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.

Undergraduate Scholarship and Award Winners

Scholar of the Year – Jael Henning

Dr. Paul Blackford British Literature Scholarship – Lydia Quattrochi and McKenna Schillinger

Dr. Olive Fite American Literature Scholarship – Audrey Lamb

Robert L. Hodges English Education Scholarships – Elijah Adams, Keagan Beckner, Bridgette Evans, and Alyssa Iverson.

Dr. Irving Garwood Shakespearean Scholarship – Eli Techtiel

Karen B. Mann Essay Award – Ainsley Eskridge

Sig. Jeannette & Dean Johnson Scholarship – Heather Powell

Lila S. Linder English Scholarship – Elijah Adams and Stephanie Bendeck-Roman

Wanninger Family Scholarship – Samantha Adcock

Beth M. Stiffler Memorial Scholarship – Emma Henderson

College of Arts and Sciences Honorary Recognition Award for the Humanities – Taylor Holan.

Professor of Creative Writing Barb Lawhorn awards the Creative Writing Winners

Writing Awards

Bruce H. Leland Essay Contest Winners

English 100, Introduction to Writing – 1st Place, Vicente Jesus Custodio; 2nd Place, Katie Litkowiak ; 3rd Place, Richardlyne Francois.

English 180, College Writing I – 1st Place, Madison Davis; 2nd Place, Daniel Rivera; 3rd Place, Evangelos Dounoulis.

English 280, College Writing II – 1st Place, Jerreia L. James ; 2nd Place, Francesca Gabrielle Abrea Magalang; 3rd Place, Jillian Alfred.

GH 101 General Honors – 1st Place, Mira Median-Dixon; 2nd Place, Ariel Riley Bernard; 3rd Place, Addison Fitzgerald.

Creative Writing Awards

Lois C. Bruner Creative Nonfiction Awards – 1st Place, Marston Harroun; 2nd Place, Carter Myers; 3rd Place, McKenna Schillinger.

Cordell Larner Award in Poetry – 1st Place, Anali Mendoza; 2nd Place, Carter Myers; 3rd Place, Heather Van Fleet.

Cordell Larner Award in Fiction – 1st Place, Gerardo Garcia Campos; 2nd Place, Emma Henderson; 3rd Place Steven Lung.

Graduate Scholarship, Fellowship, and Award Winners

Ron & Leslie Walker Graduate Fellowshi – Blake Traylor.

Syndy M. Conger Essay Award – Joshua Stinson.

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award – Maram Alsufyan.

C. John Mahoney English Graduate Fellowship – Lana Garnica.

John Merrett Scholarship in English Literature – Emma Cortelyou

Nai-Tung Ting and Lee Hsia Ting English Scholarship – Maggie Talbott

Richard T. Thornberry Scholarship in English – Maggie Talbott

Nai-Tung Ting and Lee Hsia Ting English Scholarship – Marie Watson

Announcements

Current Students

Emma Cortelyou presented her paper “‘It’s Me, Hi’: A Transmedial Exploration of Taylor Swift’s Dichotomous Personas” on the “Taylor Swift and Swiftie Studies” panel at the Popular Culture/American Culture Association regional conference in Albuquerque, NM.

Jailene Gonzalez won The Hispanic Cultural Review’s 2024-2025 literary and photographic contest with her essay “New Horizons,” inspired by her father’s journey from Cuba to America when he was 12 years old. Her essay will be published later this year.

Jael Henning attended the NCTE conference in Boston. She won Department Scholar of the Year and was elected Treasurer of Sigma Tau Delta.

Taylor Holan completed an internship in the Advancement & Alumni Relations office where she wrote press releases about new scholarships.

Carter Myers attended the NCTE conference in Boston, and he was elected President of Sigma Tau Delta.

Hannah Puccini accepted a position teaching English at Central High School in Camp Point, IL. She attended the NCTE conference in Boston, and she is the owner the Day Drinks coffee truck, so look for her around Macomb this summer.

Ajayla Ries-Ennells attended the NCTE conference in Boston.

Maya Steinke attended the NCTE conference in Boston.

Blake Taylor published his poems “Report from an Island on Fire” and “Pair of Hands Held in Imperfect Prayer” in The Polyglot, Issue 13. He presented his paper “Everybody Bleeds Here: Community and Monstrosity in Junji Ito’s Shirosuna” at the Popular Culture Association national conference in New Orleans.

Joshua Stinson won the College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Student Award.

Alumni

Emma Bryan (B.A. 2025) Emma Bryan accepted a position as a grant writer for the City of Peoria.

Annette Glotfelty (B.A. 2008) earned her Ph.D. in cognition and neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas, and she currently holds a position at UT Dallas as a postdoctoral researcher.

