Department of English

Latest happenings in the GWU English Department


September 23rd, 2008

Hello, I’m Kirk Hausmann Larsen.

Even more, I’m the new student blogger.
You might be asking yourself:
  1. “New student blogger? I didn’t know there was an old student blogger!”
  2. “What’s all this, then?”
  3. “Even more? More than what?!”
  4. “Why did he include his middle name? The pomp!”
  5. “A numbered list? Does he think I have all the time in the world?”
  6. “Is he using the second person? What about: One may be asking him/herself?
  7. “Is that him in the photo?”
I’ll get to all those presently.
First, an introductory list:
  • I am a senior in the English & Creative Writing program
  • I am the eldest of three children (I have two younger brothers)
  • I am a writer/editor of The Colonialist, GWEnglish’s favorite blog
  • I live in a Scholar’s Village Townhouse (The Comedy House)
  • I am getting the feeling this list isn’t doing much introducing

Now, you had some questions & I have some answers:
1. Yes, I am the new student blogger. I am the first student blogger, if you don’t count Rajiv. It’s an absurdity not to count Rajiv, so I’m the second student blogger. Then again, Rajiv’s position as Undergraduate Communications Liaison – what a beautiful-looking word, liaison – puts him in a middle space: it’s unclear where exactly he fits. I’ll try again:
1. Yes, I am the new student blogger. There wasn’t an old student blogger, there was merely an unused nook wherein a student blogger might find some space and comfort. Now, the nook is full. Rajiv Menon is another undergraduate who has already posted a bit – and will continue to do so – on this page right here. Rajiv also posts on the blog Hadji is Dead, which concerns itself with all aspects of South Asian Diaspora culture – very interesting stuff.
2. This is my introduction! Who let the police in?
3. Well, more than merely giving my name and leaving the post at that. I realize it was a bit early for something like “even more,” but what if it were secreted away and kept safe for the perfect time and never made it into the post at all? That’d be decidedly less, no?
4. I didn’t mean it pomp-fully, but there’re two Kirk Larsens at The GWU. I’m not Kirk Wayne Larsen, the professor of East Asian Studies; I’m Kirk Hausmann Larsen, the student of English & Creative Writing. It was intended to make things less confusing, but it’s become more confusing.
5. No, I don’t think anyone has “all the time in the world.” That phrase doesn’t even make sense, “all the time in the world.”
6. This is a blog, calm down. The second person makes sense: I’m trying to make things familiar between us because I’ll be posting frequently and I don’t want there to be any tension.
7. Yes, that’s me in the photo. I’m playing with Peter, he’s a maltese. The photo was taken last Spring Break.

The preliminaries over with, I’m at the point where I should tell you what my blog posts will be like…yes? Well, I don’t know what my posts will be like yet. I haven’t decided.
I’d be more than happy to answer questions asked via e-mail. My email address is kirk(at)gwmail(dot)gwu(dot)edu (I didn’t make it a link for fear of roving spambots).
If y’all don’t have any questions, that’s fine, too. We shall make do, regardless!

Hello, I’m Kirk.
I’m glad to be here.


September 22nd, 2008

[action photo of blogging in motion by Nick Gingold]

Follow this link to read a very good piece on why the English Department maintains a blog and Facebook page (short answer: we do it for you, the person reading this post, in the hope of community).

Thank you, Calder Stembel, for writing a feature so sympathetic to our endeavors … and thanks Nick Gingold for snapping a photograph that reduces my nerdiness quotient from 100% down into the eighties somewhere. Not an easy task.

[PS We love this editorial as well!]


September 18th, 2008

We have our blog. We have our Facebook page. We offer the most cutting edge courses in the university, if not the galaxy. So why is it that when we finally have a cute graphic to assist with our strategic plan for utter media domination, the University phases out our hippo?

Should we have chosen a First Folio as our graphic? A Wordsworthian daffodil or cloud? Would that be more enduring?

Let’s see if GW comes up with a new animal to take the place of our semi-aquatic sub-Saharan former mascot. Let’s see if, like the hippo, this mascot turns out to be the university president’s shamanistic animal spirit guide. Our suggestion? The raven. What could be more literary? We even provide this official photo of the five hundred pound raven statue already perched on campus (in front of the Old Main Building … which ought to be rechristened the Edgar Allen Poe building and given entirely either to the ornithology department or, if we don’t have one at GW, to the English Department). All that need be done to this picture is to have the former president Photoshopped out, and the new one — a literary scholar! — inserted. Instant new mascot, and new image to give it some fame. And don’t, like Poe’s raven, tell us nevermore.


August 30th, 2008

Though our site is only a day old and therefore has little content that makes it worth your time, nonetheless — because we like to be popular, and don’t want to be like one of those departments no one likes (Statistics, do you hear us?) — well, for that compelling reason alone we say: if you are on Facebook, become a fan of the GW English Department.



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