Letter from the Chair

Jahan Ramazani
Photo by Stephen Boykewich

Dear Friends of the English Department,

Greetings. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of my return to my alma mater as a faculty member. I decided to teach at Virginia primarily because of the outstanding quality of the English Department. The Department’s unique strengths were known to me first hand because, as an undergraduate at U.Va., I was attracted to the English major by the dynamic teaching of the Department’s brilliant faculty. As you’ll see from this newsletter, the Department continues to thrive, with a top-flight faculty, a robust undergraduate major, excellent graduate students, and devoted alumni in many walks of life.

One of my students recently confided in me that she thought many of her fellow undergraduate majors weren’t aware of how “special” the English Department is. She said she didn’t think most undergrads had any idea the Department was ranked well ahead of most other programs at the University. Understandably, when you are an undergraduate, you may well identify more strongly with the University than with your home department, since most of your coursework is in other fields. Your sense of yourself may also be more bound up with Madison House or the Guide Service, the Honor Committee or WTJU than with your major. Even so, the English Department could probably do a better job of getting the word out about its distinction, and that’s indeed one reason for the existence of this electronic newsletter.

Did you know that the department from which you graduated was ranked by the National Research Council as being in the top 3% of 127 English departments in the country? Did you realize it placed fourth in the nation, after only Harvard, Berkeley, and Yale, and equal to Stanford and Duke? If you google the online Graduate School Guide, phds.org, and look up rankings of English departments, you may be surprised to find that U.Va. is number 2 out of 146 English departments in the nation, in the category of “Large, less expensive program.” Given that the two other most popular majors in Arts and Sciences are departments that rank in faculty quality at number 24 and 20, with many other departments clustered in the 20s and 30s, this is no small achievement.

Rankings don’t tell you everything, of course. If a department has esteemed individual professors, for example, but they are miserably embittered and factionalized, then its ranking may not count for much. But in a U.Va. Faculty Senate Survey made public this spring, faculty in the English Department indicated a high level of satisfaction with the department’s collegiality. “Collegiality” is a term that may have a slightly tweedy, even musty air. But it’s vital to the effective functioning of a department. If faculty are feuding with one another, students get caught in the cross-fire, and the department can’t work as a team to build for the future. Nor can such a department effectively recruit the best faculty: excellent job prospects will sniff out a venomous or back-stabbing atmosphere. At Virginia, we realize that the department’s collegiality is part and parcel of its excellence.

As for recruitment, maybe the most vivid recent indicator of the Department’s health was the hiring season that just concluded. This year, we conducted a broadly defined search for new faculty in literature before 1800 (British, American and transnational), including Medieval, Renaissance, Eighteenth Century, and Early American. As a department, we are committed to outstanding work in these traditional fields, while also building strengths in new and emerging areas, such as global literature and digital humanities. A hardworking search committee combed through hundreds of applications and interviewed the leading candidates. In the end, we offered jobs to our top three candidates, and remarkably, all three accepted positions in our department. We lured an Early Americanist away from Princeton, hired a Stanford PhD with expertise in the Eighteenth Century and Digital Humanities, and recruited a top-notch specialist in Medieval and Renaissance drama who had taught for a number of years at Harvard. We look forward to introducing you to these stellar additions to our faculty in future newsletters.

Why are innovative and productive faculty attracted to Virginia, and why do they often stay once recruited? After all, the picture isn’t entirely rosy. Public universities like U.Va. are struggling to keep pace with the resources available at their private peers. Our department competes for students and faculty with private institutions that have better funding for graduate programs, faculty salaries, research initiatives, conferences, travel, and other areas vital to maintaining a department’s eminence.

But the combination of several key factors has, I believe, helped us withstand the competition so far: an outstanding faculty; a warmly collegial climate; and an exceptionally high quality of life in a place of extraordinary beauty and history. While our peers have been outstripping us in their funding sources, this rare combination has helped us keep pace, though we mustn’t be complacent about the mounting challenges. At a time when the University has set its sights on enhancing the reputation of its science departments, it may be especially important to remember that the English Department’s demonstrated record of excellence will be imperiled if it is taken for granted. Can you help us get the word out on what a precious asset the University has in the English Department?

Thank you for your continued interest in, and involvement with, the English Department, which gladly sends you this fourth issue of the electronic newsletter, prepared by the Department’s associate chair, John O’Brien. He and I thank you for taking the time to read it. As always, we’d be delighted to hear from you. Please send news, comments, and suggestions to .

With best wishes for a refreshing summer,

Jahan Ramazani
Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English and Department Chair