Department of English Newsletter September 2017

Upcoming Department Events

Sep
7
3:00 pm
Between Avery and Oldfather
Sep
10
6:30 pm
Sep
13
2:00 pm
Sep
25
1:00 pm
Sep
26
3:30 pm
Sep
28
5:30 pm

Publications & Acceptances

Grace Bauer's poems "Note from the Imaginary Daughter" and "Great Plains Prayer" appear in Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology 1867-2017. "Lament" and "Be/Attitude" appear in the latest issue of RE:AL: Regarding Arts & Literature, and "Still Life as Oxymoron," from her latest collection MEAN/TIME, was featured on Poetry Daily. Grace's co-edited anthology Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse is due out any day now from Lost Horse Press. Local contributors will be reading from the anthology at UNL in October as part of our Creative Writing Month events.

Crystal Bock Thiessen's international conference presentation report, "Photography in ELT: Engage, Inspire, Create, Learn" was published on TESOL International's Video and Digital Media Newsletter.

James (Jaime) Brunton's article Melodrama, Masochism, and Biopolitical Encounters in The Fosters was published in Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

Mark Ruffalo as the HulkWheeler Winston Dixon published the following:

  • a lengthy review of "Independent Filmmaking Around the Globe" edited by Doris Baltruschat and Mary P. Erickson, in the University of Toronto Quarterly 86.3 (Summer 2017): 268 – 270.
  • a review of "Live Cinema and Its Techniques" by Francis Ford Coppola, in Library Journal June 8, 2017.
  • "Budd Boetticher: The Last Hollywood Rebel," Senses of Cinema 83 (June 2017).
  • "‘No One Can Kill Me’: The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond," Senses of Cinema 83 (June, 2017).
  • "Phil Karlson: Forgotten Master of Film Noir," Senses of Cinema 83 (June, 2017).
  • "Synthetic Cinema: Mainstream Movies in the 21st Century," in Quarterly Review of Film and Video July 7, 2017. The article is behind a paywall, but you can see the first page here.
  • Budd Boetticher directinga review, "Truffaut on Cinema by Anne Gillain, ed.," in Choice (September 2017): #55-0106.
  • a review, "After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation by Erika Balsom," in Choice (September 2017): #55-0100.

Nikki Gray edited and recently published the 2017 issue of Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing. The journal publishes peer-reviewed editions of primary source materials as well as articles and reviews about scholarly editing. This year's editions include an early Anglo-Norman work on the seven deadly sins and their effects ("Pride makes man," for instance, "boast of having good qualities that he does not have"); H. G. Wells’s Little Wars, a fascinating meditation on war in the form of a rule book about game play with miniature soldiers; a collection of fake autograph requests sent to Mark Twain as an April Fool’s Day joke, a set of documents made even more entertaining by his rejoinder in an interview with the New York Sun; and Science and Art, a nineteenth-century British periodical playscript featuring a would-be suitor disguised as an automaton. The essays in the issue take up the translated editions of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, the editing and publication of Willa Cather's Obscure Destinies, and the adaptions of Portuguese poet Pedro Homem de Mello’s poems into fado, a popular genre of music in Portugal.

Emily Herrick, of PIESL and Jean L. Arnold, formerly of PIESL and currently working in New Zealand, are co-editors of New Ways in Teaching with Music (TESOL Press, Aug. 2017), a collection of 101 music-related ESL/EFL activities in all curricular areas, chosen from contributors in every continent except Antarctica. The book is accompanied by a website which includes an extensive bibliography and annotated list of online resources in addition to other materials.

Gabriel Houck's first short story collection, "You or a Loved One," has won the 2017 Orison Fiction Prize, judged by David Haynes; he will receive a $1500 honorarium, and the collection will be published by Orison Press in 2018. His short story, "Reclamation," has also been accepted for publication in The Chattahoochee Review, forthcoming in December of 2017.

Patrick T. Randolph (of PIESL) published a recent article in the CATESOL News Quarterly 49(1). The title of the piece is called "Using Verbpathy and Emotion-based Associations in Vocabulary Pedagogy". The article looks at Randolph’s use of what he calls verbpathy and its connection to the emotions as tools to help ELLs acquire vocabulary and enhance the learning process."

