Greetings from University Hall! The past year has been an eventful one globally, nationally, and institutionally, as well as in the English Department.
Many of you are no doubt aware of last spring’s pro-Palestinian protests in Deering Meadow, which took place within sight of University Hall. A number of English department graduate students and faculty joined the protests. Others mentored affected students from a range of backgrounds and participated in teach-ins and lectures, including a prominent speaker series on the history of Israel and Palestine cohosted by the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Studies Program, the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, and the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. More recently, our own Sarah Schulman, Ralla Klepak Professor of English, has been featured in the local press for leading a protest against Northwestern’s new policy limiting demonstrations and other expressive activities, which bans demonstrations at the Rock before 3 pm among other restrictions. As is all too common in such cases, nobody asked those of us who teach and work in University Hall whether and to what extent we’ve experienced disruptions from protests adjacent to our building, or even whether there’s a drop-off in room utilization starting at 3pm. (From the perspective of the chair’s office, there doesn’t seem to be.)
Also last spring, the members of Northwestern’s graduate student union ratified their first contract with the University. The contract provides substantial pay raises for graduate student workers, including a minimum stipend of $45,000 for AY 2024-25, as well as increased clarity about work rules and new grievance procedures. The stipend increase reverses a long decline in graduate support relative to both inflation and peer institutions – something that English department faculty had been advocating for years on behalf of our graduate students and failing to achieve. At the same time, the agreement with the union cost the University more than it had initially budgeted, creating a deficit that the University has decided to address, in part, by reducing support for advanced graduate students. These cuts have been accompanied by increased teaching requirements for those same students, imposed by Weinberg College.
While these decisions were made far from the department, they have had a major impact within it, with department officers working overtime to secure funding and teaching for students whose dissertation completion plans were suddenly in jeopardy. While the process was nerve-wracking, the department was able to draw on a combination of student-banked quarters, Weinberg funding, and the department’s own endowed funds to support all our students through the end of AY 2024-25 year. We are especially grateful to the donors who made this possible!
Looking forward, the department has joined with the Kaplan Institute and other humanities units across Weinberg to make the case for six guaranteed years of funding for all students who are making good progress on their dissertations. At the same time, we are looking inward for ways to streamline the path through our PhD program, including reexamining the language requirement and the length of the dissertation. Some of these conversations are arguably overdue: dissertation length is not an important consideration for non-academic positions, while academic presses are increasingly imposing word limits on first books by tenure-track assistant professors. At the same time, the department feels strongly about continuing to extend support for ambitious projects that work across languages and traditions, or that require extensive archival research or mastery of a major theoretical corpus.
Amidst these developments in our graduate programs, the yearly work of the department goes on. We were delighted to welcome three new faculty members and one new staff member this fall. Sarah Dimick was hired in a joint search by the English Department and the Program in Environmental Policy and Culture. She joins us from Harvard as an advanced Assistant Professor and has already established a reputation as a sought-after teacher and mentor in the environmental humanities. Noah Chaskin and Kalisha Cornett are both Assistant Professors of Instruction who hold joint appointments as Weinberg College Advisers. Noah received their PhD from our department before teaching for us as a VAP for several years. We are thrilled to welcome them back in this new role and look forward to learning from them about universal design in learning and other aspects of accessible pedagogy. Kalisha is a seasoned adviser with experience at the University of Chicago and in Northwestern’s School of Communication, as well as teaching expertise in film studies. We are very pleased that she will start teaching for us next year, while also bringing her advising perspective to bear on departmental deliberations. Jessica Masi, our newest staff member, recently began an appointment as Managing Editor for TriQuarterly, the department’s literary magazine. She comes to us with an impressive publishing background and a raft of good ideas for raising the journal’s profile. You can find faculty bios for Kalisha, Noah, and Sarah on p. 3 and a feature on TriQuarterly on p. 18.
Many of you know Kathy Daniels, the department’s beloved long-time Business Administrator. Kathy will be retiring in early 2025 and we will miss her enormously, even as we wish her well in this new chapter of her life (which is rumored to involve plans for learning the ukulele!). Next year’s Musings will include tributes to Kathy. Please write to Nathan Mead (n-mead2@northwestern.edu) if you have a story you would like to share!
With warmest wishes for a happy and healthy 2025,
Katy Breen