The CSU English Department is proud to highlight the outstanding work of our faculty and staff, whose recent accomplishments exemplify the impact of our scholarly and creative community. Below, learn more about recent publications, presentations, honors, and community engagement efforts.

Publications: Research & Scholarship

  • Doug Cloud’s article, “Digital Climate Rhetoric and the Corrupted Scientist Archetype,” co-authored with Emma Frances Bloomfield, Denise Tillery, and Sabrina O’Gwynn, appeared in Environmental Communication.
  • Todd Ruecker co-authored the Computers and Composition article “iPads in the Writing Classroom: Neoliberalism, Agency, and Access” with former graduate students, and co-edited, with Sheila Carter-Tod, the collection WPAing in a Pandemic and Beyond: Revision, Innovation, and Advocacy. He also presented “Linguistic Justice, Generative AI, and Empowering L2 Writers” at the Symposium of Second Language Writing in Taiwan.
  • As the Department’s Thomas Mark Scholar, Liz Steinway traveled to the Newberry Library in Chicago, where she researched early modern anatomical texts for an essay on Shakespeare and Fletcher’s King Henry VIII. Her essay, “Reproducing the Nation: Royal Wombs in King Henry VIII,” was recently published in Nationalism and Royal Women in Early Modern England, a collection in Palgrave Macmillan’s Queenship and Power series.
  • Erika Szymanski’s article, co-authored with colleagues from Edinburgh and Osaka, “The Soba Restaurant and the Oyster Bar: Peripheral Spaces for Responsible Research and Innovation,” has just been published (open access) in the journal East Asian Science, Technology and Society.
  • Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala and co-editors Michele Back and Yecid Ortega have a new book out, Decolonising Language Teacher Education: Voices from the Global North and Global South, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

 

Publications: Creative Artistry

  • Harrison Candelaria Fletcher has a hybrid chapbook, Comfort of Stone, coming out in Spring 2026 (New Michigan Press). His new lyric essay collection, Creation Myths, is also a semifinalist for the 2025 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize (results expected later this month). Additionally, he had four lyric essays in print and online this semester: “Moment of Stillness,” Sonora Review; “Coyote Sees Himself,” Puerto Del Sol; “Chapel of Weeds,” Salt Hill Journal; and “Lift,” The Main Review.
  • Hannah Barnhart had a short story published in the most recent issue of SLAB. The piece is titled “Mother Something Else.”
  • Matthew Cooperman has work in the new issue of VOLT, and has poems forthcoming in Action, Spectacle.
  • slp’s poem “#1: Postcard Ghazal” is published in Lavender Review, Issue 32.
  • Ben Freedman (MFA ’24) has two stories soon to be published: “That Summer,” forthcoming in Prairie Schooner in Spring 2026, and “Sally,” forthcoming in the Chicago Quarterly Review in Fall 2026.
  • Bryce M. O’Tierney’s long-form lyric essay, “Concerto,” was selected by Julia Alvarez as the winner of CALYX Journal’s 2025 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. “Concerto” will appear in Volume 36, No. 1, of CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, which will be available in Summer/Fall 2026. Bryce’s reading of “Concerto” will also be available to stream online.
  • On December 9, the University of Illinois Press published Joseph: An Epic, a first foray into poetry for Zach Hutchins.
  • The Center for Literary Publishing recently published Song of Gray by Asha Futterman, winner of the 2025 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Craig Morgan Teicher served as the final judge. In addition to publication of her book, Futterman received a $2,500 honorarium. At the invitation of the Creative Writing Reading Series, she will visit the CSU campus and give a public reading on April 16, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. in the University Ballroom of the Lory Student Center.

 

Public Talks, Conference Presentations, and Community Engagement

  • At CSU’s Climate Hub Launch event, held at the SPUR campus in Denver on October 14, Lynn Badia gave a talk with Dr. Courtney Shultz, the Director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability. Lynn and Courtney’s presentation focused on speculative storytelling as a tool to both anticipate and shape alternative climate futures, emphasizing the activation of narratives of more ethical and sustainable futures in climate policy.
  • The WAC (writing across the curriculum) team—Sue Doe, Kelly Bradbury, Genesea Carter, Leslie Davis, and Annie Halseth—has been broadening work on campus to encompass WEC (writing-enriched and writing-engaged curriculum) programs like a 2-week intensive TILT Community of Practices on Writing Engaged Curriculum and TILT WEC Faculty Fellowships with WEC mentors. This work is driven by a desire to support cross-campus faculty efforts to meaningfully integrate writing as a tool for student learning and engagement.
  • Julia Schleck gave a virtual talk entitled “Academic Freedom Under Attack: Rights, Responsibilities, and Possibilities for Resistance” to the Penn Forum for Women Faculty and Gender Equity at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday, Oct. 17.
  • Mark Bresnan spoke on two panels at the American Studies Association Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As part of a panel on David Lynch and American Empire, he delivered his paper “Re-Animating the Television of Exhaustion: Belated Temporality in Twin Peaks: The Return.” He also served as a panelist on a session sponsored by the Wiki Education Foundation, “Open Knowledge as Pedagogical Praxis: How Wikipedia Can Transform American Studies Curricula,” where he discussed his experience using Wikipedia projects to fill content gaps and promote information literacy in AMST 100 and 101.
  • Tobi Jacobi presented “Pop-up Community Writing Engagement: Making Space for the Temporary and Spontaneous” at the Biennial Conference on Community Writing with English graduate student Maddy King, where they also accepted the Outstanding University–Community Program Award, honoring more than 20 years of community writing programming. Her essay on story-exchange walls, co-authored with English department alum Braden Bomgaars, appears in Feminist Pedagogy this month.
  • Sarah Cooper gave a CSU Blake Center for Engaged Humanities Lecture titled “Archived Athletes: The Trans and Intersex Histories in the 1996 Olympics,” and presented “Listening to Our Elders: Preservation Practices, Art Making, and Research from Lesbian Spaces” at the Lesbian Lives Conference in New York.
  • Zach Hutchins attended the triennial conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, where he led a mentoring session titled “Life After Tenure: Getting to Full and Flourishing Along the Way.” He also presented on Anne Bradstreet, workshopping an essay that was solicited for the Oxford Handbook of Anne Bradstreet.
  • Kelly Bradbury gave the Holloway Lecture at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland, on October 29. The lecture series aims to inform and inspire undergraduates while sharing research in literature, rhetoric, and composition. Bradbury’s talk, “Mindful Play: Igniting Intellectual Curiosity in a Changing World,” drew from her longtime research on intellectualism in American culture.
  • Mike Palmquist delivered the keynote address at the 78thAnnual Convention of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association in Spokane, Washington, in October. His talk, “Rethinking Scholarly Publishing: Putting Scholars in Control,” explored how institutional reward structures might better support open-access publishing. He also presented on writing across the curriculum and joined the closing panel on how to get started with scholarly publishing.
  • Ryan Claycomb presented “Oyez, Oyez: National Fantasies of Deliberation on Capitol Stages” at the 2025 American Society for Theatre Research Conference in Denver in early November. His presentation examined staged representations of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., theatres and the aesthetics of political centrism. Claycomb’s essay, “Recuperating (from) Disposability in the Wasteocene: Recycling Lives and Plastics in Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” is also forthcoming in the winter issue of Comparative Drama.
  • Aly Welker and Kelly Bradbury co-facilitated “Centering Student Voices: A Dialogue on Generative AI and Writing Across the Curriculum,” part of Morgan Library’s Fall 2025 AI Dialogues: Conversations About Artificial Intelligence on Campus, a series designed to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on the role of artificial intelligence across academic fields.
  • Bryce M. O’Tierney composed, performed, and recorded the violin score for CSU dance faculty member Madeline Jazz Harvey’s original ballet The Wild Little Horse, which was staged at the CSU Fall Dance Concert the weekend of Nov. 14–15 at the University Center for the Arts.
  • On November 22, Tatiana Nekrasova-Beker, Kiley Dickerson, and Elizabeth Pedrotti presented “Preparing LSP Professionals: Target Competencies, Strategies, and Materials” at the ACTFL Conference in New Orleans.
  • In November, our English Education faculty led multiple sessions at the National Council of Teachers of English convention in Denver. Learn more about their experience here.
  • As part of the Great Conversations program, Dan Beachy-Quick led a talk entitled “Poetry: Music and Meaning” on November 11. The program brings together a community of engaged learners who receive unique access to liberal arts faculty, explore the latest scholarship from the College of Liberal Arts, and participate in lively discussion around topics of local, national, and global importance.

 

Honors

  • As of January 1, Erika Szymanski will be serving as co–editor-in-chief of Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, the open-access journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science, together with Greg Hollin at the University of Sheffield and an international editorial collective.

  • The Coalition for Community Writing recognized Tobi Jacobi and the team at the Community Literacy Center (CLC) with the Outstanding University–Community Program Award at its biennial conference in late October, honoring more than 20 years of community writing programming.

    The CLC also received two grants in October. The Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment will support a Community Writing and Arts Program Design Workshop for students, faculty, and community members in February 2026. Support from Fort Fund will enable several new Story Exchange Wall installations in Spring 2026. Kudos to lead author Mary Ellen Sanger!

  • John Kneisley’s poetry manuscript Along the Shore of Death and Dreaming was named a finalist for the 2025 Autumn House Poetry Prize.
  • Nina McConigley’s forthcoming novel, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal, and was recommended by Real Simple magazine. It will be released on January 20, 2026. Additionally, Nina’s play Cowboys and East Indians recently won an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award!