MISCELLANY – June 15, 2021

Elliott Brandsma, who graduated with a B.A. in English and Art from Texas State University in 2013, has been awarded the Dr. Herbert E. Harper, Jr. Scholarship from the San Antonio Area Foundation for the 2021-2022 academic year. The scholarship, which is renewable up to four years, will support Elliot’s doctoral studies in Scandinavian Literature and Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Nancy Wilson’s article, “Hettie Jones and Bonnie Bremser: Complicating Feminist and Beat Master Narratives,” has been published in the Journal of Feminist Scholarship.

John Blair has been named the 2021 recipient of the Rash Award in Poetry by Broad River Review.  His seventh book, The Art of Forgettingwill be released this August by Measure Press, and his eighth book, The Aphelion Elegieshas been accepted by Main Street Rag Press for release in 2022.

Cyrus Cassells was awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Activities. The award recognizes recipients’ significant contributions to their disciplines and to the intellectual life of Texas State University.

Scott Mogull’s article, “Technical Content Marketing Along the Technology Adoption Lifecycle,” was recently published in Communication Design Quarterly.

Susan Morrison’s poem, “Resurrection Fern,” was published by ISLE [Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment].

MATC graduate Meghalee Das’ article, “UX and the Online Classroom: Creating an Inclusive Experience for International and Non-Native, English-Speaking Students,” was published in the May/June issue of the Society for Technical Communication’s magazine, Intercom.

MATC student Rozelle Monroe’s article, “Leveraging Emotion Analytics: Augmenting DEI Efficacy in Approach and Sustainment,” appears in the May/June 2021 issue of the Society for Technical Communication’s magazine, Intercom.

MISCELLANY – MAY 28, 2021

Cyrus Cassells has been named the 2021 Texas Poet Laureate by the Texas State Legislature. The appointees for 2021 were selected by a legislative-appointed committee for the exceptional quality of their work and for their outstanding commitment to the arts in Texas. The 2021 appointees were formally announced through senate resolutions at the capitol on May 18th.

Aimee Roundtree is the recipient of the Mariel M. Muir Excellence in Mentoring Award for 2021. These awards are given annually to one faculty member and one staff member who demonstrate an exceptional commitment to assisting less experienced individuals in becoming more proficient in their professional activities.

The Texas State University System Board of Regents unanimously approved the motions to rename two residence halls on the San Marcos campus and name two unnamed streets on the Round Rock Campus after distinguished members of the Texas State family who are from the Black and Hispanic/Latinx communities. These recommendations include naming one of the unnamed roads on the Round Rock Campus Elvin Holt Drive, after Dr. Elvin Holt, the first Black professor in the Department of English, for his work in multicultural curriculum development.

Steve Wilson’s poems “Saraca Inima Me” and “Hello” appear in A Tether to This World: Stories & Poems About Recovery, from Main Street Rag Publishing. Steve will be one of four featured readers at the virtual book launch taking place via Zoom this evening. See details about tonight’s event here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfMI5NUMdFOa0TULRhJGdowl94FLmKHlw6-V3_eYCC70Ogyhw/viewform?fbzx=649879616519473957&fbclid=IwAR38K_XKFkUczqyOtwttxHV9Dm_xm3sJVbbj4RYyDHmohiyL8j5tHAtL288

Suparno Banerjee’s “An Introduction to Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008),” co-authored with Kevin C. Kyzer, was recently published in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Suparno’s review of Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee’s Final Frontiers: Science Fiction and Techno-Science in Non-Aligned India was published in Science Fiction Studies. 

Alan Schaefer recently presented “Fantasy, Dystopia, and Detective Instinct: Jess Franco’s Diabolical Dr. Z and Attack of the Robots” at Utopia & Dystopia: Conference on the Fantastic in Media Entertainment. His piece “‘I hear voices, like Joan of Arc’: Eddie Constantine’s Sixties Super-Spy Sendoffs” will appear on the Imagining the Impossible research blog.

MISCELLANY – May 17, 2021

John Blair has been named the winner of the 2021 Robert Frost Poetry Prize by the Robert Frost Foundation for his poem “IN THE TIN FACTORY.”

