Announcements

Battling Blood Quantum: Rights, Recognition, and Rebuilding Native Nations

Dr. Jill Doerfler will share research regarding the specific experiences of the White Earth Nation and the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, including decades of staunch resistance but ultimate implementation of a blood quantum requirement for citizenship/enrollment and efforts to return to kinship as the requirement for citizenship/enrollment today. 

Join the Conversation

Congratulations to all of our creative writing award winners: Anya White, Rylee Sweeney, Reagan Lane, Alexis Davis, Jaden Ross, Reese Hartley, Lily Margaret Greenway, Jacob Westerman, Tyler Sanmdal, Ashleigh Scully, Trinity Sloan, Alexander S. Harris, Brianna Bell, and Tam Ngyuen.

Congratulations to Reese Hartley for being awarded the Annual Sandra Brown Excellence in Literary Fiction (ELF) Scholarship.

The Sandra Brown Excellence in Literary Fiction Scholarshipwas established at TCU to provide a full tuition scholarship to a deserving student who demonstrates both academic excellence and significant potential as a fiction writer.

Congratulations to Kataeya Kartetny-Sharp for being awarded with the Addran English Heritage Scholarship!

Congratulations to Ph.D. student Abigayle Farrier on being awarded a $2500 Curran Fellowship in support of her project entitled “‘A Pioneer Editress’: Frieda Cassin’s Complex Contributions to the 19th Century Caribbean Creole Literary World.”  Abigayle will use the funding to travel to Antigua for further archival research at the Antiguan National Library and to build an open access website of the literary journal Cassin founded and edited, _The Carib_.

Stacie McCormick as well as the Livable Black Futures Collective (powered by The Afiya Center) and her post-residency work funded by the Mellon and ACLS Foundations was featured on The National Humanities Alliance, Humanities For All Website and Newsletter.

Check it out here!

Meagan Solomon has officially accepted an offer to join Southwestern University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Feminist Studies in Fall 2023. She will teach courses in Chicanx literary studies, queer studies, and women of color feminist studies that contribute to multiple interdisciplinary programs at Southwestern, including Feminist Studies, Latin American and Border Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, and English.

Dana Aicha Shaaban has been selected as the Honorable Mention for this year's (2022-2023) Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian Studies. She will receive the award at the MVSA 2023 conference in Washburn University in Topeka, KS.

Check out the details here!

Sarah Robbins and student writers launch website for "The Genius of Phillis Wheatley Peters" project!

In collaboration with a dedciated group of student writers, Sarah Robbins has launched a new website for the participatory humanities project (co-directed by Dr. Mona Narain) honoring the anniversary of Phillis Wheatley's POEMS being published in 1773. A hub of information and resources anchoring "The Genius of Phillis Wheatley Peters" project, the website will be continuing to evolve and grow all across the 2023 project year. Students Colleen Wyrick (undergraduate major), Claire Litchfield (first-year MA), and Ruba Akkad (doctoral Sherley Research Associate) and others will be developing material for the website, which was skillfully designed by Gauthier Apprentice Adrienne Stallings. Visit the website for information about upcoming events for the project, as well as resources for teaching and learning about Wheatley Peters.

Check it out here!

Thank you to the undergraduate and graduate students who have read, written about, drawn out, and talked through Black Feminist Literacies, Rhetorics, and Pedagogies with the TRACING THE STREAM Symposium since August (see syllabus here ).  Across the 2.5 days, 367 people attended the symposium watching from the lobby or joining the live zoom event.   The website now has more than 12K hits with the syllabus, program, etc shared over 500 times across social media with more people still visiting the site.

Much gratitude to the symposium assistants who included: Assistants to the Brown Chair in Literacy in Arkansas: Jackie Chicalese and Jami Padgett; Assistant to the Lillian Radford Chair in Composition and Rhetoric at TCU: Natalie Shellenberger; Graduate students at TCU (English and Education) and the Grad Center of CUNY (Urban Education) who did introductions and service: Caylie Cox, Aderinsola Gilbert, Kashema Hutchinson, Lea Lester, Mason Patterson, Hanna Perry, Ashlee Pilcher, and Kelcia Righton; and last, but certainly not least, fierce TCU undergraduates who held it down too: Josulyn Brooks and Alexa Davis. Check out their bios here! Bless up!

