Literary and Cultural Studies
Photo credit: Craig Chandler | University Communications
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 Junot Diaz, 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 diverse and innovative graduate degree programs in many areas of Literary and Cultural Studies. Graduate students who wish to pursue Literary and Cultural Studies have opportunities to work closely with faculty and design individualized M.A. and Ph.D. 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. We offer graduate degree emphases in the following areas of Literary and Cultural Studies:
- Ethnic Literatures (including African American, U.S. Latina/o and Chicana/o, Native American, African, Afro-Caribbean, and Irish literatures)
- Women’s Literature
- Medieval and Renaissance Literatures
- Nineteenth-Century Literatures (including American literatures and eighteenth-century, Romantic, and Victorian British literatures)
- Twentieth-Century Literatures (including American literatures and British modernism)
- Place-Based Writing (including literatures of the Great Plains and the American West)
Laura White
John E. Weaver Professor of English and Coordinator of Literature
19th- and 20th- century British literature, especially the novel, Narrative theory, Genre theory, History of manners, Anglo-American modernism, Jane Austen, and Interdisciplinary 19th-century studies
Marco Abel
Professor
Film Studies, Critical and Literary Theory, and Contemporary American Literature
Stephen Behrendt
George Holmes Distinguished Professor
British Romanticism, Later 18th-century British literature, Women writers of the Romantic period, Literature and the Other Arts, Blake, The Shelley circle, and Creative Writing (poetry)
Stephen Buhler
Aaron Douglas Professor and 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.
Peter J. Capuano
Associate Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Program
Faculty Fellow in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
Victorian Literature and Culture, Dickens Studies (Dickens Project Faculty), Science and Literature, History and Theory of the Novel, Body Studies, and Digital Humanities
Joy Castro
Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
Memoir, Fiction, U.S. Ethnic Literatures, Women's Literatures, and Modernism
Matt Cohen
Professor
American Studies, the History of the Book, Native American Studies, Early American Literature, Editorial Theory and Practice, and Digital Archives
Wheeler Winston Dixon
Ryan Professor of Film Studies and Coordinator of Film Studies
Film History, Theory, and Criticism
Kwakiutl Dreher
Associate Professor
African American Literature (Autobiography and Contemporary Literature to present), Mass marketed popular literature, Film and Visual Culture
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
Willa Cather Professor of English and Film Studies
Film, Film Theory, Cultural Studies, and Race, Class, and Gender Theory
Amanda Gailey
Associate Professor and Digital Humanities Liaison
Digital humanities, with a specialization in text editing and digital archives; Nineteenth-century American literature, especially Whitman, Dickinson, and late nineteenth-century children's literature; and Editorial theory
Tom Gannon
Associate Professor
Native American literatures, British Romantic literature, Critical Theory, Ecocriticism & "Animal-Rights" Theory, and Avian and Animal Representation in Literature
Jace Gatzemeyer
Lecturer
Nicole Gray
Research Assistant Professor
Nineteenth-century American literature, Book history and textual studies, Editorial theory and Digital Humanities
Chris Harding Thornton
Lecturer
Melissa J. Homestead
Professor
American Literature and the History of the Book from the Early Republic through the early 20th century, with a focus on women’s authorship; the American novel; Catharine Sedgwick; and Willa Cather
Kathleen Lacey
Academic Advisor and Lecturer
Robert Lipscomb
Lecturer
Tom Lynch
Professor and Place Studies Liaison
Cross-cultural ecocriticism and place-conscious literary studies, with an emphasis on bioregionalism
Kevin McMullen
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Amelia María de la Luz Montes
Associate Professor
Late Nineteenth and contemporary American Literature; Chicana and Chicano Literature; Latina and Latino Literature; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Literature; Theories of Identity; Creative writing, Fiction and Memoir
Ng'ang'a Muchiri
Assistant Professor
Anne Nagel
Lecturer
Gabrielle Owen
Assistant Professor
Children’s Literature and Culture, Histories of Adolescence and Childhood, Gender Studies / Queer Theory, and Composition / Pedagogy
Michael Page
Lecturer, Department Course Scheduler and Laurus Faculty Advisor
Science Fiction, 19th Century British Literature and Culture, Romantic Poetry, Romantic Fiction, Victorian Fiction, and Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Nineteenth-Century
Kenneth M. Price
Co-Director of the Center for Digital Research in Humanities
19th- and early 20th- Century American Literature, Walt Whitman, American Periodicals, Textual Scholarship, and Digital Humanities
Stephen Ramsay
Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of English
Digital Humanities, Theory of new media, and Theater History
Guy Reynolds
Professor, Director of the Cather Project and Chair of the Undergraduate Program and Curriculum Committee
Willa Cather, Modernism, American Literary history, Digital Humanities, Post-War Fiction, and US and Anglophone Literary Internationalism
Beverley Rilett
Lecturer and Research Assistant Professor
Interdisciplinary nineteenth-century studies, Victorian and early 20th-century British literature and culture, women’s and gender studies, biography, the novel, digital humanities, and George Eliot’s life and literature.
Kari Ronning
Research Associate Professor
Willa Cather Archive; co-director of the Willa Cather Journalism project; quilts, textiles and fashion design
Gregory E. Rutledge
Associate Professor
African American literature and culture, including speculative fiction, literary history, the African American epic aesthetic, and folklore; and American Studies
Julia Schleck
Associate Professor
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, Cultural Materialism/ Marxism
Kelly Stage
Associate Professor 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; Theories of the Public and Private
Pascha Sotolongo Stevenson
Lecturer
Roland Végső
Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of English and Vice Chair —
Courtesy Appointment in Department of Communication Studies
Critical and Literary Theory, Psychoanalysis, Contemporary Political Theory, Twentieth Century Literatures, Modernism, Cold War Studies, and Translation and Translation Studies
Hope Wabuke
Assistant Professor
Adrian S. Wisnicki
Associate Professor
Victorian literature and culture, colonial and postcolonial studies, global literature, contemporary African literature, digital humanities, contemporary digital culture, literature of the ancient world