News

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Professor Woolfork is featured in an article on UVAToday, found here.

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Professor Kate Kostelnik's course "Tutoring Writing Across Cultures" was featured in UVA Today.  Follow this link for the full article.

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Professor Lisa Russ Spaar was interviewed by Book Marks as part of their "Secrets of the Book Critics" series.

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Full article with all 16 Fulbright scholars from the University featured in UVA Today.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-sets-record-16-fulbright-...

Lisa Russ

The annual ceremony awards Intermediate Honors to the top 20 percent of third-year undergraduate students who have finished at least 60 hours of coursework, and honors the recipients of the annual Thomas Jefferson Awards, the highest distinction...

Department faculty offer "Readings for Our Time"

Members of the UVa English Department have suggested the following texts as ones that might be helpful to students, colleagues, and other members of the community in relation to current circumstances.

The surge in sales for George Orwell’s...

Letters

Fourth-year English major Ellie Sohm was invited to present the results of her archival work on William Faulkner’s letters to his daughter at the annual Center for Faulkner Studies conference.

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Fall Convocation

Jerome McGann, the John Stewart Bryan Professor of English, was this year’s recipient of the highest honor given to University faculty, the Thomas Jefferson Award for Excellence in Scholarship.

 

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Stephen Railton’s Digital Yoknapatawpha project has received a three-year, $286,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Division.

Read more aboout the project in...

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Rita Felski, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English and editor of New Literary History, has been awarded a Niels Bohr Professorship from the Danish National Research Foundation. Felski is one of seven international scholars and...

Caryl

UVA Today spoke to graduate and undergradute creative writers who had the opportunity to learn from acclaimed writer Caryl Phillips during his stay on grounds for the Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence program. Phillips...

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The English Department will welcome Caryl Phillips, the 2016 Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, to Grounds April 11 to 22. He will deliver a reading, lecture, and masterclass, as well as holding one-on-one conferences with...

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon will deliver a poetry reading with commentary entitled “Rising to the Rising: Poetry and Politics in Ireland” at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 16 in the Nau Hall Auditorium (Nau 101). Muldoon is the...

Jeffery Allen

Jeffery Allen, the newest professor in the English Department's Creative Writing Program, talked to UVA Today about writing, teaching, and traveling.

Allen is the author of three works of fiction: the acclaimed 2014 novel Song of the Shank...

Ralph Cohen

The English Department remembers longtime professor Ralph Cohen (b. February 23, 1917, d. February 22, 2016), an eminent educator, editor, and literary critic. Cohen joined the UVA faculty in 1967 and retired 42 years later as the William R....

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Professor Anna Brickhouse has been named the winner of the Modern Language Association's forty-sixth annual James Russell Lowell Prize for her book The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco,...

Parchment

Professor Bruce Holsinger has led an investigation into the origins and composition of parchment, specifically the variety called "uterine vellum." Holsinger, in collaboration with British scientists Sarah Fiddyment and Matthew Collins from the...

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Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is turning 150 this year, and Professor Peter Baker, a scholar of medieval literature, has contributed to the celebration with a translation of the book into Old English. In honor of the...

Michael Suarez

President Obama last week nominated Michael F. Suarez, director of the Rare Book School and University Professor at the University of Virginia, to serve on the National Council on the...

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Professor Anna Brickhouse has been awarded the inaugural book prize from the journal Early American Literature for her recent monograph The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco, 1560-1945 (...

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The English Department mourns the loss of Martin C. Battestin, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English (Emeritus), a dear colleague, dear friend, eminent eighteenth-century scholar, and Henry Fielding specialist, who died Friday, May 15, 2015...

Suarez Lecture

The 2015 Lyell Lectures, delivered by University Professor and Rare Book School Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. under the general title "The Reach of Bibliography: Looking Beyond Letterpress in Eighteenth-Century Texts," are now available as...

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Professor Emily Ogden has been given the Cory Family Teaching Award for her "dedicated and innovative teaching of courses in English. The award comes with a $25,000 cash bonus," and she will be honored at Fall Convocation on Friday, October 23,...

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The English Department has awarded its annual departmental scholarships to the following excellent undergraduate majors:

Michael Wagenheim Memorial Scholarship: Elizabeth Ballou, Kelsey Becker, Vanessa Braganza, Daniel Calem, Caelainn...

Lisa Woolfork

Professor Lisa Woolfork has been awarded an All-University Teaching Award for her creative and rigorous commitment to student learning. She received her award alongside other teachers at a ceremony last Wednesday.

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Alison Booth has received a highly competitive Level-II Startup Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Digital Humanities, to support a project entitled Cohorts of Women in Biographical Collections (CWBC)....

