Welcome to the English Department's Fall 2024 Newsletter,
This biannual review of accolades and accomplishments celebrates the intellectual dynamism of English.
I am grateful to each of you for your outstanding contributions and am excited to see what we will accomplish together in the coming months as we continue to support and inspire one another, fostering an inclusive environment where creativity and innovation thrives.
With warm regards,
Amanda Bailey, Professor and Chair
News and Updates from Our Community
Ph.D. candidate Dylan Lewis’ article about BookLab was published in May 2024 with the Bibliographical Society of America's journal (U Chicago Press) in a special issue on Queer Bibliography.
Lecturer Jonathan Rick media-trained PSE Healthy Energy, a research institute in California. View Professor Rick’s slide deck on his website.
Lecturer Kara Pleasants authored two poems, "On the Day You Realized Your Baby Might Live" and "Time," that were published in the Raven's Muse Magazine issue III: Flooded in August 2024.
Professor Marisa Parham was named a graduate mentor of the year and participated in “playtest: Practicum, A Social Talkback on AI and the Arts” at the Kennedy Center in August 2024.
Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies Karen Lewis has been elected to the Board of Directors for NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. Her term will begin in October 2024 and run through October 2027.
Lecturer Rachel Vorona Cote recently reviewed two books for The Washington Post's BookWorld, Hannah Regel's The Last Sane Woman and Jamie Quatro's Two-Step Devil. Cote also contributed an essay on Kinky Friedman to Still Alive Magazine, a project begun by novelist Erin Somers. Cote also has a forthcoming essay in The Nation on Italian author Alba de Céspedes's novel Her Side of the Story.
Associate Professor Gabrielle Fuentes’ short story “Flori Mar La Mancha: Intergalactic Female!” was published in Acentos Review in July 2024. Her essay “What is workshop for?" was published in Literary Matters in Spring 2024. Her latest novel, a literary mystery, was acquired by Flatiron Books and is forthcoming in 2026.
Emeritus Professor Howard Norman’s novel, Come to the Window, was published by W.W. Norton in July. His memoir of painter Jake Berthot, The Wound is the Place the Light Enters, was published in September by the Sowell Family Collection, Texas Tech University Press. His letters from Japan to W.S. Merwin, Rain Enters My Diary will be published in spring of 2025.
Distinguished University Professor Bob Levine gave a talk on Hallie Q. Brown at Pittsburgh's Heinz Museum in September, and in October he is participating in a plenary roundtable at the ALSCW conference on "Literary Frederick Douglass."
Creative writing MFA student Annie Przypyszny had poems published in Tampa Review, The MacGuffin, and The Main Street Rag over the summer. Another poem was published in FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art in late September.
Lecturer Ariana Nadia Nash had an excerpt from her in-progress poetry manuscript, "We," published in Issue #42 of Touch the Donkey, along with an interview with her about the project.
Lecturer Victoria Moten contributed a chapter titled “Mother(ship) Intuition: Black Women Protagonists in Afrofuturism” to Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts, published in August 2024.
Distinguished University Professor Matthew Kirschenbaum's essay, "AI and the University as a Service" (co-authored with Rita Raley), appears in the current issue of PMLA, together with a cluster of connected articles he and Raley co-edited for the journal. Later this fall he travels to Swarthmore, Loyola Chicago, and the Future of Text conference in Vancouver to discuss his current work. He also recently wrote on the subject of "language games" and the Trump campaign for The Atlantic.
Associate Professor Lillian-Yvonne Bertram co-edited Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023, to be published in November from MIT and Counterpath.
Principal Lecturer Ross Angelella’s crime story, “Mi Shebeirach,” will be published in the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights on October 28.
Principal Lecturer Mark Forrester’s second haiku chapbook, Dreamer’s Moon, was published earlier this year by Buddha Baby Press. Forrester's first chapbook, The World Disappears, was also published by Buddha Baby Press in 2021.
Creative writing MFA student Ava Serra published their poem, “Midnights Imploding,” in Issue 44 of Grey Sparrow Journal.
Professor Brian Richardson published a book, The Reader in Modernist Fiction, with Edinburgh University Press. His edited volume, Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices, was published in a Chinese translation. He delivered a paper on “Reading and the Reader in Conrad and Ford” at the Joseph Conrad Conference in London last July. In October, he will read a paper, “Impossible Voices in Flaubert, Conrad, and Ngũgĩ,” at the ALSCW Conference at Catholic University.
Lecturer Gerard Holmes joined the Board of Directors of the Emily Dickinson International Society, where he serves as Associate Treasurer and a member of the Budget and Membership Committees.
Principal Lecturer Danuta Hinc’s novel, When We Were Twins, was published in July 2023.
