News

The Center for Film Studies is pleased to announce the launch of its new movie blog and Twitter account. Both of these spaces are now open for discussion of all things movie, TV, gaming, or e-media related.

Professor Mike Sell of IUP’s English Department delivered the keynote, “Ethics and Artifacts: The Poetic Encounter and #Black Lives Matter” at Florida Atlantic University's annual Comparative Studies Student Association conference.

When advising undergraduate students into Liberal Studies English (LSE) courses, please be aware of the following information.

Professor Tim Hibsman of the English Department presented “Mini-Game Madness: What's Hip, Fun, & Educational” at the 2016 CUE Conference (Computer Using Educators Conference) on March 17 in Los Angeles.

Professor Dana Driscoll of the English Department gave a webinar for the writing center community and published an article in the latest Writing Center Journal.

A double book launch and conversation with the authors event will be held at 5:00 p.m. on March 28, 2016 at the IUP University Museum to celebrate the works of three IUP faculty members. Drs. Christian Vaccaro and Melissa Swauger, two faculty members in the department of sociology, have authored “Unleashing Manhood in the Cage: Masculinity and Mixed Martial Arts.” Dr. Aimee Wilson, a faculty member in the Department of English, is the author of “Conceived in Modernism: The Aesthetics and Politics of Birth Control.”

Gloria Park, English, and Shannon Tanghe published a co-authored piece,“‘Build[ing] something which alone we could not have done’: International collaborative teaching and learning in language teacher education,” in volume 57 of the System.

Quanisha Charles was selected as one of 10 recipients of the 2016 Scholars for the Dream Travel Awards to attend the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

An essay by Helen Sitler (English Department), “Data of the Heart,” will appear in the March 17, 2016, issue of the Writing Campus, a peer-reviewed, online scholarly blog.

Conceived in Modernism: The Aesthetics and Politics of Birth Control, by Aimee Wilson (English Department), examines the roots of birth control politics in literature from the early 20th century.

Aimee Wilson (English Department) presented a paper titled “No Gates, No Locks, No Bolts: Feminist Politics and Information Access in the Digital Realm” on November 19, 2015, at the Modernist Studies Association conference in Boston.

Emily Wender (English) presented her work on teaching young adult literature through a disability lens at the National Conference of Teachers of English in Minneapolis, Minn., on November 21, 2015. Her talk was titled “Marcelo in the Real World: Social Justice and a Disability Lens.”

John Branscum′s memoir Things in the Shape of Trailers has been nominated from more than 300 creative nonfiction pieces published in the last year in Hippocampus Magazine for a Pushcart Prize.

While we’re thrilled to move into our shiny new building, many of us are feeling some nostalgia for our longtime home in Jane Leonard Hall—so everyone is invited to a goodbye party on Friday, December 11.

There will be a meeting on Tuesday, December 1, from 4:30–5:30 p.m. in Room 105 Leonard Hall for all students interested in the IUP Oxford Summer Study Abroad program from July 15–August 6, 2016.

At noon on Saturday, November 21, Associate Professor of English Todd Thompson will participate in a virtual book signing at the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago.

Curt Porter (English Department) presented a paper called "Working/Playing Across the Political Spectrum of World English Studies" on November 6, 2015, at the Curriculum and Pedagogy national conference in Cleveland.

Join us on Wednesday, November 18, to welcome National Book Award nominee Laurie Cannady for a discussion of her new book, “Crave: Sojourn of a Hungry Soul,” a coming-of-age memoir chronicles a young girl's journey through abuse and impoverishment.

For the fifth consecutive year, Lilia Savova from the English Department has been invited to review the 2016 Fulbright applications for English Language Teaching Research/Assistant grants in Europe.

Michael T. Williamson was nominated and elected to serve as editor of Pennsylvania English, a peer-reviewed, highly selective journal of creative writing, literary critical writing, and literary historical writing.

