Graduation 2021
Go English Class of 2021!
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The Department of English celebrates and congratulates the Class of 2021! To the graduates: your English professors are incredibly proud of you. We are sure that you will do great things in your futures, and we hope you will stay in touch and let us know where your paths take you. Your humanistic education has given you the tools to read thoughtfully and deeply, to think critically, to analyze the world around you, and to communicate well in different media and to diverse audiences. You have the tools you need. Now, go out and use them to make this world better.
The 2021 ECU Commencement Ceremony will be held on May 7. English graduates receiving degrees during the 112th Spring Commencement are listed in the official ECU commencement booklet.
Outstanding Graduating Students and Retiring Faculty
Meret Burke — Graduate Student
Meret Burke is an English instructor and Department Chair of Language and Communication at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Her professional interests include composition pedagogies, Middle Eastern and South Asian literature, and the application of postcolonial feminism to literary and composition studies. Her CAP explored a merging of postcolonial studies with post-process composition pedagogies, which will continue to transform and improve her work as a writing teacher. For Meret, one highlight of the Multicultural and Transnational Literature program was the diversity of texts and authors. She especially enjoys the works of Elif Shafak, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Mohsin Hamid.
Watch Meret’s speech to her fellow graduates on YouTube.
Go English!
Rebekah Burroughs — Undergraduate Student
Rebekah Burroughs is graduating with her BA in English and History, as well as a TESOL certificate. Rebekah is from Stantonsburg, North Carolina, and came to ECU as a transfer student from Wayne Community College. Her career goals are to work with communities in preserving and growing their history through literature and history. Literature and History go hand in hand and are crucial to preserving culture and building worldview, and she wants to have a part in keeping those things available to the public, working in libraries or small museums. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in Library Science and Public History.
Watch Rebekah’s speech to her fellow graduates on YouTube.
Go English!
Dr. Liza Wieland — Retiring Faculty
Liza Wieland, Distinguished Professor in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, is the author of eight books: three collections of short fiction, Quickening (2011), You Can Sleep While I Drive (1999) and Discovering America, (1994), five novels, Paris, 7 A.M. (2019), Land of Enchantment (2015), A Watch of Nightingales, (2009) Bombshell (2001) and The Names of the Lost (1992), and a volume of poems, Near Alcatraz. (2005). She has won, two Pushcart Prizes, the Michigan Literary Fiction Prize, a Bridport Prize in the UK, and fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The North Carolina Arts Council, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. In addition to teaching creative writing courses in English, Dr. Wieland served as Associate Dean for Faculty Development in Harriot College and regularly taught seminars for the ECU Honors College.
Watch Dr. Wieland’s speech to this year’s graduates on YouTube.
Go English!
Dr. Richard Taylor — Retiring Faculty
Richard C. Taylor is an advisor for Multicultural and Transnational Literatures, with an interest in research methods and the intersection of eighteenth-century British literature and postcolonial studies, as well as Middle Eastern Literature. He is the author of Goldsmith As Journalist (1993), New Century Literature (2016), and articles on theatre history, women writers, and other eighteenth-century British topics that have appeared in Review of English Studies, Modern Philology, Philological Quarterly, Studies in English Literature, English Language Notes, Comparative Drama, Sheridan Studies Review, and elsewhere. “Goldsmith’s First Vicar” was included in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 (Gail 2000). He is a former Director of Freshman Composition, Director of Undergraduate Studies in English, and Area Coordinator for Multicultural and Transnational Literatures. Dr. Taylor for more than three decades organized and co-led the department’s annual summer study abroad trip to London, a highlight for many English students of their time at ECU.
Watch Dr. Taylor’s speech to this year’s graduates on YouTube.
Go English!