P. Jane Hafen (English) and Patrice Hollrah (Writing Center) are members of the American Indian Alliance (AIA) who attended the Native American Literature Symposium (NALS) in Albuquerque in March. As Clan Mothers of NALS, they help to organize the symposium, arrange the book and vendor exhibit, confer literary awards, present papers, and mentor…

John Bowers (English) delivered the keynote presentation "Tolkien at Merton College" to the annual meeting of the Merton College Charitable Corporation convened at the Brooklyn Law School in April. He appeared at the invitation of the host, Nick Allard, dean of the Brooklyn Law School. Among the dignitaries present was the warden of Oxford's…

Erin Rinto (Libraries) and Elisa Cogbill-Seiders (English) are the authors of "Library Instruction and Themed Composition Courses: An Investigation of Factors that Impact Student Learning." It was published in the January issue of The Journal of Academic Librarianship.  

Timothy Erwin (English) was asked to serve on a British literature evaluation panel this summer at the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, D.C., and later spoke at the triennial meeting of the International Association for Word and Image Studies hosted by the Scottish Word and Image Group at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He…

Donald Revell (English) has been chosen as this year's Phi Beta Kappa Poet for the annual Literary Exercises at Harvard University's commencement. Poets so honored in the past include Robert Creely, Allen Ginsburg, and Seamus Heany. Revell currently is writing a poem specifically for the occasion. Its over-arching theme will be the reason of…

Felicia Campbell (English) had award-winning author Len Rosen talk with students in her Chaos Theory and Literature class via Skype in September. The author spent more than an hour discussing his book, All Cry Chaos,and answering students' questions.

Charles Whitney (English) wrote an essay, "Green Economics and the English Renaissance: From Capital to the Commons," that appears in Shakespeare and the Urgency of Now: Criticism and Theory in the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). This essay links the 16th-century assault on commons rights to today's assault on the environmental commons…

Merrill Horton (English) wrote an article, "A Speculative Note on The Mansion's Myra Allanovna," which was published in The Faulkner Journal.

Gary Pullman (English) wrote a short story, "Bedtime Story," which was published in the spring edition of the peer-reviewed periodical, Word River Literary Review .

Felicia Campbell (English) received the Lifetime Service Award from the national Popular Culture Association American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) at the annual meeting of more than 2,600 members in Washington, D.C. in March. The award is an engraved crystal replica of the Washington Monument. She has held numerous offices in the national PCA,…

John Bowers (English) has been given a four-week summer visiting research fellowship at Oxford to recover a "lost" book by J. R. R. Tolkien from a local archive.

Christina Martinez, Scott Tenney, and Leeanne Schroer-Motz (all English) received 2013 Outstanding Part-Time Instructor of the Year Awards.