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Faculty News

Professor Cassel is this year's recipient of the President's Award for Inclusive Excellence and Diversity! The award acknowledges, in part, her efforts to prepare instructors to teach the Common Read (George Takei's graphic novel on his childhood in a Japanese American internment camp) and public presentations/news interviews on the history of "yellow peril" and the "hypersexualization of Asian women" as part of the "Stop Asian Hate" movement.

She was interviewed on ! Since the pandemic began, more than 10,000 incidents have been reported (as of Sept 2021). Most of them are verbal and against Asian women. Estimates are that 1 in 5 people of Asian descent in the U.S. have personally experienced some form of "Asian hate," so this work is especially relevant now and within our community. Join us in wishing her congratulations!

Professor Stoddard Holmes was interviewed on disability in Jane Eyre for , the fall 2021 season of the rompod, the feminist podcast on the romance novel.

Professor Levato's project, "SCARLET," has had excerpts recently published in , , , , and . Other excerpts from the project are forthcoming in Matter, Star 82 Review, Experiment-O, Harpy Hybrid Review, and Imposter.

“SCARLET” is a digital visual/poetic meditation on the fractured state of psyche induced by extended social isolation under COVID-19 lockdown. The digital/visual poems are created through erasure of the novel The Scarlet Plague collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life in lockdown. The titles of poems in the series are then derived from objects contained in each glitched still life.

Glitching is a technique that introduces errors into the code of a digital file or stream that distorts its presentation. The error-induced fracturing of images in “SCARLET” is intended to defamiliarize everyday objects and surroundings to reflect the state of a pandemic self in forced confinement. The Scarlet Plague is a post-apocalyptic novel by Jack London, published in 1912, set in California during the year 2073, after the world’s population is decimated by an uncontrollable pandemic.

Professor Francesco Levato was promoted to Associate Professor! He continues to excel in his service to the department, taking on the roles of Graduate Studies Coordinator and Dungeon Master this coming AY.

Professor Rebecca Lush's book was nominated for the prestigious Locus Award! Her book, "Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre" has been nominated for the 2021 awards. Read the here.

Professor Susie Lan Cassel's research featured as part of AAPI Heritage Month! Her participation in various events and panels on Combating Asian Hate led to an informative and important interview featured on the �� Homepage! Read the here.

Professor Andy Stewart's novel is out now! Andrew Kelly Stewart's first book, WE SHALL SING A SONG INTO THE DEEP, came out on March 9! Learn more about the book or order a copy, visit .

Professor Mary Stewart published "Strategic, User-Centered Design for a Globally Distributed, Condensed Format, Online Graduate Course"! Her chapter in the edited collection presents a case study of engaging in strategic, user-centered design for a globally distributed online course that aimed to train first-year writing instructors in hybrid and online pedagogy. The fifteen graduate students in this course represented six time zones, from California to China. Drawing on the Community of Inquiry framework, she analyzes her design decisions and demonstrates how she initially designed the course to be responsive to her particular student population, and how she adapted the design in response to student feedback as the course progressed. The chapter aims to provide an example that can inform how other writing instructors design flexible and responsive online writing courses.

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