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.
Here, 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 2024)
Traci Brimhall, “Rekindle creativity by focusing on the mundane” (news article), Springfield News Leader 11 Aug. 2024: https://www.news-leader.com/story/entertainment/2024/08/11/poetry-from-daily-life-rekindle-creativity-by-focusing-on-mundane/74714326007/
Mark Crosby, “William Blake Biography.” Vetusta Monumenta: Ancient Monuments, A Digital Edition, edited by Noah Heringman, 2024: https://scalar.missouri.edu/vm/biographical-register
Gregory Eiselein and LuElla D’Amico, “On Being Glad: Pollyanna and Stoic Thought.” Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century, edited by LuElla D’Amico and Emily Hamilton-Honey. Lexington Books, 2024. pp. 117-132.
Daniel A. Hoyt, Shit List. New York: Whiskey Tit, 2024.
Anne Longmuir, John Ruskin and the Victorian Woman Writer. Routledge, 2025.
Deborah Murray, “Who CaresPresents a Range of Ideas and Possibilities for All of us.” Review of Emily Kenway’s Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving and How We Solve It.The Manhattan Mercury. 29 June 2024.
Philip Nel, “His crayon is purple — but is Harold a Black boy?” The Conversation. 16 Aug. 2024: https://theconversation.com/his-crayon-is-purple-but-is-harold-a-black-boy-236749
“The Purple Crayon on the Big Screen.” School Library Journal. 8 Aug. 2024: https://www.slj.com/story/newsfeatures/purple-crayon-big-screen-crockett-johnson-Harold-Purple-Crayon-opinion
Ania Payne, “Familj” (nonfiction), Feels Blind Literary, Issue 10, June 2024: https://www.feelsblindliterary.com/apayne
Thomas Xavier Sarmiento, review of Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America, directed by Tom Shepard, and Unspoken, directed by Patrick G. Lee. Films for the Feminist Classroom, vol. 12, no. 2, 2024. Invited submission: http://ffc.twu.edu/issue_12-2/rev_Sarmiento_12-2.html.
Karin Westman, Naomi Wood, and David Russell, eds. The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 47, no. 2, 2023.
Naomi Wood and Anuja Madan, eds. Introduction and Special issue on Postcolonial Children’s and Young Adult Fantasy. The Lion and the Unicorn , vol. 47, no. 3, 2023.
Presentations (May – August 2024)
Cydney Alexis and Theresa Merrick Cassidy, “Teaching with AI: A Plan to Adapt & Innovate your Teaching this Year” (workshop). K-State Teaching and Learning Center’s Professional Development Series, 28 Aug. 2024.
Traci Brimhall, Laureate Reading with other State Poet Laureates, National Book Festival, Washington D.C. 24 Aug. 2024.
“The State of Poetry Today” with the MO Poet Laureate, KC Public Library. Kansas City, MO. 14 Aug. 2024.
“Why Can’t the Heart Stop Asking.” Laureate Talk, Newton Public Library. Newton, KS. 14 July 2024.
Theresa Merrick Cassidy, “Teaching with AI.” College of Agriculture. Manhattan, KS. 17 August 17 2024.
Daniel A. Hoyt, reading from Shit List. The Raven Book Store. Lawrence, KS. 15 July 2024.
Mary Kohn and Holly Hill (MA History ’24), “The City of Many Names: The Hartford Steamboat and the Naming of Manhattan.” Riley County Genealogical Society. Manhattan Public Library. Manhattan, KS. 18 Aug. 2024.
“Scientific Study of the Social Life of Language.” American MENSA annual gathering. Kansas City, MO. 5 July 2024.
“100 Years of Sound Change in Kansas”
- Independence Science and Technology Center. Independence, Kansas. 13 July 2024.
- Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum. Kansas. 26 June 2024.
Anne Longmuir, “Corresponding Pleasures: Reproducing Elizabeth Gaskell’s Social Networks,” 18th and 19th Century British Women’s Writers Conference.Boulder, CO. 29 May 2024.
Ian Lutz, “Sub-Textual Significance of Textual Signs in Spirited Away.” Children’s Literature Association Conference. Madison, WI. 30 May 2024.
Philip Nel, “Liberate Your Imagination: Read Diverse Children’s Books” (invited talk), Humboldt Universität, Berlin, Germany. 8 July 2024.
“The Politics of Childhood Nostalgia” (workshop). Children’s Literature Summer School. University of Antwerp, Belgium. 1 July 2024.
“Harold After Harold: The Afterlife of Crockett Johnson’s Purple Crayon.” Children’s Literature Association Conference. Madison, WI. 31 May 2024.
“Meeting the Press: How, Why, and Whether” (5-minute lightning talk). Children’s Literature Association Conference. Madison, WI. 30 May 2024.
“Academia” (panelist), CLMC/CLL Careers Day, University of Glasgow. 20 May 2024. Via Zoom.
Anne Phillips, “Quinny-Dingles, Quirks, and Queer Looking Men: ‘Regularizing’ Little Women.” KIDLIT Hollins 2nd Biennial Symposium: “Valuing.”Roanoke, VA. 28 June 2024.
