Last Friday, as part of our annual holiday party, we celebrated the contributions of Christina Hauck who is retiring this December after 27 years of service to Kansas State.
Our celebration was on Zoom, given the rise of recent COVID variants, but offered virtual congratulations and warm wishes. We debuted the official retirement citation below and enjoyed additional remarks from Phillip Marzluf and other colleagues.
Christina has several projects underway — an article appearing soon on the 1945 film Brief Encounter and coal, as well as research on gas in World War I — and so we’ll look forward to seeing these next contributions.
For now, we thank Christina for her significant and lasting contributions to our students, the department, the college, the university, and the profession.
Thank you, Christina!
— Karin Westman, Department Head
Arts and Sciences
Department of English
Christina Hauck
Dr. Christina Hauck retires in December 2021 after 27 years of service to Kansas State.
Christina earned her B.A. (1981) in English with Honors from Mills College, her M.A. (1990) in English and Creative Writing and her Ph.D. (1994) in English from the University of California at Berkeley. Christina joined the Department of English in 1994 as an assistant professor in Modern British literature. She was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2002.
Situated – appropriately, given her area of expertise – at the avant-garde of her field, Christina’s scholarship has advanced key concerns of modernism during past three decades: gender, sexuality, feminism, and film studies, among others. Her peer-reviewed publications on early 20th century birth control and abortion are foundational contributions, informed by years of research and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship award (1998-1999). Attending to canonical authors like Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot as well as popular and overlooked peers, Christina has expanded the remit of the modernist scholar and worked, with care and attention, at the intersection of literary and cultural studies across her career. Her most recent project – a study of the award-winning 1945 film Brief Encounter through the lens of coal – illustrates her continuing contributions.
Comparable care and attention inform Christina’s work as a teacher and an advisor. With high expectations for herself and her students, Christina has balanced rigor with grace. Undergraduate and graduate students have benefited from her wide range of courses, including surveys of British literature since 1660, courses dedicated to women writers and to film, and foundational required courses for the major, minor, and M.A. program, including ENGL 310 “Introduction to Literary Studies” and ENGL 801 “Introduction to Graduate Studies.” Most recently, she added expository writing to her instructional repertoire in response to staffing needs – a sign of her disposition to serve where needed and her genuine interest in learning something new.
Christina has made important contributions to the Department of English, to the College of Arts and Sciences, to the University, and to the community. Of particular note are her service as Head of the Graduate Track in Literature (2007-2008, 2010-2017), her service as an advisor for undergraduate majors and minors (over 20 years), and her many years serving on the College’s Course and Curriculum Committee and as an elected representative of University’s Faculty Senate. Christina also performed important service in dispute resolution, assisting faculty and unclassified staff during the grievance process. Beyond the university, Christina has been an active member of The Space Between, Literature and Culture 1914-1945, hosting the society’s annual conference in 2003. Her acumen, intellectual curiosity, and attention to detail have informed all her service and benefited many.
With gratitude, we recognize Christina’s significant contributions to the mission of the Department of English at Kansas State University.
K-State English 
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