News

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, staff, and undergraduates.

Publications, Exhibits, & Acceptances

To honor the work of WSU authors during this year’s Crimson Reads, held during WSU Showcase, WSU Libraries featured an author and 2023 book a day during a week in March. Ashley Boyd‘s co-edited book Reading For Justice was a featured book.

Linda Russo’s Halcyon Award-winning fourth book of poetry from Middle Creek Publishing, the verdant, was just published.

Roger Whitson’s article “Reassembling Visionary Physics: Donald Ault, Bruno Latour, and William Blake’s Mathematical Scenographies,” appears in Essays in Romanticism.

DJ Lee’s creative nonfiction essay “The River Decides” and two of her photographs appear in the current edition (14.1) of Cirque: A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim.

Grant Maierhofer’s book LRD was just published by Erratum Press.

Grant Maierhofer’s book Sentence-Making: A Writing Craft Workbook & Memoir was just published by Feral Dove Books, 2024.

Susan Dente Ross published “Complicity and Duplicity in Mainstream US Media,” Interdisciplinary Media and Communication Studies, 1, no. 1 (May 2024, DergiPark): 84-86.

Conferences, Readings, Workshops, Performances, & Presentations

Pamela Thoma presented “’Natural Disasters’: Reproductive Refusal and Post Work Imagination in Ling Ma’s Severance” on the “On Dystopia and Severance” panel at the Association for Asian American Studies conference in Seattle, April 24-27.

Christel Woods presented “SAY HER NAME” on the panel Literary Activism and Critical Intervention in Black Feminist Studies on April 11, at the College Literature Association Conference in Memphis.

On April 10 the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and English Graduate Organization (EGO) hosted the Feminist/Queer Dialogue Series (Zoom) featuring M.A. Miller, Assistant Professor WGSS, for their talk: “’F*ck Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob’: Trans Studies and the Intertidal Invertebrate.”

On May 13, Roger Whitson gave a talk online for the Global Blake Network about a recent article he published on Donald Ault and Bruno Latour.

The first Avery Series, organized by Grant Maierhofer, took place in the Bundy Reading Room on March 28. Featured guests included Linda Russo and Lauren Westerfield discussing the role of the writer today. Grant Maierhofer moderated.

WSU Vancouver’s 5^thannual Social Justice Conference (SJCon) was held April 19-21. The theme was Health & Environmental Justice: Constructing Coalitions at the Intersections of Extraction, Militarism, and Climate Collapse. The conference also included Evening with Activist in Film: The Fight for a Livable Planet. SJCon was sponsored by WSU Vancouver Native Programs and the Collective for Social and Environmental Justice.

The Showcase of Arts & Humanities research, scholarship, and creative production was held on April 10 at the Lewis Alumni Center. The evening began with flash talks from Process Grant Award Winners and was followed by the debut of short videos featuring eight faculty from across units. Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies faculty, M.A. Miller, was the focus of one of the videos. Linda Russo’s poetry project for Palouse Land Trust was also the topic of a video.

In celebration of Linda Russo’s Halcyon Award-winning fourth book of poetry from Middle Creek Publishing, the verdant, all were invited to an April 22 Earth Day Outdoor Literary Celebration, Book Launch, and Poetry Walk.

On April 26, Landescapes, the student literary magazine, Grant Maierhofer advisor, had its release party at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

On April 24, our graduating MA students gave presentations based on their studies: Hayden Mochamad, “Rhetorics of Biopolitics, Cryopolitics, and the Western Conception of Intelligence”; Emma Moroles, “Well-Being in First-Year Writing”; Anna Bushy, “Planetary Caring Politics in the Chthulucene”; Lucy Rickman, “Approaches to Reckoning with the Future Through Literature”; Laiba Sehrish, “The Impact of Imperialist Ideology on Film and Postcolonial Identity.”