Guy Reynolds signed a contract with Edinburgh University Press for a forthcoming book, Sensing Willa Cather: The Writer and the Body in Transition — to be published in 2019. His paper on Anthony Burgess was accepted for the forthcoming ASAP (Association for the Studies of the Arts of the Present) conference, to be held in Berkeley (October 28-9): "A Clockwork Orange, Brexit and Pop: Anthony Burgess's quarrel with mass culture."

Pascha Sotolongo Stevenson's personal essay "I've Got Gordon Ralfe's Number" appears in the summer issue of 1966.

Over the summer, Hope Wabuke was a featured poet in the last issue of Tupelo Quarterly, had a poem published in the last issue of Foundry Literary Journal, an essay published in the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction Magazine, invited to attend the THREAD writer's conference at Yale, and was named a finalist for the 2017 Rita Dove International Poetry Award.

Kristi Carter has two poems forthcoming in WAVES: A Confluence of Women's Voices, featuring Maxine Hong Kingston, published by A Room of Her Own Foundation.

Natalie Scenters-Zapico's poems, "There's No Such Thing As Confession in Latinx Literature" appears in Gulf Coast Issue 29.2, Summer/Fall 2017, and "A Crown of Gold Snakes on My Head" is in The Bennington Review Issue 3. She had poems accepted for publication in Tin House and POETRY. These poems are all part of her forthcoming manuscript Lima :: Limón (Copper Canyon Press).

Rachel Cochran's essay "Sometimes the Mother Eats Her Young" won the New Ohio Review's creative nonfiction contest, judged by Phillip Lopate. The winning essay will appear in NOR's fall 2017 issue.

Maureen Daniels' poem "Windless City" was published in the August issue of South Florida Poetry Journal.

David Henson won the So Say We All 2017 Literary Prize in Fiction for his story "The Tinder Men". Original artwork was commissioned to illustrate the story, which will also appear in print in The Radvocate.

Ilana Masad's review of Paul Yoon's new collection of short stories, The Mountain, was published in The Los Angeles Times. Her reviews of Zinzi Clemmons' What You Lose and Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire were both published in Bitch Media. Additionally, she reviewed American Fire for NPR.

Xavier Navarro Aquino had his novel excerpt accepted for publication in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and has two poems set to be anthologized and published by Peekash Press/Akashic Books.

Maria Nazos had her poem "Breathe Hard, Sing Deep, and Bring it on Home" appear in Issue 54 of The Tampa Review. Her poem, "Rock 'n' Roll Fever," was accepted to appear in Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, edited by Julie Kane and Grace Bauer, both of whom she thanks.

Two of her poetry translations, from the Greek, of Dimitra Kotoula, appeared in Volume 51 Number 4 of The Denver Quarterly. She recently had two other translations accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of New Poetry in Translation and one piece scheduled to appear in the journal's anthology, which introduces young translators to an international audience.

Katie Schmid Henson's poem "Where I Was Born" appeared in The Wanderer in July.

Ivan Young had the following poems accepted over the summer: "What Darkness Says" accepted by The Baltimore Review, "The Cow Bird" by The Louisville Review, and "Petrichor" by Cider Press Review. He also published three poems, "After You Leave," "Sunken Town," and "Mansions" in Apple Valley Review.

Conferences, Readings, Workshops & Presentations

Rachel Azima presented "Roots, Resistance, and Relationships to Place in the Writing Center" at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference in Detroit.

Grace Bauer read this summer in Philadelphia in the Moonstone Reading Series at Fergie's Pub. She also read at the Nebraska Book Festival as part of the Nebraska Poetry Sesquicentennial Anthology celebration.

Jazz Panel with Steve Buhler and Delfeayo MarsalisSteve Buhler presented a paper, “How to Get from Syracuse to the West Side: Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus and the Shakespearean Broadway Musical,” at the University of Waterloo's Shakespearean Theatre Conference in Stratford, Ontario. The paper was part of a session on Shakespeare and Jazz that also featured Delfeayo Marsalis, who visited UNL in 2014.

