Accolades

By Rabi Michael-Crushshon ’26

This month, the English and Creative Writing Department faculty and students achieved so many amazing accomplishments. 

To begin, a commentary piece written by Professor Andrea Kaston Tange was published in the October 12th Star Tribune print. This article argues that Minnesota needs humanities majors and pushes back against the unemployability narrative. Use this gift link, your free Star Tribune article for the month to read, or this PDF link.

Professor Penelope Geng recently published two essays. The first is titled “The Mad Butler of Gray’s Inn: Service, Mental Disability, and the Limits of Institutional Care,” Ed.  Jackie Watson and Emma Rhatigan. Mapping the Early Modern Inns of Court: Law, Literature, and  Identity. Cham: Palgrave, 2025. 99-119. 

The second essay was co-authored with Andrew Bozio (Skidmore College) and is titled: “Whiteness as Knowingness: Race and Intellectual Disability in Shakespeare’s Othello.” Ed. Alice Equestri. Shaping Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025. 263-85.

Professor Penelope Geng also published two articles on The Conversation. The first, “What’s the difference between ghosts and demons? Books, folklore, and history reflect society’s supernatural beliefs,” takes a historical and literary look at ghosts and demons. Following this article, Penelope Geng was invited to The Conversation Weekly podcast for their Halloween episode. The second article looked at the 1590 king of Scotland, James VI, and his strange obsession with witches and demons. Titled, “The Scottish king who wrote a treatise on demonology and obsessed over witches.”

Macalester junior, Ashton Rose, has been teaching a creative writing class at Cow Tipping Press. Ashton supported, selected, and put together writing along with their students, the authors. The class book will be released on December 4th from 4-6 p.m. at ACT’s Happy Hour at Dual Citizen Brewing! 

Professor Amy Elkins was awarded the Macalester Digital Liberal Arts Faculty Fellowship. Professor Elkins’s project explores the intersections of craft and digital cultures, past and future. Her project will take the form of a woven fiber optic quilt. Using “glitched” ink swatches, she will interweave fiber optic cables with paper-and-ink paper squares.

Congratulations on all of the accolades. If you have any accomplishments and would like to be included in next month’s edition of The Words, please submit them using this form.