Stephanie Spong Receives Bilinski Fellowship

Stephanie Spong was recently awarded the prestigious Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowship. The Bilinski Educational Foundation recognizes excellent doctoral students in the humanities at UNM. Eight doctoral students have already completed their dissertations and degrees supported by Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Fellowships. The 2015 finalists for the Bilinski Fellowship stand out for their potential impact on both scholarship and community. Stephanie Spong (English) is reexamining Modernist poetry to reveal how poets from Gertrude Stein to Langston Hughes created new and influential ideas of love and eros. Read more here

Dr. Helen Damico inducted as a Fellow to the Medieval Academy of America

Medieval Academy  of America

19 January 2015 To the Members of the Medieval Academy: I am very pleased to introduce the 2015 Class of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America: FELLOWS: Helen Damico (Univ. of New Mexico) Sharon Farmer (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) Margot Fassler (Univ. of Notre Dame) Robin Fleming (Boston College) Richard Kaeuper (Univ. of Rochester) Maureen Miller (Univ. of California, Berkeley) David Nirenberg (Univ. of Chicago) Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe (Univ. of California, Berkeley) Anders Winroth (Yale Univ.) CORRESPONDING FELLOWS: Paul Brand (Univ. of Oxford) Constant Mews (Monash Univ.) Felicity Riddy (Univ. of York) I hope you will join me in honoring these accomplished scholars during the Fellows' Plenary Session of the upcoming Annual Meeting.   Lisa Fagin Davis Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America Secretary to the Fellows

AISB Outstanding Student Award in English

New UNM student Bobbie Thomas (Navajo) was honored with the Outstanding Student Award in English for the 2014 American Indian Summer Bridge (AISB) Program. Through the intensive summer program sponsored by American Indian Student Services, recent high school graduates earn credit in Native American Studies, math, and English courses and prepare for college success. The writing workshop course this summer was taught by Dr. Kathleen Washburn and Ph.D. student Julie Williams.

Alumnus Diane Schmidt Wins Writing Award

Diane Schmidt got her MA in Creative Writing from UNM, in Spring 2002. Her MA Thesis was The Collected Works of Earnestine Thebad.

Attached is an article from the Gallup Independent, June 24, 2014.

"Freelance writer wins national award for enterprise reporting"
By Kyle Chancellor, News intern

GALLUP - An Independent columnist exposed a con man working in New Mexico and won a top award from The National Federation of Press Women.

Diane Schmidt won the first place award for enterprise reporting from The National Federation of Press Women for her articles "Who you gonna call, Ghostbusters?" and "Con man who posed as Native fooled merchants, media" which both ran in the Independent.

The first of the two stories appeared in the Independent on April 20, 2013, as the spiritual perspectives column after Schmidt received an irate call from a Native community member. The individual stated that David Rendon, at the time known as David RedFeather, who had recently been featured in the Navajo Times as a Native American healer, promoter, and savior for the merchants of the Old Town business district and who had recently been elected president of the Old Town Merchants Association, was in fact not who he was claiming to be.

The individual claimed that RedFeather was not a Lakola healer as he was claiming and also had an extensive criminal record including a civil complaint in Ramah from 1998 where Rendon was accused of failure to pay rent. The first story didn't name Rendon explicitly because Schmidt could not get absolute confirmation to match the man to the police records.

Through further investigation, Schmidt uncovered an extensive criminal past for Rendon in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico and finally confirmed that it was indeed the same David Rendon. Schmidt reported that the man had conned around $50,000 from people that believed he was a successful businessman, healer, roadman and mystic. What he really was, was a crook, who would prey upon peoples vulnerabilities, taking their hard earned money and bouncing out of town before the boys in blue could catch up to him. The second of the two stories ran on the front page of the Independent on Aug. 21, 2013.

Schmidt submitted the stories to the New Mexico Press Women, where they won first place in enterprise reporting and advanced to the National Federation of Press Women where it also won first place for the same category. The judges commented on the story by saying the stories were a "Great example of enterprise reporting with impact for the community."

