2022 English Awards and Sigma Tau Delta Induction Ceremony

A roster can tell professors a lot about a class–especially the dynamics of the class, based on the personalities of the students. Seeing Valerie’s name on a roster has been a sign to faculty that this class is going to do just fine. Seeing her name allows the professor to know there will be valuable conversation, discussion points grounded in readings and focused on critical topics, and important light bulb moments. Valerie is the kind of person who leans into every assignment with her whole intellect. She impressively combines critical attentiveness and rhetorical principles to craft exceptional projects. From white papers to website revisions to application of critical theory in dense papers–literary, rhetorical, and linguistic–Valerie simply excels at the theory and practice of English Studies. Her work represents the best of our discipline, and her enthusiasm, curiosity, and rigorous work ethic are inspiring, making her faculty proud to be Monmouth University English Department Faculty. It is bittersweet to know she is graduating: we may not see her name on our rosters again, but we know that she is moving confidently out into the world, armed with a calm, piercing intellect.

During her four years at Monmouth University, Christina Blumstein, has not only distinguished herself by earning a cumulative 3.992 grade point average and a 4.0 in both her English and her Secondary Education majors, but she has demonstrated intellectual initiative by completing elective minors in Italian and Communication Sciences and Disorders, exhibited a commitment to extracurricular involvement by being an active member of the Sigma Tau Delta and Phi Eta Sigma honor societies, evidenced leadership by serving as President of the Italian Club, and shown promise as a future literacy educator by excelling in her teaching placements, in her speech pathology internships, and as a substitute teacher in the Old Bridge Township Public School System. Yet, beyond these achievements, perhaps what is most remarkable about Christina is her ability—exemplified both in the exceptional Statement of Teaching Philosophy she composed for her Composition Theory course and in the successful application she recently submitted for her high school English teacher, Janine Arciero, to be selected as this year’s winner of the Monmouth University-William Roberts Charitable Foundation Outstanding Teaching Award—to clearly articulate why it remains so crucial for today’s English teachers “to make school meaningful,” to enable students “to have [mindful] experiences in the classroom,” and to empower individuals to grow into “lifelong learners” who are “willing to dig deeper than what they believe, welcoming change and differing opinions.” For all of the accomplishments listed above and for reminding us, via both her words and her example, of the reasons why we do what we do, Christina is one of this year’s deserving co-winners of the department’s highest honor.

Generously sponsored by English Department Professor Emerita and former Department Chair Dr. Caryl Sills, the teaching award in her name recognizes English-Education majors who have exhibited both exemplary academic success and utmost promise as future educators. This year’s enthusiastically selected winner is senior Melissa Ondrush. Throughout her academic career, Melissa has made her education her first priority. She is the first person in her immediate family to earn a bachelor’s degree and acknowledges how grateful she is for their support. Melissa participated in the Buddy and Me Mentorship Program at Monmouth. As an undergraduate, Melissa has taken several graduate courses including Feminist Theory, Queer World Lit, and Teaching Elementary Social Studies, a combined undergraduate and graduate course. Melissa has always wanted to be a teacher. In her own words, “I put everything I am into making sure I could be the best possible version of myself for my students. I’ve never been able to picture myself doing anything else, so I wanted to make sure I worked as hard as possible to make my dream become a reality.” Currently, she is completing her student teaching in a third grade class at Middle Road Elementary School in Hazlet. In the fall, she will apply for full time positions across Monmouth and Ocean counties. Melissa would like to thank her family, her boyfriend Nic, her cooperating teachers and students, and Dr. Goulding for helping her achieve success over the past few years.

Jane Austen allegedly referred to her writings as “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush,” and in this year’s selection for the Academic Writing Award, Katie Ruocco examines Austen’s Mansfield Park to look past the ivory and consider the elephant — i.e., the elephant in the room that is the Bertram family’s socioeconomic dependence on Antiguan slavery, a plot point the novel seems to sweep under the rug. Ruocco discusses the novel’s patriarch, Sir Thomas Bertram, arguing that to Austen’s original readers, Sir Thomas’s “jumped-up” social status, sense of noblesse oblige, casual cruelty, and view of human beings as property would have marked him to contemporary readers as unmistakably a slave owner. As such, Ruocco suggests that slavery, far from being a regrettable, marginal, and quickly abandoned practice, was thoroughly embedded in the economy, international influence, and daily domestic lives of the British. Her prize-winning essay, selected from a noticeably extensive and distinguished group of competitors, not only demonstrates the importance of reading literature with an eye to historical context but also furnishes a rich example of how literary study can make a commitment to the aims of anti-racism and social justice.

