Department of English Annual Newsletter 2024
Letter from the Chair
Dear Friends and Alumni,
I typically begin this newsletter with good news, and the English department still has much of that. But it has also been a tough few months for the humanities as many National Endowment for the Humanities grants have been defunded, our international students face an uncertain future on campus, and DEI programs that are dear to our educational mission are under attack. Indeed, it has been a semester of repositioning as we explain the importance of English studies to many audiences. As friends of the department and alumni of our programs, you have assisted us in those efforts. By your very work, you remind others why the humanities—and literary and writing study—matter in our world.
Despite the challenges, as you will see in the pages that follow, the department is doing quite well this year. Let me highlight a few of the notable events and awards that bring me solace in these troubling times, reminders that my colleagues, our students, and the larger mission of the humanities remain strong, resilient, and continue to forge new paths.
Building on my comments last year about English department faculty receiving more teaching awards than any other department, two faculty members are up for the Distinguished Teaching Award: Jimmy Worthy and Rachel Mordecai. Professor Worthy has also been nominated for the College Teaching Award in Humanities and Fine Arts. Continuing our strong mentorship record, Haivan Hoang received an ADVANCE Faculty Peer Mentoring award. Faculty are also being acknowledged for their collaborative and interdisciplinary work. Edie Meidav, Malcolm Sen, and Katherine O'Callaghan have received the UMass ADVANCE 2025 EPiC Award for On Distant Keys, a growing collective of artists, designers, writers, scientists and activists working collaboratively to generate speculative futures in the wake of climate change. Jennifer Normanly, Director of ADVANCE, writes "The On Distant Keys collective's collaboration practices are an inspiring model of creative and inclusive worldmaking that uplifts and expands knowledge across boundaries for participating faculty and all involved.”
Joining us in the fall will be Gabriel Bump, an alumnus of our MFA program. To be able to bring back one of our own to the faculty after he has been so successful elsewhere is a testament to the strength of our MFA. Professor Bump burst onto the literary scene in 2020 with his debut novel Everywhere You Don’t Belong, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, received the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Heartland Booksellers Award for Fiction, and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction. In 2023, he published The New Naturals, which The Atlantic calls a novel “that shows the dark side of Utopia.” I encourage you to read one or both of Professor Bump’s novels.
Many of our faculty writers have been honored this year. Peter Gizzi won the 2024 Massachusetts Book Award for poetry and received the 2024 T.S. Eliot Prize for his collection Fierce Elegy. The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, is considered the most valuable and prestigious prize in the United Kingdom for a new collection of poetry. Sabina Murray’s novel, Muckcross Abbey and Other Stories, was also a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, this for fiction. Martín Espada was named the recipient of the Mass Humanities 2024 Governor’s Award in the Humanities. Espada was selected for his work as a poet, editor, and essayist with a focus on using writing and storytelling to address pressing issues and reclaim historical narratives, including those of the Puerto Rican community in Massachusetts.
Our undergraduate and graduate students are also winning awards for their work. Elena Kalodner-Martin, PhD ’24, received the 2025 Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition (CFSHRC) Presidents Dissertation Award for “Medical Evidence, Expertise, and Experiential Knowledge: A Study of Patients’ Communication Practices on Social Media.” Mia Klotz, one our undergraduates, has been selected as a 2024-2025 UMass Amherst Rising Researcher. Very few humanities majors receive this award, making Mia’s accomplishments all the more outstanding. Hannah Gould, another undergraduate English major and the Kinney Center’s Renaissance of the Earth Fellow, was awarded the Chancellor’s Gerald F. Scanlon Student Employee of the Year Award in recognition of her outstanding research and public humanities projects at the Kinney Center. Hannah is the only HFA student this year to be awarded this honor.
In difficult times, it is our students who inspire me and remind me of the dynamic possibilities realized through English studies. I hope these examples, and the achievements described in the pages that follow, highlight the bright future of our department and the many ways our work strengthens and uplifts the community.
—Donna LeCourt, Chair, Department of English
New Faculty
Brenna Casey
Brenna M. Casey joined the faculty in the Department of English in the Fall of 2023. Her research and teaching interrogate the transnational routes of American literature and visual culture during the long nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She is currently at work on a book project that tracks the collusion of early photography with the consolidation of racial categories and governmental border controls during the first hundred years of the medium.
Professor Casey received BAs in English and Hispanic Studies from Boston College; an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame; and a PhD with a certificate in Feminist Studies from Duke University. Previously she taught in the Department of English and the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, the Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and English at Wake Forest University; and the English Department at Kenyon College.
Her academic work has appeared in ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth Century American Studies, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, and African American Review. Her public-facing work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, The Assembly, and The New York Times, among others.
Desiree C. Bailey
Desiree C. Bailey joined the faculty at UMass Amherst’s MFA for Poets and Writers in the Fall of 2024. Previously she was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Clemson University. Professor Bailey is the author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press) which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. What Noise Against the Cane was also a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the T.S. Eliot Four Quartets Prize, was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and was selected as one of the Best Books of 2021 by the New York Public Library.
Professor Bailey is also the author of the short fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O’Clock Press). Her work has been published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Short Fiction, and Callaloo. She has received fellowships and residencies from Princeton in Africa, the Norman Mailer Center, Kimbilio Fiction, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Poets House, The Conversation, and the James Merrill House. She is a recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts award and the Poets & Writers’ Amy Award.
