Newsletter: December 2023

Our monthly newsletter, published online during the academic year, celebrates the latest publications, acceptances, projects, presentations, awards, accolades, teaching highlights, activities, and more of English faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates.

Publications, Exhibits, and Acceptances

Peter Chilson’s creative nonfiction essay “Collateral Damage: The Map Bomb” has been accepted by the literary journal Terrain.org.

Mitchell, Ryan, Julie Homchick Crowe, Sara DiCaglio, Lisa DeTora, Brynn Fitzsimmons, Tristin Brynn Hooker, Lisa Keränen, Michael Klein, Melissa Nicolas, and Shaunak Sastry published “A Dialogue on Un/Precedented Pandemic Rhetorics” in Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, vol. 6, no. 3, 2023, pages 335-364. DOI: 10.5744/rhm.2023.3005.

Lauren Westerfield was asked to deliver opening remarks alongside fellow faculty and administrators who have been instrumental in supporting the evolution of By Light and By Darkness, an arts exhibition and literary catalog published by student organizers with Cougs for Recovery, at the exhibition’s formal opening on November 16. By Light and By Darkness, now in its second year, features art and creative writing inspired by recovery and wellness. Westerfield has worked with student exhibition curators and editors to support the project since its founding in 2022, and to arrange Editing & Publishing internship credit for catalog editors in recognition of their talents. The exhibition was on view in the CUB main floor gallery until Thursday, November 30.

Roger Whitson’s article “Blake Reprinted” appears in Issue 4 of Vala: The Journal of the Blake Society.

Blood Orange Review English Department faculty editors Lauren Westerfield, Colin Criss, Grant Maierhofer, Jamie Flathers, and Julian Ankney are thrilled to announce the latest Volume 15.2 of the journal, now available online.

Conferences, Readings, Workshops, Performances, and Presentations

On January 25, 2024, Nancy Bell and Michael Thomas will be local site hosts for the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (NACLO). This annual competition challenges high school students to learn about languages, linguistics, and computation by solving pencil and paper puzzles. The logic puzzles are designed by professionals to engage students with cutting edge issues in these fields, and no prerequisite knowledge of linguistics or programming is required. For more information about the competition, practice problems, and to register, go to the NACLO website. You can also contact Nancy Bell.

Nishant Shahani participated as a panelist in an online zoom event entitled “Pandemics + Books: Publishing on HIV/AIDS” in the Early Covid Era organized by Ted Kerr and Alexandra Juhasz where he and his co-editors represented their book AIDS and the Distribution of Crises (Duke University Press, 2020)

Nishant Shahani presented a paper entitled “Beyond Biomedical Panaceas: A Bride to Elsewhere” at the American Studies Association (Montreal, 2023) at a panel on “Viral Intimacies: Anti-Colonial, Feminist, and Queer Solidarities in the Age of Pandemics.”

Roger Whitson presented “Time Travel and Time Criticality in William Gibson’s The Peripheral,” at the symposium Time Machines: Escaping Linear Chronology Across Media Arts at Goldsmith’s University of London on 13 June 2023.

Teaching Highlights, Activities, and Innovations

The 2023 English Department Holiday Potluck Party will be held on Wednesday, December 13, 2023, from 12:00-2:00 PM in the Bundy Reading Room. Bring something to share and enjoy a bit of festivity before the end of the semester!

Open Mic, coordinated by Linda Russo, was held on Thursday, November 30, from 6:00-7:30 PM at Brused Books, 235 E. Main Street, Pullman.

Colin Criss hosted Poetry Circle from 4:30-6:30 PM in Honors Hall 142. Derek Sheffield, poet and co-editor of Cascadia Field Guide, zoomed in to chat about poems and answer questions.

Linguistics Club, advisor Michael Thomas, met with students on November 17 to discuss the topic of how to win the scrabble world championship.

A Curriculum Mapping Workshop organized by Lauren Westerfield and Ashley Boyd will take place Wednesday, February 21, from 11:00-3:00 PM, and be broken up into three one-hour work sessions—curriculum mapping, review and course outcomes revision, and catalog revision—with a break for a catered lunch. Individual invitations and a detailed agenda are forthcoming. All are welcome.

WSU’s National Day of Racial Healing will take place on Tuesday, January 16, 2024. The English Department and Visiting Writers Series will be sponsoring two events on this day at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art: an ekphrastic poetry and mindfulness workshop and the Writers Give Voice poetry reading and open mic. All are welcome at both events. From 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM there will be a Creative Writing and Mindfulness Workshop. Cameron McGill, Colin Criss, and additional creative writing faculty will lead an ekphrastic writing workshop in response to museum exhibitions, including “Jeffrey Gibson: They Teach Love, From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation” and “Here in a Homemade Forest: Common Reading Connections.” The workshop will begin with a mindfulness session with Trymaine Gaither. Participants will have the option to share their writing later in the day in the museum’s Pavilion Gallery at Writers Give Voice: Reading and Open Mic from 1:45-2:45 PM. Readers will include creative writing students and faculty and student editors/contributors of WSU creative writing publications. All students, faculty, staff, and community members are invited to bring a poem to read during the open mic portion.

Awards, Honors, Prizes, Fellowships, and Grants

Robert Eddy has become a member of the editorial board of Literacy in Composition Studies.

Buddy Levy’s book Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk (St. Martin’s Press, 2022) has won the National Outdoor Book Award in the category of History/Biography. His book was selected from over 150 submissions for the awards.

From the Chair’s Desk

Dear all,

I recently received several letters from English majors thanking their professors for their work. As we reach the end of the fall semester, and then try to recover enough for spring, I hope it’s restorative to remember our students are grateful for our efforts. One letter came from a student in Professor Michael Hanly’s Humanities 302. He was delighted to have the opportunity to read medieval and Renaissance literature and learn about its historical context. He found the course “an absolute joy,” and concludes, “I cannot overstate how much more interesting and enjoyable my education has been for having taken this class.” Students don’t always immediately recognize the impact of their degrees.

Another student, who earned her MA in the late 80s, recently wrote to me regarding her favorite professor, Donald Ross, who passed away in 2005: “Dr. Ross helped me believe that I was an excellent creative writer. He held me to a high standard, and I worked hard for him. He noticed from one semester to another that I was losing weight. One day after class, he asked if I was okay. I told him that I had cut back on my work hours to focus on classes and that my budget was very tight. He asked how tight. After that, he bought me groceries for the rest of the semester . . . I got through that semester and made it home for the summer work at a cannery. The following fall, I had money for food.” The student is now a professor herself, and I wrote to tell her about the food pantry we recently established for our students.

Thanks to all of you for doing your best to sustain your students—body, mind, and soul.

Best,

Donna L. Potts