Michael T. Williamson (English Department) presented a paper, “Landscapes of Freedom: Nineteenth Century British Women Writers and the Polities of Intervention in the Balkans and the USA,” at the Pennsylvania College English Association on Oct. 2, 2015.

Michael T. Williamson (English Department) presented “‘Treason, Stiff with Doom:’ Aesthetic Inheritance, Cultural Betrayal, and the Right to Self Determination in Felicia Hemans’s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s War Poetry” at the 23rd North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference on Romanticism and Rights.

Quanisha Charles, an English instructor and PhD candidate in the Composition and TESOL program, presented her preliminary research study, titled “Lived Experiences of Black Teachers of English Working in South Korea,” at the 15th annual Diversity Challenge: Race, Culture, and Social Justice, hosted by Boston College, in Boston, Mass.

Brian Carpenter, assistant professor in English and English education, will present at WSRL about research on how an explicit focus on Linguistic Socialization affects students in a freshman composition course.

Bryna Siegel Finer, English Department assistant professor and director of Writing Across the Curriculum, presented on the BRCA gene as a representative of the organization FORCE (Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered) to employees of the City of Pittsburgh as part of the Department of Innovation and Performances’ monthly speaker series.

Join us to celebrate the publication of "The Comics Studies Multiverse: Graphic Transformations in Education and Culture," Vol. 32 of Works & Days. A special journal launch party will be held Thursday, October 22.

Jesse Cole was selected as the 2015 English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities’ Outstanding English Major for Indiana University of Pennsylvania, on the basis of her GPA, many service activities, and the originality and merit of her work—as reflected through numerous honors and awards.

Dana Driscoll and Roger Powell (English Department) published their article, “Conducting and Composing RAD Research in the Writing Center: A Guide for New Authors” in the Peer Review.

Gloria Park and Jocelyn Amevuvor’s invited co-authored piece, “‘If you learn about these issues, you′re going to learn...more about yourself and things that you come in contact with every day’: Engaging undergraduate students in meaningful literacy in a research writing course” was published in the July 2015 Journal of Pedagogic Development.

Gloria Park, English Department, and MA TESOL student Kristiane Moe’s invited co-authored piece, “Gender and NNESTs,” will be published in Wiley′s upcoming TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching.

Tim Hibsman (English Department) presented the paper “Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration on Gaming Proposals” at the 2015 English Association of the Pennsylvania State Universities on Oct. 10 at the Slippery Rock University.

Tim Hibsman (English Department) presented a sports film and literature lecture titled “Secrets of the Frozen Lake” at the 2015 Pennsylvania College English Association in Scranton, Pa. on October 3.

Gloria Park, associate professor of English and director of the TESOL Graduate Certificate of Recognition program, has been appointed for a fourth year to serve on the Fulbright National Screening Committee to screen applications for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants.

Professor Gloria Park's co-authored piece, "Exploring the Forms of Cultural Capital, Habitus, and Field in the Life Histories of Two West African Teacher Candidates," will be published in an upcoming issue of Teacher Development.

Professor Gloria Park's article, "Raising Awareness of Diversity and Social (In)justice Issues in Undergraduate Research Writing: Understanding Students and their Lives via Connecting Teaching and Research" is published in volume 5, issue 1 of the Journal of Pedagogic Development in March 2015.

The Department of English will briefly introduce and then screen the film “The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz," on Tuesday, September 29, at 5:00 p.m. in Stabley Library, room 101. A discussion with the audience will follow.

Laurel Black and Judith Villa of the English Department spoke in May 2015 at Georgetown University at “Fighting Inequality: Class, Race, and Power: Joint Conference of the Labor and Working Class History Association and the Working Class Studies Association.”

Dan Weinstein, English, facilitated a workshop, “Draw Your Inner World,” at the 2015 Conference of the NCTE Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning held in summer 2015 in Estes Park, Colorado.

John Branscum′s stories “Disposa Pet,” “Mattress Tag Addendum,” and “Picker” will appear in the October print and online issues of Carbon Culture Review.