Undergraduate Studies
Greetings from Undergraduate Studies, the beating heart of the UMass English Department. We’ve had a year marked by transitions and new beginnings, full of life, and, as always, full of poetry, novels, teaching, thinking, and writing projects in all their many multiples. We said goodbye to our long-time Chief Undergraduate Advisor, Janis Greve, who retired, along with our former Department Chair Randall Knoper (AKA Janis’ husband), after years of teaching and mentoring our students. We said hello to our new Chief Undergraduate Advisor, Jennifer Minnen, who has already begun to fill the corner office in South College with the same light Janis brought. And through it all, Celeste Stoddard remains a steady beacon for our entire community, generously giving of that most valuable commodity — a deep understanding of UMass and our students — helping all of us navigate through our time together.
Our students continue to amaze us, engaged as ever with the world that surrounds them, thinking, talking, writing, standing up for what they feel is right, and getting ready in all kinds of ways to face the challenges and opportunities of life outside of UMass. Newer classes – like Environment, Climate Change, and the Humanities with Professor Sen, and Black Women Novelists with Professor Gerzina — have helped the department look forward into the future of writing and teaching, while familiar favorites, like the History of the English Language with Professor Harris, James Joyce with Professor O’Callaghan, and Native American Literature with Professor Furlan link past and present together for our students interested in the long histories that shape our written landscape. Our Creative Writing, Professional Writing, and Teaching English Literature classes all continue to be extremely popular as well. Approximately 1,700 students across campus enrolled in our courses last year. We are proud to be a vital and popular destination for students across UMass, even after the decision was made some years back to halve the General Education Arts and Literature requirements from two courses to one.
The milestones and traditions of the year carry us forward as well. Our crowded yearly awards ceremony at the Old Chapel in May celebrated friends, family, graduates, and the gifts of financial support we are lucky enough to award each year, all made possible by the generosity of our alums. Our English Opportunity Fellowships, given to deserving students who need assistance to pursue internships, to support research projects, or to participate in study abroad programs they would not otherwise be able to afford; our awards like the Maginnis and Ploussios and Loughman Fellowships for high-achieving, high-need students; our named essay prizes, like the Peters for work in early literature and the Sanderson for work across time and place — all of these and more are both a tribute to the students who apply for them and to our community that has formed and lasted first in Bartlett Hall and now in South College, to say nothing of our graduates all over the world.
And I personally, currently serving as Undergraduate Program Director, will not soon forget the many smiles and handshakes and occasional hugs I received on stage during the HFA commencement ceremony, as the names of newly minted English Major graduates were read out loud, and greeted by cheers. I cannot wait to hear more cheering soon. The world at present is not being kind to artists, scholars, teachers, readers, and those of us who value reasoned critical thought and the multivocal, uniquely perspectival challenges and invitations of literary expression. But, like our colleagues around the nation, we refuse to stop fostering and celebrating the many talents and passions of our students in undergraduate studies. We invite you to join us, to remember what you learned with us, and to use it to spread your own kind of light out in the world.
—Adam Zucker, Director of Undergraduate Studies
Undergraduate Studies Spotlight: A Frabjous Anniversary
Jabberwocky is the official, student-run undergraduate literary journal of the English Department. Producing a new issue each spring, Jabberwocky showcases the creativity and talent of our undergraduates. The year 2024 marked the journal’s 30th Anniversary. To Katy Schlaefer, a senior English major specializing in digital humanities and environmental humanities, it seemed an opportune moment to investigate origins. She interviewed Grace Holland, one of the Co-Editors-In-Chief, researched the journal’s storied, three-decade history, and visited Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, where she found a small box that held the first three editions. Katy reports her findings here.
Jabberwocky staff at the 2024 launch party.
Donna LeCourt and a student at the Awards Ceremony. Credit: Dylan Nguyen.
Student awardees at the Awards Ceremony. Credit: Dylan Nguyen.
Students at the Awards Ceremony. Credit: Maya Geer.
English Awards Ceremony.
English Homecoming. Credit: Dylan Nguyen.
Students at the Awards Ceremony. Credit: Maya Geer.
Graduate Studies
In fall of 2024 we welcomed an unusually large and accomplished incoming class of thirteen MA/PhD and PhD students.
Many of our grads achieved important milestones in 2024. Four students defended their dissertations and received their PhDs. Nine students passed their area exams and began work on their dissertation. And two students passed their advisory or qualifying exam. Over the course of the year many students published new work across a variety of venues and gave presentations at national and international conferences. Nine of our advanced doctoral students were awarded summer dissertation fellowships from the department, three were the inaugural recipients of Dissertation Completion Fellowships from the Graduate School, and one received a fellowship with the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project.
The English Graduate Organization organized another active year of professional, social, and scholarly programming, including a Methods Symposium in November that served as a precursor to the graduate conference in Spring 2025.
The past year also saw some major transitions in the graduate program. In January of 2024 Wanda Bak retired from her position as secretary for the graduate studies office, a role she had held for more than forty-five years. We were very sad to see her leave us as Wanda was foundational to so much of our operation. Her departure dealt a significant blow to the office, but we were fortunate to have the exceptional Celeste Stoddard sustain us in the initial weeks, followed by the temporary services of Nancy Caldwell who labored far beyond expectation to organize our efforts. In the late summer Brianna Mason joined us in a permanent capacity and we are grateful for her presence. I want to thank them all for their work, and to acknowledge Wanda’s many years of devotion to our department. I also want to thank the Associate Graduate Program Director, Caroline Yang, for her assistance organizing events and providing crucial career support to our students. I stepped down from my position in the end of 2024 for a family leave, so finally I want to acknowledge my successor, Mazen Naous, who took up the role mid-stream and has kept the program alive and flourishing.
