FACULTY

Molly Ferguson: Her new book, Banshees, Hags, and Changelings: Feminist Folklore Transformations in Irish Writing, is just out from Syracuse University Press. You can read an excerpt on their blog.

Sean Lovelace published three works of flash fiction in Frigg Magazine. 

Danielle Curry published her short story “Storm on the Horizon” in Women Speak vol. 10 sponsored by Women of Appalachia Project. Her short story “Map Back to You” is forthcoming in Women Speak, vol.11.

Pamela Hartman is the recipient of a Women of Beneficence grant for the 2026-27 grant cycle. She will administer the Cardinal Corner Book Club at both Southside and Northside Middle Schools. The two teachers she’s working with at Northside and Southside middle schools are both alumni from the Ball State English Ed program: Abigail Simpson and Megan Santin.

Keith Jackson:

• Parenting while PhDing, edited by Jackie Hoermann-Elliott and Jenna Morton-Aiken, an edited collection I’m in, was finally published this summer by Rutgers. Link: Parenting While PhDing – Rutgers University Press. I wrote about my experiences as a father pursuing a terminal degree and offered some advice on how to manage one’s time and labor while “parenting while PhDing.”
• Also, I co-authored an article in another collection titled, “Pathways to Diverse and Inclusive Curricula: Redefining the Humanities” published by Watchung Review. Our article is titled “Antiracist Curriculum Revision through Innovative Coalition Building.” In this article, we share our experiences working and collaborating with other faculty/graduate students on antiracist curriculum revisions here in the Ball State English program.

Jill Christman:

• Her new memoir, The Heart Folds Early is just out from University of Nebraska Press as part of the American Lives Series. You can read advance praise and excerpts from the book online.
• Jill has a new essay just out–“Precious to Me”–in an amazing new anthology celebrating the life, music,  and lasting power of Sinead O’Connor: Nothing Compares to You: What Sinéad Means to Us. Eds. Martha Bayne and Sonya Huber. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2025.
• And a nice nod from The Rumpus for–“Spinning Webs in Space.” The Rumpus. 8 October 2024: online. *Nominated for Best American Essays 2024 by The Rumpus.

Rod Taylor’s article “At the Foot of the Racial Mountain: Pauline Hopkins’ Literary Exodus in Peculiar Sam; or, The Underground Railroad,” won the 2025 Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society’s 2025 Scholarship Award. Over the summer, Rod completed a faculty externship through Ball State’s Career Center at Conner Prairie in Fishers, Indiana, where he worked with industry professionals to learn what they value in job candidates, employees, and interns. In June, he was awarded a short-term fellowship from the New York Public Library to support his research on African American print culture at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the world’s leading libraries on African and African American Culture. In July, Rod began his second, three-year term as the secretary/treasurer of the American Humor Studies Association. Finally, he has a forthcoming chapter (4-28-26) titled “Loving My Soul: Reconciling African American Foodways with the American Dream” in the edited collection Consuming the American Dream: Essays Celebrating the Intersection of Food, Literature, and Our National Myth (University of Tennessee Press).

Katy Didden:

This summer, The Chicago Review published my poem “To a Sheep Who Lives By a River Named for a Man Named After a Wolf” in an online feature honoring the late poet Elizabeth Arnold. I published an essay, “Nonlinear,” in the edited collection Power Shift: Keywords for a New Politics of Energy. I was a guest co-host on the podcast Poetry For All, discussing “Two Emergencies” by Joanne Diaz (if you’re a fan of Auden’s “Musée Des Beaux Arts, this is a fun episode!), and was featured on the 149 Review podcast, where I got to discuss publishing and promote The Broken Plate. In July, I attended the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment conference (ASLE) where I presented a paper and read poems from my new project, Weather by Letter.

Adam Beach published a new article, “Psychological Coercion, Affection, and Enslavement: Robert King and Mechanisms of Control in Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative (1789)” in Eighteenth-Century Life (2025) 49 (3): 66–88.

Rani Crowe’s short film Safety State has now screened at 77 film festivals, most recently, The American Pavillion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival, San Francisco Frozen Film Festival, Zefestival, Nice, France, Out Here Now, Dayton, Ohio, Oldenberg Queer Film Festival, Oldenberg, Germany, and Perlen Queer Film Festival, Hannover, Germany.  Her new feature film screenplay, The Problem with Jenny was an official selection for Lonely Seal International Film, Screenplay and Music Festival in Massachusetts. Her latest short film, Divide, has been selected for 18 film festivals, including Athens International Film and Video Festival, Cinema Diverse Palm Springs, Iowa Independent Film Festival, Queer Streifen Regensburg, Germany, The Women’s Film Festival Philadelphia,     Milwaukee Short Film Festival, and Stamped Film Festival Florida.

Joyce Huff published a chapter entitled “Dead Weight: Exhibiting Fatness Postmortem” in the collection Freak Inheritance: Eugenics and Extraordinary Bodies in Performance, edited by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Michael Mark Chemers, and Analola Santana (Oxford University Press).

Cathy Day presented on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington D.C. The title was “Selling “Career Readiness” to Liberal Arts Faculty: Moving Career Preparation into the Classroom and Curriculum,” and it included Scott Carlson and Ned Laff, authors of the book Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter and What Does (JHU Press, 2025), as well as Jason Rhody, Director of Engagement at the Modern Language Association (MLA), and Dr. Thomas Williams, Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at University of Central Arkansas. Cathy’s essay, “College is Not an Identity Store” appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s newsletter on the future of higher education, “The Edge.”

