Issue 7
ENGLISH ACCENTS SPRING 2022
INSIDE The Study Abroad Issue Student Travel in the Era of COVID: Q&A with Professor Mary Klayder Plus: Value of English Highlights Campus Updates Alumni Updates
Letter from the Chair Dear friends of KU English,
My term as Chair of the Department of English is coming to an end as I write this, and it is a bittersweet time. As chair, I’ve taught fewer courses per year in order to administer the affairs of the department, and so I look forward enthusiastically to teaching more students again. But I’ve also been able to see the department from a different perspective as chair, and I treasure that view. As chair, I‘ve been honored to see in detail what each one of my colleagues accomplishes every year as well as the achievements of our students and, ultimately, what students, faculty, and staff accomplish together. I have been privileged to lead, advocate for, and brag about this department, and I’ll miss that—although I anticipate the bragging will continue even when I hand the wheel over to Professor Marta Caminero-Santangelo, an experienced and beloved colleague and administrator who, as it turns out, has just been awarded a Distinguished Professorship. Rest assured we’ll be in good hands!
As I write, Professor Caminero-Santangelo is finishing her first study abroad in Cuba, which brings me to the focus of this issue of English Accents. We’d planned in early 2020 to launch this themed issue in 2021, after our themed issues on social justice and service and then, in 2020, on interdisciplinary study. We chose to delay the issue since study abroad was obviously not on the table during 2021. Indeed, the pandemic restrictions in the US and Europe came down at the same time as the London Review study group was abroad during spring break in 2020. Dr. Mary Klayder and the team of affiliated faculty and staff did a marvelous job shepherding our students through this
Professor Katie Conrad
nerve-wracking experience, and they returned safely, to the cheers and relief of all of us here, and put out an extraordinary volume of The London Review during that first pandemic spring.
We’re thrilled that study abroad is back; although both Dr. Klayder and Professor Caminero-Santangelo were able to offer a virtual study abroad to Costa Rica last year, all of our programs are running in person again this year. Study abroad opportunities have long been a wonderful feature not only of a KU education but, more specifically, of an English Department education. In addition to providing these valuable opportunities, we’ve worked hard over the last few years to increase the number of need-based scholarships (including through the Mary Klayder fund) so that more students can take advantage of this transformative experience.
We’ve been able to expand these and other opportunities because of you. The department has come through the challenges of the last few years with strength in part because of the professional mentorship and financial support of our alumni and donors, who have stepped in to
Support KU English! If you would like to make a financial contribution to support the award-winning work of our students and faculty, visit https://tinyurl.com/kuenglishgiving
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/KUEnglishDepartment @KUEnglish @kuenglishdepartment
help ensure that our students continue to be given amazing opportunities. The Value of English was a high point of spring 2021 and 2022, where members of our alumni network shared their career experiences and the real value of their English education in a series of virtual panels for students. Several alumni spearheaded a fundraising drive to build the Mary Klayder Fund for financial support for study abroad students in English programs. Thanks to donors, we also have exciting new student opportunity funds like the Pauzauskie Fund for Literature and Medicine and the Reiss-Clark Fund for the Advancement of Arts & Sciences, both to be launched in the coming year. We’ve received generous unrestricted departmental support from donors such as Patricia and Heyward Brock and our esteemed late colleagues Professor Beverly Boyd and Professor Janet Sharistanian. We’ve also received new graduate support from David Cicotello in memory of Louis Cicotello, from
Jim Ward in memory of Dr. Stephen F. Evans, and from longtime donors Patricia Cleary Miller and Gail Johnstone. And, of course, we’ve received dozens of individual donations as well as generous offers of mentorship and professional networking for our students from friends, alumni, and colleagues. Thank you all for being part of the English department and for helping us continue to make KU English the special place that I have been proud to call home for 25 years and have been proud to lead for the last five. In gratitude,
Kathryn Conrad Professor and Chair, English
Welcome Dr. Sean Kamperman! his Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy from Ohio State University in 2019. Kamperman’s research explores the intersection of mental disability, rhetoric, and professional writing with an overarching goal of assessing how professional workplaces and knowledge cultures more broadly can be made more accessible to neurodiverse and disabled rhetors. His work has appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Critical Education, The Gayle Morris Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, and, most recently, the edited collection Strategic Interventions in Mental Health Rhetoric.
Professor Sean Kamperman
Sean Kamperman joins the KU English faculty this fall as an Assistant Professor of English Rhetoric and Composition. Kamperman served as an Assistant Professor at Valapairaiso University in Indiana, where he taught courses in Business and Professional Writing, Health Science Writing, Grant Writing, and Multimedia Writing and Design in the Public & Professional Writing program. He received
Kamperman received the Kitty O. Locker Award for Excellence in Business Communication for his dissertation chapter on the rhetorical practices of professional selfadvocates. For the Fall 2022 semester, he is slated to teach courses on Writing for Nonprofits and Neurorhetorics. In his spare time, he enjoys playing music and watching college basketball (even, occasionally, the Jayhawks). Please join us in welcoming Dr. Sean Kamperman to the KU English family!
