Miscellany – August 26, 2019

James Reeves’ book, Godless Fictions in the Eighteenth Century: A Literary History of Atheism, is now under contract with Cambridge University Press and should be released in 2020. In July, James attended the NEH Summer Seminar on “Religion, Secularism, and the Novel” at the University of Iowa, where he presented research from his book manuscript and revised an article on “Antislavery Literature and the Decline of Hell.”

Writers for Hillviews recently interviewed Katie Kapurch about her Beatles research: https://news.txstate.edu/research-and-innovation/2019/-study-of-literature-and-rhetoric-leads-professor-on-long-and-winding-road-to-the-beatles.html. Katie and Jon Marc Smith recently co-authored “A Fear So Real: Film Noir’s Fallen Man in Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town and the David Lynch Oeuvre,” published in the journal, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies (Penn State UP). The article appears in a 2019 special issue focused on Springsteen.

Kitty Ledbetter’s essay titled “Periodical Poetry” has been published in the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing. Issue 15.2 of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, guest-edited by Kitty Ledbetter, has been published online at https://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue152/issue152. The special issue is focused on “Women and Leisure” and includes an introduction to the issue by Kitty and her essay titled “Rinkualism, Punch, and Women on Wheels.”

Jon Marc Smith is mentioned in this article from the Austin Chronicle discussing Roky Erickson, Doug Sahm, and the blueprint for punk rock: https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2019-08-09/how-a-collaboration-between-roky-erickson-and-doug-sahm-became-part-of-the-blueprint-for-punk-rock/

Julie McCormick Weng published Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism (Syracuse University Press) with Kathryn Conrad and Coílín Parsons. She also published “A Reconsideration of Joyce’s Non-Fiction,” a review of Katherine Ebury’s and James Alexander Fraser’s Joyce’s Non-Fiction Writings: “Outside his Jurisfiction” in James Joyce Literary Supplement.

Steve Wilson new book of poetry, The Reaches, is now open for pre-publication orders at this link: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-reaches-by-steve-wilson/. The book is due for release in November.

Cyrus Cassell’s poem “More Than Watchmen at Daybreak,” first published in Agni, appeared as the poem of the day on August 23 at Poetry Dailyhttps://poems.com/poem/more-than-watchmen-at-daybreak/ 

Department Chair Victoria Smith was interviewed for a Time article on the new movie about Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West: https://time.com/5655270/virginia-woolf-vita-sackville-west-relationship/?fbclid=IwAR13UqGehwAAq9WIShD3xOachSD3qkVhRg_gxa-gHMOp9mnoiRfpZR6GCKw 

In June Leah Schwebel presented ‘“Oon seyde that Omer made lyes’: Chaucer’s Intertextual Poetics” at the biennial London Chaucer Conference.” She also spent time working with manuscripts at the Oxford Bodleian Library and the British Library in London, research supported by an REP grant.

In June, Geneva Gano travelled to Shenandoah University in Virginia to deliver a paper at the Willa Cather International Seminar: “UnAmerican Activities: The Sexual Lives of Hired Girls, or, Cather’s Critique of Capitalism.” Following that, she spent a week at the University of Maryland researching Texas author Katherine Anne Porter’s connections to Mexico. She received a Research Enhancement Grant from the University to conduct this research, which will be part of her book project on the influence of the Mexican Revolution on U.S. Modernism.

Ben Reed’s panel proposal for the AWP 2020 in San Antonio has been accepted. The title is “Space Is the Place: Literary Spatialities and New Approaches to Placemaking.” He will be joined by Kelli Jo Ford, Angela Palm, Ito Romo, and Texas State MFA alumnus Ali Haider. In July he attended the MLA International Symposium in Lisbon, Portugal, where he read “Genealogy: A Dream Within a Dream,” which is an excerpt from a planned book on littoral spatialities in discourse and experience. Earlier this summer he taught his second writing workshop for veterans through VSA Texas, the state organization on arts and disability; and moderated a panel at the Writers League of Texas Agents & Editors Conference : “Discovering Your Book’s Voice, Tone, and Style,” with Christopher Brown, Mark Dery, and Charlotte Gullick.

