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.
English News
On April 22, Christy Hallberg led an in-conversation event with novelist and East Tennessee State University English professor Michael Amos Cody. The event, held at The Generalist in downtown Johnson City, TN, marked the official launch of Cody’s latest novel, Streets of Nashville (Madville Publishing), and kicked off ETSU’s annual literary festival. The venue was filled to capacity with an enthusiastic audience turning out to support both the author and the broader literary community.
The ECU Zine Lab’s first workshop, March 28-29, has produced more than a dozen themed zines.
The new zine lab, a collaboration with Missouri S&T through a PIT-UN grant, leverages zine-making as a public-interest technology to instill communication, collaboration, and content creation skills. Dr. Erin Clark is the project leader at ECU; the lab is part of her research on gender justice and technological equity.
This innovative community outreach project will support participant-produced zines. Four zines will cover gender-affirming technologies, reproductive healthcare technologies, technologies affecting survivors of gender violence, and technologies affecting women and gender minorities on campus. Scholars, students, and community partners will collaboratively edit these zines, and zine-making workshops will promote community engagement and expression.
Jennah Sutton, one of the department’s 2024 BA English graduates, will have an essay she wrote on the reality series Wife Swap in Dr. Amanda Klein’s FILM 4985 class published in Film Matters, an undergraduate journal. Sutton’s essay and a brief overview of the English Department’s Film Studies program will be published later this year.
Film Matters is a film magazine celebrating the work of undergraduate film scholars. It is published three times a year, by students and for students, and each issue contains feature articles and a reviews section.
Dr. Desiree Dighton, along with two PhD students, Ben Abel, and Mina Bikmohammadi published “Localizing with GAI in the Archives: Exploring Practitioner Attitudes on Challenges and Opportunities” in Technical Communication Quarterly. The study explores how archival professionals are implementing generative AI (GAI) in their work and what their experiences can teach us about ethical, equitable innovation. With key takeaways for technical communication, digital humanities, and knowledge sector professionals, the article emphasizes participatory localization and the role of local knowledge in shaping responsible AI use. We will also be presenting the research at Computers & Writing next month.
Alum Ina Cariño (BA English and Creative Writing Minor, ’16) received the 2025 Lucille Medwick Memorial Award for her poem, “What’s the First Word in ‘Illegal Immigrant’?”.
Cariño is a 2022 Whiting Award winner for poetry originally from the Philippines. Their work appears in the American Poetry Review, the Margins, Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review Daily, and the New England Review. She won the 2021 Alice James Award for Feast, published by Alice James Books in March 2023. Their forthcoming collection Reverse Requiem is slated for publication in April 2026 (Alice James Books).
ECU English MA alumni Jamie Gorczyca was interviewed about her Taylor Swift class taught at Vol State Community College. In the article, Gorczyca, “contests that the skills used in analyzing Swift’s lyrics are the same as those used in deconstructing poetry. To the misinformed critics,” I hope they’re open to understanding that this class is about more than Taylor Swift. It’s about cultural analysis through a subject that captures students’ interest.”
Dr. Helena Feder’s interview article “Wild Culture: A Conversation with Hal Whitehead” has been published on Terrain.org.
Whitehead studies the behavior, ecology, and conservation of deep-diving whales, mainly sperm and northern bottlenose whales. His research involves collecting various data types (acoustic, visual, genetic, etc.) in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, including areas off Nova Scotia.