Since the beginning of time…

…the English department was the best.

I thought I would just pop in and say hello! Summer is fantastic and full of reading for fun, sunshine, and sweet tea, and I am currently working my way through Jane Austen’s in preparation for the fall class and am loving, LOVING, it. But guess what? I miss the department. Looking forward to the Austen class in the fall reminds me how blessed I am to be in a department that remains chalk full of people who love the same things I do. We are so, so, so fortunate to be able to study something that so easily combines what we are passionate about with our faith. I am very sad at the people who graduated in April, but I know that there will be new and returning friends to step up and push me to grow and question as well! So, thank you to all of the recent grads who have had such an impact on me and to the professors who keep encouraging and challenging us all. I am excited about next year and I hope you are as well!

Your Veep.

Stalk Week 2012

A compilation of our Stalk Week activities this year.

English Major of February: Amy Ellingson

Our lovely Amy Ellingson was our English Major of the Month of February this year! I thought her posters would be lost in the sight of the Stalk Week phenomenon, but, alas, her stalker used them to make a creepy shrine outside the departmental kitchen.

Amy is an English Writing major in our department and is also our Sigma Tau Delta chapter secretary. Amy served as our chaplain last year, and continues to stay involved in the department. Amy, “Bunny” is one of our brightest, most kind, and intelligent students, and we were happy to call her our E.M.O.T.M! 

 

A Literary Christmas

I know hardly anyone is in a Christmas mood these days, but here are some photos of our celebration last year. We had our annual book exchange–our version of Dirty Santa. We also had our annual costume/ ugly sweater competition, which I won! Our party abounded with drinks, treats, and decorations.

 

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It’s been a While…

We have been gone for over a month! we have been a busy department. It’s time we bring you a few updates on the Christmas party, Stalk Week, CONFERENCE, and other happenings. It’s good to be back! For now, make sure you check out or new mysterious facebook personality “Sigmataudelta Rho Mu” and add her here to see what’s really going on in the Lang Lit department.

Ursula K. LeGuin…

Ursula K. LeGuin is one of my favorite writers and one of my heroes. She lives and writes in Portland, OR, and she has won prestigious awards such as the National Book Award, the Nebula and the Hugo awards (numerous times). Her parents were anthropologists, she has a degree in French literature, she has translated Lao Tzu, and her works often center on an anthropologist’s eye for the details of a culture, whether Earthly or inter-planetary. Some of my favorite novels of hers: any of the Earthsea works, Hainish cycle, The Word for World is Forest, and Always Coming Home. Here’s a beautiful quote from her dystopian classic, The Lathe of Heaven:

“Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will. . . .What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?” (1).

Crane

 

                   

My favorite quote of this week comes from Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat,” which we discussed in our American Lit III class on Thursday. 

If you have not yet read it, the story illustrates the plight of a group of men during a shipwreck. Here it is: 

“If I am going to be drowned–if I am going to be drowned–if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate the sand and trees?”

What beautiful writing! 

Have a great week, fellow Englishees!