Department of English

Celebrating the Poetry of John Ashbery on November 30 When John Ashbery died at the age of ninety on September 3, just as the fall semester was getting underway here in Orono, we immediately began planning a celebration of this major poet’s long life and prolific body of work. On Thursday, November 30, that celebration will commence with a presentation […]

Tony Brinkley Translations of Baudelaire Professor of English and Senior Faculty Advisor to the Franco-American Center Tony Brinkley has published translations of three poems from Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal in the fall issue of the journal Metamorphoses (25.1). The three poems Baudelaire dedicated to Victor Hugo— “The Swan,” “The Seven Old Men,” and “The Little Old Women”—appear in Brinkley’s translation […]

Weathering the Windstorm The fierce winds of a week ago delivered many of us into a bewildering Halloween week without power. Resourceful English majors reported reading by candlelight, flashlight, and headlamp. One, who found herself plunged into “seventy acres of darkness and silence,” took the occasion to rediscover reading for pleasure, adding “I forgot how […]

Advising for Winter Session and Spring 2018 Semester Graduate students and seniors who have earned 84 credits or more will be able to enroll for the spring 2018 semester beginning this week. Enrollment for the winter term opens at the same time. Faculty advisors will want to acquaint themselves with the course description pamphlet prepared by Ellen […]

Meet Maine Top Scholar and English Major Nicole Whitman An inaugural cohort of twenty “Top Scholars” matriculated at UMaine this fall. Students chosen for this honor receive a Maine Matters scholarship that covers full tuition and fees and is renewable for four years. Top Scholars also receive an unrestricted stipend of $500 to work with their faculty […]

Fall Break Edition Caroline Bicks Gives Pre-Performance Lecture on Hamlet this Thursday Caroline Bicks, the inaugural holder of the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, will share insights into Hamlet in advance of the Aquila Theater performance of the play on Thursday. Members of the department and of the community are invited to attend the CLAS pre-Homecoming Reception at 4:30pm in the Hudson […]

Dylan Dryer at Illinois State University and University of Illinois This Wednesday Dylan Dryer will facilitate a workshop on “Translingual Composition Pedagogy” at Illinois State University before delivering, on Thursday evening, a lecture on “The Present Future of Rhetorical Genre Studies: International Contexts and Emerging Research” in their Annual Speaker Series. On Friday, Dryer will present one of two plenary addresses at […]

Meet This Year’s Editors of The Open Field The undergraduate literary journal The Open Field will be edited this year by Eric Arnold (fiction) and Tyler O’Keefe (poetry). Eric Arnold is a fourth-year English major with a concentration in technical writing. He runs a creative writing group on campus and has a passion for fiction which he intends […]

Welcome to the third installment of “This Week in English,” a weekly bulletin meant to help keep us all informed about the many exciting classes, projects, and events that the English Department offers to the members of the UMaine community and beyond. First off, it’s nice to see Google celebrating the 308th birthday of Samuel Johnson in today’s search bar graphic!  A […]

A Glimpse into What Our Colleagues & Students Are Doing This Week As we head into the third week of the fall semester, students in Dylan Dryer‘s section of English 315 will be “moving past the myth of ‘objective summary’” with help from readings and exercises in Janet Gitrow’s Academic Writing: An Introduction. In Jody Crouse‘s Literature of Maine course, students will be discussing The Beans of […]