Day: November 19, 2019

Congratulations:

MARC graduate Cheyenne Riggs has accepted a full-time lecturer position in the Department of English at the University of Oklahoma.

Nancy Wilson’s article, “Coming in from the (Binary) Code,” will appear in the Spring 2015 issue of Writing on the Edge.

Trey Moody’s poem, “What Needs To Be Done,” is in the current issue of Puerto del Sol.

The following English faculty were name Alpha Chi Favorite Professors by students graduating Spring 2015: John Blair, Chad Hammett, Susan Hanson, Elvin Holt, Rebecca Jackson, Katie Kapurch, Lindy Kosmitis, Twister Marquiss, Stephanie Motz, Stephanie Noll, and Anne Winchell.  Alpha Chi is a National College Honor Society that recognizes “academic excellence and exemplary character” in students.

MATC student Emily Clark, this year’s Outstanding Graduate Student in English, has accepted a position at Schneider Electric as a technical writer. Emily will write documentation for tollway system software and hardware.

MFA poetry student Laura Kraay’s comic-poetry hybrid, “Notes to My Ex,” appears in the latest issue of Hobart: http://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/notes-to-my-ex.

Our Visiting Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Komi Begedou, and a colleague currently at New York University have been awarded a $10,000 grant from NYU and D-Prize for their “Jeunes Braves” project to expand classes helping teenage girls in Togo avoid unwanted pregnancy. In late April, Komi was guest speaker at the Togo Independence Day celebration held by the Togo Association of Central Texas, in Austin.

Steve Wilson has poems forthcoming in Southwestern American Literature, Midwest Quarterly, and Beloit Poetry Journal.

Congratulations:

Susan Hanson, Elvin Holt and Twister Marquiss have been named Alpha Chi Favorite Professors for spring 2015.

MARC graduate Megan Boeshart has been accepted into the PhD program in English at Old Dominion University, where she will focus on program emphases in writing & rhetoric and technology & media studies.

MFA poetry student Sarah Howze’s poem “Scene I: Stuck in the House of Tiny Deaths, Somewhere in Texas” will be published in the Spring 2015 edition of Anamesa.

A Texas State University team competed at the International Business Ethics Case Competition in New Orleans, LA in late April. The graduate student team, including English Department Administrative Assistant Shaula Rocha, along with Travis Stockton and David Tamez, won 1st place in the 90-second presentation division, and runner-up in the 25-minute presentation division.

Mary McCulley, a 2008 graduate of the MARC program, has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the English Department at Cedarville University in Ohio. Mary is currently completing her dissertation on 19th-century women’s rhetoric and literature at Texas Christian University. She will start her new position in the fall.

Mark Busby was the featured author for the launch of the 2015 volume of The Mayo Review at Texas A&M University-Commerce on April 23.   As part of the launch, Mark conducted a morning writing workshop; presented a paper in the afternoon entitled “The Scholar as Novelist, the Novelist as Scholar”; and offered a reading from his novel Cedar Crossing in the evening. Two of his stories are featured in the new volume of The Mayo Review.

Students in Laura Ellis-Lai’s fall 2014 Honors writing course presented their work at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research last week at Eastern Washington University. Congratulations to undergraduate researchers Marcela Zuniga Arteaga, Brian Woods, Lindsey Robertson, Amber Cabading, and Glen Stevenson. Laura’s talk at the NCUR Faculty and Administrator Network, about the research she did as a result of participating in Texas State’s Faculty Learning Community on Globalization this year, was titled: “Supporting International Independent Research for Undergraduates.”

Octavio Pimentel has agreed to serve as Second Stage Reviewer for the 2016 Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Graduating MARC student Shaun Bryan has been accepted into the M.A. in Applied Philosophy and Ethics (MAAPE) program at Texas State for fall 2015. He plans to study the philosophy of cognition, logic, the philosophy of language and its connection to cognition, the philosophy of education, and the mind/body connection in continuation of his research into disability studies.

Congratulations:

After hearing about Dr. Komi Begedou’s research interests and the lack of American Literature available at his home institution in Togo, Sigma Tau Delta organized a book drive for the University of Lome. For the past academic year, Sigma Tau Delta has been collecting books in the English Department as well as at all Sigma functions. As a result, they will be sending 269 books to Dr. Begedou’s university this May.

Cecily Parks’s second poetry collection, O’Nights, was published this month by Alice James Books.

Pinfan Zhu’s article “Against Cultural Influence on Structuring a Discourse for Cross-Cultural Communication” was published as the lead article in the March 2015 issues of International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science. “The Impact of Business Cultural Values on Homepage Design That May Affect International Business” has been accepted by the Journal of Technical Writing & Communication.

