Funding Opportunities

Shara McCallum, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Penn State, won this year's Pavouček Shields Faculty Award, which recognizes the accomplishments of a tenured faculty member in advising and mentoring on behalf of women at the university.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Verna Kale, Associate Editor for The Letters of Ernest Hemingway and Associate Research Professor of English at Penn State, has been elected President of The Hemingway Society for the 2026-2028 term.

Congrats to Dr. Kale on this honor!

Congratulations to Michael Anesko: Volume 19  of The Complete Letters of Henry James has received the MLA Approved Edition Seal. Well done, Michael!

On June 2, 2025, current doctoral student Carmin Wong was announced as the inaugural Poet Laureate of State College. In this position, Wong will serve the community by promoting the consumption and creation of poetry in State College.

Additionally, Wong was featured in the 2025 Shirley Graham Du Bois Creative-in-Residence. Her showcase, "Them Poems Along Won't Save Us' was featured online by the Academy of American Poets and broadcast on WBUR.

Congratulations, Carmin, on all of your accomplishments!

Yolanda Mackey-Barkers has accepted a position as an assistant professor of African American Literature and Culture at Stony Brook University. She graduated in Spring 2025. Her dissertation is titled, "The Black Renaissance and the Radical Politics of Black Print Culture, 1915-1945" and was directed by Xiaoye You. Congratulations, Yolanda, on this job market success!

Andrew Erlandson, a past recipient of a CALS research seminar funding award, has accepted a tenure-track job offer from the English and Philosophy Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Andrew’s dissertation, “Disabled Democracy: Figuring Disability in Earth Nineteenth-Century Literary and Political Discourses,” was directed by Chris Castiglia. Congratulations, Andrew, on the job market success!

Rebecca Haddaway has accepted a tenure-track position in early American literature at Middle Tennessee State University. She graduated in Fall of 2023. Her research centers on abolition and medical discourse in early America and her dissertation was co-directed by Claire Colebrook and Carla Mulford. Congratulations, Rebecca, on this great job market success!