English Accents 2019-2020

Issue 6

ENGLISH ACCENTS SPRING 2020 INSIDE THE ISSUE • • • • • • •

Cover Story Letter from the Chair Joint Appointments Study Centers Interview With a Triple Major Honors/Awards/Achievements Alumni Updates

The Core of the Humanities English as the Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies Students from Professor Marta Caminero-Santangelo’s interdisciplinary “Latin American & Latinx Literature of Trauma and Testimony” class collaborate.

By Moriyah Ramberg

W

e call English “the core of the Humanities”—and for good reason. Crafting thoughts and ideas through the written word is essential to understanding the world around us.

English fosters the ability to think critically, communicate effectively, and understand situations from different points of view, vital components of a wide range of studies, creative pursuits, and career paths. KU English alumni have gone on to pursue careers in medicine, law, consulting, publishing, and marketing, among many others, with many citing their background in English as invaluable in developing practical skills for their careers.

“Majoring in English at KU instilled in me a love of literature and laid the foundation for my future career in medicine,” said Matthew Gibson, a pediatrician from Omaha and a KU English alum. “My education from the English Department not only taught me to think critically and to write better,

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“English has influenced my other academic interests by demonstrating the ubiquity of writing.”

-Aroog Khaliq, English major

...continued on page 5

Letter from the Chair I will be honest that I began this letter before the newsletter was drafted back in the middle of March. Each time I’ve sat down to write since, there has been something new and world-shaping on which to reflect.

First, of course, the pandemic struck, bringing with it profound changes for all of us. Three months later, it is somewhat less strange to be writing this letter from my small home “office,” a desk set up in what used to be a guest room. But it is no less isolating. Instead of looking out on a busy Jayhawk Boulevard, I look out at my own backyard. Instead of touching base with colleagues and students in the hallway, I try to schedule virtual meetings, emails, and calls. I know I am lucky to have a supportive family in my home, to have a job, and to not be on the physical front lines of the pandemic, but, like the rest of you, I am also isolated, despite it all.

Connection has been a challenge during the pandemic. This spring, faculty and students had to adapt quickly to the new, mediated ways they had available to engage with each other. Despite the limitations, I am proud that many of our students praised our English teachers for doing their best to maintain the human connections that are so valuable in the work that we do, and respecting and accommodating the real-life challenges that they experienced during this time.

This is the environment in which we celebrated the incredible successes of our English Honors and Awards students this spring—virtually, this time, but no less vigorously. While the ceremony was punctuated by joyous cowbells, cheers, and dancing, I started with a serious moment to address the uncertainty that we all—but especially graduating seniors—were facing. As I told them then, it is in these moments that their English educations are even more valuable: We hear a lot of talk about what is “essential” right now. The kinds of creative and critical habits of mind that you have cultivated in English—the ability to read carefully for what is important, to look beyond surfaces, to be empathetic, to tease out the ethical implications of choices, to think critically as well as creatively about situations and stories and histories, and for many of you, to teach these skills and habits and approaches—these are essentially important in the current moment. And consolation is no small thing, either, the consolation that we draw from literature and the arts. Consolation requires the kind of empathy that emerges out of deep connection, and deep connection not only sustains us individually through times when we are separated physically but helps us, practically and essentially, to sustain and build the kind of world we want to live in.

Appropriate, I suppose, to the interdisciplinary theme of this year’s English Accents, my belief in the essential work we do in the humanities also informed an essay I wrote with my co-editors of Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism, Cóilín Parsons (Georgetown) and Julie McCormick Weng (Texas State), entitled “Science and the humanities in the time of pandemic: better together” (The Irish Times, 1 June 2020). We argued there that we don’t just need a vaccine for the virus, but also an “interdisciplinary approach to diagnosing and treating the conditions that enabled it to proliferate in the first place.” We need to understand that “our field of knowledge about the pandemic is shaped by science, certainly, but also by stories, by assumptions, by politics, by history, by rhetoric—by the very things that humanists study. If these go unexamined, our solutions to the crisis will only go so far.”

I wrote and spoke those words in early May thinking of the pandemic, but I stick by them in the wake of weeks of protest and education about the roots of police violence and our country’s long history of systemic racism. The skills and habits of mind we develop and nourish in the humanities are essential for engaging not only with the present moment but also with the complex and violent history it has brought into renewed focus. They are skills

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and habits of mind that can and should work in concert with other disciplines, where the individual stories that move, inspire, and change us are joined with history, statistical analysis, and policy. We already have the experience of transformational interdisciplinary activity in our research and classrooms at KU. We also have a model and a resource for sustainable and relevant work in the Project on the History of Black Writing (HBW), founded

by University Distinguished Professor of English, Maryemma Graham. HBW has had an interdisciplinary team of students and scholars recovering Black voices, preparing students to do digital humanities projects, training K-12 teachers, and providing public-facing education on Black writing for decades.

In this moment of change, challenge, and transformation, I am also grateful for our connections to you. Alumni, friends, and donors support our students through mentorship, scholarships, lectures, and workshops, and have provided the opportunity in some cases, such as the Melville Distinguished Professorship and the John F. Eberhardt Memorial Fund, to support essential faculty hires that would be impossible in a time of higher ed scarcity.

This summer, the David Cicotello and Louis Cicotello Memorial Fund and the Patricia Cleary Miller Graduate Funds also helped to support international graduate students who were prevented by their visas from working in the US and who were unable to return home due to the pandemic. We also encourage you to connect to current and past KU English students through the Jayhawk Career Network and KU Mentoring, programs established by the Kansas Alumni Association.

