Maria Szasz's book, Brian Friel and America, being published!

Maria Szasz's book is Brian Friel and America, Dublin, Glasnevin Press. David Jones and Mary Power co-directed the dissertation on which the book is based.

Todd Ruecker to chair Second Language Writing Interest Section

Todd Ruecker has been elected as the future chair of the Second Language Writing Interest Section in the TESOL International Organization. You can read more about the IS here: http://secondlanguagewriting.com/slwis/

Sinclair Lewis Remembered, edited by Scharnhorst & Hofer

Gary Scharnhorst and
Matthew Hofer published the edited volume Sinclair Lewis Remembered (Alabama UP, 2012) this fall.
The multiple and varied perspectives found in Sinclair Lewis Remembered illustrate uncompromised glimpses of a complicated writer who should not be forgotten.
The more than 115 contributions to this volume include reminiscences by Upton Sinclair, Edna Ferber, Alfred Harcourt, Samuel Putnam, H. L. Mencken, John Hersey, Hallie Flanagan, and many others.
http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Sinclair-Lewis-Remembered,5448.aspx

Daniel Worden in The Last Western: Deadwood and the End of American Empire

Daniel Worden's essay "'Securing the Color': The Racial Economy of Deadwood" has just been published in The Last Western: Deadwood and the End of American Empire, edited by Jennifer Greiman and Paul Stasi (Continuum, 2012).

With contributions from scholars in American studies, literature, and film and television studies, The Last Western situates Deadwood in the context of both its nineteenth-century setting and its twenty-first-century audience. Together, these essays argue for the series as a provocative meditation on both the state and historical formation of U.S. empire, examining its treatment of sovereign power and political legitimacy, capital accumulation and dispossession, racial and gender identities, and social and family structures, while attending to the series' peculiar and evocative aesthetic forms. What emerges from this collection is the impressive range of Deadwood's often contradictory engagement with both nineteenth and twenty-first century America.

Jill Jeffery publishes on Education in 2012

Jeffery, J. V., Kieffer, M. J., & Matsuda, P. K. (in press). Toward an Integrated Framework for Research Addressing Multilingual Classrooms: Examining Representations of Writing Competence in TESOL and English Education Journals. Learning and Individual Differences.

Matsuda, P. K., & Jeffery, J. V. (2012). Voice in student essays. In K. Hyland, & C. Sancho-Guinda (Eds.). Voice and Stance in Academic Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jeffery, J. V., & Polleck, J. N. (2012). Practicing teachers’ transformations within a co-instruction model. In. J. Noel (Ed.) Moving teacher education into urban schools and communities: Prioritizing community strengths. New York: Routledge.

Alan Blackstock teaching at Utah State & publishing

Many years ago, I chaired a dissertation by Alan Blackstock on G. K. Chesterton. At the time several folks were puzzled why Alan, a Language/Rhetoric major, was writing on Chesterton. Nonetheless, he did and, shortly thereafter, took a job at a community college in Houston.

Last week I received an email from Alan who is now a professor at Utah State. His Chesterton book has just been published and he's sending me a copy. I could not be more proud of him. He writes that he and a colleague have developed and presented a series of writing workshops for GIS professional in the Forest Service and at BLM. Alan is, for me, a clear example of how language/rhetoric studies and literary studies can merge and be greatly successful.             
                                                         --Lynn Beene

Deborah Weagel publishes “Helen’s Quilt as Autobiographical, Social, and Political Text, in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature

Deborah Weagel, a part-time instructor (PhD UNM 2006), published her article “Helen’s Quilt as Autobiographical, Social, and Political Text in Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water” in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature (June 2012). A version of her essay “Writing, Quiltmaking, and Feminism” was included in the anthology Writers Who Quilt, Quilters Who Write: Stories Stitched with Pens and Needles (2012), edited by Anne K. Kaler.