Assistant Professor of English John Branscum was one of the winners of the 2015 Appalachia/Affrilachia Poetry Contest hosted by Argus House Press. As a result, his collection, Skinwalkers, will be published in October 2015.

The short story “Hope Walks,” by 2014 English Writing Track graduate Lindsey Quakenbush, won eight place in the 2015 NYC Midnight short fiction contest.

Dan Weinstein, English, presented a paper titled “Freestyle Digitality: An Approach to Reading and Writing Through Text Transformation and Improvisation” at the 2015 Computers and Writing conference held at the University of Wisconsin–Stout.

Chauna Craig, English, has been selected as a writer-in-residence for the Fort Lyon Supportive Residential Community in Las Almas, Colorado, during 2016.

Todd Thompson, associate professor of English, recently published a monograph, The National Joker: Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Satire, which traces the relationship between the popular presss satires on Lincoln and Lincoln’s own satiric self-presentation.

Chauna Craig, English, was one of twelve artists selected for an Artsmith arts residency.

Peter Faziani, a student in the IUP Graduate Program in Literature and Theory, presented “Domestic Homes, Modernity, and Forbidden Nostalgia in George Orwells Coming Up for Air and Robert Musils The Man Without Qualities” at the Conference of the Space Between Society on June 21, 2015.

Michael T. Williamson, Department of English, presented “‘It Survives / In the Valley of Its Saying’: W. H. Auden, Jacob Glatstein, and the Place of 1930s Poetry in Holocaust Studies,” at the 17th annual Conference of the Space Between Society at the University of Notre Dame on June 20, 2015.

Lilia Savova, English Department, conducted an invited workshop on “Variation in the Classroom: Designing Authentic Materials and Activities” at the BETA (Bulgarian English Teachers Association) International Conference on June 6–7, 2015, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Lilia Savova, English Department, delivered a plenary lecture on “Variation in Educational Design: Using Universal Principles of Design” at the Bulgarian English Teachers Association annual conference held in Sofia, Bulgaria, on June 6–7, 2015.

Todd Thompson, associate professor of English and coordinator of the MA in English: Literature and MA in English: Composition and Literature programs, delivered an invited keynote lecture at Kalamazoo College’s 2015 Hilberry Symposium.

English Composition and TESOL student Janelle Newman presented “Representations of Families of Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Parent Involvement Educational E-Discourse” at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2015 conference in Toronto.

Lingyan Yang, associate professor in the English Department and director of Women’s Studies, and Kaitlin Tonti and Meghan Hurley, doctoral students in the graduate English program in Literature and Criticism, presented scholarship on American multiethnic women’s literature in the national MELUS conference (Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.) in Athens, Ga. on April 9–12, 2015.

Composition and TESOL student Ahmed Alnasser’s poster on “EFL Saudi Students’ Preferences for Different Writing Styles” won the Graduate Student Assembly Peers Choice Award at the 2015 IUP Graduate Scholars Forum.

Graduate students and faculty members presented a World Englishes and Translingual Practices panel at the 2015 American Educational Research Associate conference in Chicago on April 19.

Professor of English Lynn Shelly and graduate assistant Kathleen Hynes spoke about their research on writer-tutor interactions in the writing center at the Punxsutawney campus, focusing on the variable of the length of relationship between the writer and the tutor at the 2015 Mid-Atlantic Writing Center Association conference.

IUP doctoral student Meg Oldman will host and lead a discussion of episodes of the sitcom “Trailer Park Boys” on Tuesday, April 21, at 7:00 p.m. in Room 101 of the library. The series is about life between prison terms.

The Indiana Masters Swim Team, including Gian Pagnucci, chair of IUP English, and Richard Norris, IUP grounds crew, finished in second place at the 2015 Allegheny Mountain YMCA/YWCA Masters Swimming Association Championship.

Nick Katsiadas’s article, "Mytho-Auto-Bio: Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, the Romantics, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest," was accepted for publication by Studies in Comics (SiC) for their upcoming issue.

