Each month during the academic year, we assemble a newsletter of the department’s recent publications, presentations, announcements, and awards. The issue for September showcases a greater range of research, scholarship, and creative activity that our faculty and students have shared beyond Kansas State, given that it covers the summer months of May, June, July, and August.
After two summers which required significant time living in a COVID-19 world, this summer offered some opportunity to attend in-person conferences and travel for research and creative activity.
As the fourth summer living with COVID-19 comes to a close, we celebrate faculty and student success in research, scholarship, and creative activity in a variety of venues and media.
Want to catch up on past successes or to find future announcements? Visit our archive of monthly newsletters Reading Matters as well as related blog posts.
Have news to report? Email us at english@ksu.edu.
— Karin Westman, Department Head
Publications (May – August 2023)
Traci Brimhall, “The Book of Unsigned Confessions,” “Love Is,” and “The Flower is Warmer than the Air Around It Because It Wants the Bee.” Plume, Issue 142, June 2023: https://plumepoetry.com/category/all-issues/issue-142-june-2023/.
“The Most Kissed Face in the World” (essay). Prairie Schooner, Vol. 96, No. 2, Summer 2023 (153-160).
Gregory Eiselein, review of Hannah Whitman Heyde: The Complete Correspondence, edited by Maire Mullins. Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, vol. 40, no. 1-2, 2023, pp. 84-87. doi: https://doi.org/10.17077/0737-0679.31915
Philip Nel, “Wer hat Angst vor multikulturellen Kinderbüchern?” and “Why Are People Afraid of Multicultural Children’s Books?” Geschichte der Gegenwart. 21 & 23 May 2023: https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/wer-hat-angst-vor-multikulturellen-kinderbuechern/ and https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/why-are-people-afraid-of-multicultural-childrens-books/. [Same article published first in German and then in English.]
Ania Payne, “The Flipper” (nonfiction essay). The Rush, Issue 13, July 2023: https://www.rushmagazine.org/ania-payne
“The Synanthrope” (nonfiction essay). Red Rose Thorns, August 2023, pp. 123-124.
Lisa Tatonetti, Tai S. Edwards, and Mary Kohn, with Chester Hubbard, Haley Reiners (BA ’22), and Kinsley Searles (BA ’22, MA ’24), “How the Kaánze Homelands Became Kansas: The Treaty of 1825.” Kansas History Journal, vol. 46, no. 2, 2023.
Shirley Tung, “Arrival, Motherhood, and Mourning.” Months to Years, Summer 2023: https://www.monthstoyears.org/arrival-motherhood-and-mourning
Karin Westman, Naomi Wood, and David Russell, eds, The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 47, no. 1, 2023.
Presentations (May – August 2023)
Stephen Antwi (MA ’24), “Decolonizing the Imagination: ‘Sankofa-ric’ Moves of Endarkening the Cartographies of the Mind in Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky.” Children’s Literature Association Conference. Bellevue, WA. 15 June 2023.
Traci Brimhall, “Sing the Body Electric: Poetry Workshop”: Blue Valley Public Library, Blue Valley, KS, 9 Aug. 2023. | Antioch Public Library, Antioch, KS, 8 Aug. 2023. | Lenexa Public Library, Lenexa, KS, 5 Aug. 2023.
Poetry Reading, Flint Hills Symphony, Eskridge, KS. 10 June 2023.
Elizabeth Dodd, “The Artistic Impulse” (keynote address). Bluegrass Writers Studio, Eastern Kentucky University. Richmond, KY. 15 July 2023.
“From the Workbook for the Interpretation of Dreams: Poems.” Recreating Intimacy in the Face of Constant Trauma. Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Conference. Portland, OR. 10 July 2023.
“Isogloss.” The Common Reader: Essays from This Impermanent Earth. Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Conference. Portland, OR. 12 July 2023.
Gregory Eiselein, “On Being Glad: Pollyanna and Stoic Thought.” Co-presented with LuElla D’Amico. American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA. 25 May 2023.
Fereshteh Majdi (MA ’24), “The Utopian Vision in V for Vendetta.” Cultural Studies Association Conference. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. 2 June 2023
Philip Nel, “Progressive Nostalgia in the Anthropocene: Land, Longing, and the Radical Imagination.” International Research Society for Children’s Literature. University of California, Santa Barbara, CA. 13 Aug. 2023.
