I am excited to begin my term as chair of the UW-Madison Department of English, a department with incredible scholarly breadth and an extraordinary commitment to the teaching mission of the university among its staff of almost 100 teachers, researchers, advisors, and administrators, in addition to the same number of graduate students.
Where else can students workshop their creative writing with award-winning professors, carry out research in a psycholinguistics lab, work and be mentored as writing fellows, discover the layered fields of environmental humanities and Global Black literature, and pick up the skills to teach English abroad? Yes, there are also challenges ahead, from the “enrollment cliff” to job market headwinds to duration of stay limitations for international students, but, collectively, we will master them.
