Uncategorized – Department of English

October 9, 2023hao39 No Comments

Reyes Ramirez

Reyes Ramirez (he/him) is a first-generation Houstonian of Salvadoran and Mexican descent, a rich cultural heritage that features prominently in his equally diverse corpus of published poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, art criticism, and reviews. Reyes received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from the University of Houston where he studied political science, creative writing, and phronesis. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University with a focus on fiction and cognates in film and literature. During his program at Texas State, Reyes was a writing center consultant, co-editor for Front Porch Journal, an IA for survey literature courses, and a TA for college writing courses I-II.

After graduating from Texas State, Reyes took his MFA back to his hometown where he has lent his expertise towards enriching his community through his involvement with a nonprofit organization that brings art education to children, a nonprofit experimental and progressive art studio and gallery, and a nonprofit organization focused on empowering artists and connecting communities.

“Houston is important to my work because it is so easy to pack any amount of the absurd and the serious together here. It is one of the largest and most diverse cities in America that is blue in a red state that must contend with its past and present as a metropolis in the South, the Borderlands, the Gulf Coast, etc. … The possibilities for mixing languages, stories, and histories are endless here.”

Crafting stories and poetry from a unique blend of histories both real and imagined is certainly a strong suit for Reyes who has a page’s worth of grants, honors, fellowships and awards under his belt to include being a finalist for the New York Public Library’s 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award for his collection of short stories in The Book of Wanderers. While most finalists were represented by Big 5 publishers and/or agents, Reyes was representing an independent university press from Arizona, “which is all to say that the Young Lions Fiction Award put my book in conversation with some incredibly talented people.” His newest book, El Rey of Gold Teeth, is a debut collection of poetry that navigates the relationship between form and language through subversion, marginalized voices, and rerouted histories: “If my first book, The Book of Wanderers, plays with genre and the architecture of a narrative and/or story using my languages, then El Rey of Gold Teeth plays with those languages at the atomic level.”

While Reyes is primarily a writer, he finds considerable inspiration from his work in editing, curating, organizing, and teaching: “those practices force me to put my writing in conversation with communities, histories, and reality. What use is my writing if it cannot be understood by the communities I want to speak with, who I want to grow with from my adventures in language?” Reyes has taught creative writing at the grade school level; he has been a faculty tutor and workshop instructor; he has been involved on many editorial teams; and he has assisted or directed in the curation and organization of several visual and performance art projects. One of his projects includes an ongoing virtual exhibition The Houston Artist Speaks Through Grids for which he was recognized as a 2021 Interchange Artist Grant Fellow.

Reyes is currently working on a collection of personal essays that explore “a grander consciousness” through pop culture, disasters, nationhood, and more; moreover, there is a novel set in Houston in the works!

– Kandi Pomeroy, MARC Student

June 23, 2023hao39 No Comments

Meghalee Das

Meghalee Das is no stranger to higher education. After Meghalee completed a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees, she decided to pursue a PhD in Technical Communication at Texas Tech University. One of her educational stops on her academic journey was the MATC program at Texas State. As an international student, Meghalee is now an emerging academic whose research interests include intercultural communication, user experience (UX), and usability testing. Her experience and education have contributed to her professional accomplishments as a published author and an insightful researcher.

Originally from India, Meghalee worked as a feature writer and newspaper editor in New Delhi, India before she enrolled at Texas State. Initially, she chose to continue her education to build on her existing skills and knowledge as a business journalist through an MBA program. Meghalee notes that she wanted to use her time in the United States constructively and gain valuable life experiences. Therefore, Meghalee opted to complete the MBA program at Texas State because it was the right fit for her, “After visiting some universities and applying there, I was selected by the MBA program at Texas State, which was favorable in terms of location, tuition, and curriculum.” Following her MBA, Meghalee wanted to continue her education. She says, “A master’s degree in Technical Communication was the perfect choice because I have a background in English, journalism, and business communication. And after such a great experience with Texas State for my MBA, it was a natural choice for me to do my MATC [at Texas State] too, which has a great Technical Communication program.”

