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.
— Dr. Julia Horiates
English News
Tom Shields, emeritus in the English Department, along with Charlie Ewen, Anthropology, will appear on a new History Channel series, “Hunting History,” hosted by author, TV host, and outdoorsman Steve Rinella. The series focuses on historical mysteries/questions with an outdoor survival element. The second episode, scheduled to air Tuesday, February 4, at 9:00 pm, is about the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
Tom and Charlie are coauthors of Becoming the Lost Colony: The History, Lore and Popular Culture of the Roanoke Mystery (McFarland 2024). The book has recently been reviewed for the NCLR Online Winter 2025 issue.
Dr. Jessica Cory (M.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing 2012 graduate) published “‘We are of One Ecology’: How Indigenous Pacific Islander Poetics Map Anthropogenic Climate Change” in Comparative American Studies: An International Journal.
In the article, Cory writes, “By focusing on the interpersonal, generational and land-and-sea-based relationalities in these poems, readers can better grasp the complex Indigenous Pacific Islander kinship networks that sustain and nourish hope in the face of such dire environmental and cultural threats. While readers will likely expect these poems to have roots in climate activism and to critique climate change’s imperialistic and militaristic underpinnings, and many of them do, some readers may be surprised by the trust these poets have in the lands and waters themselves as well as those beings who inhabit these shared spaces.”
Anna Bradley, who is pursuing M.A. in English, has received a student travel grant from the Department of American Indian Studies at UNCP to present her paper, “Annette Clapsaddle’s Even As We Breathe as Tribalography,” as part of the panel “Contemporary Southeastern Native Women’s Writing” chaired by Dr. Kirstin Squint, at the 2025 Southeast Native Studies Conference hosted by the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
The Conference provides a forum for discussion of the cultures, histories, and contemporary experiences of Native Americans in the Southeast United States. It serves as a critical venue for scholars, students, community members, and all persons interested in American Indian/Native American Studies in the region. Held annually since 2005, the SNSC is the only national conference dedicated solely to the unique histories and cultures of Southeastern Native Americans.
Dr. Kirstin Squint along with her co-author, Dr. Christopher Rodning, presented their paper “Rhetoric and Reciprocity: East Carolina University’s Neyuheruke Wampum” at the Modern Language Association conference in New Orleans as part of a two-panel special session, “Indigenous Literatures Now! Land and Politics.”
Dr. Andrea Kitta’s new co-edited collection on conspiracy theories, Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society, is out now published by University of Wisconsin Press.
Kitta’s and co-editor, Jesse A. Fivecoate’s “timely volume complements studies from political science, sociology, psychology, history, and more, while also crucially calling for the field of folklore studies to engage more fully with conspiracy theories as a genre. Focusing on modern iterations of sometimes quite ancient conspiracy motifs and themes, the volume forcibly illustrates the crucial relevance of this prevalent and influential form of folklore in today’s interconnected world.”
Dr. Erin Clark is a recipient of the 2025 CCCC Outstanding Book Award in the Monograph category and a 2025 CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Award for Best Book in Technical or Scientific Communication for her monograph, Feminist Technical Communication: Apparent Feminisms, Slow Crisis, and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. The Outstanding Book Award is “presented annually to the author(s) or editor(s) of two publications—one award for a single-authored or multi-authored work and one award for an edited collection of scholarly work—published up to two years previously that make an outstanding contribution to composition and rhetoric. “
Clark will receive these two awards at the CCCC Awards Presentation during the CCCC Annual Convention in Baltimore, MD, in April 2025.
John Hoppenthaler has published two new poems in a top tier literary journal, TriQuarterly. He wrote the poems during a residency fellowship at the Wofford College Goodall Environmental Studies Center.
TriQuarterly is the literary magazine of Northwestern University. It is operated by the Litowitz MFA+MA Graduate Creative Writing Program. Alumni of this program, the School of Professional Studies, and other readers serve as editorial staff. Available around the world, TriQuarterly has remained “an international journal of writing, art, and cultural inquiry.