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THE
STUDY ABROAD ISSUE Hindsight is 2020. As our chair, Katie Conrad, mentioned in her message, when we planned our 2021 issue of English Accents to be focused around study abroad, we had no idea what was to come. Now, halfway through 2022, we endeavor to give our “Study Abroad Issue” a second chance, exploring what student travel looks like today, two years after our London Review group found itself abroad during “the week the world ended.” From cancellations and virtual travel experiences to mask mandates and vaccine passports, En-
glish faculty and students have continued to adapt in our ever-changing COVID era, all for the joy of an enriching global experience. In this issue, we interviewed Professor Mary Klayder, who has continued to lead our department’s signature trips to Costa Rica and the United Kingdom, and incoming Chair Marta Caminero-Santangelo, who recently led a trip to Cuba, to learn more where study abroad has been in the last two years and where it’s headed next.
Interview with Mary Klayder English Accents (EA): How long have
you been doing study abroad trips with the English department?
MK:
Well, I did the first one in 1990 and I’m about to
do the 58th program. The first program was the British Summer Institute (BSI), then I had a gap because I was running advising at Honors and I was over there as an administrator and still teaching, but it was hard in the summer to be gone because of advising orientation. During that time though, I started London Review in ‘98. Then I started doing the BSI in 2001 and then every other year until 2006 when it became every year. I’ve been doing London since ‘98 and Costa Rica since ‘06 and essentially BSI straight since ‘06.
EA:
You were on your London Review trip when the pandemic lockdown started in 2020. Can you talk a little bit about that, how the experience was and how it impacted your original plans?
MK: Yeah, I mean I think we didn’t really know what was going on. There was never any talk about us not going. I mean, there was some discussion about something happening soon, but we didn’t see it as happening that quick-
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Mary Klayder on the 2022 British Summer Institute trip
ly. I’ve talked to other administrators from other universities who said, “Well, I wouldn’t have let you go.” And, well, you didn’t know. Nobody even really knew what was going on. When we came back, most of the group was on the flight that came back through Chicago and they essentially put us for four hours in a cattle pen with all the people from Italy, which was raging with COVID. Then when we got up to the TSA, they told all the Italy people they had to go get health checks and all of us, who had been standing right next to the Italy group, didn’t have to do anything because they weren’t really restricting British travelers until like two days later. So yeah, people were washing their hands like maniacs. My hands were just raw. We didn’t have masks, although most of the Asian visitors in London had masks. A couple of the accompanying administrative people from the university came back early, mostly because one had to take care of some crisis stuff here. But the students stayed, and we all came back together. But it was just this complete confusion about whether this was really a big deal. Is this going to be for a couple of weeks? There was no sense of what it was going to be at all. There was anxiety. The biggest anxiety was that people were afraid they couldn’t get back, that they would somehow be stopped from coming back. They didn’t really understand that you’re an American citizen, you can get back in. You might have to get tested, but you’ll get back in. There was a little bit of an irrational anxiety, but at the same time people were going to plays, going out to dinner, everybody was doing stuff. So, the anxiety was there,
but it didn’t stop students from doing all these things in London. Nothing was completely closed yet, not that week. That all came later.
EA:
What factors did you consider with the Study Abroad Office when you were starting to plan a return to these trips?
MK:
We didn’t have spring break last year (2021), so London was out and last summer there was a short period of time where we actually thought we might be able to have the British Summer Institute. Within a weekend, I had like 18 people sign up, but then realized that it wasn’t going to happen and cancelled. Then in January 2021, Marta Caminero-Santangelo and I did a virtual Costa Rica trip that we had seven people sign up for. We just took them through things, we had little virtual walks through cloud forests and stuff like that. Everyone in the group said that it was so much better than they thought it would be. It was funny, but it was so interesting too that they really learned a lot. Because when we’re actually there, people are always running around looking at the volcanoes, and when it was a virtual visit, they just sat and listened to the information about the volcano. I thought that was kind of funny. Then, this past year we worked with the two people in Costa Rica, and we were pretty certain from October that we were set to go. Then I went ahead and booked the London Review group. There were a couple of little times where we were a little anxious, but David Wiley kept track of all of the case numbers abroad compared to here. Kansas was always worse off than the UK, in terms of case numbers, no matter what. There were fewer cases in the UK, so that’s how we made our decision. Both times we had to make arrangements to get tested within 24 hours of coming back. If someone had tested positive, they would have had to stay behind for five days. In another KU study abroad group, maybe the Panama trip, five people tested positive and had to stay. But both times, Costa Rica 2021 and London Review 2022, we tested negative. 27 negative tests in March. In Costa Rica, it was nice because we all got tested at the same time. With London Review, we were taking tests all day long and having to wait to check people off. Right now, the policy is that we’ll still have to get tested to come back for the BSI trip. But who knows, things change a lot. For the London Review, we had to have a QR code proving that we were vaccinated to get into the UK, but for the BSI we don’t have to anything like that to get into the UK. We leave the 27th of May and come back the 27th of June.
2020 London Review Cover See previous London Review editions at: issuu.com/kuenglishabroad
EA: What advice would you have for students who are a little apprehensive about traveling, but they’re interested in pursuing study abroad?
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from taking people abroad. It’s interesting, I’m seeing more people staying for semesters abroad because then if they got COVID, they could just isolate in their study abroad home for a week and then go back to classes. I think it makes it a little bit riskier if you get COVID in the middle of a short program, like the ones I lead, because then you have to lose out on a part of the program. But part of the program for KU Study Abroad is that they have insurance that they essentially get taken care of in the event that they test positive and have to stay behind for a few extra days. It’s built into the system to ease some of the anxieties.
