The Words: May 2025
Spring Capstones: Creative and Critical Works
This year’s senior English Capstone presentations showcased the stunning range and depth of the department’s creative and critical work. Spanning three evenings, students shared their projects that explored themes that ranged everything from identity, grief, love, memory, rebellion, language, and healing—often through genre-defying forms. From novels and screenplays to poetry collections and academic essays, these Capstones reflect not only the individual voices of their author but also the intellectual curiosity, emotional resonance, and interdisciplinary thinking that characterize the department as a whole.
Time to Celebrate: English End-of-Year
As it does every year, the English Department hosted its End-of-Year Celebration to honor the achievements of its beloved students and faculty on May 5th. Accompanied by a singing performance with English major senior Eva Markham ’25 and the Year in Review slideshow running in the background, the English community gathered to enjoy a celebration meal together. Department Chair Matt Burgess welcomed English majors, minors, and faculty, officially starting the evening’s program.
Recent words from Livingston-Patnode award winners
The English Department’s Livingston Patnode award is annually presented to an outgoing senior who makes a special contribution to the English Department in their time at Macalester. To see how our previous award recipients bring their skills and experiences gained in the English Department to the communities they’re engaging with now, The Words reached out to each recipient for an update. Read on to find out their responses!
Birdie’s Parting Words
This type of community doesn’t happen by accident. Aside from staggering skill in their respective fields, the English Department faculty possess incredible care, insight, and intention that they invest in their students; this is a massive part of what makes this department as special as it is. In Penelope Geng and Daylanne English’s classes, I found genuine joy in doing analytic work. Professor Andrea Kaston Tange’s class Ladies and Monsters was such a delight, and I now think about Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene more than I thought I would.