Ultimately, this issue of English Accents was designed to be a celebration of connections: connections in the classroom, connections in research, connections across disciplines. I hope you will read and take pride in this snapshot of some of the many ways in which our students and colleagues are enriched by, and enrich, a range of fields. I also hope you will take heart in the potential of this kind of work to contribute to positive and lasting change.

Rock chalk, Kathryn Conrad Chair, KU English

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continued from page 2... but showed me the importance of the human story and all its forms.”

Many English students broaden their education with second majors or minors in a range of fields, from art history and international studies to chemistry and mathematics.

These interdisciplinary connections are mutually enriching.

Aroog Khaliq, an English and Psychology double major on a Pre-Medicine track, credits studying English with strengthening her writing skills in the hard sciences.

“English has influenced my other academic interests by demonstrating the ubiquity of writing; even when I am writing a lab report, a case study, or an analytical essay, I draw on the same skills and techniques that I use when dissecting

Shakespeare and Austen,” she said.

Our students’ ability to see the connection between disparate fields of study is modeled by our English faculty, many of whom hold joint appointments in English and other departments and programs.

“My training as a literary scholar and years in the English Department bring a humanistic perspective to my WGSS appointment, which entails collaboration with colleagues in the social sciences and professional schools,” said Professor Ayesha Hardison, who holds a joint appointment in English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

“My two appointments allow me to maintain my affinity for interdisciplinary research—to study African American literature and culture—

through the various courses I teach across both departments.”

Students, faculty and alumni alike build upon the foundation of English to pursue a wide range of interests. In doing so, they bring the insights gained through the study of English literature, creative writing, language, and rhetoric not only to inform other fields of study, but also to inform and enrich a range of careers.

Interested in the kinds of careers our students have pursued? Check out our alumni updates in this issue, visit our website, and follow our social media #WhyEnglishWednesday spotlights throughout the academic year.

Combining Environmental Research with Scientific Writing

By Moriyah Ramberg Professor Phillip Drake holds a joint appointment in English and Environmental Studies, specializing in environmental literature and rhetoric. He was recently featured in KU Today for a paper published in Marine and Petroleum Geology titled “More than ten years of Lusi: A review of facts, coincidences, and past and future studies by Miller and Mazzini (2018): Taking the trigger debate above ground.”

Drake’s article disputes claims from geologist Adriano Mazzini and geophysicist Stephen Miller that the 2006 eruption of an East Java mud volcano was due to natural as opposed to man-made causes. The volcano, which has continued to flow, has displaced 50,000 local Indonesians, while dozens more have died and thousands more have become ill. Drake critiques Mazzini and Miller’s argument that the mudflow was caused by an earthquake and instead backs the hypothesis of other scientists that the trigger was an energy-exploration company’s drilling in the area.

When asked how his background and expertise in English informed his scientific writing, Drake said, “Beyond equipping my explorations into the power of language in shaping political maneuvers among different stakeholders, training in English informs my work via its emphasis on critical intervention; scholarship that engages historical and cultural context, along with evolving scholarly discussions; and humility through self-reflection.

While the conventions of science writing in technical journals tend to disallow many of these considerations, I believe an English background offers an important and frequently overlooked perspective for analyzing scientific inquiry and its implications.”

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Interdisciplinary Study Centers The Project on the History of Black Writing

By Moriyah Ramberg The Project on the History of Black Writing (HBW), originally founded at the University of Mississippi in 1983 by Professor Maryemma Graham, has been an interdisciplinary research project at KU for over 20 years. It continues to bring together and inspire scholars from multiple disciplines to collect and exchange notable research on Black writing and digital humanities. The mission of HBW remains to bring awareness to African American texts that have been lost to time and to digitally preserve and promote them.

In addition to hosting conferences, seminars, and exhibits that highlight Black literary research and writing, HBW publishes an online blog which focuses on Black literary history and promotes discussion of contemporary issues. They have also launched the Black Book Interactive Project (BBIP), funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which aims to address the lack of African American literary texts in digital archives and increase the number of these texts in the study of digital humanities. They plan to bridge this gap with a metadata schema that will increase the visibility of Black-authored texts.

“The metadata schema aims to identify where African American writers converge and diverge across literary history thematically, stylistically, and aesthetically, as a means of contextualizing why certain writers and literary works have not received a large amount of criticism over time in comparison to others,” said BBIP Project Manager Jade Harrison. “Additionally, our dataset will enable scholars to engage in African American literary study in an accessible way.”

Finding and preserving lesser-known texts that have slipped through the cracks of time is a collaborative effort. “We have consultants that help us narrow down books that we should digitize. Right now, we are scanning books from a list created by Kathleen Bethel who is a librarian at Northwestern University,” said Mona Ahmed, a recent KU Journalism graduate and current HBW Office Manager.

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2019-2020 HBW staff members.

Many of the scholars and students collaborating on HBW come from different areas of study. “I think when people think of Black Literature, they automatically think that to engage in Black literature, you have to be in the English department, which isn’t the case,” said Ahmed. “We have students who work with us who are in Film and Media Studies, African American Studies, American Studies, and Journalism. These students are looking for this intersection between their discipline and Black literature, which HBW offers. For example, we have students who are journalism majors and they use their copy-editing skills to edit our blogs.”