The Women's Center Monologues chapbook affords The Women’s Center with a tangible item that they can use not only to show potential clients how they have created a positive impact for others, but it is also a promotional tool that can be used to seek continued funding for the work they are doing. They rely heavily on funding and promotion to keep their services in operation so they can serve their clients. This project will allow us the opportunity to continue with our chapbook and honor those who have shared their personal stories with us for the past 4 years.

Money collected through Frog Funding in Fall 2022 will be used for the creation and publication of the 5th anniversary edition of The Women's Center Monologues chapbook, which will be designed, created, and distributed in Spring 2023. During the spring semester, funds will be used for the printing and publication costs of the chapbook.

Read more about the Women's Center Monologues and make a donation here!

Stacie McCormick recently published the essay "Performing Counter-Monumentality of the Civil War in Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard and Suzan-Lori Parks' Father Come Home from the Wars" in the collection Reading Confederate Monuments edited by Maria Seger.

Check it out here!

Think the TCU writing major is only writing papers? Think again!

Check out what Mya Estrada had to say about the different classes you can take and the different things you can learn as a writing major!🤩

Can't stay away from English and writing classes? Consider adding an English or writing major or minor!🤩

Andreley Bjelland (Class of 2019) shares how her interest in English classes inspired her current academic pursuits!

Hayley Zablotsky (Class of 2018) shares the best part about being published!

Shuv Raj Rana Bhat's book chapter “Rhetoric as a Vehicle of Social Order in the Garuda Purāṇa” has been published in Global Rhetorical Traditions!

Check it out here!

Angelica Hernandez (Class of 2019) shares how following her interests led to a writing major and prepared her for her chosen career!👏

What is your passion?

Gus Torrey (Class of 2022) shares how the Writing major helped him find his passion for different styles of writing!

A new monograph by Linda K. Hughes entitled "Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity," was published by Cambridge University Press in the summer of 2022.  Shedding new light on the alternative, emancipatory Germany discovered and written about by progressive women writers during the long nineteenth century, Victorian Women Writers and the Other Germany: Cross-Cultural Freedoms and Female Opportunity uncovers a country that offered a degree of freedom and intellectual agency unheard of in England. Opening with an account of Anna Jameson and her friendship with Ottilie von Goethe, this study shows how cultural differences spurred ten writers’ advocacy of progressive ideas and provided fresh materials for publishing careers. Alongside well-known writers – Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Michael Field, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Vernon Lee – this monograph sheds light on the lesser-known writers Mary and Anna Mary Howitt, Jessie Fothergill, and the important Anglo-Jewish lesbian writer Amy Levy. Armed with their knowledge of the German language, each of these women championed an extraordinarily productive openness to cultural exchange and, by approaching Germany through a female lens, imported an alternative, ‘other’ Germany into English letters.  Linda blogs about this book on the Cambridge website fifteen eightyfour.

Have you submitted to eleven40seven yet? 👀

Check out what Jaya Armstead (Class of 2021) had to say about eleven40seven! Don't forget that submissions are due on Sept. 30! You do not want to miss this opportunity🤩

Alumnus Jack Morgalia (Class of 2021) talks about advice he has for current Writing majors and minors in a new video. 

Listen to Jaya Armstead (Class of 2021) talk about her experience as a Texas Christian University Writing major and how it has benefitted her in her pursuits after graduation! Armstead also busts the myth that, "You can't find a job as an English or Writing major."

Dr. Linda K. Hughes will be featured in the Co-Authorship Roundtable on October 21 from 4-6 p.m. (Eastern)! Sponsored by the Victorian Poetry Caucus & the Gender & Sexuality Caucus of NAVSA, the roundtable seeks to answer the questions of "What is co-authorship" and "How might co-authorship change how we approach Victorian studies."

Register to join the discussion here!

In 2023, Bloomsbury Publishing will release Invisible Art: A Field Guide to Literary Editing. One of the publications highlighted in this book will be TCU's literary journal, descant. Matthew Pitt collaborated with the co-authors on a chapter that touches upon production logistics, aesthetic, submission practices, and DEI initiatives.

We are so proud to be announcing the 16th Annual AddRan Festival of Undergraduate Scholarship and Creativity winners! These incredible students submitted impressive work and should be very proud of what they have accomplished! 

Pati Carlos, Best Middle East Studies Submission,  Hoda Barakat’s The Stone of Laughter: Has Queerness Has Always Been Queer?

