News
Stephen Schneider publishes essay on the Louisville sit-in movement
Dr. Stephen Schneider recently published a chapter titled "Nothing New For Easter: Rhetoric, Collective Action, and the Louisville Sit-In Movement." It appears in the anthology Like Wildfire: The Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Sit-Ins, edited by Sean Patrick O'Rourke and Lesli K. Pace and published by The University of South Carolina Press.
V. Joshua Adams published in Mud Season Review
Assistant Professor V. Joshua Adams's poem "Twenty Sixteen" has been published in the current issue of Mud Season Review.
Amy Clukey elected as Second Vice President of the Modernist Studies Association
Congratulations to English professor Amy Clukey, who has just been elected as Second Vice President on the executive board for the Modernist Studies Association. The MSA is an academic association dedicated to the study of the arts in social, politica, cultural, and intellectual contexts from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. The MSA's official publication is the journal Modernism/Modernity, which is published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Amy Clukey is associate professor of English at the University of Louisville. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Modernism/Modernity, The New Hibernia Review, Modern Fiction Studies, American Literature, and Twentieth-Century Literature, among other venues. She co-edited a special issue of the journal Global South on the topic of “plantation modernity” with Jeremy Wells (2017) and she is currently completing a monograph entitled Plantation Modernism: Transatlantic Anglophone Fiction 1890-1950.
Matthew Biberman interviewed on Ghost in the Machine
Listen to English Professor S. Matthew Biberman's interview on the podcast Ghost in the Machine, about his memoir Big Sid's Vincati, which is coming out in translation in Spanish and Italian. From the show notes: "What does your motorcycle mean to you? For many riders, a bike is simply a tool, a vehicle for the body. But for some of us, a motorcycle is much more than that, a vessel that carries the stories of who we are and how we got here. Meet Matthew Biberman, son of legendary Vincent builder Big Sid Biberman. To give his ailing father a reason to live, Matthew proposed they build a bike together, a rare Vincati. That quest would turn out to be a remarkable story of second chances for both of them, and compelling proof that a motorcycle really can have a soul."
English major Josh Osborne making a difference
English major Josh Osborne is making an important contribution to the Backside Learning Center at Churchill Downs. The Backside Learning Center is a non-profit that assists equine workers at the racetrack. Josh had been teaching English-as-a-second language courses to kids and families at the Center but that changed when COVID-19 spread. Since then, the Center changed its focus to getting the families that are in need the food, diapers, and encouragement during these difficult times. Congratulations to Josh on the important work he's doing, and on graduating with a major in English and a minor in Spanish!
Andrew Rabin featured on Pessimists Archive podcast
English professor Andrew Rabin is featured on the latest episode of the podcast Pessimists Archive. Providing historical context on the plague, Professor Rabin discusses Northumbria in the year 686 and the work of Venerable Bede.
English PhD alum receives CCCC grant
Michelle Day and Sara Williams received a prestigious grant from CCCC to continue her research, "Trauma-Informed Writing Pedagogy: A Pilot Study of an Evidence-Based Training Initiative."
UofL Creative Writing students win Flo Gault Poetry Prize
Congratulations to our Creative Writing students, who have won the three top spots and one honorable mention of Sarabande Books’ annual Flo Gault Poetry Prize. This means that two students from the English Department at UofL received four of the five top prizes.
Deborah Lutz wins NEH Fellowship
Deborah Lutz has been awarded a Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Humanities. The $35,000 fellowship will support Professor Lutz’s research project titled “Paper Art and Craft: Victorian Writers and Their Materials,” a monograph about nineteenth-century poets, novelists, and artists who used the materials of writing and everyday life as inspiration for their work.
Kristi Maxwell receives grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women
Congratulations to Kristi Maxwell, assistant professor of English, who has been awarded an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. This grant will support her work on a poetry manuscript-in-progress. For more information see http://www.kfw.org/grants/grantees/ Dr. Kristi Maxwell is the author of six books of poetry: Bright and Hurtless (Ahsahta Press), Realm Sixty-four (Ahsahta Press), Hush Sessions (Saturnalia Books), Re- (Ahsahta), That Our Eyes Be Rigged (Saturnalia), and PLAN/K (Horseless Press). Her scholarly publications include articles on experimental writing practices and the hybrid writing of Jenny Boully and Anne Carson, and her research interests involve theories of representation and difference, textual performance, and the body. A former Elliston Poetry Fellow, she received a PhD in Creative Writing & Literature, along with a graduate certificate in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, where she served as editor-in-chief of Sonora Review. She is an affiliate faculty member of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department.
PhD candidate Joe Franklin wins IWCA grant
PhD candidate Joe Franklin is the winner of a Ben Raforth Graduate Grant from the International Writing Centers Association (IWCA). The IWCA awarded the grant to support his research project "Transnational Writing Studies: Understanding Institutions and Institutional Work Through Narratives of Navigation.” Many congratulations to Joe on these accomplishments! For more information on the IWCA and their research grants, click here.
Karen Chandler president of the Children's Literature Association
Dr. Karen Chandler has begun her tenure as President of the Children’s Literature Association (2019-20). Since 1973, the Children’s Literature Association has aimed to “encourage high standards of criticism, scholarship, research, and teaching in children’s literature.” It organizes an annual conference, and in June 2020 the meeting will be at the University of Washington (Bellevue).
New publications - Adams and Strickley
Congratulations to Sarah Strickley on the publication of an international feature on writing. Congratulations also to V. Joshua Adams, who published an essay titled”No Puzzle: James Merrill, Philosophical Poetry, and the Structure of the Self" in the journal Literary Imagination.
Sarah Strickley's short story wins journal prize
Congratulations to Sarah Strickley, whose short story "Dewey Dell: An American Ghost Story" won the Editors' Prize in Prose from the journal Copper Nickel. The story appears in the current issue of that journal.
Ashanka Kumari wins CWPA award
Ph.D. candidate Ashanka Kumari has won a $450 research grant from the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA) People of Color Caucus and Writing Program Administrators-Graduate Organization. The award goes to "a recipient whose project explores and/or advances the understanding of issues of race, civil rights, equity, and/or social justice in writing program administration.”
English students partnering with local organizations
Students in Mary P. Sheridan's Digital Storytelling class are collaborating with two community partners this semester. First, they are partnering with the Frazier History Museum to promote their upcoming exhibit, What’s A Vote Worth, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.
Deborah Lutz wins Huntington fellowship
Prof. Deborah Lutz has been awarded a research fellowship (short term) from the Huntington Library, in California. She will continue research on her book project, now called "Paper Art and Craft: Victorian Writers and Their Materials," with a focus on the Huntington's collection of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paper crafts, especially the valentines, greeting cards, scrapbooks, and paper dolls collected by Zelda Walker Gaudin.
Mark Mattes wins research grant
Mark Mattes has won a competitive “Grants to Scholars” award from the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. Dr. Mattes will use the $2,000 grant to conduct research in the Lyman Copeland Draper collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society for his book project Archival Apocrypha: Indigenous Writing and the Figure of Logan in Colonial and Native American History. This project explores the writing and archiving of information about the Cayuga-Mingo tribal leader Logan (Tachnechdorus).
Short story collection by Sarah Strickley
Sarah Strickley has published a collection of short stories, Fall Together.