EA:
What are you most looking forward to about this year’s BSI? Mary Klayder with students in Oxford
MK: When I was in London, I wore a mask on transit or in crowded places. We wear masks regularly, and we certainly wore them on the plane. In the lobby of the hotel, and when we had our dinners together, I took my mask off because it was really just us. But I didn’t feel any anxiety, I didn’t feel any more nervous there than here. More people are vaccinated in the UK. I feel like we’re kind of in that place where we’re living with it, no matter where we are. I don’t see any reason not to go. It became clear to me after doing Costa Rica and London Review this year, that this is not going to stop me
MK:
Ah, Scotland. Scotland. I messed up my leg right
before this year’s London Review, but I’ve been walking on the treadmill and I’m ready to go hiking. I just love Scotland; I look forward to it a lot.
EA: Is there anything else you’d like to say about your study abroad trips for our readers?
MK:
I think that people should still go abroad, maybe
more now than ever. This isolation sort of made us lose a little socialization, I know I did. I felt like I didn’t know how to talk to people anymore. It worries me a little bit. The isolation intensified divisions that we already had, and I think it’s all the more important for people to go abroad.
Interview with Marta Caminero-Santangelo At the end of the Spring 2022 semester, Professor Marta Caminero-Santangelo led new study abroad program for the English Department, a trip to Cuba!
EA: What was the most memorable part of your trip? MC:
Really the entire trip was incredible, but I suppose for me Havana holds a special place in my heart since my parents came from there. Walking through the beautiful colorful buildings of Old Havana for our city tour on the first day was just an incredible experience, with the occasional well-preserved car from the 1950s driving through! One evening we saw a play at the Fabrica del Arte, which is itself a gorgeous building and venue for all kinds of arts, Professor Marta Caminero-Santangelo
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kind of like an art gallery/museum and theater / music space all in one! The play we saw was about an interracial Cuban couple reacting to tensions in response to news of the George Floyd murder in the US, and it was deeply moving and interesting, even for the students who did not know Spanish. The Playwright and Director and the entire acting troupe came out to talk to the students! Las Terrazas is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum from Havana: a tiny town of 1000 people who all know each other, that boasts several different artist studios. The students so enjoyed talking to the artists and seeing their work, which is an incredible representation of their lush natural surroundings, and at night we had a jam session with a music group, Amygo, that is based out of Las Terrazas. (You can catch them on YouTube!) One student even played bass guitar along with the band! I think for the students that was an exceptionally memorable experience. The last thing I’ll mention was our tour of Trinidad, a Spanish colonial town, which was led by Alex, a tour guide who is also a Santero – a priest of Santeria, which is a hybrid belief system that was developed when African enslaved people in Cuba tried to preserve their Yoruban religious practices under the guise of imposed Spanish Catholicism. Alex told us so much about the religion, and took us to a house of Yemaya, who is the Orisha (spirit) of the seas. (Her Catholic counterpart is la Virgin de la Regla.) Upon our return to Havana we actually got to witness a Santeria ritual. I find the religion fascinating as an expression of creative and adaptive survival under colonial oppression.
EA: What
Old Havana
do you hope students took away from this experience?
MC: The thing I hope and believe that the students took
away from the experience was an understanding and appreciation of the incredibly rich cultural and artistic production in Cuba. We had poetry readings, a movie screening, a theatrical production, visited multiple painters and sculpture studios, listened to live Cuban music (including Santeria drumming in Cienfuegos!), witnessed amazing architectural beauty, and in general absorbed so much rich Cuban culture. I think the students and I all came away with an impression of Cuba as an incredibly artistic island, in every sense of the word.
EA: Is
there anything you couldn’t fit in the schedule this time around, that you’d like to do next time?
MC: I would’ve loved to go to Santiago de Cuba, which
is basically on the other end of the island than Havana, the east end, and is where a concentration of Afro-Cuban culture particularly flourishes. But it is a 12 hour drive and we just did not have enough time to get there. I am hoping someday!
Marta Caminero-Santangelo (4th from left) with students at an artist studio in Cuba
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Updates from Affiliated Programs Project on the History of Black Writing The History of Black Writing (HBW) is a dedicated leader in Black literature, committed to literary recovery, innovative scholarship, and community outreach. Founded in 1983 by Dr. Maryemma Graham, HBW has since been at the forefront of research and inclusion efforts in higher education. Currently, HBW counts on a staff of 21 graduate and undergraduate researchers split among four teams: staff centered on social media and archives and those focused on the Black Book Interactive Project and Black Literary Suite projects. In the past year, founding director Dr. Graham began her phased retirement, which included stepping down as HBW’s director in June 2021 and completing her teaching duties the following December. However, Dr. Graham will continue to serve HBW in a consultant position, and Dr. Ayesha Hardison, Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, has joined HBW as its new director. The goal of HBW’s prized Black Book Interactive Project (BBIP), which Dr. Graham continues to manage, is to increase the access of scholars, students, and general readers to Black-authored texts by utilizing digital tools. Over the past few years BBIP has been hard at work preserving HBW’s novel collection by inventorying 1,668 new novels to add to the 3,159 fiction titles already present in its online, searchable database. HBW partners with the HathiTrust Research Center, which is a large-scale
collection of digitized literature, on the BBIP project, and graduate students Jade Harrison, Brendan Williams-Childs, and Ashley Simmons have created a labeling system with 21 categories to guide HBW’s research on lesser-known Black writers in the collection. Recently, HBW welcomed its third and fourth cohorts of BBIP Scholars, which include scholars and graduate students from across the country interested in learning about digital humanities and digital publishing. HBW has also extended its public outreach by organizing its 7th National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute since coming to KU. The three-week 2021 virtual institute provided an in-depth reassessment of Zora Neale Hurston’s works to 25 higher education faculty and instructors from diverse colleges and universities. In the fall, HBW extended the summer institute to the wider public by holding three webinars on Hurston related topics. HBW continues to build its public engagement through social media and partnerships with institutions as well as on campus and in digital communities. For example, HBW honored Black poets on its social media during National Poetry Month. Currently, the project is planning its annual Black Literary Suite for fall 2022, which will highlight AfroLatinx and Caribbean literature and culture with a campus talk, a podcast interview, and an exhibit of influential AfroLatinx writers.