“The Spatial Imagination in the Humanities,” a virtual conference organized by Rob Tally as part of the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professorship in the Humanities project, will take place on May 20-21, 2021. The conference has been co-organized with the College of Liberal Arts, with MATC student Rachel Spradling and Dr. Aimee Roundtree. All students and faculty are welcome. Please register here: https://sc2021.wp.txstate.edu/registration-page/

Another Troy, the poetry book Susan Morrison edited (2020) of her mother’s verse, won the Gold Medal for the 2021 Human Relations Indie Book Awards in the category of Wisdom Poetry and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.

Eric Leake’s chapter “The Empathy Framework and Social Inclusion” was published in the Handbook of Social Inclusion (Springer).

MFA graduate Tomás Q. Morín’s new poem “New Year’s Eve” appears in The New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/magazine/poem-new-years-eve.html 

MFA fiction student Caleb Ozovehe Ajinomoh’s German translation of his short story “Rites Evasion Maneuvers” appears as “Grieving for Advanced Learners” in the newest issue of Literaturbote, out of Frankfurt. The English version was a finalist for last year’s Commonwealth Prize.

On May 11, Graeme Wend-Walker was the guest on KZSM’s “Bookmarked” with Priscilla Vance Leder, where he discussed his upcoming book on Russell Hoban.

Rob Tally was the keynote speaker for “Spatial Modernities: Mapping the Physical and Psychological World,” a symposium of the Centre for Modern Studies Postgraduate Forum, University of York, UK, on May 14, 2021. His talk was titled “The Utopia of the Mirror: Modern Reflections, Postmodern Spaces.” Rob Tally will give an invited talk, “Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Spatial Literary Studies,” at Ovidius University at Constanta, Romania, on May 24, 2021, via Zoom.

MISCELLANY – APRIL 30, 2021

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has elected Naomi Shihab Nye, Texas State University Professor of Creative Writing, as one of its newest members. She is among 250 people chosen by the American Academy this year and the first ever elected from Texas State.

Becky Jackson’s Self+Culture+Writing: Autoethnography for/as Writing Studies (co-edited with Jackie Grutsch McKinney) is forthcoming this August from Utah State University Press.

Texas State’s Alpha Chi National Honor Society has nominated lecturer Amanda Mixon as one of the Alpha Chi Favorite Professors for 2021.

MA Literature student Luise Noé was awarded the Chancellor’s Graduate Student Award and a teaching assistantship to support five years of study in the PhD in Literature & Cultural Theory Program at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Susan Morrison’s creative nonfiction essay, “Throbbing with Life,” has appeared in The Ekphrastic Reviewhttps://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/throbbing-with-life-by-susan-signe-morrison

Debra Monroe’s interview of Cassandra Lane, author of We Are Bridges, appears in Electric Literature.

MATC graduate Jennifer Johnson presented, “Making Digital Room for the Neurodivergent in Classes,” at TEDxTalks. The talk is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOksp3mKBI8

MFA fiction student Ali Riegel was selected as the 2021-22 Clark Writer-in-Residence.

In the editorial for the May 2021 issue of Technical Communication, Miriam Williams interviewed New York Times bestselling author, editor, and cultural critic Dr. Roxane Gay. Dr. Gay, who holds a PhD in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University, discussed the importance of technical communication in her work and her vision for the future of the discipline. Technical Communication is available here: https://www.stc.org/techcomm/

Soul Schillaci’s essay, “Walk The (Color) Line: Representations of ‘White Trash’ in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina and U.S. Race/Class Dynamics,” was selected through a blind review process as the best essay of the 2020 Texas State University Writing Center Essay Contest in the Upper-Level category.

Luke Merchant’s essay, “The Structure May Change, but the Heart Stays Stagnant: What the Seventeenth Century Plague and COVID-19 Pandemic Suggests About Us,” was selected through a blind review process as the best essay of the 2020 Texas State University Writing Center Essay Contest in the Sophomore category.

Kiera Kirk’s essay, “Strangers and Self-Esteem,” was selected through a blind review process as the best essay of the 2020 Texas State University Writing Center Essay Contest in the Freshman category.

MISCELLANY – APRIL 16, 2021

English major (and Outstanding Senior in English) Briana Gonzalez has been accepted to the University of Colorado’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Briana will begin studies as an MFA in Poetry student this fall.

