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. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of English; he founded New Literary History, the award-winning journal of theory and interpretation, in 1969 and edited it for 40 years.
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, 1560-1945 (Oxford, 2014). The prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the profession, is awarded annually for an outstanding work—a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography—written by a member of the association.
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 bioarchaeology department at the University of York in the United Kingdom, brought together international collaborators from several disciplines across the humanities and the natural sciences to look into what uterine vellum was actually made of.
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 sesquicentennial, Jon Lindseth, head of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, recruited translators including Baker to contribute to his three-volume Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The Translations of Lewis Carroll’s Masterpiece. The collection includes a bibliography of translations and essays about many of them.
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 Humanities, the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The council comprises 26 distinguished private citizens appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, with each member serving staggered six-year terms. Suarez is one of four nominees.
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 (Oxford University Press). Read the full release from EAL below:
Early American Literature Announces Winners of Inaugural Book Prize
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 podcasts at www.rarebookschool.org/lyellpodcasts.
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, at age 85. A service was held on Wednesday, May 20th at St. Paul's, Ivy. He is survived by his wife and research collaborator Ruthe Battestin.
His full obituary can be found at the Daily Progress.
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 Carney, Zoey Dorman, Alexa Hazel, Claudia Heath, Andrea Mendoza Perez, and Alex Scheinman.
Peter and Phyllis Pruden Scholarship: Emily Blase, Hillary Hylton, Charlie Micah Jones, Christine Kim, and Tanner Pruitt.
William and Charlotte Savage Scholarship: Erik Moyer, Christina Paek, and Melanie Schmidt.
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, 2015, at 2:00 in the John Paul Jones Arena.
![MOSQUITOES [by William Faulkner]](https://english.as.virginia.edu/sites/english.as.virginia.edu/files/styles/publication_crop__180x250_/public/vander2.jpg?itok=CRKFR0a2)
Sunday, April 28th
Emeritus Professor Chris Tilghman reads from his new novel, On the Tobacco Coast
Wednesday, May 1st
Thursday, May 2nd
Friday, May 3rd
