Assistant Professor Hyeryung Hwang in the Department of Interdisciplinary General Education has been selected to receive the Victor J. Emmett Memorial Award for her essay analyzing Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s novel “The Sound of Things Falling.”
Each year, the Victor J. Emmett Memorial Award is given to the author of the most outstanding essay on a literary topic featured in The Midwest Quarterly journal. The award is named in memory of Victor J. Emmett, Jr., former editor-in-chief of Midwest Quarterly and a retired English professor at Pittsburg State University.
“Being recognized by such amazing and distinguished researchers is truly an honor and a privilege,” said Hwang. “Not to mention that winning the award is a great inspiration for further publications, of course!”
As a part of the award, Hwang will deliver the annual Emmett Memorial Lecture virtually on Sept. 24. A link to the video will be provided once it’s available.
“I am so pleased and honored to have Dr. Hwang as part of the IGE community,” said Professor Dennis Quinn, chair of the IGE department. “When she announced that she won this award within a few days of starting at Cal Poly Pomona, I was so excited for her and could also sense her excitement, but also her great humility in receiving such an honor. In the short time that she has been with us, she has already made a great impression on students and colleagues alike, merging her sharp intellect, significant scholarship, and compassionate dedication to student success.”
Hwang is a multidisciplinary teacher-scholar with research and teaching experience in the fields of world literature and cinema, theories of imperialism and colonialism, and peripheral aesthetics and politics.
Before joining Cal Poly Pomona this year, she was an assistant professor of English at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She also taught at Georgia Tech as a postdoctoral fellow and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she completed her doctoral degree in English.
For more information, contact Ashley Jones at ashleyjones@cpp.edu.