Maureen Honey presented an invited slide show on Images of African American and White Women in World War II at the New York Historical Society in New York City in August. She also participated on the closing panel, "Beyond Rosie the Riveter: American Women in the Post-War World," with five well-known historians of gender and race issues in the war period. These events were part of the last week of a three-week NEH Institute for Teachers entitled American Women at War. Maureen was also interviewed in July by a journalist for an article on Rosie the Riveter appearing in the French periodical Cheek Magazine.

In June, Ken Price delivered the presidential address, "Bohemian Bureaucrat: Making Sense of Walt Whitman's Scribal Documents" at the Society for Textual Scholarship conference in College Park, Maryland. Later in the month, he co-coordinated a symposium at Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne on “Re-Constructing the Nation, Re-Constructing Leaves: Whitman’s Work after the Civil War, and Beyond.”

Patrick T. Randolph at Southwestern Bell Cultural CenterPatrick T. Randolph (of PIESL) gave his 100th presentation this summer. He was the featured speaker for the Applied Language Institute at Missouri University of Science and Technology for their annual Wise ESL Symposium. He spoke on vocabulary pedagogy, read-a-thons and drama, and writing techniques and activities for ELLs.

Guy Reynolds and Beth Burke traveled to the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne (July 1st-9th) to attend the biennial conference of the Society for the Study of American Womena Writers, and to work with the musicians who have created the highly successful Cather adaptation, Prairie Songs. Reynolds introduced a performance given at the conference.

Reynolds also spoke at a plenary session (on Willa Cather and art), and also delivered a paper ("The Theater of the Real: Cather, Modjeska, Sontag") at the 16th International Willa Cather Seminar, held in Pittsburgh (June 10th-17th).

From June 19-July 7, Julia Schleck lead an NEH Summer Institute for College Professors at the University of Indiana Bloomington, with IU colleague Kaya Sahin (History). The theme of the institute was "Beyond East and West: Exchanges and Interactions across the Early Modern World (1400-1800)" and it was attended by twenty-four faculty from around the country, all of whom were profoundly exhausted by the end of the three week institute. Visiting speakers included Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Nabil Matar, Charles H. Parker, Ulrike Strasser, and Surekha Davies. The institute was sponsored by a $154,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which still survives (!) to do its good work in the world.

Kristi Carter participated in the Naugatuck River Review Poetry Reading at The New York City Poetry Festival on July 29th, 2017. Her poems included "One Orange Streak of Day" for which she won second place in the annual Narrative Poetry hosted by Naugatuck River Review. She is grateful to have received a Joy Currie Graduate Travel Fellowship award to make her travel and participation in this event possible. It was her last professional presentation as a graduate student, as she graduated in August.

Natalie Scenters-Zapico is reading at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA as part of their English Department's Single Voice Reading Series on September 14th.

In August, 2017, Ilana Masad was honored to attend the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices in Los Angeles, California, where she studied with Garth Greenwell.

Maria Nazos will be chairing two upcoming panels, both entitled "On Speaking Terms: Forging and Maintaining Healthy Translator-Author Communication, Relationships, and Boundaries" this fall at the American Literary Translators' Association Conference and AWP. Among her fellow panelists include her colleagues and fellow translators Aliki Barnstone and J. Kates.

Lydia Presley has been invited to the Carlisle Indian School Teacher's Institute held at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. She will be traveling to Carlisle July 30 - August 4, 2017.

Activities, Accolades, & Grants

Marco Abel was awarded a College of Arts and Sciences ENHANCE grant to do attend for research purposes the 1st iteration of the moving history film festival in Potsdam, Germany in September.

English Language Trans-Siberian Adventure posterCrystal Bock Thiessen, instructor in Programs in English as a Second Language, traveled to Russia as a U.S. Department of State English Language Specialist and participated in a nine-city Trans-Siberian railroad tour across two continents and seven time zones, June 9-28.  In addition to conducting teacher trainings and workshops for incorporating photography, video, infographics, and other digital projects into the language teaching classroom, Bock Thiessen interviewed program participants along the way to capture, in their words, the impact that State Department supported English language programs have on the lives of individuals, communities, the broader Russian Educational landscape, and how they contribute to positive U.S.-Russian relations.