Miscellany – August 12, 2019

MFA fiction student Alex Kale’s essay, “River Creatures, Minor Characters,” has been accepted for publication in Wussy Mag.

A new poem by MFA poetry student Anthony Bradley appears in Honey & Lime #3: the Queer Issue: https://honeyandlimelit.wixsite.com/website/anthony-isaac-bradley 

Texas State’s News Service featured Katie Kapurch’s work recently: https://news.txstate.edu/featured-faculty/2019/kapurch-discusses-race-boundaries-in-country-music.html?fbclid=IwAR37taz_BV0DwVKjqqr7f62R2aNa1rxx4WFAWjYbCijDvLhGcSO-iDTZ7Og

Amanda Scott’s essay, “Room with Bright Window,” was recently published in Crab Orchard Review. She also recently moderated the panel “Writing the Quiet Moments Between Plot Points” at the Writers’ League of Texas’s Agents & Editors Conference.

The following faculty served on Faculty Senate committees or as Faculty Senate appointees during the 2018-2019 academic year. They not only learned about many facets of the complex institution that is Texas State, but they have also helped promote the English Department’s visibility and interests: Steve Wilson – Academic Freedom Committee; Dan Lochman – Academic Governance Committee; Rebecca Bell-Metereau – Environment & Sustainability Committee, as well as serving as a replacement on the Presidential Teaching Excellence Award Committee and as the Senate’s ex officio member of the university’s Campus Facilities Committee; Amanda Scott – Nontenure-line Faculty Committee; Amanda Meyer – Nontenure-line Faculty Committee; Kitty Ledbetter – University Lecturers Committee; Aimee Roundtree – Performing Arts Committee; Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler – Presidential Award Selection Committee for Scholarly/Creative Activity; Vicki Smith – Honor Code Council.

On July 25, Kitty Ledbetter presented “Women of the World” at the meeting of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, held in Brighton, UK. After the conference she spent the week in London conducting research at the British Library and the University of Reading.

In late July, Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler presented “The Lady and the Icon: Two Miltonic Failures and Why They Failed” at the triennial conference of the International Association of University Professors of English, held at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland.

English interns in Mr. Dan Price’s English 3312 Internship class presented electronic portfolios of their work on July 31. Works discussed included those from their internships, work from both creative and analytical courses, and films. Braeden Long interned with the Austin Radio Network (104.9 The Horn), writing wrote sports stories and social media pieces and doing radio production work. Sarah Rodriguez interned with the San Antonio Film Festival, assisting in organizing and executing the festival itself as well as reviewing and critiquing films submitted to the festival. Chandler Treon interned for Dr. Rebecca Bell-Mettereau, assisting her in establishing a film concentration within the English major.

Jessie Herrada Nance, an alumna of the MA Literature program now employed by Portland State University and Portland Community College, has published “’Civil Wildness’: Colonial Landscapes in Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia” in the Spring 2019 issue of Studies in Philology. Jessie completed her PhD in English at the University of Oregon in 2015.

MFA fiction student Mary-Pat Hayton had two creative nonfiction pieces recently accepted for publication in online literary magazines: “Inheritance,” in Waxing and Waning; and “Threshold,” in Uncomfortable Revolution.

Dan Lochman has received a two-month fellowship to research early modern medical texts at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany in the summer of 2020. The project is titled “Early Modern Cognition and In-spired Energeia: Philosophy, Theology, and Medicine.” The project will provide access to difficult-to-find sources and will contribute to an ongoing book project.

Miscellany – June 26, 2019

Cedric Synnestvedt’s short story “Dares” was published in the latest issue of BULL.

MFA fiction student Robert Madole’s translation of the German text Nina and Tom, by author Tom Kummer, was just released by Rare Bird Books.

Geneva Gano presented “UnAmerican Activities: The Sexual Lives of Hired Girls, or, Cather’s Critique of Capitalism” at the International Willa Cather Seminar, held at Shenandoah University in mid-June. She then spent a week at the University of Maryland’s Hornbake Library researching Texas writer Katherine Anne Porter’s writings from Mexico.

