Department of English Newsletter May 2022

Upcoming Department Events

Publications & Acceptances

Melissa Homestead’s essay “The Long Career of Augusta Jane Evans (Wilson)” is just out in Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition, Vol. III: 1851-1877 edited by Cody Marrs and published by Cambridge University Press.

Pascha Sotolongo Stevenson’s short story “Bloodletting” has been accepted for publication in Narrative and will be featured as a story-of-the-week.

Erika Luckert’s poem “Moules Marinières” was published in the South Carolina Review.

Conferences, Readings, Workshops & Presentations

On April 6, Marco Abel gave an invited lecture (Zoom), “With Nonchalance at the Abyss: The New Munich Group, Klaus Lemke’s Sylvie, and the Lightness of a Left without Leftism,” at The Cinema and Media Studies Colloquium at the University of Pennsylvania.

Arden Eli Hill is a featured reader for the East Coast release of the anthology Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, which published his poem “A man from Kyiv.”

Rachael Shah delivered the keynote address “More Than Just Another Chair at the Table: Centering Community Knowledge” at the Community-Engaged Alliance’s Summit and Research Symposium in Indiana.

Chaun Ballard has recently been selected, as an NEH Summer Scholar, to attend one of the institutes supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He will participate in an Institute entitled “Transcendentalism and Social Reform: Activism and Community Engagement in the Age of Thoreau.” The two-week program will be held in Concord, Massachusetts, during the summer semester. Chaun is grateful for this opportunity, and he is looking forward to learning.

Activities, Accolades, & Grants

Arden Eli Hill’s poem “None of the Star Trek Ships are Named After confederate Generals” published in Strange Horizons is shortlisted for the Ignyte award for best speculative poem. Please vote for Arden on the Ignyte Awards website.

Melissa Homestead’s book The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis has been designated an honoree for the Bernard J. Brommel Biography and Memoir Award from the Society of Midland Authors.

Thumbnail for The Tell Don't Show podcastKatie Marya and Kasey Peters have released the first two episodes of their podcast The Tell Don’t Show. You can find it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The show is produced with sound engineering by Stephen Ramsey, music by David Henson, the cooperation of Erin Chambers with Plainstate, and the support of the management at Prairie Schooner. Marya and Peters invite authors to talk writing, language, and objects, and they play Show and Tell.

The English Department Graduate Student intramural basketball team—“Sports Team”—is thrilled to announce the signing of captain Caleb Petersen to a five-year contract. Sports Team will return to the intramural finals next season with Petersen at the helm. Of this season’s playoffs run, Petersen said, “Maybe next year.”

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.