Coming Soon!
Novelist and Endowed Chair in Creative Writing, Karen Russell, will be reading from her work on Tuesday, September 26 at 3:30 at the Wittliff Collections in Alkek Library. Karen won the 2012 National Magazine Award for fiction, and her first novel, Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. She is a graduate of the Columbia MFA program, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2012 Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and a recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” fellowship. Russell is the author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories, and Sleep Donation: A Novella.
The MARC program will be hosting a workshop on Wednesday, September 27 from 5-6 p.m. in FH 376 on “Writing the Curriculum Vitae.”
Assistant Professor Cecily Parks is organizing a screening and conversation on Tuesday, October 3rd at 3:30 p.m. in Room G02 of Centennial Hall, about Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry. The film was executive produced by Robert Redford and Terrence Malick, and focuses on novelist, poet, essayist, farmer, and activist Wendell Berry, one of the more vital figures in the American environmental movement. The filmmaker, Laura Dunn, and James McWilliams (History), will stay afterward for a conversation and Q & A. The event is co-sponsored by History, Philosophy, Sociology, and the College of Liberal Arts.
Senior Lecturer Edward Schaefer will be hosting a film screening on Thursday, October 12, at 7:30 p.m. in JCM 2121. The film is titled Through the Repellent Fence. The film’s producer, Jeffrey Brown, and director, Sam Wainwright Douglas, will be on hand for a Q&A and reception following the screening.
Also on October 12, Philipp Meyer will be reading from his work at 3:30 at the Wittliff Collections in Alkek Library, and on October 13 he will be presenting again at 7:30 at the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center in Kyle. Philipp is the author of the critically lauded novel American Rust, winner of the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a New York Times Notable Book. In 2010 he was named one of the New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” fiction writers to watch. His novel The Son was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was recently adapted into an AMC television series. He is a graduate of Cornell University and has an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a James Michener Fellow.
Professor Susan Morrison will be speaking on a panel at a Cold War Spies roundtable on Monday, October 16 at 5pm in FH 230. A reception will precede the event. Her talk is titled “Teaching in East Germany in the 1980s: Interpreting my Stasi File.”
MFA student and Teaching Assistant Melanie Robinson and Claudia Cardona have been selected for an upcoming public art project (under their poetry collective name Caesura), as a part of a large festival called Luminaria to be held November 10-11 in Hemisfair Park in San Antonio. Their project, Ololyga: Think Like a Mouth, will be located at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. It explores the contributions and history of women in poetry and specifically highlights women of color, queer women, and local women poets who are fundamental to the history of poetry. Ololyga: Think Like a Mouth is a huge interactive art piece, and they need volunteers to help with construction. Please contact Melanie if you have the time and skills.
Congratulations!
Assistant Professor Geneva Gano’s article, “Michelle Tea’s Mission District Frontier: Nostalgia, Gentrification, Valencia,” was recently published in the Fall, 2017 issue of Studies in the Novel. Gano also presented on this topic at the American Literature Association Symposium on Regionalism and Place in American Literature held in New Orleans this month. Her paper was titled “Gentrification and Local Color: Literary Marketplacemaking in the San Francisco Mission District.”
Undergraduate student Lea Colchado was awarded a Texas State University Undergraduate Research Fellowship ($1000) to pursue archival research at Stanford University related to Geneva Gano’s ENG 3343 course on the Work and Career of Sandra Cisneros. Lea visited Stanford, as well as the Harry Ransom Research Center (UT Austin) and the Wittliff Collections (Texas State University) in summer, 2017 as part of her research.
M.A. student Seyedeh Razieh Araghi, was awarded a Texas State University Graduate Thesis Research Support Fellowship ($2000) to pursue archival research at Harvard University’s Widener Library related to her thesis on Iranian and U.S. American Feminist Literature. She visited Harvard in fall, 2017 to examine Betty Friedan’s papers and her writings related to Iran.
Senior Lecturer Jon Marc Smith and his writing partner Smith Henderson recently signed a contract for a book with Ecco tentatively titled The Midwife, to be published in 2018.
MATC alumnus Chase Rogers been hired as an instructional Designer with Whole Foods Market 365 (https://www.365bywholefoods.com/), which Chase says, is a Whole Foods brand created to make natural food groceries more accessible to all shoppers.
Associate Professor Scott Mogull has been very productive this year. His recent publications include a book published by Routledge, Scientific and Medical Communication: A Guide for Effective Practice, the first practice-line book in the ATTW-Routledge Book Series in Technical and Professional Communication. URL: https://www.routledge.com/Scientific-and-Medical-Communication-A-Guide-for-Effective-Practice/Mogull/p/book/9781138842557. Scott also published a research article in the prominent scientific/medical journal PLOS ONE, titled “Accuracy of Cited ‘Facts’ in Medical Research Articles: A Review of Study Methodology and Recalculation of Quotation Error Rate.” In the article, Dr. Mogull corrected the error rate of cited research “facts,” which are inaccurate summaries of previous research studies. He found that 14.5% of claims in the original medical studies are inaccurately summarized or presented when compared to the data and claims in the original studies. He is also the author of “Science vs. Science Commercialization in Neoliberalism (Extreme Capitalism): Examining the Conflicts and Ethics of Information Sharing in Opposing Social Systems,” a chapter in Scientific Communication: Practices, Theories, and Pedagogies. The book is part of the Routledge Series in Technical Communication, Rhetoric and Culture. Dr. Mogull also presented a research paper at the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine Symposium entitled, “Direct-to-Consumer Advertising in a Late-Capitalist, Saturated Pharmaceutical Drug Market: Discord in the Treximet Marketing as Greed Outpaces Innovation.” Congratulations, Scott!
Professor Susan Morrison’s novel, Grendel’s Mother: The Saga of the Wyrd-Wife, was chosen for 100 Must-Read Medieval Historical Fiction Novels by Book Riot (09-07-17).