This past week, our posts have focused on English +STEM interdisciplinary work in the Department of English at UNK. Several students cross the “two cultures” of the College of Arts and Sciences, including:
· Charlotte Okraska is a double major in biology (wildlife emphasis) and English from Clay Center, Nebraska. In 2021 summer, she participated in the competitive Student Summer Research Program(SSRP) during which she worked on a project titled “Describing Salvia pinacatensis.” Salvia pinacatensis is a new species of plant; in writing up a species description of it, Charlotte drew upon each of her majors to complete the project.
· Kait Meyer is an English Education (7-12) and Math Education (7-12) double major from Columbus, Nebraska. She is also a member of the UNK Honors Program and Teachers Scholars Academy.
· Carolyn Bundi is a pre-med biology major with an English minor from Ipswich, England. She is completing a summer research project on representations of disease in British literature. (Learn more HERE.)
Faculty in the English Department also publish interdisciplinary scholarship that crosses literary history with STEM. A partial list of books include:
· Dr. Susan Honeyman published Child Pain, Migraine, and Invisible Disability (Learn more HERE.)
· Dr. Seth Long recently published Excavating the Memory Palace: Arts of Visualization from the Agora to the Computer (Learn more HERE.)
· Dr. Denys Van Renen published Nature and the New Science in England, 1665-1726 (Learn more HERE.)
This upcoming fall 2021 semester, English course offerings also involve interdisciplinary work:
ENG 254, Section 02 Medicine in Literature (Loper 6)
3 credit hours Fall 2021 Instructor: Steinke
This course examines literary texts representing modern medicine from the early 20th century to the present. We’ll consider how writers aim to convey experiences of illness that often elude language, and how language itself affects social attitudes toward certain diseases and treatments.
Texts: Virginia Woolf, selected essays; Roxane Gay, selected essays; William Carlos William, The Doctor Stories; Mary Beth Keene, Fever; as well as poetry and prose responding to the recent pandemic and other timely topics in medicine.
ENG 866 Global Environmental Literature and Theory (graduate course)
3 credit hours Fall 2021 Instructor: Van Renen
Course will examine major trends in global environmental literature with a particular focus on environmental problems and their ties to colonialism and industrialization, and the repercussions of environmental degradation on non-human species.
Possible Texts: William Shakespeare, The Tempest; Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones; Indra Singa, Animal People; Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide; and Greg Garrand, Ecocriticism as well as others
Alumni Working in STEM
🎓 Kaitlin Schneider is a Content Writer at Secureworks, a global cybersecurity firm.
Kaitlin Schneider graduated in 2018 from UNK with a B.A. in English and a minor in Women’s & Gender Studies. She is currently employed with Secureworks, a global cybersecurity leader, as a Content Writer. During her time as a Loper, she was Secretary of Sigma Tau Delta and an Undergraduate Research Fellow. Kaitlin also published three undergraduate papers during her time at UNK, including one in The Carillon. With such a research-heavy focus, she first planned on an academic career, but instead found her way into content marketing. Content marketing allows her to tell engaging stories, flex her research muscles daily, and solve creative problems in the technology industry.
