From the Chair's Desk

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful holiday season and is looking forward to the new semester. 2019 brings a significant change to the Department of English with the retirements of several longtime faculty who have contributed a great deal to the Catholic University community. As many of you know Glen Johnson, Pamela Ward, Christopher Wheatley, and Rosemary Winslow participated in the early retirement package the university offered two years ago, and consequently have not been teaching courses since the start of the last academic year. The spring 2019 semester marks their official retirements. I would like to extend my thanks to them all for their many years of service and to wish them many more happy and productive years!

I also would like to thank the many CUA graduate students, faculty, and alumni for their participation in the twenty-second annual conference of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers at Vanderbilt University last November. I’m always thrilled—but not surprised—when colleagues at other universities tell me how impressed they are by people with a CUA affiliation. The 2019 annual conference of the ALSCW will be held at the College of the Holy Cross from October 3-6 (the Call for Papers will come out in late February) and the 2020 annual conference will be held at Yale University. The ALSCW also holds local events across the country, and this spring a host of terrific speakers will be coming to campus. Our first event will be on February 25th when Kellie Robertson of the University of Maryland comes to speak on medieval literature. In March Mike Mattison of the Tedeschi Trucks Band and Gayle Wald of George Washington University will speak on music and literature. In April Robert Levine of the University of Maryland will close our semester with a talk marking the bicentenary of the birth of Herman Melville. More information on these events is forthcoming in the weeks ahead.

I look forward to seeing you all soon!

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

 

Winter Trees
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.