Department Newsletter Spring 2025

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Late last fall, Marco Abel published “Tätowierung (Johannes Schaaf, 1967) and the Joys of Violence; or: the Forgotten Case of the Aesthetic Left” in New German Critique, no. 153, Nov. 2024, pp. 159-191. This is the second time that this field-leading journal has published Marco’s work.

Following on the heels of his recently published third monograph, Mit Nonchalance am Abgrund: Das Kino der “Neuen Münchner Gruppe” (1964 – 1972), Marco published his sixth co-edited book, New German Cinema and Its Global Contexts: A Transnational Art Cinema (Wayne State University Press, 2025). The first volume on this legendary period of German cinema in two decades, it includes twelve essays and an afterword by Eric Rentschler (Harvard), one of the foundational scholars in the field. In addition to co-writing the Introduction with his co-editor, Jaimey Fisher (University of California-Davis), Marco also contributed his essay “(Don’t) Look Back on Sylvie: Klaus Lemke, D. A. Pennebaker, and the ‘Lightness’ of a ‘Left without Leftism’”; the book’s cover image is taken from Lemke’s post-New Munich Group film, one of West-German cinema’s most beautiful films of the 1970s (or of any era).

Last but not least, as co-editor of Provocations (University of Nebraska Press), he published the book series’ ninth volume, Naomi Waltham-Smith’s Free Listening.

Mavis Beckson published a book chapter titled “Fostering a New Consciousness of Material Relationality: Merging Ubuntu and Feminist New Materialisms in African Feminist Digital Activism in Africa (Ghana)” in the The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminist Rhetoric, 2025. The chapter takes up Ubuntu and feminist new materialism to direct attention to the material flows and prospects of how Facebook, a nonhuman thing, together with human users further the values of collectivity, gendered actions, and cultural relationality in African spaces. This chapter invites and begins a scholarly conversation where both feminist rhetoricians and African feminists can study the ways materiality in African contexts advances and/or limits human agencies.  

The collection Futures of Digital Scholarly Editing, edited by Matt Cohen, Kenneth M. Price, and Caterina Bernardini, was published by the University of Minnesota Press at the end of 2024. The collection can also be accessed online on the Manifold site. 

Joy Castro’s dystopian short story of rebellion “Blessed” appeared in Not Your Papi’s Utopia: Latinx Visions of Radical Hope, the third volume in a trilogy of speculative fiction by Latinx writers, new from Mouthfeel Press.

The paperback of Chris Harding Thornton’s second novel, Little Underworld, was released through Picador on March 11. In addition, her interview with David L. Ulin, former book editor of the Los Angeles Times, Guggenheim fellow, and author and editor of eleven books, appeared in Polar Verlag magazine. Harding Thornton also contributed the afterword for the German edition of Ulin’s latest novel, Thirteen Question Method.  

Kevin McMullen’s current class of English 355, “Editing and the Publishing Industry,” is in the final stages of contract negotiation with Southern Illinois University Press, who have agreed to publish a book that the class will edit as a group, with all students listed as co-editors. This year’s project will be to edit The Selected Poems of Harriet Monroe. Mainly remembered as the visionary founding editor of Poetry magazine, Monroe was also an accomplished poet whose poems are now all out of print. The class will select which poems to include and will write a critical introduction and select annotations. The book edited by the English 355 class from last spring, an annotated edition of Susan Glaspell’s 1915 novel Fidelity, is due out this fall, also from SIU Press. 

Timothy Schaffert’s latest novel, The Titanic Survivors Book Club, was released in paperback in April, and the French translation, Le cercle littéraire des rescapés du Titanic, releases in May from Éditions Nami (Albin Michel) and as an audio book from Lizzie: Livre Audio.

Pascha Sotolongo Stevenson’s craft essay “Comfort Animals” was published in CRAFT Literary in January.

Ber Anena’s short story “An Impossible Case” was published in Transition Magazine. Three of her poems—“The Wall,” “The Body as a Walking Riot,” and “The World, Freshly Widowed Sings”—were featured in The Shallow Tales Review.

Recipient of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, Chaun Ballard’s debut collection of poetry, Second Nature, was published in April by BOA Editions, Ltd.

Doctoral candidate Tara Ballard has an article in The Journal of American Culture, vol. 48, no. 1. The article, “Poetic Form as Détournement in the Documentary Work of Layli Long Soldier, Marwa Helal, and Reginald Dwayne Betts,” is currently available online.

Azaria Brown’s story “Survival Meal: A One Woman Show” was published in The Georgia Review’s Spring 2025 issue. In addition, her essay “An LLM Writes a Breakup Text” was published in Hobart Pulp in April.

Tom Knoblauch’s monograph, Building a Feminocentric Canon: Céline Sciamma and the Inflections of Post-Auteurism, is set to be published in the fourth quarter of 2025 by Lexington Books. 

Alina Nguyễn’s poem “Poetry House” was a finalist for the 2024 49th Parallel Award for Poetry from Bellingham Review and was chosen for publication in Issue 89 earlier this year. Also, her poem “Recertified“ was published in Lunch Ticket and featured in their Amuse-Bouche Series.

