We are a community of teachers and students, readers and writers, learners and scholars. United by an interest in language and literature and convinced that our discipline is the lynchpin of a quality university, we look forward to seeing you in our classes and offices.
The English Department offers courses for every student at Coastal. Almost all students take two writing classes as part of the University Core Curriculum, and the Core allows for a number of other English options, including literature surveys and creative writing seminars. Many students also take advantage of our extensive offerings in business, scientific and professional writing.
If you choose a major or minor in English, you can expect to enjoy a broad range of classes in linguistics, literature, writing and theory all designed to make you more able to apprehend and then wield the power of words. Our major is growing, and our program can help open the worlds of possibility for which the English major is justly renowned: Education, professional school, graduate study, and jobs in the private sector . . . the English degree brings many futures within reach.
Our department is also engaged in campus life. We sponsor the "Words to Say It" reading series, sponsor an active honorary society, and organize special events that highlight literature and language.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Daniel J. Ennis
Chair, Department of English dennis@coastal.edu or 843-349-2746
Upcoming Events
Faculty Showcase Reading
On Tuesday, April 27, at 7:00 pm, in Wall Auditorium, the Words to Say It Visiting Writers Series will present a faculty showcase fundraiser reading. The reading will last approximately one hour and will feature Coastal Carolina faculty members Dan Albergotti, Jason Ockert, Joe Oestreich, and Scott Pleasant.
Faculty and students of Coastal Carolina University are invited to attend, and the reading is also open to the public. All proceeds from this fundraiser will go directly to support the Words to Say It series. Donations of any amount will be greatly appreciated. Suggested donation levels are $5.00 for faculty and guests and $2.00 for students.
The evening will also feature drawings for door prizes and a special musical guest. The reading will be followed by a small reception where the authors' books will be available for purchase and signing. Proceeds from the sale of books will also go directly to support the Words to Say It series.
In the past four years, Words to Say It has brought many literary luminaries to the campus of Coastal Carolina, including Alan Shapiro, Natasha Trethewey, A. Van Jordan, Jill McCorkle, Brian Turner, Patrick Phillips, Hannah Tinti, Randall Kenan, and Eula Biss. Authors in the series have been honored with Guggenheim Fellowships, the Poets' Prize, the Kate Tufts and Kingsley Tufts Awards, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rona Jaffe Fellowship, and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
About the readers
Jason Ockert has won several national fiction awards and is the author of the short story collection Rabbit Punches. His stories have appeared in many journals, including The Oxford American, Black Warrior Review, Indiana Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, and McSweeney'. His work is included in the 2007 anthologies New Stories from the South and Best American Mystery Stories.
Joe Oestreich's essays have appeared in Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Ninth Letter, Fourth Genre, and many other magazines and journals. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, honored by The Atlantic Monthly, and noted in The Best American Essays and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.
Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads (BOA Editions, 2008), selected by Edward Hirsch as the winner of the 2007 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses, and elsewhere.
All three authors are faculty members in the Department of English at Coastal Carolina University, where they teach creative writing courses and edit the national online literary journal Waccamaw.
Coastal@Oxford Summer 2010
This summer, Coastal students will have the opportunity to spend three weeks in Great Britain, studying with CCU faculty while in residence at the University of Oxford, one of the oldest and most respected institutions of higher learning in the world. An educational center for over 900 years, Oxford is renowned for its rich traditions, its extraordinary architecture, and its vibrant community of students and scholars. Amid the spires, towers, gardens, and markets of this ancient city, centuries of British literature, history, and culture will come to life. Students will explore Oxford’s many colleges and historical sites, attend theater performances and concerts, and take advantage of excursions to destinations such as Stratford, Blenheim Palace, and Stonehenge. While the program will be based in Oxford, students will have the opportunities to visit London's cultural, historical, and political treasures, including Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and the Tower of London. And, once in London, it is a three-hour high-speed train ride to Paris, where one of Europe's greatest cities awaits.
Students will enjoy accommodations at The Queen's College, Oxford founded in 1341). The cost will include airfare, 18 days of accommodations in Oxford and London, transportation, excursions and most meals. Trip dates are July 9 - 28, 2010.
Students may take one or both of the following English courses:
English 288 Major Writers of British Literature (3 credits), (Writing Intensive), (Prereq: Satisfactory completion of English 101 and 102).
