Faculty Profile

Grace Lavery

Associate Professor
19th-Century British
Critical Theory
Cultural Studies
Gender & Sexuality Studies

My work addresses the history and theory of interpretation under capitalism, with a focus on the ascription of sexual meaning to flesh. Embarking from the psychoanalytic insight that flesh is both meaningless and the means by which meaning becomes possible, I have studied rarefied and complex construals of flesh in a set of highly-specific historical circumstances: the late-Victorian obsession with Japanese effeminacy (in my first book, Quaint, Exquisite); the emergence of the transsexual as a focal point for modern ideas about bodily technique (in my second scholarly monograph, Pleasure...

John Shoptaw

Senior Continuing Lecturer
19th-Century American
20th- and 21st-Century American
Creative Writing
Poetry

Keats: "The poetry of earth is never dead."

For the past several years I've been writing and teaching ecopoetry and ecopoetics. In the spring of 2025, I'll be teaching an English 90 on Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics, and an English 190 research seminar on Emily Dickinson.

Read more about my new collection Near-Earth Object in Jenny Odell's recent essay in the Paris Review.

Prof. Fiona McFarlane's "Highway Thirteen" Named Finalist for The Story Prize

January 14, 2025

The UC Berkeley Department of English is delighted to announce that Professor Fiona McFarlane's 2024 short story collection Highway Thirteen has been named a finalist for The Story Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for short story collections published each year. We offer our congratulations to Professor McFarlane on this honor.

Now in its 21st year, The Story Prize is an annual book award honoring the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction....

UC Berkeley English Welcomes Cecily Nicholson as Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry

January 14, 2025

UC Berkeley English extends a warm welcome to Cecily Nicholson as the 2025 Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry.

Cecily Nicholson has worked for years in museum and arts education and is a long-time volunteer with Emma’s Acres, an agricultural social enterprise and restorative justice program led by community impacted by carcerality and food insecurity. Nicholson is the author of five poetry books and past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and a Governor General’s Literary Award....

"Cambridge World History of Sexualities" Published, Featuring Chapters by Professor James Grantham Turner

October 24, 2024

UC Berkeley English is delighted to announce the publication of The Cambridge World History of Sexualities, featuring two chapters by Professor James Grantham Turner. As CUP tells us, "The Cambridge World History of Sexualities examines sexualities across time and around the world at varying geographic and chronological scales. Featuring over eighty contributions from scholars across more...

Celebrating Lyn Hejinian: Reflections from Students, Friends, and Colleagues

July 10, 2024
Dana Swensen
This year, as we continue to celebrate the incredible life and work of poet Lyn Hejinian, we’ll be publishing a new series of remembrances across our department channels. In July and August, we’ll feature a weekly remembrance from a friend, student, or colleague of Lyn’s on our website. Essay-length pieces will feature here, while shorter remembrances will appear on our department Instagram account. All pieces will depart from a passage of Lyn’s writing selected by the individual. As Lyn wrote in My Life and My Life in the Nineties, “Any work dealing with questions of...

2023-4 Holloway Poet Tim Wood: "These poetry readings bring together professors and graduate students who are practicing poets and catalyzes Berkeley’s wider poetry community."

August 7, 2024
Dana Swensen
So, the first question - what do you see as the role of the Holloway poet?

Yeah. So this is an interesting question, because you know that I have a very personal relationship with the Holloway. And we'll probably talk some about that. So besides that, asking about the role of the Holloway poet position is a funny thing because it’s almost self-evident. Right? It's whatever the contract says: teach a class and give a reading. But it's really to be a poet. And I think that’s, again, self-evident but important, because whoever's in this position has an opportunity...

Cathy Park Hong: "I wanted to write to people like me, people who could be my kin. As I became more confident in the form, and the book, my idea of kin grew more inclusive and bigger."

October 18, 2023
Dana Swensen

This semester we were pleased to welcome Cathy Park Hong to the UC Berkeley Department of English as Professor and Class of 1936 First Chair in the College of Letters and Science. We spoke to her about poetry, AI and UC Berkeley as an intellectual homecoming.

Cathy Park Hong’s New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, was published in Spring 2020 by One World/Random House and Profile Books (UK). Minor Feelings was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for...