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Sept 2000 Volume 18 Number
1
In
This Issue
From
The Chair
In
Print
Panels
&
Awards
&
Miscellany
From
the Editor
Editor Luke
Whisnant
Assistant Editor Eric
Rondeau
Written by Eric Rondeau Luke
Whisnant
Photography Gabrielle Brant Reid Anderson Jenn Karasow Eric Rondeau |
|
... |
From the Chair The months since the end of the spring
semester have seen a number of personnel changes within the Department
of English. Several faculty left their positions at East Carolina
University to accept new positions at other institutions, to pursue doctoral
studies, or to move their lives in new directions. In addition to
those mentioned in the last issue of The Common Reader, leaving the department
during the summer were Joseph Campbell, Dennis Eadus, Kathryn Fladenmuller,
Marianna Hardison, Dale Jacobs, Heidi Jacobs, and Denise Wood.
The department also said goodbye to three members of the administrative
staff, all of whom accepted promotions to other positions within the university:
Debbie Little, Kim Seavey, and Kim Thompson.
A number of new colleagues will also
be joining the department next year, as the Executive and Personnel Committees
have recently recommended that five search committees be formed to recruit
seven new tenure-track faculty for the 2001-2002 academic year. Searches
will be conducted for two faculty in each of the fields of technical/professional
communication and rhetoric/composition, while searches will also be conducted
for one new faculty member in each of the areas of children's literature,
contemporary literature, and film. Remaining to be filled for the
2002-2003 academic year are positions in medieval literature and Victorian
literature.
The department is also gearing up
to institute a number of curricular revisions planned last year.
Committees will soon be developing a new 1000-level literature course,
a 3000-level required survey course, and a 3000-level literary theory course.
Changes are planned for other courses currently being offered in order
to secure Writing Intensive credit or Humanities credit.
Of great import to ECU are changes
taking place in its writing program. Pat Bizzaro has agreed
to serve as interim director of Writing Across the Curriculum and to institute
a new University Writing Center that will have a "hub" tutorial facility
in the General Classroom Building and satellite tutorial centers throughout
the campus. The former "Writing Center" is now becoming the "Tutorial
Center for First-Year Writing." With this change, the department
will concentrate its resources on its English 1100 and 1200 courses.
Under the supervision of Rick Taylor, Director of Freshman Composition,
graduate assistants formerly "on call" for "walk-in" tutorial assistance
are now being assigned to work with specific faculty and groups of students.
Although we're only in the third
week of the fall semester, the department has been incredibly busy, has
accomplished a great deal, and has even more activities awaiting it.
--Bruce Southard
In Print
Click on the links (in end-of-summer sky blue this issue) for more information on the items below; use your browser's "back" button to return to TCR.
The prolific Peter Makuck had a productive summer, publishing
poems, stories, and reviews all over. Fiction first: his story "Palliatives"
appears in the Spring 2000 issue of Kestrel; his story "Piecework,"
originally printed in the Hudson Review, has just appeared in This
Is Where We Live, a new UNC Press anthology of fiction by 25 contemporary
North Carolina writers. Poems: "Pennywort, After the Storm," was printed
in the venerable journal Poetry, June 2000, and was republished
on the Poetry Daily website, June 27, 2000; and two new anthologies feature
reprints of previously published Makuck poems: "Prey" appears in Urban
Nature: Poems About Wildlife in the City (Milkweed Editions), and "Back
Roads by Night," "Hunger," and "Nights" have just come out in Wildsweet
Notes: 50 Years of West Virginia Poetry. And finally, the new Laurel
Review features Makuck's "Poets in Prose," a long essay-review on books
by Samuel Hazo, David Mason, and W.D. Snodgrass.
Sandra Tawake's article "Transforming
the Insider-Outsider Perspective: Postcolonial Fiction from the Pacific"
appears in the current issue of The Contemporary Pacific (12.1).
"Roundup--Wild Ponies at Okracoke," a poem by Mary Carroll-Hackett,
was published late last spring in Mankato Poetry Review.
