Saint Vincent College English Department will present a lecture by Shakespeare scholar Ariane M. Balizet and a poetry reading by Alex Lemon at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, April 22 in the Foundations Room of Placid Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. No advance reservations are needed.

The program will also include an induction ceremony for ten students selected for membership in Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society, and public recognition of the student winner of the Ragan Poetry Competition which will be awarded at the College Honors Convocation earlier in the day.

Honored students include Emerson W. Duym, a sophomore English major from Ligonier; Rachel A. Hochendoner, a junior English major from McKeesport; Jillian Janflone, a junior English major from Washington; Megan A. Matich, a junior English major from Uniontown; Melissa A. Moyher, a senior English major from Latrobe; Diana J. Petrovich, a sophomore English major from Pittsburgh (15223); Alicia Rae, a junior English major from Saltsburg; Lauren Scheloske, a senior English major from Greensburg; Mackenzie C. Smith, a senior English major from New Kensington; and Katherine M. Stodola, a senior English major from Manassas, Virginia.

Dr. Balizet is assistant professor of English and women’s studies at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She was born and raised in southern Colorado and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her scholarly interests include Shakespeare, histories of gender and sexuality, history of medicine, the Reformation in literature, Siglo de Oro Spain, representations of Jews in medieval and early modern England and ideas of home and homeland. She has published articles on Shakespeare and film, religion and gender in Shakespeare’s plays, and 17th century metaphysical poetry. She teaches courses on topics ranging from race and gender in the Renaissance to Shakespeare in popular culture and has a particular interest in issues of diversity in the academy. She is currently working on a book entitled, Blood and Home in Early Modern Drama. Her talk is titled, Women and Shakespeare Studies Today: Dismemberment and Domesticity in Romeo and Juliet.

Mr. Lemon is the author of the poetry collections Hallelujah Blackout, Mosquito, At Last Unfolding Cargo and the memoir Happy. A play will be published by Cinematheque Press in 2010. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines including Esquire, Best American Poetry 2008, AGNI, BOMB, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Open City, Pleiades and Tin House. He was awarded a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He co-edits LUNA: a Journal of Poetry and Translation with Ray Gonzalez and is a frequent contributor to The Bloomsburg Review.

Designed to recognize and encourage student writing of poetry, the Ragan Poetry Prize competition is made possible by a gift from Dr. James Ragan, a 1966 graduate of Saint Vincent College, who served for 25 years as director of the graduate professional writing program at the University of Southern California. Dr. Ragan has read his work before five heads of state and audiences at Carnegie Hall and the United Nations. In 1985 he was one of three Americans (with Robert Bly and Bob Dylan) invited to perform at the First International Poetry Festival in Moscow. Published collections of his award-winning poetry include In the Talking Hours, Womb-Weary, The Hunger Wall, Lusions, Selected Poems and Shouldering the World. Also an accomplished screenwriter, Dr. Ragan’s most recent collection is titled, Too Long a Solitude, published by the press at the University of Oklahoma where he now teaches.

The Saint Vincent chapter of Sigma Tau Delta is one of over 750 active chapters located in Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. Its central purpose is to confer distinction upon students of the English language and literature in undergraduate, graduate and professional studies. This March, there are seven Saint Vincent College Sigma Tau Delta students giving academic or creative presentations of their work at the Sigma Tau Delta International Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Michelle Gil-Montero, assistant professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Saint Vincent College, is coordinator of the event. For further information, contact her at 724 805-2317 or michelle.gil-montero@stvincent.edu.

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