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.
Jeffery Allen, the newest professor in the English Department's Creative Writing Program, talked to UVA Today about writing, teaching, and traveling.
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 select undergraduate and graduate students. His reading will take place April 14 at 5:00 PM, in the Special Collections Auditorium, followed by a reception. The lecture will be April 21 at 5:00 PM, also in the Special Collections Auditorium.
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 featured guest and keynote speaker for the “Terrible Beauty” conference hosted by UVA’s Graduate English Students Association. The conference marks the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland and invites new takes on the relation of aesthetics to politics. Muldoon’s talk is free and open to the public.
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 led a master class for graduate and undergraduate students and held one-on-one consultations with M.F.A. and undergraduate prose writers.
Phillips will give a lecture about James Baldwin on Thursday, April 21, at 5 p.m., in the auditorium of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.
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 researchers to receive the professorship, and the only recipient in the humanities. Under the terms of Felski’s professorship, she will spend her fall semesters at the University of Southern Denmark over the next five academic years.
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 UVA Today.
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.
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.
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.
![MOSQUITOES [by William Faulkner]](https://english.as.virginia.edu/sites/default/files/styles/publication_crop__180x250_/public/vander2.jpg?itok=GThOGUy6)
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