[This is Part 2 of our three-part series Reflections on a PhD in Literature. Read Part 1: The Basics]. Now that I’ve explained the structure of a PhD in literature (and more or less, I think, other PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences), I want to talk a little bit about what it’s … Read More
Editor’s note: As the recipient of the Harvey Waterman Medal of Excellence, Nick was invited to serve as the student speaker at Rutgers’ School of Graduate Studies Convocation on Friday, May 13, 2022. Proud of our founding member, the entire Books We Read staff would like to congratulate to Dr. Allred on his lifetime achievement at … Read More
[This is the first post in our three-part series Reflections on a PhD in Literature.] During the time I’ve been involved with the Books We Read project (including this blog), I’ve been working on a PhD in English at Rutgers. Actually, I’ve been working on that PhD for about twice as long as this project … Read More
With Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, war is back on the minds of the West––even though, as Syria, Yemen, and other sites of conflict should remind us, it never really left. A recent New York Times essay by the Ukranian poet Ilya Kaminsky meditates on the role of poetry in times like these. Kaminsky’s own … Read More
Interviews with Authors: A Bibliotherapy Reader in Hungarian Judit Hajnal Ward often publishes in her native Hungarian in topics related to Library and Information Science. Her book entitled Nyitott Könyvtár (Open Libraries) was published in 2015 by Kalligram in Budapest. The second interview in the series focuses on her latest book, related to bibliotherapy in … Read More
This post starts with a confession: Middlemarch, by George Eliot (pen name of Mary Anne Evans), is widely considered one of the greatest novels ever written––certainly the odds-on favorite for greatest English novel. It is my fiancée’s favorite novel and she has written about it extensively. She’s not alone––many of the greatest literary critics of … Read More
The below was first written for a project funded by the American Library Association, for a pilot project using reading as a way to address issues of addiction. For more on the project, see here; for more information on bibliotherapy, see here. Addiction is, among many other things, bewildering and isolating. It’s an enormous and … Read More
Last week we had the pleasure of hosting poet Natalie Díaz for a Zoom reading and discussion, and a few weeks ago in late June we had author Carmen Maria Machado for a similar event. I had the particular pleasure of being the one to talk to both, asking them questions drawn from our preregistered … Read More
Natalie Díaz will be (virtually) coming to Rutgers for a live Zoom session on Wednesday July 14th! Díaz won an American Book Award for her first collection of poems, When My Brother Was an Aztec, in 2012, and recently won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for her second collection (Postcolonial Love Poem) released last year. She … Read More
This post, and this poem, is about puberty… I chose Rita Dove’s poem “Adolescence-II” for this summer program in part because (like all of our poems this session, actually) I’ve taught it before at Rutgers and students really connected with it! I’m curious to hear what Summer Tales participants will have to say about it, … Read More