“Contrary to our name, we are not only for English majors,” English Majors’ Association (EMA) President Ashley Thornton told New University. “We’re just for anyone who loves literature on campus.”
The EMA offers weekly events throughout the academic year exploring any and all subjects relating to literature and its enjoyment.
“That’s, like, the main draw [of the EMA], finding other English majors, or just other people that love literature and English,” former EMA president Leah Popoff told New University. “I would have had a very different experience, I’m sure, if I didn’t meet everybody I did there.”
Popoff graduated from UCI this past spring after serving a year as club president, retaining a strong connection to the club’s community. Her first experience with the club was in her first year, attending the EMA’s fall Cross the Line social, in which participants “crossed the line” based on their responses to various literature-based questions.
“Cross the line if you, like, prefer hardcover over, like, paperback,” Popoff said.
Thornton said that the EMA will continue the tradition of incorporating a Cross the Line social into their first meeting of the fall quarter and left an invitation open to all students.
Both presidents emphasized community building, an inclusive atmosphere and a love of literature as the core principles of the EMA.
“The professors that started the club felt… thought that there wasn’t really much of a community within the English department,” Popoff said.
The leading faculty voices behind the EMA’s formation in early 2015 were Assistant Professor Emeritus Hugh Roberts, Associate Professor Rebecca A. Davis, and Professor and Chair Elizabeth Allen. Prior to the interview, Popoff consulted with Davis and Roberts to learn more about the club’s history.
“[Roberts] felt that the students were just showing up to classes handing in their work, and not feeling like they really belonged anywhere,” Popoff said.
Student interest in a new club was high; Popoff said student volunteers soon started drafting a club constitution and gaining recognition while Roberts was the faculty sponsor.
The new club’s first meeting was a poetry discussion on Valentine’s Day in 2015. Poetry nights remain a quarterly fixture of the EMA 10 years later.
“The board and the faculty advisor prepare a packet of poems on a theme they come up with each quarter,” Popoff said. “The first, like, poetry event topic was Never Ever Valentine’s and it was featuring a series of love poems that were very skeptical about love.”
To Roberts, this first meeting was crucial for establishing the club’s dynamic and tone, particularly the relationships between students and faculty.
“He wanted this event to be something that would bring faculty and students together, but not have the faculty be in the role of teachers, and he wanted it to be… feel grounded in the enjoyment of literature in particular,” Popoff said.
This goal of cultivating a casual, inclusive environment to meet others and discuss literature remains the club’s modus operandi.
During Popoff’s term, the club introduced a new quarterly event, “This Academic Life.” Developing out of previous faculty-focused events, “This Academic Life” takes its format from the BBC podcast, “This Cultural Life.”
Each interviewed professor brings three muses from their past, talking about specific experiences throughout their career. This focus explores their academic interests, influences and inspirations in a sociable setting.
“It, like, removes the barrier, because sometimes people feel uncomfortable talking to professors about what got them on their career path,” Popoff said. “I think it kind of broke the ice.”
Other events from last year included a visit to the LA Times Book Festival, a Halloween Gothic literature special and collaborations with the Fear-Eaters, PRISM Outreach, Echolalia, the Creative Writers’ Guild and the UCI Special Collections and Archives.
As Thornton plans for the coming year, she hopes to carry that same sense of creativity and collaboration as this year’s president.
“It’s my job to not only manage the board, but also to bring people together and, like, kind of help create events and help kind of cater the EMA experience so that it’s something that people at UCI want to be involved in,” Thornton said.
While still retaining the social environment of previous years, Thornton intends to continue a trend of including more career-focused events.The board’s further prospective plans range from an H.P. Lovecraft special to a spotlight on Russian realism to an interview with bestselling author, Tim Powers, among many others.
Inspired by her background as a Chinese studies double major, Thornton also intends to include poetry nights focused on particular languages during the next year, mentioning Arabic or Mandarin Chinese as potentials.
The EMA will have a booth at the Anteater Involvement Fair on Sept. 22.
John Trytten is a Features Intern for the summer 2025 quarter. He can be reached at tryttenj@uci.edu.
Edited by Avery Rosas, Annabelle Aguirre