University of Hartford was recently listed fifth in the 25 Most Literary Colleges in America by the website Flavorwire.
UHa made it onto this list along with many prestigious institutions including Princeton, Harvard, Columbia and New York University.
The website states, “While it’s neighbors in New York and Massachusetts might carry more name recognition, this school that was originally founded by a group of the city’s upper class citizens during the Gilded Age, including Olivia Langdon Clemens (Mark Twain’s wife) and Harriet Beecher Stowe.”
The Mark Twain house on Farmington Avenue and the Harriet Beecher Stowe house on Forest Street are each only a ten-minute drive from campus. Literature is plenty accessible to the UHa community.
English Department Chair Dr. Robert A. Logan expressed his delight in being on this list.
“It was especially gratifying to see that the world outside the university is taking note of what we have known for years to be true.”
He noted that the English Department continuously “embraces diversity in the literatures that it teaches and in the approaches it employs.”
A big part of the English Department’s success and recognition comes from its faculty members. Logan points out that the English Department faculty members “are very much aware of the diversity of global literatures and offer courses in them, and we are alert to varied, innovative approaches to the teaching of these literatures.”
For example, English professor Sarah Senk was recently awarded an Award for Innovations in Teaching and Learning for what she calls the “Critical Mosaic Assignment” in which students engage with the class readings by marking them up with commentary and notes on Google Drive. By collaboratively creating this new document, students were able to engage with both the reading and their classmates’ ideas in more depth.
Logan also noted that the English Department has “exceptionally strong, renowned scholars who publish important literary criticism and creative writing to support our diverse interests.”
A perfect example of the dedication and personal achievement of the English faculty members is Professor Leslie Johnson. She has been teaching English in Hillyer College for eight years now.
In the meantime she has published a remarkable amount of work in literary magazines and academic journals. Furthermore, she founded the University of Hartford’s Writing Lab, where she dedicates her time to help students one-on-one with their essays for multiple courses.
Flavorwire also noted that Hartford “has given the Edward Lewis Wallant Award out to authors like Nicole Krauss and Dara Horn.” The Wallant Award, presented each year by the University’s Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies, is one of the oldest and most prestigious Jewish literary awards in the United States.