The Lecture Series was initiated by the Department of English Professional Growth Committee in response to the unique challenges and opportunities faced by higher education in general and the humanities in particular in the present moment of budget cuts and challenges to traditional missions. The Committee felt the English Studies program was in a unique position for meeting and reflecting critically on these challenges and opportunities because of its interdisciplinarity.

Dr. Christopher Breu, Assistant Professor of English, envisioned the series as a way of fostering “the production of new and more generalized forms of knowledge that resist the ossification of knowledge in the different disciplines.” He asserted that this is “particularly important in the present moment, when academics in higher education are being asked to communicate and make a persuasive account of what they do to an increasingly skeptical and bottom-line oriented political and public culture.”

The English Studies Lecture Series was designed to highlight the interdisciplinary conversations fostered by the department’s innovative English Studies program. The theme of this series is the English Studies Model as it relates to challenges faced by higher education. The series will feature celebrated national, international, and regional scholars and writers in the various subfields of English Studies and will be designed with the aim of promoting cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue.