Meet the Chair

I’m proud to represent the Department of English, which offers an array of options to our undergraduates, including Creative Writing, English Education, Literary Studies, Linguistics, and Rhetoric and Composition. English is also the home of the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, which provides a wide range of teaching and research opportunities for our graduate students, and will soon begin offering a graduate certificate. Our department offers our students exciting opportunities to meet award-winning writers, participate in internships, gain editing experience, present their work at Open Mic Night, and do a range of community service. Our students have conducted community workshops at Pullman’s Neill Public Library, collected oral histories of the pandemic, done research on the first high school in Whitman County, edited the Whitman County Historical Society newsletter, worked at the historic schoolhouse at the Palouse Empire Fair, and organized exhibits for the Pullman Depot Heritage Center.

I teach in the areas of Irish, Global, and Postcolonial Literatures. I’m the author of Irish Writing and Environmentalism: The Wearing of the Deep Green (Palgrave, 2018), The Pastoral Tradition in Contemporary Irish Poetry (University of Missouri Press, 2011), Howard Nemerov and Objective Idealism: The Influence of Owen Barfield (Missouri, 1994), and a book of poetry, Waking Dreams (Salmon Poetry, Galway, Ireland, 2012). I’m now writing a book on Irish Literature and Trauma, editing a collection on Postcolonial Ecocriticism, and editing a book of local history, Women of the Palouse, featuring stories of the women who served as warriors and medicine women, homesteaded on the Palouse, founded our public libraries and colleges, taught in our early schoolhouses, and wrote books about the Palouse. I serve on the Board of the Whitman County Historical Society and Neill Public Library—both of which roles have led to many interesting public engagement projects.

Donna Potts, Chair, Department of English