Contact Information

Amy Weldon
Professor of English
English Department Head

Main 603A
700 College Drive
Decorah, IA 52101

amy.weldon@luther.edu

Phone: 563-387-2224

Senior Projects

The optional semester- or year-long senior project in creative or critical writing, developed in regular meetings with a faculty member, can be a rewarding way to explore your interests and create a piece of writing to be proud of. Projects can become a published story, a graduate-school writing sample, a conference presentation, the foundation of an MA thesis, or more.

Students have completed short novels and story and essay collections as part of year-long senior projects in creative writing, critical essays and poetry collections as semester-long projects, and high-school English teaching plans for classic texts like Frankenstein as springboards into their educational careers. Each project can be completed for 1, 2, or 4 credits. Check the list of faculty members’ areas of research and creative work for ideas about who might be willing to advise your project!

Download the English Senior Project Proposal Form (PDF)

General Information and Project Proposal

Together with the required Senior Seminar, the Senior Project is the English major’s culminating experience. Projects build upon students’ previous experience with scholarly research, creative writing, or the secondary education program, and include both a substantial piece of writing and an oral presentation. Students either begin a new project or revise a substantial writing piece from previous coursework. Students may complete a Senior Project within the Senior Seminar with the permission of the seminar instructor, who will serve as their senior paper advisor.

Students complete the senior project for 1 or 2 credits. The 2-credit option differs from the 1-credit option both in product and process. The 2-credit senior project should be about twice the length of the 1-credit project. In addition, the 2-credit project requires that the student make his or her research and writing process visible in written work that the advisor and student agree upon. This may include an annotated bibliography, shorter early drafts, research notes, and self-reflective writing. For the 2-credit senior project the student should meet with the advisor every 2-3 weeks.

Registration for the Senior Project (ENG 490): All students who wish to complete a senior project should register for 1 credit of English 490: Senior Project and submit a project proposal electronically to the Department Head by the end of the second week of the semester in which the student is completing the project. If a student wishes to complete the senior project for 2-credits after consulting with his or her senior project advisor, the student must submit the project description to the department head for approval in the semester prior to undertaking the senior project (for example, at the time of registration). If the 2-credit option is approved, the department head will contact the Registrar to increase the credits from 1 to 2.

Literary analysis papers – 1 credit hour

  • About 15 pages in length, with at least 10 substantial sources
  • 2-3 suggested meetings with faculty advisor
  • First meeting with advisor in the semester prior to completing the senior project
  • Works Cited list does not need to be annotated
  • Estimated research and writing time: 25-30 hours

Literary analysis papers – 2 credit hours

  • About 25 pages in length, with 20-25 substantial sources
  • 3-5 suggested meetings with faculty advisor
  • First meeting with advisor in the semester prior to completing the senior project
  • Written work includes one or more of the following: annotated bibliography, short early drafts, research notes, self-reflective writing, or other writing in consultation with the advisor
  • Estimated research and writing time: 50-60 hours

Creative writing projects – 1 credit hour

  • Revision of work from 312 (poetry and fiction) or 213 (non-fiction)
  • Original work submitted along with revision
  • 5-page introductory essay to the project
  • No reading list required
  • 2-3 suggested meetings with faculty advisor
  • First meeting with advisor in the semester prior to completing the senior project
  • Estimated writing and revision time: 25-30 hours
  • See Preparation requirements for each genre (below)

Creative writing projects – 2 credit hours

  • New writing
  • 8-10 page introductory essay, including description of relationship between reading and writing done on the project
  • Approved reading list of at least 3-4 authors
  • Length: 20 pages for fiction or essay(s); or 15 poems; or 20-40 pages theatre or film scripts
  • Students may submit work in more than one genre with approval from advisor and department head
  • 3-5 suggested meetings with faculty advisor
  • First meeting with advisor in the semester prior to completing the senior project
  • Written work includes one or more of the following: annotated bibliography, short early drafts, self-reflective writing, or other writing in consultation with the advisor
  • Estimated writing and revision time: 50-60 hours
  • See Preparation requirements for each genre (below)

Education projects – 1 credit

Education projects are typically unit plans. The unit includes an 8-10 page research component with bibliography and a teaching component with daily lesson and assessment plans.