Recent BA double-major in English and Anthropology Chisom Ogoke (Outstanding Senior in English and Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Liberal Arts) has won an $8,500 Phi Kappa Phi Fellowship (the first awarded to a Texas State student) to support her study in the MFA in Creative Writing program. Congratulations to Chisom, and thanks to Graeme Wend-Walker, who mentored her and wrote letters supporting her application.

Dr. Terri Leclerq co-authored “Why are books banned in prison? Sex, drugs and a critique of systematic oppression” for Salonhttps://www.salon.com/2019/06/15/why-are-books-banned-in-prison-sex-drugs-and-a-critique-of-systematic-oppression/. Dr. Leclerq received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Texas State University and is a founder and active member of the Donor and Alumni Advisory Council for the Department of English at Texas State. The council works to create a bond between the English Department’s faculty, students, alumna, and donors.

Dan Lochman’s “Pierced with Passion: Brains, Bodies and Worlds in Early Modern Texts” appears in Distributed Cognition in Medieval and Renaissance Culture, ed. Miranda Anderson and Michael Wheeler (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp. 229-249. This is the second of four volumes of The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition, each with chapters on constructions of distributed cognition from classical antiquity to modernism that emerged during a series of workshops in Edinburgh in 2014.

Joe Falocco recently performed in a staged reading of Three Times Fast as part of the Winter Park Playhouse’s Florida Festival of New Musicals. This work tells the story of a teenage girl struggling with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Dr. Falocco played the girl’s father, Eddie: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/arts-and-theater/os-et-florida-festival-new-musicals-success-20190625-temnrkds2bavrcdoegmlfaeclu-story.html?fbclid=IwAR0jdX89xcER48h8zGexWIw213sBjDzCQlFdW3Bc4Idkd1HND4han27CNH4 

Naomi Shihab Nye and Vanessa Couto Johnson will be reading their poetry at The Good Kind (Southtown) in San Antonio on June 30. The event begins at 4:00 p.m., with reading closer to 5:00 p.m. Find more details here: https://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/good-poems-at-the-good-kind/Event?oid=21417769&fbclid=IwAR1DM5IqRl5eWVTdsiQOtIPs8mH3uAS-AEBvYlYAoCvc-e0gDykXu1M3Tkw

Miscellany – June 11, 2019

Two poems by MFA poetry student Abigail Kipp, “A queen” and “boys,” appear in down in the dirt. 

In mid-May, Alyssa Crow (a graduate of the MARC program) successfully defended her dissertation at the University of Utah for a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing.

MFA poetry student Nour Al Ghraowi has several recent acceptances: “More Than Numbers,” an essay about her journey to the U.S., will be published in Dame Magazine; the poem “Arranged” will appear in So To Speak Journal; and the poem “This is Hard to Say” will be published in Mizna Journal.

MFA poetry student Anthony Bradley’s essay, “My Accent Makes Me Beautiful,” has been accepted by The Coachella Review.

Susan Morrison was interviewed by Zak Jason for the May issue of Wired (https://www.wired.com/story/pooping-dark/). The article, “On Pooping in the Dark—No Lights, No Phones, No Distractions,” includes a number of Susan’s insights: “[W]e prefer not to confront our shit, and that’s dangerous. The less mindful we are of where what we eat goes, the less we consider our impact on the environment.”

“Faking It in Seven Disciplines,” an essay by MFA fiction student Kim McFarden, has been published in Belmont Story Review.

MA Literature graduate Jo McIntosh, an Instructor at Concordia University (Austin), has been named holder of the Otto W. and Norma L. Schaefer Endowed Chair in Literature. The award provides assigned time for research and monetary support for inviting scholars to present at Concordia over the next two years.

MFA fiction student Gazzmine Wilkins’ experimental essay, “Hiram Clarke,” will appear in the Texas Observer.

