NIU Today

Graduateprograms.com has named the NIU Department of English to its “Dean’s List” of top English graduate programs for “career support.” NIU’s program was ranked ninth nationwide. The career support category takes into account the quality of career planning resources and support received both during and after graduate school studies. Using a 10-star system, rankings were...

The NIU Department of English and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences External Programming office will host a “Publishing with an Academic Press” workshop. Linda Manning, director of the NIU Press, will lead the workshop from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, March 14, in Room 297 of Founders Memorial Library. “Publishing with an Academic Press”...

NIU alumnus Kenneth Womack makes writing seem easy, considering he has more than 25 books to his credit as an author and editor. After a year of touring the country to share stories about the Beatles, Womack has just released “The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four” to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the group’s appearance...

NIU alumna Melissa Leisner, a seventh-grade English and reading teacher at Prairie Knolls Middle School in Elgin, has won the prestigious Milken National Educator Award. The honor, which includes an unrestricted cash prize of $25,000, was dubbed “The Oscars of Teaching” by Teacher Magazine. Joining Illinois Superintendent of Education Christopher Koch to present the state’s 2013...

A distinguished professor in the English Department at Northern Illinois University is among the top poets in Chicago, according to CBS Chicago. Amy Newman is the author of four published collections of poetic works. According to the website, “Newman’s superb style of writing is at once deep and personal, and yet abstractly detached.” Professor Newman...

Retired NIU English instructor Ildikó Carrington wasn’t a bit surprised when Alice Munro was named recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature earlier this month. “I am delighted that she won it,” Carrington says. Back in 1989, Carrington wrote the first American book-length critical study of the Canadian writer’s works. Titled “Controlling the Uncontrollable:...

English majors aren’t what they used to be. If the major conjures up images of the grammar police, men wearing tweed jackets and smoking pipes, or 20-pound volumes of Shakespeare, think again. Today’s English students are likelier to discuss how to create a corporate social media presence;  whether the word twerk belongs in the dictionary;...

The NIU Department of English invites the public to meet and hear readings by two celebrated alumni. A reception and reading featuring poet Todd Davis and author Kenneth Womack will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, in the Anthropology Museum of Cole Hall. Davis earned both his master’s degree (1991) and Ph.D. (1995)...

The NIU Art Museum will host a fall film series in conjunction with its exhibition, “On Watching and Being Seen.” “On Watching and Being Seen” is on display through Saturday, Oct. 19, in all four galleries of the Art Museum. A public reception is planned from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12. It explores...

Tim Ryan, assistant professor of English, is the recipient of the 2013 University Honors Great Professor Award. Ryan is a specialist in twentieth century American literature and culture, modernism, African-American literature and Southern studies. This university-wide award, which was established in 2001, recognizes a faculty or staff member who has, over time, contributed significantly to...

Professor Joe Bonomo, a favorite teacher among many NIU students in the Department of English and a well-known rock ’n’ roll author and authority, has a new book out featuring a collection of essays exploring his youth. The book, titled “This Must Be Where My Obsession With Infinity Began,” was the winner of the Orphan...

Drafting the Beast In a backyard in Wheaton, Maryland, I thrust my hand into some sand. I lift out my hand, fingers-splayed. Delicate as powder. A silt of the imagination lingers on skin stretched over bone, a ramshackle draft of an X-ray machine: how bone appears. Late morning splinters all around this discovery. Later, the...