JCCC Department of English Blog

Gulley’s Talk at the Kansas Author’s Club

Posted on 04/21/2020 by jmcward

Beth Gulley, professor of English, was scheduled to give a presentation at the Kansas Author’s Club in March, but the event was cancelled because of Covid-19. However, in place of her in-person presentation, she was invited to record a video, which you can view here: https://youtu.be/32-Mi1YI-nw. Gulley’s talk, titled “Poetry Meditations: A Mindful Response to Negative Headlines,” focuses upon the value of poetry in her life and includes readings from her recent collection, $!*# Hole Countries: A Find and Replace Meditation.

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Bell Publishes Essay in The Sun Magazine

Posted on 04/21/2020 by jmcward

The cover for the April edition of The Sun.

Sam Bell, associate professor of English, recently published an essay titled “The Empty Set” in the April 2020 issue of The Sun Magazine. For more than forty years The Sun has published “some of the most radically intimate and socially conscious writing.” The Sun is funded by subscription rather than advertising, but while everyone is isolated because of the coronavirus, they have removed their paywall, so feel free to check out Bell’s essay other provocative pieces at https://thesunmagazine.org/.

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Reynolds and Werkmeister Win JCCC Publication Award

Posted on 04/17/2020 by jmcward

English Professors Tom Reynolds and Steve Werkmeister were each awarded the JCCC Publication Award this year. Reynolds won the award for his recent book of poems titled Home Field, a full-length poetry collection published by Woodley Memorial Press that is focused on sports and sporting events in small-town Kansas settings. Werkmeister received the award for his blog, Stevesofgrass, which focuses mainly on literature, particularly Shakespeare. It garnered 5,700 clicks in 2019 and more than 1,000 clicks in January 2020 alone. Both publications have been featured on the English blog in the past. More information on Reynolds’ book and Werkmeister’s blog can be found here and here.

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Hogan Wins Assessment Award

Posted on 04/17/2020 by jmcward

For her work on managing department assessment for composition and literature courses, Monica Hogan, Professor of English, was recently awarded the Excellence in Outcomes Assessment Award from the Office of Assessment, Evaluation, and Institutional Outcomes. In commenting upon the award, the reviewer noted “the great strides that the English department has made in gathering useful data and generating discussions on how data could be used to inform curriculum.”

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Cantwell’s Recent New Yorker Essay

Posted on 03/09/2020 by jmcward

David Cantwell, adjunct professor of English, recently published a piece on country singer Brandy Clark for The New Yorker online.

By Lisa Gansky from New York, NY, USA – IMG_8312, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

Cantwell’s essay, published on March 6, 2020, reviews several of singer Brandy Clark’s songs. Cantwell hopes that Clark’s most recent album, Your Life is a Record, will bring her the kind of popularity that she deserves. Cantwell states, “For nearly a decade now, women have been practically excluded from mainstream-county-radio playlists, even as the lion’s share of the best country music is increasingly written and performed by women. And no one illustrates that better than Clark,, who writes songs as well as anyone.” Cantwell’s profile/review, titled “No One is Writing Better Country Songs Than Brandy Clark Is,” can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/no-one-is-writing-better-country-songs-than-brandy-clark-is.