Message from the Chair

Welcome!
In the Department of Literature and Communication Arts, we welcome and value all people, not regardless of who you are or how you identify, but because of who you are and how you identify. You are welcome and supported here.

Faculty in our department value the process of becoming educated. We spend time with students along every part of your journey. We’ll listen as you cement ideas for a major and listen as your dreams and ideas for a major change, sometimes several times. We may even share our journeys with you. We will support your dreams and challenge you to take risks, pursue new ideas, consider unexamined beliefs, travel, develop healthy relationships with others, and embrace all that it means to be human.

Because we believe so strongly that literature and the art of communicating are important to everyone’s intellectual development, we use literature and other texts to teach the difficult skills of empathy and compassion, of global awareness and a desire to do good in a complex and often unjust world, and we work on developing students’ abilities in analysis, research, speaking, listening, and writing in every class we teach, in every major and minor we offer, and in every general education class we teach in the Integrative Core.

In sum, we love to read and think, to listen, to speak, and to write, using many of the technologies available to us, including podcasting and web writing, digitizing written work and video, and even Chat GPT at times. We also want students to work alongside us, making connections between what we read and how can use the written and spoken word to be good people and to do good in the world.

Our eight full-time faculty members teach courses in Africana studies, communication, English, First Year Seminar; gender studies, the honors program, the Integrative Core Capstone, interdisciplinary studies, and writing. We also serve in other ways on campus, such as directing the Center for Faculty Development; the Digital, Writing, and Oral Communication (DWOC) Studio; and the Honors Program. We serve on the Faculty Senate and faculty committees, we research and write, we present our work, and we volunteer in our communities.

Our home is in Chapman Hall, on the 3rd and 4th floors, and in KHIC on the 2nd floor. Come see us and learn more about what communication, literature, and writing can do for you.