StFX’s English Department celebrated an exceptional achievement on March 12th: the release of five new books. These books included an essay collection on film by Dr. Conall Cash, two essay collections on digital humanities by Dr. Laura Estill, and a monograph and essay collection on performance by Dr. Kailin Wright.
Dr. Joseph Khoury, Chair of the English Department, welcomed everyone to the reception, which was followed by an introduction from the Dean of Arts, Dr. Wojciech Tokarz. The event was well attended with an audience of students, faculty, and administrators.
History professor Dr. Bob Zecker introduced the first book, Dr. Conall Cash’s Far From the Masters: Experimentation in Post-New Wave French Cinema (Index Press, December 2025). Co-edited with Corey P. Cribb, Dr. Cash’s collection offers analyses of experimental French cinema in the ‘post-New Wave’ period from 1968–83. The book, which has been praised by world-leading film critic Adrian Martin for its “curiosity and intellectual inventiveness,” focuses on films which “take up [the French new wave’s] principles of experimentation and self-reflexivity in new directions, through a political and ethical interrogation of the image.”
Religious studies professor Dr. Ken Penner spoke about Dr. Laura Estill’s contributions to building digital humanities community and capacity at StFX and nationally. The Past, Present, and Future of Early Modern Digital Studies: Iter at 25 (Iter Press, December 2025), co-edited with Ray Siemens, “explores how and what we publish (digitally and otherwise), how we value, evaluate, and sustain those publications and digital projects, and how these projects enable us to ask new research questions about early modern literature and culture.” Dr. Estill’s second collection The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities in Practice (Routledge, November 2025), co-edited with Constance Crompton, Richard J. Lane, and Ray Siemens, features dozens of contributors reflecting on how digital methodologies change how we teach and research in the humanities and related disciplines today. This volume, over 550 pages, is available open access.
Dr. Rachel Hurst, StFX women’s and gender studies professor, introduced Dr. Kailin Wright’s essay collection on the hit Canadian television series Slings & Arrows and her monograph on reproductive justice in theatre. Dr. Hurst highlighted the importance of Dr. Wright’s much-need interventions in the fields of Canadian theatre, Canadian literature, and performance studies. Dr. Wright’s essay collection Slings & Arrows: Adapting Shakespeare in Theatre and Television (University of Toronto Press, February 2026) features diverse essays and original interviews with the actors and creators of Slings & Arrows, a CBC television comedy that “shows the backstage lives of a Shakespearean theatre company…. This collection not only asks but also answers the question, why Shakespeare today?” Dr. Wright’s monograph, No Mother, No Future: Performing Motherhood and Reproductive Loss (Routledge Press, February 2026), “examines reproductive loss not only as a dramatic device but also as a political reality shaped by systemic violence, including slavery, forced sterilization, and child welfare policies that disproportionately target Indigenous and Black communities. Through in-depth analyses and original interviews with playwrights, directors, and actors, this volume offers a critical framework for understanding how performance stages reproductive loss as a site of resistance.”
Organizers noted that publishing five books within four months is an exceptional achievement, marking the StFX English Department as a leading program in its field.