Melanie Holm presented at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth Century Studies on the mentorship and scholarship of Professor Michael McKeon, who is Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University.

The English Department congratulates Kittiphong Praphan, a recent graduate of the Graduate Studies in Literature and Criticism program, on winning a 2015 Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award for his dissertation, titled “Rice Culture, Buddhism, Wars, and Diaspora: Mutual Legacies in Heterogeneity in Southeast Asian American and Diasporic Literature.”

Gloria Park’s article appears in Journal of Pedagogic Development’s March 2015 issue. 

“Donnie Darko” will be the next film screened by the English Dept. Student Film Series. The showing will be in room 101 of the Library at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 8.

Lilia Savova’s presentation at the 2015 convention reflects her research on the linguistic analysis of texts, both original and plagiarized, and showcases the pedagogical approach she developed and applied in her teaching.

Todd Thompson (associate professor of English, MA coordinator) and Jessica Showalter (recent graduate of the PhD in the Literature and Criticism program) published an edited, online edition of “Satire in Circulation: James Russell Lowell’s ‘Letter from a Volunteer in Saltillo’” in the journal Scholarly Editing.

In a continuation of the IUP English Department’s Colloquium Series on video games as literature, Josh Begley held a discussion about “Batman: Arkham City” on March 18, 2015.

Usree Bhattacharya, Department of English, presented on a panel at AAAL) 2015 which theorized citizenship as a process of inclusion and exclusion leading to the creation of illegitimate hierarchies.

Veronica Watson’s co-edited collection, Unveiling Whiteness in the 21st Century: Global Manifestations, Transdisciplinary Interventions, brings together seasoned and emerging scholars from seven countries and 10 disciplinary areas to intervene in the ideologies of whiteness in our contemporary moment.

This Saturday, March 28, starting at 8:00am in the Kovalchick Conference and Athletic Complex, the English Graduate Organization (EGO) will host its annual interdisciplinary conference.

From 6:30 - 7:30pm, March 25 in the Leonard Lounge (room 113) Sigma Tau Delta Writing Workshop Series will hold its first of four writing workshop planned for Spring, 2015: Flash Memoir, facilitated by Assistant Professor of English, Daniel J. Weinstein.

Bryna Siegel Finer, Department of English, presented as part of a roundtable that explored the consequences of researching literacies with(in) communities outside of the composition classroom, while discussing the interdisciplinary inspiration for methodological choices throughout.

The Writing Program at IUP is proud to present author and editor Ladette Randolph presenting a series of short talks on writing and publishing on Friday, March 27, in Nicholson Library of Leonard Hall.

Current English film track major Travis Smith will be entering the master’s degree program in Film Studies at the University of Buffalo in fall 2015. While at IUP, Travis has enjoyed many film studies courses, including History on Film; Gender and Sexuality in Film and Literature; and The Great War in Film and Literature. He has also done most of the scheduling for the English Undergraduate Film Series.

Kenneth Sherwood’s article “Distanced Sounding: ARLO as a Tool for the Analysis and Visualization of Versioning Phenomena Within Poetry Audio” has been published by Jacket 2, a serial sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing.

The English Department Film Series will continue Wednesday, March 4, at 7 p.m. in Library room 101 with a screening of Se7en, an intense thriller from 1995 with Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Kevin Spacey. Admission and snacks are free, and attendance vouchers will be provided.

Steven Pearlman, director of Interdisciplinary Writing and Reasoning at the University of Saint Joseph in Connecticut, will come to the IUP campus and give a talk on how we teach thinking on March 26 in the HUB Monogahela Room.

David Downing, director of Graduate Studies in Literature and Criticism, had his 2009 essay, “What Does Neoliberalism Have to Do with Research Writing?” re-published in the 100th-anniversary celebration issue of Radical Teacher.

John Hoppenthaler, author of numerous poems in magazines and three collections of poetry from Carnegie Mellon Press, will read from his most recent book, “Domestic Garden,” in the Kipp Gallery of Sprowls Hall, followed by a Q&A.