The Project’s common goal of preserving and promoting Black writing and voices is part of what brings scholars of various disciplines together. “I think the main cause that attracts different disciplines to HBW is the thirst to learn about Black authors and to showcase research about Black authors,” said Ahmed. “I majored in journalism here at the University of Kansas and what led me to apply to HBW was that it gave me a chance to learn more about Black literature. In my primary education I read one Black author. And being a Black student and not being able to interact with Black literature was disappointing. So, when I got to college, I wanted to change that.”

To get involved in HBW, students can check KU employment for available jobs or volunteer by emailing Dr. Maryemma Graham or Sarah Arbuthnot Lendt. Volunteers will have the opportunity to be placed with a project that aligns with their specific skills and research interests.

Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction

By Moriyah Ramberg

Established by Professor Emeritus James Gunn in 1982, the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction aims to better the world through the study of science fiction.

2019 Speculative-Fiction Writing Workshop attendees.

The Center’s vision of science fiction is based in the power of the genre to help scholars and creative writers consider the future state of humanity through the lens of science and technology, and as an approach to thinking about the universe we live in. Scholars in the humanities and scientists developing technologies that have the power to change the world can use science fiction as a tool to think about the consequences of current scientific research and development.

Center Director Chris McKitterick and Associate Director Kij Johnson have furthered the mission of the interdisciplinary Center to educate scholars and students on the merits of studying science fiction. The Center offers a wide variety of science fiction-related resources such as awards, conferences, including the annual Campbell Conference, and courses ranging in topics from Astrobiology to French and Slavic offered by affiliate professors involved in the Center at KU.

McKitterick leads an annual speculative fiction writing workshop, and Johnson an annual novel-writing workshop. They also lead follow-up “repeat offender” workshops.

To understand the theories and ideas science fiction incorporates, those creating science fiction and the scholars studying it find it helpful to have background knowledge in subjects such as technology, history, and economics.

Science fiction serves as Annalee Newitz accepts the 2019 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial a common ground to Award for best short story of the collaborate with experts year. in the STEM community, combining the philosophy and ideas of the humanities with hard science and research.

A few years ago McKitterick delivered a keynote address for the University of Iowa Medical Scientist Training Program’s annual event and centered his talk on the value of a liberal arts education and how STEM can use those lessons. “Through a discussion about science fiction as a mode of inquiry, I urged them to use their training to ‘ask the next question’ and then the one after that, and so on. I urged them to think like science-fiction writers, to consider and explore possible unintended consequences and side-effects of their work,” he said. “They used the science fiction mode of inquiry to creatively consider ramifications of their work, in much the same way as a good science-fiction writer thinks about ours.”

Ayesha Hardison New Editor of Journal Professor Ayesha Hardison, who holds a joint appointment in English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, recently took over as Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Women, Gender, and Families of Color. Hardison took on the role after Jennifer Hamer, former Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of Kansas as well as the journal’s founding Editor, left KU for Penn State.

Women, Gender, and Families of Color focuses on the study of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian-American women, gender, and families. It welcomes research from the social and behavioral sciences and humanities and focuses on social, cultural, political and economic issues and policies. The journal publishes bi-annually in the fall and spring. It is sponsored by KU and housed in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department.

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Interview with a Triple Major You might know someone pursuing a double major, but how about a triple major? English Accents sat down with Jamie Hawley, a 2020 graduating senior and triple major, one of them in English.

EA: What are you majoring in other than English, and why did you decide it would be a good complement to your English major?

JH: I’m a triple major in English, political science, and communications.

I was drawn to the examination of current events in political science, and I thought that communications would be a good bridge between political science and English.

EA: How has your English major informed your other majors, and vice versa?

JH: Through pursuing these three majors, I’ve discovered that what I’m passionate about above all

else is narrative, be it the narrative structure of a novel or a political campaign. I’ve studied narrative as a rhetorical theory in communications, and I’ve realized that narrative is not only a method of persuasion, it’s also a way of seeing and processing the world, and it’s the way that’s always made the most sense to me. I love comparing all the different narratives I come across and figuring out how they intersect.

EA: What do you plan to pursue with your triple major in a future career?

JH:

I would love to pursue some kind of graduate education, particularly a program that would allow me to continue researching fanfiction and online fan communities, which is a field of study I discovered last spring and have been doing research in for the past year. Apart from that, the goal has always been to write, in any capacity, specifically using the written communication skills that I’ve honed combined with the research skills I’ve acquired in the social sciences.

EA: What has your experience been like pursuing a triple major? Any major challenges or rewarding experiences?

JH: I love it when my classes connect to each other, especially across majors. I’m taking Renaissance Lit this semester, and I’m always excited when I can make a connection between that class and all the rhetoric classes I’ve taken in communications. My one regret is that I didn’t have a lot of room in my schedule for electives, so I didn’t get to take very many classes outside my three departments.

EA: What advice would you have for someone thinking about a double or triple major?

JH: Don’t be afraid to pursue what excites you and know that it is possible to do more than one

thing. But also don’t feel like you have to turn every interest into a major or minor. It’s okay to take classes just for fun, and it’s okay to experiment with a lot of different things. Your major is not your career. Study what you care about, and somehow or another, the rest will fall into place. (Also, get sleep and drink water.)

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Honors, Awards & Achievements 2019 Honors “wizards” celebrate their accomplishments at the annual Awards and Recognition ceremony. The 2020 ceremony was held virtually.

