Each month during the academic year, we assemble a newsletter of the department’s recent publications, presentations, announcements, and awards.
We’re happy to recognize the recent successes in research, scholarship, and creative activity outlined below.
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
Mark Crosby, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2024.” Blake An Illustrated Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4, 2025.
Gregory Eiselein, “Hospital Sketchesand Celebrity Authorship in the Civil War Era.” Beyond Little Women: Essays on the Secondary Works of Louisa May Alcott, edited by Lauren Hehmeyer, Palgrave MacMillan, 2025, pp. 179-196.
Mary Kohn, “American English Vowel Shifts.” Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes. 2025. 11 pp. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119518297.eowe00133.
Presentations
Mara Aberle (BA ‘26), “Exerting Control over Death with Music: Receptions of Orpheus and Eurydice in Metamorphoses, Sir Orfeo, and Hadestown.” 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium. K-State Student Union Ballroom. 15 April 2025.
Mary Adeyemo (MA ’26), “‘Two-Penny Ale or Fine Burgundy?’ Publication History and Initial Reception of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone.” Popular Culture Association Conference. New Orleans, LA. 16 April 2025.
Cydney Alexis, Theresa Merrick Cassidy, Tim Laquintano, Carly Schnitzler, and Annette Vee, “Perception and Uptake of AI in Workplace, Educational, and Creative Contexts—and Implications for Writing Programs.” Conference on College Composition and Communications. Baltimore, MD. 10 April 2025.
Cydney Alexis and Theresa Merrick Cassidy, “From Ideation to Accommodations: Locating Complex AI Use Motivations in Writer Interviews.” AAC&U Forum on Digital Innovation (virtual). 5 April 2025.
“Online Teaching in the Age of AI.” Workshop for the K-State Teaching and Learning Center (virtual). 2 April 2025.
Traci Brimhall, reading from Love Prodigal, Watermark Books, Wichta, KS. 1 May 2025
“Laureate Talk,” Wellington Public Library, Wellington, KS. 26 April 2025.
Ekphrastic Fantastic: A Night of Art and Poetry, Museum of Art + Light, Manhattan, KS. 24 April 2025.
Reading from Love Prodigal, Unbound Books Festival, Columbia, MO. 19 April 2025.
PoetLuck @ Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, Eureka Springs, AR. 17 April 2024.
Wednesday Night Poetry, Hot Springs, AR. 16 April 2024.
Reading and Workshop, New Orleans Poetry Festival, New Orleans, LA. 10-13 April 2025.
Ekphrastic Fantastic Writing Workshops, Museum of Art + Light, Manhattan, KS. 5 April 2025.
“Laureate Talk,” Iola Public Library, Iola, KS. 3 April 2025.
Mark Crosby, “Some Mornings Blake drank his coffee by the tomb of Edward the Confessor.” William Blake Society (online). 23 April 2025: https://blakesociety.org/product/coffee-tomb/
Elizabeth Dodd, creative writing workshops for Manhattan’s Pawnee Mental Health Services and UFM, 21 & 28 Feb 2025.
Nava Eghdami (MA ’26), “The Palimpsest of Memory: The Interplay of Absent Narrator, Identity, and Memory in Rachel Cusk’s Kudos.” Popular Culture Association. New Orleans, LA. 16 April 2025.
Sarah Hemenway (BA ‘26), “The Endurance of Beowulfin the 21stCentury.” 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium. K-State Student Union Ballroom. 15 April 2025.
Sierra Knipe (MA ’25), “Colonialism’s Ghost: Haunting and Horror in Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls.” Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures 2025 Virtual Conference. 4 April 2025.
“Colonial Haunting in Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls: Trauma, Memory, and Haunting.” Popular Culture Association. New Orleans, LA. 16 April 2025.
Lillianna Lamagna (BA, ‘25), “’You’re just making up sounds’: Radical Creative Possibilities Through Translanguaging in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).” 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium. K-State Student Union Ballroom. 15 April 2025.
Allison Meerian (BA ‘26), “The Implications of Setting in The Wife of Willesden’s Tale.” 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium. K-State Student Union Ballroom. 15 April 2025.
