The English Department has numerous events, talks, and workshops throughout the year, for students, alumni, and community members.
The English Department, in collaboration with The Sewanee Review, the Mountain Goat Literary Journal, the Sewanee Literary Society, and the Sewanee Writing House, are pleased to offer lots to do in Sewanee, and remotely!
Please check at our event calendar and subscribe (Google calendar: english@sewanee.edu):
Poetry Reading by Robert Wood Lynn
On Monday, October 6, at 4:30 PM in the McGriff Alumni House, poet Robert Wood Lynn will read from his collection Mothman Apologia (Yale University Press). This reading is free and open to the public. Lynn's poetry is a moving investigation of myth and loss in Appalachia, in the context of the opioid crisis.
"Editing Politics" with Mike Peed
Thursday, October 16
5:30-6:30 PM
The Social Lodge
Mike Peed, a Sewanee English alumnus, was the Politics editor at The New York Times from 2023-25, and has recently moved to the Culture desk. He has previously worked at the The New Yorker. An article he wrote for that magazine on a blight destroying the world's banana crops was cited by the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. He has also edited at Men's Journal, and he began his career at National Journal, in Washington. Come hear him speak about his experience editing in an era of high stakes political journalism.
New Poem Published by Professor Whiteside
Professor Jim Whiteside's poem, "Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature" was recently published in POETRY.
PROFESSOR BILL ENGEL TO SPEAK AT SORBONNE UNIVERSITÉ ON POE
In the closing panel leading into the plenary address of the 4th International Poe and Hawthorne Conference (1:45-3:15 on July 4, 2025), Professor Engel will speak on “Embodied Cognition in Poe and Montaigne: Imagining Feline Consciousness” at Sorbonne Université International Conference Center.
Poetry Reading by Dr. Su Cho
Dr. Su Cho will be reading from her debut book of poems, The Symmetry of Fish, on April 9th at 4:30pm in the Torian Room.
"Tales Told out of School" - The 2025 Haines Lecture by Hortense Spillers
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
4:30pm
Convocation Hall
Writing with the Land Reading and Workshop
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
5:00pm-6:00pm
St. Mark's Community Center & Garden (481 Alabama Ave.)
Shingai Njeri Kagunda is an Afrosurreal/Futurist storyteller from Nairobi, Kenya. Her work focuses on land sovereignty and reparative narratives. She will be reading from her story "Air to Shape Lungs: and leading a workshop on writing with the history of Sewanee.
The European Marriage Pattern: Demographic Realities and Literary Implications
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
4:30pm
Naylor Auditorium
The patterns of marriage in the Early Modern Period can be mined for stories and data – how can these work together?
Dr. Jaime Harker, Professor of English and Director of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi, will deliver a lecture, Envisioning a Queer and Feminist South, Thursday, February 6, 2025 4:30 PM - Naylor Auditorium, Gailor Hall.
The lecture is free and open to the public; all are welcome.
Sponsored by The Department of English and Creative Writing, The Center for Southern Studies, Q and A House and the WIC, The Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and the University Lectures Committee.
Dr. Stephanie Batkie Won the Medieval Academy of America's Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies.
Dr. D. Berton Emerson, Sewanee alum and Associate Professor of English at Whitworth
University, will deliver a public lecture titled American Literary Misfits: The Case of
Southwestern Humor, Its Common Men, and Present-Tense Democracy, on Monday 11/18 at
5pm in the Torian Room at the duPont Library.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction, Erica Hussey, has sold her debut novel, Hafa Adai! It will be coming out from Curbstone in 2027. Congratulations!
Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry Jim Whiteside conducted an interview with poet Matthew Gelman for The Adroit Journal. Gellman's debut book, Beforelight, won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was published by BOA Editions earlier this year. It's a tender exploration of the intersections of gender, sexuality, family, and place.
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
4:30pm
Torian Room - duPont Library
Sayantani Dasgupta: Reading from her latest essay collection, Brown Women Have Everything: Essays on (Dis)comfort and Delight (UNC 2024), and in conversation with Heidi Siegrist, author of All Y'all: Queering Southernness in US Fiction 1980-2020 (UNC 2024).
Join us for a talk with Brian Selznick in Convocation Hall on Tuesday, October 8th at 5:00. He will discuss storytelling, the power of images, and adapting stories from one medium into another. All are welcome. The talk will be followed by a book signing.