Diane says, "The story was a lot of work and cost ten times more time and money than I would ever get paid, as this sort of work always does, so this was sort of my 'reward.'

"The real payback was a call I got some months later from a gal who was helping Rendon where he had resurfaced in the Carolinas, and saw my stories online about him and I was able to advise her to contact the police there instead of her trying to 'save' him."

Matt Hofer named Honors College Visiting Distinguished Professor

For Fall 2014, Matthew Hofer has been named one of two Honors College Visiting Distinguished professors, a fellowship program established by the newly organized UNM Honors College with the support of the Office of the Provost. The program is designed to bring select senior faculty to teach and mentor undergraduates in the Honors College, engage with Honors College faculty and undergraduates in a number of informal and formal settings, and present one or more public lectures. Many congratulations to Dr. Hofer, on this accomplishment!

Nicholas Schwartz receives Bilinski Dissertation Fellowship

Five talented doctoral students in the humanities at UNM will receive 2014 Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Dissertation Fellowships thanks to a generous gift from the Bilinski Educational Foundation, including Nicholas Schwarz (English), for his work on history in the 11th-century writings of the Archbishop Wulfstan of York.

Alternate Stephanie Spong (English) is also to be commended for her outstanding dissertation project.

2014 Bilinski Fellows:
http://artsci.unm.edu/news/2014-bilinski-fellows-announced.html

http://artsci.unm.edu/for-students/fellowships/recipients/2014.html

Writer's Almanac Chooses UNM MFA Alumni Richard Vargas' Poem to Share

Richard Vargas is one of our MFA alumni, and we are very proud of his work.

As of right now, Writer's Almanac is kicking off National Poetry Month with a poem from my new book, Guernica, revisited. Scheduled for Tues., April 1.

In Albuquerque, the show airs on KANW, 89.1, usually around 8:15 am. This will be the third time Garrison Keillor has read my work on the air, an honor. Hope you give it a listen, and enjoy.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Richard Vargas
Poet/Editor/Publisher
http://www.richardvargaspoet.com/
https://www.facebook.com/#!/rvargas54
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Mas-Tequila-Review/112489092101207

why i feed the birds

by Richard Vargas

once
i saw my grandmother hold out
her hand cupping a small offering
of seed to one of the wild sparrows
that frequented the bird bath she
filled with fresh water every day

she stood still
maybe stopped breathing
while the sparrow looked
at her, then the seed
then back as if he was
judging her character

he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled

a woman holding
a small god

"why i feed the birds" by Richard Vargas from Guernica, revisited. © Press 53, 2014. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) 

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2014/04/01

The book launch for Richard's new book will be April 26 at the Peace and Justice Center.

Natasha Jones honored by Conference on College Composition and Communication

Dr. Natasha Jones won two awards from the Conference on College Composition and Communication! Her dissertation won the 2014 CCCC Outstanding Dissertation in Technical Communication. In addition, her article won the 2014 CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Award in the category of Best Article Reporting Qualitative or Quantitative Research in Technical or Scientific Communication (as lead author). 

 

Congratulations, Natasha!

Rivera Garners UNM-Mellon Fellowship

ALS PhD candidate in English, Díana Noreen Rivera, has been awarded a UNM-Mellon Doctoral Defense Preparation Fellowship to facilitate the completion of her dissertation, “Remapping the U.S. Southwest: Early Mexican American Literature and the Production of Transnational Counterspaces (1874-1958).” Her study argues that early Mexican American writers offer an alternative paradigm of transnationalism for understanding the literature, culture, and geography of the U.S. Southwest as it has been imagined in Anglo American cultural production about the region. Dr. Jesse Alemán, ALS coordinator, directs the dissertation.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the highly competitive UNM-Mellon awards dissertation fellowships in the humanistic social sciences across ten UNM departments to senior doctoral students working on studies relevant to Latino/a or Native American communities. This is the first year that the English Department’s ALS program has been included in the qualified field of humanistic social sciences at UNM designated by the Mellon Foundation. The six-month award is meant to assist in the completion of the dissertation by providing a $12,500.00 stipend; tuition remission and health care coverage; and a $500.00 professional development or research support fund.

