News and Events
Genevieve West's Zora Neale Hurston collection makes The Guardian's Best Books of 2020 list
12/8/20
"Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick," the critically acclaimed collection of Zora Neale Hurston works posthumously gathered, edited and published by TWU ESFL professor and chair Genevieve West, PhD, has been selected for The Guardian's best books of 2020 list. Naoise Dolan, author of "Exciting Times," chose the book for its "fluid, polymathic voice."
Associate professor Gray Scott nominated for 2021 Pushcart Prize
12/8/20
Graham "Gray" Scott, PhD, associate professor of English at TWU, has been nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize. His short story, ‘A Parable of Things that Crawl and Fly’, was co-authored by Wallace Cleaves and appears in Pulp Literature's 25th issue.
The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is one of the most honored literary projects in America.
Paranormal frequencies: TWU graduate investigates spooky sounds in media
12/7/20
By merging her passion for music, writing, rhetoric and film, TWU graduate student Regan Dianne Campbell developed an extremely unique area of research: Sonic rhetoric and the use of sounds and music in horror movies and TV shows.
In Memoriam: Dr. Mary Turner S. Kobler (1930-2020)
12/2/20
Former ESFL faculty member Dr. Mary Turner S. Kobler passed away Friday, Nov. 27. Dr. Kobler taught for many years at TWU and retired in 1996. Because of the pandemic, Dr. Kobler's family is not planning a memorial at this time. She is survived by her daughters, Laura and Linda, who also works at TWU. Visit Dr. Kobler's obituary page to read her full bio or share a memory in the guest book.
To make a donation in memory of Dr. Kobler, please visit the League of Women Voters website.
Johnathan Smilges wins Coalition of Feminist Scholars dissertation award
11/24/20
Assistant professor Johnathan Smilges' dissertation, "Queer Silence: Rhetorics of Resistance," recently won the Presidents Dissertation Award from the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, the premier organization of feminist rhetoricians. The award is presented biennially to the "doctoral dissertation that makes an outstanding contribution to our understanding of feminist histories, theories, and pedagogies of rhetoric and composition.” One judge wrote the following of Smilges’s project:
“Smilges’s work savvily moves between theory and analysis, offering up important insights in the ways that silences work in queer and trans rhetorics. Their chapter on ex-gays is compassionate, smart, aware of its limitations, and deftly ties together queer theory and disability theory.”