Currently, Meghalee immerses herself in the world of academia as a researcher, graduate part-time instructor, and PhD student of Technical Communication at Texas Tech University. While Meghalee finishes her PhD, she co-authors books; researches intercultural technical communication, UX, usability testing, and remote collaboration and instruction; advocates for students as a member of the First-Year Writing Program Committee and a Teaching Effectiveness And Career enHancement (TEACH) fellow; and manages an introduction to technical communication course as a graduate instructor. Meghalee’s ongoing research often explores the intersection between technology and education. A few of Meghalee’s projects investigate cultural diversity in teaching multimodal assignments, user-centered approach to teaching international students online, remote UX research during COVID-19, and usability testing websites like the library and the International Office at Texas Tech University. Meghalee credits her research skills to her work experience as a journalist in India, “Researching for a news story was my favorite part of being a journalist, and although academic research uses different sources, the spirit is the same, and I leverage those experiences in my current projects.” To learn more about Meghalee’s work, you can find some of her most recent publications in prestigious technical communication magazines such as Intercom by the Society for Technical Communication and professional books such as Professionalizing Multimodal Composition: Faculty and Institutional Initiatives.

– Delainey Alexander, MATC student

November 1, 2021Danny Williams No Comments

miscellany – November 1, 2021

Aimee Roundtree’s “Ethics and Facial Recognition Technology: An Integrative Review” was published in IEEE’s 2021 3rd World Symposium on Artificial Intelligence (WSAI). Aimee will serve as keynote speaker at the 11th Annual Symposium on Communicating Complex Information.

MFA poetry student Fernando Izaguirre’s new poem “Abdomen” appears in New York Quarterly.

Amanda Scott was interviewed about Porter House Review by Becky Tuch, curator of the Lit Mag News Roundup. The interview is part of Becky Tuch’s editor series.

The Chinese translation of Rob Tally’s book Spatiality has been published by Peking University Press in Beijing. It was translated by Dr. Fang Ying, a professor at Zhejiang Gongshang University, who was a visiting scholar in Texas State’s Department of English in 2018. Rob recently co-organized the annual conference of the Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts (SCLA), whose theme was “Spaces,” which took place October 14-16, 2021, in Austin. At the conference Rob presented a paper, “The Heterotopian Enclave,” and was elected Vice-President of the SCLA. Rob will be the keynote speaker at the 4th International Symposium on Sea Literature and Culture, hosted by the University of Ningbo, and his article, “‘Don’t the great tales never end?’: Tolkien, History, and the Desire Called Marx,” appears in the current issue of the Journal of English Language and Literature.

Three poems by Vanessa Couto Johnson appear in The Collidescope and one poem in Club Plum Literary Journal. The Account informed Vanessa that her essay “my powerlifted Body” has been nominated for Best of the Net.

February 1, 2021Corey

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.

September 14, 2020mjr100 No Comments

Miscellany – Sept. 1, 2020

Geneva Gano’s book The Little Art Colony and US Modernism will be published by Edinburgh University Press this month.

Aimee Roundtree is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Generation AI Project, which is helping to create industry guidelines, competitions, and standards for how artificial intelligence is tested and deployed in products for children.

Katie Kapurch interviewed Blues Hall of Fame inductee, Bettye LaVette, about her new album Blackbirds for an article published on CultureSonar: https://www.culturesonar.com/arising-to-this-moment-bettye-lavettes-blackbirds/

The full interview will appear in Dr. Kapurch’s forthcoming NEH-supported book, Blackbird Singing: Black America Remixes the Beatles (Penn State University Press).

MFA student Chisom Ogoke is the recipient of the Graduate Endowed Fellowship in Liberal Arts. The scholarship is awarded to full-time College of Liberal Arts graduate students with demonstrated academic ability, community service or engagement, and character.

MFA student Sarah Huerta’s chapbook of poems “The Things We Bring with Us: Travel Poems” will be published with Headmistress Press in 2021. It was a finalist for their Charlotte Mew Chapbook Contest.

Susan Morrison was interviewed by American Public Media for The Water Main’s podcast called “In Deep.” Her episode about excrement in the Middle Ages and the Great Stink of the Victorian Period, “Dirty Water,” can be heard here: https://www.indeep.org/episode/2020/08/05/dirty-water

An excerpt from Steph Grossman’s novel-in-progress was shortlisted for The Masters Review’s 2020 Flash Fiction Contest. Her entry is one of fifteen pieces from which judge Sherrie Flick will choose the three contest finalists. https://mastersreview.com/2020-flash-fiction-contest-shortlist/

June 30, 2020kaf124 No Comments

Nita Novianti

“Every day I walked to campus I had to pass the river, the beautiful river, wearing my hijab. In the summertime, people would be sunbathing in bikinis. And here I was, walking among them fully covered head-to-toe, but nobody said anything.” With these thoughts, Texas State Alumna Nita Novianti reflects on her time at Texas State as a graduate student in the MA Literature program, expressing that her memories are of the kindness and acceptance that have extended beyond her time in Flowers Hall. From her current home on the island of Tasmania, she says, “learning [at Texas State] gave [her] so many invaluable experiences,” and that even when she felt like “an alien in the fields of bikinis,” she was reminded of how welcome she was.

