In July of this year, three Pitt English faculty members—Courtney Weikle-Mills, Sreemoyee Dasgupta, and Tyler Bickford—and three graduate students—Hebah Uddin, Gabriela Lee, and Christine Case—will present at the International Children’s Literature Symposium, hosted by Newcastle University and Ocean University of China in Newcastle, UK. The symposium was launched by Ocean University of China in 2012 to create transnational dialogue between Chinese and American children’s literature scholars. It has since expanded to an international format, making it an appropriate venue for collaboration on the Global Scholarly Network for Children’s Literature and Social Justice.
Associate Professor Neepa Majumdar is a coeditor of A Companion to Indian Cinema (Wiley Blackwell, 2022). Late last year, she gave an invited talk at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor entitled "'Bazaar Rumors' or 'All Facts': Film Sound Debates and the Transition to Sound in Indian Cinema.” In early 2023, she taught a master class on "writing the statement" accompanying a scholarly video essay for the the Doing Women’s (Global) (Horror) Film History international workshop. And this spring, she presented her paper, "Soft Power Diplomacy and the Indian Art Film," at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference; and the paper "Collecting as Research: Indian Film Song Booklets between Pleasure and the 'Drudgery of the Useful'” at a Pitt-Birkbeck workshop.
Teaching Associate Professor Renee Prymus was chosen as Office of First-Year Programs Instructor of the Year (2022-2023).
Dainy Bernstein, who is a visiting lecturer in the English department, presented their paper, "Rhetorics of Tznius in Twentieth- and Twenty First-Century American Bais Yaakov Schools," at the Bais Yaakov in Historical and Transnational Perspective Conference this spring in Toronto; this year they also presented their paper, "Avner Gold's Ruach Ami Series: A Case Study of Haredi Historical Fiction," at the Historical Fiction Research Conference (online). Bernstein recently received two research grants as well, including a Gilboa Research and Travel Grant from the Pitt Jewish Studies program and a Contingent Faculty Research Grant from the Association for Jewish Studies.
Recently promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure, Benjamin Miller also saw the publication of his book, Distant Readings of Disciplinarity: Knowing and Doing in Composition/Rhetoric Dissertations (Utah State UP/UP 
of Colorado, 2022), which brings a data-driven approach to the study of disciplinarity in rhetoric, composition, and writing studies (RCWS) by developing scalable maps of the methods and topics of several thousand RCWS dissertations from 2001 to 2015.
Brittany Haller, a teaching assistant professor in the Writing program, welcomed her child, Llewyn, to the world this past February. Haller has been funded by the Pulitzer Center to create a state-wide death in custody database; she is named in the Commonwealth Court case, Allegheny County v. Haller, which was argued this spring and is centered on making public the autopsies of those who die in custody.
In May of this year, Professor Piotr Gwiazda published his translation of Polish writer Grzegorz Wróblewski’s Dear Beloved Humans: Selected Poems (Diálogos Books). Gwiazda's translations and poems have recently appeared in Denver Quarterly, P-Queue, Washington Square Review, and Forms of Migration: Global Perspectives on Im/migrant Art and Literature (Falschrum Books, 2022).
Lie Low, Goaded Lamb, a chapbook of experimental short lyrics by Teaching Professor Ellen McGrath Smith, was published early this year by the Seven Kitchens Press as part of its Keystone
Series. In the fall of 2022, Pittsburgh Live/Ability: Encounters in Poetry and Prose, was published and launched by Pittsburgh's City of Asylum; Smith was the project director and editor for the collection. The e- and audio-books center the writing and experiences of 22 Pittsburghers, most of whom identify as disabled, and is free to download here.
Assistant Professor Diana Khoi Nguyen, who teaches in the Writing program, was featured this spring in the online Pittwire in an interview by MFA (nonfiction) alumna Nichole Faina.