11:08 a.m., Sept. 30, 2009----Matthew J. Kinservik has been named chairperson of the University of Delaware's Department of English, it was announced recently by George Watson, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

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"The college is grateful for Prof. Steve Bernhardt's fine efforts on behalf of the Department of English for the past five years, and we look forward to working with Prof. Kinservik to sustain momentum on key initiatives pertaining to our Path to Prominence goals and the strategic plan for the college," Watson said.

Ann Ardis, the college's senior associate dean for the humanities, said Kinservik becomes chairperson at a time when the Department of English is involved in a range of activities in support of the humanities.

According to Ardis, "Key initiatives include: the department's burgeoning partnership with the Delaware Division of the Arts on the Poets in the Schools Program and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Out Loud initiative; its engagement with the National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant to enhance graduate research and public humanities training in American material culture; its involvement in the Arts and Humanities Summer Institute to improve the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students; and its support for writing across the curriculum initiatives such as the Dissertation Boot Camps sponsored by the Office of Graduate and Professional Education and coordinated by English department faculty since winter 2009, and the establishment, in 2008, of the Writing Center's Writing Fellows training program for advanced undergraduates."

“The English Department is the biggest academic department and the only one that teaches every undergraduate student at UD,” Kinservik said. “I feel very privileged to be the chair of this department and to have the opportunity to promote and support all of the work that our faculty and students are engaged in.”

Kinservik said the diversity of the department's research and teaching is great. “In addition to literary studies, we do everything from creative writing to drama and film studies to journalism and professional writing, and that makes our impact on the intellectual lives of UD students very strong,” he said.

One of the most exciting initiatives in the Department of English is undergraduate research, Kinservik said, adding that English faculty have “sponsored individual and team-based research projects that have taken our students around the world.”

Among examples of the rich learning opportunities English faculty are creating, Kinservik led a team of undergraduate researchers that did archival work in Dublin and Belfast on 18th-century radicals and Mahasveta Barua has a team of undergraduate students doing a service-learning project in connection with Kahta, a Dehli-based Indian non-governmental organization.

Kinservik said the current economic downturn has presented academia, including the Department of English, with both challenges and opportunities. “To my mind, the value of the arts and humanities increases during times like these,” he said.

The department has responded by focusing on alumni and friends, offering opportunities through a Speaker Series and other events to “come together around our common love of the written word.”

He cited a Nov. 12 event called "Shakespeare First" that will feature a lecture by James Shapiro, author of A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, at 5:30 p.m., followed by a reception and then a concert by Lyric Fest, a Philadelphia-based chorale, that celebrates Shakespeare's life in music. The event, which will be held in the Roselle Center for the Arts, is free and open to the public and is made possible through a gift from the Charlotte Orth Shakespeare Fund.

Kinservik received a bachelor's degree in English and political science and a master's degree in English from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and a doctorate in English from Penn State University.

He joined the University of Delaware faculty in 1997, and is the author of Sex, Scandal and Celebrity in Late 18th-Century England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Disciplining Satire: The Censorship of Satiric Comedy on the 18th-Century London Stage (Bucknell University Press, 2002).

Prior to being named chairperson, Kinservik served as director of graduate studies in the department.

Article by Neil Thomas