Boise State English Department

The English department has been restructured into four new Boise State departments. Please follow the link to read more, and to support the new departments of English Literature, Humanities & Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Writing Studies.

English department restructures into four new departments Beginning in Fall 2023, the department known as “English” at Boise State will expand into...

A public memorial service will be held in honor of Dr. Cheryl Hindrichs, Professor of English, who passed away in July. The memorial is open to the public and will be held on Friday, September 16, at 2:00 pm in the Hatch Ballroom of Boise State’s student union building, 1700 University Drive (note that the room location has changed since our last announcement). For instructions on free parking for the event, please email: [email protected].

Cheryl was a voracious reader who shared her passion for and love of literature and storytelling generously with others. She was an extraordinary colleague, a dedicated and beloved teacher and mentor to both undergraduate and graduate students, and to the community at large. Cheryl was a remarkable human being — kind, humble, and generous, willing to welcome colleagues and students into her home, and share her love for life. Please join us as her family, colleagues, students, and friends remember her, and honor her with their stories and memories of how she has touched their lives.

An expert in British modernism, critical theory, and especially the writings of Virginia Woolf, Cheryl had a deep interest in the ways that illness has been represented in literature. She had long been at work on a book, “Pandemic Modernity,” that examined the ways that the 1918 pandemic and its aftermath helped shape the development of literary modernism.

Cheryl also taught courses and gave lectures on food and literature, which was a topic of both professional and personal interest. And as her colleagues and students know well, many a committee meeting or class session was enlivened by something warm and delicious that Cheryl brought, straight from the oven.

She shared her expertise in these topics not just through her scholarship, but also with the community by leading the Literature for Lunch book discussion series at the public library and later as a webinar series, directing the Hemingway Literary Center Lecture series, and teaching courses at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

MORE GREAT NEWS about our own Dr. Clyde Moneyhun, whose translation of "Ídols" by Gabriel Ferrater (1922-1972) is winner of the 2022 Sant Jordi Translation Contest at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was honored via Zoom, which featured Dr. Moneyhun reading his translation of the poem.

This translation was selected by a committee that included guest judges from Catalonia, the UMass Departments of Spanish and Portuguese Studies and Comparative Literature, and Smith College. The annual Sant Jordi program is supported in part by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Translation Center and Catalan Studies Program, and the Institut Ramon Llull, which promotes Catalan language study at universities abroad.

Dr. Moneyhun is currently on sabbatical on the Spanish island of Menorca, working on new Catalan translations.

Congratulations!!

We are pleased to announce that The Writing for Change Journal's "Collection Three: Meditations on Teaching and Learning in the Time of COVID", has just been published. It can be found on the WFCJ website here: http://writingforchangejournal.org/

The Journal's Backstory:

The Writing for Change Journal came to life in 2020, during a global pandemic, at the heels of a national reckoning on racial justice, the climate catastrophe, and profound political polarization. With the rise of Zoom, masks, social and physical distancing, combined with heightened levels of anxiety, distrust, and misinformation, it would have seemed like an objectively bad time to begin something like this. However, it was precisely because of these converging emergencies and exigencies, (all of which are still urgent and present), that make the relational work of this publishing space more vital than ever, and that remains true today.

The Writing for Change Journal launched after a few years of surveying students, and meeting with faculty and community members. At the time, there was much excitement about Boise State’s new Writing for Change minor, and we discovered a desire for more experiential writing/editing/publishing experience that were in line with how publishing happens in the “real world.” The Journal was an effort to bring that world of publishing to the personal and professional lives of budding writers, artists, and creators in the Boise area, specifically those motivated by a desire to grapple with change, who believe in our rhetorical power to use language in all its forms to imagine a more equitable, socially just, and ecologically stable future.

Each year, a new team of editors continue to work with the advisor to improve it and help guide it in new creative directions. Both the WFC Journal and the Writing for Change minor are directed by Assistant Professor of English, Kyle Boggs.

The Writing for Change Journal is a multimodal publishing space, and therefore welcomes submissions beyond traditional written texts like essays and other forms of nonfiction writing like prose, interviews, and personal narratives. Submissions may also be in the form of photography, visual and performance art, podcasts, film, and combined mediums and those yet to be imagined. Though we may ask you to include a paragraph or two about your process and intention as it relates to this collection’s theme. Creative and collaborative submissions are always welcomed.

Our next call for submissions will be released in the Fall, 2022. For more information contact Dr. Boggs at: [email protected].

Home, The Writing for Change Journal Collection One: Spring 2021 Responses and Reactions to 2020 Collection Two: Fall 2021 Coping [caption id=

Wishing a heartfelt congratulations to Boise State alum and former English major, Abril Anaya Carmona, who received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Idaho College of Law this week. She will now embark on her career as a Criminal Defense Attorney with Ramirez-Smith Law in Nampa. Abril's family emigrated to the United States from Mexico when she was a teen. She received her undergraduate degree from Boise State, and was an invaluable student employee for several years in the English Department main office. We always KNEW she was the Most Likely to Succeed! We are all very proud of you, Abril!

CELEBRATING Boise State graduates today on the blue turf!! Congratulations to each of you. Shine on and on!!

WOO HOO!! Check out this amazing project from our own Distinguished Professor Dr. Jeffrey Wilhelm, including a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that helps teachers and students in Idaho classrooms to employ the “EMPOWER Method:”

“We’re going to position kids as actual social scientists and historians who look at a variety of documents and hear different people’s stories and varying perspectives around ... contended issues,” Wilhelm said. “We’re going to ask them to look at important issues in American history and culture that affect Idaho, and play out in Idaho in particular ways.”

Congratulations, and we're SO excited to see how this good work continues!

https://www.boisestate.edu/news/2022/04/27/english-professor-promotes-a-more-perfect-union-with-new-research-grant/?fbclid=IwAR3k7EX3ZQZFXeU2Qh8ouQcsJEUhsSI2qq8Hpazc8tc3jK6R7bAxXwUandg

TODAY at 3 pm in the SUB Hatch Ballroom!! Join us to celebrate the 2022 Boise State President's Writing Awards!

THIS IS TODAY!! Stop by and join us, all are welcome!!

HAPPY FINALS WEEK!! You're almost there, and you got this!!

SHOUT OUT!! Congratulations to our own Dr. Amber Warrington, who was awarded the Golden Apple Award, a student-led effort to express appreciation to outstanding educators.

A student wrote of Dr. Warrington, “I could tell that she truly cared about me and how I was doing … that has meant more to me than words could ever express ... Every day we start class with a ‘community check-in’ -- a daily question to check in with each other on how we’re doing. This has set an environment firmly centered on fostering friendships. We care about each other and have been naturally inclined to be inclusive of everyone in class because of the environment she has and continues to create daily.”

We are so proud of Dr. Warrington!

https://www.boisestate.edu/asbsu/golden-apples/

SHOUT OUT!! Congratulations to our own Dr. Gautam Basu Thakur for his work co-editing an issue of Pedagogy titled "Cluster on Teaching Theory in Global Contexts" at Duke University Press.

Basu Thakur’s work featured in Critical University Studies Syllabus list Gautam Basu Thakur, associate professor and director of the critical theory program in the Department...