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
Assistant Professor of Practice and Coordinator of Film Studies
Film and media studies, literary and critical theory, LGBTQ studies, and creative writing (poetry)
James E. Ryan Professor of English
Victorian literature and culture, 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
Associate Professor of English and Film Studies
African American literature (autobiography and contemporary literature to present), mass-marketed popular literature, film and visual culture
Assistant Professor of English
Twenty First Century African Women Poetry, Creative Writing/Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, African and African Diasporic Literature, Epic Poetry, Ethnic Studies
Associate Professor of English
Nineteenth-Century American literature, literature and the history of psychology, history of the book, print and critical theory.
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
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
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
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
Associate 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
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 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
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