Philip Nel, “Are Dr. Seuss’s Children’s Books Racist?”, “Is Seuss Radical?”, and “Should Dr. Seuss Enterprises Have Removed Dr. Seuss Books from Circulation?” Dialogues Worth Having: Seuss and Race. Invited presentation and conversations with Donald Pease, Julia Mickenberg and Jonathan Zimmerman. Dartmouth College. Hanover, NH. 25 & 26 Apr. 2025.
“Save Us from Tomorrow: Nostalgia, Children’s Literature, and the Fight for the Future.” Weltrettungen: Kinder- und Jugendliteratur zwischen gesellschaftlichem Engagement und ästhetischem Spiel [Saving the World: Children’s and Young Adult’s Literature between Social Engagement and Aesthetic Play]. International Jugendbibliothek. Munich, Germany. 10 Apr. 2025.
Gabriell Padua (MA ’25), “American Empire, Exile, and Existentialism: Bienvenido N. Santos and Philippine Alienation.” Association for Asian American Studies. Boston, MA. 17 April 2025.
Ania Payne, “Remixing Narratives in Community Writing.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. Baltimore, MD. 10 April 2025.
Faezeh Rostami (MA ’26), “Normal People and the Shift Toward Authenticity in Depicting Heterosexual Intimacy.” 2025 Popular Culture Association Conference. New Orleans, LA. 17 April 2025.
Tosha Sampson-Choma, “Healing Her Own Grief: Therapeutic Approaches to Another Brooklyn,” 83rd College Language Association Conference. Vancouver, WA. 24 April 2025.
Thomas Xavier Sarmiento, “Author Meet Respondents Roundtable: Rebecca Jo Kinney, Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland: Race and Redevelopment in the Rust Belt, Temple University Press, 2025,” prepared remarks on “Negotiating Placekeeping for AsiaTown Cleveland.” Association for Asian American Studies. Boston, MA. 18 April 2025.
Awards
Mark Crosby has received a Summer Stipend award from the NEH for his project “The Gothic Apprentice: William Blake’s Early Drawings, Engravings, and Copperplates.”
Mary Kohn has won the Kansas State University McNair Scholars Program Faculty Mentor of the Year.
Lillianna Lamagna (BA ’25) received the 2025 University Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Student in Research.
Lillianna Lamagna (BA ’25) and Emma Rupprecht (BA ’28, English Education) each received a Grand Prize and Allison Meerian (BA ’26) and Harrison Jones (BA ’28) each received Honorable Mention prizes for the 2025 Kirmser Awards.
Cameron Leader-Picone received a University Small Research Grant from K-State’s Office of Research Development for “Transit Lit: Fictions of Migration in Twenty- First Century African Immigrant Literature.”
Anne Longmuir received the 2025 Presidential Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching.
Thomas Xavier Sarmiento won a University Small Research Grant from K-State’s Office of Research Development for “Indexing for Monograph: The Heartland of US Empire: Race, Region, and the Queer Filipinx Midwest(Temple University Press).”
Shirley Tung received a Faculty Development Award from K-State’s Office of Research Development to present her research at the Japan Society for 18th-century Studies as well as three guest lectures at Keio University.
Announcements
Five English majors have been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa: Khloe Kuckelman (BA ’25), Lillianna Lamagna (BA ’25), Allison Meerian (BA ’26), Grace Odgers (BA ’25), and Olli Sutton (BA ’26).
Featured in Media
Cydney Alexis and co-author Hannah Rule appeared in “The Material Culture of Writing,” Episode 154 of The Preservation Technology Podcast (produced by Catherine Cooper, The National Park Service).
Traci Brimhall appeared in several venues, including:
An interview with Dennis Sweeney, Poets & Writers, April/May 2025.
Inspire Interview Series, KTWU/PBS, 20 April 2025
Drunk as a Poet on Payday Podcast, April 2025
Within Reason with Mike Matson, KMAN Radio, 4 April 2025
Catherine Strayhall’s (BA ’17) poetry collection, Dress Me Like a Prizefighter (Spartan Press, 2024), has been recognized as a 2025 Kansas Notable Book.
K-State English 