Department Newsletter Spring 2026

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Marco Abel published “‘Ein väterlicher Freund’: Die Marsch-Müller-Gosov Connection” in Filmblatt 88/89 (fall 2025): 131–134. The essay is part of a dossier that both explores the Cologne-Group filmmaker Bernhard Marsch’s interest in the films of Bulgarian-German filmmaker Marran Gosov (who is often associated with the New Munich Group) and commemorates Marsch, who died in an accident with a streetcar on June 15, 2025. In April 2014, the Ross hosted Marsch, a good friend of Marco’s, with his program, “What Our Parents Always Warned Us About: The Independent Short Films of Bernhard Marsch.”

Marco was also once again part of a group of German film critics who contributed to the German film journal Cargo’s “Short Messaging Service,” where the critics posted their initial reactions to films they saw at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival; Marco contributed a dozen short takes.

The University of Nebraska Press Provocations book series, which Marco co-edits with our former colleague Roland Végső, published its tenth book, Steven Swarbrick’s The Earth Is Evil, in November 2025 and its eleventh book, Lisa Downing’s Against Affect, in April 2026.

Joy Castro’s short story “No More Beautiful Day” appeared in the November 2025 issue of The Berlin Literary Review.

Kwakiutl Dreher published “Every Minute of Every Day: The Banal as Memoir in Clarence Major’s Novel Such Was the Season” in the journal Pacific Coast Philology. Her co-edited volume, Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler’s Film “Sinners,” is forthcoming from The Journal of American Culture.

Saddiq Dzukogi published two excerpts from his longer poem “Egress” in Poetry Magazine (May 2026). His poems “New York 2018” and “Monument” were published in Either/Or Magazine (issue 1), and his poem “Magnolia Swamp” was published in Magma Poetry (no. 94, “Remix”). Excerpts from “Haske” and “Bakandamiya,” which appeared in his new book, were recently published in The Cincinnati Review (vol. 22, no. 2). Three excerpts from Bakandamiya: An Elegy were published in Mizna (vol. 26, no. 1, “Kindred”). His previously published poem “Like My Dreams Weren’t Made of Glass” was reprinted in Prairie Schooner (“Loneliness” issue). In March, his photo essay “Texture” appeared in Isele Magazine, and an extensive interview with him, “A Kind of Telling,” appeared in 128 Lit.

Arden Eli Hill had poems published in the first issue of Nerve to Write, founded by UNL alum Sarah Fawn Montgomery (PhD, 2016).

In December, Tom Knoblauch’s monograph Building a Feminocentric Canon: Céline Sciamma and the Dawn of Post-Auteurism was published by Bloomsbury Academic. He reviewed Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere for Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Together with current MA student Sarah Danielson and UNL alum Michael Hodge (BA, 2024), Kevin McMullen has an essay appearing in the May 2026 issue of Scholarly Editing, the annual journal of the Association for Documentary Editing. The piece, titled “A Model for Creating and Publishing a Collaborative Critical Edition in the Classroom,” grew out of a class project in the Spring 2024 section of “Editing and the Publishing Industry” (ENGL 355), in which both Sarah and Michael were Kevin’s students.

Timothy Schaffert’s collaboration with artists Jean Frédéric Koné and José Villarrubia, Easy to Love: An Imagined Life, a graphic novel about pioneering queer comic book artist Matt Baker, was announced as a 2027 release by comics publisher Mad Cave Studios.

Caroliena Cabada’s poem “Wild Onion” was selected for the anthology ALOCASIA: 99 queer writers on plants and nature, which was published in February.

Kathleen Dillon has an article forthcoming in the edited collection Radical Transparency: Perspectives on Graduate Education in Writing Studies, under contract with the University Press of Colorado. The article applies Slow Pedagogy to graduate student labor in writing classrooms, writing centers, and union organizing.

Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s full-length poetry collection, The Naming, was published by the University of Nebraska Press as part of the African Poetry Book series on December 1. He also has a poem titled “The Strangeness of Survival” appearing in the latest issue of Ninth Letter (“Performance” issue).

Richard Ayertey Lawer published “Digital Echoes of Tradition: How Social Media Reinforces Gender Ideologies in Akan Proverbs” in the Journal of Gender Related Studies (vol. 6, no. 1, May 2025, pp. 26–39). The article examines the intersection of digital discourse and traditional cultural ideologies. Together with Joy Afua Agama and Timothy Hattoh-Ahiaduvor, Richard also published “User Guides as Self-Teaching Aids in the Installation and Operation of Home Appliances” in the European Journal of Linguistics (vol. 4, no. 2, June 2025, pp. 18–40).