  • For literary analysis papers, two or more upper division literature courses are typically adequate preparation.
  • For creative writing projects, students are expected to complete the requirements for the English Writing Emphasis major. Ideally, these students would have had coursework and sustained writing experience in the genre of their project. At a minimum, all students wishing to do a creative writing project must be completing their third writing course during the term in which the senior project will be submitted. In addition:
    • students intending a poetry or fiction project must have completed English 212, and must have completed or be completing English 312 during the term in which the senior project will be submitted;
    • students intending a creative nonfiction project must have completed English 210, 211, or 213;
    • students intending a theatre script project should have completed at least one of Theatre 207, 351, or 352; additionally, applicants should describe sustained previous writing experience in the genre;
    • students intending a film script project must have completed English 211 and should have completed Communication Studies 258; additionally, applicants should describe sustained previous writing experience in the genre.
  • For education projects, students should indicate their status within the secondary education minor.

Submit two copies of the final project by 4 pm to Rebecca Nicholls, Administrative Assistant, Main 215.

The complete project, including required bibliographies, supplements, or introductions, must be submitted to the Registrar by the announced due date.

Information regarding oral presentation:

  • All students completing an English Senior Project will present their work at the on-campus, end-of-semester Senior Project Presentation coordinated by the English Department. See the English website for complete “Oral Presentation” instructions.
  • All students are also encouraged to present their projects at national conferences sponsored by such organizations as the National Council of Undergraduate Research and Sigma Tau Delta, at Luther-sponsored student research events like the Research Symposium, or through publication in local, regional, or national publications.

You are to seek out on your own your Senior Project advisor, who may or may not be your regular academic advisor. Consult the department faculty web site for faculty members’ areas of interest and/or consult with your academic advisor or the Department Head. A professor may suggest another advisor would be more appropriate for your project given your preferences, faculty interests and expertise, and faculty advising loads. You may also wish to consult with the English Department Head. After your Project Proposal (below) has been submitted to the Department Head, the department will assign second (and sometimes third) readers.

Suggested Timetable for All Projects

Students complete the senior project for 1-credit or 2-credits. All students register for 1-credit of English 490: Senior Project. If a student wishes to complete the senior project for 2-credits after consulting with his or her senior project advisor, the student must submit the project description to the department head for approval in the semester prior to undertaking the senior project (for example, at the time of registration). If the 2-credit option is approved, the department head will contact the Registrar to increase the credits from 1 to 2.

Please see “General Information and Project Proposal Form” for how the 2-credit option differs from the 1-credit option both in product and process.

By the end of the 2nd week (about Sept 10 in Fall; about February 10 in Spring):

  • Consult with the advisor about departmental expectations and your general writing plan.
  • Attend library research session, if announced, on MLA electronic bibliography and other specialized bibliographic resources.
  • For the 2-credit option, the student must submit the project description to the department head for approval in the semester prior to undertaking the senior project (for example, at the time of registration).

By the 6th week (mid-October in Fall; mid-March in Spring), meet with your advisor to discuss the progress you have made, which may include one or more of the following:

  • A written research plan that includes your research questions and how you plan to limit your topic.
  • A research bibliography which lists most of the sources that you will be using and any interlibrary loan orders.
  • Research notes, including bibliographical information.
  • The start of your draft on your paper, even if your ideas are not fully formed.

By the 8th week (late October in Fall; late March in Spring):

  • Bring to your advisor a significant portion of your work, which may be anywhere from a half to a full draft of your research paper (8 or more pages for 1-credit senior project, 12 or more pages for a 2-credit project). You may also wish to develop a paper outline.
  • This is the time to talk over with your advisor any problems you are having with the paper, either with locating sources or developing your topic.

By the 10th week–2 weeks to go! (mid-November in Fall; mid-April in Spring)–Meet with your advisor to discuss a complete draft that includes both citations and a complete bibliography. A complete draft for a 1-credit project is 15 or more pages; for a 2-credit project, 25 or more pages.

  • English Department faculty consider this the crucial stage in your project’s development, since students who do not seek help at this stage often write less than successful papers. Only with a complete (though perhaps still rough) draft can advisors give their best response and guidance. You should begin revising immediately after your conference.

Final due date, typically in the 12th week (often the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in the Fall; often the second Wednesday in May in the Spring)

  • Turn in two copies of your project to Rebecca Nicholls, Administrative Assistant, Main 215 by 4:00 pm. This is an absolute deadline.
  • Your paper will be read by your senior project advisor and a second reader selected by the department. The department faculty meets as a whole to discuss papers and establish final grades. After this department meeting, you may wish to discuss your final paper with your advisor and/or your second reader.

Oral presentation, the last Wednesday of the semester, 4:00 pm in Main classrooms. See Senior Projects>Oral Presentation.