Jessica Poli’s recent publications include “Late Summer Eclogue” in Tahoma Literary Review and “June” in At What Cost. Reviews of her debut poetry collection, Red Ocher, have recently appeared in Colorado Review and EcoTheo Review. In January, she taught a workshop for the Nebraska Poetry Society titled “The Poem’s Interior Landscape.”

Darian Wilson’s book review of Mad Scholars: Reclaiming and Reimagining the Neurodiverse Academy was accepted by the journal Midwestern Modern Language Association for publication in Fall 2025.

Marco Abel talked about the New Munich Group (NMG) and his new book on this West-German filmmaking movement of the 1960s, Mit Nonchalance am Abgrund Das Kino der »Neuen Münchner Gruppe« (1964-1972), with Christian Eichler, host of CUTS--Der kritische Film-Podcast (episode 221, Oct. 25, 2024). 

Subsequently, Marco gave five presentations on the book and the films of the New Munich Group at four cinemas across Germany. On December 14, 2024, he was joined by Ulrich Mannes, publisher of the German film magazine, SigiGötz-Entertainment, at the Werkstattkino in Munich; on February 7 and 8, he was joined by filmmaker Bernhard Marsch at the Filmclub 813 in Cologne; on February 9, he was joined by filmmaker Torsten Stegmann and Monika Zinnenberg, who acted in several NMG films, at the Metropolis cinema in Hamburg; and on February 11, he was joined by Martin Müller, one of the NMG filmmakers prominently featured in Marco’s book, at the Zeughaus cinema of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. At each event, the audience was also treated to the screening of several NMG films.

An interview with him on this group of filmmakers and his book appeared in Kinema Kommunal (April 2024); the interview for the magazine of Germany’s head organization for community cinemas was conducted by German film critic Lukas Foerster.

A large contingent from the Writing Center presented at the Midwest Writing Centers Association conference in Brooklyn Park, MN, in March. April Bayer, Tina Le, and Andrea Orozco-Lopez gave a roundtable presentation moderated by Benjamin Reed, titled “Emotional Labor, Embodiment, and Empowerment: How We Can Acknowledge the Unspoken.” Rachel Azima, Amanda Peterson, and Kylie Rowland’s panel, “Reading the Room: Space, Embodiment, and Promises in the Writing Center,” was selected as a featured presentation at the conference.           

Caterina Bernardini presented the paper “Conglomerates of Voices: Rethinking D’Annunzio’s Practices of Creative Reuse and Plagiarism” at the 2025 the Modern Language Association convention in New Orleans in January.

Steve Buhler shared “Othello, Abridged” with the “Abridging Shakespeare for the British and American Stage” seminar at the Shakespeare Association of America annual meeting in Boston, MA, March 19-22.

The National Willa Cather Center hosted Joy Castro for a reading and discussion of One Brilliant Flame on February 13, in conjunction with which she offered a public-facing creative writing workshop at the Bennett Martin Public Library in Lincoln on February 21. She also facilitated a public reading group of Isabella Hammad’s excellent Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative. Gratitude to the graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty members who participated.

Timothy J. Cook delivered a paper at the 52nd Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture at the University of Louisville on February 21. As a part of the “Charles Olson Society” panel, Cook shared his work, “Contested Modernity: Eliot’s ‘different voices’ or Olson’s ‘fetid mass’.” Additionally, Cook delivered a paper at the 56th Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Philadelphia, PA, on March 7. As a part of the panel “Ezra Pound, Philadelphia, and (R)EVOLUTION,” he shared his work, “The Persistence of the Epic Tradition: Eliot, Pound, and Williams.” Cook is grateful to the College of Arts and Sciences and the English department for financial support to attend the conferences.

On February 25 and 26, Chris Harding Thornton visited Dr. Todd Robinson’s “Form & Theory: Nebraska Gothic” course at University of Nebraska-Omaha and read from Pickard County Atlas and Little Underworld at Criss Library. The events were part of UNO’s Spring 2025 Writer’s Workshop Reading Series.

Melissa Homestead presented “Prospects for a Digital Edition of Sarah Orne Jewett’s Letters” at “Jewett Unbound: Global Perspectives on New England Regionalism” at Université Paris Cité in October 2024.

Kevin McMullen gave a talk, “Recovering Glaspell’s Fidelity: A Model for Creating a Collaborative Critical Edition in the Classroom,” at the Modern Language Association convention in New Orleans in January. Also, in November 2024, Kevin gave an invited talk, along with two Whitman Archive colleagues from different institutions, at the Grolier Club in New York City, discussing their research into Whitman’s work as a journalist and newspaper editor.

Guy Reynolds delivered three presentations that have grown out of his new research project on contemporary British fiction and historical narrative. He presented “England re-mapped: Jim Crace, Sylvia Townsend Warner and the historical novel” at the Northeast Conference on British Studies in Hartford, CT, on September 28, 2024; “Harrowings: Kazuo Ishiguro, Paul Kingsnorth, and the Strange Re-Birth of Arthurian Britain” at the North American Conference on British Studies in Denver, CO, on November 16, 2024; and “Britannia Re-visioned: the historical fiction of George Mackay Brown and Raymond Williams” at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture in Louisville, KY, on February 22 of this year. Guy also served as Guest Leader for the Global Catholic Literature seminar series on Shadows of the Rock at the Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture in Philadelphia, PA, on October 7, 2024.