 CURRENT STUDENTS

Undergraduate

Courtney Roberts was named one of Ball State’s TOP 100 Students. This award recognizes 100 outstanding undergraduates at Ball State who represent Beneficence both in and out of the classroom. All applications were scored by a group of Ball State alumni from around the country. Courtney is majoring in English Studies with minors in creative writing and professional writing and is considering graduate school or a career with a non-profit after graduation. 

Daniel Schultz has been awarded the Pepsi Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavor Grant for Fall 2025! He will be conducting his own original research study under the mentorship of Dr. MaryLou Vercellotti.

Graduate

Muhammad Hafeez ur Rehman:

Recent Publications

• Published an article, “Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale and the Post‐9/11 Crusade Mentality: Unearthing Historical Echoes in Modern Context” in Literature Compass (2025) V.22 No.3, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.70028
• Published an article in a Special Issue on Postcolonial Literature & Ecotheology, “Eco-Spiritual Threads: Karma, Dharma, and Ecosystem in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island” in Religions (2025) 16(7), 931; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16070931
• Forthcoming Book Review in Ecokritike (Published by H-Net),  Review of Infrastructuring Urban Futures: The Politics of Remaking Cities, by Wiig, Alan, Kevin Ward, Theresa Enright, Mike Hodson, Hamil Pearsall, and Jonathan Silver, eds. Ecokritike 2, no. 2 (2025)

Conference Presentations

• Presented my paper, “Infrastructural Affective Tonality: Mapping Lahore’s Sensory and Social Divides in Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke” in ASLE 2025 (July 9) at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
• Presented my position paper, “Defunding Knowledge: The Corporate University, Far-Right Politics, and the Crisis of Academic Infrastructure” in  Knowing Infrastructures in and beyond the neoliberal university at City St George’s, University of London, UK on June 13, 2025. (Virtual Presentation)
• Forthcoming conference presentation: will present my paper, “Patronage as Soft Infrastructure in Moth Smoke: Power, Exclusion, and Survival in Pakistan” in the Modernist Studies Association Conference (MSA) in Boston on October 11, 2025.

Leah Chandler‘s master’s creative project, “The Tale of Three Trees,” was selected as the Ball State University Foundation Outstanding Creative Project for 2025-2026. Her work was selected for the award by an intra-university committee of faculty scholars on the basis of its originality, significant contribution to knowledge, quality of writing, and potential for dissemination. The award carries a $400 honorarium and a plaque.

Judith Owano

• Co-authored the book chapter, “Photovoice and Critical Participatory Action Research: Choices and Challenges of Using an Arts-Based Method as a Research Team” in Critical Participatory Action Research in Higher Education: For Us, By Us (Routledge, 2025).
  Critical Participatory Action Research in Higher Education: For Us By Us
•  Presented “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Language Education: A Comparative Study Between Kenya and the United States” at Ball State University (2024)
• Presented “Swahili Language Night” at Ball State University (February 7, 2025), highlighting Swahili language and culture with multimedia elements, including a song.
•   Presented “Comparative Analysis of Prefixation in English and Swahili” at the 11th Annual Graduate Student African Studies Conference at Indiana University, Bloomington (March 2025).

Ismael Zerbo:

• Recipient of Ball State University 2025 Doctoral Level Excellence in Teaching Award 
• Recipient of the Ball State University 2025 Hanson Rhetoric Award
• Presented at Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) on the “B-Side of Academic Labor” along with Dr. Grouling and Keith Jackson.
• Presented at Practical Criticism Midwest (PCM) on “How Has Generative AI Changed the Teaching Practices in First-Year Composition Classrooms?”

Haley Stevens’s short story “Shekecheyanu” was published in Black Horse Review.

Blake Chapman, an MA student in Creative Writing, recently presented his EMDD thesis for Bracken Library’s “Lunch and Learn Series.” His presentation, “Save As: An Interactive Web Application for Emerging Games Media,” is available to watch on the library’s YouTube channel.

ALUMNI

Lindsey Hayse: Fulbright Taiwan ETF Award Recipient

The English Teaching Flagship Award is given to qualified English teachers in Taiwan. The Foundation for Scholarly Exchange (FSE) is collaborating with the MOE (Ministry of Education) in Taiwan to become an entirely bilingual country by 2030.

• Hayse, ’25, from New Salisbury, Ind., earned her degree in teaching English and a minor in Spanish. She also earned University honors through the Honors College.“Receiving the Fulbright to teach in Taiwan is something I’ve been working toward since my second year of college. I’m extremely excited to be returning to Taiwan to teach English, explore this beautiful country, meet old friends, and make new ones.”

Megan Lutes: Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Award

• Lutes, ’23 MA ’25, from Westfield, Ind., earned her undergraduate degree in fashion consumer science with a concentration in apparel design. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with University honors from the Honors College and holds a master’s degree in English studies. Megan will be teaching in South Korea.“I am looking forward to experiencing a new country and culture, not in the way that a tourist would, but by fully living and working and immersing myself there. I am hopeful that this experience will lead to further career opportunities in teaching or fashion in South Korea after my Fulbright year,” Ms. Lutes said.

Attention Alumni: Please follow the English department’s LinkedIn page.