Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, “The Grave at Frankfort”

September 5, 2026

Back in the 1990s, I worked closely with Dr. Paula Bennett at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and during my two research assistantships with her, I typescripted the poems that eventually appeared in her Nineteenth-Century American Women Poets: An Anthology (Rutgers UP, 1998) and transcribed manuscripts of fellow Kentuckian Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt for Bennett’s … More Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, “The Grave at Frankfort”

Academic Calendar Template, Fall 2024

June 17, 2024

Important dates, deadlines, and holidays apply to my workplace, and I hope the template may be useful to everyone in academia. Delete days of the week when you aren’t teaching. Course ScheduleFall 2024 This syllabus is a tentative schedule of our readings, due dates, and other activities. Given inclement weather and other unpredictable events, the … More Academic Calendar Template, Fall 2024

Teaching Resources about Reproductive Rights

July 18, 2022

Given the depressing developments in reproductive rights in the U.S., several colleagues and I put together the following set of resources that you and your students might find useful. Non-Fiction Sources on Abortion Clarke, Adele, and Donna Haraway, eds. Making Kin Not Population: Reconceiving Generations. Prickly Paradigm Press, 2018. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo28583407.html Finch, Annie, ed. Choice Words: … More Teaching Resources about Reproductive Rights

Emerald Isle, anyone?

July 16, 2021

Join me for Enchanted Women of Ireland, Summer 2022! Banshees will wail, hags will curse, maidens will beckon, morrigans will shape-shift, and fairies will play tricks in Summer 2022! Throughout Ireland, the appearance of a supernatural creature typically connects to a specific natural location, as a helper to the living in ways that range from … More Emerald Isle, anyone?

Model of Formal Argument

January 21, 2019

Back in the last century when I was in my doctoral program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, I had outstanding professors, like Dr. Clement Hawes, who shared with his classes this Model of Formal Argument. The structure has helped me on countless occasions, and I pay it forward by sharing it with all of my classes. All formal writing should follow a basic pattern of organization, whether the topic is expository … More Model of Formal Argument