Summer Section
Graduate students are eligible to enroll in the annual summer institutes, which alternate between the Caffyn Institute, taught by KU English faculty, and the Holmes Institute, taught by visiting faculty. Below you'll find the course description for our current summer institute as well as past institute instructors.
2026 Summer Institute
ENGL 980: Writing Across Genres
Instructor: Héctor Tobar
How do fiction writers make use of "fact"—lived experience, memory, and research—in their work? How can writers of nonfiction work make use of the literary traditions of fiction and poetry in their work? What can writers of criticism learn from their own journeys into the imaginary? Writing between genres, or in a space where literary genres learn from each other, can be a powerful tool of rhetoric and art. This course begins with the idea that writing is more essential than ever, and that experimenting with form and literary boundaries can give new power and relevance to the act of writing.
Past Summer Institutes
2024, Devoney Looser, ASU
2022 Rita Felski, UVA
2020 Jeffrey Masten, Northwestern
2018 Cary Wolfe, Rice
2016 Wendy Wheeler, London Metropolitan
2014 N. Katherine Hayles, Duke
2012 Patrick Brantlinger, Indiana
2010 Lawrence Buell, Harvard
2008 Susan Gubar, Indiana
2007 Karma Lochrie, Indiana
2006 Priscilla Ward, Duke
2005 John P. Farrell, Texas
2004 Alan Golding, Louisville
2003 Helena Michie, Rice
2002 Dana Nelson, Kentucky
2001 Frances Dolan, Miami of Ohio
2000 Susan K. Harris, Penn State
1999 Mary Poovey, NYU
1998 Myra Jehlen, Rutgers
1997 Valerie Wayne, Hawaii
1996 Paul Fussell, Penn
1995 Nancy Armstrong, Brown
1994 Scott Russell Sanders, Indiana
1993 Eric Sundquist, UCLA
1992 Constance Penley, UCSB
1991 Sharon O’Brien, Dickinson College
2025 Jonathan Lamb, KU
2023 Randall Fuller, KU
2021 Phil Drake, KU
2019 Kij Johnson, KU
2017 Giselle Anatol, KU