Diversity

At the Department of English at UNL, we’re conscious of our important role in a 21st-century Humanities discipline — we embrace the great responsibility of ensuring that the humanities includes all of its "voices," including those of ethnicity, gender and sexuality.

Our devotion to providing an intellectual climate of respect for, even affirmation of, difference is embodied in a faculty and curriculum that fosters these values on a daily basis. One of our faculty's great strengths, indeed, is the wide-ranging diversity of our teaching and scholarly talents and interests: We take pride in our course offerings in Women's literature and rhetoric, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender literature, African and African American literature, Latina/Latino literature, Native American literature and Cultural Studies in general.

In close coordination with the Institute for Ethnic Studies and the Women's and Gender Studies Program, the Department of English will continue on the forefront in acknowledging the human in all of its complexity. And as part of our ongoing commitment to diversity, we’ll encourage our students and staff every day to “Read the World, Write Your Future.”

Departmental Commitment to Anti-Racist Action

The mission of the Department of English at UNL commits its members to a shared belief that our collective work as scholars, writers, teachers, and citizens of various communities should be guided by an unwavering affirmation of diversity; a staunch desire to foster for all people, without exception, a sense that they belong; and the knowledge that social justice never exists if it does not exist for all people, not least people who have historically been and continue to be marginalized, frequently by violent means. Read more about our commitment.

English and Film Studies Faculty

A Diversity of Teaching & Research Interests

Joy Castro - U.S. ethnic literatures; women's literatures

Kwakiutl L. Dreher – African American literature, including contemporary literature, autobiography, mass marketed popular literature, film and visual culture

Gregory E. Rutledge – African American literature and culture, including speculative fiction, literary history, the African American epic aesthetic, folklore

Kwame Dawes - postcolonial literature and theory; African American literature; Caribbean literature; African literature; reggae aesthetics

Hope Wabuke - African and African American literature; Women's and Gender Studies

Ng’ang’a Wahu-Mũchiri - African & African diaspora literature; African Digital Humanities; Caribbean literature

Tom Gannon – Native American literature, including Plains Indian literatures and Native eco/animal rights

Matt Cohen – Native American literature

Julia Schleck – renaissance travel narratives to the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas; renaissance arts and sciences, with a focus on Anglo-Islamic relations

Amy M. Goodburn – multicultural pedagogies

Stacey Waite - queer theory/queer pedagogies; feminist and gender studies

Timothy Schaffert - queer studies

Gabrielle Owen - queer theory and transgender studies

James Brunton - queer studies

Melissa J. Homestead – 19th- and 20th-century women writers

Rachel Azima - Writing Center Studies, especially social justice in the writing center

Shari Stenberg - Women's and gender studies

Course Offerings - Majors

212: Lesbian & Gay Literature

215: Introduction to Women's Literature

239: Film Directors: Gay and Lesbian Directors

239B: Women Filmmakers

244: African American Literature

244A: Introduction to African Literature

244E: Early African American Literature

245A: Asian American Literature

245J: Jewish-American Literature

245N: Introduction to Native American Literature

285: Introduction to Comparative Literature

315A: Survey of Women's Literature

315B: Women in Pop Culture

333A: American Authors Since 1900: Willa Cather and Her World

344: Ethnicity and Film

344B: Black Women Authors

344D: Caribbean Literature

345D: Chicana and/or Chicano Literature

345N: Native American Women Writers

349: National Cinemas

401K/801K: Gay and Lesbian Drama

405K/805K: Canadian Fiction

414/814: Women's Literature

414B/814B: Modern and Contemporary Women Writers

445/845: Ethnic Literature (incl. Latina/o Literature)

445B/845B: Topics in African American Literature

445K/845K: Topics in African Literature

445N/845N: Topics in Native American Literature

462A/862A: Ideas of Ethnicity in Medieval Literature

475A/875A: Rhetorical Theory: Rhetoric of Women Writers

914: Seminar in Women Writers

940: Seminar in African American Literature

940A: African Literature in English

945: Seminar in Ethnic Literature