[The Spring issue of English Matters will feature the latest faculty books]
Staff colleague Judy LeRoux, our Academic Counseling Services Coordinator for the Creative Writing Program, has recently retired. The English Department is in debt to Judy for her dedication and years of service to the Creative Writing program, during which she advised hundreds of undergraduate and MFA students; assisted several Creative Writing Program directors; coordinated course scheduling, program events, and the annual MFA graduation ceremony; and helped nurture a sense of community and belonging for faculty and students.
Turning to news of career advancements, English Matters is excited to announce the promotions of Charles LaPorte to the rank of Full Professor, Michelle Liu to the rank of Full Teaching Professor, and James (Rush) Daniel to the rank of Associate Teaching Professor. These are well-deserved accomplishments, preceded by decades of dedicated hard work. Congratulations Charles, Michelle, and Rush, and thank you for your many contributions to and beyond the English department.
Getting promoted is not just hard work for those moving up in rank. We also thank our colleagues who generously and expertly served on promotion committees: Juliet Shields and Bill Streitberger (For Dr. LaPorte); Kimberlee Gillis-Bridges and Habiba Ibrahim (for Dr. Liu); and Carrie Matthews and Gillian Harkins (for Dr. Daniel).
The faculty winner of the 2021 English Department Teaching Award is Candice Rai. This award acknowledges both the tremendous work that Dr. Rai has done over the past two years in facilitating the shift to online teaching, and her transformative leadership in teaching and learning throughout her time as English Writing Programs director. Much of the innovative teaching—and thinking about teaching—in our department originates in EWP. This is evident in Dr. Rai’s mentorship of graduate student instructors, and the teaching she does in EWP orientations (which one award committee member noted "centers issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity in teaching, a key departmental value, and something that students who shift from 131 to 200-level teaching bring with them to that work"). It is equally evident in the way that work also filters "up" to faculty, many of whom learn about teaching from our own graduate students' examples, and through the numerous pedagogy events that EWP has put on under Dr. Rai’s leadership. Simply put, it's hard to imagine anyone who has had a greater impact on teaching in our department. Please join us in congratulating Candice Rai!
Dr. Rai is also a founding member for Rhetoric, Politics & Culture, a new peer-reviewed rhetoric journal, a journal that “invites scholarship on rhetorics of marginalization, structure, materiality, and power; politics, advocacy, and activism; and beyond.”
Shawn Wong, UW professor of English and longtime advocate for Asian American literature, has received the 2021 Stand UP Award from the Association of University Presses, an organization of more than 150 international nonprofit scholarly publishers.
The Stand UP award “honors those who through their words and actions have done extraordinary work to support, defend and celebrate the university press community.” The association honored Professor Wong in part for leading the grassroots effort to protect the right of UW Press, together with the Okada estate, to publish Japanese American author John Okada’s 1957 novel No-No Boy. Read more here.
Professor Wong’s co-edited book, Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers, was named New York Times Magazine 15 best books on Asian America.
Wong has also been named Lockwood Professor in the Humanities. Congratulations!
Professor Eva Cherniavsky has been elected President of the University of Washington chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a national organization chartered to develop standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country's colleges and universities.
Professor Jeffrey Todd Knight has been appointed editor of the venerable and prestigious literary history journal Modern Language Quarterly. Well done Jeff!
Professor Kate Norako was elected to the position of Council for the Medieval Association of the Pacific. Founded in 1966, MAP supports interdisciplinary medieval studies through the issuing of grants and prizes and by hosting conferences. Congratulation Kate.
Professor Juliet Shields has been elected Secretary of the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures, a worldwide academic organization dedicated to cultivating the study of Scottish languages, literatures and cultures across the globe.
Professor Catherine Cole's new book, Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice, has been awarded an Honorable Mention for the Dance Studies Association's de la Torre Bueno Prize. The de la Torre Bueno Prize is awarded annually to a book published in the English language that advances the field of dance studies. Named after prominent amateur entomologist and first university press editor to establish a catalog of Dance Studies scholarship, José Rollin de la Torre Bueno, the de la Torre Bueno Prize has recognized scholarly excellence in the field since 1973.
