The Department of English and Philosophy Presentation of senior projects and end-of-year party were held on Monday, June 6th. For pictures from this event, please click here.

Andrea Barrett, MacArthur Prize winner and author of the required Freshman reading book, Servants of the Map, visited Drexel University on Wednesday, November 14th and Thursday, November 15th, 2007. She gave a presentation in the Main Auditorium, signed books and spoke to students at the reception afterwards, attended a dinner at the Academic Bistro, taught a masters class to select students, and gave a smaller presentation in the Faculty Club. Pictures from all of these events can be found here.

The annual Department of English and Philosophy holiday party was held on Thursday, December 6th. For pictures from this event, please click here.

On Tuesday, September 18th, the Department of English and Philosophy held the annual departmental retreat. For pictures from this event, please click here.

On Monday, June 12th, the Senior Project Presentations were held in the conference room, followed by the year-end Department Party. For pictures from these events, please click here.

On Friday, May 11th, the English and Philosophy Department held its Sigma Tau Delta Awards and 26th Annual Freshman Writing Contest. For pictures from this event, please click here.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who was the third of the writers brought to Drexel in 2006-2007 by our Department's Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing, has just been given the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction with her second novel 'Half of a Yellow Sun'. The prize includes 30,000 pounds and a statue called "The Bessie."

The Orange Prize is given to the best novel written by a woman in the previous twelve months. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the youngest woman to win the prize and the first to come from Africa. She also was recently featured in Vanity Fair.

Chimamanda visited on Friday, May 4th, 2007. To see pictures, please click here.

Some of our memorable events include:

Information from the Week of Writing can be found at the official site!

Painted Bride Quarterly's Second Annual Fundraising Party

Drexel University's College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English and Philosophy, and literary magazine Painted Bride Quarterly welcomed novelist Rick Moody, novelist and screenwriter Heather McGowan, and The Wingdale Community Singers for an evening of literature and music, to World Cafe Live, on Thursday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Before the show, there was an intimate cocktail party in which people coule meet the authors and performers, with open bar and appetizers. Attendees of the cocktail party also received VIP seats for the show and a gift bag.

Rick Moody

is the author of four novels, three collections of stories, and a memoir. His most recent work is a collection of novellas, RIGHT LIVELIHOODS, to be published in June by Little, Brown. His the recipient of the Addison Metcalf Award, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Martha Albrand Prize for excellence in the memoir, from PEN; and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has produced radio works and sound art for The Next Big Thing, Weekend America, the BBC, the Third Coast International Audio Festival, and the Australian Broadcasting Company. His short work has been published in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, The Believer, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, and elsewhere.

Heather McGowan is the author of the novel Schooling, which was listed as Best Book of the Year 2001 by Newsweek, the Detroit Free Press, and the Hartford Courant and has been described by The New York Times as "Mesmerizing.... a dazzling job of conveying the hormonal impatience and doomy romanticism of adolescence." Duchess of Nothing, A Novel, has just been released in paperback. Kirkus Review says, "A truly original premise, artfully developed into a memorable and perversely entertaining comic horror story." McGowan’s original screenplay, Tadpole, won the Director's Award and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

The Wingdale Community Singers:

Formed in 2002 by Rick Moody (acoustic guitar, vocals) and Hannah Marcus (acoustic guitar, piano, fiddle, vocals). David Grubbs, of the Red Krayola, Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and many other bands, joined in 2003. He plays many instruments, though mostly the electric guitar, and sings sometimes. Nina Katchadourian (acoustic guitar, accordion, recorder, tomato, vocals) joined in 2006, as did Abe Streep (fiddle, mandolin). The Wingdale Community Singers play folk music that could have been written any time in the last sixty years. It's Old Time, it's High Modernist, it's experimental, it's resistant to interpretation, it's funny sometimes, it's full of dread other times. One aspect remains throughout: there's a lot of singing. And a lot of harmony.

Nina Katchadourian is a visual artist and musician. Her visual arts practice spans a broad range of media, including photography, sculpture, video and sound. She is represented by Sara Meltzer gallery in New York and Catharine Clark gallery in San Francisco. In 2006 the Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs exhibited a 10-year survey of her work, with accompanying monograph. She began performing with The Wingdale Community Singers in 2006. Her particular musical interests at the moment include Balinese "gender wayang," an instrument she studied in Bali in 1988 and recently began playing again. More information on Katchadourian's visual art and music can be found at www.ninakatchadourian.com and http://www.myspace.com/ninakatchadourian.

Hannah Marcus, singer-songwriter, has released five albums, among them Faith Burns (1998), and Black Hole Heaven (2000). She has recorded with members of the Red House Painters and American Music Club. Her most recent album, Desert Farmers, available on Bar/None Records, was recorded in Montreal with musicians from the group Godsped You Black Emperor and A Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orkestra.

Abe Streep (fiddle, mandolin) has performed with bands in Vermont and Montana. He also performs with The Brooklyn Playboys. He is a staff writer and editor at Men's Journal.

