by Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) Alex Gatten is a visiting assistant professor of English and the associate director of First-Year Writing at the University of Connecticut, where he also recently completed his PhD in English. His work explores the relationship between gender and sexuality and forms of writing, particularly in Romantic poetry and poetics, queer […]
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Creating Fast Funny Women: A Conversation with Nicole Catarino
by Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) When she was first hired by Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Gina Barreca in spring 2019, then-first-year student Nicole Catarino ’22 (CLAS) had no idea that she would soon help work on a book, let alone be featured in it. Fast Funny Women, an anthology of seventy-five flash nonfiction pieces […]
Developing Digital Humanities at UConn: An Interview with Kyle Booten
by Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) Kyle Booten was recently hired as an assistant professor in the Department of English in 2020. Booten is a computational poet with research interests that include literacy and media, computer generated texts, and computer mediated texts. In this interview, we discuss Booten’s post-doctoral work at the Neukom Institute at Dartmouth […]
Catching up with Hap Fairbanks
by Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) After fifty years of teaching at UConn, A. Harris “Hap” Fairbanks retired from his associate professor position in Spring 2020. On a brisk and spotty-interneted December morning, I had the pleasure of speaking with him about his career, philosophy, and projects. Teaching, Researching, Writing According to Fairbanks, he knew […]
Changing Course: A New Form of First-Year Writing
by Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) Recently, the University of Connecticut’s First-Year Writing program redesigned course curriculum and is in the process of implementing those changes at the regional campuses. The new course, ENGL 1007 (Seminar in Academic Writing and Multimodal Composition), features a Writing Across Technology curriculum that encourages students to engage with and develop […]
Waking Up to the Earth with Connecticut Poet Laureate Margaret Gibson
by Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) Professor Emerita and Connecticut Poet Laureate Margaret Gibson will be releasing two new books this year: an anthology of environmental poetry edited by Gibson called Waking Up to the Earth and a new collection of her own poems called The Glass Globe, her thirteenth book of poems. I recently had […]
“Racism in the Margins:” Confronting Biases in Writing Instruction
by Alexander Mika, ’21 (CLAS) In an effort to promote anti-racist writing practices across academic disciplines, Kathleen Tonry, associate professor of English and associate director of the University Writing Center, and Gabe Morrison, a PhD candidate in rhetoric and composition, are working on an initiative called “Racism in the Margins.” The project begins with a […]