—Daniel Sack, Director of Graduate Studies
Graduate students at the Methods Symposium.
Graduate students.
Graduate students at an EGO event.
Graduate Commencement.
Graduate students at an EGO social event.
English graduate student orientation.
A grad student in commencement regalia at a podium.
Graduate students at the Composition and Rhetoric program's Connection Day.
MFA for Poets and Writers
In 2024, the MFA for Poets and Writers turned 60 and we were delighted to accept an outstanding cohort of poetry and prose writers into a program defined by our commitment to new and diverse writing and 100% funding for incoming students. We also welcomed faculty member Desiree Carla Bailey as an Assistant Professor of Poetry to the program. From Trinidad and Tobago, and Queens, NY, Desiree is the author of What Noise Against the Cane, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.
Last year, Ryan Mihaly joined the MFA as Program Coordinator. A Hampshire College alum with an MFA in poetry from Naropa, Ryan is a musician and (recently) a new dad! Congratulations to Ryan and Karolina on the birth of their daughter, Amalia, in January 2025.
In celebration of the program's 60th, Ryan and MFA Program Director and Provost Professor, Edie Mediav produced the Fall 2024 Visiting Writers Series featuring MFA alumni Gabriel Bump, Andrea Lawlor, Dorothea Lasky, and Lisa Olstein. The 2024 Juniper Literary Festival further highlighted MFA alumni with readings and panels. Festival readers included Eric Baus, Rachel B. Glaser, Yvette Ndlovu, and Susan Straight.
Honoring the 60th anniversary, the UMass Magazine featured six decades of publications by poets and prose writers from the program. In addition to the impressive publications by our alumni, it’s inspiring to see the work they are committed to in the world. From presidents of community health foundations and high school teachers, poet laureates and lawyers, editors, content strategists and data managers, MFA alumni positively impact communities around the globe. They are communicators and advocates, changemakers and opinion shapers.
Even before they graduate, students like Ide Thompson make an impact in the literary arts. In 2024, Ide worked at the Library of Congress in the Archives, History and Heritage Advanced Internship Program on the Mary Church Terrell papers. There, Ide helped create At the Table an interactive art project and interface to support creatives, writers, and poets during the generative process of creative writing.
As we start our 61st year, we welcome Sabina Murray back from England where she was researching her next novel about T.E. Lawrence. In January, the T. S. Eliot Foundation selected Peter Gizzi as winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Fierce Elegy, published by Penguin Poetry. Jeff Parker’s new novella, G v P, is out in Proper Imposters, a book of novellas by four different authors. Abby Chabitnoy is strengthening collaborative relationships across disciplines and taking poems from her third poetry collection off the page to build community through performance poetics. The final vision for her collection is still in progress, but she hopes to include film elements and communal workshops for which she conducted research last summer visiting her ancestral homelands of Unalaska.
Looking to next fall, we are excited to announce that MFA alum, Gabriel Bump will join the prose faculty. Bump is the author of Everywhere You Don’t Belong which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction, and the Heartland Booksellers Award for Fiction. Gabe’s second novel, The New Naturals, was a 2023 New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book and a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year.
We look forward to hearing from our alumni and hope you will share your accomplishments on the MFA’s new LinkedIn page and by tagging the program so we can amplify your work on our social media platforms.
—Jennifer Jacobson, Director, Community Engagement
Error by MFA alum David Greenspan.
MFA Gradfest.
Reading at MFA Gradfest.
MFA winners at the Awards Ceremony. Credit: Dylan Nguyen.
Gabriel Bump reading in the Old Chapel.
Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies
What happens when Shakespeare appears in fragments or as momentary flashes across history? How do a diverse range of authors, playwrights, and political activists imagine conversations with Shakespeare?
In 2023-2024 the Kinney Center joined in collaboration with the W. E. B. Du Bois Library to explore these questions in a campus-wide exhibit: Shakespeare Unbound. The exhibit featured selections from the Ron and Sarah Gillespie Collection, the Robert S. Cox Special Collections, and showcased the works of William Shakespeare, W. E. B. Du Bois, Phillis Wheatley, and contemporary playwrights. The Gillespie collection, now on permanent loan to the Kinney Center, contains nearly-lost extracts from the First Folio, three rare folio editions of the plays (1632, 1663, 1685), Shakespeare’s Poems (1640), and a diverse array of materials that trace the history of Shakespeare’s plays—on page, stage, and film—from the Restoration through to the Twentieth Century. Closer to home, the collection also features the first printed Shakespeare play in America: Hamlet, published in Massachusetts in the year 1794.
Throughout the year, rotating exhibits explored various themes: the story of the print revolution in Renaissance Europe; the use of Shakespeare in prison education programs across America; and how tempests, oceans, shipwrecks and imaginary water-worlds have been the source of our reflections on a changing climate. Students from across campus and the Five Colleges engaged in classes and hands-on workshops led by a team of interdisciplinary scholars at UMass.