Ja Curria Allen, Reaching Across the Disciplines Award, I can't breathe

Olivia Fannon, Poetry Presentation 1st Place, Poetry you write when your dad dies

Asher Hagemeister, Paper, 2nd Place, Viability of Charlotte For Relocation of Cleveland Indians

Erica Harkins, Creative Writing, 1st Place, Untitled: An Unrequested pamphlet of personal musings

Anthony Lucido, Creative Writing, Honorable Mention, Homeward Bound

Libby Maack, Paper, Honorable Mention, Decoloniality and Transcendental Identity in Harriet Martineau’s The Hour and the Man and Émeric Bergeaud’s Stella

Leah Marut, Poetry Presentation 2nd Place, Far from Bittersweet

Jillian Verzwyvelt, Paper, 1st Place, Counterfeit Currency and the Collapse of the Confederacy During the American Civil War

Jillian Verzwyvelt, The Lane Schmutz Award for Best Econ Submission, Counterfeit Currency and the Collapse of the Confederacy During the American Civil War

Matthew Winnek, The Lane Schmutz Award for Best Sociology Submission,  Vulnera Sanentur" - A Sociological Study and Application of Healthcare and Healthcare Systems in the Wizarding World

Congratulations, Linda K. Hughes!

A new peer-reviewed article entitled "Vernon Lee, Slow Serialist and Journalist at the Fin de Siècle," by Linda K. Hughes, Addie Levy Professor of English, appeared in the latest issue of Victorian Literature and Culture, 50.1 (dated Fall 2021), 173-202, a journal issued by Cambridge University Press. This work grows out of Linda's work in periodical studies and her research on late nineteenth-century women writers. The essay shows that despite Vernon Lee's claims to ignore publishing for money, she was a strategic journalist in placing her many periodical articles, which she then gathered into books that newly invented a unified purpose to underscore the "bookness" of her "new" work. The tables showing the slow and erratic serial publishing record of Lee's early books of cultural criticism were contributed by Dana Shaaban, whose authorship of the tables is announced.

English Ph.D. Candidate Tyler Jean Dukes has published a substantial entry on William Rowley's 1622 "The Birth of Merlin" in The Literary Encyclopedia.

You can view the entry here.

Congratulations, Tyler!

Darius Frasure, the author of the poetry collection titled Of Stone and Rope, will be featured at the 2022 Dallas Literary Festival, produced by Southern Methodist University. The Festival, which takes place March 18th-22nd 2022, is held at venues throughout the City of Dallas, Texas, and on the Southern Methodist University Campus. 

Congratulations, Professor Frasure!

"While we may view our efforts as more noble, acknowledging the similarity of the two recruitment processes can help us as job seekers take a bit more control," says Charlotte Hogg in her article on career advice at Inside Higher Ed. In the article, Hogg compares going on the academic job market to sorority recruitment. You can check out the article here!

The TCU Sustainability Committee has partnered with eleven40seven for the second annual Writing & Art Contest. They are accepting submissions in nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art until February 25th at 11:59 pm. First place winners will receive an award of $100 and be honored at the Awards Ceremony.

The Provocation:
When we first entered lockdown in March of 2020, who among us thought the pandemic would last more than two weeks – much less two years? With an end still nowhere in sight as we bear down on year three, it's safe to say that the timeline for this particular crisis is much lengthier than any of us anticipated. And yet, even as this public health crisis continues to extend still further into the timescape, it is still dwarfed by the far greater and nearly incomprehensibly more vast planetary timeline, humanity's foray into which has been marked by the arrival of the Anthropocene. These lengthy crises demand reconceptualization from bounded emergency situations to events that stretch far beyond traditional human perception, and "urgency" must be redefined to fit these lengths. As Richard Powers writes in The Overstory, "Imminent, at the speed of people, is too late. The law must judge imminent at the speed of trees." Cultivating more vigorous ways of sustaining ourselves, others, and our collective sense of urgency for the long haul is an adaptation our current and forthcoming world demands of us.

They are looking for stories, essays, poetry, and art that help us imagine more thoughtful, loving, and equitable ways of sustaining ourselves and others during these unprecedented and inevitable times of extended crisis. Submissions might explore:
•What does it mean to sustain ourselves during times of crisis?
•What does it mean to sustain others (both human and nonhuman)?
•How do others (both human and nonhuman) sustain you/us?
•How do we cultivate a sense of urgency within vast timelines of crisis?
•What are the more uncomfortable self-care practices for sustainability? And what is their value?
•What does it mean to challenge the practice of "othering"? How might radical anti-othering be an act of sustainability? What do sustainable practices of anti-othering look like?
•How does cultivating human/ecological/posthuman kinship sustain us?

You can submit your works here! Good luck to all who enter!

Dr. Timothy Ballingall (Rhetoric and Composition PhD' 21) and Dr. Brad Lucas have published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Composition Studies entitled "Are We Overlooking (and Underselling) the Writing Capstone Course?"

You can read the article here.

Congratulations, Dr. Ballingall and Dr. Lucas!

Congratulations to English Department graduate students Susannah Sanford McDaniel, Sofia Prado Huggins, and Preeshita Biswas for their recent publications in the Fall 2021 issue of ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830. Their essays were published in the Scholarship section as a special issue on “Visions,” devoted solely to work by emerging writers. The special issue was co-edited with Dr. Mona Narain by Susannah Sanford McDaniel and Sofia Huggins.

Susannah Sanford McDaniel and Sofia Huggins wrote the introductory essay to the special issue, "The Dance Most of all: Envisioning an Embodied Eighteenth-Century Studies." Preeshita Biswas contributed the essay, “If You See Her Face You Die”: Orientalist Gothic and Colonialism in Bithia Croker’s Indian Ghost Stories,” to the collection.

The special issue “Visions” is based on the conference theme of the British Women Writers Conference (BWWC) 2020 held at TCU in 2020. The conference was the collaborative work of the talented group of British Literature students Dana Aicha Shaaban, Jong-Keyong Kim, Kaylee Henderson, Tyler Dukes, Annette Wren, and Andreley Bjelland, among others. The group worked hard to make the conference an international success and laid the foundations for ensuing scholarship, such as this ABO journal special issue.

ABO, the journal which published these essays is a peer-reviewed and indexed digital, open-access, scholarly journal, which has a readership in over 150 countries across the world. It is sponsored in part by TCU’s AddRan College.

Calling Faculty and Staff! Register now for the spring 2022 DEI Book Club! This spring, the Courageous Conversations Book Club will be a joint partnership with Neeley School of Business. Facilitated by Professor of English Mona Narain, this spring's book will be Isabel Wilkerson's Caste. Books will be provided!

Dr. Ariane Balizet published “The Humorality of Toys and Games in Early Modern Domestic Drama," in Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance, as part of Palgrave's Studies in Literature, Science, and Medicine Series. The volume was edited by Amy Kenny and Kaara Peterson. 

You can learn more about the publication here.

Congratulations, Dr. Balizet!

Dr. Rima Abunasser's chapter, “Grieving Mothers and Vengeful Gods: Djamila Sahraoui’s Yema and the Rebuilding of Modern Algeria,” has been published by Routledge Press in Women and Resistance in the Maghreb: Remembering Kahina as part of the UCLA Center for Middle East Development (CMED) series.

You can learn more about the publication and Dr. Abunasser’s chapter here.

Congratulations, Dr. Abunasser!

Dr. Sarah Robbins has recently written a fantastic new blog post about Netflix’s series “The Chair.”

You can check out the post, “Why Are Academics So Busily Writing About ‘The Chair’?” here !

Dr. Carmen Kynard has recently published a new article titled, "'Troubling the Boundaries' of Anti-Racism: The Clarity of Black Radical Visions Amid Racial Erasure" in the Summer 2021 special issue, "Black Lives Matter and Anti-Racist Projects in Writing Program Administration."

You can read Dr. Kynard’s article and more in the special edition here .

Congratulations, Dr. Kynard!

Dr. Carmen Kynard is an inaugural co-editor of the journal, RPC , which has published its first issue! Along with Bryan McCann of Louisiana State University, the journal, Rhetoric, Politics, & Culture , published its first issue during Summer 2021 with an introduction to the journal's vision by Kynard and McCann.

You can check out the journal’s first issue with the introduction by Kynard and McCann here .

Congratulations, Dr. Kynard and Dr. McCann!

This July, Dr. Carmen Kynard delivered a public lecture online for the “30 Americans” Exhibit at the Arlington Museum of Art called "Black Visual Rhetoric and the Movement for Black Lives."

