Not only was February a month full of love; it was also a month full of awesome accomplishments for our #BSUEnglish faculty, students, and alumni!

Faculty News

Professor Guilherme D. Garcia’s paper “Can you get stress without feet?” (joint work with Heather Goad) was accepted for presentation at the 36th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), held at UCLA this April.

Prof. Kathryn S. Gardiner’s feature-length screenplay “The Regiment” won an Award of Excellence in the 2018 Broadcast Education Association’s Faculty Screenwriting Competition.

Prof. Andrea Wolfe’s round table presentation,“Storytelling across the Domestic Student/International Student Divide” (with Lizz Alezetes and Deborah McMillan), will be conducted at Indiana Campus Compact Service Engagement Summit, in Indianapolis on February 27.

Prof. Peter Davis’s poem “Touching Stuff” was recently published in The Believer. His fourth book of poems, Band Names and Other Poems, is now available from Bloof Books.  He also released a new Short Hand record from his music project. This one happens to be a rap record! Prof. Davis is also judging the 2018 Lucy Munro Brooker Prize for the University of Indianapolis undergraduate poetry prize.

Prof. Angela Jackson-Brown‘s musical Dear Bobby, with music written by Prof. Davis, will have six performances at the Basile IndyFringe Theatre beginning on March 22.

Prof. Emily Rutter’s book Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball behind the Color Line (University of Mississippi Press, May 15, 2018) is now available for pre-order.

Prof. Cathy Day will be teaching this summer at the Chautauqua Institute in Chautauqua, NY. For one week, she’ll lead a series of master classes on the changing business of writing.

Prof. Jennifer Grouling published “Teaching Writing Teachers: An Assignment in Mapping Writing Program Values” in Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments.

Prof. Rory Lee published “Surveying the Available Modes of Persuasion” in Designing and Implementing Multimodal Curricula and Programs.

On February 22, 2018, Prof. Victoria Barrett published an op-ed with the Washington Post entitled, “Why I will never carry a gun in my classroom”.

Prof. Michael Begnal presented a paper at The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 on the contemporary Irish poet Maurice Scully, titled “Immanence and Ecopoetics in the Poetry of Maurice Scully.”

Retired Prof. Bob Habich contributed an invited post about Ralph Waldo Emerson to OUPblog, conducted by Oxford University Press: “Emerson’s Canonization and the Perils of Sainthood“appeared on May 25, Emerson’s birthday. In October he led a discussion of Henry David Thoreau for the Association of Lifelong Learners.  And in January, Broadview Press published Bob’s edition of the Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Prof. Lynne Stallings was awarded a VBC Fellowship for Fall, 2018, for a project titled Promoting Assessment Literacy. This project was inspired by one of the recommendations by the 2016 Indiana ISTEP panel, and the subsequent legislation (House Education Act 1003) that was passed in 2017, calling for state funds to create assessment literacy programs that promote “a better understanding of the meaning behind assessment results.” Students from a wide range of disciplines will be recruited  to determine the message and language that would most effectively  ensure that Hoosiers fully understand assessment practices and their implications for Indiana students, schools, and communities.

Prof. Stallings also recently received the Mayor James P. Carey Community Service Award in recognition of distinction in community leadership. The award was presented by the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dream Team. Her co-honorees were her husband, Daniel Stallings, Yvonne Thompson, and Susan Fisher.

Student News

Cecelia Westbrook‘s non-fiction essay, “All Babies Are Ugly, Except for Me (Just Ask My Uncle)”, has been accepted for publication by the journal Tributaries.

Alumni News

Brandon Buechley, a 2015 Creative Writing graduate, accepted a job at DK Publishing in Indianapolis. He serves as an editorial assistant for Alpha Books.

Daniel Brount (BA English 2016) recently secured a position in publishing. He’ll be a Production/Editorial Assistant at Skyhorse Publishing in New York City.

Nikole Darnell, who graduated in 2017 with a degree in Creative Writing, had her short story “When Tomorrow Comes” published in Potluck Magazine. The story was originally written for her Honors Thesis at BSU, directed by Joyce Huff.