Month: November 2020

Suparno Banerjee’s book Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybriditywas recently published by University of Wales Press. His review of Glyn Morgan and C. Palmer-Patel’sSideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction(2019), “Examining Alternate Histories,” appears in Science Fiction Studies. He also presented a paper “Indian Science Fiction and the Politics of Eutopia” at South West Conference for Asian Studies, Virtual Conference, October 23-24, 2020, which was originally scheduled to take place at Texas State University.

Geneva M. Gano presented the keynote address at the Brandeis Novel Symposium on Willa Cather’s 1925 novel, The Professor’s House. Her talk was titled, “Adventurers in the Land of Enchantment: Ashtrays, Old Pots, and ‘Something Else.’”

Jon Marc Smith was recently interviewed about his novel Make Them Cry, co-written with Smith Henderson. The interview appears in The Big Thrill: https://www.thebigthrill.org/2020/10/debut-spotlight-smith-henderson-and-jon-marc-smith/

Susan Morrison’s article, “Slow Practice as Ethical Aesthetics: The Ecocritical Strategy of Patience in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale,” has just appeared in the Special Issue: 2020 Ecocriticism: In Europe and Beyond; 10^th Year Anniversary Issue. Ecozon@ (2020): https://ecozona.eu/article/view/3453

Eric Leake’s co-authored chapter “The Stylized Portrayal of the Writing Life in Spike Jonze’s Her” was published in Style and the Future of Composition Studies (Utah State University Press).

M.A. Literature graduate Sirsha Nandi presented “Beyond Binary: Violence of the Spaces in between in Arundhati Roy‘s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” at South West Conference for Asian Studies. Sirsha is pursuing a PhD in English at Texas A&M.

 Recent English graduate Anika Adams accepted a virtual editorial internship position with Harlequin Enterprises publishing company, a division of Harper Collins. Out of 1,745 applicants, six interns were selected. Anika was one of the two applicants selected from the United States.

Cyrus Cassells has been nominated as a candidate for Texas State Artist-Poet Laureate. This designation is the highest designation that the Texas Legislature gives in the arts.

English major Paloma Quevedo’s article “Turning Food Into Home Remedies Is My Love Language” was recently published in Bon Appétit Magazine: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/turning-food-into-home-remedies

Paloma credits Dan Price’s technical writing class for giving her the confidence to submit the piece. She is currently working on another article for Bon Appétit.

MFA Fiction student Nkiacha Atemnkeng’s article, “‘Try again next time’: My Three Visa Rejections,” is featured in The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/try-again-next-time-my-three-visa-rejections?fbclid=IwAR1TouauYBNoAIUcyx6ggliQc-kBaQ0xrFY_Hq1Ik6vbMs-BNXtPR3jc7OI

Susan Signe Morrison’s article, “What it was like voting as an American in Germany right before the Berlin Wall fell,” has just appeared in The Local.de, Germany’s News in English. “In a time when US absentee ballot signatures are being questioned, author Susan Signe Morrison remembers the 1988 election and a vexed incident of signature recognition.” It can be found here: https://www.thelocal.de/20201029/what-it-was-like-voting-as-an-american-in-germany-right-before-the-berlin-wall-fell?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter. Contact Susan for a copy of the article if you cannot access it. Her article, “‘[A]n Exterior Air of Pilgrimage’: The Resilience of Pilgrimage Ecopoetics and Slow Travel from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road,” was recently published in Humanities: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/4/117

Graeme Wend-Walker’s “Children of the Night in a Sunburnt Country: Aristocrats and Outback Vampires” is lead chapter in a new volume from McFarland, Vampire Films Around the World: Essays on the Cinematic Undead of Sixteen Cultures.

Steve Wilson’s poetry appears in the new collection, Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast, out this week from Lamar University Literary Press.

Eric Leake attended a virtual discussion with students at Hunter College, where his article “Empathizer-in-Chief: The Promotion and Performance of Empathy in the Speeches of Barack Obama” was selected as the common reading for first-year writing courses this semester.

Allan Chavkin’s “Saul Bellow and Chicago” is forthcoming in 2021 in the print version of Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. It is currently available online here: https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_175-1

Miriam Williams has accepted an invitation to serve on The Ohio State University’s Department of Engineering Education Advisory Board. In October, she participated in a virtual panel discussion at the University of Houston-Downtown’s Biannual Forum on Plain English. In November, she will participate in a virtual panel discussion on plain language at the National Communication Association’s 106th Annual Convention.

MFA Fiction student Taylor Kirby’s poem “Synonym” was recently published in Pidgeonholes: http://pidgeonholes.com/2020/10/synonym/

Retired Professor Paul Cohen has recently published “Weatherman: Bob Dylan and the Wind” in Isis. He also published “The Latest Event in the History of the Novel” and “Theodora’s Complaint: Portraiture and Iconoclasm in Recent Fiction,” both in The Fortnightly Review. See here: https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2020/07/latest-event-history-novel/ and https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2020/10/portraiture-iconoclasm-fiction-new/