Undergraduate Studies

Start your summer reading now! Associate Professor Katherine Scheil this spring published She Hath Been Reading: Women and Shakespeare Clubs in America (Cornell University Press, 2012), a fascinating look at how book clubs provided encouragement for female literary education during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--and a path into public life. This is Professor Scheil's third book. In May, Professor Julie Schumacher publishes her fifth book for younger readers, The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls (Delacorte, 2012). She won a 2007 Minnesota Book Award for her novel The Book of One Hundred Truths.

Three English undergraduates are graduating this spring with Community Engagement Scholars Program recognition: Kari Eloranta, Abdiasis Hirsi, and Anna Kraemer. This honor recognizes that the students have performed 400 hours of community engagement addressing social issues and community needs throughout their undergraduate careers at the University of Minnesota. They also have completed reflections on those volunteer experiences, as well as a seminar and final project. The students receive recognition on their official transcripts and at commencement. The Department of English honored these students at our annual Campus Community Colloquium on April 30. Eloranta in addition received a University of Minnesota Alumni Association Student Leadership Award later that evening at the President's Student Leadership and Service Awards Banquet. Congratulations!

Ivory Tower, the literary and arts magazine created for and by undergraduates at the University of Minnesota, has won the Tony Diggs Innovation Award from the Student Activities Office. These Excellence Awards are intended to recognize student group achievements; the Innovation Award specifically recognizes student groups that have displayed innovation and/or fostered creativity through their program/events. Ivory Tower, which is edited and produced through the year-long English course Literary Magazine Production Lab, this year introduced the "Write and Return" program: circulating notebooks to encourage student writing and drawing on campus, as well as to boost submissions to the journal. Ivory Tower also helps organize the Writer's Block writing workshops, among other activities. The new issue of Ivory Tower is celebrated 7 pm, Wednesday, April 25, at the Whole in Coffman Union with readings, music, and art. Congratulations to the Ivory Tower staff and the writers and artists included in the 2012 Ivory Tower!