Aaron Belz defended his dissertation, "Something Mechanical Encrusted on the Living:
the Influence of Popular Comedy on Modern American Poetry." in March, and had his first book of poetry, The Bird Hoverer
published last month by BlazeVox. Also, he has received a full fellowship for a four-week writing residency at Vermont
Studio Center during May-June.
Laurie Britt-Smith served as a moderator at the Presidential Scholarship Interview weekend
in February. She presented "And a Rock Star Shall Lead Them: The Importance of Ethos in the Boundary-Crossing Rhetoric
of Bono and the One Campaign" at the US Cultural Studies Association Conference in Portland this April. Additionally,
she has been invited by Bedford/St. Martin's to review two new writing textbooks and Pearson/Longman has asked her to
be a faculty advocate for mycomplab. She also is the recipient of a dissertation fellowship for the 07-08 academic year.
Thomas Dieckmann served on the 190 textbook review committee. He also passed his MA exam
and graduates this term.
Chris Dickman presented "'Th' Same Fear that is in Your Own Heart': Androgyny,
Gendered Spaces, and the Anxiety of Masculinity in O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy" at the American Conference for Irish
Studies in New York and will present "Reacting in a Censored World: Joyce and Irish Literature 1930-1960" at the
International Joyce Conference in Austin in June.
Jen Dorsey will have three non-fiction books published this year in the trade
business category. They are: Start Your Own Self-Publishing Business, 2nd edition, Start Your Own Import/Export
Business, 2nd edition, and Start Your Own Medical Claims Business, 2nd edition. They are all due out this year
from Entrepreneur Press and will be distributed by McGraw-Hill. She will be attending Book Expo America in New
York June 1-3 to represent her books for Entrepreneur Press.
Lisa Fischer reports that a she, Lisieux Huelman, Lynn Linder, and Sarah
Schwab created a panel for Marquette University's Women and Creativity Conference called "Voices of Discontent:
Femininity, Power, and Domesticity in Four British Works." Lisa's presentation was "Singing in their chains":
Subjectivity and the Domestic in Felicia Hemans's Records of Woman. Additionally she will present research for
her Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies on Friday.
Jill Fitzgerald presented "Confessions of a Justified Swindler: The Pardoner, the Canon's
Yeoman, and another look at the Hengwrt Discrepancy" at this spring's Micklegemote.
Lea Frost took part in the Shakespeare Association of America seminar "The Politics
of Early Modern Historiography" at their annual conference; her paper was called "'Because th'event doth argue the
offence': Samuel Daniel, Richard II, and the Anxiety of Representation." Also, she'll be giving lectures at the 2007
Academy of the Humanities and the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival this summer.
Kami Hancock will present research for her Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies
on Friday. She had a piece published in Virginia Woolf Miscellany in January titled "Deviant Snapshots: Re-visiting
Jacob's Room". Also, she will be taking over as the Writing Program Assistant Director for the 07-08 academic year.
Ty Hawkins had an essay accepted for publication in Papers on Language and
Literature. The piece is called, "Tom Wolfe's American Ubermensch: I Am Charlotte Simmons and the Rhetoric of
'manly courage.'" He also had a short story, "Long Day," named a finalist for Glimmer Train's Short Story Award
for New Writers (an award designed for writers whose stories have not appeared in a publication with a greater
than 5,000 circulation).
Danielle Hignett
presented "The Opposition of Christianity and
Pagan Magic in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" at this spring's Micklegemote. She also traveled quite a bit
to the Medieval Association of the Pacific conference at UCLA, where she presented "Authorship vs Authority:
Control for the Pen in The Book of Margery Kempe" and also to the Borderlines XI Medieval conference at Queen's
University in Belfast, Ireland, presenting "Gender Reversal and the Usurpation of Sexual Power in Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight."
Lisieux Huelman
presented "'Sorrow, Affectation, and Stupidity'":
Silence in Frances Burney's Cecilia" at Marquette University's Women and Creativity Conference in March. Additionally, she will present research for her Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies on Friday.
Beth Human passed her PhD exams earlier this term and she is the recipient of
one of the department's pre-doc fellowships for next year.
Deborah Hyland presented a paper on April 29 at the 49th Annual Missouri Conference
on History entitled "Heinrich Boernstein's The Mysteries of St. Louis and the Anticlerical Tradition."
Graham Johnson will complete his degree when he defends his dissertation in August.
He has accepted a position at Reinhardt College in Georgia as an Assistant Professor of medieval British literature.
Lynn Linder presented a paper entitled "Marian's Last Word: (Re) Constructing a
Theory of Indirect Power in Victorian England," at the 9th Annual Women and Creativity Conference at Marquette
University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Also a session she proposed with Kami Hancock entitled, "'Realizing' Authority:
Recovering and (Re)appropriating Lost Voices in Nineteenth Century British Literature," has been accepted for the 2007
Midwest Modern Language Association Convention.
Katie Mathews along with Sarah Michael organized "Green Ink" – a group that allows
interested grad students to work on their creative writing. She also presented her piece "Writing in a State of Becoming"
at this spring's Mickelegmote.
