by Emily Haddad

We are delighted to announce a new scholarship, the Dorothy Mortimer Dunlap Scholarship. The scholarship is designated for a female English major entering her junior year, and may be renewed for one year. Mary Dunlap Calvin and Janet Dunlap Rathbun established this scholarship in memory of their mother, who taught high school English after she graduated from USD in 1929. Mrs. Dunlap died in 2003.

USD's Student Government Association named English the Academic Department of the Year for 2005-06. We will happily show off our plaque--just ask.

On April 13, fifteen members were inducted into USD's new chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society. Our chapter was started last year at the initiative of Theo Bohn, a doctoral student in the English Department, and is one of more than 600 active chapters. Simon Ferrell, Donald Myers, Janet Davison Nordgren, Virginia Adair Owen, and Joseph Raiche became graduate student members. New undergraduate members are: Jamie Barnett, Ian Blake, Rebecca Bonnichsen, Christopher Bordewyk, Carrie Gonsor, Sara Kniffen, Bobbi Olson, Amber Skoglund, Bridget Welch, and Stephanie Zornes. The chapter has since been nominated for a South Dakota Board of Regents award for student organizations.

Visitors to the department included poets Jim Reese and Julie Sheehan, who gave readings of their work. Marina van Zuylen also delivered a lecture entitled "Against Leisure: The Uses and Misuses of Time in George Eliot's Novel Middlemarch"; her visit was the latest installment in the English Department's Speaker Series and was supported in part by a grant from USD's Office of Research.
posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 10:40 AM

by Emily Haddad

English majors and literary topics were very well represented at IdeaFest, USD's annual showcase of undergraduate student research. Presenters included: Jamie Barnett, ("Native American Students and the Writing Center"), Mandy Ellefson ("Location and Maturation: Bronte's Jane Eyre"), Crystal Gorden ("Elfriede Jelinek's Women as Lovers: Love, Marriage, and the Role of Women under Capitalism"), Bobbi Olson ("Seulement Moi: Narcissism in Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis"), Adriane Raba ("The Importance of Phonological Awareness and Foreign Language Acquisition in Writing Centers"), and Anne Rosenbaum ("Janie's Self-Discovery through Travel and Relationships"). Megan Determan displayed a poster called "Effectiveness of Women's Whetting in Terms of Masculinity in Laxdaela saga" and Marcus Merritt participated in a roundtable on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We had a similarly excellent showing at the USD Graduate Student Forum for Research and Creative Work, with the following students presenting: Ryan Allen, Theo Bohn, Annie Christain, Sarah Den Boer, Simon Ferrell, Toni Hoffmeier, Mary Honerman, Melissa Houghton, Courtney Huse-Wika, Sean Johnston, Dan Jones, Malene Little, Jennifer Moskowitz, Joseph Raiche, Kimberly Raaphorst, Brian Twenter, and Ashley Zellmer. [Please forgive my not listing all of the titles. Trust me --they were terrific.]

Jamie Barnett has accepted a position as research associate with a technology research firm in Cambridge, MA.

Brittany Neiles, who is studying on exchange at Warwick University in the UK this semester, spent spring break visiting Dublin, Paris, Italy, and Belgium, where she saw "lots of good sights, culture, and history and fit in some good shopping on the side."

MA students Simon Ferrell and Toni Hoffmeier presented their work as a panel at the Red River Conference in Fargo, ND in February. Simon's papers were called "Slapstick Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors and its Movement beyond Farce" and "Authority through Virginity in The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth Century Recluse."

Toni also presented two papers: "The Powerful Prowess: Politicizing the Patriarchal Female" and "The Art of Feminine Control: Margaret Paston's Authority." In addition, Simon presented "Erec's Quest of Self-Promotion" at the Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature in Brookings, SD.

Patricia DiMond and Courtney Huse-Wika, both doctoral students, gave papers at the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque in February. Patti spoke about "The Owl's Song: Genre Reconsideration as Hale Breaks New Ground." Courtney's paper was " 'Ready-made Happy Endings to Misfit All Stories: Distortions of Love in the Pygmalion Myth." Melissa Houghton, an MA student, and Annie Christain, a PhD student, read their poetry at the conference as well. Annie also read at the National Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference in Atlanta, GA, and at "Spankin' the Muse," a graduate student conference at Truman State University (Annie's alma mater) in Kirksville, MO.

