We’ve got a lot of good news to share this month!

Faculty News

Prof. Sean Lovelace published four “Letters to Jim Harrison” in Willow Springs Magazine Winter 2018 issue.

Prof. Carolyn J. MacKay and Prof. Frank R Trechsel published “An Alternative Reconstruction of Proto-Totonac-Tepehua” in the International Journal of American Linguistics.

Prof. Michael Begnal published a review of recent books by Irish poets Trevor Joyce, Nerys Williams, and Susan Connolly in the latest issue of Trumpet, a journal of criticism and opinion published by Poetry Ireland.

Prof. Rani Deighe Crowe’s poem, My First Love, was published in The American Journal of Poetry Volume 4.  Rani’s short film Texting: A Love Story is an official selection of the Harrogate Film Festival, to be held in March in Harrogate, UK. Texting will also be screening at the inaugural Bull City International Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina and the Women’s Worldwide Film Festival in Scottsdale, Arizona this month.

Prof. Emily Rutter published “Going Back to Kansas City: An Interview with Ira McKnight” in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture.

Prof. Pamela Hartman, with current graduate student Hannah Fulton and former BSU graduates Jessica Berg and Brandon Schuler will be presenting “Memes to Mirrors: Integrating the Visual Arts into Secondary English Language Arts” at the International Federation of Teachers of English conference in Birmingham, UK in June.

Prof. Ben Bascom published a book review in Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life and was invited to write a response to an essay about Henri Michaux.

Prof. Adam R. Beach presented on “Olaudah Equine and the Temptations of Ottoman Migration” at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the premier conference in literary studies, in New York on January 7. The paper was part of a session on “Migrancy and Empire in the Eighteenth Century.”

Prof. Sreyoshi Sarkar also presented at MLA. She organized the January 7 roundtable on “Visualizing Violence in Contemporary States of Insecurity” and presented her paper, “Michael Winterbottom’s In This World and the Disjuncture/s of Globalization” at the roundtable.

Professor Cathy Day was invited to be a special guest at “Uncle Dan’s Book Nerds,” a periodic book chat hosted by renowned Hoosier author Dan Wakefield. The event will take place from 6-8 p.m. Sunday, February 11 at the Aristocrat Pub’s Oxford Room. For tickets and more information, go here.

Prof. Jennifer Grouling published “The Path to Competency-Based Certification: A Look at the LEAP Challenge and the VALUE Rubric for Written Communication” in the Journal of Writing Assessment.

Prof. Lyn Jones received a Provost Immersive Learning Grant for Fall 2018. Her project is “Rethinking the Stories We Publish, Shelve, and Read: Rethinking Disability in Children’s and Young Adult Literature.”

Prof. Jill Christman has two new essays coming out in prestigious literary journals this spring: “Naked Underneath Our Clothes” in Creative Nonfiction and “Life’s Not a Paragraph” in River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.  Professor Christman’s contribution to Essay Daily’s advent calendar in December celebrated former English Department students: “Jill Christman on Essays to Pry Open Doors: Ashley C. Ford, Alysia Sawchyn, & Brittany Means.”

Speaking of Ashley C. Ford, this incredible news: Flat Iron Books will be publishing her memoir, Somebody’s Daughter, under the imprint An Oprah Book.

Prof. Kathryn Ludwig gave a talk entitled “Offred and Gilead” and led a discussion on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale at a Muncie Public Library book club meeting at Maring-Hunt Library on Wednesday, January 24.

Prof. Guilherme D. Garcia will present “Regulating the interaction between lexical statistics and the grammar: a naturalness bias in learning weight” at the 41st Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW) conference, held at the Hungarian Academy of Science in Budapest in April.

Prof. Rai Peterson is teaching at Book Arts Collaborative, a community letterpress and hand-sewn book bindery located in the Madjax Building in downtown Muncie.  You can learn more by visiting the collaborative’s website or listening to this Ball State Daily News podcast on which Dr. Peterson muses aloud about the materiality of books. Book Arts Collaborative holds an open house on First Thursday from 5-8 p.m., offers community workshops, and is available for tours and demonstrations by appointment.

Student News

Mary Carter’s essay “Returning in the Snow” was published online by Atticus Review.

Alumni News

Morgan “Mo” Smith Heldman, who graduated with a BA in Creative Writing in 2013, recently got a job writing content for Samsung mobile apps. She lives in Greenville, SC. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

Rachel Tindall, who graduated with a MA in English Studies in 2017, recently accepted a position as Project Intake Coordinator at Orchard Software in Indianapolis, which delivers diagnostic information systems to healthcare organizations. You can find her on LinkedIn.

Nikole Darnell, who graduated with a BA in Creative Writing in 2017, is working for the Lebanon Reporter in Lebanon, IN and recently became a columnist. You can find her on LinkedIn.

Kate Carnahan, who graduated with a BA in Creative Writing in December, recently got an internship as a Communications Intern at Habitat for Humanity of Evansville. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

Emily Barsic, who graduated with a BA in Literature in 2017, recently got a job working as a Camp Coordinator and doing Marketing at Share Foundation with the Handicapped in Rolling Prairie, IN. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.