Richard co-authored four additional articles in 2026. With Bright Ohene Okyere, he published “From Oral Wisdom to Corporate Ethics: Human Resource Lessons from Akan and Yorùbá Proverbs” in the Journal of Human Resource and Leadership (vol. 11, no. 2, Mar. 2026, pp. 15–34). He also published “Pronouns as Political Instruments: Constructing Self and Other in Ghanaian Political Discourse” with Yvette Djabakie Asamoah and Priscilla Ama Dati in the Journal of Communication (vol. 7, no. 1, Mar. 2026, pp. 22–46).

With Timothy Hattoh-Ahiaduvor and Jemima Sam, Richard published “Language and Ideologies in Mission Statements of State and Private Universities in Ghana” in the Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Language Teaching (JLLLT) (vol. 5, no. 2, Apr. 2026, pp. 122–143). He and Timothy Hattoh-Ahiaduvor also published “The Language of Anxiety: A Stylistic Reading of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’” in Langues & Cultures (vol. 7, no. 1, Apr. 2026, pp. 209–226). The article offers a linguistic interpretation of modernist poetic expression.

Ian Maxton’s short story “Stone 80 (Haecceity)” was published in Apocalypse Confidential in April. A companion piece, “Stone 80 (Quiddity),” was published in Minor Literature[s] in May.

Jason McCormick’s article “Reimagining Basic Writing Using Disability Frameworks” was accepted for publication in Journal of Basic Writing and will be part of the journal’s two-issue 50th anniversary celebration.

Kasey Peters’s short stories were published in The Rumpus, BOOTH, and Grist. Peters’s story “Kelvinator” was selected as runner-up for The Sewanee Review Short Fiction Contest by Lauren Groff and was published in the Spring 2026 issue of The Sewanee Review.

Kylie Rowland’s article “Quiet Collaboration: A Nonvocal, Embodied, and Accessible Break from Collaboration as Talk” was accepted for publication in Composition Forum (forthcoming, vol. 59, Fall 2026).

On December 8, 2025, Marco Abel presented his book, Mit Nonchalance am Abgrund Das Kino der “Neuen Münchner Gruppe” (1964-1972), at the “Kino im Blauen Salon” cinema in Karlsruhe, Germany, in conjunction with screenings of several short films by the New Munich Group directors. (The image is a screen-printed poster advertising the event.) On February 27, 2026, Marco presented his book at the “Eschborn K” cinema in Eschborn near Frankfurt, in conjunction with a screening of the New Munich Group film, Zur Sache, Schätzchen (Go for It, Baby, dir. May Spils, 1968), the group's commercially most successful film. And on February 10, 2026, as part of an evening commemorating Bernhard Marsch at the German Historical Museum's cinema, the Zeughauskino, Marco read excerpts from an interview he conducted with Bernhard in 2007; the interview will be published in Revolver in June 2026.

Rachel Azima presented an invited keynote at the annual Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association conference in Baltimore, MD, on March 28. The talk was titled “‘Where Are You From?’: Place, Space, and Writing Center Futures.”

Caterina Bernardini presented the paper “Per sentieri non battuti: corpo, eros e desiderio nella traduzione di Mario Corona dell’ultima edizione di Foglie d’erba” at the international conference Culture in Movimento, Lingue Meticce e Altre Geografie della Traduzione at the University of Padova, Italy, in December 2025.

Joy Castro shared the paper “Creating Space to Dream: Building The Guzmán Family Classroom for Latinx and Latin American Studies” at the national Latinx Studies Association conference in Austin, TX, in March. She served as the visiting distinguished writer at Chadron State College in Chadron, NE, in April.

Timothy J. Cook delivered a paper at the 53rd Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture at the University of Louisville on February 20. As part of a “Charles Olson Society” panel, Cook shared his paper, “Navigating the Projective: Considerations of Creeley and Oppen (or Oppen’s Discomfort with Olson’s Poetics).” Additionally, Cook delivered a paper at the 57th Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Pittsburgh, PA, on March 7. As part of the panel “The Ezra Pound (Re)Generation: Making It New,” he shared his work, “H. D.’s Hermetic Ways and Pound’s Ur-Cantos: Early Epic Departures.” Cook remains grateful to UNL’s English department as well as the College of Arts and Sciences for financial support while attending these conferences.

Kwakiutl Dreher presented the films Anna, The Bell Affair, and The Diary of Michael Shiner to faculty, staff, and students at Lehigh University in Northampton County, PA. She also presented The Bell Affair for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in collaboration with the UNL Women’s Club and The Diary of Michael Shiner for Leadership Lincoln’s Arts and Culture Day at the Sheldon Museum of Art.

Saddiq Dzukogi served as a panelist at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Baltimore, MD, in March. He appeared on two panels: “How International Writers Build Successful Literary Careers After MFA,” with Weijia Pan, Meher Manda, M. Lin, and Li Zhuang, on March 5; and “Poetics, Politics, and Ethics of Memory, Imagination, and Mourning in the Elegy,” with Victoria Chang, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Prageeta Sharma, and Samyak Shertok, on March 7.