Rivera was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and received her BA and MA at the University of Texas-Pan American. She credits her passion for Mexican American literary study to her parents and grandmothers, who shared family stories of life in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands and beyond. Her publications include “Third Space Resistance in Américo Paredes’s With His Pistol in His Hand: A Defense of Nuevo Santander” (forthcoming) in Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Volume IX; “Reconsidering Jovita González’s Life, Letters and Pre-1935 Folkloric Production: A Proto-Chicana’s Conscious Revolt Against Anglo Academic Patriarchy” (2011) in Chicana/Latina Studies Journal; and “Dime con quién andas”: Toward the Construction of a Dicho Paradigm and Its Significance in Chicano/a Literature” (2008) in the Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas. She’s the recipient of the American Association of University Women Santa Fe scholarship, the Office of Graduate Studies Earickson Trust award, the New Mexico Folklore Scholarship, and she was the English Department’s inaugural Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres fellow.

Lindsey Ives Selected for A&S Teaching Excellence Award

Our own Lindsey Ives is the well-deserved recipient of this year’s College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Excellence Award. I was particularly happy to see the Dean and Associate Deans recognized the amazing work she has done for the new Stretch 101 initiative and for Core Writing generally as  “a great role model for other TA’s and an asset administering” the program.

 

Congratulations, Lindsey! On behalf of all us in English, thank you for your dedication to our students and for contributing so positively to the English Department’s teaching mission and reputation.

~CPaine

UNM Alumni Assn. awards 2014 Faculty Teaching Award to Feroza Jussawalla

Join us in congratulating Professor Jussawalla!

Professor Feroza Jussawalla’s specialty of postcolonial literature in the UNM English department lends itself to teaching at a minority-majority university. Jussawalla earned her BA at a women’s college in India before furthering her studies at the University of Utah. She taught at UTEP for 21 years before coming to UNM in 2001. In her classes, Jussawalla relates the experiences of international writers who lived under colonial rule to the experiences of the myriad cultures in the Southwest. She embraces the importance of teaching and research, and works to see her students succeed at both.

Jesse Alemán delivers the Hutchins Lecture at UNC-Chapel Hill

On November 17, Dr. Jesse Alemán delivered the Hutchins Lecture at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center for the Study of the American South. Named after James A. Hutchins, a UNC alumnus, and generously funded by the Hutchins Family Foundation, the Hutchins lecture series invites researchers to UNC to present their scholarship to mixed public and academic audiences as a way of fostering communication between faculty, students, and community members. Dr. Alemán was invited to present “Loreta Janeta Velazquez’s Civil Wars as a Cuban and a Confederate” after his research was featured in the PBS film, Rebel, and his edition of The Woman in Battle was required reading for an English doctoral seminar on the global south. Dr. Alemán’s lecture focused on how the Civil War serves as a backdrop for the “internal civil wars” between gender, sexual, linguistic, religious, and national identities that forge Velazquez’s emergence as a nineteenth-century US Latina.

http://south.unc.edu/category/hutchins-lectures/

Murrah-Mandril Named the 2013-2014 CRS Hector Torres Fellow

Erin Murrah-Mandril, a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department, with a concentration in American Literary Studies, has been awarded the Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship.

Murrah-Mandril took her BA in History and her MA in English at the University of New Mexico, and now, she is on the verge of completing her PhD in English. Her work focuses on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Mexican American literary production, and she has published articles in Western American Literature, Arizona Quarterly, and the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage series.

As a CRS Hector Torres Fellow, Murrah-Mandril will complete research and writing for her dissertation, “Time Out of Joint: Learning to Live with Specters through Mexican American Historical Narrative.” The project argues that Mexican American authors trouble modernist conceptions of empty, homogenous, linear and progressive time in order to survive and contest US colonization.  Her dissertation contextualizes the temporality of Mexican American literature within both the time of production and the time of literary recovery and maintains that early Mexican American writers, such as Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Miguel Otero, Adina de Zavala, and Jovita Gonzalez, challenge notions of progressive time to reveal temporality itself as a colonial instrument.  The material for her dissertation is located in archives throughout New Mexico and South Texas.

