English at Otago
The Department of English at the University of Otago has a distinguished record of teaching and research. It offers both a major and a minor in English literature, a minor in Writing, and also hosts the Programme in Linguistics, and the Scottish and Irish Studies Programmes.
In addition to a three-year BA course and a four-year BA Honours programme, the Department offers the Postgraduate Diploma in English, the MA, and the PhD.
The Department was ranked top English Department in the country in the most recent national evaluation of research activity.
The 2012 course information booklet is now available [PDF file 2MB]
Department Events Calendar
Latest News
The Reviews Are In...
Recent publications by members of the English Department have garnered some impressive reviews.
- US journal Choice called Alistair Fox's Jane Campion: Authorship and Personal Cinema "easily the best, most comprehensive book now available on Campion" and named it an "Outstanding Academic Title" for 2011.
- The Journal of Postcolonial Writing praised Cultural Transformation (co-edited by Chris Prentice, and including essays by Chris and Jacob Edmond) for offering a "spectrum of approaches" that "motivates us to question categories and ways of thinking."
- The on-line journal Screening the Past admired Rochelle Simmons’s book chapter “John Berger’s Revolutionary Narratives” for helping to “disassociate the British 1970s with questions of kitschy cultural populism, instead refocusing discussions around serious media interventions in the lives of everyday Britons."
- The latest issue of Romanticism called Tom McLean's Further Letters of Joanna Baillie "a valuable resource for scholars of Romanticism" and "an entertaining look at this once forgotten playwright."
- Landfall acclaimed MA candidate Joan Fleming's first book of poems The Same As Yes as "one of last year's most startling debuts."
Congratulations to all for the well-deserved praise!
A Swingin' Affair...
MA student Orchid Tierney's book Brachiation has just been published in a beautiful limited edition by Rob Lamb of the Gumtree Press. At the Sunday 25 March book launch, Orchid, Rob, and fellow poets/MA students Joan Fleming and Loveday Why read an impressive selection of their work to an enthusiastic audience at the Dunedin Theosophical Society. Congratulations to Orchid on her wonderful achievement!
Congratulating the Crop...
The English and Linguistics Department commends the latest group of postgraduates to complete degrees in 2011:
Dr Michael Cop (PhD, English)
Dr Joseph Rex Young (PhD, English)
Dr Neale McDonald (PhD, English)
Dr Ann Hassan (PhD, English)
Dr Ulrike Scherer (PhD, English)
Dr Corey Scott (PhD, English)
Dr Carol Wyvill (PhD, English)
Dr Josie Carter (PhD, English)
Helen Lyttleton (MA, English)
Alison Stone (MA, English)
Poppy Haynes (MA, English)
Megan Kitching (MA, English)
Hannah Manning (MA, English)
Sharon Matthews (MA, English)
Hugh Carthew (MA, English)
Dr Songyut Akkakoson (PhD, Linguistics)
Dr Ryoko deBurgh-Hirabe (PhD, Linguistics)
Dr Elizabeth Hogbin (PhD, Linguistics)
Dr Dennis Tay (PhD, Linguistics)
Bridget Brown (MA, Linguistics)
Congratulating the Tom...
The Department commends Dr Thomas McLean on the launch of his monograph, The Other East and Nineteeth-Century British Literature: Imagining Poland and the Russian Empire published with Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Check it out here!