Kathleen McGarvey

The hostess of a popular Parisian salon, the role of presidential power, and bullying and aggression among teenage girls are among the topics examined in new books by Rochester faculty. Here’s a selection of recent work.

Poet Jennifer Grotz, a professor of English, has been named the next director of the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. She is the first woman to serve as director of the oldest American conference for writers.

“I want our center to touch the life of every University of Rochester undergraduate,” says Joan Shelley Rubin, who was installed as the inaugural Ani and Mark Gabrellian Director of the Humanities Center in May.

Each academic year, Rochester faculty members publish books that advance scholarship and investigate questions of broad interest. New Reads offers a selection of some of their most recent work.

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Galway Kinnell ’49 (MA) was often compared to Walt Whitman for his lyricism. When he died in 2014, Rochester Review remembered him with a selection of his thoughts on the practice of poetry.

For more than 50 years, the Plutzik Reading Series has brought Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, and National Book Award winners to River Campus.

Professor James Longenbach's next books—Earthling  and Lyric Knowledge—will soon be released. This National Poetry Month, Longenbach reminds us, “the best poems ever written constitute our future.”

The author of four volumes of poetry, Grotz joins 20 other current Rochester faculty who have received Guggenheim Fellowships, which are among the most coveted academic awards.

Can poetry thrive in an age of instant communication? As April's National Poetry Month begins, University's poetry faculty and students have found that the answer is an emphatic "yes." The pace of digital life has only quickened over the last ten years since Twitter was founded, but the slower process of reading and crafting poetry continues, robustly, at Rochester.

Aaron Banks ’18 and Julianne McAdams ’17 have won scholarships to the highly competitive program of workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Rochester will host the U.S. premiere of God Has No Country, a one-man play written and performed by Donal Courtney. The drama tells the story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who used his Vatican connections to harbor Jews, ultimately saving more than 6,500 lives.

The University of Rochester has received a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to increase undergraduates’ engagement with the humanities. Titled “Humanities for Life,” the five-year initiative is designed to engage students early in their academic careers.