Welcome to IU South Bend's Department of English. We offer Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts degrees, a Certificate in Professional Writing, as well as Minors in English, Creative Writing, and Film Studies. We also coordinate the First-Year Writing Program and English as a Second Language.

The programs offered by the English Department are designed to expand a student's understanding and skill in English language and composition, written communication, and literature. These programs prepare students for a broad range of careers, especially those requiring analytical thinking and expression and the ability to read carefully and write clearly. In addition to education and media-related careers, the writing and analytical skills gained in English courses will enhance careers in business, law, and medicine.

Our faculty includes award-winning teachers, active scholars, and engaged community members.

Our students go on to pursue successful careers, become published writers, or further their education in Ph.D. and M.F.A. programs (often a combination of all three!).

Recent News

Department Chair Elaine Roth's co-edited book, Motherhood Misconceived: Representing the Maternal in U.S. Films, has just been released by SUNY Press.

Professor Jake Mattox's article, "The Mayor of San Juan del Norte? Nicaragua, Martin Delany, and the ‘Cotton’ Americans," has just been published in American Literature, published by Duke University Press.

Professor Kelcey Parker is featured as Artist of the Month for November 2009 at Image Journal.
She presented a Women's Studies Brown Bag Lecture, "Lost in Space: Fictions of Women in Suburbia," Friday, Nov. 13 at 12:00 in DW 2170.

Professor Bobby Meyer-Lee gave an invited lecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign entitled “Representing Chaucer: History, Value, and the Chaucer Edition.” He also held a seminar there on “The Axiological Logic of Chaucer’s House of Fame.”

Professor Lee Kahan was invited to present his research as part of the Deans' Seminar Series. His presentation was titled, "The Talk of the Town: Publicity and Female Propriety in the Fictions of Frances Burney."

Al Vitale has won the IU South Bend Distinguished Associate Faculty Teaching Award. He will be presented with the award by the Academic Senate on November 20.

Senior Lecturer Smiljka Cubelic presented at the 6th annual conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (issotl) in Bloomington, IN, October 22-25. She presented for the 200-level Writing Committee the following title – "The Pedagogy of Professionalization in the Age of On-Line Networking: Merging Academic Rigor with Workplace Applications."

Professor Joe Chaney presented a paper on Hamlet for the General Education Salon Series at Chinese U of Hong Kong. The title was "Shakespeare's Hamlet: The Text Whose Fate Cries Out."

Lecturer Alisea McLeod presented a paper—"Slave and Farmer: the Civil War Experience of Daniel Williams"—at the Conference on the Civil War (The University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS; October 30-31, 2009). Williams is McLeod's great-great-grandfather and his story is a case study for the subject of black farming during the war.

Recent M.A. graduate Jessica Kaiser was awarded a Presidential Fellowship to pursue the PhD in American Studies at Purdue University.

The Wolfson Poetry Award is a new national book contest named in honor of Lester Wolfson. David Dodd Lee will oversee the contest. He has books forthcoming from Four Way Press and the University of Akron Press.

For more great news about our faculty, students, and alumni, please visit our news page.

----------------------------------------------------
Department of English
Wiekamp Hall
1700 Mishawaka Avenue
Post Office Box 7111
South Bend, IN 46634-7111
Fax: 574-520-4538

Anne Richmond, Department Secretary
Phone: 574-520-4304
Office: DW 3127
Email: anrichmo@iusb.edu