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The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in October, 1996. Although some of the courses, students, and faculty members referenced in the story may have changed in the meantime, it still provides a full and accurate picture of the English Department. For the most current course information and faculty listing, we encourage you to visit the department's homepage.
English
Illuminated manuscripts, web pages, and Elvis
According to department chair, Associate Professor Ronald R. Thomas, English is a diverse department defined by a plurality of approaches, a wide variety of generic and historic interests, and the offering of two concentrations: Literary Studies, which features courses in special topics as well as in major figures - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Morrison, Elvis (more on him later) - and Creative Writing, which offers intensive writing workshops. What unites the department - "a remarkably collegial group," according to Thomas - is an extraordinary dedication to teaching. "We think about it, we talk about it, we refine our techniques. It is a very serious, constant concern," echoes Associate Professor Barbara M. Benedict.Creative Writing
Whereas most liberal arts colleges feature a distinguished writer or two on the faculty, Trinity is blessed with an abundance of talent. With Michelle Cliff (Allan K. Smith Professor of English Language and Literature), Associate Professor Arthur B. Feinsod of the Theater and Dance department, Stewart O'Nan (Allan K. Smith Assistant Professor of Creative Writing), Professor Hugh Ogden, Professor John Frederick Pfeil, Writer-in-Residence Shona Ramaya, and an impressive list of Visiting Writers, the Creative Writing wing boasts an exceptionally large corps of very accomplished writers. O'Nan, Pfeil, and Ogden have recently won, respectively, Granta, Pushcart, and NEA awards. Each year the department adds to its luster through the poet-in-residence program; this year's is Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan.
Students who major in Creative Writing work closely with these writers, very often in one-to-one situations. Unlike at other institutions, Trinity's program offers the full range of writing genres - fiction, poetry, and drama - in a graduated series of workshops. Because Creative Writing students are required to build a solid foundation in literary studies, they develop an enabling sense of literary tradition and their participation in it.
And Trinity graduates have gone on to enrich that literary heritage. As described elsewhere in this issue, Elizabeth Egloff '75 has become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary theater. Novelist Joanna Scott '83 has received a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship for her fiction. And the most recent volume of poetry from award-winning poet P. Chase Twichell '73 is receiving wide acclaim.
Students in Creative Writing are very active, organizing poetry readings on and off campus, producing the entirely student-run literary journal The Trinity Review, and teaching poetry to students at the Hartford Academy of the Arts and in Hartford-area high schools. Creative Writing graduates have gone on to law and graduate schools and careers in teaching, law, advertising, publishing, and electronic media.
Literary Studies
Although the department's teaching of literature is best defined by its plurality of approaches - New Criticism, feminism, psychoanalytic, neo-Marxist, and cultural critique - two core ideas govern. Perhaps more pervasive is the idea of the importance of language, and all try to inculcate, in Ogden's words, a "profound respect for language," its powers, limits, and dangers. Through a close reading of texts students learn not only the pleasures of literature but also "how to approach reading, thinking, and writing," according to Robyn Schiffman '97.
"Cultural studies" - in Thomas's description, "the understanding of literature as part of a broader cultural activity" - is the other dominant idea. Students learn to apply traditional tools of literary analysis not only to individual texts but also, explains Benedict, "to a number of social texts and contexts." As it develops critical thinking skills, this approach also fosters the fundamental understanding of self, other, and society that lies at the heart of a liberal arts education.
Although teaching practices are as many as the faculty, most professors try to engage students in informed conversations about literature, literary history, and methods of analysis. Graduating majors do go on to graduate schools and careers in education, but, as testament to the broad applicability of the program, most majors pursue nonacademic careers in diverse fields - advertising, law, medicine, marketing, media, publishing, and business.
Those teaching in Literary Studies match their dedicated teaching with distinguished scholarship. Thomas is the author of a number of works on Victorian literature. Benedict, whose book signing graces the cover of this issue, publishes extensively on the 18th century. Jan K. Cohn, G. Keith Funston Professor of American Literature and American Studies, writes widely on American popular culture and literature. Associate Professor Sheila M. Fisher has written on Chaucer and on feminist literary theory. Professor Dianne Hunter's works include studies of Shakespeare, psychoanalysis and literature, and feminism. Professor Dirk Kuyk, an Americanist, has produced works on William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and African-American culture. Paul Lauter, the Allan K. and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of Literature, is the editor of The Heath Anthology of American Literature, a comprehensive anthology of America's multicultural literary heritage. James A. Miller, the Charles A. Dana Professor of English and American Studies, is the Director of the American Studies Program at Trinity and has written on 20th-century African-American writing and cinema. Assistant Professor Margo Perkins has published works on contemporary African-American writing. Pfeil, in addition to his fiction, writes on film, rock, postmodernism, and politics. Professor Milla C. Riggio is the author of works on Shakespeare and on festival and drama. Associate Professor Beverly Wall, the Allan K. Smith Lecturer in English, directs the Allan K. Smith Writing Center and focuses her work on rhetoric. And Professor James H. Wheatley has written on Irish and Victorian literatures.
The Hartford Connection
Trinity's historical relationship to Hartford also provides a rich venue for students' cultural exploration and the further development of professional writing skills. Visiting Writer Lary Bloom, editor of Northeast Magazine, regularly engages students in projects that take them into the city to learn from and write about it. Students also have the opportunity to pursue internships at The Hartford Courant and other news media and have been involved in reading and evaluating manuscripts, working with graphic designers, and writing and editing stories for publication.
The Future of English Studies
With ongoing national debates about the canon, popular culture, postmodernism, and an array of other issues, the future of English studies is anything but predictable. "Scholars of the 19th century would have been scandalized to think that the crude popular writer Charles Dickens would ever become a part of any university English department curriculum," says Thomas. Imagine the scandal, he suggests, were they to learn about a course studying Elvis. Still, the department is equally committed to the new and the traditional, and looking into the future Thomas sees a department that is "part web page and part illuminated manuscript" - an apt emblem of the faculty's dedication to teaching students the manifold ways that literature engages us.
-- Mark Warren McLaughlin
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