Claire Koechle (B. A. 2024) taught English at Macomb High School for the 2024-2025 school year. She has been accepted to the University of Missouri Law Law School with a full scholarship.

Kristin Williams (B. A. 2010) accepted a position as the Upper School Counselor at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago.

Faculty

David Banash was invited to present his paper “Plotting Change: Situating Steve Tomasula in the Long History of the Novel” as a keynote address at the conference Steve Tomaula: The Art of Representation in Paris.

Ashley Beardsley won the College of Arts and Sciences Teaching with Technology Award.

Rebekah Buchanan received the Provost’s Award for excellence in Teaching. She was a member of the NCTE This Story Matters Teacher Corp and published nine rationales with NCTE. She published seven book review in School Library Journal and ten book reviews in Library journal. Her article “It’s Kind of Like a Comfort Blanket: Adult Readers and the Impact of Their Adolescent Reading Experiences with Harry Potter” was published by Study & Scrutiny: Research on Young Adult Literature. She presented “Inviting Students to the Classroom in a Writing Methods Course” at the ELATE Roundtable for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Conference in Boston and “Punk Art as Resistance: Feminist Art Activism in Punk Scenes” at the Punk Scholars Network (PSN) US and Canada Conference in Chicago. She is serving as the Vice-President of NCTE’s TRAELLE (The Rural Assembly on English Language and Literacy Education).

Merrill Cole served as the chapter president for Western’s faculty union, the University Professionals of Illinois (UPI). His poem “The Point of Seeing” appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal (Winter 2024) and the journal nominated the poem for a Pushcart Prize. His poem the “Uncanny Canary” was published in eMerge in January.

Roberta Di Carmine won the College of Arts and Sciences Internationalizing the Campus award for the second time. She continues her research for a book on cannibalism in cinema, and this summer she will travel to Australia.

Everett Hamner’s essay “Remembering the Disappeared: Science Fiction Film in Post-dictatorship Argentina,” was reprinted in Science Fiction Against the Margins. He served as organizer and moderator for three panels at the national MLA conference in New Orleans: “New Cyborg Manifestos and Natureculture Stories: The Next Forty Years,” ASLE roundtable featuring a public conversation with Donna Haraway; “Ursula K. Le Guin: A Conversation with Charlie Jane Anders and Arwen Curry”; and a follow-up scholarly roundtable session, Science and Literature Forum“Climate Changed,” panel presentation at Upper Mississippi River Conference, Moline, IL (October 2024)

Barbara Lawhorn published the short stories “That Imaginary Ocean” in Lone Mountain Literary Review; “Premeditation” on Lunch Ticket; and “Born Again” appeared in Another Chicago Magazine. Her short fiction, “Screwing Up the Nerve” is forthcoming in Sugared Water, and her creative nonfiction, “Stab Wounds and Scar Tissue” is forthcoming in El Portal. She is at work on a short story collection entitled The Difference Between Girls and Women and recently resumed her intense training regimen to reclaim, for the fourth year running, Third Place (in her age group) at the Belleville Chili Chase! She will attend a Women Writing for Change retreat in Indiana with her best friend from graduate school, a poet and bookbinder rooted in Fayetteville, AR. They are collaborating on a series of workshops combining creative writing and book arts in order to give voice to the rich immigrant experience in Northwest Arkansas. She will also be teaching at the Western Writers camp with Dr. Rebekah Buchanan in June.

Dan Malachuk published articles and reviews, including “Sympathy and Pride in George Eliot’s Fiction,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 79.1; “Revisiting the Urban Home: A Critical Approach” (with Ulrike Gerhard), Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. His reviews included Political Liberalism and the Rise of American Romanticism for Transatlantica and Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently.

Richard Ness presented “The Influence of Anxiety: Bergmaan’s Lasting Impact” as part of the “Where Does Bergman Studies Go from Here?” roundtable at the Society for Cinema Studies annual conference in Chicago. He wrote the program notes on Frank Capra’s The Power of the Press and will be introducing the film at the upcoming Columbus Moving Picture Show film festival in Ohio. This year, he retires from the university after 25 years of teaching film studies for the departments of Broadcasting and English.

William Thompson read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, meeting his goal of reading at least one hugely long modernist novel this year.

Pat Young, the longest serving professor of English in the department, passed away March 27th. She taught in the department for 36 years.

Alicia White published her poem “A Symphony of Distractions” in Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture. She presented in the roundtables “Middle and Secondary ELA teachers bringing Heart and the Arts into Rural Classrooms. Making Rural Connections” and “Drawing with Teachers: Reflections for Hope and Humanity” at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Boston.