The academic year has officially kicked off, and our department has already accomplished so much. Let’s celebrate their good news for the month! 

Faculty Good News

Patrick Collier’s book, Teaching Literature in the Real World, will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in July 2021.

Cathy Day will present (probably virtually) at the 2021 MLA Convention in January. She was invited to be on a panel sponsored by the Association of Departments of English (ADE) to discuss “English Majors’ Career Preparation and Outcomes.”

Matt Mullins’ video poem “Semi-Automatic Pantoum” was selected from over 2,000 submissions to screen at the 2020 Zebra Poetry Film Festival. 

Book Arts Collaborative

  • received a grant for $18,750 from  Discovery Group to add equipment and start an after school program for high school

    Book Arts Collaborative students, Spring 2020

    printers and bookbinders

  • received a grant for $60,000 from Ball Brothers Foundation to pay rent and visiting faculty salaries for three years
  • received a grant for $3,000 from Indiana Humanities Council to provide honoraria for guest speakers.

Rai Peterson was the featured guest on Flix Fix, hosted by Anne Laker, a podcast that is also broadcast on WQRT radio. They discussed the new Kelly Reichardt film, First Cow.

Emily Ruth Rutter hosted Poetry for Black Lives: A Reading and Conversation with Sequoia Maner and darlene anita scott on September 15. You can watch the YouTube recording of the event here. 

Molly Ferguson is a Newberry Library Irish Studies Seminar speaker for 2020-2021, where she will lead a virtual seminar titled, “Silence, Shame, and Escape in Contemporary Mermaid and Selkie Stories,” on November 13, 2020.

Mary Lou Vercellotti has a co-authored chapter “Effects of Teachers’ Language Ideologies on Language Learners’ Translanguaging Practices in an Intensive English Program” in the recently published Envisioning TESOL through a Translanguaging Lens: Global Perspectives. Find out more about teachers’ views on translanguaging and the possible benefits of viewing translanguaging-as-a-resource in language learning classrooms.

Kathryn Ludwig’s book review of The Midrashic Impulse and the Contemporary Literary Response to Trauma by Monica Osborne will appear in the winter 2020 issue (66.4) of Modern Fiction Studies.

Guilherme D. Garcia

  • has finished work on his upcoming book, Data visualization and analysis in second language research (under contract with Routledge)—the book project is being funded by a Junior Faculty Award here at Ball State. Over the summer, Garcia also started work on a digital corpus of Brazilian Veneto (Talian)—joint work with Natália B. Guzzo. Because Talian texts are rarely found in digital format, the project involves OCR (optical character recognition) and text analytics—see project page here, where the corpus (in progress) can be accessed. 
  • was invited to give a joint workshop on data analysis to over 500 linguistics students and faculty in Brazil (partnership with Brazil and UK scholars). He was also accepted to present his research as a talk at the 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA Meeting).
  • This fall Garcia’s paper (joint work with Natália B. Guzzo) Phonological Variation and Prosodic Representation: Clitics in Portuguese-Veneto Contact will soon appear in Journal of Language Contact 13. This fall, the LingData reading group will resume its activities (via Zoom) later this month. The main goal of the group is to read and discuss papers involving linguistics and/or quantitative data analysis (to promote linguistics as the scientific study of language, and to develop important technical skills for research and the job market). Students also report on the status of their research progress. Graduate students and faculty are welcome to participate—please contact either Garcia (gdgarcia@bsu.edu) or Evan Ward (etward@bsu.edu).

Dr. Darolyn “Lyn” Jones’

  • Dr. Jones’ educational book, Painless Reading Comprehension was selected for a 4th edition run. The new edition with a new publisher will be out in the Spring of 2021.
  • This June, Dr. Jones’ article titled ” ‘Don’t Speechify; Do Something’: University Students Experience Counter Narratives”, was accepted for publication in a special issue of North Meridian Review on The Freedom to Make and ReMake.
  • Dr. Jones’ literary essay titled “In Indy, #blackyouthmatter!” was accepted for publication with Belt Publishing’s city anthology titled, The Indianapolis Anthology.
  • In July, Dr. Jones edited a chapbook published by INwords Publications titled Radical and Restorative Youth Freedom Voices.
  • Dr. Jones co-authored a paper with Associate Professor in Communication Studies, Dr. Marcy Meyer titled, “Mother-Teacher-Scholar-Advocates: Narrating Work-Life on the Professorial Plateau.”  The paper was accepted in September for winter publication in The Journal of Organizational Ethnography (JOE).
  • In July, Dr. Jones was asked to develop a comprehensive curriculum for an eight-week course on narrative medicine and graphic medicine manifesto using creative narrative nonfiction writing prompts for pediatric residents at Riley Hospital.

