OSU English Department

The study of English literature and language is fundamental to any education. Not only does it provide familiarity with the literary works that shape cultural heritage and the structure, history, and use of the language, but it also develops the ability to think analytically, to write effectively, and to consider various points of view.

Since its inception in the 1960s, the English Department at Oklahoma State University has attracted and served students with a diversity of interests. It offers a variety of courses, most of them small lectures and discussion classes. The curriculum supports intensive study in specific areas but allows students to combine them according to their own professional goals. BA, MA, MFA and PhD degrees are awarded through the department, and a full range of courses is offered in six areas:

• Creative Writing
• Literature
• Rhetoric & Professional Writing
• Screen Studies
• Teaching English as a Second Language
• Linguistics

The English Department also works with OSU to provide additional services: the Writing Center, the International Teaching Assistant Program, the OSU Writing Project, and exciterbulb.

Department News

Five Professors to Join Faculty in 2013

The English Department is proud to announce that Timothy Murphy will assume the Houston-Truax-Wentz Endowed Professorship in Fall, 2013.  Professor Murphy comes from the University of Oklahoma, where he has taught literature, film, and critical theory for the past ten years.  He is the author of Antonio Negri: Modernity and the Multitude, and Wising Up the Marks: The Amodern William Burroughs.  He has also published numerous articles on critical theory, science fiction, and jazz, as well as translating many works from French and Italian.  In our program, Professor Murphy will offer upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses on a variety of topics informed by cutting-edge critical thinking and his own wide-ranging interests in literature, music, and modern thought. We eagerly look forward to working with such an esteemed theorist and teacher. 

The Department also welcomes the following new assistant professors, beginning in the Fall, 2013, semester:

In literature, Katherine Hallemeier (Ph.D. Queen’s University), postcolonial Anglophone literature; Seth Perlow (Ph.D. Cornell University), post 1900 American poetics.  For more information, see News under Literature.
In Screen Studies, Graig Uhlin (Ph.D., New York University)
In Creative Writing, Rose McLarney (M.F.A. Warren Wilson)

AWARDS & HONORS

See what our graduate students have been up to at the Graduate Program news page.

Rhetoric and Professional Writing graduate students presented at the international Conference on College Composition and Communication in March, 2013:

From left to right, Ben Smith, Danielle Smorol, and Dustin Morris prepare for their panel, “Tracing Images: Public Production and Composing Rhetoric,” which drew on their research papers from Dr. Lynn Lewis’ Visual Rhetoric and Design course. Oklahoma State University RPW  graduate students attending and presenting at CCCC 2013 included Jeaneen Canfield, Danielle Smorol, Dustin Morris, Ben Smith, Jean Alger, and Rachel Chapman.  Not pictured: current Ph.D. student Lyn Megow and graduated M.A. student Stephen Hopkins.

William Decker:  German Academic Exchange Service Award (DAAD) for Summer, 2012: University of Paderborn in Paderborn, Germany.
Dennis Preston:  Named a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. The induction ceremony will take place at the Society’s annual business meeting in Boston,  2013.
Laurie Schick: Fulbright Scholar Grant for January through November 2013;  Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Posted in: OSU English Department