James Campbell, chair
Active Students (as of Fall 2025)*
Undergrad majors: 994
Undergrad minors: 455
Undergrad certificates: 123
Graduate students: 66
2025-26 Student Credit Hours: 27,805
*All active students with declared CAH programs are included in the enrollment counts.
The Department of English had another busy year, continuing to offer undergraduate and graduate programs in creative writing, literature, and technical communication while administering the digital humanities, linguistics, and medieval and Renaissance studies minors.
The program was named best online English degree in the U.S. by Forbes for the third consecutive year and this year was singled out specifically for Best Student Outcomes. In addition, we were named best online degree in English by both Affordable Colleges and Best Degree Programs while being cited for most online English degree options by Best Colleges.
Department of English faculty Anastasia Salter and Mel Stanfill earned the only National Endowment for the Humanities grant awarded in Florida this year for their two-year project to build a digital humanities generative AI learning community. The project will allow the intelligent incorporation of AI into existing digital humanities classes and thus promote a critical use of the technology among our students.
Faculty publications highlights include the following publications: Siew Hii’s poetry book Entered Some Aliens (University of Wisconsin Press); Kevin Meehan’s translation of Marie Léticée’s Camille’s Lakou (Vanderbilt University Press); Obi Nwakanma’s newest collection of poetry, Indigo Street (Bookcraft Africa); Tison Pugh’s Engagements with Literary Gaming (with Lynn Ramey, Routledge); Anastasia Salter’s Undertale: Can a Game Give Hope? (University of Chicago Press); and Mel Stanfill’s Professor Superstar: Fandom and Antifandom of Academia (University of Michigan Press). Articles published by faculty cover topics ranging from Shakespeare’s political theology to the role of video games in technical communication. Creative writing faculty published pieces in such respected literary magazines as The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, and Michigan Quarterly Review.
Writers in the Sun reading series continues to expand. This year we sponsored a bilingual reading from the aforementioned Camille’s Lakou with author Léticée and translator Meehan, the Cuban-American novelist Ivonne Lamazares, the Puerto Rican poet Bonafide Rojas, and a publishing panel featuring a literary agent, a literary public relations professional, and a publisher. In addition, we hosted Arnab Dutty Roy from FGCU who spoke on the postcolonial bildungsroman, film director Arfat Sheikh, novelist Tara Dorabji, and Vanessa Lee from Université Côte d’Azur. 
The English Department Symposium reached its fifteenth year and for the first time featured a plenary speaker, Zahi Zallou of Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.
English offered two events at this year’s UCF Celebrates the Arts: the annual Write of Passage MFA Student Reading, which brought ten graduating MFA writers to the stage to read from their creative theses, and alumnus Jaroslav Kalfař ’11, author of Spaceman of Bohemia, who talked about his writing process and how his novel was turned into a film. We continued Parcels: MFAs in Progress reading series, which brings MFA students and faculty out into the community. Cypress Dome, UCF’s undergraduate literary journal, published its 37th annual issue and held a launch party with a special guest, poet Didi Jackson ’01 of Vanderbilt University.
After an intense period of faculty hiring, the department welcomes a large number of new faculty who will join the department from across the U.S. We are happy to announce the following new scholars and writers joining us in August:
- Fiction writer Dylan Bassett has a Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Cruz and an MFA from the University of Iowa. He was formerly an assistant professor at Xavier University in Ohio and is the author of Gad’s Book: A Novel from Outpost 19.
- Lillian Campbell holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She comes to us from Marquette University in Milwaukee, where she was an associate professor. She teaches and researches technical communication. She is the author of Patient Sense: Rhetorical Body Work in the Age of Technology, published by the Ohio State University Press.
- Poet James Davis has recently finished his Ph.D. at the University of North Texas. He is the author of Club Q which won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and is published by Waywister Press.
- Poet Siew Hii holds an MFA from North Carolina State University. Her new collection Entered Some Aliens was recently published by University of Wisconsin Press.
- Fiction writer Phillip Hurst has an MFA from New Mexico State University joins the department from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He is the author of the novel Regents of Paris published by Regal House.
- Poet Emma Winsor Wood holds a Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Cruz and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Her most recent poetry collection is Preferred Internal Landscape from Ornithopter Press.
As we welcome these new faculty, we’re also saying goodbye to longtime colleagues.
Anna Lillios has retired after almost forty years. Pegasus Professor Tison Pugh has retired after 24 years. Mary (Darlin’) Neal has retired after 17 years. Rochelle Hurt is leaving for a position at the University of Tennessee.
Recent retirees Lynn Casmier-Paz, Trey Philpotts, Lisa Roney, and Terry Thaxton were all granted emeritus status.
We thank these colleagues for their years of hard work, dedication, and friendship, and wish them all the best in retirement and their future endeavors.