The WSU Visiting Writers Series welcomed an in-person reading & Q&A with poet, author, and editor Gabrielle Calvocoressi on April 2 in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. VWS is co-directed by Cameron McGill and Julian Ankney. On April 16, the Visiting Writers Series welcomed Steven Dunn and Katie Jean Shinkle for a virtual event, moderated by Julian Ankney.

Bibhushana Poudyal was one of the panelists at the Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities Conference on April 26 at the Neill Public Library, sponsored by the David G. Pollart Center for Arts and Humanities.

On April 24, the Collective for Social and Environmental Justice (CSEJ) held its last teach-in of the academic year: “The Health Crisis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

WSU alum John DeTurk visited the English Department on April 26 to talk about how he’s used his degree throughout his career.

Desiree Hellegers was featured on KBOO Radio discussing How I Learned to Breathe Through the Apocalypse, a serial play/web series, which Hellegers wrote, performed. The series is directed and produced by Hellegers, along with Derya Ruggles and Melissa Salazar for air on Open Signalpdx.

DJ Lee was interviewed for AARP Magazine about Mother’s Day and her memoir Remote.

Aaron Oforlea and DJ Lee will run a workshop titled “Documenting Insurrectionist Voices: Life-Writing and African American Literary Theory” at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference at Georgetown University on August 16.

Kirk McAuley presented “The Ecology of British and American Empire Writing, 1704 – 1894” on April 23, in the Hecht Meeting Room, Neill Public Library.

Our faculty and students presented the following papers and discussions at the 2024 College Composition and Communication Annual Convention in Spokane, April 3-6:

Mike Edwards, Questioning Generative AI.
Wendy Olson, Cross-Talking with an American Academic of Color and “Uncovering Feminist Popular Education at the Hindman Settlement School” for the Interrogating the Legacies of Women’s Rights and Rhetorics panel.
Rachel Sanchez, Kate Watts, Seeking Abundance through Assessment: GTAs and NTT Faculty Speak on Their Experiences Using Alternative Assessment.
Sumaiya Sarker Sharmin, “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain: Bangladeshi Childless Women” on the panel From the Archives as Theory-Making Practice to Place-Based Forms of Knowledge.
Melissa Nicolas, Julie Staggers, Jeanetta Bennett, Moral Injury, Scarcity (Rhetorical and Actual), and Abundance on the WPA-Frontier.
Gavin Doyle, “Mass Incarceration as Endemic: Addressing a Health Crisis through Prison Literacy” for the panel Literacy as Intervention: Examining Definitions and Practices of Social Justice and Advocacy in Marginalized and Imprisoned Communities.
Patty Wilde, RJ Murphy, Christel Woods, From Ache to Awareness: Teaching Wellness Writing in Composition Classrooms.
Justine Trinh, Melissa Nicholas, Sara Brock, Prakash Paudel, We Are All Struggling to Be a Patient: Maintaining Rhetorical Agency within a Biased Medical Field.

Teaching Highlights, Activities, & Innovations

Nazua Idris will facilitate a Summer Reading Group: “Anti-Oppressive Digital Humanities,” which will meet four times from June to August 2024.

Open Mic@Brused organized by Linda Russo closed out the season with open mics on April 4, 14, and 18 led by MC English Minor Heather Tenenbaum. Open Mics will commence in August for the Fall semester. To join our email list, send your email address to lrusso@wsu.edu or like the Open Mic Facebook page. Many thanks to Professor Melissa Nicolas and Brused Books owner Sandy for hosting.

On April 8, outgoing Editing & Publishing Certificate Coordinator Lauren Westerfield hosted guest speakers Mia Gleason of Tule Publishing and Katie Reed of Andrea Hurst & Associates Literary Agency for an editing and publishing Q&A and internship information session in the Bundy. Incoming Certificate Coordinator Grant Maierhofer brought his English 357 students to the session, and Gleason and Reed shared details about their respective editorial and literary agent roles, industry tips for querying agents, and guidelines for pursuing publishing internships. Snacks and promotional materials for this event were sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta.