In 2025, the Kinney Center inaugurated the Gillespie Curatorial Fellowship in Shakespeare and the Book. This innovative fellowship offers opportunities to learn all aspects of curatorial practice from developing research questions, to creating exhibition materials, and collaborating with scholars and librarians to produce a special exhibit that tells new stories in the study of Shakespeare and the book. We welcomed Ayesha Mukherjee as our first curatorial fellow. A sophomore, double-majoring in English and Anthropology, Ayesha has a keen interest in book-binding practices (as a book binder herself), performance history, and museum studies.
We thank the Gillespies for their generosity in supporting this visionary fellowship and welcome undergraduate and graduate students from across disciplines to apply next fall.
To learn more about our collection and upcoming opportunities for engagement, visit the Kinney Center's website. Or, stop by! We’re open M-F 9:30-4:30 and would love to welcome you to our library, gardens, and galleries.
—Marjorie Rubright, Director, Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies
Private collector, Ron Gillespie meets with students at the opening reception for Shakespeare Unbound.
This case from Shakespeare Unbound features rare materials from Phyllis Wheatley and other early American women writers in conversation with Shakespeare’s works.
Shakespeare Unbound engaged with questions of Shakespeare performance across time, homing in on Othello.
The title page for Hamlet, the first Shakespeare play printed in America in 1794.
Oxford Summer Seminar
The 57th annual Oxford Summer Seminar, hosted at the welcoming Keble College, once again flourished during the summer of 2024. This year, 41 enthusiastic seminarians from UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and UMass Boston came together to experience the enchanting surroundings of Oxford. They relished the tranquil beauty of University Parks and the vibrant atmosphere of the iconic Lamb and Flag Pub, all within a short stroll from the bustling Broad and Cornmarket streets.
Keble College, known for its striking nineteenth-century architecture and its brick pattern design often lovingly compared to lasagna, provided the perfect backdrop for our tradition of academic excellence and a strong sense of community. The program utilized a unique structure of "houses," named after Keble’s quads—Liddon, Pusey, Hayward, and Newman—to promote friendly competition for the highly coveted “House Cup.”
Under the spirited leadership of our Junior Deans, Seth Jones (BA Political Science, Seminarian 2022, Junior Dean 2023) and Lily Lavier (BA Political Science, Seminarian 2023), alongside our Graduate Assistant, Elise Barnett (Ph.D. candidate in Afro-American Studies), participants engaged in a variety of lively activities. From trivia nights and “Sports Day” to the exhilarating “Amazing Race” in the sweltering English summer heat and weekly photography contests, the program fostered camaraderie and excitement. This year, Newman House, composed of a diverse group of talented seminarians, including Tamishna Alam (Economics/ Commonwealth Honors College), Pratusha Nodouri (Economics/ Commonwealth Honors College), Thomas Scalera (Legal Studies), Alex Holmes (Pre School of Management/ Commonwealth Honors College), Rachel Friedman (Civil Engineering/English), Aili Byron (English/ Public Health), Eli Webber (English/ Commonwealth Honors College), Filippa Olsson (English/ Japanese/ Commonwealth Honors College), Camille Gomez (Art History/ Studio Art), Georgia Berry (UMass Boston/ English/ Anthropology), and Zac Ratté (History), showcased exceptional teamwork and sportsmanship, ultimately winning the coveted House Cup.
The continued support from the Hofer Fund was invaluable, helping seminarians navigate rising travel costs, the increased cost of living in the UK, and fluctuations in currency exchange rates.
Our enriched itinerary featured captivating field trips, including a visit to London in week 2, the historic city of Bath, and the splendid Salisbury Cathedral in week 3, and the breathtaking Blenheim Palace in week 5. During the reading week, many took advantage of their time to explore beyond the United Kingdom, with popular destinations like Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Venice, and the Dolomites.
The academic offerings included highly regarded courses such as "Jane Austen and her Age," led by Dr. Tom MacFaul from Merton College, and "Introduction to International Law," taught by Constantinos Giorkas from Saint-Anne’s College. These courses captivated participants and took place in the cutting-edge H.B. Allen Center at Keble College. A new addition this summer was the course on "Medieval European Women," graciously taught by Dr. Rowena Archer, held at Brasenose College, right in the heart of the city.
Additionally, the seminar hosted four engaging lectures as part of the British Studies Colloquium, encompassing timely topics such as state aggression and the right to life (Mr. Constantinos Giorkas, St. Anne’s College), the history of the Olympic movement (Dr. Andrew “Beau” Beaumont, Hertford College), the representation of women in the postcolonial Caribbean context (Elise Barnett, UMass Amherst), and an exploration of Joan of Arc by Dr. Rowena Archer (Brasenose and Christ Church Colleges). These lectures aligned with the colloquium's theme,
“Transnational Britain,” and were complemented by the Seminar’s renowned Formal Dinners held in the stunning Keble Hall. Additionally, our seminarians had the pleasure of hosting 150 guests from the University of Georgia's Oxford program at one of our formal dinners, rekindling the longstanding relationship we established during our program's previous memorable days at Trinity College.
The 2024 Oxford Summer Seminar was marked by the exceptional caliber and unbridled enthusiasm of its participants, leading to a resounding success. As we embrace our new home at Keble College, we eagerly anticipate expanding and diversifying our offerings to attract a vibrant new generation of scholars for the 58th iteration in the summer of 2025.
