News and Events
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.”
In Memoriam: Dr. Ninfa Nik (1946-2020)
11/24/20
Former faculty member Dr. Ninfa Nik was born on December 19, 1946 and passed away on November 13, 2020. She taught Spanish and French for the TWU Department of English, Speech and Foreign Languages, and she will be greatly missed. She is under the care of Fairhaven Memorial Services. Because of the pandemic, no public service is planned at this time.
To share a message in memory of Dr. Nik, please visit her Mission Viejo obituary page.
Doctoral candidate and alumna Angela Johnson receives Modern Language Association fellowship
11/11/20
TWU ESFL doctoral student Angela Johnson has been named a Modern Language Association (MLA) bibliography fellow. She will serve until 2022.
Bibliography fellows work with approximately 100 field bibliographers, from all parts of the world, who cover subject areas, journals and languages that cannot be indexed in the New York office. Each spring, five to ten fellowships are awarded to field bibliographers who, on completion of their fellowships, receive a stipend of $500 and a certificate during the awards ceremony at the MLA convention.
Johnson earned both her MLA and MA at Texas Woman's University and currently works as a school librarian.
Write Site hosts annual North Texas Writing Center Association Conference
10/19/20
The TWU Write Site hosted the annual North Texas Writing Center Association Conference, which was held fully online this year due to COVID. The event was organized by Write Site Tutor Coordinator Jennifer Phillips-Denny, PhD, and all presenters were TWU faculty, staff or students. The North Texas Writing Centers Association is a subset of the South Central Writing Centers Association, which includes member schools from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Jackie Hoermann-Elliott, PhD, gave the key-note presentation, "Under (Good) Pressure: The Diastolic Effects of Writing Center Work on Tutors' Career Trajectories." Her presentation wove professional anecdotes into relevant research findings to argue that the writing center serves as an important site for fostering workplace readiness in tutors, particularly for those interested in careers in editing and publishing.
Two ESFL graduate students were honored with awards during the event. Daniel Stefanelli and Desiree Thorpe won the Mary Nell Kivikko Excellence in Scholarship Award for their paper, "(Re)imagining Writing Centers: Strategies for Multimodal Tutoring." The Mary Nell Kivikko Excellence in Scholarship Award is designed to recognize outstanding scholarship in writing center theory and practice. They received an honorarium and presented their findings at the conference.
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