Prof. Emily Scalzo had four poems accepted to Scarlet Leaf Review, including “To My Father,” “If the Human Race is the Only Race, Why Does this Shit Still Happen,” “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and “The Reason I Blocked You on Facebook.” They are due to be published in December. Also, her poetry chapbook, The Politics of Division, was accepted by Five Oaks Press for publication in 2017.

Prof. Rebecca Manery’s book of poems, View from the Hôtel de l’Étoile, is just out from Finishing Line Press. Individual poems from this collection have been published in Rhino, Bennington Review, and The Body Politic. Becca is a new faculty member at Ball State. Learn more about her here. 

Prof. Aimee Taylor successfully defended her dissertation, titled “Fat Cyborgs: Body-Positive Activism, Shifting Rhetorics and Body Politics in the Fatosphere.” Prof. Elizabeth Dalton graduated from Spalding University with an MFA in Creative Fiction Writing. Congrats to you both!

Prof. Emily Rutter received an Immersive Learning Micro-Grant for her Fall 2017 course “Storytelling and Social Justice.” The course will facilitate a reciprocal relationship between Ball State undergraduate students and Teamwork for Quality Living, a local nonprofit focused on decreasing poverty in our community. Students will use acquired knowledge to assist Teamwork members in documenting their personal journeys from poverty toward self-sufficiency. These stories will then become part of a short documentary film and an electronic book.

Prof. Susanna Benko and her colleagues, Emily Hodge (Montclair State University) and Serena Salloum (Ball State University) recently had an article published!  The article, “(Un)Commonly Connected: A Social Network Analysis of State Standards Resources for English Language Arts” was just released in AERA Open, an open-access journal sponsored by the American Educational Research Association.   This article is the first publication from their two-year research project.

Prof. Rory Lee’s audio-video project, “Ways of Knowing and Doing in Digital Rhetoric: A Primer,” was published in the most recent issue of enculturation. Professor Lee completed the project with Matthew Davis from the University of Massachusetts Boston and Stephen J. McElroy from Florida State University.

Prof. Michael Begnal published four poems in Empty Mirror. They are titled “Homage to Yoko Ono,” “Elegy for Lou Reed,” “Elegy for Scott Asheton,” and “Homage to André Breton.” Read them here!

Prof. Mary Lou Vercellotti a poster at Indiana Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages annual conference. Grad students, current grad students, and IEI instructors also attended. She also presented at the Lilly Conference for College Teaching held at Miami University in Oxford, OH. The title of the presentation was “If you post it, will they read? An investigation of student activity in the learning management system.”

#bsuenglish alum Robbie Maakestad earned his MA in CW from Ball State in May 2014. He’s finishing his MFA at George Mason University. Check out his essay just out in The Rumpus.

Prof. Peter Davis recently released a double album (The Leaves) from his music project, Short Hand. He had poems recently published (or forthcoming) in Rhino, Rattle, Open Letters Monthly, Masque and Spectacle, Big Bell and Forklift, Ohio.  A Swedish journal, Bear Books, published an interview with him, including a number of poems and a review of some of his work. Also, The Columbia Poetry Review nominated him for a Pushcart Prize, and Frontier Slumber recently released a cassette tape of him reading his poetry called “Some Small Animal Situation.”

Prof. Joyce Huff presented a paper entitled, “The Neurotypical Uncanny: Epilepsy, Dystopia, and The Lord of the Flies” for a panel on disability and dystopia at the South Atlantic MLA conference. She also heard an excellent panel of papers that included #bsuenglish grad students Matthew Schmalzer (about Watchmen), Danita Mason (about The Hunger Games), and Bethany Stayer (about Dracula).

Graduate students Danita Mason, Mathew Schmalzer, and Bethany Stayer presented at South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) in Jacksonville, Florida.

Elsewhere on the graduate student front, Jesse Sopher presented at the Indiana College English Association conference in October. He won best paper/presentation with a $100 prize. Zach Kocanda (current Creative Writing MA) also presented. Nikki Baker presented, as well, and was one of the organizers. She graduated with her PhD in Rhet/Comp this past summer.

Current #bsuenglish major Hannah Schneider won third in the international “Shanghai Get-Together 2016,”  the 4th Writing and Photography Contest put on by an organization in Shanghai.

#bsuenglish alum Autumn Hill is working for the Express Enrollment Center at Ivy Tech in Columbus, IN.