UMBC English Department

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/37

The English Department is a vibrant center for teaching, learning, and research, offering courses on literature, communication, writing, rhetoric, journalism, creative writing, and digital media. The Master of Arts in Texts, Technologies, and Literature provides an opportunity for advanced students to further their understanding of literature and a broad array of other texts, including digital, academic, and those that function in everyday use, in relation to both historical and contemporary culture.

The English Department takes great pride in our combination of award-winning research and deep commitment to students and teaching. Our faculty are among the most productive researchers at UMBC and have interests in a wide range of specialties in literature, writing, communication, and technology. UMBC’s outstanding English faculty past and present includes winners of the Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo fellowships, as well as recipients of the American Book Award, the American Studies Network Prize, the James N. Britten Award for Inquiry in the Language Arts, the James Thurber Prize for Comic Fiction, the Society for Professional Journalists’ Award for commentary, the City and Regional Magazine Award for column writing, and Baltimore Magazine‘s Best of the Web award.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 106

American Apocalypse in (and out of) History
(Cambridge University Press, 2020-12-03) DiCuirci, Lindsay
How 19th-century Spiritualists ‘canceled’ the idea of hell to address social and political concerns
(The Conversation, 2025-0308) DiCuirci, Lindsay
Spiritualists believed that after shedding the body in death, the spirit would continue on a celestial journey and help those on Earth create a more just world.
Mellon Foundation grants CAHSS $750K to establish Global Asias Initiative
(UMBC News, 2024-04-03) Duque, Catalina Sofia Dansberger; Demond, Marlayna
"Me Time": Motherhood, Reading, and Myths of Leisure
(Penn State University Press, 2023) Bhalla, Tamara; DiCuirci, Lindsay
In this micro article, the authors survey the media landscape, including bestseller lists and celebrity book club culture, think pieces and mommy blogs, to examine the discourse around "me time," reading, and motherhood. The article explores how the cultivation of "me time," which is ostensibly about taking time away from mothering, returns mothers to the work of self-improvement, disguised as self-care. The books that mothers are reading (judged by their posts online, book awards, bestseller lists, book club culture, etc.) and the ways they are blogging about "me time" reading suggests that under the conditions of twenty-first-century neoliberalism, reading mothers must use this time to meditate upon and improve their mothering. "Me time" reading is framed as a separation from maternal labor but instead impels mothers to justify their solitary habit and redeem reading as a contribution to—rather than detraction from—family life.
Marcy J. Dinius. The Textual Effects of David Walker’s “Appeal”: Print-Based Activism against Slavery, Racism, and Discrimination, 1829–1851. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. 360 pp. Illus. $55. Hardcover (ISBN 978-0-8122-5378-8).
(University of Chicago Press, 2024-03) DiCuirci, Lindsay
Becoming A Hero: An Analysis of the Presentation Of Theme In Nintendo’s The Legend Of Zelda Franchise
(2023-01-01) Perez, Ivan Carlos; Tran, Sharon; English; Texts, Technologies, and Literature
My work proposes using theme as a scope for video game analysis to generate a more wholistic understanding of how the parts of a game interact to generate meaning. When applied to video games as a purely narrative property, themes become relatively static. If we use theme as a scope for analyzing and understanding other elements of the text, however, then we come away with a more complex and dynamic understanding. Using Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda franchise as a case study, I propose that the gameplay expands upon themes put forward in the franchise’s narratives, with my primary focus being on the hero. In Zelda games’ narratives, the hero is discussed in static, traditional terms. But, if we use this theme as a scope for understanding the gameplay, the player has opportunities to both reinforce and play against this understanding, producing a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of the hero.
UMBC celebrates 25th Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day with an expanded global audience
(UMBC News, 2021-05-12) Duque, Catalina Sofia Dansberger
ASSIMILATING THE ARTS: On Poetry and Difference in Yoko Ono's Grapefruit
(Amodern, 2024) Finberg, Keegan Cook
Afghanistan, Gendered Subjects, and Border Politics in Lillias Hamilton’s A Vizier’s Daughter: A Tale of the Hazara War (1900)
(Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 2023-06) Fernandez, Jean
AFTER SAPPHO
(University Of Virginia, 1999) Pekarske, Nicole
The Dead Can’t Dance
(University Of Virginia, 2003-12-12) Pekarske, Nicole
Early Canvas
(University Of Virginia, 2003-12-12) Pekarske, Nicole
Intermissa, Venus
(University Of Virginia, 2003-12-12) Pekarske, Nicole
ON THE BIRTH OF MY MOTHER''S YOUNGEST BROTHER
(VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW) Pekarske, Nicole
Early Canvas
(Verse Daily, 2004) Pekarske, Nicole
Reading a Memoir at Cedar Island
(POETRY FOUNDATION, 2007-11) Pekarske, Nicole
Carolina Journal
(POETRY FOUNDATION, 2007-11) Pekarske, Nicole
MONET’S WATERLOO BRIDGE
(Alaska Quarterly Review, 2016) Pekarske, Nicole
WHY MONET STILL MATTERS
(Masque & Spectacle, 2016-05-31) Pekarske, Nicole
Attending the School of Pain: Disabled Children in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
(2023-01-01) Jett, Emma; DiCuirci, Lindsay; English; Texts, Technologies, and Literature
This thesis is concerned with looking at several common character archetypes of disabled children in mid-nineteenth-century American fiction, exploring an intersection between childhood and disability studies that previously has not been given significant attention. To fill this gap, this study offers a reading of some of the many nineteenth-century disabled child characters that filled both popular children?s literature and domestic literature of the period. As these genres of literature are concerned with the bildungsroman, the presence of disability complicates our expectations and understanding of childhood growth. Through this research, the archetypes of the sickly Angel in the House, the disabled child whose body is leveraged as an object lesson, and the child chastened by pain are explored, turning to disabled literary children both to bring their disabled bodies out of the shadows and to critique the moral, educational, societal, and representational work that these characters perform in nineteenth-century American fiction.

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