Meredith College English Department

09/01/2026

The Meredith College Summer Reading/Writing Contest is here!

Topic: We the Women

The stories we choose to tell shape the way we understand leadership, community, history, and change. In We the Women, Norah O’Donnell highlights women throughout American history whose voices, actions, and achievements helped shape the nation. But history is still being written, and many influential women of today have stories that deserve to be told as well.

For this writing contest, we invite Meredith students to write about a woman born after 1975 whom they admire and believe should be celebrated in a future volume of We the Women. Your submission may take the form of an academic essay (argumentative or expository) or a creative work (personal essay, poetry, fiction, hybrid writing, etc.).

Your piece should explore the significance of this woman’s voice, work, leadership, creativity, advocacy, or impact. You may choose someone widely known or someone from your own life or community whose contributions deserve greater recognition. Your writing might consider questions such as:

● What makes this woman’s voice or story powerful or important?

● How has she influenced her community, field, culture, or the world around her?

● What challenges or barriers has she faced, and how has she responded to them?

● What can others learn from her example?

● Why does her story deserve to be remembered, shared, and celebrated?

● How does she embody courage, citizenship, innovation, compassion, leadership, or change?

We are looking for originality, thoughtful reflection, strong storytelling, and compelling writing that captures why this individual matters. We encourage students to use research, personal experience, observation, and creativity to bring their chosen subject vividly to life. Pieces will be judged on originality, depth of thought, quality of writing, and the ability to inspire readers to recognize and celebrate influential women whose stories deserve a wider audience.

The Summer Reading Program will award first-place prizes to one first-year student and one established student. Submissions will be judged by a panel of readers, including student readers. The first-place winners will each receive a Meredith swag bag and t-shirt.

See the QR code on the flyer for submission. Deadline is Friday, September 14th by 5:00 PM

08/12/2026

Check out this Adult Continuing Education, non-credit course being offered this fall:

Renaissance in Harlem, 1919–1934
Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-noon, August 26–November 11
Hybrid class: Meets in person in Lux Lounge, and via Zoom

As thousands of African Americans left the American South and its “Jim Crow” laws behind, seeking economic opportunity and social equality in what has been called “the Great Black Migration,” a cadre of Black intellectuals in the creative hotspot of 1920s Harlem sought to develop a political identity and highlight what made their culture’s writing distinctive. In this 12-week course, we’ll read some of the poetry, drama, and fiction it produced, and learn about what lay behind it. We’ll study the social conditions that led to the migration, the changes it brought to the United States, and the developing vision of the artists and intellectuals in post-World War I Harlem. How could Blacks move past the racist “minstrel tradition” that White culture caricatured? How could they both celebrate and expose the injustice of life in America for African-Americans, and yet, in the words of Langston Hughes, say, “I, too, sing America”? How should they respond to the currents of Modernist literature that were changing the poetry and fiction of mainstream writers?

In this class, we’ll explore these questions and others, and tell the story of the birth of Harlem’s “Renaissance” after World War I, its flowering in the 1920s and early 1930s, its death in the economic hardships of the Great Depression, and the impact it had on American writing in the years after. As background, we’ll read Lehmann’s prizewinning history of the Great Black Migration,
The Promised Land. Most of our reading will be samples of writers of the period in Lewis’s The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, and we’ll conclude with Zora Neale Hurston’s first novel, published in 1934, Jonah’s Gourd Vine.

Texts
• David Levering Lewis, The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, New York: Penguin, 1994. ISBN 978-0140170368
• Nicholas Lehmann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, New York: Vintage, 2011, ISBN 978-0307764874
• Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine: A Novel, New York: Amistead, 2008, ISBN 978-0061350191

Instructor: Robert Rubin ([email protected]), (919) 433-7322
Cost: $225 For more information, contact Dr. Robin Colby, Department of English, (919) 760-2290, [email protected]

04/22/2026

REMINDER: Come join us this Friday at 10:00 AM for a fun community Reading and Open Mic event! We'll be in Lux 234. Hope to see you there!

Join us for a Reading & Open Mic event next Friday, April 24th at 10:00 AM! Come bring your favorite work to read or just come and listen with some fine company. We'll meet at Lux 234.

04/17/2026

Join us for a Reading & Open Mic event next Friday, April 24th at 10:00 AM! Come bring your favorite work to read or just come and listen with some fine company. We'll meet at Lux 234.

04/17/2026

Looking to complete some electives this summer? Check out these online literature classes! These classes will be taught from late May through early June.

04/14/2026

But wait, there’s more! We have more classes coming up in the Fall semester. Register now to secure your spot!

04/13/2026

Check out our interview with Meredith College English major Elle Barrow, third place winner of the AR Ammons Poetry contest!

04/12/2026

We are excited to announce Dr. Robin Colby's forthcoming publication, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Companion. Congratulations Dr. Colby on this remarkable achievement! You can pre-order your copy now on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Gaskell-Companion-Companions-Literature/dp/1476688222

04/01/2026

Registration is soon, make sure to check out what the English Department has to offer in the Fall semester of 2026!

03/29/2026

Congratulations to Elle Barrow, a Meredith College English major whose work came in 3rd place for the prestigious AR Ammons Poetry Contest!

Learn more about the AR Ammons Poetry Contest here: https://sites.google.com/view/arammonspoetrycontest/home