Department of English

Recorded December 1, 2021. UNL creative writing professors Joy Castro and Timothy Schaffert discuss plot development and other key components of novel writing, especially as pertains to depicting crime and suspense. Joy Castro’s most recent novel, Flight Risk, was called “a deftly intelligent literary thriller” by bestselling novelist S.J. Watson; Castro is also the author of the New Orleans crime novels Hell or High Water and Nearer Home. Timothy Schaffert’s novel, The Perfume Thief, was called “the queer spy novel about WWII Paris that I never knew I needed and now could not possibly consider living without” by CrimeReads.

On April 7, 2021, friends, colleagues, and readers of Ted Kooser gathered to celebrate the publication of the new book MORE IN TIME: A TRIBUTE TO TED KOOSER, co-edited by UNL Ph.D. student Jessica Poli, Professor Marco Abel, and Associate Professor Timothy Schaffert. The event was co-sponsored by local bookstore Francie & Finch, the Department of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and University of Nebraska Press.

The Sunita Jain Literary Award for Excellence in Poetry was established in 2021 in memory of Dr. Sunita Jain, who earned her Ph.D. in English from UNL in 1972 and won multiple literary awards during her time here. She went on to become one of India's most celebrated bilingual writers, and received one of India's highest civilian honors, the Padma Shri, for her literary contributions. Dr. Jain passed away in 2017. The winner of the inaugural Sunita Jain Award was Jamaica Baldwin, who is pursuing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Nebraska Lincoln with a focus in Creative Writing (poetry), African Diasporan Literature, and Women and Gender Studies. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, the 2019 winner of the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Contest in Poetry, and a 2020 Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize Runner Up. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Guernica, The Adroit Journal, World Literature Today, The Missouri Review, and TriQuarterly, among others.

"Digital Humanities and Data Justice." Recorded March 18, 2021. Lauren Klein is Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory University. In this video, Adrian S. Wisnicki, Associate Professor of English and Digital Humanities Program Coordinator at UNL, introduces Professor Klein’s lecture

Miriam Posner is assistant professor in the Information Studies department and the Digital Humanities Program at UCLA. Adrian S. Wisnicki, Digital Humanities Program Coordinator at UNL and Associate Professor in the English Department, provides the introduction.

“Lessons from The Digital Black Atlantic: Amplifying Equity and Justice in Public Humanities” Recorded October 25, 2019 Roopika Risam is assistant professor of English at Salem State University.

Kwame Dawes, Chancellor's Professor of English, Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner, and recipient of a 2019 Outstanding Research and Creative Activity Award (ORCA), spoke at the president's luncheon on May 28, 2019.

Ezra Greenspan is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Chair in Humanities at Southern Methodist University.

Recorded Tuesday, Sept 25, 12:30-1:30 pm In anticipation of Roxane Gay’s forthcoming event, panelists explored the representation of women in art and popular culture, with a specific focus on women of color. Panelists: Kwakiutl L. Dreher, Associate Professor of English, is a screenwriter, actor, playwright, and author. She is the author of Dancing on the White Page: Black Women Entertainers Writing Autobiography (SUNY Press) and her essays and articles have appeared in Film Criticism, the Popular Culture Review, and A Feminist Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Her recent film, Anna, for which she was screenwriter, co-director, co-producer, and actor, has received recognition and rewards from film festivals across the country, including Best Animation from the 2018 New Media Film Festival. Hope Wabuke, Assistant Professor of English, is a poet, essayist, and literary scholar. Her research and creative work explore the literature of the global African diaspora as well as larger questions of immigration, the first-generation experience, the refugee experience, liminality, trauma, inherited trauma, gender, women’s studies, modernism and post-modernism. She is the author of the poetry collections Movement No. 1: Trains (dancing girl press) and The Leaving (Akashic Press). She was a finalist for the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize. She is a founding board member of the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. Moderated by: Adrienne Christian, a PhD student in English and Art. She is a fine-art photographer and author of two poetry collections: 12023 Woodmont Avenue (Willow Lit, 2013), and A Proper Lover (Main Street Rag, 2017). Adrienne's nonfiction and poetry have been featured in over five dozen magazines and literary journals, including The Los Angeles Review as The Editor's Choice, Today's Black Woman, Jolie, Obsidian, and Alimentum. She is a fellow of Cave Canem and Callaloo writing residencies. Adrienne is also an Associate Editor at Backbone Press, and an Editorial Assistant in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction at Prairie Schooner literary magazine.

The English and Film Studies Major for a Day program was featured on Channel 8 KLKN-TV's Excellence in Education Segment. The week-long series of events is coordinated by Chief Advisor Kelly Payne, advising interns and members of the English Student Advisory Board. Channel 8 News Anchors Rod Fowler and Megan Conway have the story.

Recorded October 2, 1996 in Love Library.

Frances W. Kaye received the 2016 Louise Pound - George Howard Distinguished Career Service Award. The award was presented to her at a Faculty Senate meeting on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 in the UNL City Campus Union Auditorium.

Talk given at the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center on September 11, 2015.

Talk given at the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center, September 11, 2015.

James Cherry recites Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

"I wrote this poem - Bill Kloefkorn, the state poet was on his way out to Grand Island [Nebraska] one time for a writing engagement out there. And I was sort of resentful that I hadn't been invited. I thought I'd go home and write a real snotty poem about Nebraska, and have Bill read it out there in my absence. And I got home and started to work on the poem, and as the poem developed, I began to understand how much I really loved the state. This is that poem: So This Is Nebraska."

Hannah is an English major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Someday, she would like a career in the publishing industry. She was an intern with the University of Nebraska Press. Hear about her experiences majoring in English.

Kenneth is an English major in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He likes to do undergraduate research and hopes to be a professor some day.

Dillon is an English major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He had an internship at The Prairie Schooner literary magazine and is now the opinion editor at The Daily Nebraskan, the student newspaper. Dillon studied abroad in China. Hear why he chose UNL.

A short video promoting the Film Studies program to students featuring faculty from the program.