A Reading of Banned and Challenged Books, 2018

On Thursday evening, September 27, a few dozen gathered in the student union to mark American Library Association Banned Books Week with a reading.

Readers & Books

Ms. Rachel Hagen, MWSU Education student

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Rev. Brian Kirk, Pastor of First Christian Church, St. Joseph

• Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Ms. Rachel Lundy, Special Collections Librarian, MWSU

• Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

Mr. Steve Booher, News Director, St. Joseph News-Press

• “Cry Cry Cry” by Sherman Alexie

Ms. Jade Lewis, East Buchanan High School and Prairie Lands Writing Project  

• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Dr. Robert Nulph, Chairperson of Communication and Journalism, MWSU

• Paper Towns by John Green

Dr. Elizabeth Thorne Wallington, Assistant Professor of Education, MWSU

• The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The event was sponsored by EML, Prairie Lands Writing Project, MWSU Library, and the Education Department.

Professor Kunkel Launches New Book

On Saturday, Sept. 8, at 4 p.m., Dr. Marianne Kunkel of MWSU's English and Modern Languages department read poems from her new book, Hillary, Made Up (Stephen F. Austin State University Press). 

The reading, which took place at St. Joseph's Wyeth-Tootle Mansion, was followed by refreshments and a book signing. About 35 people were in attendance. 

Dr. Kunkel is grateful to all who attended or wished to attend!

Congratulations, Marianne!

Bill Church Recipient of Alumni Distinguished Professor Award

Eleven will be honored with Alumni Association awards at the 36th annual Awards Banquet on Friday, Oct. 12.  

Among the honorees will be EML's very own Dr. Bill Church, a 1989 EML alumnus and current associate professor of English.Bill is the 2018 recipient of the Alumni Association's Distinguished Professor Award.

Bill joins past department winners Dr. Susie Hennessy, Dr. Jane Frick, Dr. Betty Sawin, Dr. Jeanie Crain, and Dr. Isabel Sparks. 

Congratulations, Bill!

Recent Faculty Work

In July, Dr. Kaye Adkins, professor of English,  presented at the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) Professional Communication conference in Toronto; the conference is international, with attendees from North America, Europe, and Asia. Dr. Adkins was part of a panel that discussed the use of portfolios for evaluation of technical communication programs and of graduating students. Dr. Adkins explained the Missouri Western Technical Communication portfolio program, which has been in existence for over 20 years. The program was presented as a model for other programs.

In July, Dr. Adkins also participated in the iFixit EDU Symposium. iFixit, a leader in the Right to Repair movement, partners with technical communication teachers to provide students the opportunity to create repair manuals and publish them on iFixit's website, www.ifixit.com. Dr. Adkins was invited to participate as a veteran teacher, offering advice to teachers who are new to the program.

Prairie Lands Writing Project News

Co-Director Josie Clark(SJSD) and Director Susan Martens (MWSU) presented "Engaging Place, Empowering Writers: The Writing Marathon" at the Write to Learn Conference in Osage Beach, MO, on Feb. 16.

Co-Director Amy Miller coordinated the popular High School Writing Day event at MWSU on March 1 which brought approximately 200 high school students and their teachers from 17 area schools to our campus for a day of writing workshops, lunch, and an open mic session.  PLWP TC Terrance Sanders (Frontier STEM High School) served as Emcee.  Volunteer workshop presenters included PLWP TCs Dawn Terrick, Patsy Brost, Joe Marmaud, Reilly Maloney (East Buchanan High School), and Vickey Meyer (SJSD) as well as MWSU faculty members Meredith Katchen, Marianne Kunkel, Kaye Adkins, Bill Church, Michael Charlton, Bob Bergland, and Bob Nulph. English undergraduate students Michael Cullinane, Alexandria Null, Tiffany Rice, Brooke Howe, Lena Ashford, and Mandee Greer served as MWSU student guides and assistants. 

Co-Director Elisabeth Alkier (SJSD) coordinated another successful Summer Youth Writing Project for the Saint Joseph Public School District May 18-June 14.  SJSD teachers for this popular program, which served approximately 120 elementary students and 30 middle school students, included PLWP Teacher Consultants  Cindy Faucett,  Raelynn Stroud, Jolynn Venneman, Robin Pettegrew, and Josie Clark.

Director Susan Martens (MWSU) facilitated a Writing Retreat for area teachers at Conception Abbey in Conception, MO, on June 22-24. Marianne Kunkel (MWSU) served as Guest Editor.  