Katie Kapurch’s article, “’Old Town Road’’s Pop Outlaws: Lil Nas X Remixes the Mac-and-Jack Hustle,” was published on CultureSonar recently. The research relates to Katie’s NEH-funded project about African Americans’ musical conversations with the Beatles: https://www.culturesonar.com/old-town-roads-pop-outlaws-lil-nas-x-remixes-the-mac-and-jack-hustle/ 

MFA fiction student Ryan Lopez’s short story “Shadows Doth Make Bright” appears in Deep Overstockhttps://deepoverstock.com/2019/06/03/shadows-doth-make-bright-ryan-shane-lopez/ 

Rob Tally will serve as a featured speaker at this year’s Symposium of the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science, to be held in Washington, DC this week. The theme of the symposium is “The Geospatial Humanities: Transdisciplinary Opportunities for the GIScience Community.

Miscellany – May 20, 2019

Naomi Shihab Nye’s essay on her memoires of W.S. Merwin, who passed away in late April, appeared in a recent Texas Observerhttps://www.texasobserver.org/remembering-w-s-merwin-honorary-texan/

 

Susan Morrison’s “Waste in Literature and Culture: Aesthetics, Form, and Ethics” appears in the current issue of EuropeNow – the entire issue is on waste. “Slow Pilgrimage Ecopoetics” was published in Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 10.1 (2019): 40-59. http://ecozona.eu/article/view/2527/3110

 

On May 7th, English interns in Mr. Dan Price’s English 3312 Internship class presented on their semester’s experience. Denisse Torres worked as a paralegal in the Attorney for Students office. Ashley Morris blogged and did other media relations for On Vinyl Media, a music licensing company. Zane Altemus worked in the Governor’s Office dealing with economic development and tourism. Nyeira Leonard did a variety of outreach and marketing activities for Student Support Services; Langston Neuburger worked for the Texas State Writing Center, using his experience in technical communication to redesign their policies and procedures.

 

Rob Tally’s “The End-of-the-World as World System” appears in Other Globes: Past and Peripheral Imaginations of Globalization, eds. Simon Ferdinand, Irene Villaescusa-Illán, and Esther Peeren (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

 

For a new production of Cyrano de Bergerac, Joe Falocco will be playing the Viscount de Valvert, who loses the epic “duel in verse” to Cyrano. This role will give Joe the opportunity to use his “long-dormant skills in rapier combat.” He will also have a cameo as a confused Italian Friar later in the show. The Archive Theater boldly creates new translations and adaptations of beloved stories to make them more accessible to contemporary audiences. They develop exquisitely detailed, extensively researched, and historically informed productions that provide visual context and understanding for the stories they tell. They combine powerful storytelling, gorgeous costumes, and live music on period instruments to give their patrons a taste of living in another world at another time. The show will be staged at Austin’s Scottish Rite Theater in September.

 

MFA poetry student Abigail Kipp has three of my poems in voices of eve.

 

Cyrus Cassells’ The Gospel According to Wild Indigo was a finalist for the 2018 Balcones Poetry Prize for an Outstanding Book of the Year.

 

MFA fiction student Clayton Bradshaw’s short story, “How to Grieve for Hyacinths,” appears in the latest issue of Collateral Journal.

Miscellany – January 14, 2019

MARC graduate Casie Moreland recently completed her PhD at Arizona State University.  She was featured in a story published by ASU Nowhttps://asunow.asu.edu/20181130-never-stop-wondering-and-ask-librarian-tips-success-first-gen-grad

Flore Chevaillier’s “Experiment with Textual Materiality: Page, Author, and Medium in the Works of Steve Tomasula, Michael Martone, and Eduardo Kac” appears in the Winter 2018 issue of College Literature.

Katie Kapurch has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to research African Americans’ musical conversations with the Beatles.

Steve Wilson’s poem “The Aardwolf” appears in the new poetry anthology Enchantment of the Ordinary, out this month from Mutabilis Press.

Congratulations to the following Senior Lecturers / Lecturers, whom the Faculty Senate has approved for Nontenure Line Faculty Workload Releases: Graeme Mullen, Amanda North, Danny Peters, and Sean Rose.