Noteworthy Awards Langston Hughes Award • 2020 Winners: Graduate student Tracey Lien and Kate Lorenz.

• 2019 Winners: English alumna Jameelah Jones and graduate student Molly Weisgrau.

• Junior Aroog Khaliq, majoring in English and Psychology on a Pre-Medicine track, was nominated for a Truman Scholarship.

• Kayleigh Anderson, a 2019 graduate with a Bachelor’s in English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, received a Fulbright Award to research abroad at the University of Turku, Finland.

• Gabrielle Doue, Omaha, Nebraska, a 2019 graduate with bachelor’s degrees in English and Spanish, was selected for a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship for Colombia.

Aroog Khaliq, Truman Scholarship Nominee

Consider Applying For...

The John F. Eberhardt Excellence in Writing Award • A scholarship for dual majors or minors (one of the majors or minors must be English).

• Applicants are welcome from literature, creative writing, or rhetoric, language, and writing tracks.

2019 Winners: Nidhi Patel and Elizabeth Wenger Honorable Mention: Jamie Hawley 2020 Winners: Connor Donahue and Jamie Hawley

Jamie Hawley, 2020 Eberhardt Winner

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1950s After graduating from KUMC in 1962, Richard V. Ohmart (BA ‘58) spent a year interning at Wesley Medical Center. He and Carol, his pregnant wife, moved their two boys to Oakley, Kansas where Dick practiced until a fall on the ice and stroke forced him to retire in 2001. During that time Dick was chosen as Rural Physician of the Year by the National Rural Health Association in 1999. The Kansas Academy of Family Physicians chose him as the Family Physician of the Year in 2000.

After recovering from his stroke Dick wrote two books, When I Died, An Amazing Adventure in 2003, and The Education Of An Old Doc, The Story Of My Practice In A Wilderness, in 2011. Dick and Carol continue to live in Oakley, enjoying the company of their family.

After attending KU, Dr. John Nanninga (BA ‘59) attended Northwestern University Medical School (now NU Feinberg School of Medicine). After retiring from practice, he published a book, The Gland Illusion. Following a cardiac procedure, he has started a

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novel about a golf tournament, which is a couple years from completion.

1960s Elinor Hadley Stillman (BA ’60) studied English at Yale earning an MA in 1961 and then an ABD. She taught English at Hunter College in New York City and at several colleges near Palo Alto, where her husband was in a psychiatry residency at Stanford.

In 1969, she entered law school at George Washington University and after graduation and a federal court clerkship, had a thoroughly satisfying legal career with the National Labor Relations Board and the Office of the Solicitor General in the Department of Justice. She never regretted the time spent studying English literature and was always on the look-out for English majors when she was hiring attorneys.

David Zehring (BA ’63) graduated from the KU School of Medicine in 1967. He spent seven years in surgical residencies in Chicago, two years in the Navy with a tour in Vietnam with the Marines, practiced reconstructive surgery in Seattle, moved to rural mountainous Colorado, wrote columns

in the local newspapers on health care reform, was chairman of the local county hospital board as a retired surgeon, and played drums in jazz, rock and blues bands for over 50 years. He is now finally writing a story (maybe a novel) and enjoying the process.

Judith (Anderson) George (BA ‘64) moved to Maryland in 1964 for a job with the Department of Defense. Now retired, she still resides in Maryland.

Alan E. Craven (PhD ‘65) has written his second novel—West of Westport— about the Civil War in Kansas. Like his novel Till We Have Built Jerusalem, published in April 2019, most of the action takes place along the Kansas/ Missouri border, much of it in Lawrence. The defeat of the Confederacy and the assassination of Lincoln did not end the violence but localized and intensified it.

Kathryn Braeman (MA ‘68) and Gladys Henrikson have written a biography of a “shoestring lobbyist”: Carol Burris and the Women’s Lobby: The Untold Story of a Shoestring Lobbyist. The book is available at the Library of Congress or Amazon. Kat Braeman was a

“grass root” in Nebraska in 1971 when she was inspired by Carol Burris’s fierce advocacy in the U.S. Congress for childcare and the Equal Rights Amendment. She had a transforming impact on the nation and on women’s lives. Inspired, Kat ran for a seat in the U.S. Congress in Nebraska in 1972 on a shoestring budget. She lost to the incumbent but went to law school and then had a federal legal career in Washington, DC. Now retired, Kat lives in the Bay Area.

Rev. Patricia “Pasha“ Hafer Buck (MA ‘68) is now on her last clergy assignment as Interim Chaplain of the Mayflower Community in Grinnell, Iowa.

She taught in the English Department at KU from 1969 to 1971. Among many other careers, she also helped start and was Assistant Professor at Westmoreland County Community College in Pennsylvania. She remembers KU and Lawrence with great appreciation, fondness, and thankfulness for wonderful years studying and teaching.

She and John Buck celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary on March 6 of this year. Their favorite thing to do together, nearly daily is “practice”—Pasha her tenor sax, and John his tuba or baritone.

John DeMoss (MA ‘68) taught for one year at the Hongwanji Mission School in Honolulu and three years at the University of Hawaii. He then taught for the overseas division of the University of Maryland: seven years in Germany, 24 years in Spain, two terms in Turkey and one in Bosnia. In Spain his avocation was photographing bullfights. His photos were exhibited five times in Spain and twice in Topeka. His photos have also been published in bullfight magazines, on posters and as a prizewinner in American Photo Magazine.

