Jonathan Davis Secord has received funding for a Manuscripts lab

Professor Jonathan Davis Secord has received a Teaching Allocation Grant, for a “manuscripts lab,” consisting of a high-powered computer workstation, to facilitate undergraduate and graduate education in the Middle Ages.

Manuscripts are one of the best teaching tools available for medievalists, engaging students in unique ways by providing direct access to real historical materials. Guarded by European libraries, manuscripts are difficult to access physically, but many are now available digitally. The manuscripts lab will provide the computing power necessary to utilize the huge digital images these new resources produce. For years to come, the lab will bring the Middle Ages to life before our students’ eyes.

Karen Roybal lecture: Archives of Dispossession: Uncovering Mexicana Memory through Testimonio

Visiting Professor Karen Roybal will be giving a talk,
Archives of Dispossession: Uncovering Mexicana Memory through Testimonio
                       2:00 PM January 25, 2013
                       SUB, 3rd Floor, Fiesta A room

In this talk, Karen Roybal will use Mexicanas’ literal and literary testimonios to challenge nineteenth- and twentieth-century narratives that privilege the male voice and experience in land grant history as it relates to the making of the U.S. Southwest. She argues that these testimonios reveal an alternative archive that challenges traditional historical accounts that elide the importance of gender in this contested history.

Dr. Karen Roybal is a Visiting Research Scholar in The Center for Regional Studies and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English at UNM. Her research interests include Chicana/o, Latina/o Literature, Autobiographical Theory, Chicana/Latina Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Mexican-American History.

Jesse Alemán elected to MLA Delegate Assembly

For the second time, Dr. Jesse Alemán has been elected to the MLA’s Delegate Assembly—this time as a three-year delegate for the Central and Rocky Mountain region. He previously served on the Delegate Assembly as a Special Interest Delegate for Ethnic Studies, and he currently sits on the Advisory Council of the MLA’s American Literature Section.

Also, Dr. Aleman’s article, “Wars of Rebellion,” will appear in the upcoming issue of American Literary History (25.1), which has posted an advanced copy on the journal’s website: http://alh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/recent

Mary Luttrell publishes in Painted Bride Quarterly

Mary Luttrell, an English major pursuing her CW concentration, will publish her poem, "Porous," in Painted Bride Quarterly, Vol. 86.

Some great MFA publishing news to start off 2013

MFA Alumni Jeremy Collins’s essay “Papa Don’t Preach” received the Wabash prize for nonfiction, judged by Mary Karr, and will appear in 2013 in The Sycamore Review.

MFA Alumni Elizabeth Tannen’s essay “Jackie” appeared in The Rumpus in December 2012. You can read her essay here: http://therumpus.net/2012/12/the-sunday-rumpus-essay-jackie/

Current MFA student Nora Hickey’s essay “The World is a Mirror (and Other Tales of Drinking)" was a finalist for Diagram’s nonfiction contest and will appear in the magazine in February 2013. Congrats to Jeremy, Elizabeth and Nora!

Daniel Worden's essay on Ansel Adams and Mary Austin's Taos Pueblo published in Criticism

Daniel Worden's "Landscape Culture: Ansel Adams and Mary Austin's Taos Pueblo" has been published in the Winter 2013 issue of Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts.

The issue is available here: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/criticism/toc/crt.55.1.html

Cheryl Fresch wins Shawcross Prize for her Milton edition

Professor Cheryl Fresch, who retired from our department a few years ago, was awarded the Shawcross Prize by the Milton Society at the MLA meeting in Boston this month.  It was presented for her variorum edition of John Milton's Book IV of Paradise Lost published by Duquesne University Press in 2011.