Rani Deighe Crowe 

  • Her short film (with fellow English faculty Kathryn Gardiner and Ball State alumna, Cynda Williams) has been selected for the Rhode Island Black Film Festival Virtual Edition,  Maupintown Film Festival in Charlottesville, Virginia, Inspired Faith Film Festival Online, Kleinkaap Short Film Festival in South Africa, and Louisville’s International Festival of Film.
  • Crowe’s short film, Heather Has Four Moms, screened in Amaracourt Film Festival’s Around the World in 80 Shorts online Film Series out of Italy, Image Nation Montreal’s Facebook Live Event for Journée de Visibilité Lesbienne, State College PRIDE on Screen Virtual Film Fest and Q & A, and the Independent Film Festival Ypsilanti in Ypsilanti, MI.
  • Rani Deighe Crowe’s latest short film, Quiet on Set, has been selected by the Indy Film Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana, SAGA Adelaide: International Women’s Film Festival in Adelaide, Australia; New Haven Film Festival in New Haven, CT; Chain NYC Film Festival in New York City; Oregon Short Film Festival; Cineffable Paris International Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival in Paris, France; Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, Ft Lauderdale, Florida; Pune Short Film Festival in Maharashtra, India; Goa Short Film Festival; Dayton Independent Film Festival; Twin Cities Film Festival in Minneapolis; Louisville’s International Festival of Film; NEZ Film Festival in Kolkata, India; YofiFest in Yonkers, NY; Southampton Film Festival in Southampton, UK, and Women Over Fifty Film Festival in London, UK. It was a finalist for the Editing Award at the Oregon Short Film Festival.
  • The short film, Obligatory Departmental Anti-Racist Statement, from Crowe’s anthology of portraits of Americans from the pandemic was selected for the Oregon State International Film Festival. The short film stars Dr. Jeff Spanke and was adapted from his essay, “My Dear Racist Students.”
  • Crowe’s paper, “Strategies of Activating the Oppressed Protagonist” in Jane Anderson’s ‘1961’ of  If These Walls Could Talk 2” was selected by peer review  and presented at the University Film and Video 2020 virtual conference.
  • Curator Carmela at We Are Moving Stories selected Professor Crowe’s short film, Beautiful Eyes, as one of “the most entertaining, powerful and inspiring horror films – both smart and silly”.
  • Curator Carmela at We Are Moving Stories selected Professor Crowe’s short film, Heather Has Four Moms  as one of “the most entertaining, powerful and inspiring LESBIAN films.”
  • Crowe’s book review of Classical Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting was published in the spring/summer 2020 edition of The Journal of Film and Television.
  • Crowe was part of a virtual panel of Provincetown women filmmaker residents promoting their new Vorst House Residence in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
  • Crowe became a Board Member with the Open Circle Theater Company, in Washington DC, “promoting employment in the arts for people with disabilities and a more accessible community for all”.

Emily Jo Scalzo published two poems in Yes Poetry magazine, “Digress” and “Chassis.”

Mark Neely’s book manuscript, Ticker, won the Idaho Prize for Poetry, and will be published by Lost Horse Press in 2021. He has poems appearing in recent issues of Pleiades and Copper Nickel. 

Andrea Wolfe’s book, Black Mothers and the National Body Politic: The Narrative Positioning of the Black Maternal Body from the Civil War Period through the Present, will be published by Lexington Press in the coming months.

Katy Didden’s poem “Embrace Them All” was included in the 5th edition of Bedford St. Martin’s Literature: A Portable Anthology. An excerpt from her poem “The Sycamore on Praise,” illustrated and animated by Cynthia Perez, was projected onto the walls of the University of Missouri’s Agriculture Building as part of their Artist-in-Residence Program.

Michael Begnal’s poem “Elegy for Earth” appears in the anthology Silver Pinion: To Affirm the Marvelous (Word Studio, 2020, ISBN: 978-0-9987678-1-9).  Begnal’s translation of Irish poet Gabriel Rosenstock’s “Sé Tanka/Six Tankas” appears in Poetry Ireland Review, issue 130.

Students/Alumni Good News

Emily Turner

  • had her short story “Contributor Notes” published in the Little Fiction Big Truths journal in their 2020 Flash issue. The piece grew from an assignment in Sean Lovelace’s Introduction to Fiction course, based upon the works of visiting author Michael Martone. “Professor Lovelace is an invaluable professor,” Emily said, “and I really do owe this publication to him and, in part, Martone himself.”
  • was selected to be an editing intern assisting with the Center’s Summer 2020 chapbook publication titled, Radical and Restorative Youth Freedom Voices

Emily Turner and Megan Santin both served as teaching interns with the Indiana Writers Center’s Indianapolis youth public memoir project and program. 

Students from Jill Christman’s Fall 2019 VBC class, Indelible: Campus Sexual Violence, including current English majors Rebekah Hoffer (reporter, writer, producer) and Annie Ashbrook (host), our 2020 Outstanding English major Jonah James (reporter, writer, website designer), and recent TCOM graduate Lizzy Bernard (sound mixer and documentary producer) screened their documentary and hosted a live roundtable discussion about their podcast and activism to combat campus sexual violence at Jana’s Campaign Midwest Safety Summit in September. Be sure to visit the Indelible crew on their website and listen to the first season of Indelible which features survivor stories and vital topics such as starting college safely, Title IX, legal issues, and empowerment self-defense.

Devon Lejman worked and served as the lead teaching intern for the Indiana Writers Center’s Indianapolis youth public memoir project and program. Alum Emily Mack worked and served as an assistant teacher with that same program.  

JB Bilbrey’s, recent Creative Writing MA alum, first short film, Hiking with Cal, (Associate Produced by Professor Crowe) was selected for screening at the River Bend Film Festival in Goshen, Indiana.