Welcome to the launch of Asbury English!
August 23, 2009
As Asbury College begins its 120th year on Monday, August 24th, the English Department is ready to welcome the 300+ new students who moved in this weekend. I can’t remember a fall semester when so many of our courses are packed: everything from our freshman writing courses to our liberal arts core literature surveys and upper division seminar courses. It seems that almost daily I have received emails or phone calls from returning students who are changing their major to English or Creative Writing (and wanting to get into full classes), or I am learning of incoming students who have already declared one of our majors.
I believe this says something about the enduring power of literary language to broaden our vision of the world we live in. In less heightened terms, literature reminds me that my junk is not that different from somebody’s else’s 2,000-year-old junk. As we near another anniversary of September 11, I am reminded that, when the twin towers fell, there followed a surge in the readership of poetry (not usually at the top of the bestseller lists). There was a hunger for meaning that simply watching a 24-hour newscast couldn’t satisfy.
Eight years later, we are in times that are no less challenging. And while my lasting hope lies only in the incarnate Word–Jesus of Nazareth–I look as well to those who have dared to invoke the muse of language throughout the ages in the hope of discovering truth that will yield itself through no other medium than the creative word. This blog will be a forum in which the faculty and students of Asbury will navigate the well-traveled road between concrete language and transcendent meaning. I invite you to check this site regularly for the latest posting in our ongoing conversation.
Chuck Gobin
Chair, Department of English