—Philippe Baillargeon, Director, UMass Oxford Summer Seminar
Program for Professional Writing and Technical Communication
We’re delighted this year to welcome Jaclyn Ordway as the PWTC program’s teaching associate. Jaclyn is PhD candidate in Composition and Rhetoric, whose interests include activist rhetorics, digital literacies, circulation studies, and writing centers. Her classes have received universal praise from her students, who speak highly of her enthusiasm and concern for their intellectual and academic well-being.
Graduates of the Program for Professional Writing and Technical Communication now number more than 400, making for a professional network spanning many fields and many countries, with graduates working in Germany, Israel, Scotland, and Spain. Each year several return (in person or of late, remotely) and share with current students their perspectives from technical writing and UX design, commercial and academic publishing, law, and medicine.
Among the visiting luminaries this year were Elizabeth Riezinger ’17, now Senior Content Designer at Atlassian, and Nicholas Trieber ’17, currently Technical Writing Team Lead at Cambridge Mobile Telematics.
In 2022 we continued our partnership with UMass Instructional Technologies, providing our students apprenticeships and a practicum while at the same time applying best practices in UX to the university’s learning management systems, with attention to universal design, accessibility, and design justice. This year we also continued another interdepartmental collaboration, as current students interned with Data Science for the Common Good, a jointeffort between the UMass Center for Data Science and nonprofits and government agencies working in public health, education, health and wellness, and environmental conservation.
Job placements from spring through summer and fall were quite robust. That so many new graduates found safe harbor is evidence—as if more were needed—of their high caliber as aspiring professionals. A partial list of 2024 placements is below. Congrats to all!
—Janine Solberg and David Toomey, Co-directors, Program for Professional Writing and Technical Communication
PWTC Grads 2024
Katharine Axon, Associate Grant Writer, MJH Grants
John Baker, Associate Account Manager, Brigade Branding and Design Agency
Grace Beauregard, Commercial Strategy Associate, Wayfair
Kate Bergeron, Technical Writer, Acxiom
Carolyn Ferris, Stage Manager, Gloucester Stage Company
Amy Flynn, Power System Modeling Intern, ISO New England Inc.
Emma Gill, Technical Writer 1, Hayward Industries
Emma Kucich, Technical Writer 1, AstroNova, Inc.
Jacqueline Lutz, Junior Technical Writer, Semperis
Cole Matinzi, Technical Writer, Folia Materials / Zwift contract technical writer
Patrick Metzger, Intern, Office of Senator Lisa Boscola
Antonia Perakis, Marketing and Advertising Specialist, Western Mass News
Shashank Rao, Generative AI Associate, Innodata, Inc.
Lucas Rudd, Technical Writer, Archer Integrated Risk Management
Tyler Nguyen, Technical Writer, Karen Clark and Company
PWTC Spotlight: Lauren Saloio '23
Lauren visited our classes this year and shared her expertise with current PWTC students. She is currently a Research Fellow at UMass Amherst, managing marketing and communications for the Center for Data Science. Upon graduating, Lauren interned at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she provided technical documentation for the Nancy Roman Space Telescope and the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) spacecraft.
PWTC students at the Awards Ceremony.
PWTC 2024 cohort.
PWTC students in commencement attire.
PWTC student Tyler Nguyen.
An alumni guest speaker talks to PWTC students about AI in tech writing.
UMass Writing Program
The UMass Writing Program (WP) is composed of multiple programs that provide quality writing instruction and support for undergraduate students: First-Year Writing (Englwrit111 and 112); Junior Year Writing; and the University Writing Center, which offers one-on-one writing support to campus community members through 45-minute synchronous in-person and online sessions. While the WP is an independent academic unit, many of the English department’s undergraduate majors and graduate students tutor and teach in the WP. For the past forty years, English faculty members have served as WP director on a rotating basis. In 2024, Dr. Tara Pauliny was named permanent, full-time director, and Dr. Aaron Tillman has taken on the role of associate director. The stability of having a permanent director will allow the WP to adapt to new challenges while building on its tradition of excellence.
One challenge–or opportunity–is generative AI. While the focus on process, reflection, and in-class writing have dampened the immediate impact on the 112 curriculum, the WP has taken an active role in considering how AI will affect writing education in the future. Under the leadership of Dr. Pauliny, the WP compiled Teaching Writing in the Age of ChatGPT, a collection of resources for composition teachers. In collaboration with Dr. Janine Solberg in English and colleagues across campus, Dr. Pauliny, Dr. Tillman, Writing Center director Dr. Anna Rita Napoleone, and deputy director Dr. Anne Bello were awarded a mutual mentoring grant focused on writing, teaching, and AI. As the culmination of the grant, the WP hosted Dr. J. Palmeri, Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program at Georgetown University, who presented on “When ChatGPT Fails: Towards A Queer Pedagogy of Writing With, Against, and Beyond AI.”
The WP is also continuing to expand its use of Open Educational Resources. After moving the Student Writing Anthology and Best Text Contest publications online several years ago, the program is developing an open, online reader as the main text for 112. Senior lecturer Dr. Devin Day has led the curriculum committee in reimagining the reader, which will be free to students. At the 2025 Spring Symposium, TOs and instructors learned about open access publishing and then searched for potential readings for the new anthology, so the new collection will reflect the interests of the broader WP community.
The Writing Center (WC) has also been busy this past year, scheduling 4,000 sessions and offering campus-wide workshops on a variety of writing-related topics. The WC continues its ongoing commitment to expanding tutoring practices by conducting monthly professional development staff meetings in the fall and inquiry group sessions in the spring. The fall staff meetings focused on a variety of topics; of particular interest was the increased use of generative AI, which led one of the spring inquiry groups to develop an internal AI guide for WC tutors to support them in their conversations about this evolving technology.