The Hector Torres Fellowship, a $10,000-$15,000 stipend, was inaugurated in 2010 by the University of New Mexico’s Center for Regional Studies in memory of the English Department’s slain colleague, Dr. Hector Torres.

The Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship supports graduate research and scholarship in the English Department directly related to the late Dr. Hector Torres’ fields, as well as the mission of the Center for Regional Studies. Areas include Chicano/a literary and cultural studies; theory (i.e. Marxism; post-structuralism; deconstruction; psychoanalysis; and globalization); film studies; and scholarship related to the mission of the CRS, including history; archival research; literature; and other interdisciplinary fields related to New Mexico, the US-Mexico borderlands, and the greater southwest.

Murrah-Mandril is particularly grateful to be a CRS Hector Torres Fellow as the late Dr. Torres was one of her mentors, and his commitment to intellectual work strongly influences her theoretical approach.  Her dissertation would not be possible without the guidance he provided.

2013 Bilinski Foundation Fellowship Recipients

Three PhD students in the English department have received Bilinski Fellowships.

Dan Cryer

Dan Cryer is a PhD student in Rhetoric and Writing in the Department of English. His dissertation follows the social activism of the early twentieth century conservationist Aldo Leopold, arguing that Leopold attempted to extend the rights of citizenship to the natural world and to act as its voice in the Democratic process. Dan served for two years as Assistant Director of UNM’s Core Writing program, was the grad student administrator for the College of Arts & Sciences’ Writing Intensive Learning Communities pilot project, and has worked extensively with UNM’s Writing Across Communities initiative. He was an online course designer at the office of New Media and Extended Learning, and has taught courses in composition and technical and professional writing.

Colleen Dunn

Colleen Dunn is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of New Mexico. Her dissertation, which focuses on the lives of saints produced in Anglo-Saxon England, is driven by a central concern: the choice made by Old English hagiographers writing about female virgin martyrs to forgo (and thereby silence) native Anglo-Saxon women martyred during the Viking attacks, in favor of foreign subjects. Focusing particularly on the adapted lives of St. Juliana of Nicomedia and St. Margaret of Antioch, her research will explore what these cultural productions reveal about early medieval understandings of female sanctity, and further, the far-reaching implications these understandings had for an Anglo-Saxon audience.

Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen

Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen is a PhD candidate in the University of New Mexico Department of English Language and Literature, with a focus on Medieval Studies. His dissertation focuses on the concept of authority in the Old English Genesis poem(s), particularly Genesis A, an Anglo-Saxon poem based on the biblical book of Genesis. The dissertation examines both the poet's use of language and connections to Anglo-Saxon culture. Doug's other scholarly interests include Old English Language and Old Norse Language and Literature. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Doug enjoys spending time with his ten year old son, Mauricio.

Please see the below page for details:
http://www.unm.edu/~artsci/for-students/fellowships/recipients/2013.html

Rudy Anaya honored for his new children's book, How Hollyhocks Came to New Mexico

Once again emeritus Professor Rudy Anaya is being showered with awards for his new children's book, HOW HOLLYHOCKS CAME TO NEW MEXICO.

Winner, Children's Fiction, National Federation of Press Women, 2013

First Place, Children's Fiction, New Mexico Press Women, 2013

Pablita Velarde Award For Outstanding Children's Book, Historical Society of New Mexico, 2013

Silver Finalist, Cover Design, Children's/Young Adult, Ben Franklin Book Awards, 2013

Finalist, Children's Picture Book, Hardcover Fiction, 2013 International Book Awards

Finalist, Best Interior Design, International Book Awards, 2013

Silver Medal Children's Illustrated Book (Grades 3-6), Nautilus Book Awards, 2013

Finalist, Best Latino Focused Children’s Picture Book, International Latino Book Awards, 2013

