Students wait to hear their names called at the English Department Awards Night on Thursday, April 18th in the Lincoln Room of the Union.

Each spring, the English Department awards $20,000 in scholarships and fellowships for our graduate and undergraduate students. We are pleased to announce the following students were awarded English scholarships this spring for the 2022–2023 academic year.

College of Arts and Sciences Awards

Emma Gilliland won the College of Arts and Sciences Scholar of the Year Award

Claire Koechle was selected as the College of Arts and Sciences Lincoln Laureate nominee

Jack Sellers won the College of Arts and Sciences Honorary Award in Humanities for this year

Undergraduate Scholarship and Award Winners

John and Barbara Blackburn Scholarship – Payton Brodie

Dr. Paul Blackford British Literature Scholarship – Nicholas Rush

Dr. John Castle Memorial Scholarship – Roberto Jaramillo

Dr. Olive Fite American Literature Scholarship – Natoya Raymond

Dr. Irving Garwood Shakespearean Scholarship: Taylor Holan

Robert L. Hodges English Education Scholarships – Elijah Adams, Keagen Beckner, Grace McGill; & Brett Metternich.

The Sig, Jeanette and Dean Johnson Scholarship in English – Jamariah White

Lila S Linder English I – Sam Adcock

Lila S Linder English II – Elijah Adams

The Karen B. Mann Essay Award – Claire Koechle

Nai-Tung Ting and Lee Hsia Ting English Scholarship – Claire Koechle

Beth M. Stiffler Memorial Scholarship – Maya Steinke

English Department Scholar of the Year – Taylor Holan

Writing Awards

Bruce H. Leland Essay Contest Winners

English 100, Introduction to Writing – 1st Place, Destinee Harris; 2nd Place, Giselle Diaz; 3rd Place, Jordan Draughan; Honorable Mention, Laurence Williams.

English 180, College Writing I – 1st Place, Avery Weaver; 2nd Place, Finley Westover; 3rd Place, Jerreia James; Honorable Mention, Anne Chalker.

English 280, College Writing II – 1st Place, Evelyn Fetzer; 2nd Place, Hannah Stevenson; 3rd Place, Marlon Moses; Honorable Mention, Tionne Hanley.

GH 101 General Honors – 1st Place, Julietta Marini; 2nd Place, Rishabh Arya; 3rd Place, Natalie Gibson.

Creative Writing Awards

Lois C. Bruner Creative Nonfiction Awards – 1st Place, Karol Sheese; 2nd Place, Gerry Garcia Campos; 3rd Place, Grace McGill.

Cordell Larner Award in Fiction – 1st Place, Abigail Jones; 2nd Place, Cole Miller ; 3rd Place, Karissa Geisinger.

Cordell Larner Award in Poetry – 1st Place, Khloe Wiegers; 2nd Place, Ajayla Ries-Ennells; 3rd Place, Sophia Best.

Graduate Scholarship, Fellowship, and Award Winners

Ron & Leslie Walker Graduate Fellowship – Maram Alsufyan

Syndy M. Conger Essay Award – Abigail Heinecke & Connor Sullivan.

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award – Abigail Heinecke.

Alfred J Lindsey Memorial Scholarship – Chris Perez.

C. John Mahoney English Graduate Fellowship – Maram Alsufyan & Marie Watson.

Announcements

Current Students

Grace McGill was re-elected President of Sigma Tau Delta and presented on “The Future is Now” Roundtable at the NCTE conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Jael Henning – Elected co-vice president of Sigma Tau Delta

Taylor Holan – Elected Social Media Manager of Sigma Tau Delta

Carter Myers – Elected Treasurer of Sigma Tau Delta.

Hannah Puccini attended the NCTE Annual Convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Natoya Raymond – Elected Public Relations manager for Sigma Tau Delta

Ajayla Ries-Ennells – Elected co-vice president of Sigma Tau Delta

Kaitlyn Rockwell – Elected Secretary of Sigma Tau Delta.

Maya Steinke attended the NCTE Annual Convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Alumni

Nick Apke (B.A. 2011) accepted a position as an Instructional Designer at Briljent.

Ayana Contreras (B.A. 2006) accepted the position of Assistant General Manager of Radio, at Rocky Mountain Public Media, running daily operations and strategy for KUVO Jazz and 104.7 The Drop in Denver.

