Announcing:
Sigma Tau Delta has a book sale every first Monday and third Tuesday of the month from 9-3 in FH 108. And, they will have their new T-shirts on sale. Very nice!
Persona, the Texas State University student literary periodical that has published since 1963, is looking for students interested in serving in editorial positions – Managing Editor, Poetry Editor, Fiction Editor – and other possible staff positions, for the 2017-2018 issue. Please contact Roger Jones (RJ03@txstate.edu) by Wednesday October 18th if you are interested in serving in one of these positions.
The Children’s Literature Association’s annual conference will be in San Antonio June 28-30, 2018. The conference theme is “Refreshing Waters/Turbulent Waters,” and proposals for papers are due October 15. The call for papers and portal for submitting proposals can be found on the ChLA website: http://www.childlitassn.org/2018. For more information, contact conference chair, Marilynn Olson, mo03@txstate.edu.
Interested in spending the summer in Ireland? Join the English Department’s Texas State in Ireland program for five weeks in Cork. Contact Steve Wilson at sw13@txstate.edu for more information or to set up an application interview. The program’s 15 spots usually fill by mid-November.
Broadview Press representative Dave Caulfield took time from his busy schedule on campus to visit Teya Rosenberg’s Canadian Literature course on Thursday October 5. He read Al Purdy’s poem “At the Quinte Hotel,” gave students some background on Purdy, talked about his own enthusiasm for Canadian poets and poetry, and discussed how being an English major connects with his work for Broadview. He also answered a wide range of questions about Canada and about publishing. Thanks to Dave and to the students of English 3393 for asking great questions.
Professor Robert T. Tally announces the results of a recent flurry of scholarly activity. Here are a few things to be watching for:
- A profile of Tally and his work in spatial literary studies is scheduled to appear in Texas Monthly, hopefully in the November issue;
- His latest edited collection of essays, https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-Space-Place-and-Literature/Tally-Jr/p/book/9781138047037, comes out on November 9 and will feature an essay by Assistant Professor Geneva Gano;
- He will be the keynote speaker for the Korean Society of East-West Comparative Literature’s 2017 conference at Dongguk University, Seoul, on November 11-12, 2017. His talk is titled “The Aesthetics of Distance: World Literature after the Digital Turn.”
Senior Lecturer Keri Fitzgerald and two graduate students from the MA in Rhetoric and Composition program, Arun Raman and Rachel Elliott, will be leading a round-table discussion on the role of writing centers in confronting hate and discrimination on college campuses at the International Writing Center Association Conference on November 19 in Chicago, IL. Their session is titled, ““Complicating the Center: Confronting Hate and Discrimination.”
Congratulations!
Recent MFA graduate Michaela Hansen is the winner of the short fiction prize awarded by American Short Fiction for her story, “The Devil in the Barn.” Michaela’s work has been published in McNeese Review, and is forthcoming from Fourth Genre. Michaela worked as Managing Editor for the English Department’s literary publication, Front Porch Journal. http://americanshortfiction.org/2017/10/09/2017-american-short-fiction-prize-winners/
Professor Robert T. Tally’s essay “Of Other American Spaces: The Alterity of the Urban in the U.S. National Imaginary” appears in Space Oddities: Difference and Identity in the American City, edited by Stephan L. Brandt and Michael Fuchs (Wien & Münster: LIT Verlag, 2017), 27–45. He also has another article, “Three Rings for the Elven Kings: Trilogizing Tolkien in Print and Film,” which appears in the new issue of Mythlore 131 (Fall/Winter 2017): 175–190.
Professor Steve Wilson has been awarded a grant from the Fulbright Occasional Lecturer Fund to bring Fulbright Scholar Dr. Geetanjali Joshi (India) to campus for a four-day visit March 25-28. Dr. Joshi will present on the Beats and Hinduism in Steve’s undergraduate class on Women and the Beat Generation, as well as on Allen Ginsberg and Hinduism in Drs. Blair and McClancy’s Masterpieces of American Literature to 1865 classes. Steve has been awarded more OLF grants than any other faculty member at Texas State.
English Department Computer Lab Coordinator Matt Greengold has been elected to a one-year term on the Staff Council.
Lecturer Ben Reed has had two abstracts accepted for NeMLA 2018 in Pittsburgh. His paper “Messenger in a Bottle: Kurt Vonnegut’s Satirical Drawings in Breakfast of Champions” was accepted for the session titled “Art, Responsibility, and Satire: The Challenges of Kurt Vonnegut’s Fiction,” while Ben’s short story “Angle and Distance” was selected for the creative writing round table “Monsters and Monstrosity: A Tribute to Mary Shelley.”
Professor Mark Busby attended the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers meeting in San Antonio, September 29–30. He read from his new poetry collection, Through Our Times. Three of his poems, “Notification Officer,” “Symbiosis,” and “On the Death of My Neighbor’s Son,” appear in Writing Texas 2016-2017.
Professor Kathleen Peirce’s new book, Vault, is available from New Michigan Press. http://newmichiganpress.com/index.html#peirce
Lecturer Ross Feeler’s short story, “Varieties of Religious Experience,” was recently published online in Hypertext Magazine. https://www.hypertextmag.com/