English

The Bucknell English Department provides students with opportunities for intensive study in language and literature. Courses in English introduce students to important works of literary art in the English and American literary traditions, to other national and regional literary traditions in English, and to diverse and multicultural voices and traditions. Students in English classes learn to express themselves critically and creatively, developing a sensitivity to language and precision in writing and speech as well as analytical skills that will serve them well in their other university courses and in their professional lives following their education at Bucknell.

Fall 2009 Course Offerings and Major Requirements

The Stadler Center for Poetry houses the Creative Writing program.  Students can take classes in writing poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.

The Toni Morrison Society, an official author society of the American Literature Association, has been affiliated with Bucknell since July 2008, when Bucknell became the Society's official institutional home. Professor of English Carmen Gillespie is the Executive Director.

The University offers merit awards to support emerging artists on campus, a program coordinated by the Office of Admissions.  For more information, please visit www.bucknell.edu/admissions/arts.

Faculty Spotlight

Professor Harold Schweizer Publishes New Book, On Waiting (London: Routledge, 2008)

Penelope waits by her loom for Odysseus, Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot, all of us have to wait: for buses, phone calls and the kettle to boil. But do we know what the checking of one's watch and pacing back and forth is really all about? What is the relationship between waiting and time? Is there an ethics of waiting, or even an art of waiting? Do the internet, online shopping and text messaging mean that waiting has come to an end?

On Waiting explores such and similar questions in compelling fashion. Drawing on some fascinating examples, from the philosopher Henri Bergson's musings on a lump of sugar to Kate Croy waiting in Wings of the Dove to the writings of Rilke, Bishop, and Carver, On Waiting examines this ever-present yet overlooked phenomenon from diverse angles in fascinating style. On Waiting is the first book to present a philosophy of waiting.

Harriet Pollack Honored with Eudora Welty Society's Phoenix Award
Prof. Pollack, who teaches Southern literature, has been named the recipient of the 2008 Phoenix Award "given to an individual whose contributions to Welty Studies have been exceptional." Her 1998 Kirby Award-winning essay on the relationship between Welty's photography and fiction and her volume Welty and Politics: Did The Writer Crusade? (LSU, 2001 with Suzanne Marrs) are cited as "ground-breaking."  Prof. Pollack's latest book, Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, will be available by January.

Student Spotlight

English Club

Writers of Rohan

Student Publications

• Fire and Ice
• Mirth Grinder
• The Sidecar