News | Faculty Archives
Assistant Professor Frances Tran earns Career Enhancement Fellowship
Tran was selected as a fellow based on her proposal for a manuscript project, “Sensory Acts: On the Spectacle of Asian Racialization and the Politics of Futurism.”
Karen Laughlin: friend, colleague, leader, mentor: Karen Laughlin came to FSU in 1982 and held a joint appointment in English and Humanities for several years. She held a position as associate professor of English, and she spent her entire professional career at FSU. For the past 17 years, she led the Division of Undergraduate Studies.
Faculty members laud new FSU Library databases: The Black Abolitionist Papers database and the Black Thought and Culture database became available at the beginning of 2021, and English professors look forward to accessing the archives for research and teaching.
Pablo Maurette reflects on teaching, research, and recent accomplishments with his scholarship: Maurette's May 2020 essay "Seeing the Tartars" was named Best of 2020 by an online publication. Since joining the English department faculty in the fall of 2019, Maurette's students and colleagues have inspired his teaching and continuing research.
Carla Della Gatta and Aaron C. Thomas work together to add diverse resources to library: Carla Della Gatta and Aaron C. Thomas, assistant professors in English and Theatre, respectively, collaborated on applying for and receiving a Bradley Library Grant to to provide more materials in queer theatre and theory to the library.
David Johnson named 2020-21 Fulbright Scholar, will conduct his research and teach at KU Leuven: Johnson's research in Belgium mainly will focus on Flemish poet Jacob van Maerlant and his pieces that involved the “Matter of Britain.” The resulting monograph will be aimed at answering a number of questions about Jacob van Maerlant’s Arthur, especially, who was King Arthur to Jacob van Maerlant?
Tarez Samra Graban serves as consultant for News Nation broadcast, aimed at sharpening reception: Graban has led a training session for the network’s staff, discussing diversity, equity, and inclusion/bias. Her role also involved consulting on rehearsals and giving input on scripts for the show.
Ravi Howard receives 2020-21 McKnight Junior Faculty Fellowship for current research project: Howard will use the year-long sabbatical to further research the role of African-American U.S. Army soldiers in the Battle of Blakeley, the last engagement of the Civil War, for his next novel.
Maxine Montgomery named to lead university's Task Force on Anti-Racism, Equality & Inclusion: FSU President John Thrasher recently announced the creation of the President's Task Force on Anti-Racism, Equality & Inclusion for the 2020-21 academic year, and he named Montgomery to chair a three-person executive committee that leads the task force.
Ned Stuckey-French receives award posthumously from the Association of University Presses: He was named the inaugural Stand UP Award honoree, and a short video celebrated his achievements during the Association’s virtual 2020 Annual Meeting.
Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday reflects on her research: Funded by a grant from the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the assistant professor in the Rhetoric and Composition Program has teamed up with two researchers to study how reflection is addressed in first-year writing classes.
Frances Tran cultivates diversity, creates dialogue for English department students, faculty members: She and department colleague Lindsey Eckert have developed the Diversity Reading Initiative, which is aimed at diversifying the material, conversation, and scholarship covered by the English department.
English professors share in success and strength of university-wide digital humanities projects: Tarez Samra Graban and Judith Pascoe have worked together since the fall of 2018 with researchers at FSU and outside institutions on FSU's Demos Project for Studies in the Data Humanities, and they will join FSU digital humanities librarian Sarah Stanley's NEH grant-funded team to coordinate and host a three-day workshop in the fall of 2020.
Samuel Beckett presented on the screen and stage: Professor Stan Gontarski's "Beckett Short Films" gives life to the playwright's interest in hauntings and love lost. He also offers a local theater company personal insights for its presentation of "Endgame."
Kathleen Yancey wins NCTE's James R. Squire Award for "unparalleled" educational career: The National Council of Teachers of English recognized the English professor for the "profession-wide influence, both in this country and around the world" Yancey has had on the discipline.
Virgil Suárez delivered powerful reading of poetry at FSU Libraries' 2019 Immigration Symposium: The FSU English professor read selections from his forthcoming publication The Painted Bunting’s Last Molt, which will be released in March 2020.
Associate Professor Michael Neal wins a University Undergraduate Teaching Award: Associate Professor Michael Neal won a University Undergraduate Teaching Award for the academic year of 2018-19, an honor he calls "gratifying but also humbling."