Together with student representatives from LandEscapes and Blood Orange Review, Lauren Westerfield and Colin Criss attended the GetLit! Festival in Spokane on April 13 and participated in the book fair held at the Montvale Event Center, promoting both literary journals and the English Department and Creative Writing programs at WSU. Student representatives also took part in a creative nonfiction craft class with festival headliner Carmen Maria Machado and connected with literary journal editors, small press editors, and other literary arts organizations represented at the festival.

Linguistics Circle, advisor Michael Thomas, met on April 4 and April 19 in Avery 110. One of their discussions focused on the question: “If meaning’s emergence is centered on the reader rather than writer, what implications does this have for AI generated text?”

DJ Lee taught an online workshop on March 25 called “Writing Spring” for the Sue C. Boynton poetry contest, held each year in Whatcom County, Washington.

Awards, Honors, Prizes, Fellowships, & Grants

The English Graduate Organization (EGO) announced the following awards:

Nazua Idris won the EGO Service Award; the Best Peer Mentor Award; the Community Builder Award; and the Most Collaborative Award.
Prakash Paudel, Myra Henderson, and Genoveva Vega won the Most Creative Award.
Bibhushana Poudyal won Best Graduate Seminar of the Year Award for her course English 591.
Melissa Nicolas and Ashley Boyd won the Most Supportive Faculty Member Award.

Congratulations to the English Graduate Organization (EGO) leadership for the 2024-25 academic year:

President: Alli Riechman-Bennett
Vice President: Sara Brock
Treasurer: Prakash Paudel
Faculty Liaison: Elizabeth Forsythe
Graduate Liaison: Erika Jarmon
Undergraduate Liaison: Christel Woods
Literature Liaison: Daman Khalid

The Composition Program announced the following teaching and service award winners for 2023-2024:

Nazua Idris won the Distinguished Teaching Award Teaching Assistant.
Travis Greenwood won the Distinguished Teaching Award, Career-Track Faculty.
Rachel Sanchez won the Distinguished Teaching Award, Career-Track Faculty.

WSU English Graduate Studies Committee announced the following awards and honors:

Elizabeth Forsythe and Justine Trinh were awarded a Summer Dissertation Fellowship.
Gavin Doyle was awarded the Alexander Hammond Professional Achievement Award.
Sumaiya Sharmin received the Avon Murphy Scholarship.
Sara Brock’s “‘Pomegranate Seed’ by Edith Wharton: A Journey from Manuscript to Print” (Donna Campbell, English 573) received the Outstanding Seminar Project, PhD Level.
Corita Fernando’s “Rhetoric of Charity: Wh(o)at hides behind the Child?” (Wendy Olson, English 515) received the Outstanding Seminar Paper, PhD Level
Myra Henderson and Genoveva Vega’s “Approaching and Empowering Linguistic Justice: Workin’ Toward a More Inclusive Pedagogy” (Wendy Olson, English 515) won the Outstanding Seminar Paper or Project, MA Level.
Christel Woods, Gavin Doyle, and Justine Trinh each won the Louise Schleiner Award for Outstanding PhD Qualifying Exam
Anna Bushy passed her MA Thesis Defense with Distinction.

The 2024 Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies celebration was held April 19 at the Foundry in Pullman. The following awards were celebrated:

Beeler Lile, WGSS Outstanding Senior.
Susy Cerda Martinez, Minerva Hayes, Alysia Luna, Tavia Morgan, and Mason Metzger, Pauline E. Thompson Scholarship in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.
Emma Hoerle, Celia Forrest Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Student Award.
Kristine Binay, Susy Cerda Martinez, Eva Baydo–Bravo, WGSS Scholarly Achievement Awards.
Anna Bushy, WGSS Program Assistant, WGSS Special Appreciation Award.

