News & Events
April 2012
Chris Bolster, an MA in English student, will be presenting a paper, "Garfield as Trickster: The Existential Implications of a World Without Garfield" at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, April 2012, Boston, MA.
Spring 2012
Dr. Shouhua Qi’s new book Western Literature in China and the Translation of a Nation is set to be released in spring 2012 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Fall 2011
Jason Burgher, a graduate of the BA in English program (2009), has been accepted by Teach For America, “the national corps of outstanding college graduates of all academic majors who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and who become lifelong leaders in the effort to end educational inequity.”
November, 2011
Dr. Ingrid Pruss presented her paper entitled “Image a Spiritual Hologram: Lady Gaga & Alexander McQueen, Royalty of a Different Fashion,” at the Northeast Popular Culture Association Conference on Saturday, November 12th, 2011.
June 2011
Dr. Shouhua Qi presented a paper titled “Transmutation under Borrowed Lenses: The ‘Success Story’ of Thomas Hardy in the Post-Mao, Market-Driven China" at Hardy at Yale International Conference. June 9-12, 2011. Yale University, New Haven, CT. Sponsored by the Thomas Hardy Association.
May 2011
Dr. Ingrid Pruss attended the University of Michigan's 4T Virtual Conference: Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology (May 22nd- May 25th 2011).
April 2011
Dr. Ingrid Pruss published a prose poem, “ad fontes,” on Seam Ripper: Women on Textual & Sartorial Style, an online literary art feature/journal curated /edited by Kate Durbin and Becca Klaver. (click here to access the poem)
Dr. Çiğdem Üsekes's essay "The New Desdemona: The White Liberal Woman in African American Drama" will appear in the journal Philological Review.
March 2011
Dr. Michael J. Chappell
presented a paper titled “The Pleasures of Friendship and Society:
Pekuah and the Arab’s Seraglio in Rasselas” at the American
Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Vancouver, BC, March
17-20, 2011
January 2011
Dr. Shouhua Qi presented a paper titled “Mightier, Double-Edged Sword: Translation of Western Texts, Nationhood, and Cultural Survival for China at the Turn of the 20th Century” at the 2011 Modern Language Association Conference, Los Angeles, CA. January 6-9, 2011.
April 2010
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (ed. by Tara L. Masih, 2009), for which Dr. Shouhua Qi is a contributing author, has been named a finalist of ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards 2009. Winners will be announced at Book Expo America in New York in June.
Dr. Çiğdem Üsekes has been invited to contribute her essay entitled "James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry: Two Revolutionaries, One Heart, One Mind" to a special issue of the journal Obsidian dedicated to Baldwin.
April 2010 Dr. Cigdem Usekes will be presenting a paper tentatively entitled "Did the Sixties Make James Baldwin Too Black and Too Queer?: The Politics and the Critics of Blues for Mister Charlie and Fortune & Men’s Eyes" at the 2010 NEMLA Convention in Montreal, Canada.December 2009 Dr. Heather Levy will be presenting a paper on The Lost Eves of Peidra Azul: Teresa de la Parra's _Mama Blanca's Souvenirs at the MLA Convention in Philadelphia. Fall 2009
June 01-03, 2009 Dr. Shouhua Qi presented a three-day lecture/workshop on "Strategies for Teaching Critical Thinking and Argumentative Writing" at China FLT Textbooks and Methodology Research Center, Shanghai International Studies University. April 2009 Dr. Michael Chappell presented a paper, “Bring Back the ‘70s: Thoughts on What We Have Lost,” at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, April 2009, New Orleans, LA.
April 24-28, 2009 Dr. Shouhua Qi’s three-act play Twin-Sun River: An American POW in China was staged by the prestigious Shanghai Theater Academy (8 performances altogether). March 19-21, 2009
Dr. Cigdem Usekes will be presenting a paper at the "James Baldwin: In His Time/In Our Time" Conference at Suffolk University, Boston, MA. Dr. Maureen Maguire is working on a book tentatively titled Love Songs from Thomas Campion to Bob Dylan: How Four Centuries of Social Change Has Affected the Voice of the Troubadour. March 2009 Dr. Cigdem Usekes’s essay "'We's the Leftovers': Whiteness as Economic Power and Exploitation in August Wilson's Twentieth-Century Cycle of Plays" will be republished in the collection August Wilson edited by Harold Bloom (part of the Modern Critical Views series, forthcoming March 2009).