Megan Oldman will host a free showing of episodes from the cult favorite comedy series “Broad City” in Room 101 of the Library on Wednesday, February 18, at 7:00 p.m.

The English Department’s Publication Celebration will be held Thursday, February 12, from 4:30 until about 6:00 p.m. in the Allegheny Room in the HUB. Students are invited to attend.

O. Salako’s article, “Marginalized Labeling: An Evaluation of English Speaking Africans Classified as ESL Students,” appeared in the well-respected International Journal of Language and Linguistics. It discusses the placement of African students whose first language is English in ESL classes in the U.S.

Dan Weinstein and Gloria Park’s article “Helping Students Connect: Architecting Learning Spaces for Experiential and Transactional Reflection” has been published in the November 2015 issue of the Journal of Pedagogic Development.

Tom Slater of the English Department and the IUP Center for Film Studies has created a Facebook page for the Center designed to encourage contributions from everyone in the IUP community and their friends.

Lilia Savova participated in the review of U.S. Fulbright applications for the academic year 2014–15. Her work was part of the English Teaching Assistants international program, which is one of several Fulbright U.S. student programs. 

Usree Bhattacharya has been selected as a Concha Delgado Gaitan CAE Presidential Fellow for 2014-2015.

Tanya Heflin (Department of English) attended the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School in order to workshop the Women’s Diary Archive Project.

Tanya Heflin (Department of English) served as presiding officer of Autobiography for the fourth year at the 112th annual PAMLA conference in Riverside, California.

Tanya Heflin (Department of English) presented a paper, “Minds in the Gutter: Psychological Self-Exposure in Graphic Memoir,” at the 112th annual PAMLA conference in Riverside, California.

Tanya Heflin (Department of English) presented a paper, “‘Neither a wild Indian, nor a tame one’: Zitkala-Ša’s Outsider Activism,” at the 16th annual Modernist Studies Association conference.

The title of the presentation is Meeting the Demands of an Increasing and Cultural Diversity: Preparing Teachers to Teach English as an Additional Language: A Critical Look at the US, the State, and the PASSHE, and the presentation focuses on Park's ongoing National TESOL study and subsequent institutional case study of IUP's MA TESOL program.

Daniel Weinstein gave a presentation, "Inside the Mind of an Improvisational Writer" at the 2014 World Conference of the Applied Improvisation Network in Austin, Texas.

The Dude still abides. Watch this free movie in the IUP Library at 7:00 p.m.

An article by Lynn Shelly was the lead article in the November/December issue of Writing Lab Newsletter, a publication of the International Writing Centers Association.

Michael T. Williamson (Department of English) presented "Communism and Irresolvable Mobility in Eric Ambler's Background to Danger and Martha Gelhorn's A Stricken Field."

Michael Williamson co-chaired a seminar, “Representing the Second World War, Genocide, the Holocaust: Modernist Confluences and Divisions,” at the 16th annual Modernist Studies Association Conference.

This comedy will be shown on Thursday in Room 101 of the library. The movie starts at 7:00 p.m., and snacks, drinks, and attendance vouchers will be provided.

Want to learn how to handle the growing pile of e-mails in your inbox? Want to finally run your work schedule instead of it running you? This large group presentation that will cover general principles of time and task management in a realistic, down-to-earth fashion on Wednesday, November 12.

Patrick Bizzaro, Department of English, presented his paper, “A Wild and Dynamic Dance: English Studies Twerks into the Deep Universe,” at the EAPSU meeting on October 3, 2014.

Owen Wilson is obsessed with Paris in the 1920s and the Lost Generation of writers. He magically returns to meet them in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” showing in Stapleton Library.

Chauna Craig’s (English Department) creative nonfiction essay, “Death of a Thousand Cuts,” appears in the current issue of Lime Hawk Review.

There will be a free showing of Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull on Thursday, October 16, at 7:00 p.m. in the IUP library.