Award Highlight | 2022 Langston Hughes Award, Lawrence Arts Center Congratulations to recent graduate Faith Maddox and alumnus Brett Salsbury, who received the 2022 Langston Hughes Award for creative writing. “Each year, the award is givent to two writers to encourage and support Douglas County residents who continue in Hughes’ tradition of portraying life experience through poetry and prose,” according to the Lawrence Arts Center website. As winners, Maddox and Salsbury participated in a reading of their work at an event celebrating Hughes’ 120th birthday in early February of this year.
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Flyers from the Virtual Book Club events occuring in February, March, April, and May 2022
The Gunn Center for the Study of SF 2022 has been a year of transition and new beginnings for the Gunn Center for the Study of SF (CSSF). In January we welcomed Dr. Giselle Anatol to the role of Director; her vision of celebrating international speculative literatures seeks to honor the legacy of James Gunn builds upon the dedicated service of outgoing Director Christopher McKitterick and Associate Director Kij Johnson, and continues to expand the communities with which the Center engages.
In late January, we launched a new, streamlined website (https://sfcenter.ku.edu/) where visitors can find accessible information about our history, affiliated faculty, course offerings, award opportunities, and upcoming events.
of our first annual Sturgeon Symposium, a two-day event featuring interdisciplinary programming from a diverse range of scholars, artists, and speakers, and the presentation of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story to this year’s winner. In keeping with the Center’s updated mission, the theme for this year’s Symposium is “Celebrating Speculative Communities.” Programming will be hybrid in-person and online, and will include a reading from the Sturgeon winner, roundtable discussions, research panels, creative presentations and workshops, and more. We’re excited to highlight the wealth of incredible work being done in the field of Speculative Arts here at KU and across the globe, and hope you will join us. More information about the Sturgeon Symposium, including our CFP, can be found online at https://sfcenter.ku.edu/sturgeon-awardsymposium.
January also saw the launch of our Virtual Book Club, a monthly online event that has already drawn an international group of participants. We’ve met to discuss Rebecca Campbell’s Sturgeon Award-winning story “An Important Failure,” P. Djeli Clark’s novella Ring Shout, Colson Whitehead’s novel The Intuitionist, Franny Choi’s speculative poetry collection Soft Science, and Sarah Pinsker’s novelette “Two Truths and a Lie,” and we’re looking forward to the next round of lively and thoughtprovoking conversations in the fall. If you are interested in joining us, please check the website for updates on what to read! (https://sfcenter.ku.edu/news-events)
As the 2021-2022 academic year comes to a close, we wish a heartfelt farewell to CSSF Graduate Research Assistant Jason Baltazar—now Dr. Jason Baltazar!—who finished his dissertation and is headed east to take on a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at James Madison University. His creativity, thoughtfulness and tact, knowledge of the field, and organizational skills cannot be praised highly enough! We are delighted to announce that several new graduate students have been selected to take up his mantle in the upcoming year: Anthony Boynton (GRA-Fall semester), Sandra Jacobo (GRA-Spring semester), and Madeleine Bonnallie (digital communications).
Professor Anatol shares the following updates:
Another reason to be excited for the fall is the unveiling
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Student Association of Graduates in English (SAGE) The Student Association of Graduates in English (SAGE) was founded in 1967, and provides vital resources for graduate students in the department. SAGE creates opportunities for professionalization and public engagement, while building stronger relationships both among graduate students and between graduate students and the rest of the department. Through sponsoring social and professional events, serving on committees, and collaborating with faculty to improve the department, SAGE members offer a model of academic service to the graduate community at KU while also working to meet graduate students’ needs, including by providing supplementary travel funds for academic conferences and public forums. This year, SAGE reorganized its work and committees to better meet the needs of graduate students, resulting in a number of opportunities and events over the past two years, including: • A professionalization workshop on publishing, with speakers from all three major tracks; and other workshops focused • The Annual Welcome Picnic for new graduate students and faculty • The (return of the) annual book sale–and a new bake sale–to raise funds for graduate student travel • Silent auction at the English Department Holiday Party • Coordinating visits with prospective graduate students as well as between job candidates and graduate students Here are a few things SAGE members from each track have been up to this year: Creative Writing Brendan Williams-Childs (2nd year MFA Fiction Student): “Creative Writing students have done a lot this year with publishing. Landlocked, the grad lit mag, went to AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) with university travel funds. I think we all found the publishing panels SAGE hosted to be valuable!”
