Gary Richards recently attended the 38th annual Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival where, on March 22, he was one of four panelists on “A Truman Capote Reading and Discussion,” organized to mark the writer’s centennial. Other panelists were actor Brenda Currin, socialite Anna Christina “Tina” Radziwill, and novelist Colm Toíbín. On March 23, Richards also led the festival’s breakfast reading group, which explored the short stories of Eudora Welty, including “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies,” “Why I Live at the P.O.,” “A Curtain of Green,” “Powerhouse,” “Moon Lake,” and “No Place You, My Love.” He has led this event since 2007. … [Read more...]

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon recently presented a poster, "Where do Central Cushitic Ejectives Come From?" at the Centennial Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Jan. 4-7, New York City, NY. He also gave a talk to the LSA sister society the North American Association of the History of Language Science on "The undead nature of the term 'Hamito-Semitic'" … [Read more...]

Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, was a participant in "Mapping the Maximalist Novel: A Roundtable" at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 4-7, 2024. … [Read more...]

Brenta Blevins, Associate Professor of Writing Studies and Digital Studies, recently presented Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research on “low stakes” reflective journal assignments at the Corridors, the Blue Ridge Writing and Rhetoric Conference, in Blacksburg, VA. She also delivered a workshop on journal writing and conducting writing studies related SoTL research.  … [Read more...]

Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, recently presented "Hot/Cold Ecosystems in the Americas: Recycling Trash Cinema from Santo to Dr. Humpp" at the annual conference of the Literature/Film Association in Missoula, Montana, Sept. 21-23, 2023. … [Read more...]

Professor and Department Chair Jonathan Levin delivered a paper titled “'A tree is a passage between earth and sky’': Navigating Scientific and Animistic Frameworks in Richard Powers’s The Overstory” at the American Literature Association Annual Meeting in Boston this past May. … [Read more...]

Professor of English Eric G. Lorentzen presented a paper entitled "The Sights/Sites of Dickens in 2023: Literary Tourism, Cultural Studies, and the University Literature Classroom" at the recent Dickens Society Symposium in Rochester (RIT). The talk included research he conducted in museums and other literary sites across England, as well as the pedagogical methodologies involved with his recent new course on Dickens at UMW, "Dickens, Disney, and Popular Culture," two sections of which ran for the first time during the fall 2022 semester. He was also one of six scholars to be invited to join the roundtable "Teaching Dickens," at which he presented the talk "Wisdom of the Heart: Dickens and Cultural Studies."  Professor Lorentzen hopes to offer the course again during the fall 2024 semester. … [Read more...]

Gary Richards, Professor of English, led a discussion of six of Kate Chopin's representative short stories at the sold-out special event "Books and Beignets with Gary Richards" at the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival on Saturday, March 25. Richards has presented in this series fifteen times since 2007, lecturing on authors that include Ellen Gilchrist, John Kennedy Toole, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, James Baldwin, and, in multiple sessions, Tennessee Williams. Richards teaches such English courses as Southern Short Stories (Summer 2023), Writing About the South (Fall 2023), and Global Issues in Literature (Fall 2023) and also offers WGST courses as Perspectives in Sexuality (Summer 2023). … [Read more...]

Marie McAllister recently presented "Race and Medicine in the Physician Memoir: Stories and Silences" at the March 2023 Health Humanities Consortium national conference. McAllister's research addresses the intersections between literature and medicine. She teaches in the Department of English and Linguistics such courses as Writing about Medicine, Birth of the Novel, Jane Austen, and more. Her Literature of Death and Purpose will be offered in Fall 2023.   … [Read more...]