By the end of the 2nd week (about Sept 10 in Fall; about February 10 in Spring):

  • Consult with the advisor about department expectations and evaluation procedures, and your general writing plan.
  • Attend library research session, if appropriate for your project, and if announced (MLA electronic bibliography and other specialized bibliographic resources).
  • For the 2-credit option, the student must submit the project description to the department head for approval in the semester prior to undertaking the senior project (for example, at the time of registration).

By the 6th week (mid-October in Fall, mid-March in Spring):

  • Meet with your advisor to discuss your progress on the creative project, giving a report on the shape that your project is taking and the reading you are doing in conjunction with your writing. Make sure to discuss the intended length of the project, which will vary depending on the genre(s) of your work. For 2-credit projects, the recommended or typical length is 20 or more pages for works of fiction, 20-40 for theater or film scripts, or 15 or more poems. One-credit senior projects would be about half of these totals.

By 8th week (late October in Fall; late March in Spring):

  • Bring your advisor a partial draft of your project for review and discussion. This work should at least be the equivalent of a short story or two for fiction, 20 pages or more of film or theater script, or 6-8 poems. Consider also what sources best help you think about your work and how you will shape your 5-7 page introductory essay to your project.

By the 10th week–2 weeks to go! (mid-November in Fall; mid-April in Spring):

  • Meet with your advisor to discuss a complete draft of your project. See 6th week (above) for page lengths.
  • English Department faculty consider this the crucial stage in your project’s development, since students who do not seek help at this stage often write less than successful creative projects. Only with a complete (though perhaps still rough) draft can advisors give their best response and guidance. You should begin revising immediately after your conference.

Final due date, typically in the twelfth week (often the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in Fall; often the second Wednesday in May in Spring)

  • Turn in two copies of your project to Rebecca Nicholls, Administrative Assistant, Main 215 by 4:00 pm. This is an absolute deadline.
  • Your creative project will be read by your senior project advisor and a second reader selected by the department. The department faculty meets as a whole to discuss senior projects and establish final grades. After this department meeting, you may wish to discuss your final project with your advisor and/or your second reader.

Oral presentation, the last Wednesday of the semester, 4:00 pm in Main classrooms. See Senior Projects>Oral Presentation.

In order to celebrate Senior Projects, to provide students an additional formal speaking opportunity, and to fulfill college expectations, the English department requires students to present their Senior Projects orally. Other Luther students are invited to attend these presentations; the English faculty will divide themselves into groups so that every presentation is heard by a number of faculty.

Format

There will be a number of presentation times—for about four students each—soon after the Senior Project due date. Students will have twelve minutes to showcase their project; there will also be a few minutes for audience members to ask questions about each presentation.

Preparation

Students are encouraged to work with their Project advisors on developing an effective presentation and to practice their presentations in advance.

Creative Writing Projects

In addition to reading their own work, students should contextualize their writing with remarks drawn from the introductory self-reflective essay required of all creative projects. This section might take up to five minutes.

Poets should select poems that reflect the range of their work.

Prose writers should identify a self-contained portion of their work that will lend itself to oral presentation.

Education and Research Projects

Students will present a précis of their work that shows engagement with a larger academic conversation (“What is the relevant scholarship on this topic, and where does my work fit in?”).

If they would like to read a few selections from their written project, they should choose carefully for length and interest.

Tips

All students will need to weigh carefully the advantages and disadvantages of different presentation styles.

A newly-created, carefully-honed presentation might succinctly capture the whole project, but might sometimes feel overly-scripted, especially if read at break-neck speed without eye contact with the audience.

A spontaneous, off-the-cuff Project summary might be brilliant and engaging, or it might become bloated and meandering.

A presentation that highlights the research process might convey a vivid personality and sense of discovery, or it might turn into a blow-by-blow narration that never quite touches the Project’s real intellectual interest.

The speaking body is the primary presentation medium, although some projects may benefit from printed handouts, overhead projection, or digital presentation.

Dress does not need to be highly formal, but should reflect the event’s professional, celebratory character.

Students should engage their audience by conveying their full selves: breathe, gesture, make eye contact, speak with the whole body (not just the throat or head).

The twelve-minute time limit will be strictly enforced.

Requirement

All majors who have completed a Senior Project in English to present their work in this departmental event. We encourage students to also seek other off-campus or on-campus venues for presenting their projects: the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research, the Sigma Tau Delta convention, the Luther College Student Research Symposium, the required Senior Honors Project presentations.