Doctoral students Theo Bohn and Ryan Allen represented USD's new chapter of Sigma Tau Delta at the society's national meeting in Portland, OR. Ryan presented a paper entitled "A Book and a Performance: The Representation of Nature in American Literature" and read his poetry. Theo received an award for the poems he read.

PhD student Dan Jones presented a paper called " 'There is an Idea of a Patrick Bateman': Identity and Agency in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho" at the Twentieth-Century Literature Conference in Louisville, KY in February. Along with Sean Johnston and Annie Christain, Dan was nominated to be included in this year's "Who's Who among American College Students."

Doctoral student Jennifer Moskowitz was selected as an alternate for an American Association of University Women dissertation fellowship.

Brian Twenter, a PhD student, plans to present a paper at the Annual Dakota Conference in Sioux Falls.
posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 10:27 AM

by Emily Haddad

Ed Allen attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Annual Conference in Austin, TX, where he gave a reading from his newly published sonnet collection, 67 Mixed Messages.

Jim Balakier was invited by the National Endowment for the Humanities to evaluate proposals for NEH grants.

South Dakota Review, the literary magazine edited by Brian Bedard, was the subject of a full-page feature in the February issue of The Writer.

Amanda Emerson joined the biennial meeting of the American Women Writers Reading Group, which was held at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, March 28-29. The group met to discuss nineteenth-century life narratives and other writings in relation to historian Heather Williams's recent scholarship on slave literacy and education in the U.S.

The International Writing Centers Association has selected Chris Ervin as Web Editor for the organization and appointed him to the executive board ex officio.

"Martian Girl's Moon Garden," a poem by Michelle Rogge Gannon, won third place in the High Plains Writers Juried Poetry Competition.

"Digging to India: Modernity, Imperialism, and the Suez Canal," an article by Emily Haddad which appeared in Victorian Studies (47.3), was runner-up for the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Essay Prize for 2005. Emily gave a paper on William Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, and Thomas Moore at the College English Association Conference in San Antonio, TX, in April.

In February, Marcella Remund did a reading of her short fiction at Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD. She was a guest of NSU faculty member and USD alumna Penni Pearson (PhD).

Lee Ann Roripaugh traveled to Atlanta in March to receive the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004 for her second book of poems, Year of the Snake. In April, she gave readings at Minnesota State University in Mankato and in Utah at Westminster College and Utah Valley State College. She has poems currently appearing in the most recent issue of North American Review, as well as the anthology Digerati, just released from Three Candles Press. An essay, co-authored with Susan J. Wolfe, appears in Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television, published by I.B. Tauris.

At the Twentieth-Century Literature Conference in Louisville, KY in February, Skip Willman presented "Specters of Marx in Thomas Pynchon's Vineland."
posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 10:17 AM

by Emily Haddad

Renee Della Fave (MA) will start law school at the University of Montana this fall.

Tom Klett (MA) is a supervisor at Platinum Directories, a company in Belmont, IA. He says he has been learning to use fun software.

John Nelson (PhD) delivered a paper at the Red River Conference in Fargo, ND in February.

Kristi Rastede (MA) is the extension coordinator for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Northeast Research and Extension Center as well as an adjunct instructor in English at Northeast Community College in Norfolk, NE, where she teaches Introduction to College Writing.

posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 10:12 AM

Festival; Readings; 2006 VLP Magazine

The Vermillion Literary Project's annual poetry festival, held February 23, featured writers Penni Pearson (PhD alumna) and Jim Coppoc, with workshops, a noon reading by Pearson and Coppoc, and a fascinating talk by Coppoc on "Stage, Page, and Beyond: the Bardic Tradition in the 21st Century." In the evening, Coppoc, as the VLP slam master, performed a condensed version of Ginsberg's "Howl," which Annie Christain described in the VLP weblog as "a fierce, rhythmic, OBE-inducing chant/rant that left the audience tugging on their silver elastic soul cords like duel plane diddley bows." The winners of this slam were Lynda Letona in first place, followed by Tony LaPointe in second place and Laurie Johns in third.

In March, the VLP held a "Women's Choices" reading in honor of Women's History Month, with Lee Ann Roripaugh, Michelle Rogge Gannon, Annie Christain, Emily Haddad, and Sean Johnston reading selections by women writers and scholars. This was followed by an open-mic and our usual poetry slam, which was won by USD alumnus Barry Wolf (MA), also known as "Bear."

