Literature teaches us to engage with the past and with others. Whether we are looking at sonnets by Shakespeare, Science Fiction short stories, or novels by Chinua Achebe, Virginia Woolf, or Rigoberto Gonzalez, we are moving across imaginative boundaries: into the past or into the literary culture of a different society. The study of literature makes us aware of our own distinctiveness, as well as the uniqueness of these other places and times.
The study of literature at UNL is varied and cosmopolitan. A UNL literary student might work one semester on Milton or Renaissance London; another on the poetry of contemporary Africa; and then move back to the United States, to read Native American writing or the Harlem Renaissance.
Literary study is a bridge into different imaginative realms; it encourages us to read closely and to read deeply, to lose ourselves in a created world, but then to come back to our current realities with fresh eyes.
Undergraduate Literary and Cultural Studies
Undergraduate students with interests in literature have a variety of opportunities to develop their interests in:
- British Literature
- American Literature
- Ethnic Literatures (including African American, Irish, Chicana(o) American, Asian, Native American, and Jewish American)
- World Literatures (including Canadian, African, Caribbean, and European)
- Film History, Theory, and Criticism
- Literary History
- Literary Criticism and Theory
- Literary Genres (such as poetry, drama, fiction, life-writing, and environmental literature)
Literature students may also pursue a Literary and Cultural Studies concentration.
UNL students who graduate with an English major in literature pursue a variety of career and professional work, including
- Graduate and professional school (including law, graduate study in English, and graduate school in education)
- Advertising
- Publishing and editing
- Teaching
Graduate Literary and Cultural Studies
The Department of English offers formal M.A. and Ph.D. specializations Literary and Cultural Studies. Graduate students who wish to pursue Literary and Cultural Studies have opportunities to work closely with faculty and design individualized programs of study. Graduate Faculty members in Literary and Cultural Studies work on varied scholarly projects, share a commitment to the analysis of literature within larger cultural, social and political contexts, and utilize a wide range of critical methodologies, such as textual recovery, archival work, digital scholarship, and theoretical analyses.
Faculty
Willa Cather Professor of English and Film Studies
Courtesy Professor in Department of Communication Studies
Film studies, critical and literary theory, and contemporary American literature
Lecturer
Nineteenth-century and early modernist American poetry, transnational and world literature, multilingualism, women's writing, reception and translation studies, and digital scholarly editing
Lecturer
Assistant Professor of Practice and Coordinator of Film Studies
Film and media studies, literary and critical theory, LGBTQ studies, and creative writing (poetry)
Aaron Douglas Professor of English
The literary culture of Early Modern England, especially the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, as well as literature's connections with philosophy and the performing arts
Professor of English, Director of Literary and Cultural Studies
Victorian literature and culture, Dickens studies (Dickens Project faculty), science and literature, history and theory of the novel, body studies, and digital humanities
Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
Director of Institute for Ethnic Studies
Memoir, fiction, film, U.S. ethnic literatures, women's literatures, and modernism
Professor of English, Co-Director of the Walt Whitman Archive, Co-Director of the Charles W. Chesnutt Archive, and Affiliate Faculty in Native American Studies
American studies, history of the book, Native American studies, early American literature, editorial theory and practice, and digital archives
Lecturer
Literary and cultural studies, modernist poetry, and epic poetry
George Holmes Distinguished Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner
Post-colonial literature and theory, African American literature, Caribbean literature, African literature, reggae aesthetics, poetry, and playwriting
Lecturer
Associate Professor of English and Film Studies
African American literature (autobiography and contemporary literature to present), mass-marketed popular literature, film and visual culture
Associate Professor of English
Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
Native American literatures, British Romantic literature, critical theory, ecocriticism and "animal-rights" theory, avian and animal representation in literature
Lecturer
Creative writing, literary theory and criticism, Great Plains literature, and American fiction
Lecturer
Creative writing (poetry) and women's and gender studies
Professor of English and Director of the Cather Project
American literature and the history of the book from the Early Republic through the early 20th century (with a focus on women’s authorship), Willa Cather, Catharine Sedgwick, E.D.E.N. Southworth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American novel, and lesbian literature, history, and biography
Lecturer
Academic Advisor
African American literature, multiethnic American literature, women's literature, popular culture, race and medicine, and girlhood studies
Research Associate Professor of English
Nineteenth-century American literature and culture, periodical literature, digital humanities, editorial theory, and textual recovery
Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching
Courtesy Professor of English
Pedagogy, Open-Space Learning, the American West (especially writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Cormac McCarthy) and cultural literacy and communication
Lecturer
Literary and cultural studies, American literature, African American literature, and Latinx literature
Associate Professor of English
African and African diaspora literature, African digital humanities, 20th-century literature, Caribbean literature
Lecturer, Administrative Technician, and Assistant to the Graduate Chair
Assistant Professor of English
Children's literature and culture, young adult literature, histories of childhood and adolescence, queer theory, and transgender studies
Assistant Professor of Practice and Coordinator of Curriculum
Science fiction, film studies, 19th-century British literature and culture, and British romanticism
Hillegass University Professor of American Literature, Co-Director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and Co-Director of the Charles W. Chesnutt Archive
19th- and early 20th-century American literature, Walt Whitman, American periodicals, textual scholarship, and digital humanities
Associate Professor of English
Digital humanities, theory of new media, and theater history
Lecturer
Professor of English
Willa Cather, modernism, American literary history, post-war fiction, U.S. and anglophone literary internationalism
(그레고리 유진 러틀레지)Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
African-American literature, Afro-Korean studies (Afro-Orientalism), critical race theory, world literature, race/racism, traditional West/Central African epic performance, E3 studies (epic/exceptionalism/elite studies), storytelling and folklore, Afro-futurism, African diaspora and diaspora studies, American/cultural studies, law & literature, and American literature
Associate Professor of English and Vice Chair
Academic freedom & critical university studies, global Renaissance studies, Renaissance literature (including drama, lyric poetry and prose), travel writing and early modern colonial writings; interdisciplinary interests include Renaissance music and history of science, genre studies, and cultural materialism/Marxism
Professor of English
Associate Professor of English and Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program
Early modern literature (16-17th centuries, especially drama), theater history, theories of space and urban development, and theories of the public and private
Assistant Professor of Practice
Ethnic literatures, women writers, contemporary fiction, literary slipstream, creative nonfiction, and children's literature
Lecturer
John E. Weaver Professor of English and Chair of the Undergraduate Program and Curriculum Committee
19th- and 20th-Century British literature, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, interdisciplinary 19th-century studies, narrative theory, genre theory, history of manners, and Anglo-American modernism
Professor of English and Digital Humanities Program Coordinator
Victorian studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, African studies, global literature, digital humanities, and technology and contemporary culture