As it moves forward, the WP has continued to recognize its past. The Englwrit 111 award in the Best Text Contest was renamed in memory of former deputy director Marcia Curtis, who died in 2023. The Award for Innovative Teaching has also been named in honor of recently retired associate director of teacher training, Peggy Woods. Two graduate students received the 2025 Woods Awards, and one won the 2025 Mutual Mentoring Award. Having a small, stable leadership team has enabled the WP to be nimble and unified, leading to documented student success and opening doors for innovation.
—Anne Bello, Deputy Director, UMass Writing Program
Recent Books
Faculty Books
William Kentridge, Stephen Clingman. William Kentridge. Dual-language edition in English and Mandarin. Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2024, 265 pp.
In conjunction with the dual-language publication of the catalogue, Emeritus Distinguished University Professor of English Stephen Clingman presented a keynote lecture, “‘The World as Animation’: William Kentridge’s Art of the Boundary,” to mark the opening of the exhibition, “William Kentridge,” at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan.
Peter Gizzi. Fierce Elegy. Wesleyan Poetry Series, 2023.
"Having read Peter Gizzi's work through the immense and singular wingspan his books make, I am still awestruck and dumbfounded as to how these poems are made. This book believes in language. It also offers it the utmost reverence: by lowering it to human height, where the living are. What a masterwork of deft maneuvering within the dynamo Gizzi has made of the lyric."
—Ocean Vuong, author of Time is a Mother
"The title says this collection is one poem, and it is, with its repeated vocabulary, shades-of-winter mood, and virtuoso singing. Amazing single poems. The elegy keeps naming itself, enjoying its form. So you can love it."
—Alice Notley, author of The Descent of Alette
John Hennessy. Exit Garden State. Lost Horse Press/Washington State University Press, 2024.
“Dantean in its depth, redemptively comedic, impassioned and compassionate, spirited and contemplative, Exit Garden State indisputably proves John Hennessy to be among the indispensable poets of his generation.”
—Lawrence Joseph, author of A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems
John Hennessy, co-translator, BABYN YAR: Ukrainian Poets Respond, volume four in the Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, 2023.
Donna LeCourt. Social Mediations: Writing for Digital Public Spheres. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024.
“Social Meditations offers a pressing and important pedagogical intervention. With LeCourt’s astute attention to technologies, identities, and economic realities, the book promises smart analyses in which the author really grapples with the discursive and material complexities of writing for ever-changing digital publics.”
—Jonathan Alexander
Rebecca S. Nowacek, Rebecca Lorimer Leonard, and Angela Rounsaville. Writing Knowledge Transfer: Theory, Research, Pedagogy. Parlor Press, 2023.
Writing Knowledge Transfer: Theory, Research, Pedagogy develops a capacious understanding of transfer in writing studies, tracing the distinct ways transfer has been engaged in various disciplinary fields and drawing connections among similar threads of inquiry.
Sabina Murray. Muckross Abbey and Other Stories. Grove Press, 2023.
“I binge-read this book, savoring the gothic creepiness at the heart of each tale. Packed with compelling, nuanced lives and the deaths that haunt them, each story is a séance—an invitation for unsettled spirits to let their presence be known, ‘desperate for someone to supply the narrative.’ Murray supplies it with great style and an uncanny knowingness, leaving room for our imagination to fill in the suggestive spaces with our own dark dread.”
—Mona Awad, author of All’s Well
Daniel Sack. Cue Tears: On the Act of Crying. University of Michigan Press, 2024.
“Cue Tears is a rich and movingly autobiographical meditation on weeping in theater, performance art, and academia. Daniel Sack’s finely wrought essays investigate how the spectacle of weeping dissolves many of our presumed distinctions—real/staged, authentic/artificial, willed/involuntary, private/public— inherited from traditional discourses of sentiment.”
—Andrew Sofer
Christina Santana, Roopika Risam, Aldo Garcia Guevara, Joseph Krupczynski, Cynthia Lynch, John Reiff, Cindy Vincent. Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices. Campus Compact, 2023.
Anti-racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices centers anti-racist community-engaged traditions that BIPOC academics and community members have created through more than a century of collaboration across university and community. It demonstrates both the progress and the work that still needs to be done.
Malcolm Sen, Julie McCormick Weng (eds). Race in Irish Literature and Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Race in Irish Literature and Culture provides an in-depth understanding of intersections between Irish literature, culture, and questions of race, racialization, and racism. Covering a vast historical terrain from the sixteenth century to the present, it spotlights the work of canonical, understudied, and contemporary authors in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and among diasporic Irish communities.
David Toomey. Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself. Scribner, 2024.
This “delightful…compelling” (Scientific American) and revelatory look at the science behind why animals play “will fill you with joy and wonder” (Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus).
Jimmy Worthy II (ed.). After a Thousand Tears. University of Georgia Press, 2023.
Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877–1966) was the most prolific female writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Published now, for the first time, After a Thousand Tears features eighty-one poems that offer Johnson’s intimate and forthright sensibility toward African American women’s lived experiences during and following the Harlem Renaissance.
Adam Zucker. Shakespeare Unlearned: Pedantry, Nonsense, and the Philology of Stupidity. Oxford University Press, 2024.