Ph.D. student Lisa Osei was awarded a fellowship by Arts For All. Osei seeks to translate the vivid and immersive worlds depicted in Afrofuturist and Africanfuturist literature—including Nalo Hopkinson’s “Midnight Robber,” Nnedi Okorafor’s “Binti Trilogy,” Akwaeke Emezi’s “Pet” and Rivers Solomon’s “The Deep—into an interactive gaming experience.
Creative writing MFA student January Santoso has poems accepted for publication and forthcoming in Pine Hills Review and The Champagne Room.
Comparative literature Ph.D. candidate Mehdy Payam had a poster presentation at DH2024 in Arlington, VA in August. It was titled “Quantitative Analysis of Canon vs. Non-Canon in Persian Novels: A Computational Study of 1000 Works.”
Comparative literature Ph.D. alum Stephen Rojcewicz ’17 published a review in National Association of Poetry Therapy Museletter in 2023, a response in Thornton Wilder Journal in 2023, a review in the Journal of Poetry Therapy in 2024, and “Villa Rhabani: Foreshadowing Wilder’s Masterpieces” in Thornton Wilder Journal in 2024.
Ph.D. student Dalton Greene will be working as a research assistant for Dr. Patricia Akhimie, director of the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in D.C. this semester. Greene is working on a public exhibition that will open at the Folger next fall.
Lecturer Aysha Jawed was the first author for the articles “Gather together in the name of our next generation: A scoping review of the essence and implementation of community baby showers” in Biosocial Health Journal and "Assessing universal considerations in infant mortality across the globe: A descriptive observational study of sudden infant death syndrome knowledge and reduction coverage on YouTube" in Health Promotion Perspectives. Jawed was the sole author for the article “More than just a crib: Assessing the prevalence of partnerships between Cribs for Kids and children’s hospitals in the United States” in the Biosocial Health Journal. An abstract she submitted for the Traumatic Brain Injury conference on her concussions research has been accepted for a poster session. The conference will take place in Boston in May 2025.
Lecturer Jesse Brooks’ story "The Regal Azul" was published in the Missouri Review this past spring. The same story will be anthologized in a book of short stories by the magazine late this fall, titled “Life Support: Stories of Health & Medicine.”
Assistant Director of the Writing Center Tom Earles presented "Tutor Emotional Labor and Asynchronous Online Tutoring" at the European Writing Centers Association conference in Limerick, Ireland this June.
Creative writing MFA student Olivia McClure’s poem "Something About Me" was selected by Anders Carlson-Wee for inclusion in the 2024 edition of Best New Poets.
Associate Professor Oliver Gaycken has accepted the position of Senior Editor at the journal Film History.
English Alum Jason Reynolds ’05 Awarded MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’
A Terp who became a bestselling author of books for young readers was announced October 1 as one of 22 winners of the 2024 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, widely known as the “genius grant.”
Jason Reynolds ’05 will receive a $800,000, no-strings-attached award in recognition of his work “depicting the rich inner lives of kids of color and ensuring that they see themselves and their communities in literature,” the foundation said.
Read full story in Maryland Today.
New Podcast Explores Past, Present and Future of Black Studies
John Drabinski, a professor in the University of Maryland’s English and African American and Africana Studies (AAAS) departments, is the co-creator of “The Black Studies Podcast,” a series of conversations examining the history of the field.
Supported by a $100,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, Drabinski and Ashley Newby, a lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in AAAS, launched the show in May and have thus far featured conversations with more than 30 scholars from across the country. Each shares stories about what got them interested in the field and how that interest materialized during the course of their academic career. They share insights on where the field is headed next.
Drabinski and Newby currently release one to two podcast episodes per week, and plan to do so through Spring 2025. They are also planning a research-focused speaker series with AAAS this fall, and a spring symposium that will allow students from Black Studies departments throughout the DMV to come to UMD to present their work, then witness scholars of the field do the same.
Listen to “The Black Studies Podcast” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and YouTube, or subscribe to the series on Substack.
Introducing the Stanley Plumly Memorial Digital Archive
The new Stanley Plumly Memorial Digital Archive, hosted by the literary journal The Georgia Review, houses poetry, essays and drafts by the late poet and longtime professor in the University of Maryland Department of English. It also includes teaching materials, selections of press and promotions from his career, photographs and recordings.
It’s "a place of tribute, homage and memorial,” said English Professor Joshua Weiner, who began to curate the archive following Plumly’s death in 2019. “In this wonderful way that can only happen in an archive, visitors can look behind the curtain of Stan’s teaching and work … [and get] in touch with the art and spirit of poetry.”
New English M.A. Teaching Pathway
Graduate Studies is launching a new part-time track of the English M.A. program at UMD that provides broad training in literature, language, and theory for educators during the academic year.