The VLP 2006 magazine was unveiled at the April 27th reception and authors' reading at the Coffee Shop Gallery. The magazine includes writings and artwork by Sean Johnston (first-place winner of the VLP Short Story Contest), Barb Baker, John Banasiak, Phillip Block, Ken Carstens, Philip DePaula, Patricia DiMond, Amanda Gebhart, Vanessa Gorden, Jami Guthrie, Nathan Hitchcock, Steven D. Howe (2nd-place winner of the Holidays on Ice Contest), Sandra Kern (2nd-place winner of the VLP Short Story Contest), VerLynn Kneifl, D. T. Kofoed, Paula Kostel, Lynda Letona, Rosemary Moeller, John Mullin, Joe Night, Joseph Raiche, Marcella Remund, S. K. Robertson, Amanda Sides, and Suzanne Sunshower.

Winners of that evening's poetry slam were Melissa Houghton in first place, followed by Lynda Letona in second and Tony LaPointe in third. One of the prizes Melissa won was a signed copy of poet Julie Sheehan's new book, Orient Point.
posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 10:02 AM

DWP at SDCTE; A Visit to Washington, D.C.

by Emily Haddad, Chair

Nancy Zuercher and Michelle Rogge Gannon participated in the South Dakota Council of Teachers of English Spring Conference on March 24 and 25 in Chamberlain. Nancy, who is the post-secondary liaison on the SDCTE Executive Board, led discussions on literature-based writing and on post-secondary teachers' concerns. Michelle presented a session entitled "Collaborative Writing Online That Meets Standards and Engages Your Students." USD English alumnus Justin Blessinger (PhD), a Dakota State University faculty member, participated, as did Nancy Kampfe, an alumna and teacher at Bennett County High School. The DWP Board of Directors also met Saturday morning, with Nancy leading the meeting. In the afternoon, fourteen DWP teachers participated in the spring reunion, with the focus on sharing successful teaching moments and writing.

Michelle and Patricia Konechne, a middle school teacher from Kimball, attended the National Writing Project's annual spring meeting in Washington, D.C. April 6-7. While there, they spoke about the Writing Project and South Dakota writing issues with Senators John Thune and Tim Johnson, as well as with one of Representative Stephanie Herseth's assistants.
posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 9:56 AM

Student Presentations; Conference Planned

by Emily Haddad, Chair

Trina Borchardt, Mandy Hagseth, Mandy Klein, and Lynn Von Koch presented papers at "Gender Interse(x)tions: An Undergraduate Conference on Gender and Sexuality," sponsored by Augustana College on April 8 in Sioux Falls. The papers had originally been written for USD's first ever Introduction to Women's Studies course, taught by Amanda Emerson. Faculty member Melanie Wood, who attended the conference, reports that the presentations were "absolutely brilliant!!!" Trina, Mandy Klein, and Lynn also gave presentations based on their women's studies research at IdeaFest. All four projects drew on the wonderful holdings in South Dakota women's history available in the Special Collections at USD's I.D. Weeks Library. The new introductory course was added to the curriculum as part of an overhaul of the minor in women's studies that has now been approved by the Board of Regents.

A women's studies conference, "Choices Women Make," will be held March 23-24, 2007 at USD. The university has provided funding for the conference. Anyone who wishes to volunteer to help with planning next fall should email Amanda.Emerson@usd.edu.

[Editor's note: The Women's Studies program at USD is headed by Amanda Emerson, a faculty member in the Department of English.]
posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 9:39 AM

Winter Graduates; New English Dept. Professor

by Emily Haddad, Chair

Congratulations to the students who graduated this winter with degrees in English: Chelsea Armbruster, Anne Frisbie, Scott Krivohlavek, Molly Kuxhaus, Megan Nearman, Kristi Rastede (MA), Lisa Shea, Ingunn Solberg (MA), Lisha VonEhwegen, and Julia Weisgram.

In August we will welcome a new colleague, Laura Furlan Szanto, who will teach courses in American and Native American literature. Laura is finishing her doctorate at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She fills the position left vacant by Norma Wilson's retirement in May 2005.
posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 9:34 AM

Four Donations to English Dept.

by Emily Haddad, Chair

Donations to English Department funds were received from Mary Dunlap Calvin, Pamela Smith Hill, Toni Hoffmeier, and Janet Dunlap Rathbun. Our sincere thanks to all for their support.
posted by Michelle Rogge Gannon at 9:30 AM