In December, Susan Morrison gave a talk entitled “Slow Ecopoetics: A Pilgrimage through Waste” at the Rice University symposium, “Waste: Histories and Futures.” She also taught 12th graders at Austin’s Liberal Arts and Science Academy about Chaucer’s “The Miller’s Tale” and fecopoetics.

Nancy Wilson received thanks for her ongoing service to General Education Council from Assistant Vice President for Academic Services Mary Ellen Cavitt, who writes, “Thank you for all you have done to ensure that course audits and holistic assessments of components and competencies were completed” during calendar year 2018. Your work as a member of the GEC is precisely the type of institutional service that supports the interests of our undergraduate students, your faculty colleagues, and the administration.”

Vicki Smith also received thanks from Dr. Cavitt for her service as Vice Chair of the Honor Code Council. In this position, Assistant Vice President for Academic Services Cavitt writes, Dr. Smith “assumed many additional responsibilities and put forth countless hours to ensure a fair and valuable academic environment be provided to all faculty and students.”

The Honors College offered thanks to the following faculty who supported students completing contract work in English courses for Honors credit: Laura Ellis-Lai, Eric Leake, Chad Hammett, Kate McClancy, and Chris Margrave (2 students). The College also thanked the following faculty for supervising Honors theses: John Blair, Rene LeBlanc, Teya Rosenberg, Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler, Rob Tally, and Anne Winchell; and for serving as second readers on Honors theses: Stephanie Noll and Cecily Parks.

Logan Fry has been chosen as the winner of Omnidawn’s 1st/2nd Poetry Book Prize for 2018, judged by Srikanth Reddy. Omnidawn will be publishing his book, Harpo Before the Opus, in the fall of 2019.

Ross Feeler won the Key West Literary Seminar’s 2019 Marianne Russo Award for a novel-in-progress.

Miscellany – December 5, 2018

“Hail to the Krueg,” a short story by Cedric Synnestvedt, MFA fiction graduate and current department Lecturer, will be in the January issue of Jabberwock Review.

MARC graduate Alexis McGee recently received her PhD from the University of Texas-San Antonio and has been hired as an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama.

Dan Lochman’s “’[T]he fault of the man and not the poet’: Sidney’s Troubled Double Vision of Thomas More’s Utopia” was published in Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 41.3 (Summer 2018), 93-115. It’s a special issue of the University of Toronto-based journal, titled “Utopia for 500 Years,” with papers from a September 2016 conference of the same name at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan.

Rob Tally’s new book, Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination, has just been published by Indiana University Press: https://www.amazon.com/Topophrenia-Narrative-Spatial-Imagination-Humanities/dp/0253037662/

MARC student Sarah Percy will present her research project, “Generation Z: Practicing Classical Pedagogy and Digital Rhetoric in Composition Classrooms,” at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on February 20-23, 2019.

On November 28th, Texas State senior English major Chisom Ogoke was a guest in Graeme Wend-Walker’s Mythology class, where she discussed mythopoeia and how she is using it to produce a magical realist account of the principles underlying Darwinian evolution.

MARC graduate Casie Moreland recently received her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Arizona State University and has been hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Western Oregon University.

Three poems by MFA poetry student Emily Ellison appear in the latest issue of Foothill Literary Journal.

MARC graduate Justin Whitney recently received his PhD from the University of Utah and has been hired as an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Delhi.

Dr. Rebecca Jackson was named an Alpha Chi “Favorite Professor” in Fall 2018.

Miscellany – November 26, 2018

MFA fiction graduate and Lecturer Ross Feeler’s short story, “The Noise of Departure,” appears in the current issue of the Potomac Review: (http://mcblogs.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/).

Stacey Swann, MFA graduate in fiction, has sold her novel to Random House.

MFA fiction student Ryan Lopez’s short story “Party of Eight” was published recently in the digital literary magazine Hypnopomphttps://hypnopompblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/28/party-of-eight-ryan-shane-lopez-fiction/

“Senior Lecturer and MFA fiction graduate William Jensen attended the Western Literature Association Conference in St. Louis, Missouri, this October. Mr. Jensen read from a creative work in progress currently titled Badlands.”