The "Writing as a Career" panel happened on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 from 11:00-12:15 in the Living Arts Lounge. Professional writers shared their real-world experience with writing as a career. Panelists included: Dan Miesieski and Joe Manzione of Creative Group, Stacy Stanislaw, Drexel graduate working for a medical publisher, Robert Strauss, freelance writer and Steve Volk, Senior Writer for the Philadelphia Weekly. The event was open to all interested students; light refreshments will be served. This event was sponsored by the Department of English and Philosophy and Magnificent Minds. For pictures from this event, please click here.

Edward Tenner, author of the Freshman required reading book Our Own Devices, visited Drexel University on November 7th and 8th, 2006. For pictures from his lecture on November 7th, please click here. You can also watch a video online of Dr. Tenner's talk here. For pictures from the Master's Class he taught on November 8th, please click here. For pictures from his talk on Alfred Robida on November 8th, please click here.

Rosanne Cash & Anthony DeCurtis Performance/Reading at the World Cafe Live

On Thursday, May 11, the College of Arts & Sciences and the Department of English & Philosophy joined together to welcome the Painted Bride Quarterly to its new home at Drexel University with an evening of literature and lyrics with Rosanne Cash and long-time Rolling Stone editor, Anthony DeCurtis! President Papadakis (right) graced a dinner to mark the event.

The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium Undergraduate Philosophy Conference was held at Drexel University this year. The theme of this year's conference was "The Impacts and Implications of Technology on Life, Ethics & Art." It was held on Saturday, February 25, 2006 from 9 am to 5 pm in Nesbitt Hall, Ruth Auditorium, Room 125. Please click here for more information.

John Timpane, author and editor of the Commentary Page and Currents editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer gave a talk on "This Writing Life," in the University Club on the 6th Floor in MacAlister Hall, at 2 pm on Thursday, February 16, 2006. Pictures from the event can be found here.

The author of film scripts and articles on science as well as books on writing and poetry, including Poetry for Dummies, John Timpane also conducted a multi-genre workshop "Collected Works Workshop" for students, following the lecture: 3:15 - 4:30.

The workshop was limited to 15 students. Short non-fiction/journalism, short fiction and poetry were all welcome. The deadline for sending manuscripts is January 30.

Timpane has received many awards including the James K. Batten Award for Excellence in Civic Journalism from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, 2000, and the Association of Opinion Page Editors Award for Best Series, 2004.

He became Commentary Page Editor in August 1997 after more than 20 years as a teacher of college English (specialties: Renaissance literature and composition theory) at Lafayette College, Rutgers University, the University of Southampton, Stanford University and elsewhere. He has a Ph. D. in English and Humanities from Stanford.

Throughout his undergraduate, graduate, and scholarly career, he wrote op-ed and perspective pieces for magazines and newspapers, and he had a flourishing freelance writing career that included film scripts, interactive video scripts, books (Writing Worth Reading, about composition; It Could Be Verse, about poetry; Poetry for Dummies, also about poetry; Usonia, NY: Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright, about architecture), poetry, essays (on biotechnology for Science magazine), and research articles.

His poetry has appeared in Sequoia, Kelsey Review, Live Oak, 5_trope, Eight Millennial Voices, Northeast Corridor, and elsewhere. He was also a writing coach at various companies and newspapers--which is how he and the Inquirer first fell in love. He is a sometime columnist for Mental_Floss magazine, a sometime NPR commentator (for the show Been There, Done That), and the host of the audio blog "Sketchy Species" for the Drexel Web zine Dragonfire.

These events are sponsored by: the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing in the Department of English and Philosophy, the Department of Culture and Communication, the College of Arts and Sciences, and Magnificent Minds.

On Tuesday, November 15th, 2005, Dr. Richard Burgin came to Drexel University to read from his latest book, The Identity Club. Pictures from this event can be found here.

On Wednesday, October 26th, 2005, Bharati Mukherjee visited Drexel University to give a talk about her short stories from The Middleman, which was a reading requirement for all incoming freshman. Pictures for this event can be found here. For pictures from the class she held on Thursday, October 27th, please click here.

On Wednesday, May 18th, 2005, COAS held their launch party for ASK. The event was held in the Faculty Club Reserve Section at 6 pm. Please click here for pictures.

Ha Jin, the winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner award for his novel Waiting, was on the Drexel campus on October 20-21 2004. He gave a lecture on October 20 at 1:30 in the Main Auditorium and conducted a master class for Drexel students chosen on the basis of their own writing. Professor Jin, who teaches at Boston University, was invited to Drexel by the Freshman English Program Advisory Group which selected The Bridegroom, a collection of his short stories, as the book to be read by all incoming freshmen across the University in the summer before they arrive at Drexel. The aim of this Drexel Freshman Reading Assignment is to allow freshmen to share a common experience as a foretaste of the intellectual inquiry and discourse they will find at Drexel University. The reading assignment will showcase the varied nature of academic discourse throughout the University.

To see pictures from these events, please click here. To see an article about these events, please click here.

The Gala Inauguration of the Certificate in Writing and Publishing was held on Thursday, May 27th, 2004. For pictures of the event, please click here.

On April 17, 2003, African writer Ayi Kwei Armah visited Drexel for a master class and open lecture. Photographs of this event are available on the web site devoted to the event.

For our full News & Events archive, please click here.