Miscellany

The 7th TALGS (TESOL/Applied Linguistics Graduate Students) Conference will be held on Saturday, February 20, 2010. Proposals are currently being accepted. All interested students, faculty, and staff are invited to attend! Call for papers: Cross-disciplinary proposals with relevance to language use, language learning and/or teaching from a variety of fields, including, for example, English studies, education, discourse studies, foreign languages, anthropology, communications, sociolinguistics, psychology, and sociology -- all are welcome. Proposals reporting on action research (inside and outside the classroom), work in progress, submissions based on graduate student term projects, pilot research, as well as proposals for discussion sessions and workshops are welcome. Presentations requiring computer facilities can be accommodated. Multiple proposals will be considered. Please submit your proposal. The deadline is Monday, November 30, 2009.

In April of 2009, Sheffield University, Sheffield, England, brought in C.W. Sullivan III to serve as one of the outside examiners on a PhD oral examination committee for Deborah Crawford.  Crawford’s dissertation, "Stories of St. Patrick: Traditional Narration in Medieval England, Wales, and the Isle of Man," used folkloristics (contemporary folklore theory) to differentiate between the native Irish stories of St. Patrick and the more widely-spread Catholic/Christian stories.  Crawford investigated not only medieval texts for this dissertation but went to the sites from which the stories came, interviewed living story tellers who continued the narrative tradition, and examined historical/archaeological sites associated with the St. Patrick legends.  The dissertation was over 200 pages long and contained 1330 footnotes.  Sullivan and the other outside examiner, Dan Melia of UC Berkeley, agreed that the dissertation amply illustrated Crawford's ability to handle a staggering amount of researched material and organize it into a cogent and compelling argument.  Deborah Crawford is now Dr. Deborah Crawford.

The Tar River Writing Project concluded another exciting Summer Institute in July, which brought together sixteen K-College teachers to research various writing pedagogies and to develop as writers themselves. Co-Directors Will Banks and Todd Finley facilitated the institute along with the help of Associate Directors Jennifer Sharpe-Salter, Jonathan Bartels, and Terri Van Sickle, three area teachers whose English and English Education degrees were earned at ECU.  This summer marks the third such institute since the inception of the TRWP. To date the TRWP has brought over $150,000.00 in federal and state grants to ECU, monies which have been used to fund the Summer Institute and to conduct a number of teacher-development projects in Eastern North Carolina.

John Hoppenthaler completed a two week residency at the Weymouth Center [pictured right] for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, NC, during which time he discussed poetry with students at Sandhills Community College. He also presented a reading and gave a craft lecture at the West Virginia Writers' Workshop in Morgantown, WV.  

Gabrielle Freeman exhibited "Niobe's Children: A Visual Poetry Series" at the Bertie County Arts Council during the month of August.  This was a pre-event for the 2009 Literary Homecoming.

An M.A. Thesis Workshop in Literature was held on Wednesday, September 16th from 6-7 pm in Bate 2002. Faculty presented and answered questions about choosing a topic, working with a committee, writing a prospectus, defining an argument amd preparing for a defense.

English Club's fall organizational meeting was held September 9th in the faculty lounge. English Club is an informational organization for interested undergraduates. At regular meetings on alternate Wednesdays, there are discussions about literature, film, writing, and any other topics of interest to members.  English Club also sponsors events, service projects, readings, and ECU's undergraduate journal The Thorn (first issue forthcoming later this semester).  There is no cost for membership, and new members at any class level and of any major are always welcome.

"Feminist Frolics" was held Saturday, August 29, at the Tipsy Teapot. Performers at this Women's Studies fundraiser included Mike Hamer (with his band, the Zen Revelators) and Batya Weinbaum, who read original poetry. Batya Weinbaum has also (by invitation) participated in two group exhibits: Group Exhibit, Camp Meade Community Arts, on Sept. 9, in Middlesex, VT, and at OFO Gallery, Hart, MI, August 5-9, 2009.

The first EGSO meeting was held on Monday, September  14th at the Tipsy Teapot from 5-6 pm. New officers of the organization are: President, LaTasha Jones; Vice President, Jennifer Sheppard; Secretary, Will Angel; Treasurer, Celestine Davis.

Mike Hamer, who has been performing sing-alongs with kids since he was eighteen, has put together the music CD Kiddo Songs -- "twelve tried and true kid favorites," with some great tunes from the American Songbook, including "Polly Wolly Doodle" and the "Crawdad Song,"  three Woody Guthrie classics, Howard Hangar's rollicking "Dog Breath,"  and  Mike's "Pee In the Woods," among other songs.  These songs are great for Mom and Dad or Grandpa or Grandma to play and sing along with the young ones in the car or at home.  If you'd like a copy, go to mikehamer.net.

The film Refuge--Pocosin Lakes produced by Star Trak Recording Studio Productions premiered Friday, May 22, at the Turnage Theater in downtown Washington. The film is dedicated to Karen Baldwin, a dedicated environmentalist, and lover of nature and wild places such as National Wildlife Refuges.  The Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge was the refuge whose existence was threatened by the Navy Outlying Landing Field.  Baldwin was very much a part of the fight against the OLF but, unfortunately, did not live to know of her eventual victory. For information about the soon-to-be-released DVD including purchase information, see Refuge--Pocosin Lakes.