MFA poetry graduate and Lecturer Meg Griffitts’ poem “How to Tell You’re The Right Kind of (                )” has been accepted for publication by fields and will be featured in the upcoming fall/winter issue.

MATC graduate and Senior Lecturer Amanda Scott’s essay, “Project/Object,” has been accepted for publication in phoebe.

“A Daughter Goes to Work,” a poem by MFA poetry graduate and Lecturer Katherine Stingley, was named a finalist for the Francine Ringold Award for New Writers, sponsored by Nimrod International Journal; a second poem, “Seven Husbands,” was named a semifinalist for the same award.

Steve Wilson and MFA poetry graduate Prudence Arceneaux read from their recent collections at Malvern Books on November 18. Steve’s poem “After All” will appear in Awake in the World, a collection of texts about the natural world that will be published next spring.

Alan Schaefer, co-editor of The Journal of Texas Music History, announced that the 2018 issue is now in print and available for free from the Center for Texas Music History in Brazos Hall.

Leah Schwebel’s “Triumphing over Dante in Petrarch’s Trionfi” appears in volume 39 of the 2018 issue of Mediaevalia.

On November 3, Dan Lochman presented the paper “Who knows … Colin Clout? Experiences of Remembering (and Forgetting) in Spenser’s Writing” at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Albuquerque, NM. He serves on the organization’s Executive Council, which has begun preparations for the 50th Sixteenth Century Studies Conference by returning next fall to its original site, St. Louis.

Rob Tally contributed five entries to the Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory: “Episteme,” “Jameson, Fredric” “Negation,” “Oedipus Complex,” and “Overdetermination.”

 

MATC student Megahlee Das presented “How can Technical Communication Programs Prepare Students to Work in International Environments?” at Texas State University’s 10th Annual International Research Conference on November 14th. She is scheduled to present “From Apu to Alex Parrish: Pop Culture and Perception of Outsourcing and Collaboration in the Technical Communication Industry” at the 40th Annual Southwest Popular/American Culture in Albuquerque, New Mexico in February 2019.

Miscellany – October 25, 2018

Kate McClancy’s “The Wasteland of the Real: Nostalgia and Simulacra in Fallout” came out in the September issue of Game Studies, and she presented “Fighting a Lonely War: Frank Castle and the Domestication of Vietnam” at the meeting of the Popular Culture Association of the South.

Marilynn Olson presented “Billy Whiskers Bashes His Way into History: JFK’s Favorite Childhood Series Defined America for Millions” at the University of Michigan in late September.

Susan Morrison presented a paper entitled “Countering Misecogyny and Ecocatastrophe in Hawthorne: The Paradigm of Viriditas and Grace” at the 8th Biennial Conference of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment (EASLCE) in Würzburg, Germany (September 2018). Susan also published “Walking as Memorial Ritual: Pilgrimage to the Past” as the Featured Article for the M/C Journal: A Journal of Media and Culture special issue on walking: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1437

Two MA Literature graduates and current Lecturers presented at the Meeting of the Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts on October 18-20 at the Sam Houston State University Woodlands Campus: Shannon Shaw presented “Aileen Wuornos: The Monster Man Created”; and Whitney May presented “Pennywise and Pound Foolish: Scary Clowns and the Monstrous Marketplace.”

Octavio Pimentel’s article “Counter Stories: Brotherhood in a Latinx Fraternity” has been published in the Fall 2018 issue of Open Words: Access and English Studieshttps://www.pearsoned.com/counter-stories-brotherhood-latinx-fraternity

Current MFA fiction student Mary-Pat Hayton, has a personal essay as a finalist in “pen 2 paper – a disability-focused creative writing contest”:

https://txdisabilities.submittable.com/gallery/b3b7a89e-340b-4a3a-8881-951c6560b7ce/10961936/ This is a “judged by readers” contest, and readers (including us!) can read and vote.