Fall 2008 Dr. Michael Chappell’s review of The Mammoth Book of Bikers, edited by Arthur Veno, appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies. November 7-9, 2008
Dr. Cigdem Usekes presented a paper entitled "James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry: Two Revolutionaries, One Heart, One Mind" at the American Drama Conference at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, NY (November 7-9, 2008). Fall 2008 The Pearl Jacket and Other Stories: Contemporary Chinese Flash Fiction, preface and translation by Dr. Shouhua Qi, was released fall 2008 (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press). July 26-August 2, 2008 Dr. Shouhua Qi presented a paper titled “‘You deceived me—not by words, but by appearances’: First Impressions and Tragic Consequences in The Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure” at the 18th International Thomas Hardy Conference (Dorchester, UK. 26th July – 2nd August 2008). July 2, 2008 Dr. Heather Levy presented a paper "Provisional Bliss: Landscape and London in Elizabeth Bowen's To the North" on July 2, 2008 at the Literary London Conference hosted by Brunel University, Uxbridge. June 26-28, 2008 Dr. Margaret Murray is currently organizing a conference on Edith Wharton for the Wharton Society, which is to be held at The Mount, in Lenox MA. Students are invited, and may attend all sessions. June 2008
Dr. Heather Levy visited the New Archive for Poetry at the Mandeville Library at U.C. Davis in June 2008 to research Hannah Weiner's unpublished poetry. This work was conducted through an AAUP research grant. March 26-27, 2008 Dr. Shouhua Qi was invited to give a lecture for the Honors Program at Harrisburg Area Community College March 26-27, 2008. The title of his lecture was “History and the Novel: The Role of Literature in Understanding the Dynamics of Power.” March 24, 2008 A stage reading of Dr. Shouhua Qi’s Twin-Sun River (a screenplay about an American Korean War POW who chose to go to China at the time of armistice) was performed in the HBO Building in New York (5:30 PM- 8:00 PM, March 24, 2008). The event was sponsored by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences New York, produced by Emmy-winning Louisa Burns-Bisogno and Ellen Muir, and directed by Pam McDaniel. Earlier (6:00PM-8:00PM, March 19, 2008), Dr. Qi was invited to give a seminar lecture at the academy titled “Translating from Novel to Screenplay: Challenges and Pitfalls Merging Three Cultures (Chinese, Japanese, Western).” February 17, 2008 Dr. Ingrid Pruss presented a paper entitled, “Miri Ben-Ari’s ‘Symphony of Brotherhood’: Is it really about us?” at the 2008 Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference. The paper demonstrated the use of Ben-Ari’s hip-hop video as an adjunctive tool for teaching critical methods and advanced poetry, specifically the dramatic monologue. December 27-30, 2007 Dr. Heather Levy will be presenting a paper entitled “More than ‘Trash to Buy Tobacco’: Sinister Badges of Womanhood, Blackness and Homosexuality in Melville's Redburn” at the 2007 Modern Language Association Convention in Chicago. Fall 2007 Dr. Margaret Murray will be on sabbatical for the fall. The purpose of this leave is twofold: (1) to train as Associate Editor of The Edith Wharton Review and (2) to continue her research on the life of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman in order to write a critical biography, which is now in progress. The working title is For the Love of French Hats: The Life of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.
FALL 2007 Dr. Donald P. Gagnon serves as faculty advisor to the English Society, the English Honor Society as well as Stand Together, the organization for g/l/b/t/q students. In addition, Dr. Gagnon is co-chair of the annual Banned Books Week event this year.
August 4, 2007 Dr. Margaret Murray and Professor (Judy) Sullivan had a get together for students and community members for a chance to chat with like minded Potterphiles about the last book in the Potter series, Harry Postter and the Deathly Hallows. All invited, all ages.
July 2007 Western Literary Studies: Traditions, Trends, and Topics, which Dr. Shouhua Qi co-edited and contributed to, is released by People’s University of China Press in Beijing.