The M.A. in English Teaching Pathway is designed for educators in the DMV region who are seeking to advance professionally and to meet continuing education requirements through receiving a master’s degree from the Department of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. This pathway is designed to support certified teachers through coursework in literature, language, and theory alongside electives that can be taken with the College of Education’s Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership.
Introducing the Disability Resource and Technology Hub
We're delighted to announce the establishment of the Disability Resource and Technology Hub (DRTH or "the Hub"), a departmental initiative led by Senior Lecturers Kisa Lape, Daune O'Brien, Sarah Dammeyer, and Carolyn Fink (College of Education) and supported by a 2024 TLTC Teaching Innovation Grant.
Our mission is to serve students and instructors in the English department with technological and pedagogical resources that are specific to language, writing, and rhetoric. Our aim is to alleviate barriers to access for students with disabilities (both visible and invisible), while also providing instructors with resources to facilitate anti-ableist classrooms. Our vision for the Hub is that it will be a departmental resource that is flexible, adaptive, and emergent; we hope to work with you our colleagues to address the specific needs of students with disabilities, and to acknowledge that disability identity and culture are integral to both the academic and social experiences of all UMD students and instructors.
We will be hosting our official launch event on October 29 in the third floor lobby of Tawes and in 3223 Tawes Hall, the new home of the Hub. The event will feature a poster showcase from students in Daune O'Brien's Advanced Composition courses and Kisa Lape's Writing for Health Professions courses, highlighting issues of access and inclusivity in Professional Writing projects. Light refreshments will be served from 11 am to 1 pm.
Center for Literary and Comparative Studies
The Center continues with the theme of Displacement in 2024-2025 with a special emphasis on war, violence and incarceration.
We are living in a time of profound crisis as the war in Gaza and in Ukraine continues unabated; as the prolonged civil wars in countries such as Sudan and Myanmar continue to produce 10 million and more displaced peoples; and as violent attacks against immigrant and minority populations continue to rise in various parts of the world including the United States, UK and South Asia.
What is our role as writers, scholars, faculty and students in the University at large and more specifically, in our own department?
How do we respond to the ways in which violence, both immediate and distant, shapes our quotidian lives, while simultaneously trying to create and inhabit spaces to think about modes of resistance, revolutions and acts of reading, thinking and writing that can speak to the contemporary moment?
Upcoming Events
Please join the Center on Thursday, October 24 at 4 pm for a talk titled "Sanctuary for None: Border Violence Against Migrants and Nature in the Sonoran Desert" by Professor A. Naomi Paik of the University of Illinois, Chicago. This talk is part of the Bebe Koch Petrou Lecture Series.
On Wednesday, November 13 at 12 pm, the Center will host a Works-in-Progress event featuring Professor Lee Konstantinou and his work Creator-Owned Comics.
In the Spring, the Center will welcome speakers Ulka Anjaria (Professor of English and Director of the Mandel Center for the Humanities, Brandeis University) and Robin Kelley (Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History and Professor of African American Studies). Professor Cecilia Shelton will be featured in a Works-in-Progress event.
BookLab
BookLab is looking forward to a busy semester with a full schedule of open hours, class visits, and three fabulous undergraduate interns! This semester we are staffed by RB Faure, Rifka Handelman, and Dylan Lewis.
We have a lot of new inks on hand: the theme for this semester is COLOR! Stop by and see us Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday afternoons (and in the evenings on Tuesday!), grab a poster from the wall outside our door, and follow us on Instagram @umd_booklab to keep up.
Act Like You Know: A Podcast Preview & Talk Back
Join Assistant Professor Cecilia Shelton on October 24 at 5 pm in Ulrich Recital Hall to preview her podcast, Act Like You Know, and spark a dialogue about expertise, ethos and the ways that language ideologies shape who we listen to.
Professor Shelton is a 2024-2025 Faculty Fellow with the Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities, and this event is her contribution to the center's Humanities Dialogues Series.
Her podcast, which is forthcoming in 2025, will stage conversations with interlocutors who center Black and other minoritized linguistic and cultural practices in communicating what they know and using their expert knowledge to solve problems.
This preview event will feature excerpts from Professor Shelton's conversation with Dapper Dan Midas (aka DDm), a Baltimore artist whose social and political commentary on his Secretary of Shade YouTube Channel centers Black queer culture and language. After a preview of their conversation, Professor Shelton will talk with a panel about the critical insights to be drawn from Black language and lived experience to understand our contemporary political discourse.
A light reception will follow the event.
Daniella Odutola Internship Corps
Jeneva Williams-Blackwell, Information Studies '20, generously gifted the department $25K in memory of her friend Daniella Odutola, English '20.
The Daniella Odutola Internship Corps, which will launch in Summer 2025, will support undergraduate English majors interested in pursuing an internship to advance their career goals.