Rebecca Gonner (B.A. 2017) accepted a position as a technical writer with CACI International.

Cass Litle (M.A. 2011) accepted a position as a Writing Specialist at East Central College in Union Missouri.

Emily Litle (M.A. 2014) accepted a position at the University of Missouri at Saint Louis as a Learning Analytics Coordinator for their Center for Teaching and Learning.

Raymond Norris (M.A 2018) was accepted to the doctoral program in English at Texas A&M where he will be fully funded with a fellowship.

Meghan O’Toole (M.A. 2021) accepted a position as the Assistant Director of Content and Storytelling at Lake Forest College.

Darrin Ross (B.A. 2022) attended the NCTE Annual Convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Zack Short (M.A. 2006) accepted a full-time faculty position as an Instructor of English at Southeastern Community College in Iowa.

Samantha Smith (B.A. 2023) accepted a position teaching English at Rochester High School in Illinois.

Anne Vantieghem (M.A. 2023) presented her paper “How to Use Classics with a Modern Lens for the Twenty-First Century Student” at the NCTE Annual Convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Faculty

David Banash published “The Long History of Collage: From Early Modern Commonplace Books to Twenty-First-Century Experimental Writing” in Subversion and Conformity in Literary Collage (Routledge 2024). 

Ashley Beardsley presented “Open Work, Open Play: Stories of Resisting Exclusive Digital Media” and “Amplifying Student Voices in Our Stories about Generative Artificial Intelligence” at the 7C Ad Hoc Committee on AI at the Computers & Writing conference in Fort Worth, TX. June 2024. She is moving from Associate Editor to the Disputation Section Co-Editor for Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. She took on a new role as an Associate Editor for the Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2023. She published “‘You Have Time and You Should Cook, Tonight’”: Erasing Feminized Labor on 30-Minute Meals.” Peitho, vol. 26, no. 2, Winter 2024, and her chapter “‘Calling All Bakers, Chefs, Home Bakers & Cooks’: Digital Food Activism and Bake Sales as Social Activist Rhetoric” is forthcoming in the book Practicing Digital Activisms.

Rebekah Buchanan was chair and presenter at “Making Rural Connections: Building Rural Literacies, Creating Communities, and Cultivating Dialogue,” a Roundtable at the NCTE Annual Convention in Columbus, Ohio. Nov. 2023. She was also the advisor for student Grace McGill’s presentation on the “The Future is Now” Roundtable at NCTE, and she brought six undergraduate and graduate students to present and attend this year’s NCTE conference. She presented “Young Adult Reads and Cannabis Culture: Smoke and Prince of Pot” at the PCA Annual Conference in Chicago, in Mar. 2024, and she founded the Cannabis and Culture Area, a first of its kind for a national academic association, and she is now serving as the area Chair for Cannabis and Popular Culture Area of PCA. She also presented “Women in Punk” at the Punk Scholars Network Conference in Chicago, Aug. 2023. She co-founded The Rural Assembly on English Literacy and Language Education (TRAELLE) and currently serves as its vice president. She won a competitive grant to become a member of the 2024 Cohort of This Story Matters Teacher Corps. She continues to write book reviews for Library Journal and School Library Journal and she hosts the New Books Network: Popular Culture podcast channel.

Merrill Cole was elected WIU Chapter President of the UPI faculty union. His poem “Meditation with Medieval Plague Paintings” was published in New York Quarterly in June.

Roberta Di Carmine led a study-abroad course in film studies, “Exploring Italy Through Film” for undergraduate and graduate students, spending ten days in Italy exploring the culture of Italian cinema. She was also invited to speak at both the Multicultural Center and Veterans Resource Center, leading a discussion of the documentary film Lioness, on March 26, 2024.

Everett Hamner presented “Making End-Times New: Climate Lit & Film as Contemporary Mythology,” for the Sacred Texts, Theory, and Theological Construction Unit at the American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, 2023. He was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Science and Literature Forum and the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment for the Modern Language Association. He also organized the 6th Annual Get Lit event at Western’s Quad Cities Campus.

David Johnson co-authored “Embodying Antiracist Pedagogy: Why Is It So Difficult?” for the Journal of Teaching Writing, Volume 37, Issue 1, (2023).

