With profound sadness, the English Department writes to acknowledge the tragic passing, after a battle with COVID-19, of an important and recent alum of our MFA program, and educator in our Writing Program, Rana Zoe Mungin MFA '15. She was a beloved social studies teacher at Ascend Academy in Brooklyn at the time of her passing. Although only 30 years old, her work struck a deep chord with a broad swath of readers and scholars. Her candid reflections and critical perspective contributed to national conversations about institutional racism in MFA programs, an ongoing issue that our department and others like it continue to grapple with. She shared her experiences with the goal of making us better and more accountable educators. She, in turn, became a teacher who brought conceptions of justice, equity, and compassion into her classroom.

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has announced the selection of the 2020-21 Lilly Fellows for Teaching Excellence, including three faculty members from the College of Humanities &...

Emiliano Ricciardi...

The Tasso and Music Symposium, originally intended to take place on the UMass Amherst campus, will now take place via Zoom video conference during the April 17-19 weekend (9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m....

As health care workers battle the COVID-19 pandemic on the front lines, they currently face a nationwide shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), including face coverings of all types. When Kristin Jensen and Felicia Malachite of the Department of Theater’s costume shop at UMass Amherst learned that masks were being shifted from facilities such as veterinary clinics to hospitals to help address the scarcity, they decided to make cloth masks for veterinarians and other non-emergency health care workers so they can extend the life of their existing PPE supplies.