Promotion, Retention, and New Leaders
The English Department would like to extend special congratulations to Candice Rai and Jesse Oak Taylor for their promotions to the rank of Full Professor.
Additionally, congratulations are in order for Janelle Rodriques and Leila Kate Norako for their promotions to the rank of Associate Professor. Congratulations Candice, Jesse, Janelle, and Kate on these wonderful and well-deserved career achievements!
In January 2025, our newest faculty member, Rhema Hokama, will join the department. Stay tuned for more from Professor Hokama!
After six years at the helm of the department, Anis Bawarshi is returning to his office on the 4th floor of Padelford. Over that time, Anis led our department through several faculty hires, promotions, and reappointments, significant program and curricular developments, not to mention the rise of social justice movements, a global pandemic, and its long aftermath. He led us through it all with competence and compassion. Thank you, Anis, for everything you have done to lead our department and facilitate the growth of its faculty, staff, and students.
With that, we are beyond excited to have Habiba Ibrahim as our newest department chair. Professor Ibrahim brings a wealth of experience and leadership, having previously served as the assistant chair.
2024 also comes with the news that Michelle Liu has signed on for a two-year term as Associate Chair. Congratulations, Michelle!
And lest you have forgotten, our returning program directors are formidable in their own rights:
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Stephanie Clare returns as Director of Undergraduate Studies
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Suhanthie Motha returns as Director of MATESOL
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Eva Cherniavsky returns as Director of Graduate Studies
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Megan Callow returns as Director of the Program for Writing Across Campus
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David Nikki Crouse returns as Director of Creative Writing
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Stephanie Kerschbaum returns as Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric
Awards and Honors
Professor Jesse Oak Taylor has been selected as the recipient of the 2023-24 English Department Excellence in Teaching Award. Selected by the Scholarships and Awards Committee (Norman Wacker, Catherine Cole, Henry Staten, and Paul Remley), this award recognizes a faculty colleague for their outstanding contributions to teaching. Congratulations, Jesse!
Stephanie Kerschbaum and Anis Bawarshi have been appointed Dean’s Academy Futurists at UW. The Dean’s Academy Futurists comprises a dozen thoughtful, engaged faculty who “will together imagine the future of higher education after 2050 and to envision new, yet unknown models.”
Chadwick Allen's book Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts has won not one, but two major book awards! It won the Beatrice Medicine Award for Best Monograph from the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, as well as the Thomas J. Lyon Award for Western American Literary and Cultural Studies from the Western Literature Association. Congrats on your success, Chadwick!
Josie Walwema has been awarded the 2024 CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Award in the category of Best Article Reporting Historical Research or Textual Studies in Technical and Scientific Communication for her co-authored essay (with Jessica Edwards), “Black Women Imagining and Realizing Liberated Futures.”
Pimone Triplett was named a finalist in Narrative Magazine’s 15th Annual Poetry Contest. Professor Triplett also accepted an invitation by the Pulitzer Prize Board to serve as one of five poets on the Nominating Jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for 2024, reviewing 364 nominated poetry books. Great work, Pimone!
David Bosworth’s essay, "The Fifth Element," published last year in Raritan, has been selected as "notable" in the anthology Best Essays of 2024.
Jonathan Radocay has been selected as an American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) scholar by the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (CAIIS) for the 2024-2025 academic year. Professor Radocay is also on the organizing committee for the Sacred Breath Writing and Storytelling series.
Alex Ramos has been funded to participate in the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) Faculty Success Program.
Charles LaPorte has been appointed the Joff Hanauer Distinguished Professor in Western Civilization. The Hanauer Distinguished Professorship is one of the highest honors in the Humanities Division.
Janelle Rodriques was elected Vice Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies.
Cristina Sánchez-Martín was appointed to the advisory board of Añada: revista d'estudios llioneses.
Douglas Ishii was a juror for Best Narrative Short Film at the Seattle Asian American Film Festival.
Suhanthie Motha was appointed a member on the UW Public Lectures Committee, as well as the Distinguished Public Service Award Committee for the American Association for Applied Linguistics.
UW and National Fellowships and Grants
Douglas Ishii, Catherine Cole, and Anna Preus have received Royalty Research Fund Grants from the University of Washington.
