McNeese Arts Briefs

McNeese State University Master of Fine Arts poetry student Tyler Robert Sheldon recently had his poetry chapbook “Consolation Prize” published by Finishing Line Press, a short story, “The Clay,” published by The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, several book reviews printed in the Los Angeles Review and in Tinderbox Poetry Journal and an essay, “Reevaluating Expectations: Buying Shrimp When You’re Midwestern,” in the Tin Lunchbox.

Two McNeese English and Foreign Languages faculty members participated in the annual meeting of the Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts in The Woodlands, Texas. Dr. Rita Costello, associate professor of English, chaired the panel, “Monstrous Bureaucracies,” for which she presented the paper, “The Bureaucratic Nightmare: From ‘The Memorandum’ to ‘Bitch Planet,’” while Dr. Wendy Whelan-Stewart, associate professor of English, presented a paper about ambivalent attitudes towards breastfeeding in Toni Morrison’s classic novel “Beloved.”

At the annual meeting of the South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA) in San Antonio, Texas, McNeese MFA poetry student Matthew Moniz was awarded the SCMLA Poetry Prize given to the poet who submits the best collection of poems.

Also at the conference, McNeese graduate student David Ryan Palmer presented a paper for the Modern Drama panel on “The Mainstream Melting Pot and the Erosion of Subcultures: What (May) Come in the Next American Drama.” Costello also presented a paper, “The Perfect Reader: Resources for Building Textbooks,” on the Freshman English and English Composition panel and chaired a special topics panel on “Graphic Texts and Visual Rhetoric: The Cultural Kaleidoscope.”