The Friends of the Library is hosting an event on Tuesday, October 15 at 5:00 pm in the Torian Room featuring Dudley Delffs and Bessie Gantt, C'98. They are both ghostwriters and will share their experiences as behind-the-scenes collaborators for their many bestselling
clients.
Authors Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel will read from their co-authored novel Dayswork at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept 19, in Naylor Auditorium.
Come see a studio production of Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder's new play Zelda in the Backyard
Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 at 7:00PM
Friday, Sept. 20, 2024 at 7:00PM
Tennessee Williams Center Studio Theatre
Reserve your tickets
There will be a reading of The Untitled Measure for Measure Project
a new play-in-progress by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder
Saturday, Sept. 22 at 3:00PM
Tennessee Williams Center Studio Theatre
No reservations required
Sewanee English faculty Stephanie Batkie and Bill Engel published articles in the recent special issue of the South Atlantic Review (Summer 2024), coedited by Bill Engel and James Ross Macdonald.
For a closer look at the journal, please click here.
After finishing his English major and Sewanee, and then working at the Paris Review and the Sewanee Review, Carlos moved to New York and began pursuing opportunities in publishing. He is now working as an editorial assistant at Viking Books at Penguin Random House. Congratulations, Carlos!
On April 17, at 7 PM in Naylor Auditorium in Gailor Hall, Sewanee Poet-in-Residence Stephanie Choi will read from her brand-new collection, The Lengest Neoi, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. There will be a reception and book signing after the event. The event is free and open to the public, and copies of The Lengest Neoi will be available for purchase.
On April 11, 2024 at 11 AM in the Torian Room, duPont Library, Dr. Anne O'Neil-Henry (Georgetown University) will offer a lecture, "Solar Power, Algeria, and the 1878 Universal Exhibition of Paris." The lecture is free and open to the public.
On April 10, 2024 at 4:30 PM in the Torian Room in duPont Library, Dr. Nathan Hensley (Georgetown University) will offer a lecture, "George Eliot in the Age of Climate Breakdown." The lecture is free and open to the public.
At the Annual Teal Awards Ceremony on March 5th at 5pm in Convocation Hall, the English and Creative Writing Department was honored with "The Idealist Department Award" for 2021-22. The "Teal Awards" were designed to recognize at least nine honorees on an annual basis. These honorees make and have made contributions to our campus in ways that encourage our collective values while working to prevent sexual harm. The English and Creative Writing Department is committed to working to prevent harm and create a welcoming environment for all students. We are honored, and much thanks to the Title IX Office for creating these awards!
As part of his sabbatical activities, Professor Engel has published an article based on his remarks at the 17th International Connotations Symposium in Ellwangen, Germany, sponsored by the University of Tübingen.
Click here to read the essay.
Click here to learn more about Professor Engel's teaching and research.
The Writing House presents Coffee and Conversation with Sewanee Poet-in-Residence Stephanie Choi, Friday, February 23, at 3 PM, at Stirlings. Come, drink and eat, and chat about poetry, creative writing as a profession, and Stephanie's new project.
As part of his sabbatical research agenda, Professor Engel will work with rare materials at The Huntington Library (and later this semester at The Newberry Library in Chicago), on his current book project, At the Limits of the Visible: Cognitive Ecologies in the Premodern Paperworld.
Find out more about Professor Engel's teaching and research here.
Thursday, February 15
4:30pm
Naylor Auditorium - Gailor Hall
A conversation with Barbara McAdams.
Barbara has crafted numerous professional and collegiate theatrical productions that center social justice and social change, including:
The Laramie Project (with Tectonic), #HereToo Project (Gun Violence Prevention youth activism at Western Washington Univ, Penn State and Columbia College Chicago), and others tackling topics from climate action, domestic violence, Equity, Inclusion and Diversity.
As part of his sabbatical activities, and in connection with visits to the Huntington Library and the Marco Institute to advance his research, Professor Engel has signed on to work with graduate students at UC-Irvine and UT-Knoxville using a program he has designed called "The Early Modern Paperworld: situating a research agenda." Learn about his lecture at UC-Irvine's School of Humanities on February 16, 2024, "Living with Death in Shakespeare's England," Find out more on Professor Engel's teaching and research.
Poet-in-Residence Stephanie Choi's debut poetry collection, The Lengest Neoi, has not yet been published by University of Iowa Press (pub. date: May 6), but it is already gathering buzz. It recently made the list of poetry books to read in 2024 on LitHub, alongside poets such as Anne Carson, Diane Seuss, Reginald Shepherd, Li-Young Lee, and Jean Valentine.
