Park Hall Monitor: Winter 2025

Head's Note, Winter 2025

Dr. Roland Végső

Dear Colleagues, Students, Alumni, and Friends of English,

Another year has passed, and the Department of English continues to be the source of exciting new work in all the fields of our discipline that our faculty and students are involved with. It would take too long to list all of our recent accomplishments, so I will mention here only some of our highlights from 2024. David Diamond published his first scholarly monograph, Reading Character After Calvin: Secularization, Empire, and the 18th-Century Novel. Esra Mirze Santesso received an honorable mention in the competition for the Modern Language Association’s 2024 Scaglione Prize for Middle Eastern Studies for her book Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing. Ed Pavlić’s essay “Anita Baker Introduced Us...” was selected for inclusion in the Best American Essays 2024 anthology. LeAnne Howe received the 2024 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book Board of Directors. Aruni Kashyap published his collection of stories, The Way You Want to Be Loved, and received a prestigious fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Chigozie Obioma published his third novel, The Road to the Country, and was honored by New Africa Magazine in its list of the 100 most influential Africans of 2024. Rebecca Hallman Martini, the director of the Willis Center for Writing, won the 2024 Conference on College Composition and Communication’s Advancement of Knowledge Award for her book Disrupting the Center: A Partnership Approach to Writing across the University. 

Speaking of the Writing Center, the fall semester of 2024 marked a major milestone in the history of this facility. With a generous donation from Jill and Marvin Willis as well as vital support from President Jere W. Morehead, the Jill and Marvin Willis Center of Writing officially opened its doors in its new central location in the Miller Learning Center. We held a festive opening ceremony on August 28, 2024, where President Morehead and Dean Anna Stenport were among our invited speakers. Under Rebecca Hallman Martini’s excellent leadership, the Willis Center for Writing continues to offer support to all students, faculty, and staff on a wide variety of writing-related projects. Their services are free of cost and available to all UGA writers.

Many of our students also had a truly successful year. Rahad Abir was named the Georgia Author of the Year in the Literary Fiction and Short Story Collection category for his book Bengal Hound. Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson’s article, “The Risorgimento of Christina Rossetti” was published in the 2024 special edition of The Pre-Raphaelite Society Review. Abhijit Sarmah was a finalist for the prestigious Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship for the second consecutive year. Saurabh Anand received a Short-term Research Grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as well as the Scholar of Dream Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. You can read more about their accomplishments in the rest of the Newsletter. But I hope that even this selective list clearly demonstrates how lucky we are to be able to work with so many exceptionally talented writers and thinkers in the English Department. 

As some of you might recall, the fall semester of 2023 started with some unexpected news. In early August, we learned that our recently retired colleague, John Wharton Lowe, passed away. Professor Lowe was Barbara Methvin Professor of English specializing in Southern and multiethnic literatures. He has authored and edited numerous books, published dozens of essays, and presented over 80 papers in North America, Europe, and Asia. We are now delighted to announce that with a generous gift from June C. Lowe, Professor Lowe’s widow, we will be able to launch the John Wharton Lowe Graduate Fellowship and the John Wharton Lowe Graduate Support Fund. Both the fellowship and the support fund are designed to provide support to graduate students who work in the fields that were important for Professor Lowe during his distinguished career. 

If you are yourself an enthusiast of Southern and multiethnic literatures or if you have been lucky enough to personally benefit from Professor’s Lowe’s infinite spirit of generosity, please consider donating to the John Wharton Lowe, III Doctoral Fellowship in American, Southern American or Multicultural American or to the John Wharton Lowe, III Doctoral Support Fund at these links. 

This year, we have also established the Dr. Chris Alexander First Year Writing Support Fund to honor the memory of our recently deceased colleague. Dr. Alexander earned his PhD in English Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Louisville in 2010 and joined our department as a Lecturer in 2011. Among other things, he frequently taught courses in technical and professional communication. The fund will provide support for the First-Year Writing Program within the Department of English where Dr. Alexander taught most of his courses. If you consider writing in all its forms to be an essential skill, you can help our students by donating to this fund. 

2024 was also a watershed year for one of our other distinguished colleagues. After an illustrious career of dedicated service, Dr. Kretzschmar, a world-renowned linguist, who has been a cornerstone of UGA’s Department of English, making groundbreaking contributions to sociolinguistics and dialectology, particularly through his work on the Linguistic Atlas Project, decided to retire. Throughout his tenure, Dr. Kretzschmar inspired countless students across several continents and enriched the university’s academic community with his expertise and passion. His contributions have left an indelible mark on UGA and the field of linguistics.

I will conclude this note by wishing a happy new year to everyone. I want to thank you all for your continued support of our department. I am looking forward to all the new projects that we will be able to work on together during the forthcoming year.