Congratulations to English Lecturer Brian Dudak, who was honored by University College as this year’s Outstanding Dual Enrollment Faculty Member, and Instructor Honey Denson, who was also honored as a finalist.
Outstanding Honors Teacher Award
Congratulations to English Master Instructor Candie Moonshower, who was recently selected as the Honors College’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year. She has also been inducted into Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
Student Self Placement Publication
Associate Professor Kate Pantelides has published a special section on Methods of Student Self Placement in the Journal of Writing Assessment.18.1 (2025). Her introduction to the section is entitled “Collaboratively Building Our SSP Scholarship (Because Placement Is Still Everyone’s Business).”
Keynote on Ecocriticism
Professor Philip E. Phillips served as the keynote speaker at the International Conference on “Humans, Animals, and Natural History: Ecocritical Approaches to World Literature” at Ravenshaw University in Cuttack, Odisha, India. For more information, visit https://mtsunews.com/phillips-delivers-keynote-international-literature-conference-india/.
Publications and Keynote Speaker Invitation
We congratulate Professor Mohammed Albakry on two publications and an international speaking invitation.
Dr. Albakry’s co-authored article “Navigating Academic Arguments: Teaching Reporting Verbs in Transitional Reading Courses” appeared in the Journal of College Reading and Learning 54(3).
He has a forthcoming chapter entitled “Language Shift and Cultural Identity: Younger Generation’s Attitudes Toward Cajun French,” to appear in the edited volume Language in the Changing South, University of Georgia Press.
And he has been invited to be the keynote speaker at the 4th International Sacred Texts Conference in Accra, Ghana (June 2025), organized by the University of Ghana and the University of South Africa.
Jewish Women Writers, SF, and the Holocaust
Professor Elyce Rae Helford has published a chapter entitled “Traumatic Timescapes: Holocaust Memory in Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic and Nava Semel’s And the Rat Laughed in editor Marleen S. Barr’s new collection from Lexington Books, Jewish Women Science Fiction Writers Create Future Females: Gender, Temporality — and Yentas.
Aristotle’s Web: Six Short Plays
Congratulations to Professor Claudia Barnett on the publication of Aristotle’s Wife: Six Short Plays About Women in Science, just out from Carnegie Mellon University Press.
A Linguistic Guide to Sentence Structure
Congratulations to Professor Aleka Akoyunoglou Blackwell on the publication of her new book, A Linguistic Guide to Sentence Structure in American English (Cognella).
Teaching Prize in 18th Century Studies
Assistant Professor Bridget Donnelly has received the Martha F. Bowden Teaching Prize (first place) from the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The award recognizes “innovative pedagogies for teaching the time period to students at the undergraduate and graduate level” and was bestowed upon Bridget for the collaborative critical edition that she produced with her students in her “Gothic and Horror” class.
Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro
The new Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro is MTSU English’s own Dr. Matthew (Matt) Levitt Brown.
The MTSU alum has published multiple books, including his poetry collection Thou Art That.
He is also the co-founder of multiple writing groups, including Writers Corps, a student literary project for military veterans and their families; the Lavinia Project, a creative writing group for survivors, witnesses, and allies against sexual and domestic violence; and Nuestros Voces, a writing and resource acquisition group for Latino students and others interested in the Latino experience.
The new Poet Laureate’s recent experimental work with interactive writing component is up in Todd Gallery 210 through Spring Break.