Boldface was founded in 2009 by the editors of Glass Mountain, the University’s undergraduate literary magazine. Boldface’s mission is to give emerging writers access to experiences that are typically available only to professional writers: several days of intense focus on the craft of writing through workshops, readings, and craft talks.
Three current students and five alumni of the Creative Writing Program have recently published new books. From award-winning debut novels and poetry collections to a Louisville poets anthology conceived in the aftermath of city-wide protests in 2020, there’s something for every reader in these stunning new publications. We invite you to explore this eight-book list with evocative covers, publisher information, blurbs from Mark Doty to Dana Levin, and be inspired by the wealth of literary talent nurtured at UH.
In 2021, the English Department launched a revamped, nationally competitive online M.A. program. Dr. Lynn Voskuil spearheaded the effort to fully redesign our Master’s in English to be relevant to the social, political, and environmental challenges of the 21st century and to accommodate professionals who work full- or part-time. Interactive, asynchronous courses are offered online, and face-to-face courses are offered during evening hours with the goal of eventually providing the option of a fully online M.A.
It’s the rare undergraduate who has already experienced presenting their original research at an academic conference. Now imagine you’re a sophomore bringing a new, Black Studies-meets-Deep Time lens to literary studies and Harvard University comes knocking. Even amid the immense field of talent in Roy Cullen, only one undergraduate currently fits this bill: Kalena Holeman.
Late-medieval literary scholar Dr. Daniel Davies’s “Special Topics in Poetry: Premodern Poetics” class culminated in an all-day colloquium on December 7th, 2022—a mini-conference that captivated his graduate students across concentrations. The event, “De arte / ex arte: Medieval Poesis Then & Now,” provided a unique opportunity for students to present both critical and creative papers side by side and respond to each other’s research in a professional context designed to emulate an academic conference.
Junior English Major Alissa Boxleitner recently received the Provost Undergraduate Research Scholarship (PURS) in support of her research toward developing a feminist literary framework for analyzing bodily transformation in textual and visual mediums. Her PURS project compares Myriam Gurba’s 2017 memoir, Mean, with the collected artwork of Earth-body artist Ana Mendieta (1948 – 1985).
Ph.D. student Ibrahim Badshah's essay "Translation Theory and Praxis in East and West: The Case of Saud Al-Sanousi’s Saaq al-BambooSaaq al-Bamboo" appears in the most recent issue of the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics.
Thursday, February 24, at 4pm, a celebration of Dr. Lauren Zentz’s new book, Narrating Stance, Morality, and Political Identity: Building a Movement on Facebook (Routledge, 2021) will be held virtually.