Marilynn Olson presented “Billy Whiskers: Frances Trego Montgomery’s Primer for Two-Legged Kids (1902-1930)” at the Child and Citizenship symposium of the Critical Childhood Studies Seminar, held at Texas A&M, March 27th.

Rob Tally was named Outstanding Professor of the Year by Sigma Tau Delta.

Gabriel Schnell, graduating MFA fiction student, has accepted a position as an 11th grade Writing teacher at Gestalt Community Schools in Memphis, TN.

On April 15, several former student teachers participated in a panel organized by Stephanie Noll, Lindy Kosmitis, Sarah Youree, Keith Needham, and Laura Sims. The panelists – Kylie Cooper, Zach Soto, and Michele Benage – spoke to current student teachers in English about their experiences as new teachers. The panelists were given books for their classrooms thanks to Stephanie’s project, Old Books for New Teachers, which helps recent Texas State graduates build their classroom libraries.

2007 fiction graduate Amelia Gray’s third story collection, Gutshot, has just been published by FSG. To read its NPR review, click on this link: http://www.npr.org/2015/04/14/397071343/gutshot-is-gloriously-grand-guignol.

Lindy Kosmitis has been name 2014-15 Honors Professor of the Year.

Susan Morrison has been awarded the title of Honorary Professor of International Studies for a three-year term, beginning in the 2015-16 budget cycle. This is a renewal; Susan was also an Honorary Professor of International Studies for the 2012-15 cycle.

Congratulations:

Rachel Snow, an undergraduate English major who will begin the MARC program this summer, has been awarded a Graduate Merit Fellowship of $2,500 for the 2015-2016 academic year. The fellowship is designed to help recruit students of the “highest quality’ to master’s programs at Texas State.

Miles Wilson’s story, “Tough,” appears in the current issue of The Georgia Review. An interview with Miles appears in The Georgia Review Online: http://garev.uga.edu/blog/mwilsoninterview.html.

On March 27th, MA-Literature graduate and current Lecturer Amanda Sabo, MFA poetry graduate Jeremy Bauer, and MA-Literature student Christine Zabala presented the panel “From Virginia Woolf to Batgirl: The Failure of Democracy’s Promise” at the Women and Gender Symposium, held at Texas State.

Rob Tally’s essay “Beyond the Flaming Walls of the World: Fantasy, Alterity, and the Postnational Constellation” appears in The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Amy J. Elias and Christian Moraru (Northwestern Univ. Press, 2015).

Libby Allison has been invited to participate in Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Institute, sponsored by Texas State’s Center for Diversity and Gender Studies.

MARC student Clare Murray presented “‘Suppose there were a Narnian World’: C.S. Lewis’s Rhetorical Use of Supposals” at the 18th Annual C.S. Lewis and Inkling Society Conference, held recently at Grove City College. Her essay received Honorable Mention in the competition for best Graduate student paper presented at the conference, for which Clare was awarded a small cash prize. On April 11 she will present “‘Well, That’s Your Opinion’ – Truth, Morality, and Religion in the Composition and Rhetoric Classroom” at the Texas State conference on “Religious Studies, the Liberal Arts, and the Public University.”

The English Department was well represented at the national Pop Culture Association / American Culture Association meeting held recently in New Orleans. MARC student Collin Couey presented “You and Your Crew: A Critical History of Rap Groups”; MFA fiction student Theresa Holden read her short story, “What Are the Vitals?”; MFA fiction student Graham Oliver presented “Renegade or Paragon: Narrative Choice in Contemporary Video Games”; and MATC student Amanda Scott presented “‘Shorty Wanna Be a Thug’: The Dynamics of Gender in Rap Groups.”

Congratulations:

MFA poetry student Ashton Kamburoff’s poem “Russet County” has been published in Portage Magazine: A Review of Upper Midwest Writing, Art, and Culture.

The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz, a collection edited by Murray Pomerance and Barton Palmer, will be published by the University of Texas Press in 2016 and includes a chapter written by Rebecca Bell-Metereau.

Annie Shepherd presented “Accepting the Inexplicable: the Relationship Between Style and Content in Tony Earley’s ‘The Prophet from Jupiter'” at the American Literature Association’s “God and the American Writer” conference in late February.

John Blair has won the 2014 Dana Award, awarded for a group of poems.  He will receive $1,000 as winner.

MFA fiction student Emily Smith has been awarded a scholarship to attend the New York State Summer Writers Institute, to be held at Skidmore College.  Only 51 out of 300 applicants received an award.

