as those wishing to prepare for professional or graduate study. English courses complement programs in the humanities and fine arts, especially in communication arts, modern languages, theater, religion, and history. Since English study combines so well with other specialties, students have used it not only to prepare for careers in teaching, law, journalism, publishing, the theatre, and public relations; but also in counseling, medicine, psychiatry, the clergy, business, agriculture, and the fine arts.