In the latest installment of the “Good News” series, the Ball State English Department highlights the accomplishments of our faculty and students. 

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Dr. Lyn Jones was awarded the Top Diversity Research and Publication Award for the university faculty for the second year in a row. Diversity Provost Dr. Charlene Alexander and Provost Robert Morris presented her the award.  In addition, Lyn was nominated for the Dr. Robert O’ Foster Faculty Award for her work with the ABLT club and the commitment to raising awareness for LGBTQ.

Graduate student Elizabeth King received a Fulbright award! In August she will be placed in Taitung, Taiwan to work with local English teachers and invest in the local community.

The Alliance of Black and Latino Teachers
Club was nominated for a Diversity Awareness Program of the Year, but did not win that award.  It is quite an honor to have been nominated for this award.

Dr. Robert Habich presented his research on Ralph Waldo Emerson and international tourism at “Global/Emerson: Transmission, Translation, Transnational” at Cornell University.  

Dr. Molly Ferguson presented a paper titled “The Devil You Don’t: Alcoholism and the Faustian Bargain in Claire Kilroy’s The Devil I Know” at the American Conference for Irish Studies, held this year at Notre Dame University.

Dr. Mary Lou Vercellotti published “Shifting structural complexity: The production of clause types in speeches given by EAP students” with undergraduate research assistant Jessica Parker.

Graduating English Education student Rita Mitchell won the Jessie Nixon Award for her leadership in the Alliance of Black and Latino Teachers Club. The award goes to a graduating senior who has been actively involved and has made a positive impact on the university. Congratulations, Rita!

36_Rai Peterson.jpgDr. Rai Peterson participated in The People’s 500, an art project that photographed 100 ordinary people with personal connections to the Indianapolis Brickyard track, each driving two laps in an Official Pace Car for equalling 500 miles or one race. Rai’s personal connection is her participation in the 2012 Indy Mini Marathon. She completed the 13.1 miles while on crutches, and crossed the finish line in just barely under 3 hours. The exhibit will premier at the Tube Factory artspace on May 6.

Prof. Michael S. Begnal published a review of three recent books by Irish poets — Trevor Joyce, Christodoulos Makris, and Peter O’Neill — in the Spring 2016 issue of Trumpet, Poetry Ireland’s critical review.

Prof. Emily Rutter presented “‘Straighten Up and Fly Right’: A Contrafactual Reading of Percival Everett’s Suder and Bernard Malamud’s The Natural” at The Sultans of Swing Conference: 100 Years of Baseball, Jazz, and Short Fiction at Wright State University.

Prof. Silas Hansen presented at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Los Angeles as part of a panel called “The Multimodal Workshop: Digital Pedagogy for Creative Writers.”

Dr. Joyce Huff wrote a blog post entitled “The Subersive Potential of Fat in Sarai Walker’s Dietland“ for the German Food Studies blog Food, Fatness and Fitness: Critical Perspectives.

Prof. Emily Scalzo had two senryu accepted to the May 2016 edition of Cattails through the United Haiku and Tanka Society.

Dr. Frank Felsenstein and prof. Patrick Collier, along with three colleagues from the History department, are joint editors of Print Culture Histories Beyond the Metropolis. Patrick co-wrote the introduction, and Frank contributed a chapter entitled “Print Culture and Cosmopolitan Trends in 1890s Muncie, Indiana”.

Graduate student Jeremy Flick accepted a teaching position at Ivy Tech in Marion, IN. In addition, Jeremy

Graduate student Matthew Balk defended his dissertation on April 28th. He also accepted the Writing Center Director position at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs for the coming fall semester.