The “30 Americans” exhibit is a collection of works from thirty African American artists, both emerging and established. The powerful exhibit also includes a live-streamed lecture series that can be streamed through the Arlington Museum of Art Facebook page, @ArlingtonArt.

You can check out the "30 Americans" exhibit from now until September 5. To learn more about the exhibit, find the lineup of lecturers, or stream the speaker series, click here.

Congratulations, Dr. Kynard!

Dr. Joddy Murray has recently published two poems in The Fourth River (A Journal of Nature and Place-Based Writing): "Exhale"& "Somber Shade."

You can read both of those poems here!

TCU has recently reached an agreement with the Fort Worth Public Library to transfer ownership of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame to the university.

The Texas Literary Hall of Fame was started in 2004 by the FWPL, and since then has inducted many well-known writers with a connection to Texas. Their biennial awards banquet has also become a prestigious event in Texas Literary culture that has honored inductees, including writers with TCU connections. This award banquet will now be held with the biennial Mary Couts Burnett Library’s Texas Book Award Banquet.

Along with the transfer of ownership of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, the Fort Worth Friends of the Public Library provided TCU with an endowment to support the program.

You can see various materials owned by the FWFPL on display at the downtown public library, and this collection of materials will continue to be housed in the downtown library to maintain a collaborative connection with the city and the library.

This project was initiated by Dan Williams of TCU Press in collaboration with Dean Tracy Hull, Dean Sonja Watson, and Adam Braggs. The Center for Texas Studies and the English Department also collaborated on this project, and Alex Lemon will represent the English Department on the inaugural committee to manage the award and banquet.

We are excited to share the news of a donation made to support our students! The Fort Worth Women’s Wednesday Club has recently made a generous $20,000 donation to the TCU Department of English. The club has a legacy of supporting lifelong education, and they have been a generous donor in funding several of the Creative Writing Awards in the department throughout the years, as well as the Women’s Wednesday Club Merit Award. These awards are given to outstanding English or Writing majors each year, and this donation will support the awards going forward.

We greatly thank them for their generosity! You can read more about the Club’s history at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman%27s_Club_of_Fort_Worth

Congrats to the TCU English department students who are completing PhD or MA degrees this spring! They participated with their faculty mentors in the AddRan Hooding Ceremony on April 29. We are in awe of their achievement during a pandemic year. Best wishes in the future!

Congratulations to all of our English department award recipients this semester!

The TCU English Department would like to extend a huge congratulations to Katie Kelton, who is TCU's first Fulbright recipient of 2021. Katie will br graduating in May 2021 with a B.A. in English, a minor in Spanish, and as an Honors Laureate. Katie will be working as an English Teaching Assistant in Spain. Congratulations again, Katie!

Dr. Theresa Gaul was recently featured in a program on Cherokee History for OsiyoTV! Check out her work on the project here.

Writing major Huy Nguyen has selected a “book club” text for any and all friends of the department to read over break: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. We’ll assemble all those who love to “talk books” to discuss this Pulitzer Prize finalist on Sunday, January 31, at 4:00 p.m.

Mark your calendars!

TCU magazine highlighted English alum Jeramey Kraatz ’08 for publishing multiple works of children's literature. Read the full story here!

We want to share with you the exciting news of three new gifts to the Department of English that enhance undergraduate and graduate education. These gifts illustrate the continuous support of our programs in the college, the importance of teaching and scholarship and most importantly, our graduate students. The Dr. Geraldine F. Dominiak English Department Endowed Writing Fund was generously provided by her estate to support the writing program. The Gary Tate Graduate Student Endowed Fund and Gary Tate Annually Expendable Graduate Student Fund are funded by the generosity of Dr. Nancy Myers, a 1997 graduate of the English doctoral program and honors the legacy of Dr. Gary L. Tate (1930-2012), former TCU Addie Levy Professor of Literature and leading figure establishing the field of rhetoric and composition.

Dr. Geraldine F. Dominiak English Department Endowed Writing Fund

The Dr. Geraldine F. Dominiak English Department Endowed Writing Fund was established in October of 2020 through a bequest from Dr. Geraldine Dominiak. A professor of accounting at Texas University for nearly 30 years, Dr. Dominiak also served as chair of the department from 1974 to 1983 and co-authored a managerial accounting textbook that became a standard in college accounting classes and went through numerous editions. She passed away at the age of 83 in 2017 and left the bequest in her will to “enhance the Writing Component of the English department.”

