Wheeler Winston Dixon has published a lengthy review of the late director Agnès Varda’s last film, Varda by Agnès (2019) in Quarterly Review of Film and Video, December 6, 2019.

Cather Studies 12 has now been published. Subtitled Willa Cather and the Arts, the volume features essays tracing Cather’s imaginative relationships to opera, visual art, and a wide range of literary sources. This is the last Cather Studies volume edited by Guy Reynolds, and Melissa Homestead is now the General Editor of this scholarly series.

Jonathan Cheng published an article, Fleshing Out Models of Gender in English Language Novels 1850-2000 in Cultural Analytics.

Claire Jimenez’s short story collection Staten Island Stories was published in December at Johns Hopkins University Press. She also wrote several articles for Remezcla, including reviews of Raquel Salas Rivera’s while they sleep, under the bed is another country and Daniel Jose Older’s Shadowshaper Legacy. She also interviewed Luis Rodriguez and NoNieqa Ramos. Eater.com published an article she wrote about the history of pasteles.

Erika Luckert’s essay “Teaching Creativity: Lessons in Metaphor for the Composition Classroom” was published in Writing on the Edge, and her poem “Preparations” was published in Cotton Xenomorph. Her poetry manuscript was also a semi-finalist for Pleiades Press’ Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize. She was also listed as a semifinalist for Persea Books' Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry.

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster’s Kitchen Sink Film screened at Anthology Film Archives in the NewFilmmakers Film Festival in New York on January 29th. No Personal Checks played the Kansas City Underground Film Festival (January 20th). It was also an official selection at Expressions Art Movie Film Festival in Los Angeles (Dec 6th); the Intimate Lens Visual Ethnography Film Festival in Italy (Dec 20th); the New Jersey International Film Festival (January 24th); and the United States Super 8 Film and Digital Video Festival on February 22nd. It will travel (and screen) with Festival Vortex in Acapulco, Cancún, Queretaro, Oaxaca, and Puerto Escondido in 2020.

Foster’s eco-feminist short film on the devastating effects of climate change, Memento Mori was selected for an international group screening, Wake Up! Climate Change at the New Media Fest Art Video Köln, The New Museum of Networked Art, Cologne, Germany (December 26, 2019; traveling around the world in 2020).

Finally, as Guest Curator, Foster presented a selection of short experimental films, Outsiders/Inside, at Kino Klub Split in Croatia on January 17, 2020. Foster was interviewed on her own experimental films in Sarah Tremlett’s forthcoming book on avant-garde cinema, The Poetics of Poetry Film, forthcoming from Intellect Books (2020). Tremlett also wrote on Foster’s short Desire Market for the #DirectedbyWomen project.

Crystal Bock Thiessen, lecturer in Programs in English as a Second Language, presented “Improve Your Photography and Video Skills for Visual Storytelling and Impact in International Exchanges” at the Global Ties U.S. National Meeting in Washington, D.C., Jan. 22-25. The National Meeting is the premier gathering of organizations, U.S. government agencies, advocates, and leaders in the international exchange field held in conjunction with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Office of International Visitors at the U.S. Department of State, and provides high-level insights on trends affecting the international exchange field, engagement in in-depth professional development opportunities, and opportunities to build networks to strengthen international exchanges.

The Composition Faculty are pleased to introduce the new Associate Directors of Composition for the 2020 calendar year, Keshia McClantoc and David Winter. Keshia joined us at UNL in 2017 and is working on her PhD focused in Composition & Rhetoric. David joined us at UNL in 2018 after completing his MFA at Ohio State University where he also taught composition. He is pursuing a PhD focused in Poetry. They are both experienced teachers and great listeners. Keshia’s pedagogical interests include multimodal composing; community-based writing; canvas/LMS design; as well as queer and feminist pedagogies. David’s pedagogical interests include working through difference & discomfort in the classroom; teaching peer feedback; as well as queer & feminist pedagogies. Seek them out for ideas and feedback on your composition teaching! We also want to take this opportunity to thank Matt Whitaker and Alex DeLuise for their service.

Jonathan Cheng has accepted a software engineering job at Apple.