Giving
UC Riverside’s Department of English has gained national recognition and respect in the past decade. In the face of a widespread decline of English as a major of choice, the Department of English has not declined, but—as the Chronicle of Higher Education reports—has grown by 7.3%. At the same time, the department has also risen in reputation. It was recently rated as among the top 15% of 621 Departments of English nationally by College Factual, an organization that gathers and disseminates higher education data. It also placed 47 out of the smaller list of 153 departments in the US News and World Report.
Our Department of English is non-traditional, innovative, and truly diverse in its students, faculty, and scholarly work. Many of our professors, current and recent, have rethought, built upon, or broken through traditional models of scholarship in literature in English. We see diversity not as an exceptional remedy, but as the very core of what we teach and write about.
Financial support for our students and faculty continues to be an area of crucial growth. As our graduate program grows more competitive with major universities, we may find ourselves losing talented applicants to other universities that can promise a more robust financial package. Meanwhile, all our department stakeholders benefit by our upholding of rigorous curricula, programming, and research and our doctoral students are increasingly finding posts at nationally respected research institutions.
Therefore, your gift to the Department of English will be not only deeply appreciated, but truly transformational. Our donors may choose to support:
- Friends of English, the discretionary fund for the Department of English Chair
- Named funds for specific purposes as described below, including student support and a lauded lecture series
Friends of English Fund
Our Chair of English can respond to immediate needs like emergency student or faculty support, costs of department events, new books and publications, equipment or materials, and other needs through this highly important fund. Budget cuts over the last decade or more have seriously diminished the funding we have for sponsoring visiting lecturers, which is an essential activity in any department engaged in serious research projects. Lectures by colleagues from other institutions help us to stay current with ongoing research in our fields, allow us to interact in real time with scholars around the nation, and draw attention to the work our own faculty and graduate students are doing. They also help to build the department’s intellectual community by offering social as well as intellectual occasions to come together.
Lindon Barrett Memorial Fund for Black Studies
This fund provides scholarship support memory of Professor Lindon Barrett (1961-2008), who came to UC Riverside after serving as director of the Program in African American Studies at UC Irvine from 2004 to 2007. He had been a vibrant faculty member at UC Riverside for just one year when he died tragically. In memory of this brilliant scholar and friend whose work in African and Black studies continues to be groundbreaking and influential, the Department has created this memorial fund benefitting graduate students in Black Studies.
Contribute to Lindon Barrett Memorial Fund for Black Studies
Gregory Bredbeck Speaker Series Fund
This funds honors the memory of another beloved member of the faculty member in the Department of English, Dr. Gregory Bredbeck (1962-2007), a Renaissance scholar whose landmark scholarship raised an LGBTQ lens to English literature and remains exhilarating to this day. The Gregory Bredbeck Speaker Series Fund provides honoraria and travel funding for an important speaker to share their scholarship with our students, faculty, and greater community.
Emory Elliot Endowed Memorial Scholarship
Emory Elliot was a professor of American literature at UC Riverside, known in particular for advocating the expansion of the literary canon to include a more diverse range of voices. In his honor his family established an endowed scholarship fund benefitting graduate students.
Marshall Van Deusen Memorial Scholarship
Professor Emeritus Leslie Marshall Van Deusen was a well-respected and much beloved professor in the UCR Department of English from 1954 until his death in 1994. He served as Chair of the Department of English at a time of much turmoil with the grace that characterized everything he did. The Marshall Van Deusen Memorial Scholarship provides awards to outstanding English students in his memory. Read more about Professor Emeritus Van Deusen here.
Thank you for your generosity and support of the Department of English!