Princeton University senior Sara Krolewski has been awarded a Witherspoon Scholarship to study literature at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She is an English major who is also earning a certificate in French.

Simon Gikandi, Robert Schirmer Professor of English, has been awarded by the Council of the Humanities an Old Dominion Fellowship. Appointed for one year, Gikandi will be researching his book The Atlantic Crypt: Slavery and the Cultures of Modernity as well as engaging with colleagues across the University. Old Dominion scholars also serve as Faculty Fellows in Princeton’s Society of Fellows.

Congratulations to Rasheeda Saka (Class of 2020) who has won a Breakout 8 Writers Prize. Co-sponsored by The Authors Guild (the largest and oldest community of professional writers) and Epiphany: A Literary Journal, the Breakout Prize “celebrates the voices of exciting student writers.” The award includes a cash prize along with publication in the forthcoming spring/summer issue of Epiphany. Rasheeda Saka is a fiction writer who has studied with Neel Mukherjee, Angela Flournoy, and Kirstin Valdez Quade.

English majors and faculty get together for the annual Majors Colloquium. Russ Leo, Bradin Cormack, Sarah Anderson, and Christina León offered their thoughts on this year's theme "Why Words Matter." Afterwards the department adjourned to the rotunda in Chancellor Green for more conversation, a catered meal, and a celebration of our graduating seniors.

Miranda Marraccini, a graduate student in the Department of English, was selected as a 2018 Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellow in Women’s Studies. Marraccini’s dissertation, “Feminist Types: Reading the Victoria Press,” uses digital humanities methods and archival scholarship to develop a new understanding of nineteenth-century feminist print culture. This semester, Marraccini is co-teaching “Virtual Victorians” with Professor Meredith Martin through Princeton’s Collaborative Teaching Initiative.

English major, Jack Lohmann's research project, “Nauru”, with supervision by Professor Robert Nixon, has been selected for support from the Smith-Newton Scholars Program in the Princeton Environmental Institute.

Prof. Zahid Chaudhary and Daniel Hazard's collaboratively taught course, ENG374: Fighting Words, or Cultures of Protest, involves students in an upcoming exhibition at the Princeton Art Museum, entitled “Picturing Protest.” Students will each write explanatory labels for two artworks, and their labels will become a part of the artwork’s online record. The course includes two visits to the museum’s study room where the students discuss the artworks to be included in the exhibition.

Writers need readers—and in the present moment, many academic writers are seeking ways to address a broader and more diverse readership. At the panel discussion “Writing in Public,” five members of the Princeton community shared how their work outside the academy relates to their scholarship, and how writing for different audiences has increasingly become a part of their profession, especially as early career academics.