Category: Miscellany Archive

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 Hypnopomp: https://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.

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 Studies: https://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.

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 Matters: https://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.

Meg Griffitts has had three poems accepted by pioneertown.

Octavio Pimentel has been named to the editorial board of Technical Communication Quarterly.

MA Literature graduate and Lecturer Sean Rachel Mardell will present “Systemic Colonization and the Criminal Caste in Orange is the New Black” at the South Central MLA meeting, to be held in San Antonio next month.

Autumn Hayes, MFA poetry graduate and Senior Lecturer, has a poem, “On Them,” in the latest issue of Storm Cellar; as well as an article, “The E-Racing of Meghan Markle,” in The Washington Spectator. Her workshop, “Using H5P Tools to Foster Higher-Order Thinking,” has also been accepted for the second annual H5P Conference in Melbourne, Australia, which will take place this December.

On September 14th and 15th, MA Literature graduate and Lecturer Shannon Shaw participated in the intensive interdisciplinary research start-up program, CoSearch, organized by the College of Fine Arts and Communication. Out of 22 research pitches, Shannon’s proposal, “Changing the Language of Sex,” was one of five finalists selected by vote to present at the Texas State Performing Arts Center. She is currently collaborating with colleagues Amanda Scott, Meg Griffitts, Whitney May, and Ali Saltzman to develop the project.

Anthony Bradley, current MFA poetry student, has a poem in the fall issue of Prairie Schooner.

MFA fiction student Ryan Lopez will present “Escaping Our Shared Illusions: A Style Analysis of ‘Jon’ by George Saunders” at “Reflections in the Funhouse Mirror,” a visual culture conference for graduate students, to be hosted by The Department of American Studies at Saint Louis University in late October.

Espacialidade, a Portuguese translation of Rob Tally’s 2013 book Spatiality, has just been published. Rob also has a busy speaking schedule over the coming weeks. Along with colleagues Katie Kapurch and Geneva Gano, he will take part in the College of Liberal Arts’ “Innovation Day” (organized by Aimee Roundtree) on September 24, 2018. He will serve as keynote speaker of the “Jornada Internacional de Estudos sobre o Espaço Literário” (International Study Days on Literary Space) conference in Viseu, Portugal, September 26, 2018; his speech, “Mapping Literature,” was video-recorded for presentation at the event, and he’ll conduct a Q&A session over Skype. Rob will present “The Spatial Turn in Literary Criticism,” at the Southeast Modern Language Association (SCMLA) conference in San Antonio, October 11-13, 2018; “Monstrous Accumulation: Topographies of Fear in the Age of Globalization,” at the Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts (SCLA) conference in The Woodlands, Texas, October 19, 2018; and “Charybdis: Migration, the Mediterranean, and the World We Live In,” at the Ninth Biennial Race, Place, and Ethnicity conference in Austin, Texas, October 24, 2018. Rob will serve as keynote speaker for the Central Texas chapter of the American Association of Teachers of French’s meeting in San Marcos, Texas, October 27, 2018, discussing “What is Geocriticism?” He will also be keynote speaker for the Symposium on the Geographic Approach to Language, Literature, and Culture, sponsored by the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China, on November 3, 2018. His address, “Geocriticism: Literary Studies after the Spatial Turn,” has been video-recorded for presentation at the event. He will also present “Homo Cartographicus,” at the World Humanities Forum in Busan, Korea, on October 31, 2018.

Graduate students and faculty are invited to “Coffee Night/Drop in” sessions this semester, in Flowers Hall 361. There will be coffee, tea, and snacks. Drop-ins will take place on the following dates: Wednesday Oct 10, 5:00-6:30; Tuesday November 13, 5-6:30; and Monday December 3, 5-6:30.

Kate McClancy presented “The Gender Game: Cold War Nostalgia and Women Spies” at the inaugural meeting of the Comics Studies Society, held at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana this past August.

A feature article on Naomi Shihab Nye was published by the University News Service: http://news.txstate.edu/featured-faculty/2018/naomi-shihab-nye.html.

Debra Monroe has signed a contract with textbook publisher Kendall Hunt to edit a teaching anthology tentatively titled Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. It will include her introductory essay on history as well as theory and craft. The book is slated for release in early 2020.

