Jill Clingan (MA '03) “Stories matter. Teaching Language Arts is important because we make sense of our world through story—both by reading the stories of others and narrating our own.” I said these words to a group of enthusiastic teachers in Brazil in 2018 where I was helping lead an educational conference with my Mizzou … Continue reading Alumni Spotlight: Jill Clingan
Cover for Karma Animalia (Social Justice Anthologies, 2022) by Ania Payne Each month during the academic year, we assemble a newsletter of the department's recent publications, presentations, announcements, and awards. As we begin a third year living with COVID-19, we continue to direct energies towards teaching our courses and to supporting others during the … Continue reading Winter 2021-2022 Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity
(Photo by Hongqi Zhang) If you post a question like “Who is African?” on Twitter, your timeline will immediately become bombarded both with hot takes about what constitutes the African identity on one hand and a big earful of insults from individuals who don’t think that the question should exist at all. Yet, no matter … Continue reading Move over Afropolitans, We are Going Old School
Location: English Department Alumni Facebook Group, posted by Aimee Teslaw (MA '00). Object: Textbook supplements for university required writing courses ENGL 100 and ENGL 200, c. 1999. Observations: 1) Aimee: "Went through some drawers. Found some relics of the late ‘90s." 2) We love seeing traces of earlier K-State English experiences! 3) These spiral-bound supplements … Continue reading Found Object: Expository Writing Materials, c. 1999
Kudzu Vines (photo) Southern Literature: the hallowed playground of venerated authors such William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor. Their novels and short stories have created such a comprehensive and detailed landscape that when we revisit texts such as The Sound and the Fury or Wise Blood, our minds cannot help but conjure images of … Continue reading Bless Your Heart, Regionalism and Southern Literature Just Ain’t the Same Thing
One of the memes created by students in Traci Brimhall's ENGL 463 "Introduction to Poetry" (Spring 2022) To get us ready for a semester of metrical fun, my ENGL 463 "Introduction to Poetry" students got do everyone’s favorite thing: watch a professor laugh at their own jokes on a PowerPoint. But then they got to … Continue reading Meme That Craft Element!
Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson (left) and Ella Hunt as Sue Gilbert (right) in Dickinson (image: Apple TV+) If Emily Dickinson were alive today, she’d definitely be a Swiftie. Fans of Taylor Swift praise the poetic descriptions of love, heartbreak, and longing that appear in her latest album, evermore, and Taylor’s narrative songwriting is both … Continue reading Taylor Swift’s evermore (Emily Dickinson’s Version)
Spring Flowers (photo: Office of the President) This week's glimpse of warmer temperatures offers a preview of what's ahead, once we experience some more winter weather. As we dodge snow and the latest COVID-19 variant here at the start of the semester, we'll look for signs of spring where we can! Here are some of … Continue reading Spring Preview
Faculty and Grad Student Trivia Night Each year at our annual department Holiday Party, we ask those in attendance to help us select the images that should appear on our end-of-year card for our donors and friends. Once again this year, due to Covid-19, our Holiday Party moved online (for our celebration of retiring faculty … Continue reading 2021 Holiday Card
Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) Today we share the final entry selected for publication from an assignment in ENGL 801 “Introduction to Graduate Studies”: a piece of public scholarship (700-1,000 words) which tailors an academic paper and its scholarly intervention of 10-12 … Continue reading Really, It’s in Your Best Interest to Join Captain Jack in a Life of Piracy
K-State English 