Texas State was well represented at the 36th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, held recently in Orlando. Brandy Eileen Allatt presented “Herbert and Jodorowsky: The Unintentional Meta-Messiah in Jodorowsky’s Dune“; Suparno Banerjee presented “Ghosts, Aliens, and Machines: Epistemic Continuity and Assemblage in Shirshendu Mukherjee’s Science Fiction”; and Graeme Wend-Walker presented “The Scientific Imagination and the Imaginary Science.”

Trey Moody’s short short story, “Permission,” appears in the current issue of NANO Fiction, and two of his poems are in the newest OmniVerse.

MFA fiction student Shannon Perri’s story, “You’re Never Alone Until There’s Nothing,” has been published in Queen Mob’s Teahouse: http://queenmobs.com/2015/03/youre-never-alone-nothing/.

MFA fiction graduate Marc Watkins’ first book, Middle West, will be published by Queen’s Ferry Press this June: http://queensferrypress.com/blog/marc-watkins-middle-west-to-be-published-in-june-2016/ [archived]

Congratulations:

The College of Liberal Arts has nominated the following English faculty for 2015 Presidential Excellence Awards: Kitty Ledbetter, for teaching; Rob Tally, for scholarly / creative activity; and Steve Wilson, for service.

Octavio Pimentel’s latest book, Racial Shorthand: Coded Discrimination Contested in Social Media, has been accepted for publication by Computers and Composition Digital Press.

Columnist Ken Herman of the Austin American-Statesman featured Texas State University’s Common Experience and the Common Reading Program in his Metro/State commentary column on Wednesday, February 25th: http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local/herman-in-coincidence-texas-state-students-read-ph/nkH8H/#4839166c.3593031.735654. He discussed the 50th anniversary of Texas State’s integration, as well as the history of the school. In addition, the piece highlighted Common Reading Program director Twister Marquiss, who is a lecturer in the Department of English.

Komi Begedou will present “Navigating the Intersections of a Christian Organization and a West African Public University” at the Texas State University conference, “Religious Studies, Liberal Arts and the Public University,” taking place this coming April.

Scott Mogull’s article “Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Health Consumerism” has been accepted for publication in Fall 2015 as part of a special issue of Communication Design Quarterly exploring health and medical discourses. CDQis the peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Design of Communication.

Michael Noll’s story, “The Tank Yard,” was accepted by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for the June/July issue. In addition, Michael was invited by the journal American Short Fiction to write an essay about a text that portrays poor parenting. His essay, discussing Murray Farish’s story “Inappropriate Behavior,” was published along with essays by other writers at ASF‘s blog series, Bourbon & Milk: http://americanshortfiction.org/2014/12/25/bourbon-milk-truth-flags-secret-knowledge-need-sometimes-stomp-around-raise-voice-carry-television-garage/ [archived].

Congratulations:

Scott Mogull’s presentation, “Practices of Visual Inscriptions in Science and Engineering Discourse: Implications for Teaching,” has been accepted at ProComm 2015, the annual conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Professional Communication Societ, to be held in Limerick, Ireland on July 12-15, 2015.

Steve Wilson’s poem “Six Storms” will be among the texts used by visual artists to create new work during a series of spring workshops sponsored by the renowned Kinsale Pottery & Arts Centre (Kinsale, Ireland). The project will culminate in an exhibition entitled “Trading Words: An exploration of the relationship between visual arts and creative writing”: https://tradingwords2015.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/steve-wilson/.

MA-Literature student Tyler Dukes presented “The Searchers and Dallas Buyers Club: Social Upheaval on Two Frontiers” at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPCA) Conference, held recently in Albuquerque, NM.

Cyrus Cassells has been named a “Guest Director” for the Drama Department’s current production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Mark Busby has been selected as the “featured author” for Texas A&M-Commerce’s launch of its annual literary magazine, The Mayo Review.  Two of his stories will appear in the issue, and he will do readings and workshops as part of the event. Mark presented “Leavening Humor in Cormac McCarthy’s Cities of the Plain” at the Texas/Southwest Popular Culture Association meeting in Albuquerque, February 11, 2015.

The 19 February 2015 issue of the Austin American-Statesman featured on the first page of “Austin 360” “Homegrown,” the collection of posters celebrating the Austin music culture that is on view at the Wittliff Gallery through July 3. Alan Schaefer, lecturer in the Department of English, has curated the exhibit and authored the related book, Homegrown: Austin Music Posters 1967 to 1982 (Austin: UT Press, 2015), which features essays by Joe Nick Patoski and Nels Jacobson.