Yekaterina Kozhukhova published “How Coyote Borrowed the Devil’s Wings” in Dreamforge: A Magazine of Science & Fantasy Fiction. She also designed and taught an honors course on horror fiction and the role of horror in contemporary culture.

Barbara Lawhorn published “Recompense” in Zaum Magazine (Issue 28); “Ember” in The Bangalore Review (March 2024); “Field Corn,” in Miracle Monocle (Spring 2023); “God Send,” in the Belmont Story Review (Fall 2023); “Switchback,” in BigCityLit (Summer 2023); “Kitchen Song” in Inkwell (Summer 2023); and “Using My Hands” in the Santa Clara Review. (Vol. 110, Issue 02). Her short story collection Born Again was a semifinalist for the Eulidia Award. She earned a graduate certificate in Mindfulness for Educators from Antioch University, and she now organizes Midweek Mindfulness & Muffins (Fall) & Monthly Mindfulness & Muffins (spring) for the department. She hosts a pack-a-lunch/poetry for dessert “Garden Party” with librarian, Michelle Holschuh Simmons and also hosted an open mic at the Western Illinois Museum with Sue Scott and Jan Welch in April.

Dan Malachuk published his new book Literature for a Society of Equals (Routledge, 2024). He also published “Sympathy and Pride in George Eliot’s Fiction” in Nineteenth-Century Literature 79.1 (June 2024).

Amy Mossman spent three weeks as a visiting professor at Le Mans University in Le Mans, France where she gave research talks, sat in on classes, met with students and faculty, and spoke to a group of students about the new student exchange partnership Western has with Le Mans University. In January 2024, Amy Mossman was selected to participate in the MLA’s competitive Reimagining Humanities Coursework for Career Readiness professional development workshop series for spring 2024. The goal of the seminar, which is funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, is to support faculty members and program leaders in languages and literatures at small and mid-size institutions that are developing initiatives in undergraduate career preparation.

Mark Mossman was promoted to the position of Interim Provost. He presented “Revamping the Onboarding Process: Preparing Students for Higher Learning” at the  Higher Learning Commission Annual Convention, on April 16, 2024, in Chicago.

Richard Ness published “Projectile Dysfunctions: Influences On and Of Bergman’s Persona”. In A Companion to Ingmar Bergman (Wiley-Blackwell) and “Music for Crime Films, Film Noir, and Thrillers,” in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World (Bloomsbury). He contributed program notes for this year’s Columbus Moving Picture Show festival, in Columbus, Ohio.

A.J. Rocca presented “The Horde Enters Ukraine: Rhetorical Use of ‘Orcs’ in the Russo-Ukrainian War” at The Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Nov. 2023. He published several short stories, including: “The Devil Went Down to the Subway” in Playlist of the Damned“; “Adventure Capital” in 99 Fleeting Fantasies; “And One Day Soon Your Many Worlds” in Short Edition; “To Catch the Light Off Other Stars” in Sci Phi Journal. His article “Samuel R. Delany as Genre Flaneur: Encountering Science Fiction in Dhalgren” was published in Science Fiction Studies. His feature Article: “John Milton the Space Poet: Early Traces of Science Fiction in Paradise Lost” was published in Reactor. His feature story, “‘Not in our Name’: Chicago’s Jewish Left Demands a Ceasefire in Gaza” was published in The Chicago Reader.

Alisha White brought three current undergraduates, one current graduate student, and two alumni to the NCTE conference, where she also gave two presentations: “‘I Talk Like a River’: Connecting Place and Identity in Picturebooks and YA” for the Making Rural Connections Roundtable and “Visual Eco-literacies: Pivoting from Climate Doom to Inspiring Climate Possibilities” for the roundtable session for ELATE Commission on Climate Justice at the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Columbus, Ohio. She presented “Let’s Wear It Tomorrow: Concert Tee Shirts as Representations of Affinity Spaces” at the National Popular Culture Association in Chicago. As a co-author, she published “Walking the In-Between: Convening Time and Space for our Entangled Selves” in Pedagogical Propositions: Playful Walking with A/R/Tography [Book 2] (InSEA) and “Do Not Enter: Walking and Rolling the Wrong Way up the Down Ramp” in Pedagogical Propositions: Playful Walking with A/r/tography [Book 1].

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