Shakespeare Unlearned dances along the borderline of sense and nonsense in early modern texts, revealing overlooked opportunities for understanding and shared community in words and ideas that might in the past have been considered too silly to matter much for serious scholarship.
PhD, MA, and BA Books
Elizabeth [Nikki] Lloyd-Kimbrel. Matrimonies. Finishing Line Press, 2023.
Heather Diane Wayne. Consuming Empire in U.S. Fiction, 1865-1930. Edinburgh University Press, 2023.
William H. Steffen. Anthropocene Theater and the Shakespearean Stage. Oxford University Press, 2023.
MFA Graduate Books
Sarah Ghazal Ali. Theophanies. Alice James Books, 2024.
Jedediah Berry. The Naming Song. Macmillan, 2024.
Marie Buck and Matthew Walker. Spoilers. Golias Books, 2024.
Elizabeth Byrne. Book, Beast, and Crow. Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins, 2024.
Melissa Caruso. The Last Hour Between Worlds. Orbit, 2024.
Julie Choffel. Dear Wallace. The Backwaters Press/University of Nebraska Press, 2024.
Leora Fridman. Bound Up: On Kink, Power, and Belonging. Wayne State University Press, 2024.
David Greenspan. Error. antiphony, 2024.
Paul Harding. This Other Eden. W. W. Norton & Company, 2023.
Nathan Hill. Wellness. Knopf, 2023.
Joy Ladin. Family: Poems. Persea Books, 2024.
Joy Ladin. Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender. Persea Books, 2024.
Susannah Lee. Wintering Over. Finishing Line Press, 2024.
William Mailler. Trauma, Truth, & Outrage: Collected Poems 1968 - 2024. 2024.
Bill Meissner. The Wonders of the Little World. Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2024.
Emilie Menzel. The Girl Who Became a Rabbit. Hub City Press, 2024.
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Drinking from Graveyard Wells. University Press of Kentucky, 2023.
Jay Neugeboren. Whatever Happened to Frankie King. Graphic Mundi - Psu Press, 2024.
Rowan Perez. Body's A Bad Monster. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2024.
Connolly Ryan. Velocity at Rest. Meat For Tea Press, 2024.
Sejal Shah. How to Make Your Mother Cry. West Virginia University Press, 2024.
Lindsey Webb. Plat. Archway Editions, 2024.
Matthew Zapruder. I Love Hearing Your Dreams. Scribner, 2024.
Giving to the Department, 2024 Donors
The Department of English is grateful to the alumni and other donors whose contributions and support are key to our creating a vibrant experience for our students. Your generosity allows us to offer student scholarships, to teach innovative courses, and to sponsor visits by internationally renowned writers and scholars. Please consider making a contribution, thereby enriching the lives of our students and investing in our common future. You may make a gift online or by mail. You may give to the English Department as a whole, or to individual funds within the department.
The individuals and organizations below made donations to the Department of English and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and during between January 1 and December 31, 2024.
Sherril J. Aaron
Jennifer S. Adams
Lynne J. Agress
Patricia P. Allen
American Online Giving Foundation
Lois R. Andelman
Emily M. Anderson
Jeannine C. Atkins
Allan D. Austin
Bonnie L. Badin
Jeffrey T. Bagley
Mary C. Bagshaw
Ronald P. Barriere
Michael A. Bars
Karen E. Beaton Ward
Joanne H. Beckman
Anthony J. Bellissimo
Elisabeth E. Bennett
Heidi S. Berenson
Daniel E. Berthiaume
Michael E. Billa
Harold B. Bjornson, Jr.
Joye L. Bowman
Brian R. Boyer
Joseph W. Bradley
Judith V. Branzburg
Lauren Franklin Briggs
Michael G. Buckley
Jesse R. Buday
Alan R. Burne
Catherine M. Burns, Ph.D
Miss Carol A. Burton
Judith E. Buswick
Alta-Mae Butler
Dominic V. Capasso
J. Scott Cary
Charles Hayden Foundation
Deborah A. Chatigny
Judith S. Chelte
Kathleen E. Chick
Joanna L. Christensen
Kenneth L. Chute
Judith V. Clayman
Carey R. Clouse
Sarah C. Coates
Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts
Judith S. Connell
Renee Connell
William Connell
Erin G. Conrad
Robert A. Cook
W. Bruce Cooper
Antonio Luigi Corbia
Charles C. Corson
Andrew F. Costello Jr.
Elisabeth J. Cotton
Christophe G. Courchesne
Kevin J. Courtney
James R. Crabb III
Christina J. Cronin
Mark E. Crosby
Dyanne M. Crowley
Mark L. Curelop
Marilyn G. Curran
Claude C. Curtis
Carole M. Cutitta
Alan N. Dallmann
John E. Dangelo
Delia M. Davis
Lauren E. De La Parra
Laura A. Dellapenna
Carol A. DeLuca
David A. Denby
Christopher M. Dennis
Anatoliy Devitskiy
Lynn Dgetluck
Mary A. Dinovo
James E. Dobson
Monique B. Doyle
D-Ann N. Drennan
Meghan C. Driscoll
Jeanne A. Dubino
Matt H. Dunphy
Jay L. Dupont
Jacalyn R. Duvarney
Wendy S. Evans
Emily N. Falconer
John J. Farrelly
Caroline E. Fenton
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
Philip S. Fisher
Paul Gerard Flamburis
Herman J. Fong
Ellen G. Forbes
Paul E. Forte
Michael Fox
Donald C. Freeman
Ann Furtado
Jane Gagne
Douglas N. Gates
Joanne E. Gates
Joanne M. Gavin
Jane Gehr
Miss Ruth E. Gelman
Gretchen H. Gerzina
Andrew Frank Gori
Leonard G. Gougeon
Diane E. Gould
Maria Gounaris
Christopher G. Graham
Suzanne L. Graver
Irene C. Gravina
Scott B. Greenberg
Jason J. Gregoricus
Aimee Griffin
Carol L. Griggs
Andrea R. Griswold
Sandra L. Guido
Patrick E. Guinen
Gail Hall Howard
Rachel R. Halpern
Tara A. Hancock
Eileen M. Hare
John P. Hartnett, Jr.