“‘There’s more to life than mops and pails’: Liminal Spaces in Picturebooks.” Children’s Literature Association. Madison, WI. 31 May 2024.
Tosha Sampson Choma, “Enacting Mental Health Activism through Teaching Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn and Tayari Jones’ Leaving Atlanta.” College Language Association Conference. Memphis, TN. 11 April 2024.
Thomas Xavier Sarmiento, “Sensing the Queer Filipinx Midwest: Geographic Nostalgia and Melancholia in Bienvenido Santos’s Exile Literature.” The New Territory: “Literary Landscapes in Kansas” Celebration Gathering, sponsored by Humanities Kansas, Union Hall, Manhattan, KS. Keynote speaker. 27 July 2024.
Maggie Steuer (MA ’24), “Where in the World is Nancy Drew? The Role of Location in Adaptation.” Children’s Literature Association Conference. Madison, WI. 1 June 2024.
Karin Westman, “How University Budgets Work — and What to Do When They’re Not Working for You.” MAPS Leadership Institute, in collaboration with MLA and ADE/ALD. Online. 26 June 2024.
“‘Kiddie Lit in Academe’ Revisited.” Children’s Literature Association Conference. Madison, WI. 1 June 2024.
“Editor’s Roundtable” (panelist). Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference. Madison, WI. 31 May 2024.
Awards (May – August 2024)
Mara Aberle (BA ’26, minor in Classical Studies) has received a Patti Johnson Wilson scholarship of $10,000. The scholarship supports students in Oklahoma and Kansas who are majoring in liberal arts, engineering, or music, who are working part time, and who have financial need.
Cydney Alexis and Theresa Merrick Cassidy won a $110,000 K-State Office of the Provost Academic Innovation Fund award to develop a “Writing with AI” microcredential.
Traci Brimhall received a Poet Laureate Fellowship of $50,000 from the Academy of American Poets. The award “recognize laureates’ literary excellence while enabling them to undertake meaningful and innovative projects that enrich the lives of community members.”
Roger Friedmann received the department’s 2024 Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Hunter Scott (MA ‘22) received the department’s 2024 Excellence Award for Term Instructors.
Lillianna Lamagna (BA ’25) received a Regent Scholarship from Sigma Tau Delta, the international honorary society for English language and literature students.
Philip Nel has received the 2024-2026 Donnelly Faculty Award.
Ania Payne received the Chapman Center/Arts and Sciences Integrating Engagement Across All We Do Grant for her project “Integrating a Habitat for Humanity Partnership Across a Writing Course.” Lisa Tatonetti also received a grant through the same funding initiative.
Lisa Tatonetti and Shirley Tung have both received a Big 12 Fellowship. Tatonetti will collaborate with Dr. Joanna Hearne, the Jeannie Hoffman Smith Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma, on documentary work with and about the Kaw Nation for the Kansas Land Treaty Project. Tung will visit the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin for her work on “Muses for the Miscellany: Edmund Curll, Robert Dodsley, and the Popularization of Coterie Poetry.
Quoted in Media (May – August 2024)
Beth Jones (MA ’25) was featured (under her nom de plume, L.C. Mortimer) in Canvas Rebel on 15 July 2024: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-l-c-mortimer/
Mary Kohn appeared on KTWU’s Cottonwood Connection for their three-part series “In Time of War” (season 4, episodes 9-11) which aired in May 2024: https://www.pbs.org/show/cottonwood-connection/
Announcements (May – August 2024)
Cydney Alexis and Theresa Merrick Cassidy have organized a team of 12 cross-disciplinary faculty and staff members who were accepted to participate in the year-long AAC&U “Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum”: Alice Anderson, instructional designer for K-State Libraries; Jason Coleman, Academic Services Librarian; Gayle Doll, Adjunct Associate Dean for academic and faculty affairs in the College of Health and Human Sciences; Raelynne M. Hale, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages; Joe Mocnik, Dean of K-State Libraries; Suzanne Porath, Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction; Don Saucier, Faculty Associate Director of the Teaching and Learning Center; Chwen Sheu, Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the College of Business Administration; Amber Vennum, Professor of Applied Human Sciences; and Ben Ward, Instructional Technologist in the College of Business Administration.
Karin Westman has been elected to serve a three-year term (2024-2027) as Treasurer and as a member of the Executive Board for the Children’s Literature Association.
Research and Creative Activity from Alumni (May – August 2024)
K.E. Semmel (MA ’01) has published his first novel, The Book of Losman. Kyle’s previous fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ontario Review, Lithub, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Southern Review, HuffPost, The Millions, Washington Post, and elsewhere. He is also the translator of more than a dozen novels from Danish or Norwegian, including novels by Naja Marie Aidt, Karin Fossum, Simon Fruelund, and Jussi Adler Olsen, among others. See more about Kyle and his work at kesemmel.com.
Winniebell Xinyu Zong (MA ’21) has received a Post-Graduate Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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