Lark Warren and Crystal Bock Thiessen, instructors in Programs in English as a Second Language, were invited to the University of Macau to conduct English language and artistic expression trainings at the Summertime English Art and Immersion Experience Camp, July 17-28 in Macau, China.

Steve Buhler plays guitar for children attending the Little But Fierce Shakespeare workshopSteve Buhler served as dramaturg and music consultant for Flatwater Shakespeare's summer production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Becky Boesen, the company's new Executive Artistic Director. After the show's initial run at Wyuka Stables, Merry Wives toured several Lincoln parks and added new stops at Pioneers Park Nature Center, the Homestead National Monument of America in Beatrice, and the Haymarket's Railyard. Steve was also a guest instructor for Flatwater Shakespeare's “Little But Fierce” K-6 program and “Sonnet Intensive” 7-12 program, offered free of charge to area students. Finally, Steve impersonated William Shakespeare (as a time-traveling visitor from the future) during a conversation with Phil Whitmarsh at the 2017 Nebraska Book Festival.

Dr. Ng’ang’a Wahu-Mũchiri won an International Research Collaborations Award and conducted interviews with market traders in 2 of the largest open air markets in Accra, Ghana. This is part of his ongoing work on rural and urban land rights in eastern, southern, and western Africa. The research was undertaken in partnership with Dr. Kofi Saah of the Linguistics Department at the University of Ghana - Legon.

Ken Price reports that the National Historical Publications and Records Commission has awarded the Walt Whitman Archive a $64,000 grant for part four of "Fame and Infamy: Walt Whitman’s Old Age Correspondence." The Archive team, including collaborators at the University of Iowa, deserves credit for ongoing good work; at UNL special praise for excellent work on the correspondence project goes to research assistant professor Nicole Gray and recent PhD and now postdoc Caterina Bernardini.

Adrian S. Wisnicki has been named the North American Representative of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS).

Kristi Carter's full-length manuscript earned a finalist position in Backwater Press's Book Prize, judged by Bob Hicok. Her chapbook manuscript was a finalist in both Jacar Press's Chapbook Competition and Red Paint Hill's open reading period.

Ilana Masad will be the guest editor for the Hebrew edition of SmokeLong Quarterly's Global Flash Series. The program is open to submissions of flash stories (600 words or fewer) in Hebrew starting September 1, 2017.

Maria Nazos is grateful to have received a grant from The Lincoln Arts Council and recognized The Mayor's Arts Award for Emerging Writer at a ceremony at the Pinnacle Arena in May.

Lydia Presley has been named a Graduate Great Plains Fellow (2017-2019) by the Center for Great Plains Studies.

Katie Schmid Henson and David Henson were proud to accept a parenthood residency in May with the arrival of Margot Ione Henson, May 23rd 2017, at 7 pounds 12 ounces. The appointment is lifelong.

Margot Ione Henson

A message from the 2017-2018 English Student Advisory Board

The English Advising Office and English Student Advisory Board are starting their fourth year of the English Freshmen Mentoring Program this fall.  Each week mentors will meet with Kelly Payne to explore and discuss mentoring, the department’s mission, life skills, and humanities scholarship using the English Department’s mission statement on imaginative reasoning as our guide.

Below is a list of the 15 undergraduate mentors for the 2017-2018 academic year:

Anne Aberle • Danielle Bischoff • Gabrielle Stroup • Xinyue Wang • Jerica Burgess • Jade Zuehlke • Berkley Fierro • Jenna Brende • Hailey Fischer • Lee Kenny • Araya Santo • Mitchell Seldal • Michaela Luckey

If you see ESAB mentors in the halls, or teach them in your classes, please thank them for their service to the department.  Additionally, although our mentoring program is geared specifically to declared English & Film Studies majors, if you have a new student interested in majoring in the department, do not hesitate to have them reach out to Kelly or a member of the English Student Advisory Board to get connected.

We will be hosting three events this fall including Freshmen Mentoring Welcome, Freshmen Spring Advising Event, and Preparing for Finals. More information on event details is available on the Department calendar. Please encourage your first-year students to attend.

Have news or noteworthy happenings to share?

The Department of English encourages our faculty and current students to submit stories about their activities and publications of note by filling out the Department Newsletter Submission Form.