In July, Teya Rosenberg presented “‘Not in your time, indeed not in my time’: Educational Intent, Cultural Identity, and Global Influences in the Newfoundland Jack Picture Books” at the Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research in Wellington, New Zealand; and more recently, she spoke at the September meeting of PFLAG San Marcos about LGBTQ representations and issues in children’s and young adult literature.

On September 11, Susan Morrison taught a graduate seminar for Rice University, via Skype, on the topic of “Waste.”

Whitney May’s “Through the Cheval-Glass: The Doppelgänger and Temporal Modernist Terror in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” has been published in the summer issue of Supernatural Studies.

• In July, Flore Chevaillier presented “Hemingway, Death, and Intertextuality in Carole Maso’s AVA” at the XVIII International Hemingway Conference: “Hemingway in Paris.”

  Malvern Books (Austin) will host a Texas State Faculty reading with Debra Monroe, Naomi Shihab Nye and Cyrus Cassells on Sunday, September 23, at 1PM.

  Amanda Scott was named the 2018 Faculty Member of the Year for University Seminar. In addition to a plaque, she receives a $1,000 stipend. This year makes the second in a row that an English faculty member has received the award.

  Susan Morrison’s “Grendel’s Mother in Fascist Italy: Beowulf in a Catholic Youth Publication” appeared in International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA) 20.1 (2018).

  Steve Wilson’s latest collection of poetry, Lose to Find, was published this July. His poetry also appears in Last Call: The Anthology of Beer, Wine and Spirits Poetry, as well as in a limited-edition letterpress broadside published by Small Fires Press (New Orleans). On August 21, he joined MFA poetry graduate and Lecturer Vanessa Couto Johnson and MFA poetry graduate and ACC faculty member Prudence Arceneaux on KZSM radio for a poetry reading and discussion.

  Jennifer duBois has been awarded a Civitella Ranieri Writing Fellowship in the summer of 2020.

  Miriam Williams’ article, “Technologies of Disenfranchisement: Literacy Tests and Black Voters in the U.S. from 1890-1965″ (with Natasha Jones of the University of Central Florida) will be published in the Society of Technical Communication’s Journal, Technical Communication, in the fall 2018 Special Issue on Election Technologies. Her essay, “#BlackLivesMatter: Tweeting a Movement in Chronos and Kairos,” is included in Octavio Pimentel and Cruz Medina’s edited collection, which was recently published by Computers & Composition Digital Press.

  This fall, Trey Moody (MFA Poetry graduate, 2009; Lecturer, 2014-15) begins teaching as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of English at Creighton University in Omaha, where he has been teaching for the past two years as a Resident Assistant Professor of English. He will continue teaching undergraduate courses as well as graduate courses in Creighton’s MFA program in creative writing.

  Lecturer and MFA poetry graduate Vanessa Couto Johnson read at Malvern Books’ “Chap[book]s and Broad[side]s” event on August 17: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DOZiVaOS_E

Cecily Parks’ essay, “On Rewilding,” appears in the latest issue of Boston Review: http://bostonreview.net/poetry/cecily-parks-rewilding#.WzZZJrUXX24.facebook.

Small Fires Press (New Orleans) published a limited-edition broadside of Steve Wilson’s poem “Moksha” in July. His poetry appears in the new anthology, Last Call: The Anthology of Beer, Wine & Spirits Poetry, as well as in the 2019 Texas Poetry Calendar. His latest collection, Lose to Find, was published this summer.

Susan Morrison has been invited to participate in an exploratory seminar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The seminar is entitled “Close Encounters of the Fecal Kind” (August 23 & 24).

The special issue of Feminist Media Histories on comics that Kate McClancy guest-edited has come out, and includes an introduction from her as well as her article “Desperate Housewives: Murdering Gendered Nostalgia in Lady Killer.”

Leah Schwebel’s “The Pagan Suicides: Augustine and Inferno 13” appears in the latest issue of Medium Aevum.

Kathryn Ledbetter’s article, “The Life and Death of the Cuckoo” appears in the Summer 2018 issue of Victorian Periodicals Review. She also presented a paper titled “Edmund Yates and ‘What the World Says’: ‘Garnering the On Dits of the Day’” at the international conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, held in Victoria, British Columbia in July.

Racial Shorthand: Coded Discrimination Contested in Social Media, a collection of essays edited by Octavio Pimentel and Cruz Medina, was published in July by Computers & Composition Digital Press.

