Letter from the Chair
If there is a way to describe the core concern of the many programs and courses in the
Department of English, it might be this: In English we study the production and analysis
of texts. That means that we study all kinds of symbolic action: visual and verbal texts,
print and digital texts and images, and other cultural forms and practices as well as poems,
plays, novels, stories, and essays. You might say that in English we (still) study reading
and writing, in a hundred different ways.
In creative writing courses, for instance, we explore effective ways of telling stories and structuring poems, and in other writing courses, we study how to present or analyze an argument, or how a particular rhetoric works to move a specific audience. In literature courses, we research the history of representation, and in linguistics, we investigate the conventions of modern grammar, speech, and writing. The study of language is a part of courses in technical and scientific communication, even as they focus on digital design and multi-media. These are just a few of the things that we do in our various programs and courses, but you get the idea.
The numerous fields that faculty in the English Department write about and teach—from silent film to innovative poetry, from the illuminated manuscript to the web page and from the memoir to the business report—all involve language and text deployed to shape meaning and value. Because we share this core concern with text, interpretation, and value, there is a vital sense of community in the department.
The Department of English is central to the liberal arts mission of Miami University, and the kind of knowledge and skills that you will acquire in its courses are much in demand in the world beyond the university. The Department is large, and students appreciate the diversity of its course offerings. Measured in terms of the number of student credit hours and faculty, the Department of English is the biggest department at Miami University. In 2004-2005, over 30,000 student credit hours were earned in the department.
Judging by the number of teaching awards English faculty have won in recent years in and beyond the university, we have reason to be very proud of all that teaching. In 2005, English faculty and advanced graduate students won three of the five teaching awards given out by the College of Arts and Science. An English professor on the Middletown campus won the E. Phillips Knox Teaching Award, the second time in three years this award has gone to faculty from English. Members of the department taught courses not only in our department but also in Women’s Studies, American Studies, and the Honors program and continued their work as affiliates in American Studies, Black World Studies, Women’s Studies, and Interactive Media Studies. English Department faculty direct two of those programs and the Center for Writing Excellence and Howe Writing Initiative.
These teaching accomplishments only begin to hint at the expertise of teachers and the range of subjects taught in the department. Even to list the programs and areas of concentration that make up the Department of English—Composition and Rhetoric, Creative Writing, Linguistics, Literature, and Technical and Scientific Communication—won’t suggest all that we study and teach in English. Reading the catalog of courses included on this site will allow for a better idea of some of what we study and teach, but each of those courses will be taken up in slightly different ways by different faculty and updated yearly to take account of new content and new approaches to that content.
Our record as publishing scholars and creative writers is no less distinguished. In 2004-05, English faculty published ten books in fields including early modern literature, composition and rhetoric, and modern theater studies. They published two novels and three chapbooks of poems and more than 40 refereed scholarly articles, on subjects including the displacement of labor in Winner and Waster, Jane Austen, modernism and anti-modernism in British poetry, voicing the text in early modern English courtrooms, teaching creative writing, teaching business writing in China, and the rhetoric of Hawaiianness. Faculty gave lectures, readings, or performances at most of the major conferences in the United States and were invited to do the same at prestigious institutions throughout the USA and in countries including Ireland, Italy, India, China, Lesotho, and the United Kingdom.
This is an exciting time to be a member of the department. As a faculty we have been able to add exciting young members to our group of established scholars and have the good fortune to look forward to a number of new hires in the immediate future. As a discipline, English is engaging new subjects and methods and media. We hope that you will consider taking some of our courses or becoming a member of our department.
Keith Tuma
Professor & Chair
June 2005