News

Professor Hsuan Hsu received a Senate Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching. Professor Hsu’s graduate teaching and mentoring earn consistent praise from students and colleagues as “stellar,” “generous” and transformative. He guides students through the intellectual and professional dimensions of academic life, pairing rigorous instruction with sustained, attentive mentorship.

Professor André Naffis-Sahely has received a prestigious Cholmondeley Award from the UK’s Society of Authors. The Cholmondeley Awards for Poets were founded by the late Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966 to recognize the lifetime achievement and distinction of individual poets. Notable past recipients include Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Lawrence Durrell, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Carol Ann Duffy and John Burnside.

It’s Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The titular character has just killed the Scottish king and is on the brink of committing more violence to keep his new crown. For those who know how the play ends, Macbeth proceeds to his eventual doom. But what if you could talk him out of making such drastic, life-altering decisions? 

William Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage.” But what would the late-16th-century playwright’s work look like in the virtual world?

A collaboration at the University of California, Davis, among the DataLab, the ModLab and the Department of English is giving undergraduate students the chance to find out.

The first of a three-part series by Heather Ringo interviewing UC Davis English PhD
program alumni, this article follows three former students who landed tenure-track
professor roles after completing their degrees. These professors reflect on their
memories of UC Davis and how their time here prepared them for their future career,
share the exciting work they are doing in their new roles, and offer sage advice for those
seeking to follow in their footsteps.

Link to article: https://theaggie.org/2026/5/6/shakespearebirthanddeathanniversary 

Jennifer Harris ‘00 is an alum of UC Davis where she received her bachelor's degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing (with a minor in Women Studies).

Professor Maceo Montoya is a California-based writer and visual artist who teaches courses in both Chicana/o Studies and English. His work spans fiction, nonfiction, and collaborative visual-textual projects, and he is the author of multiple books, including The Scoundrel and the Optimist, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, and You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories.

 Craving a horror podcast with brains? Fear of the Dark is the one for you. Hosted by Ph.D. candidate Stacey Baran and Associate Professor Matthew Vernon, it is not your average two guys at a mic, shouting hot takes. Instead, Baran and Vernon use the lens of race to ask big questions about one of the most dynamic and politically relevant genres in pop culture. How does the nation dream itself on screen in the midst of a zombie apocalypse?

Jordan S. Carroll’s most recent book, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, received the Hugo Award at the Seattle Worldcon 2025 Convention. This prestigious award recognizes literary and critical work in the genre of science fiction. Jordan received his PhD in English from UC Davis (2016) and has since gone on to publish several books as well as articles in notable publications such as American Literature, Post*45, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.