Wonderful news! Alex Gatten (PhD ’20) has been hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor and the Associate Director of First Year Writing at UConn, with a one-year renewable contract.

Pam Bedore will run a workshop for English faculty of all types and graduate students entitled “Using Discussion Boards with Online Teaching. This informal workshop, scheduled for Wednesday, August 19, from 1-1:45 is open to everyone and will cover the following topics:

1. Designing engaging discussion boards
2. Grading discussion boards quickly (with rubrics)
3. Following up on discussion boards to introduce future materials

You can connect to the workshop via Pam’s webex room:  https://uconn-cmr.webex.com/meet/pab05001

Congratulations to Katie Nunnery and Hayley Stefan on their new jobs!

Katie has accepted a one-year position as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Freshman Writing Program at Tulane University, and Hayley has accepted a one-year position as Visiting Assistant Professor in the English Department at Holy Cross.

 

 

How Studying Racism Helped Us Become Anti-Racist Activists.

Earlier this summer, as the US saw the beginning of the largest protest movement in its history, English PhD candidate Anna Ziering organized a collaboration with former students on an activist writing project in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The process built on coursework from Ziering’s FA 19 course “American Literature Since 1880” (ENGL 2203), which closed with Angie Thomas’s YA novel “The Hate U Give.” Using Zoom and GoogleDocs, a team of twelve students worked together, building on their experience in two different sections of the class and, says Ziering, “organically sharing their diverse perspectives, experiences, and histories of activism.” Their article was published in UConn Today on July 30.

We celebrate the news that Sean Forbes, Director of Creative Writing, has been awarded the first Mellon/UCHI Faculty Fellowship to support work on his new poetry collection, “Archaeological Review: A Book of Poems.” Congratulations to Sean for winning this major fellowship.

Anna Zarra Aldrich, an Honors student who just graduated with degrees in English, Journalism, and Political Science, has earned many awards in her academic career so far. She is a Babbidge Scholar, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and a Dean’s List honoree. She has been lauded as an excellent speaker, a stellar academic thinker and leader, and as someone who is unafraid to take exciting risks in her creative work. During her time at UConn, Anna served as Editor-in-Chief of both the Daily Campus and the Long River Review, treasurer of UConn NOW, Press Corps Model UN member,  a research intern at the Thomas J. Dodd Center Archives and Special Collections, and a communications specialist for the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Anna’s plan is to pursue a PhD in English with the goal of becoming a professor.

Kudos to this excellent graduate!

 

 

 

 

Anna Mae Duane’s new book, Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys who Grew Up to Change a Nation, received a wonderful review by Kenneth Best in UConn Today.

Congratulations to Anna Mae!

English Department Scholarships 2020

Congratulations to the following award recipients!

And thank you to all who nominated students—we received many fine entries and only wish there were awards for all who merit them.

 

The Jonathan Hufstader Distinguished English Major Award: Stephanie Santillo

 

The Kathleen Gibson McPeek Scholarship: Gillian Bullock

Honorable Mention: Julie Dai

 

The Suzanne Brennan Perella Memorial Scholarship: Camryn Johnson

 

The Steblea Family Scholarship: Madelon Morin-Vial

• Gabe Morrison has won the Francelia Butler Graduate Award for Teaching Innovation. This award recognizes one English or Medieval Studies graduate student who demonstrates commitment to innovative teaching and reflective practice that supports student engagement and learning in a non-FYW course. One committee member wrote, “Gabe has not only been an incredibly effective teacher, but he also has taken on new teaching responsibilities and developed them expertly.” They noted that “Gabe’s vocation is pedagogy itself.”

• Mollie Kervick has won the David Leeming Graduate Award for Service. This award recognizes one English or Medieval Studies graduate student who demonstrates excellence in service or outreach to the department, university, institution, or community. One committee member noted that they were particularly impressed by both Mollie’s formal service roles — including her presidency of EGSA and her leadership position organizing the “Emerging Voices in Irish Studies Graduate Student Conference” — and her commitment to forging communities of support among graduate students.
• Alex Gatten has won the Milton Stern Dissertation Award, which recognizes the best dissertation submitted for a PhD in English or Medieval Studies, for his project “Formal Perversions: Queer Poetics and the Turn in Romantic Verse.” One committee member wrote that they found Alex’s dissertation “complex and really compelling, offering a new way of reading not just Romantic poetry, but poetry in general. The dissertation engages recent scholarly work on form (such as Caroline Levine’s recent Forms) to make a convincing connection between literary and bodily form that I found beautifully argued.” Another noted that the sample chapter was “elegantly written,” a balanced combination of “close reading, historical context, and deep engagement with scholarship.”

Each award is accompanied by a $500 prize. Congratulations to Gabe, Mollie, and Alex!