June 28-30, 2007 Dr. Cigdem Usekes presented her paper “In Another Country: James Baldwin and the Turkish Theatre Scene" at the James Baldwin Conference in London, England. This project was sponsored by a 2006-2007 CSU-AAUP Research Grant. June 14-17, 2007 Dr. Shouhua Qi presented a paper entitled “Imagining Hardy in the Brave New World Today” at “Hardy At Yale,” an international conference organized by The Thomas Hardy Association. He is the organizer of the panel “Thomas Hardy and the Globalized World.” May 10, 2007 Dr. Shouhua Qi is Western’s recipient of the 2006-2007 Connecticut State University Board of Trustees Research Award. The annual award was established in 2006 to recognize an assistant or associate professor from each of the four CSU universities for his or her “research/creative work of exceptional promise” and for having demonstrated “substantive contributions, achievements and scholarly activity” in his or her field in the last five years. May 2007 Dr. Michael J. Chappell is named to the editorial board of the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies. April 25, 2007 Dr. Shouhua Qi’s paper entitled “Traditions and Trends in Western Literary Genre Studies” was published by Foreign Literature Studies (Vol 29, No. 2, April 2007, pp.31-42), Wuhan, China. April, 2007 Dr. Margaret Murray gave a paper entitled "The Brokeback American Hero: From Salem to Wyoming" at the American Culture Association conference held in Boston, MA.
April 1, 2007 Dr. Shouhua Qi’s short story collection entitled Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories (Long River Press, 2007) was released. Gloria Frym, an American Book Award winner, says the 14 stories in the collection “gloriously join the lineage of Chekhov” while Daniel Asa Rose, a two-time Pen Fiction Award recipient, says “[b]y turns tender and chilling, these elegant and deeply knowing tales linger in the mind.” April 2007 Dr. Michael J. Chappell presented a paper, "A Brief History of the 21st Century Motorcycle Hero," at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference in Boston, MA. March, 2007 Dr. Ingrid Pruss gave an interdisciplinary paper/performance art piece at the CSU Sensorium in New Britain, CT on the necessity of acknowledging teaching as an artistic, creative genre and a valid form of art and the impact of originality in the classroom on students’ performance in the class based on group work, individual presentations and papers. Pruss used Shakespeare, advertising, postmodern art, the entertainment industry, and some of her own work to make her point. February 8, 2007 Dr. Shouhua Qi was the featured author speaker for the Writing Contest sponsored by Kennedy Middle School of Southington, CT. January 2007 Dr. Shouhua Qi was a featured writer of a Reading and Signing event sponsored by the MFA program, Alumni Hall, WCSU. Fall 2006-Spring 2007 Dr. Margaret Murray was named as Assistant Editor of the Edith Wharton Review during spring 2007. She was also named Secretary of the Edith Wharton Society during fall 2006. December 27-30, 2006 Dr. Margaret Murray chaired a panel on Edith Wharton at the 2006 MLA Convention in Philadelphia, PA. The panel's title was "Narcissism in the Works of Edith Wharton."
November 2006 Dr. Michael J. Chappell presented a paper, "Vultures, Indians, and Colonial Expansion: Samuel Johnson and the First Great War," at the Silo, Hunt Hill Farm, New Milford, CT. June 2006 Dr. Michael J. Chappell was interviewed in CSU Universe about his work in motorcycle studies and its application in the classroom. April 27, 2006 Dr. Shouhua Qi was the featured speaker of the Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month at Norwalk Community College, CT. The title of his speech is “Bridging the Pacific: A Personal Journey from a Different Shore.” April 27, 2006 Dr. Shouhua Qi was the keynote speaker of the 2006 IMPAC-Connecticut State University Young Writers Trust. The title of his speech is “Impac[t]ing the World with Your Words”. April 2006 Dr. Michael J. Chappell presented a paper, "Hunter S. Thompson: A Literary Appraisal of Hell's Angels" at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference in Atlanta, GA. March 2006 Dr. Michael J. Chappell presented a paper, "Vultures, Indians, and Colonial Expansion: Samuel Johnson and the First Great War," at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Montreal, QC