On October 12th, Texas State senior English major Chisom Ogoke presented “Sekoia and the Books of the Galápagos: Storytelling Biological Anthropology through Magical Realism” at the “Faulkner and García Márquez” conference, sponsored by the Center for Faulkner Studies at Southeast Missouri State University.

MFA poetry graduate Dorothy Lawrenson’s poem “Viewmaster” will be included in the anthology A Year of Scottish Poems: One Poem to Read Each Day, to be published by Macmillan Children’s Books in December 2018.

2018 MFA fiction graduate Emily Beyda has sold her first novel to Doubleday.

Miscellany – October 8, 2018

In the Acknowledgments section of his new book, Beautiful Country Burn Again, recent holder of the Endowed Chair in Creative Writing Ben Fountain writes, “I’m tremendously grateful to the faculty and students in the writing program at Texas State University.” In a book that will be widely reviewed — NPR interviewed recently him — and widely read, the program and school are also recognized on the book jacket.

MATC graduate and Senior Lecturer Amanda Scott’s essay “Room with Bright Window” will be published in Crab Orchard Review this fall. Her article, “Cultivating Activist-Based Pedagogy in the Age of Generation Z,” will appear in Cuentos & Testimonies: Diversity and Inclusion at Texas State (an anthology edited by Miriam Williams and Octavio Pimentel) later this fall; she’ll present the article at the Decolonizing Conference to be sponsored by the University of Toronto’s Center for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies this November.

The Department of English was well represented at the College of Liberal Arts’ Innovation Day, which was held across campus on Monday, September 24. The current NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English, Dr. Robert T. Tally, offered students a glimpse into his research on the relationships among space, narrative and representation during the panel titled, “Space and Place Matter.” The “New Perspectives on Race and Gender” panel included three representatives from the English Department. Dr. Katie Kapurch discussed her ongoing research on girl groups and girl culture influences on the Beatles. Dr. Geneva M. Gano shared research on Chicana author Sandra Cisneros’ relationship to San Antonio and Texas and discussed her Spring 2019 course that will offer students the opportunity to undertake directed student research in the Wittliff Archives at Alkek Library. Dr. Samuel Saldívar III presented his research on race and comics, with a special focus on Django Zorro. Lead organizer for the CLA’s Innovation Day was Dr. Aimee Roundtree, Professor in the English Department and Associate Dean for Research and Promotion in the College of Liberal Arts.

Jennifer duBois will participate in the “Literary Death Match” in Odessa, TX on October 12, and will be giving a presentation on Writing from Imagination through the Writers’ League of Texas’ “Texas Writes” program in Olton, TX on the 13th. Jennifer’s short story “Racing the Train” was accepted for publication by Shenandoah, and her third novel The Spectators will be published by Random House this April.

At an awards ceremony on October 17, Foundations of Excellence will recognize Assistant Professor Cecily Parks as one of ten Texas State University faculty and staff members who make a significant impact in both the lives of the general student population and on the university community.

On Oct. 3, Whitney May, Shannon Shaw, Meg Griffitts, Amanda Scott, and Ali Salzmann led a Philosophy Dialogue Series talk on “Changing the Language of Sex: Disrupting Silos of Sexuality and Re-Envisioning Dialectics of Pleasure.” Their objective with this project is to re-conceptualize how we understand sexual identity, orientation, and behavior rhetorically, so that we may begin to disrupt traditional notions of sexuality in both private and social contexts, and to cultivate healthier, responsible, and inclusive perspectives that embrace progressive notions of selfhood, sexuality, and social justice/wellbeing. This was the leaders’ first discussion and introduction to their hypothesis, which they plan to test in a future research project.

Katie Kapurch’s “’Come on to Me’ is Paul McCartney’s Guide to #MeToo-era Flirting” appeared in a recent issue of Pop Mattershttps://www.popmatters.com/paul-mccartney-come-on-to-me-2608669994.html.

On October 5, Cyrus Cassells read at UT-San Antonio as part of the UTSA Creative Writing Reading Series. He’ll also read at the Texas Book Festival in Austin on October 28.