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Professor Lisa Russ Spaar has been selected as one of three finalists for Baylor University's 2016 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, the only national teaching award presented by a college or university to...

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Former U.S. Poet Laureate and Commonwealth Professor Rita Dove paid homage to Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison at the March 12 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) annual awards ceremony at The New School in New York City. Professor Dove introduced Ms...

Shakespeare

A committee of English professors were instrumental in attracting William Shakespeare's "First Folio" to the University of Virginia. Eighteen of Shakespeare's plays are known today only because they were included in the “First Folio,” among them...

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English Professor Stephen Cushman has received the state's highest honor for professors, the Outstanding Faculty Award, given by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and Dominion Resources. The award recognizes superior...

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USA Today College ranks the University of Virginia’s English Department as one of the top ten places to get an English degree in the country. Citing outstanding programs and faculty, USA Today notes that students at UVa “have...

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The English Department will host a community reading and discussion event this Wednesday at 7:00pm in the Bryan Hall Faculty Lounge. The Winter Read will bring together undergrads, graduate students, and professors to discuss Mark Haddon’s The...

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Professor Lisa Russ Spaar is one of five finalists for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. These awards are some of the most prestigious American literary awards and are judged by a...

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Author James Salter spoke to UVA Today recently about his time in residence with the UVA English Department's Creative Writing Program. The Kapnick Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Program, established last year in the tradition of...

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Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the recipient of the 2014 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry. The prize was awarded at the 17th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards Celebration on October 18 at...

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If you are an English major or potential English major, come out to The Great English Exposition this Wednesday at 7pm in Bryan Hall 229. This information session, sponsored by the English Department and UVa College Council, will include faculty...

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Professor Gregory Orr spoke to Robin Young on Here and Now about living after an accidental shooting death. Orr reflects on the recent incident in which a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot and killed her instructor at an Arizona firing...

TJ Notes

Professors John O’Brien and Brad Pasanek spoke to UVA Today about their new web application for Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia. The application – developed...

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USA Today interviewed current Poet Laureate of the US and Emeritus Professor of English Charles Wright. You can listen to the story here.

 

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Professor Andrew Stauffer spoke to CBC Radio about Book Traces, his crowd-sourced web project to find drawings, marginalia, photos and anything else in copies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century...

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The Furious Flower Poetry Center’s once-a-decade conference is dedicated this decade to Professor Rita Dove. This gathering of poets and scholars, held at James Madison University, features readings by many of the best established and emerging...

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Professor Gregory Orr reflects in The New York Times on the recent incident in which a nine-year-old girl shot and killed her instructor at an Arizona gun range. Professor Orr, author of 12 books of poetry and a memoir titled...

Salter

This fall, American author James Salter will teach and lecture for the semester as the University of Virginia’s Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer in Residence. The residency, which begins with Salter’s visit, exists to create an open,...

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Professor Paul Cantor explains what Shakespeare can teach us about politics on a new website in the Great Thinkers series. The centerpiece of this website is a set of 25 lectures given by Cantor on...

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UVa Emeritus Professor of English E. D. Hirsh, writes Politico, can be credited with the foundation of the Common Core teaching standards, currently adopted in 43 out of 50 American states. Developed in 2009 by the National Governors...

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PhD candidate Andrew Ferguson was quoted in The Guardian speaking about the works of science-fiction author RA Lafferty. The article credits Ferguson, alongside fellow enthusiast Neil Gaiman, for rekindling interest in Lafferty, described in the...

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Audrey Golden, a recent PhD and lecturer in the English Department, has been named third prize winner in the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest. Contestants include the winners of three dozen book collecting contests held at colleges and...

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Professor Lisa Woolfork's recent summer class on 'Game of Thrones' continues to capture media attention. The following article in the Wall Street Journal gives an in depth look into the class, talking to students about their experiences immersing...

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Walter Sokel (1917-2014)

Walter H. Sokel (b. 17 December 1917, d. 21 February 2014) was Commonwealth Professor of German Literature at the University of Virginia from 1973 until his retirement in 1994. He escaped from his native Austria...

Lisa Woolfork's 'Game of Thrones' class

Professor Lisa Woolfork has garnered a flurry of media attention with her popular 'Game of Thrones' course. The class, offered this summer as a four-week, discussion-based seminar, focuses on the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning HBO series and...

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The Library of Congress will name Charles Wright, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Virginia, America's next poet laureate. Wright, whose work he once described as reckoning with “language, landscape, and the idea of God,” has...

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Jerome McGann, University Professor and John Stewart Bryan Professor of English, has been elected to the American Philosophical Society. He becomes the eighth U.Va. scholar to join the ranks of the country’s first learned society, joining such...

