Student Representation in the WLA

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Graduate Student Representative
Over the years, more and more graduate students have started attending the annual Western Literature Association Conference. Now every fifth member of the Western Literature Association is a graduate student. Therefore, since 2001, the association’s Executive Council has included a Graduate Student Representative who is elected by the membership at large. Beginning in 2011, two grad student representatives serve on the council. Each graduate student representative serves a two-year term, and a new representative is elected each year.

Each Grad Rep’s responsibilities include:

• being a voting member of the association’s governing body, the Executive Council, which makes decisions about the conferences and the running of the association’s scholarly journal
• attending the pre-conference Executive Council meeting to act on behalf of the graduate student membership
• being an active participant in the yearly conferences and most of their related events
• organizing and moderating a panel at the yearly conference on some aspect of career and professionalization issues (he or she is usually assisted in this by a regular member of the association).
• During the second year, the grad rep will be a committee member for selection of the Owens Awards.

If you are interested in submitting your name for nomination as Grad Student Representative, please contact the current WLA president. Note: The Graduate Student Reps are appointed for two years, and the Western Literature Association expects that appointment to be carried out. So please don’t nominate yourself or accept a nomination for Graduate Student Rep if you expect to finish your degree before the end of spring semester of your second year.

Know your current graduate student representatives:

Jes Lopez (rep: 2017-2019)
Michigan State University
lopezj18@msu.edu

Jes Lopez is a doctoral student in the Department of English at Michigan State University. She holds an MA in English from the College of Charleston and The Citadel joint program. Her interests include 20th-century American literature and film, disability and cognitive studies, and digital humanities. Her current research focuses on investigating representations and receptions of neurodiversity through autistic characters in literature and film.

Jes Lopez

Jillian Moore Bennion (rep.: 2018-2020)
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh
jillian.bennion@gmail.com

Jillian Moore Bennion is a doctoral student and graduate teaching fellow at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. She holds an MA in American Studies from Utah State University. Her research interests include nineteenth-and twentieth-century literature and film. Her current research centers on representations of maternal grief as labor and the resulting material artifacts as they appear in Western American narrative literature.

Jillian Moore Bennion

Past Graduate Student Reps:

Rachel Heise Bolten, Stanford University, 2016-2018
Landon Lutrick, University of Nevada, Reno, 2015-2017
Sylvan Goldberg, Stanford University, 2014-2016
Jaquelin Pelzer, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2013-2015
William V. Lombardi, University of Nevada, Reno, 2012-2014
Ashley Reis, University of North Texas, 2011-2013
Matt Lavin, University of Iowa, 2010-2012
Kerry Fine, Texas Tech University, 2008-2011
Angela Waldie, University of Calgary, 2006-2008
Drucilla Wall, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005-2006
Matthew R. Burkhart, University of Arizona, 2003-2005
Anne L. Kaufman, University of Maryland, 2001-2003

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