Michelle Beissel Heath has a chapter that will be published in Oceania and the Victorian Imagination: Where All Things Are Possible (edited by Richard D. Fulton and Peter H. Hoffenberg), which is coming out from Ashgate on March 28. The chapter is titled "Cooks and Queens and Dreams: The South Sea Islands as Fairy Islands of Fancy."
Nine Sigma Tau Delta students have had papers accepted at the annual Sigma Tau Delta Convention: Shaye Champ-Mino, Kaitlyn Darveau, Alex Emery, Celeste Lempke, Lacey McPhillips, David Pearson, Charisa Ramsey, Aaron Rothenberger, and Justin Zyla. The students will be heading to Portland, Oregon, over spring break to present their critical and/or creative pieces. Faculty co-sponsors are Dr. Michelle Beissel Heath and Dr. Megan Hartman.
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield was awarded the Delbert and Edith Wylder Award for Exceptional Service to the Western Literature Association at the annual conference held in Lubbock, Texas, November 7-9, 2012. She also presented a paper, "Never Sell the Land."
Dr. Robert M. Luscher was recognized by the national Phi Eta Sigma organization for his leadership of the UNK chapter of Phi Eta Sigma national honor society at the 41st National Convention in Salt Lake City on Oct. 6, 2012. Luscher has been the faculty sponsor of the UNK chapter since 1998. Under his leadership, the chapter has engaged in a variety of service projects on campus & in the community, as well as held book drives annually for Better World Books. A number of UNK students have been awarded national Phi Eta Sigma scholarships during his time as advisor.
“The Day Carl Sandburg Died” premiered Monday, Sept. 24, at 9 p.m. CT on NET1 and NET-HD and included interviews with Kathryn (Kate) Benzel, Ph.D., Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and Ted Kooser, former two-term U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently an English Professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This year is the 45th anniversary of Sandburg’s death.
NET also aired “Carl Sandburg: Prayers for the People,” on Sunday, Sept. 23, at 10 p.m. CT on NET1 and NET-HD. Taped at the Merryman Performing Arts Center in Kearney, Nebr., this hour-long NET Television production features Chuck Peek, University of Nebraska at Kearney professor emeritus; Ted Kooser, former U.S. poet Laureate; and the musical quartet, Mike Adams & the Sandtones. This NET Television production won an Emmy for best arts and entertainment program at the Heartland Regional Emmy Awards in 2010.
Dr. Michelle Beissel Heath has published "Not 'All Ridges and Furrows' and 'Uncroquetable Lawns': Croquet, Female Citizenship, and 1860s Domestic Chronicles" in Critical Survey (Spring 2012): 43-56.
The English department would like to welcome Lucia Theresa, daughter of Robert and Allison Ficociello and Sonnet Alonza, daughter of Michelle Beissel Heath and W. Scott Heath.
Dr. Robert Ficociello will have a chapter forthcoming titled “The Tomb of Nationalism: The (Im)Possibility of an Other in Danilo Kis’ A Tomb for Boris Davidovich,” co-written with Robert Bell, Loyola University New Orleans, for the Cultural Representation and the International Short Story Sequence. In addition, he has also published several creative and non-fiction pieces: “How We Read” in Future Earth Magazine; “Stolen Green” in Apogee, "Greyhounded" in Short Story. Dr. Ficociello also chaired a panel at the PCA/ACA Conference in Boston and presented "Disaster Pedagogy, Critical Thinking, and Cultural Studies."
Dr. Robert Luscher presented “White Trash Twisted Apples in Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff: Winesburg, Ohio, with Heightened Grotesqueness” at the 12th International Conference on the Short Story in English on June 27030 in North Little Rock, Arkansas. He was also a panel Member in the Plenary Session on "What We Learn when We Teach the Short Story."
Congratulations to Dr. Susan Honeyman for receiving the Faculty Mentor Award for the College of Fine Arts and Humanities.
Dr. Michelle Beissel Heath was awarded a grant from the Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship Lilly Library-Indiana University for "Creating Literary Citizens: Games, Stories, & 19th Century Childhoods."
On June 12-16 in Boston, Dr. Robert Luscher presented "The Sequences/Cycles within John Updike’s Early Stories: Sketching the Domestic Life in America in 'Tarbox Tales'” at the Second Biennial John Updike Society Conference. Conference participants visited Massachusetts sites included in Updike's writings, including Fenway Park; the former Updike houses and other sites in Ipswich, MA; Old Salem; & Harvard University. Members of the Updike family and friends of Updike presented sessions at the conference as well, with son Michael Updike leading the tour of Ipswich.
Dr. Robert Luscher presented a keynote address entitled “Down The Road from Winesburg: The Spatiotemporal Aesthetics of Contemporary American Regional Short Story Cycles” at an international conference in Leuven, Belgium, on Cycles, Recueils, Macrotexts: Theorizing the Short Story Collection, May 22-24, 2012.
Dr. Susanne Bloomfield presented "Elinore Pruitt Stewart, Western
Adventurer" at the Making of the Great Plains Interdisciplinary
Symposium sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies and the
Homestead National Monument of America on March 30, 2012.