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
Sophronia Knott was featured in the Graduate School News – December 2025 email. She discussed her experience as the 2016 3MT Grand Champion Winner.
When advising students considering the 3MT, Knott stresses the importance of showmanship as much as scholarship. She encourages participants to watch previous winners and engaging TED Talks, noting that strong content alone isn’t enough—you need a little “razzle dazzle” to stand out. Memorization, practice, and intentional movement all play a crucial role in delivering a polished and memorable performance.
Dr. Andrea Kitta recently gave a lecture at Harvard on conspiracy theories and spoke at a FiVE event with students at Quincy House. Students discussed how conspiracy thinking and legend fill deeply human needs and circulate within communities, both immediate and imagined.
She was also nominated to give the plenary at the online meeting of the American Folklore Society. Her nominated speech is titled “Studying Belief in a World of Misinformation.”
Dr. Rebecca Bernard’s story “The Flirt” originally published in Oxford American in Fall 2024 was listed as a “Distinguished Story” in this year’s Best American Short Stories edited by Celeste Ng.
Bernard is the author of the story collection Our Sister Who Will Not Die. Her fiction has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, the Cincinnati Review, and Southern Indiana Review.
Dr. Kirstin Squint spoke alongside Dr. Ryan Emanual, a hydrologist from Duke University, at the University of North Carolina – Asheville, on the topic of “Southern Indigenous Waters,” the inaugural event in the Thomas Howerton Professorship lecture series, “Rising Waters: Writing Place and Environment.” Dr. Squint’s lecture was entitled “Swamp Souths, Hurricanes, and Water: the Indigenous Gulf South and Beyond” and Dr. Emanuel discussed his recent book, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice. Their respective lectures were followed by a discussion and Q&A session with the audience. Dr. Squint also visited an Introduction to Literature class taught by the Thomas Howerton Professor, Dr. Erica Abrams Locklear, to discuss swamp and water-related texts in U.S. Southern and Native American literatures.
You can learn more about the event and the speaker series in this article from Mountain Express magazine.
Dr. Marame Gueye was invited to participate as a discussant at the 31st Lubin Symposium organized by the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Brandeis University. This year’s featured speaker was Senegalese writer, Ken Bugul. The theme of the Symposium was “On Madness in Chaotic Times.”
The Tillie K. Lubin Symposium focuses on a contemporary issue or event relevant to Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
John Hoppenthaler has two new poems in Nine Mile Magazine. “Star Jasmine” and “Jack in the Pulpit” are featured in the Fall 2025 edition. Nine Mile Magazine publishes online twice yearly, showcasing the best work received from authors whose poems, energy, and vision seem to be most deeply imbued with life.
Amber Flora Thomas has an essay in the new anthology, Quest: A Writer’s Journey, which will be published in December. Quest is a book of memoirs by “outstanding poets from diverse backgrounds who recall how they found their beginnings.”
She also published a poem in Prairie Schooner Magazine, which is published in cooperation with the University of Nebraska Press and the Creative Writing Program of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department and is endowed by the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editorship and Fund for Excellence.