The Department of English:
An Education in Imaginative Reasoning
We, the faculty of the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, believe that one of the greatest strengths of our department is that in all areas of our curriculum—literary and film studies, creative writing, composition and rhetoric, and the digital humanities—we help students develop their capacities in imaginative reasoning so that in their lives as citizens of the world and members of their local communities they can discern connections and synthesize across seemingly incommensurable ideas or beliefs. Imaginative reasoning is the ability to use the imagination to think hypothetically about the world in all its variety and possibility—the past, present, and future, the local and the global. Such an ability, we believe, enables all of us to engage critically with social and political phenomena because it allows us to re-envision what is possible and to dream up audacious solutions to seemingly insoluble problems, solutions that might at first seem implausible but, once dreamt up—once imagined—suddenly seem possible. These moments of imaginative insight compel us to ask: Why are such solutions deemed impossible or implausible to begin with? Who says so and for what reasons? What prevents us from dreaming of alternatives, of imagining other paths, in the first place?
By educating students in multiple literacies, we offer them the intellectual skills they need to intervene actively in political, civic, and cultural affairs in their communities. This literacy work—fostered through analyzing literature and moving images, the creative and rhetorical production of texts, and the critically- informed development of digital environments—involves imagining political, civic, and cultural futures that might better serve the entire body politic; it also requires deeply investigating the wide range of traditions that have led to and influenced the current cultural scene.
We believe that nurturing the capacity for imaginative reasoning is particularly important today. One key demand—perpetually called for in contemporary business discourse to which today’s universities feel compelled to respond—is the need to innovate. We agree that the ability to innovate is important and should be valued; however, as teachers and scholars in the humanities, we are skeptical of an idea of innovation predicated on planned obsolescence. Rather, we affirm a model of innovation grounded in a critical engagement with tradition and predicated on creative reinvestigation. In our classrooms and in our research and creative activity, we re-visit, re-read, re-write, re- think, re-see, re-frame, re-investigate, re-interpret, and re-create the past(s) through encountering texts, moving images, and media practices from many cultural traditions in order to understand and act upon the present in new ways for a better future to come.
Studying literary, film, rhetorical, cultural, and media history; theorizing these histories and the changes writing, reading, and viewing practices have undergone over the centuries; asking questions about present creative activities and their ways of entering such longstanding conversations—all such activities ultimately train our students in what we, as an English Department, see as valuable skills.
We are especially committed to posing such questions that cut to the core of ongoing conversations about the state of the Humanities in the twenty-first century because we are keenly aware of our specific place within a university on the Great Plains with a historic land grant mission. Indeed, we affirm the specificity of our locality—of our place, as well as the specificity of other places—as crucial for inquiry across our curriculum and for the research and creative activities many of us pursue. At the same time, we recognize that the lives of students today—not just in metropolises but also here in Nebraska—are ceaselessly confronted with the impact of global forces. Students need to become more globally aware and better equipped to navigate nimbly a broader and more rapidly shifting world than their grandparents, if not their parents, could dream of; but they also can find it difficult to get their “local” voices heard. We thus seek to guide our students in the process of bringing their “local” voices (the specificity of their social locations) to bear on the global context (the “world”).
Contrary to many misperceptions about the Great Plains, the “world” is not just “out there”—elsewhere; it is in fact right here in Lincoln, Nebraska, a community in which students in the local public schools speak more than sixty languages and where global migration has left an indelible mark on the city, the state, and the region. This globalization of local communities is ripe with potential—and imaginative reasoning is precisely that skill and capacity that allows us, collectively and individually, to partake in the important civic process of realizing this culturally rich potential. As the Department of English at UNL, we are committed to educating our students in this art of imaginative reasoning so that they can become well-informed and caring actors in an increasingly dynamic environment.
While we respond to an institution-wide request to review academic mission statements, the 2025 Chair’s Advisory Committee of the department shares the language above, derived from the mission statement that was the most recently ratified by a full department vote (2016).