Laura Dassow Walls, a distinguished scholar of 19th century American literature and culture, will join the Notre Dame faculty in fall 2011 as the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English. Her arrival, notes Professor John Sitter, chair of the Department of English, is the latest in a series of recent hires that have been critical to the growth of the department.
Declan Kiberd, one of Ireland’s most prominent intellectuals, has been appointed Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.
You can find Notre Dame graduates with degrees in English almost everywhere—and not just working in the classroom as teachers or professors. Indeed, according to a survey of alumni, they are thriving in a broad range of professions. Consider, as just one example, the members of a virtual departmental dynasty: brothers Greg ’87, Jeff ’89, and Mark Miller ’05. All three received English degrees before moving into careers that include finance, medicine, publishing, and higher education.
Pride in his cultural heritage and a love of literature prompted senior English major Matthew Coyne to delve into the origins of the Appalachian literary journal Cold Mountain Review last summer—a research project he then expanded into a senior thesis on influential regional writers.
To Steve Tomasula, literature is the “wild west” of the arts today. “As an artistic medium, the revolution that’s gone through music and the visual arts is now happening in books,” said Tomasula, an associate professor in the Notre Dame Department of English and director of its Creative Writing Program.
Three English professors at the University of Notre Dame—Stephen M. Fallon, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, and Peter Holland—have been singled out for their outstanding scholarship. “Any of the three major honors accorded to these professors would alone be welcome news for Notre Dame—together they signal the highest distinction,” says Professor John Sitter, chair of the Department of English.
Women in the Department of English accounted for three of the four American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) fellowships the University of Notre Dame received in 2010. The recipients include John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Associate Professor of EnglishSusannah Monta, Assistant Professor Katherine Zieman and Ph.D. candidate Hilary Fox.
Recent books from the Department of English faculty.