The Spring 2000 issue of The University of Notre Dame's journal Religion
and Literature (32.1) features Doug McMillan's essay-review
of John L. Mahoney's Seeing Into the Life of Things: Essays on Literature
and Religious Experience (1998); Terence J. Martin's Living Words:
Studies in Dialogues About Religion (1998); John Morreall's Comedy,
Tragedy, and Religion (1999); and Frederick J. Ruf's Entangled Voices:
Genre and the Religious Construction of the Self (1997).
"Resources for the Study of American Fantasy Literature Through 1998,"
an article by Roger Schlobin, appeared in the Journal of the
Fantastic in the Arts (10.4).
Margaret Bauer published an article on Faulkner's The Sound
and the Fury entitled "'I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent
blood': Quentin's Recognition of His Guilt" in the Southern Literary
Journal (32.2).
Seodial Deena's abstract "Synonymy of Multiculturalism and Postcolonialism
through Globalizaton" was published in the Eighth
International Literature of Region and Nation Conference, Abstracts;
his article "Colonization
and Canonization: Class Marginalization through Education," appeared
in Terranglian Territories: Proceedings of the Seventh International
Conference on the Literature of Region and Nation (Peter Lang, 2000).
Gay Wilentz's essay "Afracentrism as Theory: The Discourse
of Diaspora Literature" was published this summer in New York University's
Passages:
A Journal of Transnational and Transcultural Studies.
Two papers by Technical & Professional Communications faculty and
students have been published in the Proceedings of the 47th [International]
Society for Technical Communication Annual Conference (STC, 2000):
"Guidelines
for Accessible Web Sites: Technology & Users," by Michele Ward,
Philip Rubens, and Sherry Southard; and "Online Collaboration:
Distance Learning and Professional Forums Display Advantages and Disadvantages,"
by Andrea House and Holly Siegelman. Both papers were given
at the STC Conference, May 21-24, in Orlando, FL.
Panels & Presentations
And continuing with TPC faculty news, Philip Rubens and Sherry
Southard also presented "Training in Intranet & Internet Learning
Environments" at the 8th Annual STC Carolina Chapter Summer Conference,
August 11-12, 2000, Chapel Hill, NC.
At the 7th International Pragmatics Conference, in Budapest, July 9-14,
Agnes
Bolonyai gave her paper "Intentionality at the Crossroads of Bilingual
Choices: Managing Power and Linguistic Asymmetry"; she also organized a
panel, "From Intentionality to Variability: Pragmatic Motivations for Codeswitching."
C.W. Sullivan III was an invited plenary speaker at the Children's
Books Ireland annual conference in Dublin, May 2000. The conference theme
was "New Worlds," and Sullivan's presentation was entitled "J.K.
Rowling And Ursula K. LeGuin: Creating the Series-Book Fantasy World."
The second half of summer found Seodial Deena in Austin, TX,
at a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar. According to Deena,
he spent six weeks with one of his two "former lovers (History)--the other
being Math--and had the most delightful stimulation." During the seminar
he gave three presentations: "The Present State of Caribbean Literature
and Criticism," "A Response to Dane Kennedy's 'Imperial History and Post-Colonial
Theory,'" and "A Critical Review of Sarvepalli Gopal's Jawaharlal Nehru:
A Biography." Deena also presented a paper, "Synonymy of Multiculturalism
and Postcolonialism through Globalizaton," at the Eighth International
Literature of Region and Nation Conference, Ostersund, Jamtland, Sweden,
August 2-6.
On June 2nd, Peter Makuck presented the Commencement Address
at Arendell Parrott Academy in Kinston, NC.
Overlooking the Park, a play by Robert Siegel (with original
music composed by Luke Whisnant), was produced by the American Theater
For Actors in New York this past July.
On August 25, Reginald Watson gave a presentation to an Honors
class at D.H. Conley High School (Donna Mills, instructor) on Zora Neale
Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.