CS Shushok (C'24), an English and Geology major, published an opinion piece entitled, "I am a nonbinary young person in Tennessee: My dress is not drag" in the Tennessean, which was then picked up by national outlets.
Please join the Sewanee Review in celebrating Patricia Smith, recipient of the 2023 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. Events are scheduled for September 26 and 27.
This year, our Haines Lecturer will be the professor and critic Scott Newstok. He will deliver the 30th Haines Lecture, entitled "How to Think Like Shakespeare (and Other Humans)," on Tuesday, October 10, 2023 at 4:30 PM, in Convocation Hall.
Professor Elyzabeth Wilder has won the prestigious Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship. The Tennessee Arts Commission awards the Individual Artist Fellowship annually to recognize and acknowledge outstanding professional Tennessee artists who add to the state’s cultural vitality. Wilder is one of just five artists named as this year’s fellows.
Come to the Social Lodge on Thursday, September 14 at 6:45PM for a flash songwriting session with members of the Writing House and the University Choir.
Dr. Engel contributed Chapter 10 in Memory and Affect in Shakespeare's England, edited by Jonathan Baldo and Isabel Karremann (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Dr. Jennifer Michael's article, The Children Will Listen: The Blakean World of 'Into the Woods,' was published on the literary site, The Millions in June of 2023. It views the popular Sondheim musical through the lens of William Blake's poetry. You may read the full article.
Attend a virtual version of a roundtable on the Artes Moriendi (Death Arts), an important Medieval and Renaissance cultural practice, featuring Sewanee professor Dr. William Engel, June 22, 2023, 12:30pm-3:00pm CDT (5:30pm-8:00pm GMT).
Translating between languages is a complex process, but what is it to translate across drastically different cultures? Three Sewanee professors, Paul Holloway (Classics and Ancient Christianity), Juyoun Jang (English), and Stephanie McCarter (Classics), will discuss their translation projects in Naylor Auditorium at 7 PM, April 25.
Dr. Patrick Elliot Alexander, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies, University of Mississippi, and Co-founder and Director, University of Mississippi Prison-to-College Pipeline Program, will deliver a lecture on Tuesday, April 11, entitled, "From 'Genuine Solidarity' to Radical Togetherness: Student-Centered and Student-Led Learning Communities at Parchman and Beyond."
The lecture, in Naylor Auditorium in Gailor Hall, is at 7 PM. It is free and open to the public.
Two Sewanee students in Professor Elyzabeth Wilder's playwriting course, Carson Mendheim ('25) and Sofia Tripoli ('26) attended the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Young Southern Writers Program over Spring Break. Carson won the Critics Choice Award!
Please join Dr. Juyoun Jang's class for Lectures in African-American Poetry throughout the semester.
Open to All Students, Faculty, and Staff
These are guests lectures in Dr. Juyoun Jang's ENGL402, a course for students at Sewanee and Maury County Jail
Join on Monday or Wednesday, in person or on Zoom
Gailor 110, 3:30 p.m.-4:45 p.m.
DART will hold a LIVE online info session on February 15th at 7pm EST to discuss careers in community organizing. All Sewanee students and alumni welcome, particularly those graduating before May 2023.
RSVP at www.thedartcenter.org/rsvp
DART trains professional organizers and community organizations how to work for social, economic and racial justice.
In an article on 2022 being the "Year of Gossip," Dr. Jafri, an expert on the uses of gossip in Victorian literature, helped explain why Covid-19 intensified the desire for gossip last year: “I’m not surprised that years of social crisis—in a society that barely qualifies as such—have created an audience for low-stakes sensationalism with a human-interest angle.” So...tell your friends!
Dennis Kezar, who has taught Renaissance Literature at both Vanderbilt University and the University of Utah, will give a lecture entitled, Seeing Feelingly - The Alchemy of Shakespeare's Skeptical Empathy, at 4:30 PM, November 9, in Gailor Auditorium.