His index to Nabokov’s Strong Opinions, and his long article “The ‘Real’ Real Life: Sebastian Knight and the Critics” can be found online. He retired in 2006 and is now living in Topeka.

After a stint in the Navy, Preston Fambrough (BA ‘68) completed a PhD in comparative literature at North Carolina Chapel Hill and taught English and French at Baker University until his retirement in 2012.

William Deschner (BA ‘69) is happily retired in Palm Springs California after a 40 year career in Obstetrics and

Gynecology. He enjoys a little tennis, a little travel, volunteering, and most of all living where other people want to vacation. He is thankful for his liberal arts education at KU. Joseph Roach (BA ‘69), Sterling Professor of Theater and Professor of English, Emeritus, at Yale University, recently retired after 40 years of teaching, research, and administration in theater, performance studies, and English literature. After earning his PhD at Cornell University, he went on to chair performing arts programs at Sweet Briar College, Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University, New York University, and Yale. Recognized by a Lifetime Scholarship Award from the American Society for Theatre Research, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Oscar Brockett Prize for Outstanding Teaching from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

1970s David Norlin (MAT ‘70) retired from College Teaching (Garden City Community College, 8 years and Cloud County Community College, 25 years) in 2005. Now living in Salina, Kansas, Norlin has been Chair of Salina Access TV, the Human Relations Commission, and the City Planning Commission.

He is active as part of the Spirituality Resource Center, Program Chair of Salina Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and the Core team for North Central Chapter of Kansas Interfaith Action.

Don Byrd (PhD ‘71) taught at the State University of New York at Albany for 40 years. He directed over a hundred doctoral dissertations and was DGS for several years. His wife, Marge, received an MA in History at KU and ended up Vice President of Academic Affairs at Maria College in Albany. Their daughter received a PhD in Art History and works at the Whitney Museum in New York. Since retiring, Byrd and his wife moved to Brooklyn five years ago. In his spare time Byrd enjoys writing, hearing music, seeing art, and spending time with his nine-year-old granddaughter.

Bill Thompson (MA ‘72) continues to

be politically involved since he moved to Fort Collins, Colorado five years ago. As a precinct committee person, he conducted a caucus March 7th, and he hopes to serve on the legislative citizens redistricting commission. His wife, Anne, is the spokesperson/leader of the Larimer County League of Women Voters.

Mike O’Neal (BA ‘73) went on to KU Law School, graduating in 1976. He practiced law in Hutchinson from 19762012, and taught at Hutchinson Community College from 1976-1984. Mike was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives in 1984 and served 14 terms, the last two as Kansas Speaker of the House. Upon retirement from the Kansas Legislature, Mike moved to Lawrence and served as President and CEO of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He retired from the Chamber in 2016 and started his own legal and governmental affairs firm. Today he represents a variety of clients before the Kansas Legislature and practices administrative law. He has been a KU basketball season ticket holder for more than 30 years. Mike’s son and Daughter, Austin and Haley, are both KU graduates. Mike and his wife, Trish, got married in December and reside in Lawrence.

Thomas Fox Averill (MA ‘74) retired in 2017 after 37 years of teaching Creative Writing and Kansas Literature at Washburn University of Topeka, where he established the Center for Kansas Studies and the Thomas Fox Averill Kansas Studies Collection at Mabee Library. His 2018 novel, Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr, won the Byron Caldwell Smith Award from the Hall Center for the Humanities at KU. He continues to write, collect books, and teach for the Osher Institute.

Charles (Chip) Jones (BA ‘74) is the author of a forthcoming book from Simon & Schuster, The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South.

In his fourth historical work, Jones reveals how a black man had his heart taken from him without prior consent as surgeons at the Medical College of Virginia rushed to join the heart transplant race. With a publication date of August 18, 2020, the book will be ready for pre-orders this spring.

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Jones, a former reporter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, became aware of the heart transplant tragedy while working as communications director of the Richmond Academy of Medicine.

Dr. John Neibling (MA ‘74) is retired from a 37-year career in community college teaching and administration in Arizona and New Mexico. He and his wife Karen live in Scottsdale, Arizona and will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on May 31, 2020. John enjoys golf, fly-fishing, KU basketball, and, most of all, spending time with his three grandchildren.

In December, Lawton R. Nuss (BA ’75) retired as Chief Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. After receiving his Bachelor’s, Nuss then served 4 years in the US Marine Corps as a combat engineer before returning to KU and earning a JD from the law school in 1982. He practiced law in his hometown of Salina for 20 years before being appointed to the Supreme Court

by Governor Bill Graves in October

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2002. In 2015 Nuss was named a Distinguished Alum of the KU Law School.

The law school’s Chief Justice Lawton R. Nuss Award for Excellence in Advocacy in the KU Court of Traffic Appeals is named in his honor. Nuss served on the high court for 17 years, the last 10 as Chief Justice.

Douglas L. Hill (BGS ‘77) continues to reside in Norman, Oklahoma with his spouse of 43 years Barbara (Kaufmann) Hill. Their children Dana Allison Hill (KU BFA) and Dr. Ricky Hill reside in Kansas City, Missouri and Chicago, Illinois respectively. Hill continues as a freelance print and photo journalist mainly published in the Norman Transcript daily newspaper and Norman Magazine for the past 23 years. He primarily writes about arts, music and vintage automobiles. Hill is retired from General Motors Corporation where he specialized in Human Resources and Supply Chain Management, living and working in Michigan, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas.

