Message from the Chairs
Dear Friends,
We’re writing to share the UC Davis English Department newsletter for 2022–23, with updates on what our community has been doing over the past twelve months—publications, prizes, and activities.
This year has been another period of many transitions. We have two wonderful staff colleagues, Mary White and Vicki Higby Sweeney, moving into retirement this summer; we will miss them greatly but are grateful for their cheering, calming presence in the department over many years. You can read more about their plans below in “Career Transitions.” We are also sorry to say goodbye to Professor Susan Carlson, who joined us for a brief stint after leaving her role as Vice Provost for Academic Affairs in the Office of the President last summer and generously shared her wealth of experience. All three of these colleagues have been founts of wise advice and guidance and while we wish them a very happy retirement, we also suspect we may be sending them “follow-up questions” for a little time to come. We are fortunate to have Sharla de Anda stepping into Mary’s role and Estelle Espinoza into Vicki’s, and they have already eased these challenging transitions.
Come next fall, we will be joined by no fewer than four new faculty colleagues, a very exciting development for our department. Professor Xavier Lee, who was hired in last year’s Global Black Literatures search, is completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University and will arrive this fall. In our section on Career Transitions, you can learn more about Professor Lee as well as Professor Akua Banful, who was also hired as part of this search and has been teaching for the department for the past academic year. In the Fall we will also welcome Professor Sal Nicolazzo, a specialist in 18th-century literature, race, and empire; Professor Ruben Zecena, hired in this year’s highly competitive search in Chicanx/Latinx Literatures in English; and Professor André Naffis-Sahely, a translator, poet, and critic who will divide his time between our department and the Department of French and Italian. We are thrilled to be welcoming them all.
This year offered a new opportunity to English majors and graduate students in the form of the Professor Jack Hicks Award in English, a generous three-year gift from screenwriters Chris Markus and Steve McFeely in honor of their mentor, an emeritus professor who taught for many years in our department. The undergraduate and graduate students receiving these awards will use the funds to support hands-on research projects and workshops that complement or extend their education as readers and writers. Like the Hackett Endowment, an award that was inaugurated last year and which has similar goals of supporting students’ learning beyond the classroom, the Hicks Award further expands possibilities for our students, who responded with a range of fantastic projects. Experiential learning is gaining traction in our department in many ways. You can read more about how it informs the research of some of our graduate students and the teaching of some of our faculty in the newsletter feature story “Experiential Learning.”
The skills our students develop in and beyond the classroom inform their careers after graduation. We are especially excited about the multitude of pathways our PhD students pursue after attaining their degrees: Assistant Professor, Acquisitions Editor for a press, Manager of Policy Research and Knowledge Sharing at an environmental organization—these are but a sampling of the exciting jobs in which our graduates are employed. In our feature story “Beyond Graduate Studies,” you can read more about the ways our department has supported students’ exploration of these and other careers.
Finally, we want to thank PhD student Ally Fulton for organizing and writing the features you see below, and for her impeccable organization. Further grateful thanks, as always, to Kevin Bryant, who makes sure all the links work and that our newsletter finds its way to the website.
Gina Bloom, Interim Chair of English
Claire Waters, Chair of English