Selected readings in the works of major authors of Great Britain and Ireland, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to writers of the twentieth century. We will visit sites relevant to some of these works and develop an understanding of British history and culture as we study its literary traditions. This course may be used to fulfill either the "Humanistic Concepts" Core Curriculum requirement or the "Global Studies Awareness" Core Curriculum requirement.
English 497 Literature, Language, Location (3 credits), (Prereq: Grade of C or above in English 101 and ENGL 102, One literature class at the 200 level or above or permission of instructor).
This advanced course will take advantage of our location in Oxford and our visits to other sites by studying texts that engage with, adapt, or recreate significant moments in British history. Reading works that engage with the past, we will investigate the construction of British identity and the formulation of cultural memory.
English 625 Teaching British Literature and Culture in Context (3 credits)
Drawing on the texts that form the British literature "cirriculum consensus" for high schools, this hybrid distance learning/travel course will befin with a four-week remote until delivered through Blackboard that will include streaming lectures and online discussions of British literature and the ways direct knowledge of the cultural context of a literary work can enhance the presentation and interpretation of thos works for students. The coursewill culminate in a one-week visit to Great Britain, with time spent in the literature-intensive cities of Oxford and Stratford.
Art History 392 Critiquing the Museum-Oxford (3 credits)
This course explores the artistic traditions from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Classical Greece and Rome to modern London as they relate their presentation in major and minor museums in Oxford (Ashmolean, Pitt Rivers, Bate, Christ Church Picture Gallery, ect.), Cambridge (Fitzwilliam), London(British Museum, National Gallery, Victoria & Albert, Tate), Paris (The Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Pompidou Centre), and various smaller museums associated with daytrips to cathedrals and historic sites. Even as the museum collections display objects from the dawn of civilization to the present, the cities and towns themselves provide and extraordinary overview of the architectual and artistic themes, innovations and heritages that have shaped our modern world. Our readings and discussions will focus on various issues related to museums, including the function of a museum, the business and economics of museums, the role museums play in society, how interior and exterior spaces shape museum experience, and the ethics of museums and their collections in an age of litigation and repatriation.
Program Faculty
Daniel J. Ennis, Ph.D. is a Professor of English and a specialist in eighteenth-century British literature. He has served as a faculty member for CCU study abroad programs in London, Dublin, Paris and Amsterdam, and is currently the Chair of the Department of English.
Arne R. Flaten, Ph.D is Associate Professor of Art History and Associate Dean of the Humanities and Fine Arts, and specializes in Italian Renaissance art and the integration of new technologies with Art History and Archaeology. Flaten spent much of his life abroad and has served as a faculty member for study abroad programs to Greece, Spain, Italy, Paris and Amsterdam.
Cynthia Port, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of English and specializes in modern and contemporary British and Anglophone literatures. She participated in a study abroad program in Oxford as an undergraduate and, as a graduate student, helped coordinate the University of Pennsylvania's program at King's College in London.
For additional information and application materials, please contact the Office of International Programs and Services by email at internationalprograms@coastal.edu or by phone at 843-349-2684 or 843-349-2054.
Spotlight
Associate Professor of English Receives Fulbright for Study in China
Carol Osborne, Associate Professor of English, has been selected to participate in the Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad program in China in June and July 2009. She will improve her understanding and knowledge of Chinese culture in order to enhance the curriculum of her world literature course and to develop a new upper level course on Chinese literature and culture.
The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR) has administered the Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad Program to China since 1981 as part of memorandum of understanding with the Chinese Ministry of Education. The program is designed to give American educators an introduction to China’s history, culture and society.
Dr. Osborne is one of 16 professors who will travel abroad through the Fulbright program. The group will meet in the San Francisco Bay area for a pre-departure orientation program, providing an opportunity for participants to attend briefings on topics such as Chinese culture, society and language.
Dr. Osborne’s travels in China will include stops in Beijing, Xi’an, Shanghai and Hong Kong. She will visit cultural and historic sites, government offices and educational institutions, and she will attend lectures on Chinese history, economics, education and politics.
Assistant Professor of English and Students Receive ASIANetwork Fellows Program Award
Dr. Maggie Ivanova, assistant professor of English and students Yelena Ninichuk, an English major, Victoria Poston, a History major and Mikkenna Woods, a Political Science major, have been awarded a fellowship of $20,892 by the ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows Review Committee to conduct a three-week collaborative research project in Japan this summer. In preparation for the overseas project, Ninichuk, Poston and Woods will present their preliminary research at the Big SURS conference in Asheville, NC this March.
