Iowa State University Department of English

05/28/2026

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05/26/2026

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05/22/2026

Lilian Atchison, a graduating senior double-majoring in English and Women’s and Gender Studies with a minor in Environmental Studies presented her Honors project last Wednesday. She completed her project under the advising of Professor Linda Shenk.

Way to go, Lilian!🎉✨

05/22/2026

We are pleased to announce Jen McClung, Associate Teaching Professor, as this year’s recipient of the 2026 Marty Baker Graham, Ph.D., Excellence in Teaching Foundation Courses Award. This award is given annually and recognizes instructors for their teaching excellence and teaching innovation in our ISUComm Foundation courses. Awardee receives a certificate and their name is placed on the Marty Baker Graham, Ph.D., Excellence in Teaching Foundation and Advanced Communication plaque.

05/18/2026

We are pleased to announce Jessica Jorgenson Borchert, Teaching Professor, as this year’s recipient of the 2026 Marty Baker Graham, Ph.D., Excellence in Teaching Advanced Communication Courses Award. This award is given annually and recognizes instructors for their teaching excellence and teaching innovation in our ISUComm Advanced Communication courses. Awardee receives a certificate and their name is placed on the Marty Baker Graham, Ph.D., Excellence in Teaching Foundation and Advanced Communication plaque.

05/18/2026

05/15/2026

We are pleased to announce Brian Gillette, Lecturer, as this year’s recipient of the 2026 Excellence in Teaching Foundational Speech Communication Courses Award. This award is given annually and recognizes instructors for their teaching excellence and teaching innovation in our ISUComm courses. Awardee receives a certificate and their name is placed on the Excellence in Teaching Foundational Speech Communication Courses Award plaque.

04/13/2026

The most talked about literary conference in America, has gone and some of us are still cut up in the euphoria that is AWP!

So what really went down at AWP conference ? Who were we able to sight from our school ?

Maybe we will find out in the next slide?

04/13/2026

At Awp 2026, we were privileged to meet our esteemed Professor and senior editor of Flyway Journal, Ms Debra Marquart. With her is Sir Liam Flake Liam H. Flake, who serves as the deputy commander of Flyway Journal.

04/08/2026

In Visual Vestiges Charles Kostelnick analyzes the role of the past in understanding, studying, deploying, and teaching visual language in business, technical, and professional communication. He explores how information designs—text, pictures, icons, charts, and graphs—evolved to develop their rhetorical power and the many ways in which their vestigial forms permeate contemporary design. To explain these temporal dynamics, he examines the forces that underpin them: cultural shifts in aesthetics, taste, and values; social changes that redefine how we relate to one another rhetorically; and innovations in technology that transform the tools and channels we use to visualize and interpret information. Drawing on rhetorical theory, design studies, art history, and historical and contemporary examples, Kostelnick explores the rhetorical role of time in bridging past and present design forms—by constantly regenerating them through visual conventions, by heightening pathos appeals through sentiment and nostalgia, and by bolstering ethos, amplifying epideictic displays, and narrating stories with text, pictures, and charts.