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The 2021 Winter edition of Landlocked is available for download or purchase at https://landlockedmagazine. com/issue-4-1/ Literature Sandra Jacobo (4th year Literature PhD Candidate): “I’ve been awarded the GRAship for the Gunn Center, an awesome opportunity that allows me to ‘geek out’ on my love for science fiction by coordinating the CSSF’s monthly Virtual Book Club and also live out my publishing career dreams by assisting with the administration of the Sturgeon Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story. This opportunity is not only awesome because of these cool tasks, it also relates a lot to my research in Afro-Caribbean femme Spec Fic!” Rhetoric and Composition Brynn Fitzsimmons (3rd year Rhetoric and Composition): “I’m excited to attend the Rhetoric Society of America conference in May, which will be my first in-person conference since COVID shutdowns. I was also recently awarded the Sherman and Irene Dreiseszun Scholarship from the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Foundation, which provides important support as I begin my dissertation research. As I move into that dissertation stage, events from SAGE’s Lecturers, Readers, and Professionalization Committee this year have all been incredibly useful and generative for me.”
SAGE allows graduate students to build rapport within the department, raise funds for conference travel, and provide opportunities for graduate students to showcase talents and work outside of those normally covered by coursework, research, and teaching. Spaces for community-building and professionalization are incredibly important to graduate students, and SAGE is working to secure additional support from the Student Involvement and Leadership Center and other campus resources to be able to keep expanding SAGE’s work to encompass the needs of graduate students in the English department.
KU English in the News Writers still putting ‘Richard Wright in Context’ | KU News (September 2021) Professor Ayesha Hardison’s chapter in the Cambridge University Press book Richard Wright in Context focuses on the 10 years the Native Son author spent in New York. Book chapter unearths the bomb hidden in Oscar Wilde’s comedy | KU News (October 2021)
Incarcerated poets impress teacher with written word’s power | KU News (May 2021) Senior Lecturer Brian Daldorph’s book Words is a Powerful Thing: Twenty Years of Teaching Creative Writing at Douglas County Jail, which has since been named a 2022 Kansas Notable Book, “is part-memoir about his teaching experience at the jail, part-inmate anthology and also includes a survey of major incarcerated writers” (KU News). Health Humanities and Arts Research Collaborative awards starter grant through The Commons, Office of Research | KU News (July 2021) Last summer, doctoral student Brynn Fitzsimmons was awarded funding by the Health Humanities and Arts Research Collaborative (HHARC) for their research project, which “[addresses] how citizen journalism can support community-engaged health communication, better dialogue between health care professionals and the public, and media and health literacy” (KU News).
In her book chapter “Rage’s Brother: The Bomb at the Center of Wilde’s Trivial Comedy,” Professor and Chair Kathryn Conrad focuses on subtle allusions to Oscar Wilde’s political leanings in his work. Researcher traces concept of taste in literature to 16th century | KU News (November 2021) Professor and Associate Chair Jonathan Lamb attributes Francis Bacon with shifting the meaning of the word “taste” in his article “What Books Taste Like: Bacon and the Borders of the Book.” The Origin of Valentine’s Day | Country Living (January 2022) In an article on the origin of Valentine’s Day, Country Living references late KU English professor Jack B. Oruch’s research, which argues that Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to connect St. Valentine with love.
Book details ‘conversation between Victorian literature, evolutionary science | KU News (July 2021) In her 2021 book Human Evolution and Fantastic Victorian Fiction (Routledge), Professor Anna Neill “explores how Victorian works... speak back against a conception of the evolutionary past as deep and gradually developing” (KU News). Art Alliance plans to broadcast poetry across Kansas City streets | KMBC News (September 2021) Professor Megan Kaminski was among the poets broadcast in the streets of Kansas City last fall as part of a Mid-America Arts Alliance project to feature local poetry while they were closed during the pandemic. From script to screen | Kansas Alumni Magazine (2021) KU English alumna and disability advocate Rebekah Taussig, PhD ‘17, is adapting her memoir Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body for TV with ABC Signature.
Prairie oracles offer advice in divination deck from KU professor | KU News (February 2022) In an effort to educate others on the local prairie ecosystem, Professor Megan Kaminski has published Prairie Divination, “a 40-card oracle deck and illustrated collection of essays. It’s a distillation of the plant and animal knowledge she has gained from 14 years living in Kansas” (KU News). continued on page 12
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2022 Value of English Series
English & Medicine Panel
This spring, KU English continued its virtual Value of English series, inviting alumni to share how their English education has impacted their career path. Panel discussions focused on the fields of medicine, law, publishing and writing, marketing, public relations, higher education, and the public service sector. Our department extends a big thank you to our alumni for their time and insight! Here are a few highlights from our alumni.
English & Law Panel
Molly Butkus
JD, University of Texas Partner, Bracewell LLP - Houston, TX
“[Transactional law] is very little storytelling, and it’s very technical... The agreements I’m working with are usually 80 to 100 pages long. Every sentence really matters… the punctuation has to be right… Sometimes litigation stems off of whether ‘and’ means ‘and’ or ‘and’ means ‘or’. You have to be so precise, but it’s fun…”
Alex Kong
MPhil, Cambridge PharmD, KU PhD student, International Health, Johns Hopkins
“Everyone is talking about how public health is having its moment..., but what hasn’t been talked about is the fact that communications is really having its moment, and the fact that it can be so easy to get something wrong when you’re communicating in high stakes situations where everyone is on edge and... looking for a voice. There’s a definite need for healthcare professionals to be able to communicate in a way that gets the facts through but still addresses [fear and anxiety], because you can’t win with just facts in situations like this. The importance of cultivating the right messaging and making sure that it rings true while also grabbing the attention of others is really important right now.”
