In 2009, the Lehigh English Department made a commitment to literature and social justice (LSJ) as the central intellectual emphasis of our department. Through this focus, we explore the distinctive contributions that literary works (and other forms of expressive culture) have made to movements for social justice over many centuries, as well as the ways in which literary texts have represented and often legitimated unjust social arrangements.
Welcome
English at Lehigh
Welcome to the English Department! You can explore the department's offerings and get a sense of what we're about by browsing the cards on this page and the navigation above. Note the events and news blocks! You'll also find an events calendar; Please check back regularly for updates.
The Department of English has a focus on Literature and Social Justice, the outcome of a multi-year effort to revitalize the traditional period-based approach to literary studies and to develop an organic interest among many of our faculty members. Like the university as a whole, the department is committed to cultivating graduates who will be engaged citizens and community members, in addition to successful professionals and life-long learners. We also hope that our students in particular will learn to recognize how literature and other forms of cultural production uniquely intervene in questions of justice and shape our ways of being in the world.
Drown Unbound
Message from the Department Chair
English majors at Lehigh love to read, sometimes bringing this love with them from high school, sometimes developing it in first-year English classes. If on a spring afternoon you visited the terrace of Drown Hall, our home on Lehigh's South Mountain, you would be likely to find students scattered in chairs reading, hunched at tables editing one another's papers, or gathered to continue a discussion begun in class.
Spotlights
Immigrant stories in film and literature often focus on what is lost in the process of migration: particularly the loss of one’s culture and identity. However, the immigrant experience can also...
Lehigh’s Humanities Center helps drive humanities research and teaching under the direction of Suzanne Edwards
By Wendy Greenberg
As Humanities Center director, Suzanne Edwards, associate...
New Publications
Awards
Core Activities
- An exploration of how studying literatures contributes to questions of social justice.
- An immersion in historical periods informed by strong theoretical commitments.
- An engagement with contemporary literature and culture. An emphasis on theorized pedagogy, reflective practice, and the scholar-teacher model.
- An interaction with Lehigh's varied interdisciplinary programs, including Africana Studies; Classics; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Jewish Studies; and American Studies.