Chauna Craig, Department of English, presented "Bees Buzzing Between Window Panes: Developing Student Attention Through Metaphor" at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education.

Curt Porter has coauthored a study on art-based language pedagogy for the September issue of English Teaching: Practice & Critique.

Join us for a reading by novelist Robert Bausch on Monday, October 20, at 4:00 p.m. in Nicholson Library, room 112, Leonard Hall.

Learn about technical writing by attending a Technical Writing Workshop featuring members of the IUP English faculty who know what it means to write to spec.

An article by Stephan Schaffrath, temporary faculty member in both the English Department and the Department of Developmental Studies, has been republished in the anthology Contemporary Literary Criticism.

IUP English faculty, staff, and students are invited to the annual English Department Networking Event on Thursday, October 2.

English Graduate Organization students will host a workshop on graphic novels, this year’s featured genre for national Banned Books Week events, on Thursday, September 25.

A lively group of librarians, professors, and students will discuss what should be done with library books that contain plagiarized content, as part of IUP’s Banned Books Week program. The discussion will take place Monday, September 22, 2014, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. in the HUB Ohio Room.

Laura Ragsdale, English-Writing Studies, was featured in the national music magazine CMJ. Ragsdale, former DJ and music director at WIUP, synthesized her work in an independent study in English and practicum in Communications Media this past spring to develop and sustain a regular blog, Unclaimed Baggage, on contemporary music and to write a guide for college radio music directors.

English professor Curt Porter has published a peer-reviewed article on wiki use for collaborative course design in the September issue of STEM Journal, an international journal on the use of multimedia in language instruction.

Film Studies major Travis Smith will introduce Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting on Thursday, September 18, in Room 101 of Stabley Library.

Dr. Chauna Craig, Department of English, is one of 10 mentors selected for Writer to Writer, a pilot mentoring program sponsored by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.

Dr. Michael T. Williamson (English) delivered a paper, “Doubled Crossings: Yiddish Writers Respond to the Treaty of Non-Aggression Between Germany and Russia,” at the international conference of the Space Between Society, Institute of English Studies, University of London, July 17-19, 2014.

Dr. L. Savova has been invited as visiting professor at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU).

English professor Lilia Savova has been invited to serve on the Fulbright National Screening Committee, screening applicants to several European countries. This is the third time Savova has been asked to serve on the national committee.

The September 2014 special issue of TESOL Journal, co-edited by Gloria Park and Sarah Henderson Lee, includes articles by other members of IUP’s Composition and TESOL program: Curtis Porter, Ann Amicucci, and IUP alumni Jocelyn Amevuvor and Indah Puspawati.

The IUP English Department is now accepting applications for the fall 2015 cohort for the TESOL Graduate Certificate of Recognition program: 18 credits in two semesters.

Daniel J. Weinstein  presented a workshop, “Freely, Aptly, Deeply: Sensitizing Student Writers to a Transcendent Vision of Textuality” at the 2014 Annual Conference of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning.

English professor Tom Slater will be nominated for a stipend of $6,000 by Dr. Tim Mack, dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Research.

Lingyan Yang, English Department and Women’s Studies program, presented “A Brief Intellectual History of Asian Pacific American Cultural Criticism,” and reported as vice president and program chair at the 2014 Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States national conference.

This three-part colloquium series will explore video games as an important part of our contemporary culture and as a form of art that creates powerful experiences and high-impact statements about who we are and who we might be. Open to faculty, staff, and students; April 15, 17, and 22.

A presentation by Lilia Savova, Department of English, focused  on collaboration through interactivity, connectivity, and project sharing using online environments such as Moodle, Blackboard Collaborate videoconferencing, wikis, discussion boards, Google Docs, and multimodal joint projects.

This coming Monday, March 10, the Center for Digital Humanities and Culture will present the third workshop in its Open Source Toolkit workshop series. 

Sponsored by EGO (English Graduate Students), the English Department, the Graduate Program in Literature and Criticism, and the Graduate Program in Composition and TESOL.