December 2010 graduate Christian Wallace’s profile of Myrtis Dightman, “The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo,” was the cover story of the July issue of Texas Monthly. It’s his first cover for the magazine and has been picked up by Longform and Longreads.

Dr. Prosper Begedou, who teaches at the University of Lome (Togo) and recently spent a year in the Department as a Fulbright Scholar working with Elvin Holt and Steve Wilson, wrote to express his university’s gratitude for a second shipment of books collected by several groups in the English Department: “Through this email, I would like to express, once again my gratitude for the second batch of books donated to the University of Lome. Today, the Director of the main library of the university (Dr. Komla M. Avono) received the books. Please extend our heartfelt thanks to Texas State University, the English Department and Sigma Tau Delta for their generosity. The University of Lome would love to see, one day, a faculty member from Texas State University here for some days to share their expertise with us. The students from the University of Lome, and especially those of the English Department, will take advantage of these books and their knowledge of American and British literature will be enhanced.

Assistant Professor Eric Leake’s essay “‘Should You Encounter’: The Social Conditions of Empathy” appears in the latest issue of Poroi: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention. Also, his interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jeffrey Gettlemen is reprinted in the paperback edition of Gettlemen’s memoir Love, Africa.

Rob Tally is editor of a “special focus” section of the latest issue of the American Book Review (Jan.-April 2018) on the topic of Critical Lives II, which contains 14 brief essays/reviews plus his “Introduction to Focus: A Life in Theory.” His essay “Swerve, Trope, Peripety: Turning Points in Criticism and Theory” appears in the March 2018 issue of The Journal of English Language and Literature.

At the June 8 meeting of the New England American Studies Association, held in Lowell, Massachusetts, Nancy Wilson presented “When the Default is White: Challenging Crevecoeur’s Melting-Pot America,” and Steve Wilson presented “An Irish Girl in the Contact Zone: ‘Only an Irish Girl!’ and the Perils of Transcendental Values for Women in the 19th Century.”

Karen Russell’s story, “Orange World,” appeared in the June 4 issue of The New Yorker.

Amanda North has an essay in Construction Literary Magazine‘s spring issue: “The Ruin of Madness.”

Leah Schwebel’s article, “The Pagan Suicides: Augustine and Inferno 13,” appears in Medium Aevum.

Geneva Gano has been named the Jesse H. and Mary Gibb Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies for 2018 to 2021. During her three-year appointment, Dr. Gano will convene a symposium on the influences of the Mexican Revolution on the development of U.S. modernism across the arts and a lecture series on women writers in the greater Southwest. In conjunction with The Wittliff Collections, Dr. Gano will help to establish further research on Chicana author Sandra Cisneros’ relationship to San Antonio and Texas. She is also developing a Study-in-America program that will take graduate and undergraduate students to Santa Fe and Taos to further their studies in the history and culture of New Mexico.

Please send future Miscellany items to your new/former Associate Chair, Steve Wilson, sw13@txstate.edu. Thank you!

Texas State alumna Terri Leclerq has received the prestigious 2018 Golden Pen Award, a national honor that goes to an outstanding writer about law. Terri’s most recent book, Prison Grievances (2013), is a graphic novel that is to help those in prison develop effective petitions and navigate grievances. As an award winner, she joins distinguished justices, academics, and writers such as Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times. Terri is a prior recipient of the Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Award and a founding member of the department’s Donor and Alumni Advisory Council. She received a BS in Education (English/Journalism) at Texas State in 1968 and an MA in English in 1970.

Congratulations to Professor John Blair, who has been named by President Trauth a University Distinguished Professor, one of Texas State’s most coveted faculty honors. This follows a number of other awards for his creative work, including most recently the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Wilda Herne Prize for Fiction, and the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry. As a University Distinguished Professor, Dr. Blair will receive a one-time $5,000 cash award, a commemorative medallion, and recognition during the fall convocation. Dr. Trauth is also nominating him for consideration by The Texas State University System (TSUS) Board of Regents for the Regents’ Professor Award, and will submit his portfolio to The TSUS office.

Professor Dan Lochman’s article “Textual Memory and the Problem of Coherence in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene” is just out in a special issue on Narrative and the Biocultural Turn (ed. Vittorio Gallese and Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski), in Costellazioni: Rivista de lingue e letterature (Volume 2, Number 5, [2018]: 147-80). At the end of March, he read the paper “Arthur’s Memory: Spontaneity and Deliberation in The Faerie Queene” at the New Orleans meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, where he also co-organized three panels on early modern cognition and affect.

