NDSU Department of English

We are delighted to announce the recipients of this year's English Department Graduate Student teaching and research awards. Please join me in congratulating two outstanding members of our community.

Teaching Award: Nazifa Tasnim

We are pleased to award this year's teaching prize to Nazifa Tasnim. Her nominator describes her teaching as "innovative and effective," noting that "Nazifa is able to think beyond traditional course curriculum and motivate students to think critically about assumptions they and others hold about seemingly neutral concepts such as 'work.'"

Research Award: SJ Williamson

This year's research award goes to SJ Williamson. The judges praised their work for addressing "important questions about how emotion intersects with Generative AI during the writing process, and the implications of this intersection for neurodivergent student writers." They further noted, "The research design is creative and utilizes multiple methods, and the research question is interesting."

Congratulations Nazifa and SJ! Your dedication to teaching and research exemplifies the best of our department. Thank you, too, to those who nominated outstanding students, and to this year's judges.

NDSU English was honored to welcome Dr. Laura Gonzales from the University of Florida as our 2026 Visiting Summer Scholar!

Dr. Gonzales spent the week with us teaching ENGL 790: Community Engagement and Technology Design (May 18–22), bringing her expertise in multilingual user experience, translation, and technology design to our campus.

Thank you, Dr. Gonzales, for sharing your knowledge and passion with our NDSU community! 💛💚

Congratulations to the organizers of the NDSU Showcase of Student Writing 2026 and to every student who participated! Yesterday's event in the Oceti Sakowin Ballroom was a wonderful celebration of the volume and range of student writing across campus, from multimedia projects to traditional essays and everything in between.

A huge shout-out to the award and prize winners, and an equally big one to every student who put their work on display and shared it with our community. It takes real courage to showcase your writing, and you should all be proud.

Thank you to the organizers for putting together such an engaging, welcoming event. Walking the ballroom, browsing student work, and hearing students talk about their projects was a highlight of the week.

Keep writing, Bison!

Photo credit: Ellie Eggl

Please join us in congratulating Pinki Rani Das, a second-year MA student in English at NDSU, on an incredible year!

Pinki has been awarded two academic scholarships, the Rooney English Graduate Scholarship and the Blue Key Prairie Rose Achievement Award. We are so proud of her hard work and dedication.

Pinki has had a busy year presenting her work at the CCCC 2026 Conference and the MnWE Conference 2026, and she recently published a story in the March 2026 issue of NDSU's Spectrum magazine!

You can read her published piece here:
https://ndsuspectrum.com/post/the-center-for-writers-changed-my-life

Congratulations, Pinki!

🎉 Congratulations to Elizabeth Labanna Harney on the successful defense of her MA thesis!

Her thesis, "Examining First-Year Student Lived Experiences in the Writing Classroom through Reflective Journals: A Feminist Pedagogical Perspective," is an important contribution to our understanding of how reflective practice can center student voices in writing education.

📸 Elizabeth pictured here with her advisor, Dr. Bruce Kovanen.

Committee members:
Dr. Bruce Kovanen (Advisor)
Dr. Alison Bertolini
Dr. Elizabeth A. Gilblom

We are so proud of your hard work and dedication, Elizabeth. Well deserved! 🎓

Alumni Spotlight: Congratulations to Mafruha Shifat, (MA, Spring 2025), who recently published a book review in Enculturation: a journal of rhetoric, writing, and culture! https://parlormultimedia.com/enculturation10/shifat-review

The review originated as coursework in Dr. Bertolini's Graduate Scholarship, ENG 760.

Mafruha is currently pursuing a PhD at The Ohio State U., developing a theoretical framework on feminist rhetorics, building on scholarship first encountered in NDSU's ENG 676! We're so proud to see our alumni thriving!

Congratulations to the English Graduate Organization!
We are proud to recognize the success of the 2026 Red River Valley Graduate Student Conference, "Knowledge in the Age of AI: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Learning, Writing, and Teaching," held April 11, 2026, on the NDSU campus in Fargo, North Dakota.

This year's conference brought together graduate scholars from across disciplines to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the ways we learn, write, and teach. Panels such as "I, Writer: Finding Authorial Voices in a Post-LLM World," "At the End of Daybreak: Emerging AI Threats to Cultural Identity," and "Negotiating Difference" offered thought-provoking discussions that left attendees with fresh perspectives on technology, pedagogy, and humanistic inquiry. The conference also featured a compelling keynote address by Dr. Elaine Auyoung, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

As one participant noted, "This was one of the most well-organized and intellectually engaging graduate conferences I've attended — every panel sparked real conversation."

Please join us in congratulating our EGO Officers — Obehioye Omokhuale, Pinki Das, Elisabeth Eller, Katilynn Herout, and Habiba Akter — along with our dedicated Conference Liaisons, Devon Cottle and Ellie Eggl, for their hard work in organizing and hosting this outstanding event.

In well-deserved recognition of their efforts, the conference has been nominated for the Educational Program of the Year Award as part of the Bison Leader Awards. Congratulations to the entire team on a job exceptionally well done!

Please join me in congratulating Katie Carpenter, whose review of Ruth M. McAdams' Temporality and Progress in Victorian Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) has been accepted for publication in the April 2026 issue of Johns Hopkins University's Victorian Review! Katie originally wrote this review as an assignment in ENGL 760: Graduate Scholarship. We're proud to see her coursework lead to publication!

Keep up the great work, Katie!

Photo credit: Lydia Baker

We are excited to have Dr. Laura Gonzales join us this summer to teach the NDSU English Department's 2026 Summer Scholar Course, ENGL 790: Community Engagement and Technology Design.

This intensive one-week course is a rare opportunity to learn from a scholar whose ideas are actively reshaping how we think about technology, communication, and justice. We hope you'll join us!

📣 Coming April 11 to the Red River Valley Grad Student Conference!

At the End of Daybreak: Emerging AI Threats to Cultural Identity

This panel brings together three perspectives on AI, language, and belonging:
🔹 Nazifa Tasnim: “Detecting the 'Failed' Citizen: AI, Dehumanization, and Decolonial Resistance”
🔹 Mohammad Al Walid: “Minimizing the Use of Anthropocentric AI in Writing”
🔹 Nurul Islam: “Standardization, Bias, and the Limits of Bengali in Google Translate”

https://www.ndsu.edu/english/2026-red-river-valley-graduate-student-conference