In July, Ron Hoag presented a paper at the Thoreau Institute
(Lincoln, MA) on "The Mountain Wildness of Walden and 'Walking,'"
arguing that Thoreau's excursion to Katahdin in the middle of his two-year
stay at Walden Pond informed his famous essay "Walking, or the Wild," and
also led directly to a number of famous passages about wildness in Walden,
making it a wilder book than it otherwise would have been. Also in July,
Hoag attended the board of directors meeting and subsequent annual convention
of the Thoreau Society in Concord, MA.
Awards & Appointments
Reginald Watson was recently appointed to the Executive Board
of the Greenville Community Development Corporation Board and to the Pitt
County Weed and Seed Board. At the August 14th faculty meeting, Watson
was elected Faculty Senator.
Harold Snyder was recently awarded a Certificate of Recognition
"for service during the period of the Cold War (2 September 1945-26 December
1991) in promoting peace and stability for this Nation. The people of this
Nation are forever grateful." The certificate is signed by the Secretary
of Defense, William S. Cohen.
The National Academic Advising Association has named Sherry Southard
an Outstanding
Advisor Winner. (The link leads to an ECU press release about the award.)
Cheryl Dudasik-Wiggs and Christa Reiser (Sociology) have been
named the new co-directors of the ECU Women's Studies Program. This year
marks the 15th anniversary of the program.
The North Carolina Literary Review has been selected from more
than 1400 print entries to appear in the 2000 Design Show of the University
& College Designers Association (UCDA). Congratulations to Art Director
Mary Thiesen.
Miscellany
Seodial Deena spent First Summer Session in Belize, teaching
a course on Colonialism and Christianity. He gave three radio talks about
Culture and Spirituality on the Guyana Broadcasting Station.
Steve Harding spent the summer working with the not-for-profit
organization HIS Right Hand Ministries, bringing over 360 teenagers and
their adult leaders into the Greenville area to work on flood recovery
projects. The group helped repair over a dozen homes, worked on four Habitat
for Humanity projects, provided programs for children in the FEMA trailer
parks, prepared food boxes at a food bank, sorted clothing, and did countless
other small projects for flood victims.
An American Cafe, an original play by Gay Wilentz and
Todd
Lovett, is being produced as a video by UNC-TV; it will air as part
of their Race Initiative series and will be used for educational purposes
in high schools and community development groups. The production is funded
in part by a $20,000 grant from Z. Smith Reynolds's "Race Will Not Divide
Us" initiative and over $80,000 in grants raised by the Multicultural Literature
Program and the community theater group PeopleAct.
C.W. Sullivan III served as a Visiting Professor for the Hollins
University Summer Graduate Program in Children's Literature, teaching a
seminar entitled "The Fantastic in Children's Literature." Sullivan is
one of a number of Visiting Professors who teach at Hollins on a rotating
basis; he is scheduled to be there again in 2003.
Gay Wilentz was among the four faculty members and 47 students--the
largest group to date--who participated in the ECU/UCB Summer Study Abroad
Program in Cultural Studies.
In June, Ron Hoag spent three days in the Maine back country
doing on-camera commentary for a feature-length documentary entitled "Wilderness
and Spirit: A Mountain Called Katahdin." The film, by award-winning filmmaker
Huey Wentzell, has been in production for two years and will be released
in 2001. Hoag's commentary dealt with the Thoreauvian history and significance
of the mountain, which Henry Thoreau climbed in 1846 and wrote about in
his 1848 magazine essay "Ktaadn," later included in his book The Maine
Woods. Hoag, a specialist in Transcendentalism, says that he was already
something of a "transparent eyeball," so "the transition to talking head
seemed more or less natural."
Congratulations to Laura Micciche and Gary Weissman, who were
married on August 12 in Akron, OH.
From The Editor
Now that we've made it through this first issue, the next item on our
agenda is the annual autumnal update of faculty profile webpages. You can
help. Since last year, have you
The next issue of TCR will be published in mid-October; we'll have a
call for copy around October 1st. Please hold all news and notes until
then.
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