Lecturer Daniel Keltner’s first novel Into That Good Night comes out June 5th. The book launch and reading is at Book People in Austin: https://www.facebook.com/events/1790494951254528/

Two poems by Professor Roger Jones have been published in Southern Poetry Anthology VIII: “The Bee Tree” and “Bait.” https://www.amazon.com/Southern-Poetry-Anthology-VIII-Texas/dp/1680030639

The Graduate Programs of the Department of English are pleased to announce the recipients of 2018 Graduate College Scholarships. We are very proud of the current and incoming graduate students who were successful in a competitive field of applicants. Please congratulate these fine folks who are in your classes or working with you and be ready to welcome and congratulate the incoming students who will join us this coming summer and fall.

Assistant Professor Geneva Gano has been named the Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies for 2018-2021. Liberal Arts Council noted that the proposal will make significant contributions to the work of the Center for the Study of the Southwest and will bring prestige and visibility to the Center. Dr. Gano will continue to teach courses in English but will devote part of her time to activities related to the Center and her research.

Retired Professor Priscilla Leder has a new hobby as a radio personality. She has started a two-hour show titled Bookmarked on the San Marcos community radio station KZSM.org. from 4-6 on Tuesdays. The station is only on-line now but eventually will be on the air. Priscilla co-hosts with Deborah Carter of the San Marcos Public Library, and their show includes reviews, interviews, and of course local news of interest to readers. Graeme Wend-Walker recently joined the show for a discussion about young adult literature. You can check out their Facebook page to learn more about the show.

Professor Robert T. Tally, Jr. will be a keynote speaker at an event called “Granfalloon: A Kurt Vonnegut Convergence,” sponsored by the Indiana University Arts & Humanities Council, to be held May 10-12 in Bloomington, Indiana. His talk is titled “Kurt Vonnegut, American: Granfalloonery and National Identity.” In other news, Rob’s essay “The Space of the Novel” appears in The Cambridge Companion to the Novel, edited Eric Bulson (Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 152–167).

Senior Lecturer Alan Schaefer presented a paper entitled “Draining Her Desire: Jess Franco’s Las Vampiras” at the Pop Culture Association National Conference in Indianapolis last month as part of the Vampire in Literature, Film, and Culture subject area.

Senior Lecturer Tomás Morin has accepted a position at Drew University as an Advanced Assistant Professor of Poetry and will be the Co-Director of the Creative Writing Emphasis. The LA Review of Books recently reviewed his book Patient Zero: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/second-acts-a-second-look-at-second-books-of-poetry-gabriel-fried-and-tomas-q-morin/#!

Humanities Texas has awarded $1,000 to the Children’s Literature Association for their annual meeting to be held at the Sheraton Gunter in San Antonio on June 28-30. Congratulations to the conference chair, Professor Marilynn Olson.

Lecturer Ben Reed’s paper “Technologies of Instant Amnesia” will be republished as a chapter in vol. 256 of Layman Poupard’s Short Story Criticism, edited by Lawrence Trudeau, which will focus on the short fiction of Kurt Vonnegut. Ben recently presented a paper on Breakfast of Champions at the annual NeMLA Convention in Pittsburgh. While there, Ben read an original short story titled “Angle & Distance,” which was inspired by the work of the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, and informed by that author’s visit to Texas State in October 2013. Finally, earlier this semester, Ben designed and led a six-week writing workshop for veterans facilitated through VSA, the State Organization on Arts and Disability, and funded by DVNF, the Disabled Veterans National Foundation. He looks forward to doing so again later this year.

Professor Pinfan Zhu presented his paper, “Well-Received Rhetorical Strategies as Demonstrated in the Speeches and Reports by Chinese Leaders” at the Annual International Conference of the International Organization of Social Science and Research on March 20. He was also recently invited to be on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Media and Communication Studies and currently serves as a member on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine by Hunan University, China.

