Carroll University English Program

I am incredibly proud to launch the inaugural issue of the Journal for Undergraduate Research in the Humanities (JURH). The website is jurh.net. Please click around, read the amazing work produced, and get us some clicks. Again, it's jurh.net!

This journal was created and edited by an Undergraduate Editorial Team: Kaitlyn Brucci, Ailey DeBlare, Genevieve Deveau, Sami Erstad, Alivia Hansen, Sadie Olympia Hoffman, Gina Magno, Julia Martinez, and Maria Radish

The fourteen essays that we published represent four countries (USA, Canada, Netherlands, Hong Kong, China) and five states (Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Illinois, California, Texas.) The issue also showcases the full range of Humanities scholarship, and our essays cover literature, history, television studies, game studies, linguistics, cultural studies, and musicology etc.

Please click, read, and enjoy!

Find yourself . . . .

For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet by Joy Harjo - Poems | Academy of American Poets For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet - Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

A powerful poem in anticipation of April being National Poetry Month.

Ars Poetica (Excerpt from “Telling the Gospel Truth”) by Beth Ann Fennelly - Poems | poets.org Ars Poetica (Excerpt from “Telling the Gospel Truth”) - The next time a student asks how to become a writer, I will...

This looks like must-see viewing!

American Masters | Flannery | Season 35 Explore the life of Flannery O’Connor whose fiction was unlike anything published before.

RIP, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames] by Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Poems | Academy of American Poets Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames] - I am signaling you through the flames

Have you written something great in a Humanities class in the past year? Submit it!

Who will you read and be “schooled by” over winter break?

another literary school of fish Visit the post for more.

We all need some Thanksgiving poems, and there are plenty to choose from here:
https://poets.org/poems-thanksgiving?fbclid=IwAR13KXr06CZwuSkSdU4NNmxaf54jPsTqmoeCvxizydotsOF-aTw0jSoZB_c

Poems for Thanksgiving | Academy of American Poets Poems for Thanksgiving - Find poems about gratitude, family, food, home, and giving thanks for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Poetry from the pandemic:

Corona Diary by Cornelius Eady

These days, you want the poem to be
A mask, soft veil between what floats
Invisible, but known in the air.
You’ve just read that there’s a singer
You love who might be breathing their last,
And wish the poem could travel,
Unintrusive, as poems do from
The page to the brain, a fan’s medicine.
Those of us who are lucky enough
To stay indoors with a salary count the days
By press conference. For others, there is
Always the dog and the park, the park
And the dog. A relative calls; how you doin’?
(Are you a ghost?) The buds emerge, on time,
For their brief duty. The poem longs to be a filter, but
In floats Spring’s insistence. We wait.

How about some summer pandemic reading? The New York Times asked some pretty impressive authors to write stories inspired by our current pandemic:

The Decameron Project: New Fiction Twenty-nine short stories to help us try to understand this moment. Fiction by Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Edwidge Danticat, Charles Yu, David Mitchell, Rachel Kushner and more.

There is nothing quite like poetry to capture life. Here's a poem from a new poetry anthology, Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America's Poets Respond to the Pandemic, edited by Alice Quinn:

"Storm"

Night squall raging,
black branches
batter every window
as the sky lashes
the city. Without devices,
all I can do is shelter in place—
& wait the latest nightmare
out, find other sources
of power as I sit in the dark
save for a candle burning
for my mother writhing
in an ICU & for the world
to make it against all odds.
In every sense, I burn
in the unseen places, head
filling with smoke, each hour
lived in a dense haze.

Millions weather this
twenty-first-century unholy
Passover, homes
bereft & singed forever.
The unruly rich in charge
deign themselves
gods, maniacal &
merciless. Every warning
unheeded, no bona fide mark
of protection
this time, no choice
in the losses raining
almost everywhere.

Candlelight for two
is a date; I faintly
remember those.
Candlelight
alone
is a séance—
forgive me,
my dearly departed
for crying out
so often, for still needing you
so damn much.

Kamilah Aisha Moon