Joyce Harvey Bottenberg
Malcolm N. Haskell, Jr.
Meribah M. Haughey
Brodie A. Hawkes
Attorney Karen L. Hawkins
Pamela P. Hegarty
Maryhelen Hendricks
Anne J. Herrington
Heidi J. Holder
Flournoy C. Holland
Lauren R. Hoops Schmieg
Luna Hou
Thomas E. Howard
Ellen Ingrid Howes
Pamela A. Howes
Melissa N. Hubbell
Kathryn L. Hueber Quiones
Christopher W. Ivusic
Phoebe S. Jackson
Pamela M. Jacobs
Jennifer Jacobson
Ashley L. Jahrling Bannon
David D. Jensen
Christine I. Joenk
Christopher J. Jones
Cathleen C. Judge
Ava J. Juwa
Elena R. Kalodner-Martin
Atty. Carol J. Kantany-Casartello
Allan Kelley
Grant W. Kelly
Joshua S. Kelly
Rebecca J. Kennedy
Laura M. Kenney
Jim E. Kobylecky
Nicholas Dimetri Kritikos
Kaitlyn Kubla
Megan C. LaFlamme
Rachel Lavery
Christiana Lee
Daniel M. Leonard
Jillian R. Letteney
Alan C. Levine
Storie E. Libby
Matthew A. Lindberg
Eric N. Lindquist
Sandra J. Liro
John P. Lloyd
Barbara A. Luce
Robert L. Lynch, Jr.
Morton Lynn
Bridie Macdonald
Anu N. Mahadev
Beth N. Mahoney
Owen D. Maloney
Sandra J. Mangurian
Michael S. Marturana
John A. Massa
Sheila M. McAleney
Ashley Kathleen McDermott
Kerry R. McDonough
Erin M. McGarry
Patti J. McKenna
Carol A. McManus
Dan O. McNamara
Jeanne A. McNett
Christina M. McNulty
Margot E. Miksis
Marla R. Miller
Sheri Muro
Aleksandra Nakollari
Jaime Fontaine Nappi
Cleyvis Natera
National Council of Teachers of English
Krista M. Navin
Diana K. Nguyen
Mary E. Norcliffe
Thomas P. Norton
David L. Novick
Lawrence E. O'Brien
Shaun V. O'Connell
Michael J. O'Connor
Maura D. O'Leary
Linnea G. Olsson
Michelle L. Ott
Mathew L. Ouellett
Michael A. Ouellette
Jeffrey S. Parker
William A. Pasch
Bruce M. Penniman
Morton L. Perel
Jean R. Perley
Stephen J. Perrault
Christopher Jacob Pitt
Emily Portillo
Linda A. Poulin
Rebecca L. Prior
Kristin M. Purdy
James R. Quinn
Stacey Resnikoff
Laura J. Ress
Andrew M. Richmond
Elizabeth Jolene Riezinger
John A. Riley
Lucy P. Rime
Wendy A. Ritger
Phyllis M. Berman
Miss Denise E. Robitaille
Mark E. Rollins
Daniel S. Ronan
Corry A. Root
Lauren M. Rosenberg
Scott E Rosenberg
Darcy Ross
Amy E. Rudolph Mariano
Garrett D. Russell
Michael C. Ryan
Daniel A. Sack
Atia Sattar
Luana Scherzberg
Rebecca J. Scott
Kenneth J. Sena, II
Francis J. Sersanti
Edward Sharples Jr.
Ronald A. Sheffler
Sarah E. Shepherd
Marjorie A. Short
Nicole Sibley
Serah M. Sibley
Christine M. Sigman
Stephanie M. Silenti
Veronica L. Skinner
Elizabeth A. Slavkovsky
Gloria Slosberg
Stephen F. Smith
Michael P. Smolens
Janine L. Solberg
Roberta Soolman
JoAnn C. Spaulding
Craig A. Spiewak
Leti Stiles
Frances T. Stone
Hugh D. Stringer
Anne-Marie K. Strohman
Steven R. Sullivan
Christina Ashley Sun
Cynthia S. Swartwood
Howard F. Swinimer
Lisa Y. Tendrich Frank
Esther M. Terry
David M. Toomey
Talya M. Torres
William A. Tremblay
Sharon M. Tuttle
Miriam N. Underwood
Cornelia Veenendaal
Paul Vitali, Jr.
Pierre A. Walker
Anne Walters
Henry G. Walz
Katherine M. Weagle
Danyea L. West
Marie J. Whiting
Bonnie J.H. Wilkes
Melvin H. Wolf
Beatrice Martin Wood
Heidi M. Woolard
Xeric Foundation
Kevin Xu
Julia L. Yashiro
Nicole M. Young-Martin