KU English in the News continued Don’t ignore deeper ‘Plague Year’ anniversary context, professor says | KU News (February 2022) In an article for Public Seminar, Professor Anna Neill connects the COVID-19 pandemic with the 300th anniversary of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. The Duke of Lennox, a preternatural political context | KU News (March 2022) Professor Emeritus David Bergeron has written the first biography of the Duke of Lennox Ludovic Stuart. The Duke of Lennox, 1574-1624: A Jacobean Courtier’s Life was published this year by Edinburgh University Press. Toni Morrison novel gets at root cause of health care disparities, professor writes | KU News (April 2022) In her article “Getting at the Root of US Healthcare Injustices through Morrison’s Root Workers,” Professor Giselle Anatol discusses how the healers in Toni Morrison’s novels provide insight into “longstanding gendered and racial health disparities” (KU News).
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New online play from Darren Canady asks who owns the notion of Blackness | KU News (May 2022) Professor and Undergraduate Director Darren Canady’s new play “The Percy Meacham Dance Experience” was inspired by choreographer Alvin Ailey’s integration of his all-black dance company. The play premiered virtually this May as part of the Playwright Center’s Playlabs Festival.
Alumni Updates 1950s Marjorie L. Morgenstern (BA ‘59) taught English literature & writing for 32 years and retired in 1995. Morgenstern undertook post-grad work at San Jose State, Santa Clara, Colorado, and Montana University, but those experiences never equaled the joy and beauty of her undergraduate days at KU starting in Corbin Hall, 1955. She thanks KU & her parents, whose formal education ended at 8th grade in one room Barton and Russell County country schools, for their support. Morgenstern is approaching 85 healthy years, and has traveled throughout North America, South America, and Europe.
1960s Dr. Robert H. Deming (MA ‘61), with Dr Anne L Deming (worked on MA in French and taught French courses during 1961-1962), published two books: A History of Bear Lake. Mill City Press, 2018 and Camp in the Woods on Bear Lake. Amazon/KDP, 2019. Albert J. Devlin (PhD ‘69) completed
PhD study in Modern and American literature in 1969 and accepted an appointment at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Amid passing administrative duties, he taught a variety of courses and received an NEH grant for a two-volume edition of Tennessee Williams’ correspondence (New Directions, 2000, 2004). He was appointed a Middlebush Professor and retired in 2010. Later research included an edition of Elia Kazan’s correspondence (Knopf, 2014). He met his wife, Molly, at KU, a gifted teacher of French at Hickman HS in Columbia. Two sons and four grandchildren live in Dallas. Joseph Roach (BA ‘69), received the 2022 William Clyde De Vane Award for Scholarship and Teaching from the Yale University chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
1970s Ron Pullins (MA ‘70) worked for major publishers in New York and Boston before spending thirty years developing his own publishing house, Focus Pub/R. Pullins Company, and publishing such works as (his delight-
ful KU prof) Ken Rothwell’s edition of King Lear, originating the Focus Library of Medieval Woman including an edition of de Pizan’s Letter to Othea, and 100+ other titles. His list was acquired by Hackett (Cambridge, MA). In retirement he has focused on writing fiction and drama, with works published in the Southwest Journal, Shenandoah, and others. He lives in Tucson with partner and cat. Charles V. (Chip) Jones (BA ‘74) is the author of The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South and winner of the 2021 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction. The Organ Thieves — Chip’s fourth historical work — has also been selected as the 2022 Common Book for first-year students at Virginia Commonwealth University. Planning is also underway to use the book as the basis of a podcast about systemic racism in Richmond, Virginia. Chip lives in Richmond with his wife, Deborah White Jones, also a 1974 graduate of KU. Lawton R. Nuss (BA ‘75) retired as Chief Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. In his most recent article (published
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by the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review), he analyzes the Model Veterans Treatment Court Act and offers guidance to those states and U.S. territories considering the creation of new veterans treatment courts and the enhancement of existing ones. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Topeka. Lisa Browar (MA ‘76) was elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society. Founded in 1812, the AAS is one of the country’s oldest learned societies. Lisa has been President of the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology in Kansas City, Missouri since 2008, having worked previously at Yale University, Vassar College, The New York Public Library, Indiana University, and The New School. Rosemary O’Leary (BA ‘78) received the 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Kansas School of Law. She is the Edwin O. Stene Distinguished Professor at the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. She lives in Lawrence with her husband, Larry Schroeder.
1980s Daniel Born (MA ‘80), writing under the pen name David Saul Bergman, co-authored a hardboiled crime novel, Unpardonable Sins, published by Wipf and Stock in 2021. Currently a lecturer in the M.A. literature program at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies, he is at work on a sequel to Unpardonable Sins titled Prodigal Sons. Robert Bruce Scott, Ed.D., (BA ‘80) is editor at Multilingual Adaptive Systems Newsletter and co-editor at C2C Digital Magazine. He lives with his wife, Meribel, in Council Grove, KS. Robb has two sons, two daughters, two granddaughters, and a grandson. As an undergraduate at KU, Robb’s professors included Harold Orel, Roy Gridley, Peter Casagrande, Gerhardt Zuther, Richard Eversole, and Max Sutton.
