Julia Schleck's essay “Stranger than fiction: early modern travel narratives and the anti-racist classroom" was published at the end of December in the collection Teaching Medieval and Early Modern Cross-Cultural Encounters across Disciplines and Eras, edited by Lynn Shutters and Karina Attar (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Two new pieces by Jean L. Arnold have just been published in New Ways in Teaching Vocabulary, Revised, edited by Averil Coxhead, creator of the AWL (Academic Word List) using corpus linguistics. Jean's two pieces both deal with using art to assist vocabulary acquisition and are entitled: "Flowery Speech: Integrating the Visual with its Denotation and Connotation" and "The Art of Learning Vocabulary". This new volume is available through TESOL Press.

Joy Castro's short story, "Independence Day," appeared in The Normal School. A work of historical fiction, the story is based upon scholarly research into the hanging death of Josefa Juvera Loaiza in California in 1851.

Rhonda Garelick published a Sunday op-ed about politics and Oscar-nominated films in the Los Angeles Times.

Ken Price's essay “Retrospect and Prospect: Walt Whitman and the Study of Periodicals” has been accepted for publication in American Periodicals.

Julia Schleck's essay “Stranger than fiction: early modern travel narratives and the anti-racist classroom" was published at the end of December in the collection Teaching Medieval and Early Modern Cross-Cultural Encounters across Disciplines and Eras, edited by Lynn Shutters and Karina Attar (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Benjamin Vogt's weekly prairie garden articles at Houzz were featured in their top 15 list for 2014 -- in fact, 7 of the 15 most-read articles were his. Prairie up!

Erin M. Bertram published an excerpt of her long poem “A Field Guide to the Body in Need” in the inaugural issue of The Blueshift Journal in December 2014.

Matthew Guzman's article, "Dog's Best Friend? Man, Vivisection, and the 'Animal' in Mark Twain's 'A Dog's Tale,'" will appear in the 2015 issue of The Mark Twain Annual.

Maria Nazos's poem "Rock 'n' Roll Fever" is forthcoming in the Winter 2015 Issue of Chiron Review. Her poem "Down-to-Earth" was published in the February 2015 Issue of decomP. One of her poetry translations of contemporary Greek poet Dimitra Kotoula entitled "Case Study V (On Ethnics)" is forthcoming in the Summer 2015 Issue of The Blue Lyra Review. Her book review of Robert Gibbs' poetry collection The Empty Loom will appear in the Summer 2015 Issue of Prairie Schooner.

Ian Rogers's essay, "Language as Immersion: The Blackfoot Mode of Experience in James Welch's Fools Crow" is forthcoming in the Spring issue of Great Plains Quarterly.

Nima Kian received a Folsom Distinguished Dissertation Award for his dissertation entitled Motivations for Yesterday. The dissertation investigates the divide between time - the space that is time - and time - the clock that serves as time's arbitrator. The poems develop a single narrative that relate a story of nativity-the exploration of one's ground as one's sense of being and belonging-and of history-one's sense of time and space very much connected to that sense of nativity. As part of the Iranian diaspora, Nima aimed to discover the moments in (his) history when particular changes impacted the Iranian trajectory. Motivations for Yesterday explores those moments and functions as the cartographer of discovering the movement of a people across time. It serves to convey nostalgia, not for what never was, but for what the past actually was and what it can be again, especially when we track the paths taken to arrive upon today. Nima would like to thank Grace Bauer and Stephen Behrendt for their diligent guidance throughout the writing of the dissertation, without whom the work would not be what it is. Many thanks to Gwendolyn Audrey Foster and Wheeler Winston Dixon for their unwavering support and encouragement. Nima also expresses his gratitude to Kwame Dawes for supporting the nomination of his dissertation. Thanks also to Ted Kooser, Jill Johnson, and Bret Shepard for their advice and encouragement throughout the writing process. Thanks to Roland Végső for preparing the dissertation for nomination. Thanks to Sue Hart for being Sue Hart. Thanks also to Ken Price and Elizabeth Lorang for their support. Last, but certainly not least, a heartfelt thanks to Kazim Ali and Jane Miller, who served as the outside reviewers of the dissertation.

Rhonda Garelick's new book, Mademoiselle, was recently reviewed in the Washington Post.