Laura Chrisman is a Writing@UW Fellow, part of a new program co-organized by Megan Callow. The Writing@UW Fellowship supports faculty as they (re)envision writing in their disciplines and in their teaching and learning practices.
Anu Taranath and Josie Walwema have each been awarded global engagement fellowship grants from the UW Office of Global Affairs.
Catherine Cole has recieved a Kreielsheimer and Jones Large Grant from the Arts Division of the College of Arts & Sciences.
Linford Lamptey, Jonathan Isaac, and Calvin Pollak have been selected as fellows for the 2024-2026 Evidence-Based Teaching (EBT) Program through the UW Center for Teaching and Learning. This program’s focus will be on critically interrogating and integrating AI into classroom practice.
Simpson Center Awards
Anna Preus, Geoffrey Turnovsky (French & Italian Studies), Melanie Walsh (Information School), and Golden Owens (Cinema & Media Studies) have been awarded a Simpson Center grant to support their project, "AI, Creativity, and the Humanities."
Nancy Bou Ayash, Sasha Senderovich (Slavic Languages & Literatures), and Aria Fani Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures) have been awarded a Simpson Center grant to support their continued work on the Translation Studies Hub.
Gillian Harkins has been awarded a Simpson Center collaboration grant to support "Transnational Feminisms and Categories of Sexual Violence."
Megan Callow, Calvin Pollak, and Ben Wirth have been awarded a Simpson Center grant to support “A Classroom-Centered Inquiry into Generative AI, Large Language Models, and Writing Praxis.”
Charles LaPorte and Jesse Oak Taylor were awarded a Simpson Center grant for their "Event 2024: Flightless Global Conference, Seattle Hub.” The conference asked, “Can we imagine an event that contributes to a more sustainable future while providing some advantages that are not possible at a regular annual conference?”
Alys Weinbaum, Oliver Rollins (American Ethnic Studies), and Lynn M. Thomas (History) received a Simpson Center grant for their Humanities Microseminar on the work of Dorothy Roberts, “Race and Reproductive Justice, Past and Present.”
Janelle Rodriques and Charles LaPorte were selected for the Simpson Center Faculty Summer Fellowship on Religious Cultures, Sacred Practices, and Spiritual Teachings.
Speaking Appearances and Public Scholarship
Chadwick Allen’s co-authored piece, “Ungrafting: There/Here, A Conversation between Chadwick Allen and Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi,” was published in the exhibition catalogue for Hương Ngô: Ungrafting (Los Angeles: Inventory Press, 2024). Ngô’s practice “looks at histories of colonial violence, specifically colonialism in French Indochina, through image-making, translations, and material investigations.” Allen’s piece reflects on “the connection between Ngô’s exhibition and global anti-colonialism, the trans-Indigenous, and the role of the archive in artistic production.”
Alys Weinbaum gave a talk, "Slavery and Surrogacy" as part of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Library's 1619 Project discussion group (link to YouTube video of talk). Professor Weinbaum discussed her book, The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery, which examines how the legal and cultural impact of Atlantic slavery defined slave reproduction and enslaved women as "biocapital."
Jesse Oak Taylor gave a talk entitled "Scaling the Himalaya with Joseph Hooker: Climate, Altitude, and the Earth System" at the Huntington, as part of symposium on environment, empire, and the arts in the industrial age linked to an exhibit, "Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis" which will be on view until January 2025. If you are in LA between now and the beginning of January, you are strongly encouraged to check it out!
Monika Kaup gave an invited talk on “Tom McCarthy’s Neo-Neuro-Modernism: Reconfiguring Proustian Memory in Remainder” at the International Center for Philosophy at Bonn University, Germany.
Cristina Sánchez-Martín gave a talk at Casa Latina Volunteer Appreciation Spring on “Community-engagement and antiracism in English-language teaching."
David Shields’s Q&A with Sean Gorman about WWE and Trump was recently published in McSweeney’s and reprinted in the Washington Post (link to McSweeney's).
Shawn Wong and author Oscar Penaranda spoke about their respective books and stories at Mam's Books in Seattle's Chinatown. The talk was titled "From Kearney Street to King Street."