The Department of Communication Studies & Modern Languages

Unity and the 'Story of 9/12': Sport, Public Memory, and the Rhetorical Reinvention of 9/11 

/ April 16 at 6 p.m. - Dempster 247

Dr. Michael Butterworth will speak for the annual Low Lecture. Dr. Butterworth is the director of the Center for Sports Communication & Media, the Governor Ann W. Richards Chair for the Texas Program in Sports and Media, and a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. His research explores the connections between rhetoric, democracy, and sport, with particular interests in national identity, militarism, and public memory. He is the author of Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity: The National Pastime and American Identity during the War on Terror, co-author (with Andrew Billings and Paul Turman) of Communication and Sport: Surveying the Field, editor of Sport and Militarism: Contemporary Global Perspectives and The Handbook of Communication and Sport, and co-editor (with Daniel A. Grano) of Sport, Rhetoric, and Political Struggle, and Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas (with Adriana Angel and Nancy Gómez).  

Communicating and Belonging: A Personal Reflection

Chloe Watson, a corporate communication major, will be presenting her paper, "Communicating Belonging: A Personal Reflection" at the 34th Annual Theodore Clevinger Jr. Undergraduate Honors Conference at the Southern States Communication Association's 94th Annual Convention that will take place on April 3-7 in Frisco, Texas.

The Department of English

Visiting Poet: Dr. Taylor Byas / April 15 at 6:30 p.m. - Catapult Creative House

Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a features editor for The Rumpus, an acquisitions poetry editor for Variant Literature, a member of the Beloit Poetry Journal editorial board, and a 2023-24 National Book Critics Emerging Fellow. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contest, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize. She is the author of the chapbook Bloodwarm from Variant Lit, a second chapbook, Shutter, from Madhouse Press, her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times from Soft Skull Press, which won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award, and the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and her second full-length Resting Bitch Face, forthcoming in 2025. She is also a coeditor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama, published with Texas Review Press in December 2023, and Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology forthcoming from HarperCollins.

Lillian Neely and Maurice Weakley

Redhawks are both English majors who presented papers at the Popular Culture Conference that took place March 27-30 in Chicago, Illinois.

The Department of Criminal Justice, Social Work, and Sociology

A Day in the Park with Green Bear

/ April 20 from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. Cape County Park South

The mission of the Green Bear Project is to educate the community about child abuse. Over the past 20 years, Green Bear has educated thousands of adults and kids about the dangers, warning signs and prevention of child abuse through various programs. The SEMO-NASV/Green Bear Project "A Day in the Park with Green Bear" event is a fun family event with free activities, giveaways, and food. Dr. Kristen Sobba, in partnership with the Green Bear Project, will have a station with games and prizes for the children and educational information for the parents.  

Four Legged HEROES

/ April 10 at Noon - Brandt Hall 205

Join us for an insightful presentation and engaging Q&A session with a skilled local cadaver dog handler. For more information, please contact Laura Krieger at lkrieger@semo.edu.

Dr. Michelle Kilburn

Dr. Kilburn had the honor of being the commencement speaker in December 2023. She had her picture taken with the president, the deans, and the Board of Governors.

Pictured left to right, back row: Dr. Michelle Kilburn, Dr. Alberto Davila, Dr. Mike Godard, Dr. Eric Bain-Selbo, Dr. Rhonda Weller-Stilson.

Front row: David C. Martin, Lloyd F. Smith, Tina L. Klocke, Dr. Carlos Vargas, James P. Limbaugh, Kerry K. Robinson.

Dr. Jen Bengtson

Attended a press conference on April 2 to announce the identification of one of the Jane Doe cases. On April 14, she will attend a commemoration of the 45th anniversary of the disappearance of Cheryl Scherer, a teenager who was abducted from a gas station in Scott City. Dr. Bengtson was asked by Cheryl’s sister to talk a little bit about the importance of working on old unidentified remains cases.

Dr. James Brubaker

Published his latest novel We Are Ghost Lit in June 2023. Here is a brief description from the publisher’s website, “…James Brubaker’s new novel employs a constellation of narrative possibilities in its quest to understand how we can live with loneliness and grief.”

/ For more information or to purchase a copy of the book, please visit here!

Contact us: The College of Humanities and Social Sciences

chss@semo.edu

(573)651-2154