Department of English Archives - Page 2 of 13 - News Center

Still from Psycho horror film showing Norman Bates greeting Marion Crane and Sam Loomis at hotel desk.

The work of horror films

February 20, 2024

A collection of essays coedited by Jason Middleton explores the "monster" of late capitalism lurking in modern American horror films.

Detail of Caravaggio's "The Conversion of Saint Paul" shows Saul sprawled on the ground beneath a horse's legs, blinded and with his arms raised. A crop of the painting serves as the cover art for Jennifer Grotz's "Still Falling: Poems."

A poet’s meditation on loss, light, and legacy

February 20, 2024

Still Falling, English professor Jennifer Grotz’s fourth collection of poems, illuminates the connection between art and time.

Ezra Tawil in a yellow and black checkered shirt smiles at the camera in a room with wood-paneled walls.

Ezra Tawil, English professor of substance and style, remembered

February 5, 2024

The scholar of American literature had a special talent for connecting with colleagues and students alike.

illustration of a book with a red tail of Satan hanging out of the book like a bookmark to represent the light verse of Melissa Balmain's latest collection.

Provoking and coping through light verse

December 12, 2023

Rochester English instructor ‘explores the lighter side of dark times’ with her latest collection of poems.

Black and white portrait of Norwegian author and 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient Jon Fosse staring directly at the camera.

How Nobel Prize–winning author Jon Fosse was found in translation

October 6, 2023

Open Letter’s Chad Post on discovering the Norwegian author for English audiences—and the importance of foreign translation presses today.

Promotional artwork shows the colors of the trans flag with the words "Based on Virginia Woolf's gender-bending masterpiece Orlando by Sarah Ruhl" with an Elizabethan color and a ring.

The ‘first English language trans novel,’ adapted for stage

September 30, 2023

The International Theatre program’s production of Orlando promises “a wild ride” and a serious reflection on the fluidity of identity.

Crop of book cover art for Dangerous Children by Kenneth Gross.

When fictional children become stranger things

Teaching an undergraduate class on ‘dangerous’ children in literature inspired English professor Kenneth Gross’s latest book.

Close-up photo of Steven Schottenfeld, author of This Room Is Made of Noise.

Questions of character and motives drive professor’s new novel

In Stephen Schottenfeld’s This Room Is Made of Noise, a down-on-his-luck handyman befriends an elderly widow of means. What’s a reader to think?

Fatou Jobe, who is translating Wolof fables into English, wears bright green while looking off camera in a library entryway.

English major from The Gambia helps preserve ancient African fables

Fatoumatta Jobe is transcribing in Wolof—and then translating into English—centuries-old stories passed down orally.

Mellon grant supports a close-up on close-ups

A Rochester research team is part of an inter-institutional project to document the history of the close-up, one of film and television’s most powerful techniques.