It was a delight to start the Fall semester with a kick-off meeting focused on the English Department’s contributions to undergraduate education at UW-Madison. Over sixty faculty and staff shared examples of teaching innovations and …
News
Chair, again!
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 …
Summer
For faculty with a 9-month appointment, summers are for research and for recharging. I just returned from a trip where I combined both. I learned so much at the 8th International Conference on Prescriptivism in …
Why I support the English Department on Day of the Badger
Why I support the English Department on Day of the Badger: Because, as a former department chair, I know that discretionary funds makes a difference — money that can go, without much red tape, towards …
Linguistics of Sustainability
I received funding from the Hessen Incentive Grant to develop a COIL (collaborative online international learning) course on the Linguistics of Sustainability with Professor Holden Härtl at the University of Kassel. Hessen is the German …
Fellowship in AI and Knowledge
I’m thrilled to have been awarded one of the four inaugural faculty fellowships in AI and Knowledge at the new Center for Humanistic Inquiry into AI and Uncertainty, housed within UW-Madison’s Institute for Research in …
English Language and Linguistics (the journal)
I have joined (effective Jan. ’26) the editorial board of English Language and Linguistics (published by Cambridge University Press), a journal I always reach for when I want to get a sense of where the …
Book contract
Happy news: I just signed a contract with Routledge for my next book, Bad Grammar in the Digital Age. I will look at how the public discourse about language is shaped by descriptive and prescriptive …
Paper out and end of an era
The end of an era! Our contribution to Non-Canonical English Syntax, edited by Sven Leuckert & Teresa Pham and published by Cambridge University Press, caps off many years of productive collaboration with Heidrun Dorgeloh …
Goodbye, Summer 2025!
Summer just flew by. With several projects submitted for review, it is now time to wait for the feedback. The last summer project to complete was a presentation at the 8th Conference of the International …
It doesn’t have to be a research paper!
I am not a big fan of ending undergraduate (or mixed undergrad/grad) classes with a research paper that is only read by me. So, in my ‘English Grammar in Use’ class, we end with a …
What happens in the classroom doesn’t stay in the classroom
I am not terribly active on LinkedIn, but I recently posted something that seems to have resonated with a lot of people, so I am repeating it here:
It’s graduate program application season!
If you know someone interested in a small but cohesive Ph.D. program in English Linguistics with faculty who work well together and are known to value mentorship and interdisciplinarity, share our program flyer with them. …
Becoming a class
As I walked into my classes yesterday (first classes of the new semester), the room was very quiet. Nobody was talking to anyone else. Most students were checking their phones. At the end of the …
Ready for the new semester
Just in time for the start of the semester next week: My dog Willy and I passed our team evaluation for Dogs On Call, a local animal therapy organization, with flying colors this weekend. Willy …
Greetings from Aix-en-Provence!
I know a lot of care goes into organizing big national conferences, but they’re not for me. With 15 concurrent sessions going on, it’s hard to make good choices, and there is a …
A night out at Olin House
Great night out at the Chancellor’s residence (Olin House) to celebrate the Hilldale Awards. I’m honored to be in the company of such distinguished colleagues and loved being able to invite friends to the reception. …
Hilldale Award
I’m grateful to be in the company of such brilliant colleagues! The Hilldale Award is special because it recognizes work in the three domains of research, teaching, and service (many other awards at UW-Madison focus …
5 Words, 5 Lessons, 0 Phonics
I had the pleasure to meet the winners of the 2024 Madison All-City Spelling Bee and to share some thoughts on English spelling at a recent event with the Madison Rotary Club. We cannot …
New semester, new syllabi
New semester, new syllabi: This semester I’ll be teaching two classes I have taught many times before, an introduction to they study of English syntax and a more advanced course, introducing students to working with …