At the Honoring Ceremony in May, the department recognized the academic, creative and professional achievements of students, faculty and staff over the past academic year. The event brought together graduating seniors, master’s candidates, award recipients and their supporters to celebrate a thriving community of scholars and writers.
English alumni of the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) are drawn to the program for diverse reasons—a love for storytelling, a passion for the descriptive power of poetry, or a fascination with the historical and logical underpinnings of rhetoric, to name a few. For Hannah Vogltanz, the story began with a love for English grammar and structure.
For Melanie Seitzer, a lecturer in the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s (UNO) Department of English and the associate director of the university’s Writing Center, the path into academia was one that revealed itself gradually—through curiosity, experience and the guidance of remarkable mentors.
For Christina Delray, a graduate student and instructor of record in the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s (UNO) Department of English, learning has never been confined to a classroom.
For Jennifer Hadley, an English teacher at Elkhorn High School and Member of the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s (UNO) dual enrollment program, education isn’t just a career, it’s a family tradition.
What Are You Reading?
Percival Everett’s novel, James, is an electrifying adaptation of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The most compelling aspect of the novel is the eponymous protagonist’s first-person narration that draws readers into a story that they think they know and surprises them with a powerfully subversive retelling. In Everett’s book, code switching becomes a means by which people of color and enslaved people hide their intelligence and perform diminished selves that appear non-threatening to their slave-owning masters and overseers in Missouri and other parts of the South. When Twain’s “Jim” finally becomes Everett’s James, he speaks with a knowledgeable eloquence that frightens people much more than the gun in his hands. While I really enjoyed this intelligent novel, my critique of the novel rests in its use of standard English as a means of claiming equality and liberty; using standardized speech as a marker limits how we understand agency, intelligence, and humanity. James carves out a space for himself through speech (standard English) that is legible, familiar, and demonstrative of liberal education, but does that reimpose certain rather exclusive ways of understanding personhood? I’m still thinking through these questions. If you see me in the hallway, let me know what you think!
-- Dr. Tanushree Ghosh, Department Chair
Give to the UNO English Department Fund for Excellence
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