Before walking her kids to school on an April morning earlier this year, Novianti relayed these fond and powerful memories from her experience studying at Texas State, while her children laughed and played behind her. She had been awake since the early hours of the morning, completing work on her Ph.D. in Education with a focus on teaching critical literacy through fairytales. Studying at the University of Tasmania, Novianti explains that the roles she balances each day — “a Ph.D. student, a mother to two children, a wife, a daughter, a lecturer for [her] University in Indonesia, and also a translator,” embody the global journey she has taken through her study of literatures in English.

After earning an undergraduate English degree from the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (Indonesia University of Education) (her home country), she enrolled in Texas State’s graduate MA Literature program after being awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to support her studies. Her time at Texas State was her first time abroad, so choosing the right program to enroll in for her 2-year Fulbright Scholarship was important. Of her first experience corresponding with the English Department, Novianti fondly remembers that, after receiving a personal response – rather than an automated reply – to an email she sent asking about the program, she immediately thought, “I need to go there.”

Among the scholarly interests she explored at Texas State are postcolonialism and feminist literature, interests she attributes to her “background as a woman from a Southeast Asian country that was one of the colonized nations in Asia; I feel like this literature represents who I am.” She also notes the influence her children have had on her work, “I also love children’s literature, especially since I gave birth to my two beautiful children.” Initially, she says, children’s literature was not a topic she was particularly interested in, but “now [she is] in love with it.” Today, her interest in children’s literature is her main research focus for her current studies toward the Ph.D..

During her Master’s degree, she was able to explore her interests as well as investigate new ones. Realizing English literature was “even wider in scope than I thought,” she lists Chicanx and Native American literatures as examples of types of new texts she was exposed to at Texas State: “I thought [English Literature] was just, you know, canonized, white, male literature. I came to realize it is beyond that, so I felt enlightened in so many ways.” Expanding her exploration of English Literature with the Department’s faculty also brought useful challenges to the way she teaches, writes, and reads; she recalls in particular the support of several professors, including Steve Wilson, Robin Cohen, Nancy Wilson, Paul Cohen, Nancy Grayson, Daniel Lochman, and Rebecca Bell-Metereau.

Since graduating with her MA Literature degree in 2010, Novianti had the opportunity to discover a passion for teaching at the university level, using her graduate work to secure a Lecturer position at the Indonesia University of Education, where she was the first English Lecturer to hold an M.A. in literature. She notes, “many of the Lecturers graduated after studying English education, so I felt like it was a blessing.” She also works to share her passion for reading and the inspiration she gets from it by posting read-along videos to YouTube. Starting as an activity shared with her children, her videos allow her to share her storytelling and “the joy of reading” with as many people as she can. Maintaining the YouTube channel and her personal blog have since become some of her favorite hobbies.

Now living off the coast of the Australian mainland, she continues her global journey, as well as her study of literature: “It’s beautiful here…. I really like it. It kind of reminds me of Texas; the people are so bubbly here.” While maintaining her many roles, Novianti continues down the long road to her Ph.D. work, sharing that many of the skills she gained and experiences she had at Texas State were invaluable for success on the path she is now traveling.

– Kennedy Farrell, English Major

March 5, 2020mjr100 No Comments

Miscellany – March 4, 2020

Whitney May’s essay, “The Technology of Anguish: (Re)Imagining Post-9/11 Trauma in the Fantasy Universes of Tamora Pierce,” has been published in the edited collection Displaced: Literature of Indigeneity, Migration, and Trauma, from Routledge. The collection is part of their “Studies in Contemporary Literature” series. Whitney recently participated as a panelist at the Common Experience event “The Truth About Urban Myths and Legends,” a roundtable discussion between Texas State students and scholars of folklore at the university.

Vanessa Couto Johnson will be a reader at the AWP 2020 Offsite joint event of Forklift, Ohio; Rinky Dink Press; and Slope Editions, held at Bar 1919 on Thursday, March 5 from 9-11 p.m. She is also scheduled for author signings at the AWP Bookfair at Slope Editions’ table (T2036) on Saturday, March 7 from 12:30-2:00 p.m.