Gary Tate Graduate Student Endowed Fund

The Gary Tate Graduate Student Fund, provided by the generosity of Dr. Nancy Myers, will enable the TCU English Department in the AddRan College of Liberal Arts to support learning and professional development of graduate students through conference participation and research. It is the donor’s intention to create a permanent endowment of monies through lifetime and/or testamentary gifts. The earnings of this endowment will go toward supporting English graduate students in any area of study to attend conferences or conduct archival research, whether in person or virtually. Earnings will become available for use in the 2021-2022 academic year. Other donors may contribute to this endowment at any time.

Gary Tate Annually Expendable Graduate Student Fund

The Gary Tate Expendable Graduate Student Fund, provided by the generosity of Dr. Nancy Myers, will enable the TCU English Department in the AddRan College of Liberal Arts to support learning and professional development of graduate students through conference participation and research. Other donors may contribute to this immediately expendable fund at any time.

We heartily thank these generous donors!

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Norrell Edwards will be joining us the TCU English Department as our Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in spring 2021.

Congratulations to Dr. Joe Darda, who is receiving honorable mention for the Constance M. Rourke Prize at the American Studies Association Conference this week for his article, "Like a Refugee: Veterans, Vietnam, and the Making of a False Equivalence.” The Constance M. Rourke Prize is awarded annually to the best article published in American Quarterly that was written by a current member of the American Studies Association.

• Dr. Charlotte Hogg, with Eileen E. Schell (Syracuse) and Kim Donehower (U of North Dakota), co-edited a special issue of enculturation journal: Rhetorics and Literacies of Climate Change. They also co-authored the introduction to the issue.
  
  
• The special issue, "Toni Morrison and Adaptation," guest co-edited by Dr. Stacie McCormick, has been published in the Fall 2020 issue of College Literature. Check out the website dedicated to celebrating 50 years of The Bluest Eye at thebluesteye50.com
  

Dr. Carmen Kynard and her colleague, April Baker-Bell, from Michigan State University, launched the #BlackLanguageSyllabus at blacklanguagesyllabus.com in September 2020. The site (blacklanguagesyllabus.com) features the Black Language Magazine, which Dr. Kynard and Dr. Baker-Bell edit bi-monthly.

• Danny Rodriguez's article "Countering Racial Enthymemes: What We Can Learn About Race from Donald J. Trump" was published in Issue 3 of Constellations.
  
  
• Cody Jackson co-authored a CCC essay in College Composition and Communication's September 2020 issue. The essay is co-authored with Dr. Christina V. Cedillo and is titled "We Are Here to Crip That Shit: Embodying Accountability Beyond the 'Word.'" The work is part of a Symposium on Accessibility and Conferencing edited by Adam Hubrig and Ruth Osorio.
  
  
• Angela Mack’s article titled, “Afrosurrealism, Aristotle, and Racial Presence in Netflix’s Luke Cage,” has been published in the current issue of Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy (Volume 7, Issue 2).
  
  
• Saffyre Falkenberg’s essay "Wherever the Flame Was Brightest?: Identity and Assimilation in Rick Riordan's Greek Mythological Adaptations for Young Adults" appeared in the edited collection, Adaptation in Young Adult Novels: Critically Engaging Past and Present. The volume was edited by Dana Lawrence and Amy Montz and published by Bloomsbury.
  
  
• Sarah-Marie Horning published the essay “Does anyone want waiting on?’ Love, Labor, Liquor and the Utopian Function of Reproductive Work in Ballad of the Sad Café, an Ecofeminist Reading” in Carson McCullers: A Centenary Collection.

A TCU English Department tradition since 1936… the Creative Writing Contests 2016 are now open for entries. Each contest carries a cash prize. In all, over $3,000 will be awarded to winners.

Entries must be submitted online at cwa.submittable.com between December 20, 2019 and February 17, 2020.

Contests include categories for many types of writing genres, both creative and scholarly, and are open to all currently enrolled TCU students (both undergraduate and graduate) and alumni.

Mark your calendars for the awards ceremony on Tuesday, April 28, 2020 at 5:00pm in the Dee J. Kelly Alumni & Visitors Center. All are welcome to attend.

Contact the Department of English by email or phone at (817)257-7240 if you have any questions or need further information.

This past November, TCU equestrian, English, and History double major Laska Anderson was named as a Rhodes Scholar finalist, a candidate for one of the most prestigious scholarships offered in the nation.