Timothy Schaffert presented a craft talk, “Kiss Your Darlings: An Editor Advises You to Abandon All Advice,” at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans, and he appears on the panels “Fight for Our Right to Read: Publishing LGBTQ+ Titles in 2025” and “Finding Your Muse in LGBTQ+ History and Culture.” He also appears on the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival panel, “The Past is Foreign Country: Historical Fiction.”

Alex C. Valin was a participant in the MS Sound Forum’s roundtable “Sound and Literature Now” at the Modern Language Association convention in New Orleans in January. His talk was titled “Literature and the Soundscape.”

Caroliena Cabada presented her paper “Intergenerational Climate Lyricism” at the Modern Language Association conference in New Orleans in January.

Alina Nguyễn and Caroliena Cabada presented a workshop, “To Be Is Hard Work: Reclaiming Our Names as Political Project in Creative Writing and Beyond,” at the annual meeting for the Association for Asian American Studies in Boston, MA, in March.

Kathleen Dillon presented with other graduate student union organizers at the Modern Language Association Conference in New Orleans on “Practicing a Slow Resistance in Building a New Union.” 

Uche Okonkwo, Tara Ballard, Alina Nguyen, and Ava Winter, along with Silvia Park (University of Kansas), presented a panel at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference titled “Women Writers Talk Shame in the Classroom, Academia & Their Writing Lives” in Los Angeles, CA, in March. 

In March, Darian Wilson attended the Northeast Modern Language Association conference in Philadelphia, PA. In an essay entitled “Demi-Rhetorical Rejections of Neoliberal Academia: A Collective Effort,” she discussed possible applications of Remi Yergeau’s theory of “demi-rhetoricity” within the academy.

Marco Abel thanks the College of Arts and Sciences for awarding him a Research Impact and Engagement Grant ($3,000) to support the promotion of his new book in Germany. As he’s done in the last two decades, Marco also attended once again the Berlin International Film Festival and was invited by German film magazine Cargo to contribute to its “Short Message Service“ commentary on the festival’s films.

Kwame Dawes, George W. Holmes Emeritus Professor of English, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Laura White’s class of English 995, “Teaching Literature,” had the great good fortune to be visited on Tuesday, March 26, by Dana Gioia, renowned poet, librettist, essayist, and head of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003-2009, among many honors. He was looking at our Weldon Kees archives on a flying visit from final rehearsals of his new opera, which is about to be produced by the Kansas City Light Opera. It was entirely coincidental that Dana came that evening, or at all, because his visit was only planned a few days before (thanks to Matt Cohen, who helped bring Dana and Laura together), but it just so fell on the evening when all fourteen seminarians were to recite memorized poems (of no more than 14 lines long, for a session that Laura had called “Reading Out Loud”). Dana just happens to be the person who started the NEA program Poetry Out Loud (my!). After a class filled with their own and Dana’s recitations (“his far more polished and professional than ours,” Laura notes, as “he is a long practitioner”), followed by their collective musings on the place of sound in poetry, the class came to a happy ending with book signings. Afterward, Dana, Laura, Vida Davidovic, Lauren Millhorn, and Alec Miller visited what Laura describes as a domesticated kicker bar at the Cornhusker. Dana gave cards to all, had books signed for some, and promised to be of service in future. Laura writes, “I think we are all pretty grateful for the visit,” noting that “perhaps he can come back sometime, as he lives in Kansas City.”

Chibueze Darlington Anuonye’s “Poetry is my Last Defense” emerges as the Hopkins Review’s most read feature of 2024. In “Poetry is my Last Defense,” Anuonye discusses writing, life, and literary leadership with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets Diane Seuss. On Seuss poetry books, he writes, “Regardless of their distinctive thematic temperaments, these collections embody Seuss’s resolve to live in the present, despite her losses, the most intimate of which is her father’s untimely death. Seuss’s daring to live fully inspires the heart and soul, as well as the terror and rage that conflate in these works, with a singularity of mind and a flawless absence of calm.” Beyond his work with Seuss, Anuonye’s writing has helped to bring the works of some of America’s most acclaimed modern poets, including Joy Harjo, Brandon Som, and Afaa Michael Weaver, to a more global readership. 

Tara Ballard has been awarded a fellowship to attend the 2025 Summer Seminar at The Institute for Critical Social Inquiry at the New School in New York. There, Ballard will study under Dr. Homi K. Bhabha. 

Uche Okonkwo’s novel, A Kind of Madness, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in the “Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author” category. You can read about it on the 56th NAACP Image Awards website.

In January, Kasey Peters was awarded a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation.

Darian Wilson is grateful for her ability to attend the Northeast Modern Language Association conference this year thanks to the department graduate travel grant and the Joy Currie Fellowship for Professional Travel.