MFA fiction student Brady Brickner-Wood published a review of Emily Nemens’ debut novel, The Cactus League, in Harvard Review. Her short story, “Shrine Room,” will appear in Bellevue Literary Review‘s spring issue.

Katie Kapurch published “The Beatles, Fashion, and Cultural Iconography,” a chapter in Kenneth Womack’s new collection, The Beatles in Context. The book is part of Cambridge University Press’s “Composers in Context” series and explores wide-ranging aspects of the Beatles’ artistry.

Kathleen Peirce’s new poetry manuscript, Lion’s Paw, will be published by Miami University Press.

Cyrus Cassells and Naomi Shihab Nye will receive awards at this year’s meeting of the Texas Institute of Letters: Cyrus’ Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas will receive The Souerette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation of a Book, and Naomi’s The Tiny Journalist will receive The Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry.

Assistant Professor Cecily Parks has been named Sigma Tau Delta Professor of the Year. Her poem “Nasturtiums” appears in the latest issue of wildness at https://readwildness.com/21/.

Ross Feeler’s short story “Parisian Honeymoon,” was published in Electric Literature‘s Recommended Reading, with an introduction by Brandon Taylor: <https://electricliterature.com/parisian-honeymoon-ross-feeler/>

MARC student Lea Colchado’s poems “Ausencia” and “Sundays” have been accepted for publication in Boundless: The Anthology of the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival.

Dean of the Graduate College Dr. Andrea Golato reports that Dr. Debra Monroe, faculty member in the Department of English, is the recipient of the 2019–2020 Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Outstanding Mentor Award. Since more than 200 graduate colleges belong to CSGS, the competition for this award is quite fierce and being selected is a very special honor. The Graduate College nominated Dr. Monroe, who was also the recipient of the 2019-2020 Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award, for her outstanding work with countless Master’s students in the Creative Writing MFA program. In particular, the committee recognized her tireless efforts to work closely with both students and alumni and help them publish their creative works as award-winning books and stories in high-profile venues. Through her efforts, she has greatly enhanced the academic and professional pursuits of her students while also attracting top-quality applicants to the Creative Writing Program at Texas State. The Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Outstanding Mentor Award will be bestowed upon Dr. Monroe next Weekend at the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools Annual Meeting. She will receive a monetary award and a very nice plaque.

Kitty Ledbetter’s article, “The Women’s Press,” has just been published in Volume 2 of the Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, a three-volume history that offers a definitive account of newspaper and periodical press activity across Britain and Ireland from 1650 to the present day.

November 19, 2019cah312 No Comments

Miscellany – May 11, 2016

Congratulations:

The following candidates from the Department of English for tenure and/or promotion in 2015-2016 have received letters of approval from the Provost, subject to final approval by the Board of Regents at a meeting later this spring: Suparno Banerjee, Joe Falocco, and Scott Mogull have received the Provost’s approval for tenure and promotion to associate professor; Octavio Pimentel and Pinfan Zhu have received the Provost’s approval for promotion from associate to full professor.

William Jensen’s latest story, “Come Again Another Day,” will be included in the anthology Texas Weather, to be published by Lamar University Press.

“El Ensayo: Latin@s Writing About Writing,” an essay by Nancy Wilson, Rebecca Jackson and recent English graduate Valerie Vera, will appear in Next Steps: New Directions for / in Writing About Writing, due out early next year from Utah State University Press.

Cecily Parks’ poem “Hurricane Song” has been selected for the Pushcart Prize, and will appear in The Pushcart Prize XLI: Best of the Small Presses this fall.

Congratulations to the faculty hired for the department’s five new Senior Lecturer positions. Their duties will include teaching undergraduate Technical Communication classes and offering service to the department and university: Laura Ellis-Lai, Chris Margrave, Sean Rose, Alan Schaefer, and Lauren Schiely.

Karen Wood writes that her daughter Rosalie Evelyn Wood, newest member of the Wood family, was born on April 16th.

November 19, 2019mjr100 No Comments

Miscellany – 4 September 2015

Congratulations:

Allan Chavkin published “Looking at Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman through the Lens of Interpersonal Acceptance and Rejection Theory and Family Systems Theory” in the Spring 2015 issue of the Arthur Miller Journal. He presented “Bellow’s Death Comedy in an Early Draft of Henderson the Rain King” at the American Literature Association Annual Conference, held this past May in Boston.

