Department of English (University of Chicago)
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| Department of English (University of Chicago) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Department of English |
| University | University of Chicago |
| Established | 1892 |
| Location | Chicago, Illinois |
| Chair | [Name not linked] |
| Website | [Not provided] |
Department of English (University of Chicago) The Department of English at the University of Chicago is a research-intensive academic unit noted for its contributions to literary scholarship, critical theory, and humanities pedagogy. Located within the University of Chicago campus in Chicago, Illinois, the department has engaged with figures and movements connected to Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, King's College London, and University of Toronto across collaborative projects and scholarly networks.
History
The department traces roots to the late 19th century during the presidency of William Rainey Harper, with institutional ties to the founding of the University of Chicago and intellectual currents from Johns Hopkins University, University of Michigan, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and Northwestern University. Early faculty engaged with literary debates alongside contemporaries from G. Stanley Hall-era psychology and dialogues with figures linked to Princeton Theological Seminary and the American Philological Association. Throughout the 20th century the department intersected with movements associated with New Criticism, Chicago School scholars, the Chicago Review, and exchanges with international centers such as École Normale Supérieure, Sorbonne University, and University of Göttingen. Key mid-century appointments connected the department to debates that involved scholars from Harvard University Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Wesleyan University Press, and institutions like the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Academic Programs
The department offers undergraduate majors and minors, graduate programs including the PhD, and joint degrees that coordinate with units such as the Committee on Social Thought, the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities, the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and professional schools like the Booth School of Business and the Pritzker School of Medicine. Coursework spans historical periods and genres with seminars referencing canonical authors linked to William Shakespeare, John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Homer, Virgil, Dante Alighieri, Homeric scholars, and modern writers associated with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Franz Kafka, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Antonio Gramsci, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Graduate training includes methods and approaches relevant to archives at institutions like the Newberry Library, Library of Congress, British Library, Bodleian Library, and Huntington Library.
Faculty and Research
Faculty research spans historical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary fields with involvement in projects connected to the Modern Language Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, the Renaissance Society of America, the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and grant-funding from bodies like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. Individual scholars have worked on areas tied to figures such as Edmund Spenser, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, William Wordsworth, Alexander Pope, Henry James, W. B. Yeats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Allen Ginsberg, Gertrude Stein, Hannah Arendt, Iris Murdoch, Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Clarice Lispector, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Ibram X. Kendi, and Stuart Hall. Faculty have published with presses such as University of Chicago Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and journals like PMLA, Critical Inquiry, Representations, New Literary History, and the Chicago Review.
Facilities and Resources
The department benefits from campus resources including the Joseph Regenstein Library, the Digital Humanities Summer Institute partnerships, archives at the Newberry Library, special collections tied to the Smart Museum of Art, and collaborative labs with the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Poetry Foundation, and cultural institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago History Museum. Students and faculty access databases and holdings connected to the JSTOR corpus, Project MUSE, and collections curated alongside the American Antiquarian Society.
Student Life and Organizations
Undergraduate and graduate students participate in literary and scholarly groups including the Chicago Review, campus chapters of the Modern Language Association, reading groups focused on authors like Oscar Wilde, Herman Melville, Sylvia Plath, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Adrienne Rich, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, W. H. Auden, and contemporary circles engaging with scholarship influenced by Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha, bell hooks, and Anne Carson. Extracurriculars interact with performance ensembles at the Hyde Park Art Center, internships with the Chicago Tribune, editorial work with university presses including Chicago Review Press, and public lectures hosted by institutes like the Institute for the Humanities.
Notable Alumni and Scholars
Alumni and affiliated scholars include novelists, poets, critics, and academics associated with institutions and prizes such as the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature, the MacArthur Fellows Program, the National Book Award, the Booker Prize, and appointments at Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, Duke University, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Toronto, and University of Oxford. Distinguished names linked by study or teaching include Saul Bellow, Theodore Roethke, Hannah Arendt, Wayne Booth, Richard Rorty, Ruth Millikan, Rene Girard, Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Harold Bloom, Martha Nussbaum, Susan Sontag, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Saidiya Hartman, Edward Said, Fredric Jameson, J. Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida (as intellectual interlocutor), William Gass, John Crowe Ransom, W. H. Auden (visitor/lecturer), and contemporary scholars who hold posts at leading universities and cultural organizations.