Evaluation

The faculty will continue to use their traditional method for evaluating the written Project: the Project advisor and a second reader will each evaluate the work independently, and the department as a whole will finalize the grade. The oral presentation will not be formally graded, but it is possible that the Project’s final grade will reflect the faculty’s experience of hearing the presentation. (Note: Depending on the number of projects and the complexity of the logistics, it may not always be possible for a student’s advisor to hear the student’s presentation.)

Film and Literature

  • Destroying Racial Barriers in Glory

Global Literature and Post-Colonialism

  • Literate Arts of the Contact Zone: Four Australian Aboriginal Authors
  • Our Postmodern Identity: Cultural Multiplicity in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49
  • (De)Constructing Stephen: The “sexual logic of colonialism” in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  • Overcoming Oppositional Constructions of Power Through Mutuality in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India
  • Mission Impossible? English Education in Tanzania

Literature and Graphic Arts

  • Weathered Bronze, Fading Possibilities; The Shaw Monument and its Message
  • Evolution of Cultural Work in War Films: 1915-1994
  • Native American Mascots: An Issue with More than One Dimension

Humor, Literature of

  • The Remaking of Monarchy: Mark Twain and the Industrialization of America
  • Huck and Tom: The Importance of Tom’s Reappearance in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • George Washington Harris: Sut, Satire, and the South

Identity-Personal, Regional, and National

  • Our Postmodern Identity: Cultural Multiplicity in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49
  • Emily Dickinson: Reaching Out to a Wider World
  • The Remaking of Monarchy: Mark Twain and the Industrialization of America
  • National Identity: The Internal Divided Force in Anne Devlin’s After Easter
  • Roads to Truth: Emerson and Thoreau’s Visions of Integrity
  • From Rebellion to Acceptance: Old New York in the Novels of Edith Wharton
  • George Washington Harris: Sut, Satire, and the South
  • Seeking the Self: The Quest for Independence in Jane Eyre and Villette
  • Jane Eyre: A Journey to Self Understanding in a Male Dominated Society
  • Letting Go and Joining In: Jim Burden’s Journey Towards Reality In My Antonia

Language, Education, and the Teaching of English

  • Orality v. Textuality: The Use of Dialect in Chaucer’s “Reeve’s Tale”
  • Mission Impossible? English Education in Tanzania

Love and Sexuality in Literature

  • Chaste Women in the Third Book of Spenser’s The Fairie Queene
  • Paying for Sex: Fairplay and Foreplay in The Canterbury Tales
  • The Reconciliation of Art and Love: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • Barrett and Browning: Prostitution

Modernism and Postmodernism

  • Our Postmodern Identity: Cultural Multiplicity in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49
  • T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, and the Shared Modernist Aesthetic

Music and Literature

  • Reading a Drowsy Syncopated Tune: Jazz and Blues Music and Racial Response to Langston Hughes’s The Weary Blues
  • T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, and the Shared Modernist Aesthetic
  • My Favorite Things: The Jazz Poetry of Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez in the Nineteen Sixties

Narrative and Lyric Strategies and Voices

  • Emily Dickinson: Reaching Out to a Wider World
  • Approaching the Kingdom of Dahomey: Uncovering the Warrior-Poet through Her Prose and Poetry
  • Huck and Tom: The Importance of Tom’s Reappearance in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • “It is Everything and Nothing”: The Role of the Persona in the Poetry of Keats and Wordsworth
  • Seeking the Self: The Quest for Independence in Jane Eyre and Villette
  • The Real and the Ideal: Contrasting Depictions of Orphan Life in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

Political and Social Ideologies

  • “Roses Under My Window”: Emerson’s Evolving Political and Social Ideologies as Seen in Nature, The American Scholar and Self-Reliance
  • Evolution of Cultural Work in War Films: 1915-1994
  • Native American Mascots: An Issue with More than One Dimension
  • Wright’s Black Boy: Hope for Self in Communism
  • The Real and the Ideal: Contrasting Depictions of Orphan Life in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables
  • Stephen Jay Gould: Where Science Meets Culture

Psychology, Illness, and Literature

  • Inspired: Pain, Illness, and Poetry in the Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • “Roses Under My Window”: Emerson’s Evolving Political and Social Ideologies as Seen in Nature, The American Scholar and Self-Reliance
  • from what I can gather: a “normal” person learns to embrace autism
  • Patriarchal Destruction of Women in Song of Solomon and Paradise