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Rebecca Pyle (BA ‘86) (once Rebecca Brown, an art student and then a lit student and then a creative writing student at the University of Kansas) has lived over a decade in Utah, where she is married to the also-from-Kansas Salt Lake Tribune editorial writer George Pyle. Once a first-prize winner in three KU creative writing competitions (the Wolfe, the Whitcomb, the Carruth) (1978-1979) (her graduation was delayed by several years by both a change of major, and by living in both London and New York City before returning to graduate), she is now published within dozens of art/lit journals, in the U.S., England, Northern Ireland, Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, and India, as a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer, essayist, and poet, and as an artist, too. Some of the journals her work is appearing in are The Honest Ulsterman, Die Leere Mitte, The Wisconsin Review, Gris-Gris, Gulf Stream, Folio, Lit, The William and Mary Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Stoneboat, New England Review, Litro UK, LItro US, The Menteur, The Kleksograph, The National Poetry Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Cream City Review, The Penn Review, Blood Orange Review, Hawai’i Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Terrain, Guesthouse, and in an anthology soon to be published in Australia by Grattan Street Press (University of Melbourne). Her paintings and drawings and photographs have appeared on covers of The HitchLit Review, Raven Chronicles Journal, Oxford Magazine, The Rappahannock Review, JuxtaProse, and The Underwater American Songbook. Rebecca also, once, was the runner-up in the United Kingdom’s National Poetry Competition, co-sponsored by The Poetry Society and BBC2, while living and working in London. See rebeccapyleartist.com. Mark von Schlemmer (BA ‘86) went on to complete an MA in Theatre & Media Arts from KU in 1990. After working in cable and Broadcast television for 12 years in the Lawrence and Kansas City area, Schlemmer came back to KU and completed a PhD in Film and Media Studies in 2010. Schlemmer has now worked for 12 years at the University of Cen-
tral Missouri, promoted in 2020 to the rank of Professor of Communication and Film. Throughout his career, the writing skills he honed at KU as an undergraduate have served him good . . . ha! They have served him well, even when they weren’t directly related to the written word. He has had the honor to work closely with Professor Kevin Willmott on many of his films including serving as editor and co-writer on several award-winning documentary films including their current film which explores contemporary LGBTQ issues in Kansas (scheduled for release this fall on regional PBS stations). He is currently working on an experimental graphic novel version of his film dissertation Cinematic Pigness: A Discourse Analysis of Pigs in Film. Jim Jones (MA ‘87) will have two novels published this year. As the River Flows is a YA historical novel set in 1880’s Nebraska and Kansas, highlighting the contributions of African Americans in the region. The second novel, Stupid and Contagious, is a murder mystery set in Seattle’s grunge rock music scene of the late 1980’s. Both books will be published by Cloudy Ghost Press. Andrea Broomfield (BA ‘87, MA ‘89) is the current chair of the English Department at Johnson County Community College. Her most recent book publication is Iconic Restaurants of Kansas City (2022 History Press). She divides her time between research on Kansas City foodways and those of the UK, as well as Transatlantic dining at sea. She will be giving a paper on the topic at this July’s Oxford Food Symposium at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University. She is currently working on a new book that explores the culinary history and traditions of the Atlantic Celtic Nations. Steve Farmer (PhD ‘89) with Professor George Worth as committee chair, is retiring from the English Department at Arizona State University after 30 years of teaching. While at ASU, he taught courses in 19th-century British poetry and fiction, as well as graduate courses in literature pedagogy.
1990s After residing in Saint Augustine, Florida for 27 years, James C. Campbell (PhD ‘90) recently moved to Aiken, a surprisingly exquisite town in South Carolina where he hopes to celebrate my 87th birthday in June. Sterne and Carrlyle have drawn his interest lately, as satire seems appropriate for the aged outlook. His wife of 63 years, Sally Campbell, continues to tolerate his vagaries. Kiersten Gobetz Firquain (BA ‘90) lives in Napa, CA and is the owner of Legit Provisions a farm to table micro Market. Andrew S. Grossman (BA ’93) was recently named as one of the Top 5 Lawyers in the Columbus, Ohio area by Ohio Super Lawyers, for the seventh year in a row. A divorce lawyer in Columbus, Andrew is very excited that his son, Pierce, will be attending KU in the Fall, majoring in Business Administration and Marketing. Tonya A. (Sanchez) Waller (BA ’93) earned a doctor of education degree in higher education administration from the University of Kansas in 2018. She is a GEAR UP Director with the Center for Educational Opportunity Programs through the Achievement
& Assessment Institute at the University of Kansas. Tonya lives in Lawrence, KS with her husband Robert and their three daughters. Adam Wray (BA ‘93) is the founder and CEO of AstrumU, a Seattle-based data services startup that delivers an AI recommendation engine to quantify the value of education for an individual. Prior to founding AstrumU, he held a variety of senior leadership and founding roles at data services, cybersecurity, cloud, AI and edtech focused companies. He was one of the founders and CEO of Tier 3, a cloud services provider that was acquired in 2013 by CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL). As a board director for Observable Networks, he helped lead the cloudbased cybersecurity providers’ Series A investment and exit to Cisco Systems in July 2017. Active in community and civic life, Adam serves as a member of the national board of directors for the University of Kansas’ Alumni Association and the board of College Possible, a national nonprofit that connects high school and college students with near-peer success coaches. He is also a board director for the Washington Policy Center, an independent, non-profit think tank that promotes sound public policy in Washington State that focuses on issues ranging from education, environmental conservation, government accountability, health care, and small
