Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. — Gabriel García Márquez
Uncompromising dedication to his work and Catholic faith, combined with an unprecedented creativity and courage to experiment with the voice and rhythm of poetry. They’re the qualities that come to mind when we think of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Thanks to the generous support of the Schubert family, John Carroll University is able to celebrate Hopkins’s spirit of creative innovation by inviting well-respected international scholars and creative writers to share their work with our English majors and other students.
Since the inception of the Hopkins Chair in Literature in 1998, we have welcomed to campus renown literary scholars, novelists, poets, and playwrights from England, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, and Canada. Our prestigious Chair has been held by Simon Armitage, Oxford; Willy Maley, University of Glasgow; Duncan Wu, University of Oxford; Oliver Plunkett Rafferty, S.J., Marynooth, Ireland; David Attwell, University of Witwaterssand, South Africa; and Matthew Pateman, University of Hull. About every three years, the Hopkins program brings to campus Actors from the London Stage, who present dynamic theater workshops in classes all across campus and then perform one of Shakespeare's great plays.
Each visiting scholar, writer, and artist embodies Hopkins’s dedication and commitment to literary excellence — and serves as proof of the English department’s dedication to ensuring that students receive thorough, valuable knowledge of the discipline’s most compelling subjects.