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.
Laura White
John E. Weaver Professor of English and Coordinator of Literature
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
Marco Abel
Willa Cather Professor of English and Film Studies and Department Chair
Courtesy Appointment in Department of Communication Studies
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)
Caterina Bernardini
Lecturer
Nineteenth-century and early modernist American poetry, transnational and world literature, multilingualism, women's writing, reception and translation studies, and digital scholarly editing
James Lowell Brunton
Assistant Professor of Practice and Coordinator of Film Studies
Film and media studies, literary and critical theory, LGBT studies, creative writing, and 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
Affiliated Faculty: Women’s and Gender Studies
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
Director of Institute for Ethnic Studies
Memoir, fiction, film, U.S. ethnic literatures, women's literatures, and modernism
Matt Cohen
Professor, Co-Director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and Affiliate Faculty in Native American Studies
American studies, history of the book, Native American studies, early American literature, editorial theory and practice, and digital archives
Kwame Dawes
Chancellor's Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner
Post-colonial literature and theory, African American literature, Caribbean literature, African literature, reggae aesthetics, poetry, and playwriting
Kwakiutl Dreher
Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
African American literature (autobiography and contemporary literature to present), mass-marketed popular literature, film and visual culture
Amanda Gailey
Associate Professor and Digital Humanities Liaison
Digital humanities, text editing and digital archives, editorial theory, and nineteenth-century American literature (especially Whitman, Dickinson, and late nineteenth-century children's literatures)
Tom Gannon
Associate 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
Scott Guild
Lecturer
Creative writing (fiction), novel writing, composition and rhetoric, literary and cultural studies, and anti-racist pedagogy
Chris Harding Thornton
Lecturer
Creative writing, literary theory and criticism, Great Plains literature, and American fiction
Melissa J. Homestead
Professor of English, Program Faculty in Women's & Gender Studies, 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
Kathleen Lacey
Academic Advisor and Lecturer
African American literature, multiethnic American literature, women's literature, popular culture, race and medicine, and girlhood studies
Yulia Levchenko
Lecturer
Nineteenth-century Russian and British literature (specifically the Romantic Era), literary translation, and cross-cultural relations between Russia and Europe
Tom Lynch
Professor and Place Studies Liaison
Cross-cultural ecocriticism and place-conscious literary studies, with an emphasis on bioregionalism
Kevin McMullen
Research Assistant Professor
Nineteenth-century American literature and culture, periodical literature, digital humanities, editorial theory, and textual recovery
Nick Monk
Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching — Courtesy Appointment in Department of English
Pedagogy, Open-Space Learning, the American West (especially writers Leslie Silko and Cormac McCarthy) and cultural literacy and communication
Amelia María de la Luz Montes
Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
Chicana and Chicano literature, Latina and Latino literature, LGBT literature, theories of identity, creative writing, fiction, and memoir
Ng'ang'a Muchiri
Assistant Professor
African and African diaspora literature, African digital humanities, 20th-century literature, Caribbean literature
Gabrielle Owen
Assistant Professor
Children's literature and culture, young adult literature, histories of childhood and adolescence, queer theory, and transgender studies
Michael Page
Lecturer, Department Course Scheduler, and Laurus Faculty Advisor
Science fiction, 19th-century British literature and culture, british romanticism, and film studies.
Kenneth M. Price
Hillegass University Professor of American Literature, Co-Director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and Co-Director of the Charlest W. Chesnutt Archive
19th- and early 20th-century American literature, Walt Whitman, American periodicals, textual scholarship, and digital humanities
Guy Reynolds
Professor and Chair of the Undergraduate Program and Curriculum Committee
Willa Cather, modernism, American literary history, post-war fiction, U.S. 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, George Eliot’s life and literature, and digital humanities.
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 of English and Ethnic Studies
African-American literature and culture, including speculative fiction, literary history, the African-American epic aesthetic, and folklore
Julia Schleck
Associate Professor
Global Renaissance studies, 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, and 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, and theories of the public and private
Pascha Sotolongo Stevenson
Lecturer
Ethnic literatures, women writers, contemporary fiction, literary slipstream, creative nonfiction, and children's literature
Roland Végső
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
Adrian S. Wisnicki
Associate Professor and Digital Humanities Program Coordinator
Victorian studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, African studies, global literature, digital humanities, and technology and contemporary culture