No, that’s not me. That’s the guy who played the Maytag Repairman on TV. More about that later.

It’s a pleasure to have been handed the keys to this blog from Jeffrey Cohen, our Department’s Chair Emeritus (a title I have just now invented and summarily bestowed). To be honest, it’s also a bit daunting. I am a writer and a talker, but not–until now–a blogger.

So I’m going to fall back on a skill I have honed in nearly 15 years of office hours: giving advice to English majors. I can’t tell you whether you should go to law school (this question comes up rather frequently), and I can’t tell you whether Course X or Course Y will be life-changing (although I’ll have my hunches). But I can offer the following nuggets. Some of them are things I wish I knew when I was an English major.

* Get to know your professors. You’re probably too young to remember this advertisement for Maytag appliances, featuring the repairman who is “the loneliest guy in town,” but if you ask your professors, they’ll agree that students usually don’t stop by if something isn’t broken. Where your ongoing education is concerned, your professors are your most important resources outside of the texts you are reading. Stop by to introduce yourself. Tell them what interests you and what you like about the class. Tell them what you do when you’re not in class. Keep in touch after the class has ended.

* Get to know your classmates. I’m always surprised that my students don’t know each other, or don’t know each other at all outside of a few desultory conversations in the classroom. Your classmates are, for the most part, fabulous. They are also keenly interested in many of the things that interest you.

* Take classes with professors who interest you. Don’t worry that the topic doesn’t immediately grab you; in most instances, a professor who engages you can make any material come alive. Like-minded friends can also direct you to the professors they find challenging and interesting in the classroom.

* Go outside your comfort zone. Our former chair is a medievalist. I am not. That said, in college I opted to take a course in Old English, in which we translated (into modern English) the poem “The Dream of the Rood.” This task terrified me, in large part because most of the students in the class were Ph.D. candidates specializing in medieval literature. At one point, I stopped by the professor’s office hours and confessed that I didn’t think I could keep up with people who already knew so much more than I. He encouraged me to stay. It ended up being one of the most memorable courses I ever took.

* Pursue at least one opportunity unique to GWU English. Here is a sampling of things we’re doing this semester. We have Professor Faye Moskowitz’s amazing Jewish Literature Live. You can take a one-credit course with our British Council Writer in Residence, who this spring is Howard Jacobson. Check out our class in the History of the Book at the Folger Library. Consider English Honors.

* Visit the new Chair. My office is open to everyone, including undergraduates. I’d love to hear your ideas for how we can enhance your experience as an English major. Please make sure I’m not the “loneliest gal in town.”

I was hired as an assistant professor by the George Washington University in 1994, and have been happy to be a part of the English department from the very first day. Now as a full professor and new chair, I am daily filled with wonder at the excellence of our undergraduate students, at the vigor of our graduate program, at the teaching and writing strengths of our faculty.

Although this website is young, I hope that it provides you with a small glimpse of the intellectual liveliness that flourishes in the department. I hope, too, that whether you are an alumnus or just an interested friend of literature, you will consider — now or at sometime in the future — making a contribution. No doubt you have heard what GW charges for tuition, and that the endowment is doing well. Unfortunately these facts matter relatively little to our department. We rely upon the generosity of our benefactors to be able to grow our cultural and academic activities.

All gifts made to the department directly benefit its scholarly and pedagogical missions. Through funding such as yours our faculty are able to travel to conferences and present their research; to use archives in the United States and abroad in order to further our knowledge of topics as diverse as the life of Willa Cather or the world that Shakespeare inhabited; to shine new light on African American or postcolonial or medieval literature; to bring into the classroom the excitement of being at the forefront of the scholarly field. In the past donations from alumni and friends have endowed visiting scholar series like the Jenny McKean Moore professorship; have provided our undergraduates with prizes that reward excellence in scholarship and creative writing; have made possible research and writing in our graduate program and among our faculty.

In the future we would like to expand these programs and bring new ones to GW.

I urge you to consider using the CONTRIBUTE link at right, and designating your gift to the Department of English. Please also see this note. I thank you in advance for your generosity.

Yours sincerely,

Jeffrey J. Cohen

Chair

PS I look forward to hearing from you. Please drop me a line at chair@gwu.edu