On August 4, Susan Martens and Amy Miller presented a session at the National Writing Project Midwest Conference in Madison, WI, titled "The Writing Marathon: Celebrating 25 Years."

Alumna Wins Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award

Mercedes Lucero, an alumna of our department with a degree in Literature and a minor in creative writing, is the 2017 recipient of the Langston Hughes Award in Creative Writing for her chap book In the Garden of Broken Things.

Mercedes has her MFA from Northwestern University and is currently working on her PhD at the University of Kansas.

This is the second time that a MWSU English graduate has won the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award. Mary Stone is a previous recipient.

Visit her author page for more information about Mercedes' work.

Congratulations, Mercedes!

New Faculty in EML

We have more than a few new faces in English and Modern Languages this fall. Welcome to all of our new colleagues!

Janice Cools-Stephens, our new assistant professor in technical communication, was born in Saint Lucia, a Caribbean island. She earned her a PhD in English from the University of the West Indies-Mona and an MA in Rhetoric and Professional Communication from New Mexico State University. Her Writing Studies work in Composition and Technical Communication has appeared in CEA Forum, the Wisconsin English Journal, and book chapters. Her Men’s Studies and Masculinities work has been published in the Journal of Men’s Studies, and Culture, Society and Masculinity. Her research interests in writing studies include Academic Literacies, ethnography, and transferable skills. She is co-author with Gregory Stephens of Communicative Cultures in Writing Studies: Ethnographic Approaches, Transferrable Skills and Non-Academic Genres, forthcoming from University Press of Colorado.

Pauline Destouches is a French Fulbright teacher from Paris who recently completed her Master's degree in English studies, major Translation. She has always been fascinated by languages and especially English since her first foreign languages classes in primary school, and has since travelled to English-speaking countries as often as she could. After spending a year in Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland with the program Erasmus for her last year of degree, she has now come to Missouri Western to teach French to American students and learn about the Midwestern way of life!

Carla Kluth, a German Fulbright teacher, is originally from Cologne, a city located in western Germany. She strives to share her language and culture with students of Missouri Western State University. She has taught German as a foreign language to Chinese students in Guangzhou, China, as well as to refugees in Germany. At the University of Cologne Carla Kluth obtained her bachelor’s degree in English and Art. She majored in printmaking and is currently waiting for the results of her master’s thesis. At Missouri Western State University, Carla wishes to strengthen German language teaching and encourages students to learn any language apart from their own mother tongue.

Gregory Stephens, half-time instructor of Spanish, is on leave 2018-19 from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, where he is an Associate Professor of English. He teaches Creative Writing, literature, film, and seminars in Cultural Studies and Writing Studies. Before grad school Stephens was an award-winning songwriter in Austin, Texas. He is the author of On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley (Cambridge UP). Trilogies as Cultural Analysis: Literary Re-imaginings of Sea Crossings, Animals, and Fathering is published by Cambridge Scholars Press (2018). The monograph Three Birds Sing a New Song: A Puerto Rican trilogy about Dystopia, Precarity, and Resistance, which combines ethnography and literary nonfiction, is in production with Intermezzo.

Alyssa Striplin, a new Instructor of English, is from Independence, Missouri, but she’s fresh off the plane from Minnesota after earning an M.F.A. in fiction from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She spent three years finishing the first draft of a novel about cryptids under three feet of snow, surviving only on hot dishes and horror movies. Before that, she received her bachelor’s and Master’s degree in English from Northwest Missouri State University. This means that she’ll have to splice a bearcat, a maverick bull, and a griffon together into some kind of beastly amalgamation of alma maters, which is to her liking. She’s a huge fan of monsters, mythology, magic, and the macabre. This is evident in some of her short stories, which have been published in The Molotov Cocktail, Luna Station Quarterly, Blue River Review, and Midwestern Gothic. Feel free to stop by her office in Eder Hall to hear stories about her black cat, Loki, and whatever horror movie she’s forced her partner, Kevin, to watch.

Lili Wang is our visiting professor of Chinese from Xi’dian University. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Northwest University (Xi’an, China) and Master’s Degree from Beihang University (Beijing, China) with a focus on American Literature.  She has been teaching at Xi’dian University, China for 10 years. She won the Second Place in the National Foreign Language Teaching Contest and the Grand Prize in Shannxi State Level College English Teaching Competition. She is a huge fan of the NBA, and Kevin Durant is her favorite player.