Anu Taranath continues to earn recognition for her much-featured book, Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World. The latest is the Newsweek Future of Travel Award in the Storytelling category.
The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) has awarded Professor Nancy Bou Ayash the 2021 CCCC Research Impact Award for her book, Toward Translingual Realities in Composition: (Re)Working Local Language Representations and Practices. This is one of the most prestigious awards in the field of Composition Studies. Dr. Bou Ayash has also been elected next Chair of the CCCC Transnational Composition Group. Congratulations Nancy!
Professor Stephanie Kerschbaum and her co-author Lauren Rosenberg have received the 2021 NCTE Richard C. Ohmann award for their article, “Entanglements of Literacy Studies and Disability Studies,” published in the March 2021 issue of College English. The award is given in the name of Richard C. Ohmann, landmark editor of College English throughout the 1960s. It recognizes an outstanding refereed article in the past volume year that makes the most significant contribution to scholarship or research, or theory or pedagogy, in English studies.
Professor David Shields contributed an essay to the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of Covid 19, which won a 2021 Washington State Book Award, edited by Jennifer Haupt. Professor Shields’ Reality Hunger: A Manifesto came in at number five on LitHub’s list of the 100 most important books of the last decade.
Professor Josephine Walwema's “A Values-Driven Approach to Technical Communication” earned Best Article Reporting Qualitative or Quantitative Research in Technical or Scientific Communication from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC).
And along with Professor Kimberlee Gillis Bridges, Dr. Walwema has also been awarded a UW Data Studies Institute course development grant. The English Department is excited about our faculty forays into data science.
Professor Monika Kaup has been awarded a course development grant from the Global Literary Studies initiative to develop a capstone course titled "The Neobaroque as World Literature.”
Charles LaPorte and Anis Bawarshi were awarded Simpson Center Mellon Summer Fellowships for New Graduate Seminars in the Humanities
Bawarshi has also been awarded the Thomas L. and Margo G. Wyckoff Endowed Faculty Fellowship. Congratulations Anis!
Professor Rae Paris has been awarded a Black Opportunity Grant to develop a mentoring program for Black students. UW’s Black Opportunity Fund was established to acknowledge the harm that systemic racism has on the Black community, to take action to address these inequities and injustices, and to fund a strategic agenda that meets immediate and ongoing needs of our Black students and faculty.
Professor Suhanthie Motha co-organized the BIPOC Pre-College English Teachers’ Faculty Community of Practice and Care, a year-long professional development program for BIPOC teachers at colleges across WA state.
A Global Innovation Fund Virtual Study Abroad Development award has been issued to Professor Andrew Feld. This is a special cycle of the Global Innovation Fund (GIF), for faculty directors who are interested in converting their study abroad program into a virtual international program.
Several English Department faculty were awarded UW Simpson Center for the Humanities fellowships. Professor Stephanie Clare was awarded a Simpson Center Society of Scholars fellowship; Professor Anu Taranath was awarded Simpson Center funding for a colloquium on “Pedagogies of Reciprocity”; Professor Juliet Shields was awarded a Simpson Center Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship; and Professor Colette Moore was awarded Simpson Center funding to host Studies in the History of the English Language conference and colloquia.
Professors Colette Moore, Megan Callow, Josie Walwema, Kate Norako, Shawn Wong, Douglas Ishii, David Crouse, Andrew Feld, Pimone Triplett, and Maya Sonenberg were awarded funding to participate in Simpson Center Faculty Reading Groups.
Last but not least, several faculty were awarded English Department Collaboration grants: Stephanie Clare and David Crouse (Black Trans Studies Collaboration), Doug Ishii and Michelle Liu (The Transpacific Turn in Teaching and Research), Megan Callow, Josie Walwema, and Dylan Medina (Humanizing Technical Communication in English and Beyond), Habiba Ibrahim and Megan Callow (Toward Equitable Review of Productivity in the Wake of the Pandemic), Michelle Liu, Suhanthie Motha and Rae Paris (Toward Antiracist/Anticolonial Scholarly Practices in the Humanities: A Workshop)