The online journal Two Hawks Quarterly features a poem by Professor Steve Wilson, “Violently Sundered.” http://twohawksquarterly.com/2017/05/30/violently-sundered-steve-wilson/

MATC alumna Dr. Lonie McMichael recently founded Technodaptability, a company that trains clients to adapt to new technologies. On May 16th, Lonie will host a Society of Technical Communication (STC) webinar titled “What is Technological Adaptability?” The webinar is free to STC members at (https://www.stc.org/event/what-is-technological-adaptability/). Her book, Technological Adaptability: Learning Technology Quickly, is forthcoming.

MATC alumna Amber Rigney accepted a position as Chief Publishing Officer at Paxen Publishing in Melbourne, Florida. Amber provides strategic direction and leadership of Paxen Publishing’s library as well as the newly acquired Steck-Vaughn adult education library and SkillsTutor. She also manages content development of print and digital adult education products.

Lecturer Kamron Mehrinfar has been nominated as an Alpha Chi Favorite Professor for 2018.

Assistant Professor Cecily Parks’s poem “Girlhood” appears in the April 30 issue of The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/girlhood. In other news, Professor Parks has been named one of the Alpha Chi Favorite Professors for 2018.

Susan Morrison won Sigma Tau Delta’s Outstanding Professor Award, 2017-2018. Additionally, the book she edited of her mother’s diaries, Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America, has just been released as a paperback by Chicago Review Press.

Professor Robert Tally’s essay “The Space of the Novel” appears in The Cambridge Companion to the Novel, edited Eric Bulson (Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 152–167.

William Jensen’s story “All Ye Faithful” has been accepted for publication in Manzano Mountain Review.

MATC student Sarah Holdgrafer was recently promoted to Manager of the Self-Service & Content Team at ShipStation in Austin, Texas. Sarah and her team are responsible for all user-facing help documentation and internal support training.

Lecturer Autumn Hayes’s poem “On Them” has been accepted for publication in the summer issue of Storm Cellar, and her essay, “Black Panther’s Courageous Take On Basic Truths,” is now available in the April edition of The Washington Spectator.

MATC alumna Brooke Turner was recently recognized by Austin Woman magazine as a 2018 Woman’s Way Business Awards Finalist for Product Innovation. She is co-founder and CMO of Kwaddle, an Austin-based company described as “an online platform that provides access to high quality, out-of-school education and enrichment programs to help children thrive and reach their fullest potential.”

Lecturer Ashton Kamburoff was awarded a writing residency through the Vermont Studio Center. Four of his poems – “The Story,” “Capablanca & My Father,” “Water & Glycol,” and “22° Halo,” are forthcoming in the September issue of Softblow.

Emeritus Professor Miles Wilson will be reading from his latest book, Westwork: New and Selected Stories of the American West, at BookPeople in Austin on Tuesday, May 1 at 7:00 p.m. and at The Twig Book Shop in San Antonio on Tuesday, May 15 at 5:00 p.m.

Professor Cyrus Cassells was Chair of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry this year. He and his co-jurors David Baker (who served on this year’s Pulitzer jury) and Monica Youn (who also served as the chair of the National Book Award in Poetry) read close to a hundred books. In a ceremony at USC on Friday, Cyrus presented the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry to Patricia Smith and wrote the citation for her book Incendiary Art: “In her most powerful, impassioned, and masterly book to date, Patricia Smith bears witness to the harrowing legacy of Emmett Till and to ongoing crises of chronic bigotry and brutality with unerring craft and crusading urgency. The intrepid, at-the-ready poems of Incendiary Art address African American forbearance and sorrow with a phoenix-like prowess and grace, reaffirming Patricia Smith’s stature as one of America’s most indispensable poets.” Patricia’s book was also named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize last Monday and has also won the NAACP award and the Kingsley Tufts Award.

In other news for Professor Cassells, his manuscript, Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas will be published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in a bi-lingual Catalan/English edition in the spring of 2019

As Discipline Representative for Rhetoric, Professor Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler organized four panels for the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in New Orleans. She was also part of the RSA Executive Council and delivered a paper titled “The Politics of Invention: Milton’s Turn to Logic.” In April, Elizabeth presented a paper at the annual South Central Renaissance Conference in Atlanta, “Revision as Invention: Ramus, Milton, and ‘A Masque.’”

Senior Lecturer Chris Margrave will be presenting his paper “Time is a Necessary Illusion: Climate Change, Abstract Minimalism, and Buddhist Perspectives of Impermanence” at the Temporal Belongings Conference taking place this June in Edinburgh, Scotland.