Mark Lowes, (BA ‘77) graduated from Vanderbilt Law School in 1980 and practiced law with the firm now known as Bracewell LLP. in Houston Texas.

After 26 years in private practice as a trial lawyer, Mark moved in house to head up the litigation department for Kellogg Brown and Root. He currently holds the title of Senior VP Litigation and oversees KBR’s world-wide disputes.

Robert E. Nugent III (BA ’77) is preparing to retire after 20 years’ service as a U. S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Kansas. After obtaining a JD at KU Law in 1980, Bob practiced law in Hutchinson and Wichita for 20 years and was appointed to the bench in 2000. In a time of diminishing emphasis on the humanities, Bob continues to revere the invaluable knowledge and experience he gained studying literature and politics at Kansas and is rarely without a book. He was particularly inspired by teachers like Margaret Arnold, Elizabeth Schultz, John Senior, and J. Eldon Fields, to name a few. He

complemented his 7 years at KU with music, singing in various University choirs throughout. Bob lives in Wichita with his wife, Linda, and has recently become a grandfather.

W. Mark Smith (BA ’77) is nearing 40 years of practicing law in Washington, DC, with Sutherland Asbill & Brennan/ Eversheds Sutherland. Over his career, Mark has debated regulations at the White House, Treasury and Labor Department; managed a US Supreme Court case to a 9-0 decision; presented on retirement policy in the halls of Congress and C-SPAN; represented clients before the IRS, DOL, SEC, FINRA, OCC, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and state regulators; and first chaired a billion dollar transaction. Mark has been asked to serve in a number of leadership positions at his firm – including executive partner for the firm, managing partner for its DC office, and practice head for tax and benefits – and in the community, notably as Board President of the DC Bar Foundation. The writing skills he honed at KU have been a calling card throughout his career, and he may be the only lawyer who has ever quoted John Milton to the Labor Department (an experience he has mercifully spared his ten grandchildren).

Retired from teaching English, Women’s Studies and serving as Dean of the College for Academic Life at Muhlenberg College, Carol Wilson (MA ’77) is frequently in nearby New York City for cultural events, especially theatre and museums. She also takes pleasure in serving as a reader for the national Chautauqua Book Prize for excellence in fiction and narrative nonfiction.

1980s Daniel Born (MA ‘80) completed his doctorate in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1990. He has lectured in Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies, MA in Literature program, since 2006, where he has taught courses including Afterlife of the Victorian Novel and Post World War II American Novel and the Theological Imagination. He presented a paper on October 18, 2019 at the Byron Don Juan 200: A Bicentennial Symposium conference at DePaul University in Chi-

cago: “Don Juan at 200: What Liberalism Was, and Could Be.” Neil Nehring (MA ‘80) has been a professor in the English department at the University of Texas at Austin since 1986.

Sheila “Katie” Conboy (BA ‘81) has just been named President of Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana.

Conboy earned a PhD in English Literature at the University of Notre Dame in 1986. She taught at Stonehill College in N. Easton., Massachusetts for 13 years and then served for 13 years as Stonehill’s first Provost. In 2013, she became Provost and Senior Vice President at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts. She will assume her presidency at Saint Mary’s on June 1, 2020.

Karen (Kline) Ford (MA ’81) is retiring this Spring after 37 years of teaching English and Journalism courses at Holton High School in Holton, Kansas.

She enjoyed her years in the classroom and seeing many of her students become KU grads! During retirement, she hopes to do some traveling with her husband of almost 40 years, Mike Ford, play her flute in flute groups, read, and write some grants. She enjoys learning and hopes to take advantage of her senior status and audit some classes or take others.

David Powls (BA ‘82) is now in his 38th year of community journalism in Kansas, 36th as a community newspaper owner. Powls has owned newspapers in Yates Center, Osawatomie, Louisburg, Sabetha and Holton. He and his wife, Connie, have owned and operated The Holton Recorder for the past 23 years. In 2015, Powls returned to KU to complete one course for his Bachelor of Science degree in journalism. He and his wife have two grown children - a KU grad teacher and a Recorder sports writer/photographer - and one grandson. Powls is a past president of the Kansas Press Association and author of two local community history books.

Leigh Clark (PhD ‘83) secured in June 2018 his emancipation from wage slavery and entered that blissful condition described by the late Alan Watts as a Way of Liberation. Like the happy person in Cicero’s adage—“Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit—Clark

has an extensive personal library and two gardens (one Zen, the other drought-resistant native plants). He is finished writing two-thirds of a short historical novel for which he can halt composition whenever necessary to do extensive research rather than just make up sociological details as he goes along. Nihil deerit indeed!

Edwin Goldberg (BA ‘84) has published more than seven books and is grateful to the English Department for preparing him so well.

Jan Underwood (BA ‘86) lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches Spanish at Portland Community College. She has written several books— two collections of short stories (one of which is a work of “cli-fi,” or climate change science fiction) and an academic satire. She is currently shopping around the manuscript of her newest novel, set in a fictitious South American country and featuring two U.S. Latinx travelers and a ghost.

David Dettmer (BA ‘87) is an associate professor in the Department of English and Journalism at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas.

