Spring Preview

Spring flowers in Manhattan, KS (2023) Welcome to the spring semester! We hope that you are keeping warm and safe as 2024 gets underway. Here are some of the events that we're looking forward to in the months ahead. Please join us for community, creativity, and conversation! All are free but online access requires advance … Continue reading Spring Preview

November 2023 Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Cover for the special issue of Unsettling Global Midwests, a special issue of American Studies with American Studies International, vol. 62, no. 3, 2023, co-edited by Tom Sarmiento.  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 … Continue reading November 2023 Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

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

6,487 Miles from Home: On the Tea Roads in Northern China and Mongolia

Professor Phillip Marzluf (October 2023) In the first week of October, I traveled throughout Inner Mongolia in China, visiting giant cities of glass and steel, paying my respects at the Mausoleum of Genghis Khan, and taking photographs of rural and desert landscapes. I was conducting “in the footsteps” travel research of Western visitors who, in … Continue reading 6,487 Miles from Home: On the Tea Roads in Northern China and Mongolia

October 2023 Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Traci Brimhall's poem "Arts & Sciences" appeared in The New Yorker   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 … Continue reading October 2023 Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

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

Kansas State Indigenous Peoples Day

Keynote speakers Arigon Starr and Dustin Tahmahkera pose with Willie the Wildcat during the 2023 Indigenous Peoples Day Conference (9 October 2023) Kansas State’s 2023 Indigenous Peoples Day, which took place on Monday, October 9th was a celebration of the creative arts. The program, “Writing, Singing, and Shaping the Future,” included talks by Kickapoo writer, … Continue reading Kansas State Indigenous Peoples Day

September 2023 Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Cover image for Phillip Marzluf's Travel Writing in Mongolia and Northern China, 1860-2020 (Amsterdam University Press, 2023)   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 … Continue reading September 2023 Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity