What Happens to Childless Mothers?

Copies of The Lovely Bones, including the Chinese translation, "蘇西的世界," wait to be read. Today we share the third of six pieces of public writing selected for publication from an assignment in ENGL 801 “Graduate Studies in English”: a piece of public scholarship (700-1,000 words) which tailors an academic paper and its scholarly intervention of … Continue reading What Happens to Childless Mothers?

Resting in Peace: Why Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Keeps Sharon Tate Away from the Action

Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Today we share the second of six pieces of public writing selected for publication from an assignment in ENGL 801 “Graduate Studies in English”: a piece of public scholarship (700-1,000 words) which tailors an academic paper and its scholarly intervention of 10-12 pages … Continue reading Resting in Peace: Why Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Keeps Sharon Tate Away from the Action

Mina Harker is More Than Just a Love Interest

Photo collage of letters and documents for Dracula (LegendaryTalesEdit) In ENGL 801 "Graduate Studies in English," a required course for incoming M.A. students, we have always asked our graduate students to develop an original contribution to a current scholarly conversation about a literary or cultural text. Starting in 2020, we added a final writing assignment: … Continue reading Mina Harker is More Than Just a Love Interest

Materialist Approaches in ENGL 220

Students from the K-State First Year Seminar course ENGL 220 "Fiction into Film" visit the Beach Museum to see the exhibition on "Women Artists in the Era of Second Wave Feminism" This semester, I’ve had the great opportunity to teach ENGL 220 “Fiction into Film” as a First-Year Seminar, where we read literary texts and … Continue reading Materialist Approaches in ENGL 220

From the Archive: Halloween Horror: The Tell-Tale Heart

Image Credit: Goodreads Since our blog debuted in 2017, we have published 400+ posts.  While some of you may have been with us from the start (thank you, loyal readers!), others may have joined us more recently. So, we're highlighting periodically some of the posts that have garnered a lot of views or that address … Continue reading From the Archive: Halloween Horror: The Tell-Tale Heart

A Sense of Place for Midwesterners of Color: A Podcast from ENGL 650

For Fall 2023, I’m teaching ENGL 650 "Readings in 20th- & 21st-Century American Literature" as “Multiethnic Literatures of the Midwest.” Centering Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Midwestern stories and authors, the course invites us to explore our perceptions and misconceptions about America’s heartland and to discover the rich diversity of the region. In … Continue reading A Sense of Place for Midwesterners of Color: A Podcast from ENGL 650

Wild Lit

Students from "Wild Lit" rise early to view prairie chickens on the Konza prairie (April 2023) Spring 2023 launched a new environmental literature course, "Wild Lit." How have American writers viewed the more-than-human world over the centuries? What role has public land played in the American traditions of nature writing and environmental literature? How do … Continue reading Wild Lit

From Gendered Blood to Magical Silver: Student Symposium on Asian American Lit

Michele Janette's ENGL 680 "Asian American Literature" class (May 2023) You know how it is: you have these great conversations, read these fabulous books, discover these new ideas, and write this great paper, and only your professor sees it before it vanishes into last year's folder on your laptop, or into the inaccessible corners of … Continue reading From Gendered Blood to Magical Silver: Student Symposium on Asian American Lit

Rebury, Repatriate, Reclaim: Rhetoric of the “Salina Burial Pit”

Postcard of a roadside sign for the Indian Burial Pit near Salina, Kansas, c. 1950-1960. Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society's Kansas Memory online archive. As the academic year comes to a close, today we share the final piece of public writing selected for publication from an assignment in ENGL 801 “Graduate Studies in English” … Continue reading Rebury, Repatriate, Reclaim: Rhetoric of the “Salina Burial Pit”

Scrumptious Kansan Krauts: English Students Bake Bierock with Bakery Science

Cooling Bierock surrounded by undergraduates Claire Adamyk, Chase Bauman, Melaina Gross, Jolyon Griffith, Sarah Hemenway, Anna Jirak, Bella Lane, Olivia McComb, Reagan Montgomery, Hailey Rush, Zyler Wyman, Rachel Zimmerman together with Jeanette Rohleder, Elisa Karkle, and Steffi Dippold, instructor for ENGL 210 “Honors English: How to Cook a Raccoon: The Memory Work of Cookbook Collections” … Continue reading Scrumptious Kansan Krauts: English Students Bake Bierock with Bakery Science