Runner Up Children's Picture Book, Great Southwest Book Festival, 2013

Honorable Mention Children's Picture Book, Los Angeles Book Festival, 2013

Honorable Mention Children's Picture Book, New England Book Festival, 2013

Honorable Mention Children's Picture Book, Paris Book Festival, 2013

Honorable Mention Children's Picture Book, San Francisco Book Festival, 2013

Keleher and Wertheim Awards for 2013: Greg Martin & Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán

Please congratulate the winners of the Departmental Keleher and Wertheim Awards for 2013:

 

*The Keleher Award is given to “An Assistant Professor who demonstrates a strong commitment to teaching done primarily at the undergraduate level.” This year the Keleher Award goes to Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán.

*The Wertheim Award is for "tenured faculty who have made outstanding contributions to the profession." This year the Wertheim Award goes to Greg Martin.

Many congratulations to Melina and Greg!

Greg Martin's Stories for Boys was chosen for SEATTLE READS

Greg Martin's latest book, Stories for Boys (Hawthorne Books, 2012) was chosen for SEATTLE READS and he's going to be busy in Seattle that whole time, May 1-5.  http://www.spl.org/audiences/adults/seattle-reads. Stories for Boys is The Seattle Public Library's Washington Center for the Book's 2013 featured work.

Stories for Boys was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Greg Martin's first book Mountain City won the 2001 Washington State Book Award. He lived in Seattle and taught at Seattle University and North Seattle Community College. He currently teaches creative writing at UNM.

Also, please see: Seattle Times — a feature and interview about Stories for Boys and Seattle Reads:
http://seattletimes.com/html/books/2020882341_litlife29xml.html?prmid=4939

Dan Cryer wins Susan Deese-Roberts TA of the year award

It's no surprise that university awards for teaching always go to TAs in the English Department. We simply have the brightest, most experienced, committed, pedagogically sophisticated TAs on campus. Many congratulations to Dan Cryer for winning the OSET TA award this year. Congratulations to all the TAs who were nominated: we know how excellent you are. gail

Kubasek Named the 2012-2013 CRS Hector Torres Fellow

Natalie Kubasek, a PhD candidate in English, with a concentration in American Literary Studies, has received the Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship.

Ms. Kubasek joined the English doctoral program in Fall 2010 after earning her MA in English from Simmons College, in Boston, MA, and her BA in English from Whittier College, in her hometown of Whittier, CA. In 2011-2012, she garnered a Latino/a Graduate and Professional Student Fellowship sponsored by UNM’s El Centro de la Raza and the Title V Resource Center.

Her research focuses on Chicano/a literature, and as a CRS Hector Torres fellow, she plans to conduct research for her dissertation on Chicana feminism and cultural production, with an emphasis on theater and performance art. The study of Chicana theater and performance art, Kubasek maintains, is a rich yet untapped area of Chicana cultural production, and the fellowship will help her locate and access primary documents and resources housed in archives across the southwest; she also plans to locate and interview authors, performers, and playwrights significant to the development of Chicana theater.

The Hector Torres Fellowship, a $10,000-$15,000 stipend, was inaugurated by the University of New Mexico’s Center for Regional Studies in memory of the English Department’s slain colleague, Dr. Hector Torres.

The Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship supports graduate research and scholarship in the English Department directly related to Dr. Hector Torres’ fields, as well as the mission of the Center for Regional Studies. Areas include Chicano/a literary and cultural studies; theory (i.e. Marxism, post-structuralism; deconstruction, psychoanalysis; and globalization); film studies; and scholarship related to the mission of the CRS, including history, archival research, literature and other interdisciplinary fields related to New Mexico, the US-Mexico borderlands, and the greater Southwest.

Hector Torres papers available in Center for Southwest Research

The final stage of the Hector Torres Papers is completed. The collection is housed in the Center for Southwest Research, and it's now listed on the Rocky Mountain Online Archive. You can find the index here:
http://rmoa.unm.edu/docviewer.php?docId=nmumss891bc.xml