Congratulations to Dr. Philip Phillips, whose recently published edited collection of essays, Poe Spaces: Within and Beyond the Spatial Turn, published by Palgrave Macmillan in its Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies Series, has just received the J. Lasley Dameron Award for 2025 from the Poe Studies Association (PSA).
Congratulations to Dr. Gaylord Brewer, who has just released his newest book of poetry, Goodbye, Baby, with Accents Publishing.
We proudly share Dr. Chandler Mordechai’s most recent refereed publication in the February 2026 issue of the journal ImageText. The article explores a creative pedagogical activity featuring the works of five MTSU students. You can read “Developing Reflexive Research Approaches through Multimodal Positionality Poems” at the attached link.
Congratulations to Dr. Chandler Mordechai, who has published “Storiographies of #HealingJourney: Online Feminist Rhetorical Practices of Healing through Content Creation and Care” in the Winter 2026 issue of Peitho: Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric.
Congratulations to Dr. Bridget Donnelly, who published the article “‘We Have to Be Detectives’: Digital Archival Research in the Undergraduate British Literature Survey Course” in the January 2026 issue of the journal Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture.
Professor Rima Abdallah shared her research on effective strategies for teaching virtual students in two talks at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi at the invitation of Dr Karine Germoni. Her presentations were “Teaching Writing Across the Disciplines” and “Teaching Texts Remotely: Challenges and Strategies for Teaching Asynchronously.”
Dr. Laura Dubek has just published her chapter “Rewriting ‘The Ugly Duckling’: The Bluest Eye and Civil Disorder(s) in the 1960s” in Critical Insights: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, edited by Jericho Williams (Salem Press, 2025).
English Lecturer Mary Carroll Leoson’s new book of short stories, Devil’s Oak: Waking the Female Wound has just been published by MTSU Open Press. The collection features strong female characters against a backdrop of ghosts, fairy tales, and urban legends.
Mohammed Albakry’s new book, Presentation of Self in Academic Support Genres, with Clint Bryan, is now out from Michigan University Press. Unlike their previous co-authored book, Writing Recommendation Letters, which tackled the evaluative discourse we ask others to do on our behalf, this volume takes up the evaluative and promotional labor that academic job seekers engage in when presenting themselves professionally.
Associate Professor and prolific author Dr Fred Arroyo received MTSU’s 2025 Distinguished Senior Career Activity Award. His award-winning books include Sown in Earth: Essays of Memory and Belonging (2020), Western Avenue and Other Fictions (2012), and The Region of Lost Names (2008). For more, see this recent interview with Dr. Arroyo, “On Writing Your Obsessions.”