Department of English

A Letter From the Department Chair

It is my delight to serve as the Chair of the English Department at Temple University. Home to a thriving undergraduate major, a rich MFA program in Creative Writing, and a selective PhD program, our department can boast of extraordinary, prize-winning faculty, recognized research and teaching, excellent students, and a diverse curriculum. Professor Larry Venuti, an internationally recognized expert in translation studies, received the highly prestigious Guggenheim award in 2006, and this year received an Honorable Mention in the Modern Language Association Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione competition in translation. Professor Miles Orvell was awarded the Bode-Pearson Prize from the American Studies Association this year, which recognizes his lifetime contributions to the field. And in the same year, he was named one of Temple University's Great Professors. Professor Suzanne Gauch received a Fulbright in 2008 and spent the year teaching and conducting research in Fez, Morroco. And Professor Rachel Blau DuPlessis received a fellowship at the prestigious National Humanities Center in 2009. Our creative writing faculty has also received numerous national awards, including Pew Fellowships in the Arts in both 2002 and 2006 for two of our poets, (Rachel Blau DuPlessis) and (Jena Osman), while Professor Osman's volume of poetry was recently selected for publication by the National Poetry Series. Professor Samuel Delany's writing is nationally and internationally recognized. Two of our faculty have received the highly competitive research award given the Temple University's most productive scholars (Miles Orvell and Larry Venuti), and three of our creative writing faculty have won Temple's Creative Achievement award (Samuel Delany, Jena Osman, Rachel Blau DuPlessis).

Award-winning for scholarship, we are also a department that can boast of extraordinary teachers who have received recognition from national societies, our own College, and the entire University community. John O'Hara and Julia Mendenhall have received the Provost's Award for Innovative Teaching in the new Gen Ed program. Professor Steve Newman received a Lindback Teaching Award in 2009, and Professor Sue-Im Lee, one of three recently tenured faculty, received the College of Liberal Arts Alumni Teaching Award last year as well. And Temple 's most coveted "Great Teaching Awards" have been presented to Miles Orvell, Eli Goldblatt, Joan Mellen and Phil Yannella.

We welcome undergraduate and graduate students to explore our offerings in British and American literature, international fiction and film, composition and rhetoric, theory, and creative writing. With 550 undergraduate majors and 120 graduate students, we host a lively and diverse curriculum, with faculty committed to American Studies and Women's Studies.

Welcome to our web site and our department. Please browse our faculty profiles, our departmental readings, and our lecture series. With a range of funding opportunities for graduate students in two distinct programs and an exciting and challenging undergraduate curriculum, we invite you to consider this as your intellectual home as you explore the wide-ranging field of English Studies.

Sincerely,
Shannon Miller
Chair and Professor
Department of English
Temple University

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