Melissa Mayus served on the 190 textbook review committee and is finishing the MA
this semester. She will present "No Land for Loyalty: Exeter Book Riddle 20" at Kalamazoo this year. She has also
received a fellowship to study at Notre Dame.
Aaron McClendon had a proposal accepted by the Poe Studies Association for their panel
at the 2007 MLA in Chicago. He has also received a dissertation fellowship for the 07-08 academic year.
Sheri McCord is completing her year long a colloquium at the Folger Institute, Folger
Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. entitled "Vernacular Health and Healing." She will also present "Griselde's
Exchange: 'Povre Array' and 'Heigh Noblesse' in 'The Clerk's Tale' at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval
Studies in Kalamazoo in May.
Sarah Michael in addition to co-organizing Green Ink, served on the 190 textbook
review committee.
Tim Moylan presented "'To Venture the Hazard of a Show:'" Thomas Churchyard
and the Entrepreneurial Imperative" at the Graduate Research Symposium, placing third in the competition.
Justin Noetzel is completing his MA work this semester: his exam is April 30 and
Thesis Defense is May 7.
Sandra Olmsted served on the 190 textbook review committee.
Heather Parks will present research for her Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies on Friday.
John Peruggia chaired a session entitled "Modern Society: Forster, Lawrence, and
Waugh." At the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900 (Feb 22-24) In addition, at the same
conference he presented a paper entitled ‟Freed from Touch: Lawrence's The Man Who Died." Also in February he
served as a moderator at the Presidential Scholarship Interview weekend. At the 42nd International Congress on Medieval
Studies, he will chair a session entitled "Old Norse Literature and Culture." and will present a paper entitled "See You
at the Crossroads: The Intersections of Beowulf and The Dream of the Rood." He is also serving as a graduate mentor for
the Medieval Academy of America.
Bill Rable presented "Looking Good, Feeling Great: Physiognomy, Phrenology, and
Walt Whitman's Sense of Self" this April at the 22nd Annual Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Art Santirojprapai has received a dissertation fellowship for the 07-08 academic year.
Sarah Schwab presented "How to be a Good Wife; or, Manners, Morals, and Marriage in
Maria Edgeworth's Belinda" at Marquette University's Women and Creativity Conference in March. Additionally, she will
present research for her Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies on Friday.
Sara Schwamb returned from maternity leave this term and also served on the 190
textbook review committee. She has also been given one of the department's pre-doc fellowships for next year.
Matthew Schultz served on the 190 textbook review committee. He has also been busy
writing. He has a forthcoming article, "Using New Historicism to Teach James Joyce's 'Dubliners'" in
Eureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction. Also forthcoming is "A Portrait of the Artist as a Revolutionary: Protest,
Rebellion, and Death in the Irish Literary Revival." for the Encyclopedia of Protest and Revolution, and a book review:
Ireland: Space, Text, Time by Liam Harte, Yvonne Whelan, and Patrick Crotty in the James Joyce Quarterly. He has also
presented "Ritual Storytelling: Confessional Rhetoric in Synge's the Playboy of the Western World and Yeats's Purgatory,"
at MLA in December and "Gambling Man of Business: A Portrait of Excess in Vauxhall Gardens," Romantic and Victorian
Entertainments in March. Additionally, he will present, "Intimate Rivalries: "A Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name" in
Joyce's Exiles," at the North American James Joyce Conference this June in Austin.
Paul Stabile passed his written and oral PhD exams in March. He also served on the
190 textbook review committee.
Ann Torrusio served on the 190 textbook review committee.
John Walter has accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the University
of North Carolina at Wilmington and will, later this summer, defend his dissertation "Remembering that Which We Forgot:
The Canon of Memory and English Studies." He presented "Social Memory Studies and Rhetoric" at CCCC in March and
"Old Practices and New Literacies: Composing with Words and Images" at Creighton University's Jacobson Symposium
in April, and he will present "Database Rhapsody from the 'Singer of Tales' to 'Geek DJs'" at Computers and Writing
this May. Additionally, he organized a series of conference sessions marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of
Orality and Literacy: "Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy at 25" for MLA in December;
"Twenty-five Years of Reading and Misreading Orality and Literacy for CCCC in April; and "Orality and Literacy 2.0"
and "Orality and Literacy: The Next 25 Years" for Computers and Writing later this month. He continues to serve on the
CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication, on the editorial board of Kairos, and on the advisory
board of H-Net's H-DigiRhet, and he is finishing a three-year stint as the processing archivist of the Walter J. Ong
Manuscript Collection.
Joe Webb is excited that he will soon pass his French exam. He also presented
Lonesome No More!: Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick and Narrative Healing" at the Northeast MLA conference in Baltimore.
An extended version of the paper will be included in the forthcoming collection, Narratives of Old Age, by Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
Paul Yoder successfully defended his dissertation: Inside/Out: The Divided
Self and Nineteenth Century Psychoanalytic Spaces' in April. He also is an Assistant Professor of English and
English Education at Truman State University.