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Professor Andrew Stauffer traveled to Greece as a representative of the Byron Society of America, where he gave a lecture on Byron’s poetry to approximately 200 local citizens of Messolonghi.

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An interview with Professor Bruce Holsinger will air on With Good Reason beginning May 31st to June 6th. You can find broadcast times posted here.

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Anna Ioanes, a PhD candidate in the English Department, has won this year's Zora Neale Hurston prize for best graduate student essay. The competition was held by the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Ioanes's essay is titled "...

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Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English, has released the following statement on Maya Angelou's life and work:

Maya Angelou was indeed a phenomenal woman – rising from the ashes of a childhood that would have...

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At its 313th Commencement on Monday, May 19, 2014, Yale University bestowed an Honorary Doctor of Letters on Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Among Ms. Dove’s fellow honorees are Sir Timothy...

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The 2014-2015 Scholars' Lab graduate fellows include three graduate students from the English Department- Jennifer Foy, Amy Boyd, and Andrew Ferguson.

Jennifer Foy (English), James Ambuske (History), and Emily Senefeld (History) were...

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This year, the UVA quizbowl team consisting of Matt Bollinger (undergrad, English), Tommy Casalaspi (undergrad, English), Evan Adams (grad, law), and Dennis Loo (grad, math) performed the rare feat of uniting the sport's two national titles. On...

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Congratulations to the following English majors who have just been elected to the UVa chapter of Phi Beta Kappa!

Abigail McKenzie Meredith

Emily Rose Sullivan

Kevin Christian Hermann

Morgan Alayna Dresner

Seyed-...

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Laura Goldblatt, a PhD candidate in the English Department, has won the 2013-14 All-University Graduate Teaching Assistant Award in Arts and Humanities.
 

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Professor John O'Brien of the English Department has been awarded the Daniels Family National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship, a three-year appointment. O'Brien describes his project in part thus:

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A C Spearing, William R Kenan, Jr Professor of English, has been awarded the Doctor of Letters (Litt.D) from the University of Cambridge, an honor conferred on those who have achieved the highest national or international prominence in their...

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Professor Bruce Holsinger was on Here and Now to talk about his new novel, A Burnable Book. Holsinger spoke to Robin Young about the bawdiness of medieval England, what he learned about the Middle Ages from the writing process,...

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UVa alumnus Daniel Jones, editor of the popular personal-essay column “Modern Love” in the New York Times, will be in the Bryan Hall Faculty Lounge this Monday, March 24, at 10am for a talk about writing, editing, and love. Jones's new...

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A new track has been added to the undergraduate English major. The undergraduate track in Global English Literature and Culture (GELC) allows students in the English major to extend their study into the widest contexts of...

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The Teaching Awards Committee has honored Professor Stephen B. Cushman with the Cavaliers' Distinguished Teaching Professorship, the highest teaching award at the University. This is the 23rd year of an awards program designed to recognize...

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Eleanor Henderson's first novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is being made into a film. Henderson is a 2005 graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program and began her novel, which captures the straight edge youth counterculture of the 80s,...

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"Forget Tom Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa tower; the hot new super-agent is 14th-century writer Geoffrey Chaucer. Thrill to his daring Middle English rimes! Gasp at his mighty scansion! Here in the pages of Bruce Holsinger’s medieval adventure...

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Professor Brad Pasanek talked to Ploughshares Literary Magazine as part of their "People of the Book" series, a series of interviews charting an informal ethnography of the book. Pasanek fielded questions ranging from how he defines a...

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Professor Jane Alison's newest work, Change Me: Stories of Sexual Transformation from Ovid, has just been released from Oxford University Press. In Change Me, Alison freshly translates and arranges selections from Amores and the Metamorphoses...

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English Department doctoral candidate William Rhodes has been awarded the 2014 Schallek Fellowship by the Medieval Academy of America. Rhodes is working with Professor Elizabeth Fowler on a dissertation entitled "The Ecology of Reform: Land and...

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Jahan Ramazani, Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English, talked to UVA Today about his recent professional accomplishments and service. Ramazani served as one of five judges for this year's National Book Award for Poetry, which was...

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James Seitz, the new director of UVA's academic writing program, spoke to UVA Today about undergraduate writing requirements and the ways they might further enhance the university's educational goals. Seitz, who joined the English...

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Mary Szybist, a graduate of the University of Virginia and former English major, has been awarded the 2013 National Book Award for poetry. Read more about Szybist and her winning work Incarnadine...

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Charles Tyson, a fourth-year student majoring in Political and Social Thought and English, became one of two University of Virginia undergraduates to win a 2014 Rhodes Scholarship. Tyson, who has previously won Wagenheim and Pruden scholarships...

