{"id":4270,"date":"2026-07-17T11:31:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T15:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/spotlight\/?page_id=4270"},"modified":"2026-08-11T09:43:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:43:06","slug":"english-2026","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/spotlight\/english-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"2025-26 – English"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t\t
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Jaroslav Kalfa\u0159, author of Spaceman of Bohemia<\/span>, speaks onstage at UCF Celebrates the Arts 2026.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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James Campbell,\u00a0chair<\/p>\n

Active Students (as of Fall 2025)*<\/span><\/h2>\n

Undergrad majors: 994
\nUndergrad minors: 455
\nUndergrad certificates: 123
\nGraduate students: 66<\/p>\n

2025-26 Student Credit Hours: 27,805<\/span><\/h2>\n

*All active students with declared CAH programs are included in the enrollment counts.<\/small>
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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.<\/p>\n

\"StudentsThe program was named best online English degree in the U.S. by Forbes<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Faculty publications highlights include the following publications: Siew Hii\u2019s poetry book Entered Some Aliens<\/em> (University of Wisconsin Press); Kevin Meehan\u2019s translation of Marie L\u00e9tic\u00e9e\u2019s Camille\u2019s Lakou<\/em> (Vanderbilt University Press); Obi Nwakanma\u2019s newest collection of poetry, Indigo Street<\/em> (Bookcraft Africa); Tison Pugh\u2019s Engagements with Literary Gaming<\/em> (with Lynn Ramey, Routledge); Anastasia Salter\u2019s Undertale: Can a Game Give Hope?<\/em> (University of Chicago Press); and Mel Stanfill\u2019s Professor Superstar: Fandom and Antifandom of Academia<\/em> (University of Michigan Press). Articles published by faculty cover topics ranging from Shakespeare\u2019s 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, <\/em>and Michigan Quarterly Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Writers in the Sun reading series continues to expand. This year we sponsored a bilingual reading from the aforementioned Camille\u2019s Lakou<\/em> with author L\u00e9tic\u00e9e<\/em> 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 Universit\u00e9 C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur. \"'The 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.<\/p>\n

English offered two events at this year\u2019s 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 Kalfa\u0159 \u201911, author of Spaceman of Bohemia<\/em>, 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<\/em>, UCF\u2019s undergraduate literary journal, published its 37th annual issue and held a launch party with a special guest, poet Didi Jackson \u201901 of Vanderbilt University.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n