Month: September 2024

Elizabeth Barchas Prelogar, the 48th Solicitor General of the United States is featured in the October Issue of Vanity Fair.  Prelogar attended Emory University and majoring in English and Russian, and studied as a Fulbright Scholar.  She graduated summa cum laude in 2002.

Prelogar earned a master’s degree in creative writing as a Bobby Jones Scholar at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and went on to receive an M.Litt. with distinction, also from the University of St. Andrews.  She proceeded to Harvard Law School, where she graduated with her J.D., magna cum laude in 2008.

Since October 2021, she has led the office that represents the federal government’s interests before the Supreme Court. Often referred to as the “10th Justice,” the solicitor general of the United States is the most frequent advocate in the Supreme Court, serving as counsel in approximately three-quarters of all cases that are decided on the merits each year.

On September 20th, at 10:15 a.m., Professor of English and Creative Writing Tiphanie Yanique will give a reading of “Beach,” a new short story, influenced by feminist literary traditions, Decolonial forms, and the importance of water in Caribbean societies. The story is set on a composite island of the Virgin Islands during the Carnival season.

The reading is part of dECOlonial feelin project, an interdisciplinary and international symposium organized by the Virgin Islands Studies Collective, and focused on America’s colonies, starting with the Virgin Islands, using the methods of art, creative writing, archiving, philosophy, storytelling, and spiritual practice.  Other presenters at the event will include Dr. Hadiya Sewer, La Vaughn Belle, and Dr. Tami Navarro.

The symposium is open to the public, but RSVPs are required and seating is limited.  For more information, please contact vistudiescollective [at] gmail [dot] com.

English faculty member Mandy Suhr-Sytsma organized a September 14th field trip to the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park’s Indigenous Celebration and the Mercer University McEachern Art Center’s  “Ocmulgee to Okmulgee” exhibit featuring work by three Muscogee artists: Johnnie Diacon, Kenneth Johnson, and Jamie Bennett. More than fifty Emory students and faculty members participated in the trip, including English faculty members Vani Kannan and Mandy Suhr-Sytsma, English graduate student Amelia Ali, and 28 undergraduate students from several English classes: Dr. Suhr-Sytsma’s courses on Native American Women’s literature and First-Year Writing: Native American Voices, Dr. Kannan’s First-Year Writing course on Cultural Rhetorics, and Dr. Keme’s courses on Muscogee Literature and Indigenous Literatures before 1850. The trip was supported by Emory’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies and two CFDE Community-Engaged Learnings Grants. Learn more about Indigenous Studies at Emory at https://native.emory.edu/. And be sure to come out for Emory’s third annual Muscogee Teach-In on Friday, November 8th.