David Morse (MA ‘89) has been a full-time professor at Long Beach City College in Long Beach, California since 1998. He has served as department chair and as president of the college’s academic senate. From 2014-2016 he served as president of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. In 2017-2018 he held a position as Vice-President of Instruction at Barstow Community College before returning to the classroom in Long Beach in 2018. He is currently a member of the Board of Governors of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges.

1990s David Hartwell (BGS ‘91), is a retired military pilot and current FedEx Airbus captain living in Germantown, Tennessee. He is married to a KU nursing graduate working for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Since 2000, Kristy (Greene) Hurst (BA ‘91) has worked as a freelance writer and editor. In addition to writing

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for the Institute for Excellence in Writing. Additionally, she teaches written expression to students of all ages and tutors students in person and online who struggle with dyslexia.

A longtime book critic and former president of the National Book Critics Circle, Kate Tuttle (BA ‘92) became books editor at the Boston Globe in February 2020. Tuttle is also a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post.

After practicing criminal defense law for a decade, Amy (Vickery) Engel (BA ’93) is now a full-time writer. Her first novel, The Book of Ivy, won the Missouri Gateway Readers Award and the Georgia Peach Book Award in 2017. Her latest novel, The Familiar Dark, will be published by the Dutton Imprint of Penguin Random House and has sold foreign rights in 13 territories to date. Amy lives outside of Kansas City, Missouri with her family.

Patricia Hildenbrand (BA, ‘93) recently received her ten-year federal service award. She has worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs since 2010 and is currently a Supervisory Program Analyst for Member Services Knowledge Management, where she supervises a team of writers-editors who write and publish articles, job aids, and standard operating procedures for an enterprise-wide knowledge base system. Some of the programs her team supports include nationwide phone health care enrollment and the National Call Center for Homeless Veterans.

She is honored to serve those who served. for magazines, Kristy works with corporate and agency clients to develop vivid and compelling copy for print and online marketing. Her client list has included many well-known companies, including Catalyst Healthcare Marketing, VHA Inc., Broadlane Inc., Kimberly-Clark, Mary Kay, Southwest Airlines, and the University of Texas at Dallas. Kristy is a former trade mag-

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azine editor and has worked in publishing and marketing communications since graduating in 1991. Kristy lives in New Braunfels, Texas, with her husband and two young boys. Her family loves to take to the open road seeking adventure, hauling their vintage Airstream behind them.

Jennifer (Swisher) Mauser (BA ‘91) works as an educational consultant

John Reinhart (BA ‘93) was selected as an Ambassador for the Davis Phinney Foundation last December.

Todd Hernández (BA ‘95) was recently promoted to Full Professor of Spanish at Marquette University.

Brian Moss (BA ‘95) currently manages the Ask-A-Librarian Services for the KU Libraries. After earning a BA

in English and German at KU in 1995, Brian went on to earn a Master of Library Science degree at Emporia State University in 2009, and then a Master of Global and International Studies, including a graduate certificate in African Studies from KU in 2017.

Virginia Brackett (PhD ’98) helps organize writing sessions and workshops for veterans and their families as a member of the Kansas City Veterans Writing Team. Brackett’s most recent book, In the Company of Patriots, is a narrative nonfiction study of the effect on her family of the loss of her father who was killed while serving in Korea. Her fiction placed second in the fall 2018 Owl Canyon Hackathon, a competition for which she served as a judge in 2019, and her work was a finalist in the 2019 William Penn Foundation Early Childhood Book Challenge. Her 15 books have received citations from Booklist and the Amelia Bloomer Project (ALA), among others. She retired from Park University in 2016 and when not writing, she and her husband Ed enjoy their seven grandchildren.

Amy Stuber (PhD ‘98) serves as Director of Writing and Humanities for the DC-based education company, Smarthinking. Her fiction has appeared in Triquarterly, American Short Fiction, New England Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Her fiction received a Special Mention in the 2020 Pushcart Anthology. She’s an Assistant Editor for Split Lip Magazine and can be found online at www.amystuber.com.

2000s Janet Holliday (MA ‘00) recently retired from the US Army after more than 30 years of service. She is currently an adjunct instructor for both the Department of English and the College of Education at the University of Louisville.

Doug Steward (PhD ‘00) taught American literature and critical theory at Truman State University and Franklin & Marshall College before moving to the Modern Language Association, where he now directs the Association of Departments of English, which helps English department administrators carry out their duties effectively and connects them to an international

network of peers.

Joseph Yockey (BA ‘00) is currently a Professor of Law and the Brenda and Michael Sandler Faculty Fellow in Corporate Law at the University of Iowa College of Law. In May 2020, he will begin his term as President of the University of Iowa Faculty Senate. He resides in Coralville, Iowa, with his wife and daughter.

After graduating, Lai Yung Kwok (BA ‘01) returned to Hong Kong and pursued a Master of Philosophy in Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. Her thesis was on Hong Kong New Wave cinema. Last year, she published her second collection of short stories, Revisiting Time (in Chinese), delineating ordinary people’s alienation and struggle for survival in the midst of social unrest.

Troy J. Bassett (PhD ‘02) was promoted to full professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne last year.

This year his book The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Three-Volume Novel was published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Mark Hansen (MA ‘02) is a Senior Editor and Vice President in Chicago at Nieman Inc., a developer of K–12 educational materials—largely in the English language arts and social studies disciplines. His group works with various publishers in consulting and project development roles. He has been with the company fifteen years, after starting in journalism at business-to-business magazines along with side jobs as a tennis instructor.

He is also active in the Jefferson Park neighborhood in the northwest side of Chicago in community work.