Octavio Pimentel’s book, Historias De ‘Exito within Mexican Comunities: Silenced Voices, in now out from Palgrave Macmillan. His paper “Opening the Gateway: The Power of Dual Language Composition Courses” has been accepted for presentation at the CCCC conference in Houston next spring; and “#RacistTweets: A Critical Analysis of the Ongoing Racism in Social Media” has been accepted for presentation at AESA 2015, to be held in San Antonio. In addition, he has agreed to a one-year term as a member of the 2016 National CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Awards Selection Committee, which recognizes outstanding books and articles in technical and scientific communication in six categories (best book, best original collection of essays, best article reporting qualitative or quantitative research, best article reporting historical research or textual studies, best article on philosophy or theory, and best article on pedagogy or curriculum).

Alan Schaefer’s essay “Reframing a Portrait: Flann O’Brien’s Interrogation of the Artist in ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’” will appear this winter in New Critical Perspectives on Franco-Irish Relations, volume 68 of the Reimagining Ireland series (Peter Lang International Academic Publisher).

In June, Susan Hanson presented “From Matagorda to Mad Island” at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment conference, held at the University of Idaho. In July, her photograph “At the Koi Pond” was one of 60, out of more than 750 submissions, chosen for a juried exhibit at A Smith Gallery in Johnson City. Also in June, two of her underwater photos from the San Marcos River were selected for the 11th Annual Naturescapes Exhibition at the San Marcos Activity Center Walkers’ Gallery. The exhibit will remain up until Sept. 11.

Rob Tally’s article, “The Geopolitical Aesthetic of Middle-earth: Tolkien, Cinema, and Literary Cartography,” translated into Russian by Arja Rosenholm, has now come out in her edited collection of essays, Topographies of Popular Culture(Moscow: New Literary Observer Books, 2015). In Russian, his article is titled “Геополитическая эстетика Средиземья: Толкиен, кино и литературная картография,” and the book information is here: http://www.nlobooks.ru/node/6226.

MATC faculty Scott Mogull and Deb Balzhiser co-authored “Pharmaceutical Companies are Writing the Script for Health Consumerism,” published in the August 2015 issue of Communication Design Quarterly as part of a special issue on medical rhetoric.

Marilynn Olson’s “John Ruskin and the Mutual Influences of Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde” appears in Children’s Literature and the European Avant-Garde. She also presented at two summer conferences: “Without Names: Defining Childhood as Audience for Pirate Tales,” at the International Research Society in Children’s Literature conference, held in Worcester, England this past August; and in June, “Billy Whiskers: Mrs. Montgomery Defines Freedom for Young America,” at the Children’s Literature Association International Meeting, held in Richmond, VA.

November 19, 2019mjr100 No Comments

Miscellany – August 28, 2015

Congratulations:

At the 2015 College of Liberal Arts Convocation, the following English faculty were recognized with awards: Kitty Ledbetter received a Presidential Distinction Award for Teaching, Rob Tally received a Presidential Distinction Award for Scholarly/Creative Activity, Steve Wilson received a Presidential Distinction Award for Service, and Kathleen McClancy received a College Achievement Award for Teaching.

Wendy Shan Wen, Professor and Vice Dean in the College of Foreign Studies at South China Agricultural University, is spending the 2015-16 academic year as a Visiting Research Scholar. Professor Wen will work with Steve Wilson.

On Wednesday, August 12, Stephanie Noll raised over $500 and collected several boxes of books for Old Books for New Teachers, her project that supports first-year teachers by helping them build classroom libraries. The fundraiser was a part of Five Things, a reading series that takes place every other month in Austin.

Benjamin Reed’s essay, “Technologies of Instant Amnesia: Teaching Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron’ to the Millennial Generation,” was published in the Spring 2015 issue of Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice: http://www.cpcc.edu/taltp/spring-2015-8-1 [archived].

Kitty Ledbetter presented her paper,“’Five O’Clock Tea’ and Dickens’ Young Man: Edmund Yates as Columnist for The Queen,” at the annual conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, held in Ghent, Belgium on July 10. In addition, she has been appointed Assistant Director of Faculty Development for Texas State: her duties will be to coordinate the New Tenure Track Faculty Orientation each fall and the Program for Excellence in Teaching and Learning events throughout the academic year.

Katie Kapurch’s article, “Rapunzel Loves Merida: Melodramatic Expressions of Lesbian Girlhood and Teen Romance in Tangled, Brave, and Femslash,” appears in the Journal of Lesbian Studies.

Steve Wilson’s poem “Selections from a Sketchbook of Birds” will appear in the fall issue of Borderlands.