In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red and the forthcoming novel The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, will give a reading in Convocation Hall on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 4:30 p.m. In addition, she will be making classroom, workshop, and other program visits. She has received both a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Dr. Anna Foy has received a Sewanee Research Grant to travel to Scotland to examine the extant legal papers of a man named Joseph Knight, an important but mysterious figure from African and Scottish legal history who was granted freedom from enslavement from the Scottish high court in 1788. Born in Guinea, transported as a child to Jamaica, and sold into slavery to John Wedderburn (a Scotsman), Knight eventually met and fell in love with Ann Thompson, a white servant of Wedderburn with whom Knight had a child. After several rounds of appeal, the monumental Knight v. Wedderburn case effectively declared slavery illegal within Scottish borders, even as slavery remained legal in the British colonies. The central goal of Dr. Foy’s project is to examine and transcribe the 40-odd pages of Knight’s legal “memorial” (a kind of autobiographical petition) with an eye to eventual publication. Knight’s case deserves to be better known.
Read a new interview with Kevin Wilson in the New York Times Book Review section here!
This year, our Haines Lecturer will be the poet Natasha Trethewey. She will deliver the 29th Haines Lecture on October 25, 2022 at 4:30 PM PM, in Convocation Hall. It will also be livestreamed on the Sewanee English and Creative Writing Department's YouTube Channel.
Our English and Creative Writing has been creating fiction, poetry, and drama. Below is some of their most recent work.
English faculty have been hard at work writing and editing criticism - here are some of our recent publications! Click to see what has just come out in print.
English Professor Bill Engel has a chapter in the collection Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction
The Sewanee Review presents the 2022 Aiken Taylor Award, October 12-13. Critic Christopher Spaide will lecture on the work of Garrett Hongo, the recipient of the 2022 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, on October 11th at 4:30 PM in Guerry Auditorium; Hongo will receive his award and read from his work on Wednesday, October 12th at 5 PM, in Convocation Hall.
Dr. Jiwei Xiao, who formerly taught Chinese at Sewanee, will deliver a talk entitled "What is a detail?: Reading Chinese Fiction as World Literature." In addition to the lecture, Dr. Xiao will be at the Tower Room upstairs in McClurg at noon for a discussion over lunch.
English Professor Bill Engel has a new book out with Cambridge, The Death Arts in Renaissance England: A Critical Anthology
Novelist Katie Kitamura, whose novel Intimacies was a favorite of best-book lists in 2021, will read at 4:30 PM on Tuesday, August 30th, in Gailor Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. Start the semester off with a reading from one of the nation's best novelists! The event will also be livestreamed - click to find out more.
Memoirist and novelist Justin Taylor will read from his work on September 29th, at 4:30 PM in Gailor Auditorium. Mr. Taylor is also the Director of the Sewanee School of Letters, and, as a Brown Foundation Fellow, is currently teaching The Beginning Narrative Nonfiction Workshop for Sewanee's Creative Writing Program. The event is free and open to the public.
English Professor Bill Engel has written a book on The Printer as Author in Early Modern English Book History: John Day and the Fabrication of a Protestant Memory Art.
Ciona Rouse, a Nashville poet teaching African-American Literary Societies this semester at Sewanee, will read from her poetry at 4:30 PM on Wednesday, April 6, at 4:30 PM in Gailor Auditorium. An award-winning poet, Rouse is also well-known for her electrifying readings.
Kevin Wilson's new novel, Now Is Not the Time to Panic, will be published on November 8, by Ecco. A coming-of-age story, the book focuses on two kids named Frankie and Zeke over the course of a summer.
Dr. Macfie, the Samuel R. Williamson Distinguished University Professor at Sewanee, is working on a memoir, Unlettered, a part of which has been published in the Sewanee Review. Hear her read new material on Thursday, April 7, at 4:30 PM in Gailor Auditorium.
As part of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, poet Jos Charles will read from her poetry, including from feeld, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. The reading will take place April 9, at 1 PM in Gailor Auditorium. Her poems, whose language blend together the ambiguity of Middle English and the punch of text-speak, reckon with youth, desire, and trans experience. In addition to the reading, she will be in conversation with medievalist and trans scholar Dr. Gabriel M.W. Bychowski. This event is co-sponsored by the English Department, the Sewanee Review, and the University Lectures Committee.
Dr. Jennifer Michael (also C'89), in addition to teaching Romantic literature at Sewanee, has recently published some new poetry, including a new chapbook from Finishing Line Press.
On March 23, 2022, at 4:30 PM in Gailor Auditorium, the English Department presents a lecture-workshop with Ralph Cohen, the co-founder of the American Shakespeare Center, a Shakespeare-centered performance group based in Staunton, VA, in the world's only recreation of the Blackfriars Theatre, Shakespeare's indoor performance space. He and actors from ASC will lead students in discussion and performance workshops. No prior acting experience required!