Jane Hanson, Ph.D., was a Fulbright 2015 judge for Taiwan in Denver, CO, on Wednesday December 3rd. This entailed reading and scoring 80 applicants’ personal statements and essays, transcripts, references, and other application materials during a three week period.

Robert Lipscomb has been selected to receive the Folsom 2015 UNL Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award (nominated by Roland Végső).

Ashanka Kumari received honorable mention for an Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award (nominated by Adrian Wisnicki) in the annual Folsom Graduate Recognition Awards.

Third year doctoral student Caterina Bernardini was awarded a Joy Currie Graduate Travel Fellowship for presenting her paper entitled “Omnes! Omnes!” The Proto-modernist Multilingualism of the 1860 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass” on the round table "Beyond Monolingualism?" (with respondent Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak) at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association in Vancouver, BC, on January 11, 2015.

Kathleen Lacey received a "Certificate of Recognition for Contributions to Students" award from the UNL Teaching Council and the UNL Parents' Association in late January. Kathleen Lacey has been chosen as the inaugural fellow for the Michael K. Schoenecke Leadership Institute program with the Southwest Popular/American Cultural Association. The fellowship is a two-year commitment dedicated to providing scholars of popular culture with leadership opportunities in conference planning, organizing, and marketing.

A large number of English department faculty and lecturers received the Certificate of Recognition for Contributions to Students last month. Recipients of this certificate are determined by parents of UNL students, who nominate a member of the University "who has made a significant difference" in their son's or daughter's life. The 27th annual awards ceremony, sponsored by the UNL Parents Association, the UNL Teaching Council, and UNL Student Affairs, took place on Friday, January 30 at the Union. The recipients from the English department were:

• Joseph Goecke
• Kathleen Lacey
• Kelly Payne
• Megan Peabody
• Beverley Rilett
• Julia Schleck
• Benjamin Vogt
• Stacey Waite

Ann Bouma along with Carmen Varejcka-McGee​ have been selected as a presenter at the American Advisers Association Conference. They will be presenting "Building Bridges across Oceans: Advising International Students." During the presentation, participants will learn about the educational systems that many of our international students come from and how this affects their expectations of higher education. Topics covered will include major differences in classroom behavior, the international students’ understanding of “good” performance, and misunderstandings about instructor/student interaction. They will explore some of the core differences between these alternative education systems and the US system of higher education. Discussion will include advising and teaching tips. Finally they will give suggestions for working successfully with international students as an Advisor and an instructor.

Joy Castro served as the keynote speaker at the Hands On Literary Festival and Masquerade Ball in New Orleans over New Year's Eve. She gave a reading at the University of Nebraska Omaha on January 28.

In February, Rhonda Garelick will be giving a lecture at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

Dr. Jane Hanson delivered a Strategic Planning initiative for the Mensa Foundation in Dallas Ft. Worth on October 18, 2014, and is currently revising their mission statement, serving as chair of New Projects, and is Liaison to International Mensa for International Scholarship Development. Dr. Hanson also co-presented with Roz Hussin at the 2015 Winter Interim Workshop for The CASNR Teaching and Learning Improvement Council on Friday, January 9 at the Nebraska East Union. The topic was "ENGL322B Linguistics & Society: Using student videos for student ownership and assessment in the classroom" and highlighted English majors’ work.

Ken Price gave a talk on "The Role of the Critical Edition in the Digital Age” and moderated a panel on "Genetic Editing and Interpretation" at the MLA convention in Vancouver, Canada.

Aimee Allard recently presented her paper “Dust Matters: Reconsidering Dust in New Materialist Philosophy” at the 2015 MLA Convention in Vancouver, Canada, as part of a special session on New Materialism. As a recipient of the Joy Currie Graduate Student Travel Fellowship, Allard would also like to express her gratitude to the Currie family, whose generosity helped make it possible for her to attend MLA.

Jaime Brunton will present her paper "Metamodernist Nostalgia: American Avant-Garde Poets Constructing a Home in the Present" at the Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture since 1900 taking place at the University of Louisville Feb. 26-28.

Matthew Guzman will present his paper entitled, "Roanoke: Cooper's Equestrian Identity" at the upcoming ALA Symposium: God and the American Writer in February.