Department of English

Peter Beinart is Professor of Journalism and Political Science at CUNY. He is also a Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times, a political commentator on MSNBC, and Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents. Over the years he served as Editor of The New Republic and wrote for publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Die Zeit, and the Financial Times. He is the author of four books including The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris (Harper, 2010) and The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books, 2012).

John Elder returns to the Middlebury College community to share reflections about how poems by Emily Dickinson and the 8th-century writer Du Fu have helped him arrive at a more resolute response to this challenging moment in American history. 

Vievee Francis is the author of four books of poetry: The Shared World (Northwestern University Press, 2023); Forest Primeval (TriQuarterly Books, 2015), winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award; Horse in the Dark (Northwestern University Press, 2012), winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize; and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2006). Forthcoming are a memoir, Ugly, and her fifth volume of poetry, Cleaning the Houses of the Dead.

Documentary Screening: “It Will Be Different for You.” The film is about Middlebury alum Lea Davison, an Olympic Mountain Biker. Another Middlebury Alum - of Creative Writing - Simon Perkins - co-produced the film along with Creative Writing professor Megan Mayhew Bergman.  

Our contemporary age of migration is also a time of “crisis,” with movements from global south to global north perpetually framed in emergency terms. In Italy, these discourses are intimately tied not only to arrivals by sea, but to racialized notions of national identity and a general lack of reckoning with colonial history.

Title: THE TRAUMA MANTRAS

UNSETTLING THE SELF/RETHINKING TRAUMA:  Ethnographic Prose Poems on South Sudanese Refugees and American Attempts to “Heal” Them

Students who completed an English (literature track) thesis or a Creative Writing thesis in the 2023-2024 academic year will read from their work. Light refreshments will be served. Feel free to come and go.

Five student fellows, working under the NFJ program with journalist in residence at Davis - Sue Halpern, will be presenting their projects from this academic year, as part of a recurring yearly tradition with the Middlebury Magazine. We will be presenting 14 pre-produced podcast episodes to the audience as part of the ‘why are you here’ program.

Connect with Midd alums at the English Field Guide.
Presented by the Center for Careers and Internships and cosponsored by the English department, this Field Guide brings alumni back to campus to share knowledge and experience related to their post-Middlebury careers and professional lives with current students.

On Thursday alumni join us for a panel discussion. Friday morning, our alumni guests have volunteered to hold one-on-one chats with students (Sign up in Handshake)

More information can be found on the English Department News and Events webpage