For the second year in a row, Patricia Banfitch has been chosen as the winner of the Undergraduate Creative Writing Award. This year, Trish has received that distinction for a novella that she wrote during the fall semester for an independent study—a project for which she will graduate with departmental honors. In it, Trish writes with great sensitivity and nuance about a high school-aged protagonist, who, during her father’s slow death from cancer, enters into a sexual relationship with her father’s middle-aged home health aide. As one might imagine, the story is often disturbing and painful. Yet it is a testament to Trish’s instincts as a fiction writer and her considerable gifts for characterization and subtlety that this story also contains convincing moments of intimacy, tenderness, heartbreak, and even humor. Trish plans to spend the year after graduation working, writing, and honing her graduate-school application materials with the intention of enrolling in a MFA program in fiction in fall 2023.”

“Malia Paladino’s “Broken Mirrors” is a deep meditation on the pressure of having a particular body, and how we see ourselves and each other, through one woman’s story of childhood, adolescence, and family.”

This year’s Academic Writing Award Runner-up is Liza Gordon, for her essay “I, Vampire: The Vampire As an Escapist Proxy Body,” in which she argues that “Throughout history the vampire monster has been utilized as a vehicle for self-expression and exploration of perception of the world around the self.” Grounded in the context of two theses from Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Monster Theory theoretical framework—The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis and Fear of the Monster is Really a Kind of Desire—Gordon explores how the vampires in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, and Vampire: The Masquerade “ . . . [exist] both to question the classification of the world as well as to be [creatures] of escapism for [authors and readers alike] to use to navigate the world and understand themselves.” Gordon is an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing and double minors in Art and Professional Writing, who hopes to become a published author of gothic fiction. She is an accomplished artist with an impressive portfolio of original short stories and poetry. When she is not chasing the ever-elusive reflections of vampires, you can find her reading, drawing, or hanging out with her four cats.

The runner-up for this year’s Undergraduate Creative Writing Award is graduating senior Gabriella Pisacane for “August Rains.” In this short story, two teenagers make out in the back seat of a car: a plot that is seemingly as old as time itself. When they get too hot, they get out of the car and stand in the rain. But these too teenagers “weren’t dating, [they] weren’t almost dating, [they] weren’t even really friends.” Their connection is ambiguous, which the narrator claims to feel just fine about at the beginning of the piece. However, over the course of this story, which is driven not so much by plot as it is by character interiority and psychological realism, we come to realize that this ambiguity is yielding powerful feelings on at least one side of the dyad. Over the course of six tightly controlled, tautly narrated pages, Gabby manages to depict the narrator’s dawning awareness of her changing emotions in simple, moving, and elegant prose. Gabby notes, “my plan for the future is actually to become an author! I want to write fiction books and am planning to get a job in editing and publishing after I graduate to support myself and better understand the industry while I finish my first book. I’ve been working on the book for a lot of college in my free time and have been able to workshop some of the chapters in my creative writing classes.””

John Vurro’s excerpt from his novel, Play, Rewind, is a hilariously touching story of what one man gives up to take care of his ailing mother. It rings of truth, intelligence, and the absurdity of the human condition.

Every year, the English Department recognizes and provides financial support for a graduating senior English major beginning graduate study by the fall of the upcoming academic year. This year’s winner is Valerie Aristy-Reyes, who graduated in spring 2022, and who has received the additional distinction of having been a co-winner of the 2022 English Merit Award. To the delight of the faculty, Valerie will be returning to Monmouth next semester to pursue a master’s degree in Rhetoric and Writing. In the spring, Valerie was inducted into the English Honors Society, Sigma Tau Delta, and she is also a member of Tau Sigma. She is not yet not sure what she wants to do after receiving her master’s, but she is exploring the idea of continuing her education and obtaining a more advanced degree. In her spare time, she loves to read, write/journal, and spend time with her dog, Sherlock.