Race

  • Literate Arts of the Contact Zone: Four Australian Aboriginal Authors
  • Reading a Drowsy Syncopated Tune: Jazz and Blues Music and Racial Response to Langston Hughes’s The Weary Blues
  • Looking into the Eye of a Cyclone: Gender in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind
  • T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, and the Shared Modernist Aesthetic
  • Destroying Racial Barriers in Glory
  • “Entire Faith in Them as Soldiers”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Army Life in a Black Regiment
  • Huck and Tom: The Importance of Tom’s Reappearance in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • Overcoming Oppositional Constructions of Power Through Mutuality in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India
  • Native American Mascots: An Issue with More than One Dimension
  • Wright’s Black Boy: Hope for Self in Communism
  • Patriarchal Destruction of Women in Song of Solomon and Paradise
  • My Favorite Things: The Jazz Poetry of Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez in the Nineteen Sixties

Science and Literature

  • Stephen Jay Gould: Where Science Meets Culture

Theology and Literature

  • Chaos and Milton’s Law of Mercy in Paradise Lost
  • Chaste Women in the Third Book of Spenser’s The Fairie Queene

War in Literature

  • Looking into the Eye of a Cyclone: Gender in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind
  • How the Civil War Affected Walt Whitman’s Writings
  • Approaching the Kingdom of Dahomey: Uncovering the Warrior-Poet through Her Prose and Poetry
  • Masculinity: Scarlett’s Savior and Curse in Gone with the Wind
  • Destroying Racial Barriers in Glory
  • “Entire Faith in Them as Soldiers”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Army Life in a Black Regiment
  • Margaret Mitchell in the 1930s: Hope for a Better Tomorrow
  • Evolution of Cultural Work in War Films: 1915-1994
  • There It Is: Vietnam in American Literature

Women and Gender

  • Emily Dickinson: Reaching Out to a Wider World
  • Looking into the Eye of a Cyclone: Gender in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind
  • Culhwch and Olwen the Core of Arthurian Romance
  • Approaching the Kingdom of Dahomey: Uncovering the Warrior-Poet through Her Prose and Poetry
  • Masculinity: Scarlett’s Savior and Curse in Gone with the Wind
  • From Rebellion to Acceptance: Old New York in the Novels of Edith Wharton
  • (De)Constructing Stephen: The “sexual logic of colonialism” in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  • Educating Women? The Differing Perspectives of John Stuart Mill and Charles Dickens
  • Chaste Women in the Third Book of Spenser’s The Fairie Queene
  • Margaret Mitchell in the 1930s: Hope for a Better Tomorrow
  • Overcoming Oppositional Constructions of Power Through Mutuality in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India
  • Paying for Sex: Fairplay and Foreplay in The Canterbury Tales
  • Patriarchal Destruction of Women in Song of Solomon and Paradise
  • The Reconciliation of Art and Love: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • Seeking the Self: The Quest for Independence in Jane Eyre and Villette
  • Jane Eyre: A Journey to Self Understanding in a Male Dominated Society
  • Mary Chesnutt’s Last Word
  • Barrett and Browning: Prostitution

Cultural Studies

  • Native American Mascots: An Issue with More than One Dimension

Drama-pre-19th century British

Drama-19th century to the present, British and American

Fiction-pre-19th century British

Fiction-19th century to the present, British and American

  • Our Postmodern Identity: Cultural Multiplicity in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49
  • The Remaking of Monarchy: Mark Twain and the Industrialization of America
  • National Identity: The Internal Divided Force in Anne Devlin’s After Easter
  • Looking into the Eye of a Cyclone: Gender in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind
  • Masculinity: Scarlett’s Savior and Curse in Gone with the Wind
  • From Rebellion to Acceptance: Old New York in the Novels of Edith Wharton
  • (De)Constructing Stephen: The “sexual logic of colonialism” in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  • Educating Women? The Differing Perspectives of John Stuart Mill and Charles Dickens
  • Destroying Racial Barriers in Glory
  • Huck and Tom: The Importance of Tom’s Reappearance in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • Margaret Mitchell in the 1930s: Hope for a Better Tomorrow
  • Overcoming Oppositional Constructions of Power Through Mutuality in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India
  • George Washington Harris: Sut, Satire, and the South
  • There It Is: Vietnam in American Literature
  • Wright’s Black Boy: Hope for Self in Communism
  • Patriarchal Destruction of Women in Song of Solomon and Paradise
  • Seeking the Self: The Quest for Independence in Jane Eyre and Villette
  • Jane Eyre: A Journey to Self Understanding in a Male Dominated Society
  • Letting Go and Joining In: Jim Burden’s Journey Towards Reality In My Antonia
  • The Real and the Ideal: Contrasting Depictions of Orphan Life in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

