From the Chair's Desk

 Dear colleagues and friends,

We will celebrate the end of the semester in fine English department style on April 23rd at 3:30 pm in Gowan 400 with a lecture and a party. As many of you know, 2019 is the bicentennial of Herman Melville’s birth. To mark the occasion and celebrate the conclusion of the academic year, Robert Levine will give a talk titled, "What Is an American? Race, Emigration, and Nation in the Writings of Herman Melville.” Robert Levine is Professor of English and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author, editor, or coeditor of over 25 volumes, including Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville: Essays in Relation (2008) and The New Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville (2014), and is the General Editor of The Norton Anthology of American Literature. After the talk we’ll celebrate with a spread catered by Rocklands BBQ. Please mark your calendar and join us! All are welcome.

The end of the year also brings a change to the Department of English. Our beloved and remarkable colleague Rebecca Rainof Mas has accepted a full-time position at Princeton University. Rebecca joined the Department of English at Catholic University as an assistant professor in 2008 after earning her PhD at Princeton University in that year. She was promoted to associate professor in 2015. Since 2016 she has had a joint appointment at Catholic University and Princeton University. Rebecca has been and is an exceptional scholar, teacher, and colleague, and we will miss her dearly. Princeton’s gain is our loss, but we wish Rebecca and her family the very best and hope she will come back to visit us often!

Ernest Suarez
David M. O'Connell Professor of English
Executive Director, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers
Chair, Department of English