English Department
Florida State University
405 Williams
Building
Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1580
Phone: 850 644 4230
Fax: 850 644
0811
The Department of English offers work leading to the Bachelor of Arts (BA), Master of Arts (MA), Master of Fine Arts (MFA), and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in English and American literature, creative writing, and rhetoric and composition. It also offers course work and degree options in a number of related fields including popular culture, folklore, critical theory, women's studies, and film studies. read more
Kristie Fleckenstein's book encourages student empathy, change through identification.
Kristie Fleckenstein's new publication—Vision, Rhetoric, and Social Action in the Composition Classroom (Southern Illinois UP, 2009)—might sound a bit academic, even impersonal, to the layperson, but her purpose is quite the opposite: "to help students connect to their surroundings with an empathic eye, leading them to become compassionate participants, not indifferent observers." Vision, Rhetoric, and Social Action is premised, she says, on the idea that changing the world "requires changing the way we see the world."
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Virgil Suarez's Cuban roots influence his poetry and prose.
Professor Virgil Suarez has been a fixture in the Department of English since 1992, and he says that working and creating among his high-quality colleagues has always motivated him to be productive. In fact, since arriving at the university Suarez has published fourteen books of poetry and prose and received several awards for his writing, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant.
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Anne Coldiron's study of translation illuminates old controversies and recovers the 16th-century battle of the sexes.
Associate Professor Anne Coldiron's most recent book addresses writings that have not been edited since 1483, yet their topics are up to the minute: the battle of the sexes. The book not only raises seemingly timeless issues about gender, but its scholarly controversies resonate throughout the field of early modern literature. English Printing, Verse Translation, and the Battle of the Sexes, 1476-1557 (Ashgate, 2009) focuses on poems that are difficult to acquire—they are rare copies held in archives at large and wealthy libraries—and that are also challenging to comprehend because the poems are printed in their original blackletter typefaces. Using her proficiency and passion for the translation process to provide readers with access to the writings, Coldiron calls English Printing a "recovery project."
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Amit Rai offers up a well-timed critique of India media with Untimely Bollywood.
Associate Professor Amit S. Rai shines a spotlight on Indian popular culture in his new book, Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India's New Media Assemblage (Duke UP, 2009). The result, writes Corey K. Creekmur, co-editor of Cinema, Law, and the State in Asia, is an accomplishment that "stands out not only for its originality but also for its audacity. Its deft coordination of what at first would seem wildly heterogeneous topics is simply dazzling."
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Paul Outka wins ASLE award for Race and Nature.
The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment awarded the prize for the best scholarly book on literature and the environment published in 2007 and 2008 to Professor Paul Outka for his recent book, Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance (Palgrave: 2008). With more than 1,200 members in 24 countries, ASLE is the principal organization for those authors who write on Literature and the Environment. In their commendation, judges agreed that Outka "makes good use of literary theory with a strong historical context." Judges also pointed out the "sophisticated way it addresses the intersection of race and nature" in the work of both Anglo-European and African American writers. → read more
Poet Barbara Hamby makes words tango.
Reviewers are making room on their dance cards for Barbara Hamby's new book of poems, All-Night Lingo Tango. Former winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hamby combines in her fourth book an intricate verbal play with tongue-in-cheek eroticism to produce off-beats lyrics almost as exciting as the fabled Argentinian dance. → read more
Eric Walker discusses modern marriage.
Eric Walker's new book, Marriage, Writing, and Romanticism: Wordsworth and Austen after War (Stanford University Press: 2009) is destined to change what we mean when we say, "Marriage is difficult." → read more
