Statement of Solidarity from the English Department Faculty
We acknowledge and condemn the series of recent incidences of racist violence against people of color, and black people especially. We are appalled by the long history of such episodes, which has horrifically yet again expressed itself this year in the killing of George Floyd on May 25, of Breonna Taylor on March 13, and of Ahmaud Arbery on February 23 at the hands of police or white vigilantism. Read more...
Our department fosters the open understanding of literatures and cultures in English. We promote original work on new questions of history, criticism, theory, and analysis. We invite practices of reading and writing that challenge the ongoing creation of knowledge in our fields. English is among the largest undergraduate concentrations at Brown, and graduates of our Ph.D. program are recognized for their scholarship across the globe. Our nonfiction writing program opens up the useful diversity of styles and modes of writing.
New Courses
There are a number of exciting new courses in Fall 2020: Independence and Modern Literature; Midsummers; How to Do Things with Books; Terrible Births: The Novel out of Romanticism; Blackness and Being; Toni Morrison; “The Pursuit of Happiness”: Transatlantic Literary Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century; Bakhtin and the Political Present: Literature, Anthropology, Dialogue; Suspicion and Its Others; Memory/Matter/Time: Literature and the Changing Earth.