Saddiq also appeared as a guest poet on Nebraska Public Media’s Friday LIVE in February. In April, he was a visiting poet for Highline College’s National Poetry Month main event, a guest poet at Newberry College, and a facilitator for the North Omaha Writers Workshop. In November, he was a visiting writer for the University of Louisiana’s Deep South Writers Series.

Arden Eli Hill was the invited speaker for Morrill Hall’s recent Astronomy Night in April. The title of his talk was “The Science in Science Fiction and the Science Fiction in Science.”

Melissa Homestead presented on “The Publishing History of The Minister’s Wooing” at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Symposium in Hartford, CT, in April. In May, she will be presenting on “The Compositional Chronology of My Mortal Enemy” and participating in a roundtable on “Jewett Then and Now” at the American Literature Association in Chicago. In June, she will be giving a keynote lecture, “From Typescripts, to Magazine Novelette, to Book: The Writing and Publication of My Mortal Enemy, 1924 to 1926,” at the Willa Cather Spring Conference in Red Cloud, NE.

Timothy Schaffert was a panelist at the Tennessee Williams/Saints and Sinners Literary Festivals in New Orleans in March. The panels included “Controlled Chaos: Finding Form Through Revision,” alongside Pulitzer winners Michael Cunningham and Robert Olen Butler.

Jessica Poli recently led a workshop with co-organizers Caroline Crew and Lindsey Webb at the New Orleans Poetry Festival titled “Ekphragrance: Generative Poetry + Perfume Workshop.”

Ben Reed, Associate Director of the Writing Center at UNL, participated in a seminar on childhood performance with his paper “‘He Straight Declined’: Mamillius’s Death as Tragic Protest in The Winter’s Tale” at the Shakespeare Association of America annual meeting in Denver, CO, in April.

Kathleen Dillon presented “Co-Creating Wellbeing in the Writing Classroom” at the Conference on Writing & Wellbeing in Tucson, AZ, in January.

They also coordinated three collaborative panels on Slow Pedagogy with Timothy Oleksiak, serving as a presenter and respondent, at the Conference on College Composition & Communication (CCCC) in Cleveland, OH, in March. Kathleen also presented with fellow members of the CCCC Labor Caucus on “Tales from the Trenches: Academic Labor Organizing in Troubled Times.” 

They presented on their dissertation, Practicing a Slow Resistance in the Writing Classroom, at UNL’s Student Research Days in April. 

Akua Agyeiwaa Denkyi-Manieson presented aspects of her digital project at two research events:  a poster session at UNL’s Student Research Days on April 8 and a presentation at the Global Digital Humanities Symposium at Michigan State University on April 13. At both events, Akua’s project reiterated the need to build digital infrastructures that not only recover African texts but also preserve and illuminate their Africanness. These opportunities also enabled her to launch and draw attention to her website, Goldcoast Novels.

In February, Ian Maxton presented “The Novel and Stonehenge” at the American Comparative Literature Association’s Annual Meeting in Montreal, Canada, as part of the “Chronotopes of Extinction” seminar co-organized by Timothy Bewes and Antoine Traisnel.

Jason McCormick co-presented at CCCC in Cleveland, OH, about a pilot program to embed writing center tutors in developmental classroom spaces. This was the first time they were able to present at the conference in their capacity as Writing Center Director at the University of Southern Mississippi, and they co-presented with their graduate Writing Center Coordinator.

Alina Nguyễn and Caroliena Cabada presented their workshop “Taking Space: Non-Hierarchical Classroom Lessons for Early-Career Educators” at the annual Association for Asian American Studies conference in Honolulu, HI, in early April. They also presented this workshop in the department’s Teaching Development Workshop Series.

In March, Kasey Peters moderated the panel “Game Changer: Literary Queer Sports Writing” at AWP in Baltimore, MD, with novelists Holly Wendt and Jonathan Fram. They had a ball. Peters was also a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center in January, where they walked through a squall in the night and sang karaoke.

Kylie Rowland presented “Counter Conferences: Conversations With and Against the University” with Marcus Woodman and Amanda Peterson at CCCC in Cleveland, OH, in March.

Darian Wilson presented “The Neuroqueer Child” at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Toronto in January.

James Brunton’s poem “Proof” was selected as runner-up for The Iowa Review Prize for Poetry and appears in the current issue of The Iowa Review (vol. 55, no. 3, Winter 2025-26).

Saddiq Dzukogi’s book Bakandamiya: An Elegy received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. It was listed as a favorite read by Poetry Northwest and as a notable African book by Brittle Paper and Afrocritik. The book also won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Prize.

Melissa Homestead was awarded a monthlong fellowship by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, to conduct research for her planned book Boston Marriage: The Lives and Partnership of Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett.