Welcome
LSU English is home to world-renowned faculty, innovative course offerings, and talented students. At the heart of our work is an attention to verbal communication in spoken and written form – what humans do with language, how we do it, why we do it, and to what effects. Through the study of literature, linguistics, rhetoric, film, theory, and the craft of writing in a variety of genres and forms, we challenge students to ask questions of texts, to read beyond literal meanings, to understand how context and text interact, and to create compelling texts of their own. The value of an English degree is that the person who can write with elegance and precision, and who has the skills to interpret and analyze texts, is needed – and valued - in every area of work and life.
Go to Undergraduate and Graduate Course Descriptions to see examples of what our Department has to offer and browse “About Us” to learn about our faculty, graduate students, publications, events, and more.
Professor Sue Weinstein
Chair, Department of English
Creative Writing Director
LSU English is excited to welcome Associate Professor Adam Clay as our new Director of LSU Creative Writing. Adam comes to us from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he directed the Center for Writers. He is the editor of Mississippi Review and the author of 5 collections of poetry, 4 with the prestigious Milkweed Editions. His most recent book is Circle Back, published this year by Milkweed. You can learn more about Adam at his website, http://adamclay.org/.
English Department News
Congratulations to Distinguished Instructor Ann Martin on being named a CxC Teaching Fellow. Ann directs our English Dual Enrollment Program and is an invaluable member of LSU English.
Congratulations to Distinguished Instructor Nolde Alexius, who has been awarded the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society of Louisiana State University 2024 Outstanding Instructor Award! Nolde has been a valued member of the English Department for many years and we are thrilled that her many contributions to students and to English have been recognized with this prestigious award.
In Other News
This year, the MLA Convention will be in New Orleans, January 9-12, 2025. Since it is so close, the Department will pay registration fees for any English graduate student who wants to attend.
This Fall, the department is hosting and co-hosting the following invited-speaker talks:
- 9/26, Boyce Uphold (Creative Writing Speaker Series)
- 10/21, Ben Bergholtz (LSU English PhD alumnus, English Graduate Studies workshop series)
New Faculty (Coming Fall 2024)
Adam Clay will be joining the Department of English in Fall 2024 as the Director of Creative Writing. He is coming to us from the University of Southern Mississippi. He has a PhD in English and an MFA in Creative Writing and was the director of USM's Center for Writers and the editor of Mississippi Review.
David Nee will be joining the Department of English in Fall 2024 as an assistant professor in the Early Modern/Renaissance area. He earned his BA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and his PhD in English from Harvard University.
Ashlynn Wittchow will be receiving her PhD in Spring 2024 from Teachers College, Columbia University and will be joining the English Department in Fall 2024 as an assistant professor in the area of English Education.
Jessica Valdez will be joining the Department of English in Fall 2024 as an assistant professor of 19th Century British Literature. She comes to us from the University of East Anglia and previously worked at the University of Hong Kong.
Alexandra Meany will be coming from the University of Washington where she will be receiving her PhD. She will be joining the Department of English in fall 2024 as an assistant professor in the area of Multi-Ethnic Literature.
Faculty Accomplishments
Michael Bibler (Associate Professor) signed a contract with Oxford University Press to co-edit (with Sheri-Marie Harrison of University of Missouri) the Oxford Handbook of the Southern Gothic. The book is expected to be ready for publication in 2026.
Lauren Coats (Associate Professor), Jennifer Glassford (Instructor), Casey Patterson (Assistant Professor), and Paige Watts (Instructor) completed the Summer 2024 Communication-Intensive (C-I) Teaching Lab for new C-I Teachers and received their C-I certification.
Adam Clay (Associate Professor) participated in a poetry panel at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson this September. His latest book, Circle Back, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Finally, his poem, “Self-Portrait as an Invasive Species,” was published in Mid-American Review.
Brannon Costello (Professor) joined the staff of Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society as Associate Editor. This summer, he also presented essays at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature biennial conference in Gulfport, MS (“Of Grit Lit and Steel: On Charles Willeford’s Cockfighter”) and the Comics Studies Society’s virtual conference (“The Glitchy Environmentalism of Rick Veitch’s Swamp Thing”).
Alison Grifa Ismaili (Senior Instructor) was invited by the Cox Academic Center for Student-Athletes to serve as a guest football coach and to attend the UCLA game in recognition of her work with student athletes.
Saiward Hromadka (Instructor) presented a paper, “The New Curb Cut: Ungrading as the Pedagogical Ramp Between Artificial Intelligence and Dyslexia in College Composition Courses,” at the South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA) conference in September.
Ann Martin (Distinguished Instructor) was selected by the LSU Office of Academic Affairs and Communication across the Curriculum to join the second cohort of Communication-Intensive Teaching Fellows to inform, create, and disseminate innovative teaching development resources across campus.
Casey Patterson’s (Assistant Professor) article, “Towards a Manumissive Black Fantastic in Fandom, Fantasy, and Literature for Young People, or: A Case for the Black Hermione” (2022), received an honorable mention for the Children’s Literature Association’s Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award.
Pallavi Rastogi (Professor) has received an advance contract from LSU Press for the co-edited book (with Madoka Kishi), “Asians on the Gulf Coast: Other Races, Other Cultures” in Louisiana.”
Maurice Ruffin (Associate Professor) has had multiple readings this summer and fall, including at University of Oregon and Oregon Humanities Center, Lighthouse Writers Lit Festival (Denver), Sewanee Writers Conference, Mississippi Book Festival, International Black Writers Festival (Howard University), Brooklyn Book Festival, Eudora Welty Symposium at Mississippi University for Women, and Louisiana Book Festival. New editions of his novel The American Daughters are being published, and his work has been recognized by the 2024 John William Corrington Award (Centenary College of Louisiana), a 2024 South Arts Fellowship for Literary Arts Recipient, and the 2024 Inaugural Tennessee Williams Distinguished Arts Award (Tennessee Williams Festival).
Irina Shport (Associate Professor) published in JASA-Express Letters an article on tone modifications that speakers make to produce clear speech in a tone language (Mandarin) (with Jack Rittenberry).
Josh Wheeler (Associate Professor) published a feature, The Last and Final Death of Smokey Bear, exploring the cultural history of Smokey the Bear in ALTA Magazine’s special issue Reckoning with the West, edited by historian William Deverell. His previously published feature, In the Shadow of Oppenheimer (2023), for Distillations (the magazine of the Science History Institute) was included in the magazine’s annual “Best of Distillations” issue, published in August 2024.
Jessica Valdez (Assistant Professor) had her essay, "The Memetic Form of Bret Harte's Ah Sin: From the American West to The Way We Live Now," come out in Victorian Studies in August.
Ashlynn Wittchow (Assistant Professor) had a chapter, “Writing on the Mountain: James Moffett at the Bread Loaf School of English,” published by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in the edited collection on the legacy of James Moffett. She presented two conference papers at the NCTE conference in Boston, MS (“Considering contemporary applications for the history of English education”) and the JCT Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice in Dayton, OH (“Lessons from a blue guitar: Speculative fabulation in English education”).
Graduate Student Accomplishments
Azharuddin (PhD) was the recipient of the 2024 Sarah Liggett Teaching Award. He attended Harvard University's 14th Institute of World Literature 2024 Summer program, hosted by University of Cyprus.
Dahlia Li’s (MFA) short story, "The Last Sticky Thing", was published in The Writing Disorder last summer, and it was selected for the journal's “Best in Fiction" collection.
Carolina Murriel (MFA) was named one of Gambit's 40 Under 40 people doing good in New Orleans for her project Legados de Luisiana, an oral history series of Louisiana's Latin American elders, made in her capacity as a death doula. Legados was funded by a Rebirth grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. This September, her first published poem came out in Harper Collins' Here to Stay, an anthology of poets from the undocumented diaspora, edited by the Undocupoets collective. Lastly, Carolina’s production company Pizza Shark was nominated for the Podcast Academy's Ambie Award (akin to the Grammys of podcasting) in the Politics/Opinion category for their show National Emergency, a public health podcast hosted by two ER nurses who look at mass violence, disaster(mis)management, carceral health systems and more through a public health lens.
Ibrahim Nureni (PhD) has published a haiku in Acorn: A Journal of Contemporary Haiku, one of the most prestigious haiku journals in the United States. He was selected as a Fellow of the Bill Anderson Fund, a fellowship program for doctoral students engaged in disaster or medical hazard-related research across various disciplines.
Sunny Rosen’s (MFA) short story, “The Birthday Party,” received an honorable mention from this year’s AWP Intro Journals Project.
Erin Little published work in Olney Magazine and Crab Creek Review. Erin was also announced as the 2023 Poetry Chapbook winner by Chestnut Review for chapbook, Personal Injury. Her debut chapbook, described as "crucial, painful, and innermost," will be available later this year. An interview with Erin discussing writing about and into trauma was published in Chestnut Review in October.
Taylor Thompson (M.A. 2023) started this Fall as a Visiting Lecturer of English with Specialization in Rhetoric, Writing, and Digital Media Studies at Northern Arizona University while completing her PhD at LSU.
Seohye Kwon (Ph.D. candidate) was selected as one of the LSU representatives of the 2023 SEC Emerging Scholars program. She will receive an increase in her graduate assistantship stipend for one year and join students from across the SEC at the University of Arkansas this October for the multi-day 2023 SEC Emerging Scholars Program and Career Preparation Workshop. Seohye also published a book review of Judgment and Mercy by Martin J. Siegel titled "Irving Robert Kaufman's American Dream.” She has received a Korean Honor Scholarship from the Korean government, an award given to outstanding students of Korean heritage to encourage high achievement of academic performance and the development of leadership qualities for their future professional careers.
Nuha Fariha (MFA candidate) published her first poetry collection, God Mornings Tiger Nights, with Game Over Books in August 2023. This collection is “an ode to the enduring spirit of the Bengal tiger and a love letter to an immigrant's journey.”
Sunny Rosen (MFA candidate) received a Best of the Net nomination for a poem published with Taco Bell Quarterly. She published a book review with Current Magazine on Alba de Céspedes’s 1952 novel Forbidden Notebook. Sunny was also received a scholarship in the summer to attend the Convivio Writer’s Conference in Umbria, Italy.
Alumni
Madoka Kishi’s (PhD 2015, Professional in Residence in English) monograph, The Suicidal State: Race Suicide, Biopower, and the Sexuality of Population is slated to be published this October with Oxford University Press. The book theorizes a biopolitics of suicide by mapping the entwinement between the Progressive-Era anti-immigrant discourse of “race suicide” and period representations of literary suicide, including works by Henry James, Kate Chopin, Jack London, Gertrude Stein, and a series of Madame Butterfly texts. She is co-editing (with Pallavi Rastogi) a volume titled Asians on the Third Coast: Other Races, Other Cultures in Louisiana, which is under advance contract with LSU Press.
Tyler Sheldon (PhD 2024, Postdoc) published four poems in 365 Days Anthology and an article “On Confronting Identity and Global Challenges through Popular Culture and Pedagogy" (with Anna CohenMiller) in Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Pop Culture and Pedagogy. He was selected as one of the Featured Artists at the 2024 Festival of Words in Grand Coteau, Louisiana (November 2024).