(pictured above: Lindsey Felt giving a presentation in Seoul, South Korea)
Even with the new academic year starting, many of our colleagues have been keeping busy, publishing and presenting, both to Stanford and the broader community. Read on to see what they've been up to - and be sure to check out the end of this article for a tribute to our former colleague, Marjorie Ford.
Nissa Cannon began her term as the Contingent Faculty Representative to the Modernist Studies Association's Executive Board. In addition, her article, “Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools and the Ephemeral Promise of Transnational Community” (Open Library of Humanities, vol. 10, no. 2, 2024) was awarded Honorable Mention by the MLA Prize Committee for Contingent Faculty and Independent Scholars.
Lindsey Felt shared: "I traveled to Seoul, Korea in September, where I gave a presentation at The Leeum Museum of Art titled '(Re)Mediating Access: Disability, Criptech Art and Technology.' My talk was translated simultaneously into Korean and Korean Sign Language, which was an amazing and slightly out-of-body experience in transnational and translinguistic access."
Zandra Jordan wrote: "Last year, I participated in a Rhetoric Society of America Supersession called 'Just Fine: The Rhetoric of Black Women and Femmes.' My essay, 'Becoming as Fine as We Wanna Be: Rhetorical Worldbuilding in Womanist Proclamation," was published this month in Rhetoric, Politics & Culture (RPC), vol. 3, no. 2, as part of a special issue about the supersession. RPC typically selects two articles for a 6-month period of free access to promote the journal and the latest issue. My essay was one of the two selected!"
Kevin Moore's article, "The Vesuvian Fallacy" came out in October as part of the inaugural issue of ContraSTS, a new STS journal out of MIT. The article focuses on the dubious "Vesuvius Challenge" competition, where participants supposedly used AI to unroll charred scrolls from a buried Herculaneum villa.
Roberta Wolfson wrote: "On November 14, 2025, I delivered a talk about my book, Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the U.S. Security State (also available through Stanford libraries), in a virtual event sponsored by the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies (CAALS). I was joined by Chris A. Eng, a fellow CAALS member who also has recently published a book, Extravagant Camp: The Queer Abjection of Asian America. Our talks were followed by a lively discussion with the folks in attendance." Roberta's book is available to borrow both from the PWR library as well as Green library. Roberta has also been recognized for a second year in a row by Stanford's Office for IDEAL Advancement, which has placed her on the 2025 IDEAL Honor Roll.
Irena Yamboliev's book, Ornament, the Novel, and the Victorian Real, was published this fall by Oxford University Press. According to the publisher, this book “develops a new canon for the Victorian theory of ornament” and offers a “new reading of Victorian design theory.”
Our former colleague, Marjorie Ford, passed away on December 6, 2025. Marjorie's role in teaching writing at Stanford pre-dates the formation of PWR; she was a truly iconic presence in the program for many years. Below are a few recollections of her from her time at Stanford:
Marvin Diogenes: Many of you knew Marjorie, who taught in three iterations of the Stanford writing program for roughly three decades, spanning Freshman English, Writing and Critical Thinking, and the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. There was nobody quite like Marjorie. She often led her students in in-class yoga sessions, one of her long-time interests. For many years she taught a popular PWR 1 on the rhetoric of rock. She had a family connection to that world through her daughter Maya, a member of the rock band The Donnas, which formed in Palo Alto in 1993. With her late husband Jon Ford, Marjorie published eight editions of a popular reader for writing courses, Dreams and Inward Journeys, described this way on Amazon: “Supporting a creative approach to the teaching of writing, Dreams and Inward Journeys presents a rich mixture of personal and academic essays, stories, and poems. The readings touch on such topics as memory, myths and fairy tales, obsessions, sexuality, gender roles, technology, popular culture, nature, and spirituality. Readings encourage the investigation of new ways of seeing and understanding self and the relationship to important social issues and universal human concerns."
Ruth Starkman: Marjorie took me to yoga. She asked me if there were special headphones so she could listen to the Sex Pistols while doing her water yoga.She also loved David Bowie and Austrian author Thomas Bernhard.May her memory bless her family and the world. (Pictured: Marjorie doing yoga with former colleague Nancy Buffington)
Ann Watters: I have many stories of times with Marjorie over the last 30 years but most memorable is having drinks with our McGraw Hill editor at the top of the World Trade Center, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, meeting Ellen Woods from H&S/ VPUE era at the Plaza (there for a conference), and making some wild subway journeys. She was a creative spirit who showed colleagues it was possible to teach and publish and yet make time for family—a trailblazer in many ways.
Tom Freeland: Marjorie would stop by my office with a quick question about scheduling a workshop or something, and an hour would fly past while we chatted about yoga, sc-fi and The Donnas. I loved visiting her classes to lead a workshop. She will be missed.
Kevin DiPirro: I was always impressed with Marjorie’s interest in rock—especially in women rockers—and saw just how much her students responded to her very hip and contemporary tastes. It made me realize, early on, that I could bring my own musical interests forward to my students—and I continue to do so to this day.
Christine Alfano: Marjorie and I had offices next door to one another for several years in Margaret Jacks Hall. She was always so friendly and brought such positive energy with her wherever she went. When Alyssa O'Brien and I first thought about publishing Envision, she sat us down and gave us amazing advice about contracts, textbook publishing, and the ins and outs of juggling authorship with teaching. We were so grateful for all her guidance, especially considering how many textbooks she had already published in her career (you may even be able to find some still in the PWR library). Side note: She actually thought my name was Catherine for many years, and I gave up trying to correct her after a certain point; I was happy to be Marjorie's Catherine. She will be missed! (Pictured: Stacey Anderson, Marjorie Ford, Christine Alfano, Alyssa O'Brien, and Carolyn Ross at an early 2000s CCCC conference)
