
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.
2023 Summer Institute
ENGL 790: Writing for Diverse Publics
Instructor: Randall Fuller (randallfuller@ku.edu)
This course, open to all English graduate students, will provide an intensive workshop devoted to writing for audiences beyond specialists in our field. (We will, however, discuss the form of the academic essay in some depth.) Writing for larger publics is becoming an increasingly important facet of humanistic careers within and without the academy. We will encounter approaches and techniques for writing op-eds, podcasts, book reviews, and general interest articles and books—all based upon your classroom and dissertation research. Course readings will include work by practitioners of public humanities, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Claudia Rankine, Stephen Greenblatt, Jill Lepore, Saidiya Hartmann, and others. Topics will include how to make theory legible for general audiences without sacrificing its complexity; the relationship between narrative and argument; and the role of humanistic knowledge for social activism. The class will be supplemented with Zoom visits by writers and editors, and the final product of class will be a portfolio of polished writing, including an op-ed, a podcast script, and a full-length essay.
Past Summer Institutes
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
2017 Giselle Anatol, KU
2019 Kij Johnson, KU
2021 Phil Drake, KU