“Nostalgia, Memory, Empathy: Multicultural Children’s Books vs. the Authoritarian Imagination.” Children’s Literature Association Conference. Bellevue, WA. 16 June 2023.
“Sing a Song of Blackface: Nostalgia, Minstrelsy, and Children’s Music.” The Child and the Book. University of Montenegro. Podgorica, Montenegro. 15 May 2023.
Ania Payne, “No More Infographics: Compliance in a Community-Based Learning Partnership.” Association of Teachers of Technical Writing. Virtual conference. 8 June 2023.
Anne Phillips, “Why It Is Time to Reconsider Kate Greenaway.” Children’s Literature Association Conference. Bellevue, WA. 16 June 2023.
“Alcott in the Archives: Utilizing Collections, A Roundtable.” American Literature Association Conference. Boston, MA. 25 May 2023.
Hunter Scott, “‘Poetry Is Not a Luxury’: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Raphael Campo, and the Poetics of Empathy” (invited speaker). Creative Medical Solutions: AIDS Education & Training Center Program. St. Louis, MO. 31 Aug. 2023.
Shirley F. Tung and Mark Crosby, “Imaginative Influences: Wollstonecraft on Sterne and Sendak on Blake,” Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge. Cambridge, UK. 19 May 2023.
Karin Westman, “Wild Hearts: Landscapes of Affect and Imagination in Three Narratives about Mary Shelley and Her Art.” Children’s Literature Association Conference. Bellevue, WA. 16 June 2023.
“Editor’s Roundtable” (panelist). Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference. Bellevue, WA. 17 June 2023.
“Graduate Curricula and Careers Pre-Seminar Workshop” (seminar co-leader). MAPS Leadership Institute, in collaboration with MLA and ADE/ALD. Online. 21 June 2023.
“Advocating for the Humanities on the Hill.” ADE/ALD 2023 Summer Seminar: Centering the Humanities. Georgetown, Washington, DC. 3 June 2023.
Awards (May – August 2023)
Traci Brimhall received the 2023-2025 Donnelly Faculty Award.
Mark Crosby was elected as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Cassidy Hartig (BA ’24) received a Regent Scholarship from Sigma Tau Delta, the international honorary society for English language and literature students.
Cassidy Hartig (BA ’24), Aidia Kite (BA ’25), Anna Poggi-Corradini (BA ’24), and Donovan Tucker (BA ’24) have received Undergraduate Research Awards from the College of Arts and Sciences. They will be supported by English Department faculty mentors Mary Kohn (Hartig and Poggi-Corradini), Michele Janette (Kite), and Lisa Tatonetti (Hartig).
Ania Payne has been awarded $5,000 through the Engaged Scholarship Research/Creative Activities Grants program on behalf of the Engagement Scholarship Consortium to complete a one-year collaborative project, “Community Asset Mapping Through Front Porch Conversations and Writing.” The project is a collaboration with community partner Manhattan Area Habitat for Humanity.
Theresa Merrick has received the department’s 2023 Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Naomi Wood has received the department’s 2023 Award for Excellence in Advising.
Quoted in Media (May – August 2023)
Mary Kohn appeared on KTWU’s Cottonwood Connection, season 2, episode 6 “Have Town, Will Travel,” aired 12 Mar. 2023: https://www.pbs.org/video/have-town-will-travel-f8eryu/.
Ania Payne was interviewed by Colene Lind for KMAN’s “In Focus” segment about the Engagement Scholarship Consortium grant she received for her community-engaged research project “Community Asset Mapping Through Front Porch Conversations and Writing.” 24 Aug. 2023: https://soundcloud.com/user-713727314/in-focus-082423-institute-for-civic-discourse-and-democracy.
Announcements (May – August 2023)
Philip Nel was elected to the executive board of the International Research Society of Children’s Literature.
Research and Creative Activity from Alumni (May – August 2023)
Dan Hornsby (BA ’12) has published his second novel, Sucker (Penguin Random House, 2023).
Emily Midkiff (MA ’12) received the 2023 Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Book Award for her book Equipping Space Cadets: Primary Science Fiction for Young Children (UP of Mississippi, 2022).
Ed Skoog (BA ’94) had several poems in the June/July issue of American Poetry Review. He is also now in the 12th year of his literary podcast, Lunch Box, with Ed and John, co-hosted with Cornell professor and novelist J. Robert Lennon.
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