Several faculty members began the academic year with changes in rank or appointment. EJ Levy received tenure and promotion to associate professor and Ellen Brinks and Roze Hentschell were promoted to full professor. Sharon Grindle, Jenny Levin, and Dana Masden received Senior Teaching Appointments in recognition of their years of excellent teaching. Todd Mitchell moved to the non-tenure-track rank of Assistant Professor and was reappointed as Director of Creative Writing Pedagogy.
Sue Doe was awarded the Paulo Friere Educator Award for 2014 on December 6 by the Denver-based Romero Theater Troupe for “work on behalf of contingent labor in higher education.” The Romero Theater Troupe, a Denver-based group, addresses social justice issues through organic theater. Along with several graduate students and NTTF, notably led by former grad student Vani Kannan (now at Syracuse U), Sue helped put together last year’s performance called, Contingency: A Crisis for Teaching and Learning which was performed on the campuses of CSU and Front Range Community College. The Fort Collins performances were subsequently folded into a larger production of the Romero Theater Troupe. An Adjunct at Ludlow integrated stories of adjunct faculty, undocumented workers, discarded senior workers, marginalized female workers, and embattled union workers, among others. Organic theater is participatory theater that depicts the everyday, often invisible violences that people experience, in the workplace, on the streets, at home, and elsewhere. Participant-actors write short scenes to depict their own experiences. The act of writing the play brings people together to address the social justice issues in question and the differences between actors. This work builds on Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed.
Tobi Jacobi and Ann Folwell Stanford (DePaul University) are pleased to announce the release of Women, Writing, and Prison: Activists, Scholars, and Writers Speak Out, an edited collection of essays and narratives on women’s experiences in prison (Rowman and Littlefield).
Tobi Jacobi presented a paper ((Re)writing ‘Lila: Stories from the New York Training School for Girls, 1920-1935) at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in San Juan.
The Community Literacy Center is pleased to announce the launch of the fall 2014 SpeakOut! Journal. The issue, titled, “We Make Our Future,” features 68 community writers from our youth and adult programs.
Kristin George Bagdanov’s panel “Cultivating and Communicating Crisis in Ecopoetics” was accepted for the Conference on Communication and Environment (COCE) in Boulder this June. Also presenting on this ASLE-sponsored panel is 3rd year poet, Gracie McCarroll.
Kayann Short’s (English BA 1981; MA 1988) essay, “Floodables,” about the aftermath of Colorado’s 2013 flood, appears in the Winter 2014 issue of The Fort Collins Courier.
Chris Vanjonack has two short stories accepted for publication: “The Last Times You Saw Jenny McCreary” – Buffalo Almanack – Issue 6 – December 15th and “Last Letter Home” – New Haven Review – Issue 15 – Winter 2014.
Upcoming Event: SpeakOut fall journal launch. Tuesday, December 16, 6:30-8 pm at the Wild Boar Coffee Shop (lower level). “Please join us to celebrate writing with Fort Collins poet laureate and English Department alumna, Chloe’ Leisure, and our youth writers. Refreshments will be served.”