Students in the Limelight

Graduate student Hanh Hoang recently won the David T. K. Wong Fellowship, which is "... a unique and generous annual award of 26,000 to enable a fiction writer who wants to write in English about the Far East to spend a year in the UK, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich," according to the university's web site. Hoang submitted the story titled "Mr. Sa's Buddas" for the award. She says that while the events take place in Saigon in the 1960s, "the story is not about the [Vietnam War], but about people with the universal yearning to be loved and understood." The story will be part of a novel Hoang will write during her stay at UEA from October 2009 to June 2010. While in the Department of English, Hoang has worked with Professors Robert Olen Butler, Julianna Baggott, and Bob Shacochis, and for her preliminary exams and dissertation, she will work with Butler, Baggott, Ned Stuckey-French, and Neil Jumonville.

Students Dustin Anderson and Tatia Jacobson Jordan received impressive graduate awards for the 2008-09 academic year. Anderson was the winner of the FSU Graduate Student Leadership Award, and Jordan won this year's FSU Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. Both of these awards are given in competitions that involve the entire University, making our students' accomplishments especially commendable.

Two undergraduates, Christopher Lowy and Young Yi, delivered papers at this year's American Comparative Literature Association convention, held at Harvard University in late March. The ACLA is the premier international organization for the study of comparative literature, and it is highly unusual for undergraduates to present their own research at the convention. Lowy delivered a paper entitled "Kenneth Rexroth and an English Kambun," and Yi's paper was titled "Keitai Shosetsu: The Text between Localized and Globalized Identity." They are both double majors in English (literature track) and Modern Languages. Professors Elaine Treharne and Andrew Epstein have worked closely with the students throughout the spring semester. Treharne's Honors Seminar, "The Meaning of Text," has been a great influence in the work of both Lowy and Yi. She has worked with them on their conference papers as well providing training about scholarly presentation. Both Treharne and Epstein were members of Lowy's thesis committee, and Treharne was also a member of Yi's thesis committee.

A faculty committee has recognized two emerging poets in the department for their work. The committee selected Scott Bailey and Avni Vyas as Florida State's entrants in the competition for the Best New Poets in 2009 anthology. This annual anthology publishes fifty poems from emerging writers around the country.

 

2009 Writing Award Winners

The Department of English recently announced the 2009 Writing Award winners, and according to Professor David Kirby, "The competition was ferocious this year." Five undergraduates and four graduates were recognized with writing awards; in addition, five graduates won Kingsbury Fellowships. Here is the complete list of winners:

Undergraduate Writing Awards

Graduate Writing Awards

Student Profiles

Anne Barngrover is finishing up her first year in the MFA Creative Writing program, specializing in Fiction, and also currently teaches two First-Year Composition courses. She is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio and graduated in 2008 from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, where she received a B.A. in English Creative Writing. So far Anne's favorite things about transitioning from the Midwest to a city "further south than the Deep South" include: Spanish moss, Whataburger, sinkholes, and chasing lizards.

Meaghan Brown is a first year P.h.D student in English Literature at Florida State University, currently studying with the History of Text Technologies program (HoTT). She did her undergraduate work at Oberlin College, where she graduated with Honors in History for a thesis on the translation history of Ovid in early modern England. She received her Masters in Information Studies in 2008 from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently working on several projects involving the rhetoric of paratexts in early modern printed books.

Kevin Carr is a third-year Ph.D student, from Boston MA, and a research assistant working on the electronic edition of The Collected Works of Ben Jonson, which is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Kevin's field of study is Renaissance Literature, and he is particularly interested in the intersection of art, science and philosophy in 17th century England. He received a B.A in Drama from Ithaca College, and an M.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts-Boston. In his "former life," he spent several years working in arts management in Boston before deciding to return to graduate school. Kevin has a forthcoming article in Renaissance Papers (2009) entitled: "What thing thou art, thus double formed": Naming, Knowledge and Materialism in Paradise Lost." He is a huge Boston sports fan, and has acted in and directed several theatrical productions.

Matthew Davis is a second-year Ph.D. student in Rhetoric and Composition and a teaching assistant in the First-Year Composition program. Matt graduated from the University of Kansas with a B.A. in English and German and from North Carolina State University with an M.A. in English with a focus on 19th and 20th Century American Literature. He has had the pleasure of calling Oklahoma, Ontario, Michigan, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, and Germany home for various lengths of time and is happy to add Florida to the list. Since the crossover from literature, Matt has discovered research interests in classroom pedagogy & pedagogical theory, the interface of composition and literature, collaborative learning & writing, technology and composition, and literacy studies. Matt spends his free time traveling, playing hockey, soccer, and basketball, and enjoying German language and culture. Matt will present "Ecologies and Assemblages: Theorizations of Literacy" at the 2010 CCCC.

Sarah Grieve is a second year MFA student in poetry. She earned her BA (2005) and MA (2007) in literature from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where she also played NCAA basketball. Sarah's poetry has appeared in Tiger's Eye and The Sow's Ear Review. Last year she presented conference papers at SAMLA and MLA. Sarah is the assistant poetry editor at the Southeast Review and will serve as assistant to the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the fall.

Josh McCall is a first year M.F.A. student in Creative Writing, and a teaching assistant in the First-Year Composition program. Josh completed his B.A. in philosophy at the University of Georgia in 1997. He published his first book, The Blackout Gang, a young adult novel, in 2006. He's recently finished his second Y.A. novel, and is interested in continuing his work in both literary and commercial fiction.
 

Kara Taczak is a third-year Ph.D. student in Rhetoric and Composition, a teaching assistant in the First-Year Composition program, and CCC editorial assistant. Kara graduated from Walsh University with a M.A. in Education and from Mount Union College with a B.A. in Creative Writing. Kara has previously taught at the University of Akron, Malone College, and Walsh University. Her research interests and dissertation will focus on transfer in the First-Year Composition classroom, specifically looking at reflection's role in transfer. Kara has been published in Teaching English in a Two-Year College and has presented at conferences such as CCCC, WSRL, Writing Across the Borders and The Purpose(s) of English: A Conference on the Future of English Studies

Sarah Unruh is a second-year Ph.D. student in Literature, and a teaching assistant in the First-Year Composition program. Sarah graduated from the University of Bristol (UK) with a M.A. in Romanticism and from Flagler College with a B.A. in English. In March 2009 she presented her paper "Emergent Cemetery Culture and Dark Ecology in Liber Amoris" at the Nineteenth Century Association's Conference on the Green Nineteenth Century. Sarah's dissertation will focus on Romanticism and lead her into the territories of Decomposition, Dark Ecology, and Necromanticism. When not digging up information on those topics she can probably be found testing the limits of container gardening or trying out new recipes in the kitchen with her husband.