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Professors Elizabeth Fowler, Clare Kinney, and A. C. Spearing went on the air October 9th to talk about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on WTJU's "Soundboard." Professor Kinney read her own translation of a passage, Professor Spearing...

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Professor Gregory Orr discussed his latest collection of poems, River Inside the River, on the PBS NewsHour. Read the full article and listen to excerpts...

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Professor Lisa Russ Spaar was awarded the 2013 Jefferson Scholars Faculty Prize.

In 2005, in connection with its 25th anniversary, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation created the Jefferson Scholars Faculty Prize. The award is meant to foster...

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Commonwealth Professor Rita Dove’s paperback edition of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry will be released on September 24, 2013.

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Commonwealth Professor Rita Dove published her new poem "Trayvon, Redux" on July 16, 2013 in the online magazine The Root.

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Professor Mark Edmundson's piece on the "Ideal English Major" was recently featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Pulitzer Prize-winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States, UVA’s Commonwealth Professor of English Rita Dove will deliver the keynote address at Emory University’s 168th commencement ceremony Monday, May 13, in Atlanta...

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On March 13, 2013, UVa’s Commonwealth Professor of English toured the Children’s Inn and a pediatric unit of the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and gave the NIH’s annual 2013 J. Edward Rall Cultural...

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A team including Professor Stephen Railton were recently awarded one of the NEH's new Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants.

University of Virginia -- Charlottesville, VA
HD 51774, Digital Yoknapatawpha...

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Professor Paul Cantor's article was recently featured in UVA Today's Daily Report. You can read the full article at:...

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This year, U.S. News also conducted new peer surveys and published new rankings for Ph.D. programs in economics, English, history, political science, psychology and sociology – all parts of U.Va.’s...

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On Monday, March 11, English PhD student Joanna Swafford will launch the pre-release of Songs of the Victorians, an archive of parlor and art song settings of Victorian poems, and also a scholarly...

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The ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship supports digitally based research projects in all disciplines of the humanities and related social sciences. It is hoped that projects of successful applicants will help advance...

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Rita Dove was one of numerous luminaries to briefly speak at The Peace Ball on January 20, 2013, one of Washington, DC’s more creative big parties over the weekend to celebrate the presidential inauguration. The Peace Ball: Voices of Hope and...

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Yesterday, the announcement about Professor Spearing's new book, Medieval Autographies was posted on UVA Today.

 http://news.virginia.edu/content/shelf-anthony-c-...

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The winter special issue of the Cortland Review focuses on UVA poet Gregory Orr's work, including a video interview and visit to his home. The issue features poets associated with Orr and includes work from our very own Charles Wright, Paul Guest...

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Check out this great Q & A interview in UVA Today about Paul Cantor's new book:

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Paul Cantor, The Invisible Hand in Pop Culture

University Press of Kentucky: http://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2502

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Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English Paul Cantor's new book, The Invisible Hand in Pop Culture was recently reviewed in the Wall Street Journal:

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Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

We are delighted to announce the very recent publication of the 4th edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics with Stephen Cushman as General Editor and Jahan Ramazani as Associate Editor:

Other contributors...

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Graduate student Camilla Ammirati's play "In the Ebb" is currently being performed at the New York International Fringe Festival.

For more information visit http://www...

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Click the link below to hear Professor Andy Stuaffer and other expert readers discuss A. S. Byatt's Possession on the Diane Rehm Show:

http://...

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June 8, 2012 — As the Spanish explored the New World, a ship stopped in the Chesapeake Bay in 1561 and picked up a Native American youth, whom they took back to Spain. Baptized Don Luis de Velasco, he became an educated translator. In 1570, he...

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When University of Virginia fourth-year students Allison Geller and Sarah Grigg took a workshop on the poetics of place with English professor Lisa Russ Spaar, they wrote about some unusual details on the...

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Rita Dove, one of the nation's most preeminent poets, has published a novel, a play, a book of short stories and nine collections of verse, including one that was awarded the Pulitzer...

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Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove was recently given what may be the biggest honor -- and challenge -- of her career: sorting through poems from the last 100 years to create "The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American...

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The Thomas Jefferson Award is the highest honor the University community bestows upon its faculty.  Ramazani was honored with the award recognizing excellence in scholarship, established in 2009 by the Alumni Board of Trustees of the University...

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"Make it new!" exhorted Ezra Pound, the expatriate American poet and key figure in the Modernist movement of the early 20th century.

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"You can't imagine the U.S. without including the South," said Jennifer Greeson, author of "Our South: Geographic Fantasy and the Rise of National Literature," published by Harvard University Press last fall and recently named winner of the C....

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Dove was recognized for her 2009 book, "Sonata Mulattica," the story of African-Polish violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower.

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