English Department Undergraduates won the following scholarships and awards:

Kian Foster-Grahler and Erin Harnum, Sarah Weems Award for Creative Nonfiction.
Hope Dela Cruz, Ruth Slonim Scholarship.
Norah Dacy, Outstanding Senior.
Tannaz Moghadas, Clarence-Clyda-Claryda Smith Excellence Endowment.
Tavia Morgan, April Seehafer Scholarship.
Morgan Roop, Norah Dacy, Tannaz Moghaddas, Tavia Morgan, Brandon Osegueda, Bella Rock, Isabella Swenson, Anita and Richard McDonald Endowment.
Tavia Morgan, J.B. Lord Memorial Endowed Scholarship.
Tannaz Moghaddas, Tavia Morgan, Brandon Osegueda, Kate Petersen, Morgan Roop, Isabella Swenson, Leopold Wotherspoon, Basil and Ella A. Jerard Endowment.
Isabella Swenson, Emmett and Mary Avery Writing Awards.

Nazua Idris received the Karen P. DePauw Leadership Award (for Ph.D. and Ed.D. candidates), “created in honor of Dr. DePauw’s service to WSU in 2003 to give recognition to candidates that demonstrate evidence of leadership skills and/or university involvement.”

DJ Lee received a WSU Women of Distinction Award for 2024 given by the Office of the President.

Farwells

Heloise Abtahi, Graduate Academic Coordinator and Managing Editor of ESQ, started working in the Department of English at WSU in October 2013, soon after graduating with an MA in English at University of Idaho. Her scholarly work originally focused on eco-anxiety in nineteenth-century British literature before she pivoted to editing and publishing. Starting as Assistant Editor of ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, Heloise was promoted to Managing Editor in winter 2014. She redesigned and taught English 357: Editing & Publishing, and started Voices, an undergraduate academic journal and internship program, with Rachel Sanchez. In November 2021, she began working as the department’s Graduate Academic Coordinator, juggling those responsibilities with ESQ and her family business, a solar water heating company in western Washington. Heloise is transitioning to a remote administrative assistant position in the Office of Assessment for Curricular Effectiveness/UCORE, while continuing on a more part-time basis with ESQ. She and her husband Jeff will be moving back to Bellingham to be closer to family. She will be greatly missed in the English Department!

Robert Eddy, Professor, retired May 2024. He has been at WSU for more than 20 years. He was Director of Composition for eight years, two terms, and leaves a long legacy of great teaching that begins on the other side of the country, where in 2001 he was awarded the University of North Carolina Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. Here at WSU, English graduate students have twice awarded Eddy their Most Supportive Professor Award. In 2018, the Honors College gave Eddy its Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2021 the English Graduate Organization voted Bob’s Rhetorics of Racism course the Best Graduate Seminar of the Year. Robert Eddy’s work focuses on the relationships of racism and rhetoric. He analyzes Malcolm X’s rhetoric of renaming and how to understand this rhetoric and its implications for renaming a multiracial USA. The underlying argument is that in a global society, persons, groups, and nations must keep transforming and adjusting to increased interdependence and interrelationships so that like Malcolm we improve our adaptability and chances for the global survivability of human beings. Eddy also writes about how Islam in the USA is being constantly insulted, assaulted, persecuted, and boycotted.

Will Hamlin, Professor, retired in May 2024 after 35 years of full-time college teaching, the last 23 at WSU. During that period, he has published five books and dozens of essays, most of them dealing with Shakespeare, Montaigne, early modern English drama, book history, Renaissance ethnography, and epistemological skepticism in 16th-century Europe. He also directed WSU’s graduate program in English for twelve years (2003-2015). More recently, he has begun using digital analytic techniques derived from Corpus Linguistics to study the evolution of major cultural lexica in early modern England. His research has been supported by the NEH, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Lilly Library (Indiana University), and the Renaissance Society of America, and he has given talks and lectures in England, France, Italy, and Spain as well as in the US and Canada. Will was awarded WSU’s annual Sahlin Research & Scholarship Prize in 2018, and students in the English Department have honored him twice for designing and teaching the “Best Graduate Seminar” (2005, 2015). He has never uttered the words “Go Cougs” and has no plans to do so in the future.