Film

  • “You Never Really Own Shit”: Bay Area Gentrification on Film
  • Destroying Racial Barriers in Glory
  • Evolution of Cultural Work in War Films: 1915-1994

Global Literature

  • Literate Arts of the Contact Zone: Four Australian Aboriginal Authors
  • Our Postmodern Identity: Cultural Multiplicity in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49
  • Jorge Luis Borges and His Advancement of the Essay

Nonfiction Prose

  • Roads to Truth: Emerson and Thoreau’s Visions of Integrity
  • Educating Women? The Differing Perspectives of John Stuart Mill and Charles Dickens
    “Roses Under My Window”: Emerson’s Evolving Political and Social Ideologies as Seen in Nature, The American Scholar, and Self-Reliance
  • Jorge Luis Borges and His Advancement of the Essay
  • Mary Chesnutt’s Last Word
  • Treating Fact as Fiction: Reader-Response in A Sense of Where You Are and The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
  • Stephen Jay Gould: Where Science Meets Culture

Original Fiction

Original Nonfiction—Autobiography, Personal Essay, Journalistic Prose

  • “A Little Marshmallow Ghost”: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction Essays
  • from what I can gather: a “normal” person learns to embrace autism
  • Mission Impossible? English Education in Tanzania
  • The Roses of 67 Homefield

Original Poetry

  • Calling Glory: A Collection of Poems
  • Creative

Original Drama

  • Television Script: “Heat Wave”

Poetry-pre-19th century, British and American

  • Chaos and Milton’s Law of Mercy in Paradise Lost
  • Culhwch and Olwen the Core of Arthurian Romance
  • Approaching the Kingdom of Dahomey: Uncovering the Warrior-Poet through Her Prose and Poetry
  • Chaste Women in the Third Book of Spenser’s The Fairie Queene
  • Paying for Sex: Fairplay and Foreplay in The Canterbury Tales
  • Orality v. Textuality: The Use of Dialect in Chaucer’s “Reeve’s Tale”

Poetry-19th century to the present, British and American

  • Emily Dickinson: Reaching Out to a Wider World
  • Reading a Drowsy Syncopated Tune: Jazz and Blues Music and Racial Response to Langston Hughes’s The Weary Blues
  • How the Civil War Affected Walt Whitman’s Writings
  • Inspired: Pain, Illness, and Poetry in the Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, and the Shared Modernist Aesthetic
  • “Entire Faith in Them as Soldiers”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s Army Life in a Black Regiment
  • “It is Everything and Nothing”: The Role of the Persona in the Poetry of Keats and Wordsworth
  • The Reconciliation of Art and Love: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • My Favorite Things: The Jazz Poetry of Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez in the Nineteen Sixties
  • Barrett and Browning: Prostitution

Drews, Marie
(drewsmar@luther.edu)

  • 19th and 20th Century American Literature
  • Women and Gender Studies
  • Domesticity and women’s writing

Garcia, Mike
(garcmi01@luther.edu)

  • Teaching and Assessment of Writing
  • Rhetoric
  • Literacy
  • Professional and Technical Writing

Hageman, Andy
(hagean03@luther.edu)

  • Literature/Film and Environment
  • American Literature
  • Techno-Culture and Science Fiction
  • Film Studies

Klammer, Martin
(klammerm@luther.edu)

  • American Literature
  • African and African-American Literature
  • South African Literature and Culture

Row-Heyveld, Lindsey
(rowli01@luther.edu)

  • Medieval and early modern literature
  • Shakespeare and early modern drama
  • Disability studies

Weldon, Amy
(weldam01@luther.edu)

  • Creative Writing (Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry)
  • 19th Century British Literature
  • Contemporary Literature
  • Southern Literature

Whitsitt, Novian
(whitsino@luther.edu)

  • Literature of African Diaspora
  • African Feminist Theory
  • Islamic Studies

Senior papers are subject to rigorous review by faculty, which provides detailed feedback to the writer. Download an assessment grid for each area of emphasis.

Contact Information

Amy Weldon
Professor of English
English Department Head

Main 603A
700 College Drive
Decorah, IA 52101

amy.weldon@luther.edu

Phone: 563-387-2224