Robert Stilling adds MLA honorable mention award to MSA First Book Prize for Beginning at the End: The Modern Language Association and the Modernist Studies Association both touted the significance of his book "Beginning at the End: Decadence, Modernism, and Postcolonial Poetry."
Gary Taylor's article memorializing English major published in 2019 edition of Best American Essays: Two days after English major Maura Binkley was killed in a Tallahassee shooting, Professor Gary Taylor expressed his grief on paper. The essay gained a wide readership online, and the editors for Best American Essays chose it for inclusions in this year's collection.
Professors' friendship inspires scholarly alliance: University of Brasilia, Brazil Professor Marcus Mota reflects on his teaching experiences at FSU and his work with English Professor Stan Gontarki that led to Mota's book Dramatugias. Conceitos, Exercícios e Análises, which is based on his course notebooks.
Perry Howell wins Fulbright Lecturer Award to teach in Japan for the 2019-20 academic year: Howell will teach courses in American literature, history, and culture through a media studies lens at Yokohama National University and Tokai University. His grant proposal was entitled “Public Speaking and the American Publics.”
Judith Pascoe's extensive academic experiences shape the support she provides for her students: George Mills Harper Professor of English Judith Pascoe empowers students to take charge of their academic and career paths and to reimagine the opportunities beyond the classroom.
Assistant Professor John Ribó flips the switch: Ribó, assistant professor in the English department at Florida State University, has academic interests in Latinx, Caribbean, queer, border, cultural, and critical race studies that stem from personal experience, curiosity itself, and a love of literature, music, and film. He takes these interests and helps students explore them in class, around campus, and across Tallahassee, sharing an active and inquisitive approach to teaching.
Dennis Moore retires from his "academic home": Dennis Moore is not just retiring from Florida State University after 28 years of teaching, mentoring, research, and service to the scholarly community at large. He is leaving the Department of English, the place during those nearly three decades that he says “has been an academic home, indeed, my fun home. Full stop.”
Professor Diane Roberts wins alumni writing award, scores ride in homecoming parade: When a writer wins an award, the honoree usually receives a certificate or a plaque, maybe even gets the opportunity to give a short thank-you speech in front of colleagues. For her most recent honor, Florida State University English Professor Diane Roberts took a more celebratory route—literally.
Kathleen Yancey wins 2018 Exemplar Award for Composition Studies: Professor Kathleen Yancey’s achievement is one she never expected nor sought to win: the 2018 Conference on College Composition and Communication Exemplar Award.
Professor Andrew Epstein’s book Attention Equals Life garners national honor: His publication has been named as one of the Outstanding Academic Titles for 2017.
Assistant Professor Alisha Gaines investigates “empathetic racial impersonation” in Black for a Day: She places her first book-length publication high on her list for career achievements.
David Kirby adds a lifetime Achievement Award to his list of honors: David Kirby has won a couple of Pushcart Prizes, back-to-back Florida Book Awards, and a finalist position for a National Book Award, in addition to a Guggenheim Fellowship and the title of Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English. His most recent honor takes all of that recognition and wraps up everything into one package.
Kathleen Yancey, Liane Robertson, and Kara Taczak win a second award for Writing across Contexts: Professor Kathleen Yancey and her co-authors Liane Robertson and Kara Taczak recently won their second major award for Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing when the Council of Writing Program Administrators named the publication as its Best Book on Writing Program Administration for 2014-15.
Professor Robert Olen Butler's archives bound for Beinecke Library: He has a lifelong writing career and three-plus decades of teaching, skillfully juggling both. He has earned acclaim and major awards for his storytelling, and Butler has guided hundreds of students through their own creative process.
Jimmy Kimbrell wins National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Fellowships: As 2016 neared its end, English Professor Jimmy Kimbrell found out he will have additional time to work on his newest collection of poetry, Flea Trap.
Professor Meegan Kennedy wins National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship: She received a big boost from the NEH, and because of that support she soon will be able to resume her research full time into some of the little things in life. Very little things.
Professor Erin Belieu wins Writers for Writers Award for her work with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts: Her goal during VIDA's summer 2009 genesis, an objective that co-founders Cate Marvin and Ann Townsend shared with Belieu, was to address and challenge gender bias in publishing.