Dan Lochman was asked to edit a special issue of Sidney Journal (38.2 [2020]), which has just been released. He contributed to the issue a brief preface and an essay, “‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia is for the body…’ and soul: Energeia and Enaction in Sidney’s Apology and Arcadia.” The topic of the special issue is energeia as the forcible agent of affect and cognition in narratives and in readers of works by Sidney and writers he influenced. The issue includes an article by former MA Literature student Jessie Herrada Nance (now teaching at Portland State University): “‘Making Good in Confusion’: Energeia and Kalendar’s Garden in Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia.”

MARC graduate Lea Colchado has been accepted to the University of Houston’s PhD in Literature, Rhetoric and Composition, and Pedagogy Program. Lea will begin studies in fall 2021 with full financial support for the five-year program. Lea thanked Drs. Geneva Gano, Becky Jackson, and Nancy Wilson “for their continuous guidance, fuerzas, mentorship, and unwavering belief in me.”

Geneva Gano published a dual book review of two recent scholarly biographies in the Cleveland Review of Books. Read “Writing Willa Cather” here: https://www.clereviewofbooks.com/home/melissa-j-homestead-daryl-w-palmer-willa-cacther-review-gano

English major Oscar Montes has been accepted to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and will begin studies as an MFA in Poetry student this fall.

MATC graduate Jenny Joy Van De Walle was promoted to Communications Lead for Texas State University’s IT Assistance Center. See advice and updates from Jenny on Texas State’s Division of Information Technology Blog: https://doit.wp.txstate.edu/author/jv1260/

B.A. in English graduate Langston Neuburger has been offered admission to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures Program and a Graduate College Fellowship Award, which covers tuition and includes a stipend.

MA Literature Program Graduate Assistant Amber Avila has been accepted to the Master of Professional Studies in Publishing program at George Washington University with a $5000 entrance scholarship.

English major Maddie Gummer has been accepted to the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and will begin studies as an MFA in Poetry student this fall.

Rebecca Bell-Metereau presented “Can Movies Save the Planet? Silkwood and Other Eco Warriors” on the “Ecocinemas and Local Interventions” at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference.

MATC graduate Allison Derton was promoted to Senior Technical Writer at Emerson Automation Solutions in Round Rock, Texas.

MA Literature student Austin Winn, who holds a Teaching Assistantship and is soon to graduate, has been accepted by the PhD in Literature program at University of North Texas.

MISCELLANY – April 1, 2021

Susan Morrison was recently honored by Texas State University with the title of University Distinguished Professor. This award honors individuals whose performance in teaching, research, and service have been exemplary and recognized at the state, national, and international levels. Dr. Morrison will retain the title for the duration of her service at Texas State. Dr. Morrison has also been nominated for consideration by the Texas State University System (TSUS) Board of Regents for the Regents’ Professor Award.

Susan Morrison’s article, “Insistent, Persistent, Resilient: The Negative Poetics of Patient Griselda,” has just appeared in Medieval Feminist Forum.

Katie Kapurch’s chapter, “The Beatles, Gender, and Sexuality: I Am He as You Are He as You Are Me,” is included in the edited collection, Fandom and the Beatles: The Act You’ve Known for All These Years, published by Oxford University Press (2021). For book details, see https://global.oup.com/academic/product/fandom-and-the-beatles-9780190917869?cc=us&lang=en&

Eric Leake’s chapter, “The Multiple Lives of News Stories: Civic Literacies and Rhetorical Transformations,” has been published in the freely available collection Literacy and Pedagogy in an Age of Misinformation and Disinformation by New City Community Press.

Whitney S. May’s article, “‘Powers of Their Own Which Mere “Modernity” Cannot Kill’: The Doppelgänger and Temporal Modernist Terror in Dracula,” has been published in the latest issue of Gothic Studies.

MARC student Elisa Serrano has been accepted into Penn State University’s PhD program in Curriculum and Instruction and awarded a research assistantship.

MARC student Delaina Bailey has been accepted into Texas Tech University’s PhD program in Technical Communication and Rhetoric.

A German translation of Texas State MFA student Caleb Ozovehe Ajinomoh’s short story “Rites Evasion Maneuvers” appears as “Grieving for Advanced Learners” in the newest issue of Literaturbote. The English version was a finalist for last year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

MARC graduate Manny Pina has successfully defended his dissertation in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University and has been hired as a tenure-track assistant professor at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi.

MARC student Sarah Rose Rosenbaum presented her paper “The Subversive Power of Shapeshifting: Trickster Ecofeminist Rhetorics” as part of the “Embodied, Material Texts” panel at the NeMLA conference.

Three poems by MFA student James Trask appear in the Windward Review and are available here: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/65332093/windward-review

Texas State was represented at the 42nd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts – held virtually this year from March 18 to 21 – by Suparno Banerjee (“Disaster and the Environment in 20th Century Indian Science Fiction”), Andrew Barton (“If You’re Not Scared of Death, How Can You Value Life?: Bridge Babies, Timefall Rain, and Eco-Horror in Death Stranding“), and Graeme Wend-Walker (“Children of the Night in a Sunburnt Country: Australian Vampires on Film”). Graeme Wend-Walker also read his short story, “Bangy.”

MISCELLANY – MARCH 5, 2021

The Department of English is pleased to announce that this year’s Outstanding Senior in English is Briana Gonzalez. The committee had a difficult choice, with so many students standing out for their academic accomplishments and their contributions to their communities. Thank you to all our students. Thank you to our faculty for their valuable input during this process.

The Department of English is pleased to announce that this year’s Outstanding Graduate Student in English is Nour Al Ghraowi. Nour’s poem “Truth is I would like to escape myself” appears in Poetry Magazine. You can read the poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/155504/truth-is-i-would-like-to-escape-myself

Porter House Review, the MFA program’s literary journal, was recently recognized by PEN America. Fiction contributor Mackenzie McGee’s “Re: Frankie,” originally published in the journal, has been named a winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and will be included in the Best Debut Stories 2021 anthology. See announcement here: https://pen.org/pen-dau-short-story-prize/

Leah Schwebel’s chapter “Trophee and Triumph in the Monk’s Tale” was recently published in Chaucer and Italian Culture (University of Wales Press), 2021.

Amanda North presented “Literary Gastronomy: Cultivating Communities around Food and Literature” and moderated “Food and Culture: Communities, Feasts, and Literature” at the 2021 Southwest Popular and American Culture Association conference, held digitally. Her poem “Rumination VII” will be published in the ninth issue of Sobotka Literary Magazine.

On Sunday, Feb. 28, Graeme Wend-Walker was the guest on KZSM’s Philosophy and Popular Music program, where he discussed Australian music. The program is hosted by Paul Wilson and supported by the Texas State Department of Philosophy.

Anne Winchell chaired a Pedagogy and Popular Culture panel at the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association conference on February 24, 2021. Anne also presented “Helping Students Engage in Discussion in the Fully Online Classroom.”

MFA Fiction graduate Lev Keltner’s flash story “Myth Fest” appears in Peach Maghttps://www.peachmgzn.com/lev-keltner

MISCELLANY – FEBRUARY 19, 2021

John Blair’s short story “Tickling the Dragon’s Tail” has been named the most recent winner of Big Sky, Small Prose Prize by the University of Montana’s literary magazine, Cutbank. The judge, Daryl Scroggins, wrote, “This is a brilliant work, perfectly orchestrated in its language and themes. I thank you for making it a finalist and giving me the chance to help in pressing it forward.”

Kathleen Peirce’s new collection of poems Lion’s Paw was released February 2nd from Miami University Press. A starred review in Publishers Weekly (www.publishersweekly.com/9781881163688 ) and a feature on the Poetry Society of America’s “In Their Own Words” site (https://poetrysociety.org/features/in-their-own-words/kathleen-peirce-on-this-way ) followed.

Whitney May’s chapter “Topophilic Perversions: Spectral Blackface and Fetishizing Sites of Monstrosity in American Dark Tourism” has been published in Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters (Rowman & Littlefield), edited by Natasha L. Mikles and Joseph P. Laycock.

Susan Morrison’s poem “Cathedral” was published in Taj Mahal Review.

Steph Grossman’s short story “Girl in the Forest of Fear” was a finalist for the 2020 CRAFT Elements Contest: Conflict. You can read the short story and an introduction by the editors in CRAFT Literaryhttps://www.craftliterary.com/2021/02/12/girl-forest-of-fear-steph-grossman/

MATC graduate Meghalee Das was selected as one of ten first-time presenter recipients of the 2021 Scholars for the Dream Travel Awards by the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Her article “Key Takeaways and Trends in Remote UX Research” appears in the latest issue of Intercom.