On February 8 at 4:30 in Gailor Auditorium, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novelist Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi will read from her work. The reading will be followed by a reception and book-signing.
Dr. Tucker Publishes a Book: "Unexpected Pleasures"
In February, Clemson University Press will publish Dr. Lauryl Tucker's book, Unexpected Pleasures: Parody, Queerness, and Genre in 20th-Century British Fiction. The book dives into Dr. Tucker's interests in humor, especially the humor that queers conventions both social and literary. You can find the book here, and Dr. Tucker will discuss it at a Dean's Faculty Research Presentation on January 27, from 12:30-1:30 at McGriff Alumni Hall.
Mr. Radney Foster, C’82, Nashville singer, songwriter, author, and actor (and Sewanee English major) will be the Babson Center’s 2022 Humphreys Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Navigating the fluid nature of the music industry, Mr. Foster will share insights of his journey from West Texas to Sewanee to the Music City and will offer wisdom to his success.
Celebrated poet and honorary degree recipient Nikki Giovanni will give a reading from her writings at 4 PM in Convocation Hall, January 13; she will receive her honorary degree the next day during Winter Convocation.
The Mountain Goat is back from break! You can submit online - and come to their reading every first Tuesday of the month, this month at 6 PM, at the Social Lodge!
The English Department and the University Bookstore are joining forces to feature our favorite titles, just in time for holiday shopping! Come to the opening, November 4, from 5-7 PM, and get discounts on books and the Blue Chair Tavern!
If you've ever wondered (or been asked) what you can do with an English degree (besides being a teacher or a writer), we have answers for you from alumna and English major Caroline Morton Huffman (C'86), who has had a long career in business and is looking forward to helping answer your questions. Come chat at 7 PM, Wednesday, Nov 3 at the Social Lodge. This event is sponsored by the English Department and the Babson Center.
Professor Kevin Wilson's most recent novel, Nothing to See Here, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of their Big Read program, where they select 15 books for the year and offer grants to communities to discuss the book that they choose. His short story, "Biology" was selected by Jesmyn Ward for this year's Best American Short Stories.
Are you interested in publishing your work, or working in publishing? Wondering how publishing works in different ways for fiction, poetry, translations, or academic texts? Come to a roundtable on October 22 at 4 PM at the Writing House, featuring William Engel of the English Department, Stephanie McCarter of the Classics Department, Matthew Mitchell of the History Department, Gwen Kirby of the Sewanee Writers Conference, and Eric Smith of The Sewanee Review. This event is organized by the Writing House!
We are very pleased to present Michelle Zauner (aka Japanese Breakfast) in concert and conversation Sunday, April 25 at 4:30 PM. Recording as Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner has released two critically-acclaimed albums, Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet; her third album, Jubilee, will be released June 4, 2021. She is also the author of Crying in H-Mart, a memoir that develops her essay of the same name in the New Yorker. You can read more about the memoir here. This concert is presented by The Mountain Goat Literary Journal, the Writing House, the Asian Languages and Culture House, the Wick, Campus Activities, the Sewanee Review/Dakin Fund, and the Departments of English and Music.
Out of over 550 applicants, English major, Claire Crow, was offered (and accepted) one of 3 positions in the Ph.D. Program in English at Yale to continue her work on depictions of race in medieval romance. She was also accepted with full funding into the Ph.D. program in Medieval Studies at Cornell and into the English Ph.D. programs at Indiana University, The Ohio State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Fordham University. In addition, she was offered positions in the M.A. program in English at NYU and at the University of Birmingham (UK), the M.A. program in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth, and the M.A. program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.
A new Sewanee student run podcast bringing you weekly doses of the medieval world with guest appearances from experts and scholars.
On April 17, at 7 PM in Naylor Auditorium in Gailor Hall, Sewanee Poet-in-Residence Stephanie Choi will read from her brand-new collection, The Lengest Neoi, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. There will be a reception and book signing after the event. The event is free and open to the public, and copies of The Lengest Neoi will be available for purchase.
The First Annual Capstone Reading for Creative Writing graduating majors will take place on Monday, April 22, in Convocation Hall from 6:00 to 7:00 pm.
Poetry: Wyles Daniel and José Diaz
Fiction: Remy Donald, Rylee Higgins, Eleanor Knox, Sarah Crosby McKay, and Stormy Stewart
