Upcoming Events

This GEA-sponsored event aims both to introduce new students to the peculiar genre that is the seminar paper and also to help students at all stages think strategically about how our seminar papers can inform our other projects. After a general introduction to resources and tips for paper-writing, four advanced graduate students will talk about their experiences adapting seminar papers into conference presentations, articles, and dissertation chapters.

There will be plenty of time for questions from the audience.

Panel Participants: Christos Kalli, George Perez, Rylee Smith, Eileen Ying

We will be welcoming Dr. Erin Murphy from Boston University from 5:30-7 on Thursday November 12th in the English faculty lounge (FBH 135). 

Zombies, Martyrs, and Submarines: Margaret Cavendish’s Soldiers and the “Right Owner” of the Body
In Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, she imagines an army of reanimated corpses. With this bizarre and haunting hypothetical, Cavendish explicitly explores the question of who is the “right owner” of a body. As she represents soldiers across her oeuvre, from her martyred brother to her triumphant female warriors, she returns to these questions of what happens to bodies at war, and the relation between vulnerability and power. This talk argues that war is an epistemological and political lens as significant to Cavendish’s work as the New Science. Her interweaving of embodiment and emergent military technologies, fact and fiction, points beyond considerations of Cavendish’s royalist allegiance or her supposed pacifism to what might best be understood as the somatechnics of war.

The Phyllis Rackin Lecture
The Phyllis Rackin lecture was established to honor Phyllis Rackin, Professor Emerita of English at the University of Pennsylvania and her groundbreaking work in the fields of both feminist scholarship and Early Modern studies. A former President of the Shakespeare Association of America, she has published numerous scholarly articles on Shakespeare and related subjects in anthologies and in such journals as PMLA, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Shakespeare-Jahrbuch. She has also published four books on Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Tragedies; Stages of History: Shakespeare's English Chronicles; and Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories, which she wrote in collaboration with Professor Jean Howard of Columbia University; and Shakespeare and Women. Her awards include an ACLS fellowship and a Lindback award for distinguished teaching.

This annual lecture is made possible thanks to the generous support of the English Department, the Medieval-Renaissance Studies Working Group, and the FQT/GSWS Center.

As grad students, we are often asked what we study—less often are we asked how.

In this panel, four Penn English faculty members (Caz Batten, David Eng, Dagmawi Woubshet, and Chi-ming Yang) will share their own experiences with method. Through their conversation, we will explore a variety of methods in literary study and consider what each affords us as scholars.

There will be ample time for questions from the audience.

Participants:

Caz Batten, Assistant Professor of English

David Eng, Richard L. Fisher Professor of English

Dagmawi Woubshet, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Associate Professor of English

Chi-ming Yang, Professor of English

Join the English Department’s Undergraduate Chair Dr. Emily Steinlight to discuss undergraduate AI usage. This workshop is an open forum for talking about how we can change our teaching and grading to accommodate the various ways that undergraduates may be using AI. With a particular focus on syllabus-building, assignment types, and assessment models, future and current graduate instructors will learn how to ensure their undergraduate students’ critical engagement with course content and intellectual growth in the age of AI.

Register here: https://cetli.upenn.edu/event/assessment-models/

Curious about where an English degree can take you? Join us to explore the diverse career paths English majors pursue — from publishing and communications to law, marketing, and beyond. We’ll share real outcomes data from recent English graduates, demystify what “networking” really means (and how to do it comfortably and effectively), and show how Career Services can support you every step of the way. Whether you are getting started exploring your interests or connecting with alumni and employers, we have resources to help you navigate your path. Come discover how your writing, critical thinking, communication and storytelling skills translate into powerful career opportunities.