Literary and Cultural Studies

in the Department of English

Laura White works with an undergraduate researcher

Literature teaches us to engage with the past and with others. Whether we are looking at sonnets by Shakespeare, Science Fiction short stories, or novels by Chinua Achebe, Virginia Woolf, or Rigoberto Gonzalez, we are moving across imaginative boundaries: into the past or into the literary culture of a different society. The study of literature makes us aware of our own distinctiveness, as well as the uniqueness of these other places and times.

The study of literature at UNL is varied and cosmopolitan. A UNL literary student might work one semester on Milton or Renaissance London; another on the poetry of contemporary Africa; and then move back to the United States, to read Native American writing or the Harlem Renaissance.

Literary study is a bridge into different imaginative realms; it encourages us to read closely and to read deeply, to lose ourselves in a created world, but then to come back to our current realities with fresh eyes.

Undergraduate Literary and Cultural Studies

Undergraduate students with interests in literature have a variety of opportunities to develop their interests in:

British Literature
American Literature
Ethnic Literatures (including African American, Irish, Chicana(o) American, Asian, Native American, and Jewish American)
World Literatures (including Canadian, African, Caribbean, and European)
Film History, Theory, and Criticism
Literary History
Literary Criticism and Theory
Literary Genres (such as poetry, drama, fiction, life-writing, and environmental literature)

Literature students may also pursue a Literary and Cultural Studies concentration.

UNL students who graduate with an English major in literature pursue a variety of career and professional work, including

Graduate and professional school (including law, graduate study in English, and graduate school in education)
Advertising
Publishing and editing
Teaching

Graduate Literary and Cultural Studies

The Department of English offers formal M.A. and Ph.D. specializations Literary and Cultural Studies. Graduate students who wish to pursue Literary and Cultural Studies have opportunities to work closely with faculty and design individualized programs of study. Graduate Faculty members in Literary and Cultural Studies work on varied scholarly projects, share a commitment to the analysis of literature within larger cultural, social and political contexts, and utilize a wide range of critical methodologies, such as textual recovery, archival work, digital scholarship, and theoretical analyses.

Graduate Specialization

Literary and Cultural Studies Faculty

Marco Abel

Willa Cather Professor of English and Film Studies
Courtesy Professor in Department of Communication Studies

Film studies, critical and literary theory, and contemporary American literature

Caterina Bernardini

Lecturer

Nineteenth-century and early modernist American poetry, transnational and world literature, multilingualism, women's writing, reception and translation studies, and digital scholarly editing

Trevor Bleick

Lecturer

James Lowell Brunton

Assistant Professor of Practice and Coordinator of Film Studies

Film and media studies, literary and critical theory, LGBTQ studies, and creative writing (poetry)

Stephen Buhler

Aaron Douglas Professor of English

The literary culture of Early Modern England, especially the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, as well as literature's connections with philosophy and the performing arts

Peter J. Capuano

Professor of English, Director of Literary and Cultural Studies

Victorian literature and culture, Dickens studies (Dickens Project faculty), science and literature, history and theory of the novel, body studies, and digital humanities

Joy Castro

Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies
Director of Institute for Ethnic Studies

Memoir, fiction, film, U.S. ethnic literatures, women's literatures, and modernism

Matt Cohen

Professor of English, Co-Director of the Walt Whitman Archive, Co-Director of the Charles W. Chesnutt Archive, and Affiliate Faculty in Native American Studies

American studies, history of the book, Native American studies, early American literature, editorial theory and practice, and digital archives

Timothy J. Cook

Lecturer

Literary and cultural studies, modernist poetry, and epic poetry

Kwame Dawes

George Holmes Distinguished Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner

Post-colonial literature and theory, African American literature, Caribbean literature, African literature, reggae aesthetics, poetry, and playwriting

Andrew Del Mastro

Lecturer

Kwakiutl Dreher

Associate Professor of English and Film Studies

African American literature (autobiography and contemporary literature to present), mass-marketed popular literature, film and visual culture

Amanda Gailey

Associate Professor of English

Tom Gannon

Professor of English and Ethnic Studies

Native American literatures, British Romantic literature, critical theory, ecocriticism and "animal-rights" theory, avian and animal representation in literature

Chris Harding Thornton

Lecturer

Creative writing, literary theory and criticism, Great Plains literature, and American fiction

Arden Eli Hill

Lecturer

Creative writing (poetry) and women's and gender studies

Melissa J. Homestead

Professor of English and Director of the Cather Project

American literature and the history of the book from the Early Republic through the early 20th century (with a focus on women’s authorship), Willa Cather, Catharine Sedgwick, E.D.E.N. Southworth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American novel, and lesbian literature, history, and biography

Phillip Howells

Lecturer

Kathleen Lacey

Academic Advisor

African American literature, multiethnic American literature, women's literature, popular culture, race and medicine, and girlhood studies

Kevin McMullen

Research Associate Professor of English

Nineteenth-century American literature and culture, periodical literature, digital humanities, editorial theory, and textual recovery

Nick Monk

Director of the Center for Transformative Teaching
Courtesy Professor of English

Pedagogy, Open-Space Learning, the American West (especially writers Leslie Marmon Silko and Cormac McCarthy) and cultural literacy and communication

Elva Moreno Del Rio

Lecturer

Literary and cultural studies, American literature, African American literature, and Latinx literature

Ng’ang’a Wahu-Mũchiri

Associate Professor of English

African and African diaspora literature, African digital humanities, 20th-century literature, Caribbean literature

Anne Nagel

Lecturer, Administrative Technician, and Assistant to the Graduate Chair

Gabrielle Owen

Assistant Professor of English

Children's literature and culture, young adult literature, histories of childhood and adolescence, queer theory, and transgender studies

Michael Page

Assistant Professor of Practice and Coordinator of Curriculum

Science fiction, film studies, 19th-century British literature and culture, and British romanticism

Kenneth M. Price

Hillegass University Professor of American Literature, Co-Director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and Co-Director of the Charles W. Chesnutt Archive

19th- and early 20th-century American literature, Walt Whitman, American periodicals, textual scholarship, and digital humanities

Stephen Ramsay

Associate Professor of English

Digital humanities, theory of new media, and theater history

Benjamin Reed

Lecturer

Guy Reynolds

Professor of English

Willa Cather, modernism, American literary history, post-war fiction, U.S. and anglophone literary internationalism

Gregory E. Rutledge

(그레고리 유진 러틀레지)Associate Professor of English and Ethnic Studies

African-American literature, Afro-Korean studies (Afro-Orientalism), critical race theory, world literature, race/racism, traditional West/Central African epic performance, E3 studies (epic/exceptionalism/elite studies), storytelling and folklore, Afro-futurism, African diaspora and diaspora studies, American/cultural studies, law & literature, and American literature

Julia Schleck

Associate Professor of English and Vice Chair

Academic freedom & critical university studies, global Renaissance studies, Renaissance literature (including drama, lyric poetry and prose), travel writing and early modern colonial writings; interdisciplinary interests include Renaissance music and history of science, genre studies, and cultural materialism/Marxism

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