Professor of English Honored in Coastal Carolina University Distinguised Teacher-Scholar Lecturer Series
On Thursday, November 20, 2008, Steve Hamelman, professor of English, will present Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Ten Iconic Scenes in the Wilderness of Classic American Fiction as part of the Coastal Carolina University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecture Series. The lecture will begin at 7:30pm in Wall Auditorium and is free and open to the public.
Steve Hamelman teaches undergraduate courses in American literature, literary theory, and composition in the English Department at Coastal Carolina University. His scholarly work is reflected in many publications and conference papers on the early American novel, theory, and popular music. Dr. Hamelman earned degrees at Colgate University (BA), the University of Maine at Orono (MA), and Brandeis University (MA, PhD). He has been a full professor at Coastal since 2001.
The Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecturer award is given annually to a Coastal Carolina University faculty member who has outstanding abilities as a teacher, scholar and communicator. The recepient of the award delivers a public lecture in the fall semester on an original topic. For additional information, please call 843-349-2086.
The Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecturer Series is made possible through the generous support of Horry Telephone, Inc.
Sara Sanders named to South Carolina Humanities Council Board
Sara L. Sanders, Kearns Palmetto Professor of English at Coastal Carolina University, has been elected to a thee-year term to the board of directors of the Humanities Council of South Carolina, effective November 1, 2008.
Sanders joined the Coastal Carolina University faculty in 1987. She is a graduate of Baptist College of Charleston (now Charleston Southern University) and earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of South Carolina in 1978 and 1981, respectively.
She was director of Coastal’s Honors Program from 1992 to 1996 and received the Student Affairs Division Award for the 1995-1996 academic year. Sanders chaired the Department of English, Communication and Journalism from 2004 to 2007 and was named Kearns Palmetto Professor for 2007 to 2012.
She is a consultant to the Conway Medical Center Palliative Care Team. She and her husband Steve Nagle are co-editors of English in the Southern United States (Cambridge University Press 2003) and co-recipients of the 2003 South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Humanities.
Her areas of expertise include teaching composition, English as a second/foreign language, illness narratives, cognitive metaphors and development of learning communities.
The Humanities Council awards nearly $250,000 annually in grants for statewide public programs and sponsors two initiatives - the South Carolina Humanities Festival and the South Carolina Book Festival held in Columbia.
Dan Albergotti Receives South Carolina Arts Commission Fellowship
Coastal Carolina University professor/poet Dan Albergotti is the recipient of a 2008-2009 Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the South Carolina Arts Commission. He is one of six South Carolina artists - four writers and two musicians - to be selected for this annual fellowship recognizing superior artistic merit. The six artist fellows receive $5,000 each.
Albergotti, assistant professor of English and the Department of English's coordinator of creative writing, joined the Coastal Carolina University faculty in 2005. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Clemson University in 1986 and 1988, respectively, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina in 1995.
He is the 2007 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize winner for his first collection of poems, The Boatloads. His poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review and other journals. His chapbook, "Charon's Manifest," won the 2005 Randall Jarrell/Harperprints Chapbook Competition.
Albergotti has been a scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers' conferences and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A graduate of the MFA program at UNC Greensboro and former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review, he currently serves as poetry editor of storySouth (www.storysouth.com).
The board grants fellowships based on recommendations made by out-of-state review panelists who select fellows based solely on their work.
Daniel J. Ennis, Ph.D. is a Professor of English and a specialist in eighteenth-century British literature. He has served as a faculty member for CCU study abroad programs in London, Dublin, Paris and Amsterdam, and is currently the Chair of the Department of English.
Arne R. Flaten, Ph.D is Associate Professor of Art History and Associate Dean of the Humanities and Fine Arts, and specializes in Italian Renaissance art and the integration of new technologies with Art History and Archaeology. Flaten spent much of his life abroad and has served as a faculty member for study abroad programs to Greece, Spain, Italy, Paris and Amsterdam.
Cynthia Port, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of English and specializes in modern and contemporary British and Anglophone literatures. She participated in a study abroad program in Oxford as an undergraduate and, as a graduate student, helped coordinate the University of Pennsylvania's program at King's College in London.
Assistant Professor of English and Students Receive ASIANetwork Fellows Program Award
Professor of English Honored in Coastal Carolina University Distinguised Teacher-Scholar Lecturer Series
Sara Sanders named to South Carolina Humanities Council Board
Dan Albergotti Receives South Carolina Arts Commission Fellowship