MFA Poetry student Anthony Bradley’s essay “The Alien Horror of Gregg Araki’s NOWHERE” was recently published in Certified Forgotten. You can read the essay here: https://certifiedforgotten.com/gregg-araki-nowhere/

MISCELLANY – FEBRUARY 01, 2021

Cecily Parks’s poem “December” was selected by Tracy K. Smith for Best American Poetry 2021, which will be published by Scribner later this year.

Susan Signe Morrison has had the following two articles published:

“Consent and Lemman in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Reeve’s Tale” in Notes & Queries. https://academic.oup.com/nq/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/notesj/gjaa187/6090160  and “The Body: Unstable, Gendered, Theorized” in A Cultural History of Comedy in the Middle Ages edited by Martha Bayless.

Ben Reed’s short story “The Interpretation of Dreams” has been published in The Adroit Journal. You can read the story here: https://theadroitjournal.org/issue-thirty-six/ben-reed-prose/

Anne Winchell’s chapter “Storytelling in Video Games” will appear in Teaching the Game: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Game Course Syllabi to be released in 2021.

Nancy Wilson and Connor Wilson were granted a $5,000 Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Online Educational Resources (OER) Course Development and Implementation Grant. Working with the Office of Distance Education, they will develop an English 1320 that uses OER resources, thereby eliminating textbook costs to the students. Once crafted, this course will serve as a model for other zero-textbook-cost writing courses.

MARC students presented at the 2020 CCCC Regional Conference at USC in December, which was held virtually. Hannah McKeating presented “The Lady’s Rhetoric Cookbook as a Model of Cultural Collaboration,” Elisa Serrano presented “The Multilingual Writing Classroom: Proposal for a New Introductory Writing Course,” and Lindsey Villalpando presented “Comunidad en la Frontera: Building Writing Communities through Pedagogy in U.S./Mexico Border Cities.”

The MA Literature Program congratulates Tyler Rhea (Area Exam Director Susan Morrison) and Brendan Dewell (Area Exam Director Geneva Gano), both of whom graduated in December 2020. The program welcomed 7 new MA Literature students this spring: Emily Adams, Jason Eisenmenger, Anna Elliott, Bryce Jeter, Kaylee Keeton, Animate Mazurek, and Charlotte Schmowski.

MISCELLANY – JANUARY 15, 2021

Laura Ellis-Lai has received a Texas State University Award for Excellence in Online Teaching for her summer 2020 Technical Writing course. Dr. Ellis-Lai will present “Student Engagement in a Time of Corona” at the 8th annual showcase of award winners on Tuesday, February 23, 2021. To attend this Zoom event, please RSVP at https://signup.txstate.edu/topics/1579-8th-annual-award-for-excellence-in-online-teaching-virtual-showcase

On December 23, Indolent Books published two of Steve Wilson’s poems — “Safety” and “On Uncertainty” — as part of their online feature, “Transition: Poems in the Afterglow,” which focuses on the period between the last election and the upcoming inauguration. The poems can be read here: https://www.indolentbooks.com/transition-poems-in-the-afterglow-12-23-20-steve-wilson/

Rob Tally’s article-length chapter, “Fredric Jameson (1934-),” appears in The Routledge Handbook of Marxism and Post-Marxism, edited by Alex Callinicos, Stathis Kouvelakis, Lucia Pradella (Routledge 2021).

Cecily Parks’ poems “A Private Well” and “Collected Typos” are featured in the latest issue of Poetry Northwest. https://www.poetrynw.org/winter-spring-2021/

Eric Leake’s essay “Implosions and Nostalgia in Las Vegas” was published in Intraspection: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture, and Style. The essay can be read here: https://sites.google.com/murraystate.edu/intraspection/home/all-issues/issue-3-2020/implosions-and-nostalgia

MATC graduates Samantha Casertano, Meghalee Das, John (Jack) McClellan, and Jenna Mount will present findings from research conducted in the program’s Editing the Professional Publication course at the 9th International Conference on Technical Communication. The presentation is titled, “Examining the Value of Technical Communication Graduate Degrees in Non-Academic Professions.” The virtual conference will be held on January 29th and hosted by Clillac-Arp Research Laboratory and Paris Diderot University.

MFA graduate Rob Madole has published a review of Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies in Ploughshares. https://blog.pshares.org/