business. Adam is also an advisor to Big Sky Bravery, a civilian-based organization that works to provide active-duty members of U.S. special forces with post-deployment decompression programs, mentorship, and support in the restorative outdoor surroundings of Montana. Gwen (formerly Griffin) Westerman (PhD ‘94) was appointed Poet Laureate of Minnesota in September 2021. Her poem “De Wakpa Tanka Odowan / Song for the Mississippi River” is incorporated into the two-block long artwork by Ann Hamilton (BFA ‘79) “A Song for Water” at the Peace Plaza in Rochester, MN, which was dedicated on May 18, 2022. Her poetry is also part of the new Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories Exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago. Gwen is a Professor in the English Department and Director of the Humanities Program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg’s (MA ‘88, PhD ‘95) latest book -- her seventh collection of poetry -- How Time Moves: New and Selected Poems -was recently published by Meadowlark Press, featuring a whole new collection of poems on how time moves, plus the best of her books Following the Curve, Chasing Weather, Reading the Body, Lot’s Wife, Landed, and Animals in the House. Her recent poems
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have been accepted into publications including Midwest Quartly, Wilderness House Review, Mockingheart Review, Kairos, eMerge, and “Being Made of Weather” was the featured poem in the 2022 Symphony in the Flint Hills field guide. Caryn has retired from Goddard College, where she taught for 23 years, to be a post-institutional woman; she offers writing classes, coaching, talks, and retreats through her website (http:// carynmirriamgoldberg.com). Virginia Brackett’s (PhD ‘98) most recent publication is her family memoir, In the Company of Patriots (Sunbury Press 2019). It showcases her father, Captain Edmund C. Roberts, Jr., and his war experiences, his death fighting in Korea, and the effect on her family of his death. Virginia continues to volunteer as part of the Kansas City Veterans Writing Team, assisting in offering writing workshops for veterans and their family. She wrote and directed a training video, Creating a Veteran Writers Program, that will be offered in a course titled “Moral Injury in the Aftermath of Covid”, part of a certificate program designed by Volunteers of America and offered beginning this fall through the University of Minnesota’s School of Social Work. Clint Crumley (PhD ‘98) steps down this summer after 17 years as English Department Chair at Providence Day School in Charlotte, NC. He’ll continue teaching in the department after his chair duties end. He and his wife, Patricia (KU PhD, ‘96, in Counseling Psychology) have lived in Charlotte since leaving Lawrence in ‘98. Their son, Field, attends Centre College in Kentucky. Elizabeth (Townley) Love (BA ‘98) received a Masters of Library Science from Emporia State University in 2018 and now works for Mid-Continent Public Library in the Kansas City Metro Area as the Technical Services Manager.
After 23 years in public radio, Annie (Newcomer) McMahill (BA ‘98) moved over to the commercial TV side of media in November 2021. She is now Senior Account Executive at FOX4 WDAF-TV in Kansas City.
2000s Mara (Reichman) Lambert (BA ‘02) embarked on an overseas adventure in 2018, after 15 years as an editor for two journals published by the American Academy of Family Physicians in Leawood. She is currently the managing editor of JBI Evidence Synthesis, an international, multidisciplinary health care journal that publishes systematic reviews and scoping reviews. Mara lives in Adelaide, Australia, with her husband, Mark. As a native Kansan, she is dazzled by the beauty of Adelaide beaches, while still holding a special place in her heart for Wescoe Beach. Moira Ozias (MA ‘04) accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on equity in higher education, especially investigating white women’s racism and processes for creating educational spaces that resist white supremacy and antiblackness. She lives in Tucson with her partner Z and their Westie Grrtrude. Mary Ann Porch-Caram (BA ‘04) recently accepted the role of Digital Commerce Director at Bacardí, the largest privately held spirits company in the world Mary Ann lives in Oklahoma City, OK with her husband and son, along with their two dogs. Will McCollum (BA ‘05) recently made a donation to the Moonlight Basin Community Fund in order to reserve naming rights of a new ski lift. Big Sky Ski Area can now boast of the Jayhawk Ski Lift: https://liftblog.com/madison-big-sky-mt/
2010s Jennifer B. Doty (Beck) (BA ‘10) was recently promoted to Associate Design Director at an advertising agency called Madwell in NYC. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, Brian. They are expecting a baby girl in September 2022. Jess Shuler (BA ‘11) is part of the Director’s Guild of America, and is the Key 2nd Assistant Director on The CW Television Series “Dynasty” in Atlanta, GA. Lauren Summers (BA ‘12) accepted position this past August, 2021 with the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office as an Assistant District Attorney. Currently the only hardened criminals she works with, though, are her incorrigible Cocker Spaniel and Schnauzer. Jennifer Colatosti (PhD ‘15) received tenure (2021) and promotion to associate professor (2022) at Georgia State University - Perimeter College. She also accepted an administrative promotion to associate department chair of English, Arts, and Humanities in August 2021. Luke Kahler (BA ‘16) graduated from The University of Kansas School of Medicine with an MD in May 2022. Centennial Clogston (BA ‘17) received her Master’s in Library Science from Emporia State University in 2019. After working at the Lawrence Public Library in Youth Services for five years, she is now delighted to be on staff for the KU English Department. Moriyah Ramberg (BGS ‘18) recently bought a house with her longtime partner and is enjoying life as a homeowner and having more space for her cats to roam. A former KU English staff member, Moriyah started a new position in February 2021 as Publications Manager for the KU Aerospace Short Course Program.
Keep in touch! For more information on alumni opportunities, visit kualumni.org or email us at english@ku.edu.