Michael Stigman (PhD ‘05) is in his 13th year at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, where he recently became a full professor. At BC, he teaches several creative writing courses, World Literature Two, English Composition, and Literary Criticism, among others. He and his wife and children live in Weston, Missouri.

Anne (Bradley) Allensworth (BA ‘07) received her Masters in Public Administration from Wichita State University in 2010. Her mother and father are also alumni of the KU English program. She works as a Senior Budget Analyst in

the Texas Senate Finance Committee in Austin, Texas, advising the Chair of Senate Finance on budget issues in the areas of General Government, the Judiciary, Criminal Justice and Public Safety. She had no career plans when she graduated from KU and describes her current career path as accidental but fulfilling; her favorite part of her job is bridging the gap between the raw numbers and the analytical and policy impacts of each decision point for members of the Texas Legislature.

Anjali Nerlekar (PhD ‘07) is Associate Professor at Rutgers University (New Brunswick) and her first book is Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2016). She is currently Chair of the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL) and a core member of the Program in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. Her ongoing project, along with Dr. Bronwen Bledsoe at Cornell University Libraries, is the creation of a material archive of Indian poetry titled “The Bombay Poets’ Archive” located in the Cornell Library Special Collections.

Angela L. Glover Howell (PhD ‘08) teaches in the CORE program for Champlain College and online for The University of Nebraska Omaha and Oklahoma University. Before moving to Vermont, she was on the artists in the classroom roster for the Nebraska Arts Council. Her children’s book Ethan Eats Hot Lunch, illustrated by Bruce Arant, was published by Farfallina Press in 2017 and nominated for the Nebraska Book Award. Glover Howell, a native of Nebraska, was selected by the Willa Cather Foundation to be their writer in residence where she led a series of place-based prairie workshops while living in the Harling house made famous in Cather’s My Antonia. Glover Howell and her husband, Will, live on Champlain Island and when they are not teaching or writing, they enjoy hiking and the challenge of finding the perfect French fry.

2010s Kelci Shipley (BA ‘11) has spent most of her post-KU life in New York, working for media companies including

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Viacom (MTV and Comedy Central) and The New York Times, where she was a Project Manager for the beloved Games (NYT Crossword) team. But recently she moved across the country to San Francisco, trading in the concrete jungle for California sunshine and vineyards. She runs strategic operations for the global travel and technology company Airbnb. When she’s not working she is wine tasting or hiking outside San Francisco.

The memoir written by Margaret Kramar (PhD ‘12), Searching for Spenser, is the winner of the 2019 National Indie Excellence Awards.

Jason Barrett-Fox (PhD ‘13) has published articles in the American Journal of Semiotics, Rhetoric Review, Peitho, JAC, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and The Midwest Review, as well as chapters in recent collections such as Women at Work, Reinventing (with) Theory in Rhetoric and Writing Studies, and Posthuman Praxis in Technical Communication. His current project, a book on the intersection of technology, rhetoric, and media in feminist historiography, is under advance contract. Jason is an Assistant Professor of English and Director of Composition at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.

Dustin Crowley (PhD ‘13) began work in 2015 as an Assistant Professor of

English at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey teaching classes in African literature, global Anglophone literature, and literary theory. He has published one book, Africa’s Narrative Geographies: Charting the Intersections of Geocriticism and Postcolonial Studies, and has authored several articles on African literature covering topics like migration, environment, posthumanism, and science fiction.

After graduation, Erin (Behncke) Murray (MA ’13) moved to Austin, Texas, where she works as a graphic designer.

She married fellow KU alum Nathan Behncke, (KU Law ‘12) in 2014, and welcomed a daughter, Alaina, in October 2015. Erin and her family recently appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters.

They’re very much enjoying their south Austin home.

Danny Buteyn (BA ’15) moved back to the Twin Cities to pursue a career in publishing. He was hired as a publishing intern at West Academic Publishing in St. Paul, Minnesota, and shortly thereafter was hired full time as a Publishing Specialist. After two years of working with law textbook manuscripts, Danny decided to go to law school. He enrolled at Mitchell Hamline School of Law where he is currently a 2L in the part time evening program. In February of this year, Danny was promoted to Associate Acquisitions Editor at West. Danny has two years left of

law school and is mulling whether to practice or continue his career in academic legal publishing. Danny believes that his English degree from KU has prepared him not only for a career in publishing, but also law school.

Lars Erickson (BA ‘17) graduated from The University of Kansas’ Masters of Arts Interaction and User Experience Design program in 2019. He now works at a design/build firm in Kansas City called Useagility where he applies human centered design strategies to design enterprise software. He volunteers as the Co-Director of Communications for the User Experience Professionals Association- KC board (UXPA.) In all this, his degree in English Literature has helped him communicate well.

Although a designer by profession, his degree in Literature is essential to his roles. The people Lars works alongside all value the way language can be used to unite people and uncover solutions to everyday challenges.

Noah Hogan (BA, ‘19) is currently a reading tutor for the Literacy Lab at a charter school in Kansas City, Missouri.

After his service year with AmeriCorps is over, he will begin studying for a Master’s in Education at UMKC and working as a middle school ELA teacher through the Kansas City Teacher Residency.

Join the KU Mentoring platform! This program, part of the KU Alumni Association’s Jayhawk Career Network, helps current students and alumni make one-time or long-term professional connections based on location, career interests, or other factors.

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