Anderson currently holds a 4.0 overall GPA and numerous equestrian titles including, NCEA Horsemanship Rider of the Year, Elite Equestrian and Ariat First Team All-American.

Over the summer, Anderson studied in Italy and Paris, researching on how women ran businesses discretely, acting as their husband, from 1450 – 1600. She found 10 women who actively ran businesses after their husbands passed away. Upon graduation from TCU, Anderson will continue this study in her graduate school coursework.

Many thanks to Dr. Ariane Balizet, Associate Chair, for her successful planning for Dr. Ayanna Thompson's Green Chair visit to the English Department last week. Dr. Thompson shared a wealth of knowledge and wisdom while she was here on topics ranging from gaps in what we know about audience reception of performances of Shakespeare, to what "enlightened leadership" looks like at a university today, to how to best support faculty and students in the liberal arts to attain the next level in their trajectories of achievement.

While she was on campus she met with 77 students in 5 classes, had a conversation on centering the liberal arts at TCU with Provost Dahlberg and Associate Provost Wormley, had small group discussions with English faculty, English graduate students, and TCU faculty women of color on topics of concern to them, and lectured to a crowd of over 100 attendees.

Thanks to all of you who helped to plan her visit or attended events while she was here! This was an exciting moment in the intellectual life of our department!

Dr. Alyssa G. Cavazos (PhD Rhetoric and Composition '12) was recently awarded tenure at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where she is Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Composition & Literacy Studies.

She completed her PhD dissertation, "Latina/os in Rhetoric and Composition: Learning from Their Experiences with Language Diversity", at TCU under the guidance of Carrie S. Leverenz (chair), David Colón, Francyne Huckaby, and Melanie Kill (U. Maryland).

Assistant Professors Stacie McCormick and Joe Darda have both published their first books.

Staging Black Fugitivity by Professor Stacie McCormick (The Ohio State University Press) asks how drama constitutes an important site for ongoing conversations about slavery's resonance and its legacies. To answer this question, McCormick charts the historical turn toward slavery in Black drama that began in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Empire of Defense: Race and the Cultural Politics of Permanent War by Professor Joe Darda (University of Chicago Press) is an extensive and multilayered critique of the past seventy years of American military engagement. Joseph Darda exposes how the post–World War II formation of the Department of Defense and the subsequent Korean War set a course for decades of permanent conflict.

April Patrick, who completed her Ph.D. at TCU in 2011, has been elected to a two-year term as Recording Secretary for the International Research Society of Victorian Periodicals. The Society, which meets annually, has a membership drawn from North America, the UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Dr. Patrick is currently the Honors Program Director at Farleigh Dickinson University, Florham Campus.

Sophomore Business major and Honors student Payton Williams, who took Chris Manno's ENGL-10803 course last fall, wrote one assignment, a research essay that centered on air travel security.

That essay was published worldwide this month both online and in print by Airways Magazine:

https://airwaysmag.com/author/payton/

Payton engaged in a year's worth of rewriting and additional research under Chris's and the editors' mentoring, The end result is that the lead story in the September issue worldwide is Payton's very well-written and hard-hitting article.

Dr. Carmen Kynard is the new Lillian Radford Chair in Rhetoric and Composition.

Before TCU, she worked in English and Gender Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice as well as English, Urban Education, and Critical Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She interrogates race, Black feminisms, AfroDigital/African American cultures and languages, and the politics of schooling with an emphasis on composition and literacies studies. She has taught high school with the New York City public schools/Coalition of Essential Schools, served as a writing program administrator, and worked as a teacher educator.

She has led numerous professional development projects on language, literacy, and learning and has published in Harvard Educational Review, Changing English, College Composition and Communication, College English, Computers and Composition, Reading Research Quarterly, Literacy and Composition Studies and more. Her first book, Vernacular Insurrections: Race, Black Protest, and the New Century in Composition-Literacy Studies won the 2015 James Britton Award and makes Black Freedom a 21st century literacy movement.

Her current projects focus on young Black women in college, Black Feminist/Afrofuturist digital vernaculars, and AfroDigital Humanities learning. Dr. Kynard traces her research and teaching at her website, "Education, Liberation, and Black Radical Traditions" (http://carmenkynard.org). Next semester, Dr. Kynard will be teaching an undergraduate course titled, "Word is Bond: An Introduction to African American Rhetoric."