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Research Groups & Collaborations

Interdisciplinary Collaborations

At the University of Minnesota, English faculty and students regularly make connections across campus, whether via workshops at the Center for Medieval Studies, collaborative groups at the Institute for Advanced Study, or co-sponsored events with other departments and centers.

Research Groups

Research groups (or subfields), comprised of faculty and/or graduate students, typically meet once or twice a month, on or off campus, for discussion of texts, recently published works, or faculty and student works in progress. Many students participate in more than one group, for social networking as well as academic support. If a group is not formed that suits your interests, the graduate office can help you start one! Some currently active research groups include the following:

Image of colloquiumMedieval & Early Modern Research Group

The Medieval & Early Modern Research Group is a student-led interdisciplinary forum for those interested in medieval and early modern Europe and the spread of European colonialism. We entertain a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, and we organize discussions, presentations, and events on topics concerning the scholarship, teaching, and critical theory relevant to work in the medieval and early modern fields. Contact Caitlin McHugh for more information. Although we are an active and independent graduate-student group, students in MEMRG often collaborate with faculty-organized groups. See The Center for Medieval Studies and Early Modern Literature at UMN.

19th Century British Subfield

This research group of graduate students and faculty members meets monthly to discuss works-in-progress. We are not limited to one school of thought or method of research, and our interests span the long 19th century. Recent discussions have centered on diverse topics including female werewolves, masculinity and politeness, and smoking. The papers we discuss may be seminar papers, conference papers in progress, potential articles, dissertation chapters, or even sections of book projects. For more information visit our website (which also contains links to research resources) or email us at nineteen@umn.edu.

Pedagogy Subfield

The Pedagogy Subfield consists of a group of teachers who have established this community as a space to discuss, research, experiment with, and foster a culture of pedagogy. As graduate assistants and as instructors, we share our resources, ideas, and experiences from the classroom. A sampling of our activities includes a radical pedagogy reading group, syllabus workshopping and a growing classroom activity archive, and colloquiums on issues facing educators in our field today. Please see our blog for more information, and feel free to contact us at pdsgumn@gmail.com.

Theory Reading Group

The Theory Reading Group was founded in 2010 by graduate students at the University of Minnesota. Students in the PhD program in English constitute our core membership, and our events reach audiences in over a dozen departments across the University. We began as an informal reading group, meeting monthly to discuss contemporary and canonical texts from the constellation of work known as Theory. Since that time, we have expanded our activities to include a semesterly speaker series that, paired with meetings to discuss readings, constitutes an informal seminar on issues in contemporary Theory. Our series in fall 2011, “Rhetorical Bodies,” included talks from Laura Hengehold (Case Western Reserve University), Levi Bryant (Collin College), John Protevi (Louisiana State University), Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut), and Patricia Clough (Queens College, CUNY Graduate Center). Our spring 2012 series, "From Bodies to Spectres," featured Tony Brown, Christine Marran, and Stuart McLean (University of Minnesota), Claire Colebrook (Penn State University), Patricia Clough, Kiarina Kordela (Macalester College), Nicholas Royle (University of Sussex), and Melissa Littlefield (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). For more information, visit our blog or contact Andrew Marzoni or Robb St. Lawrence.

20/21 Century Subfield

Our group provides a network for students and faculty interested in matters of the 20th and 21st centuries. We organize discussions and presentations on topics concerning scholarship, teaching, and critical theory relevant to work in the fields of 20th- and 21st-century literatures and cultures. Contact us at ttonec@umn.edu for more information.

 

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