English Department

Go English!

Here at the ECU Department of English, we are a vibrant and energetic collection of teachers, scholars, researchers, and writers. Our department offers four degrees: a B.A. in English; a B.S. in Professional Writing and Information Design; an M.A. in English; a Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Writing, and Professional Communication as well as various minors and certificates. The diversity of this department is one of its strengths: you can take coursework in literature, creative writing, technical and professional communication, rhetoric and composition, multicultural and transnational literatures, linguistics, theory and criticism, folklore, children’s literature, teaching English to speakers of other languages, and film studies. In addition, you can expect to benefit from a breadth of faculty expertise across many areas of study. Above all, your success as a student is our first priority.


Why my English degree makes me a better doctor
— Dr. Julia Horiates

English News

Moseley Receives Gold Scholarship from ECU Business

Ethan Moseley, currently a BTC certificate student, has been awarded the prestigious Gold Scholarship from the ECU College of Business. Ethan will begin the MA in English program concurrently with the MBA program in Spring 2025. Desiree Dighton and Brent Henze have both mentored Moseley significantly including offering feedback on his scholarship materials.

Parille Publishes Work on Carl Barks

Dr. Ken Parille has a short piece in the latest volume of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Carl Barks Library. The book has eighteen stories in all in more than 200 pages of story and art, each meticulously restored and newly colored. In addition, there are insightful story notes by an international panel of Barks experts.

Klein’s Class Screens Cult Classic

Dr. Amanada Klein’s class FILM 4980/ENGL5330 recently screened The Room, a cult classic, where attendees received a prop bag, including items to toss at the screen (rose petals, spoons, footballs), instructions on what to yell and when, and free movie theater popcorn.

“Trash Cinema and Taste” is an aesthetics course that asks students to consider what qualities that categorize a film alternately as “bad,” “low brow,” or “cult,” how to taste cultures and taste publics are established, and why certain films are believed to have “cultural capital.” The class project tasks students to organize themselves into groups, book a venue, write advertising copy, and create promotional “ballyhoo” around the film. Their goal is to get as many students as possible to attend a “bad movie” and, in addition, to get them to interact with the film. This project illustrates the intimate relationship between cult films and their audiences, further emphasizing concepts we had read about and discussed throughout the semester. This year’s event brought together 70 students, who had a raucous interactive experience.

Feder Publishes Essay

Dr. Helena Feder has published the essay “French Food for the ‘New Woman'” in the North American Review.

Founded in Boston in 1815, the North American Review is the oldest and one of the most culturally significant literary magazines in the United States. Contributors include important nineteenth-century American writers and thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Edith Wharton, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman; and twentieth-century writers like William Carlos Williams, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, William Saroyan, and Flannery O’Connor.

Faculty Recognized at Book Awards

Current ENGL faculty Dr. Will Banks, Dr. Nikki Caswell, Dr. Erin Clark, and John Hoppenthaler (along with Associate Professor Emeritus Dr. Tom Shields) were recognized at the Faculty Author Book Awards Ceremony on October 22nd at the Janice Hardison Faulkner Gallery in Joyner Library.

Each year, Academic Library Services and Academic Affairs recognize faculty and other researchers in the division who have contributed to the prestige of East Carolina University by creating and disseminating scholarly monographs. This year’s ceremony recognizes authors and editors of monographs published between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024.

  • Will Banks—Failing Sideways: Queer Possibilities for Writing Assessment
  • Nikki Caswell—Failing Sideways: Queer Possibilities for Writing Assessment
  • Erin Clark—Feminist Technical Communication: Apparent Feminisms, Slow Crisis, and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster
  • John Hoppenthaler—Night Wing Over Metropolitan Area
Herron’s Work Featured on Great Castles of Europe

The 3D digital recreation of Edmund Spenser’s Kilcolman Castle, built at ECU for Dr. Thomas Herron’s Centering Spenser website, features prominently in the 22nd episode of Great Castles of Europe (2024), part of The Great Courses DVD/video lecture series produced by The Teaching Company.

The digital castle was built at ECU by digital arts students under the direction of Herron and ECU Art Professor Laurie Godwin, and is featured on Centering Spenser, a digital resource for Kilcolman Castle.

Trethewey Returns to ECU on October 24

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, acclaimed memoirist and essayist, and two-term Poet Laureate of the United States, Natasha Trethewey, will return to ECU on October 24th. The event will be held in Ballroom A of ECU’s Main Campus Student Center at 6:30 pm. She will read from her nonfiction prose, though the program may include a poem or two. The event will conclude at 7:30, and there will be a book signing thereafter. 

 A brief meet and greet will be held in Main Student Center Room 253. 

Archived News