From the Chair

• approved and sent forward a request to plan a new doctoral program in Discourse Studies; 
• received approval from the University Curriculum Committee and Faculty Senate for four new courses (Appreciating Literature, Language in the USA, Southern Literature, and Introduction to Literary Theory);
• received Humanities credit for six courses (Literature and Religion, Film Literature and History I & 2, Literature for Children, Literature for High School, and Literature for the Younger Adolescent);
• continued the fight for Humanities credit for three linguistics courses (Introduction to Language Studies, Language in the USA, and Introduction to Linguistics);
• received approval from the Graduate Council for three new courses (Language and Society, Second Language Research Methods, and Literature Study in the Secondary School);
• welcomed nine prospective faculty members to ECU for on-campus interviews.

We have also welcomed one new staff member to the department: Karen F. Cook.  Karen, who received her B.S. in Family and Community Services from ECU this past December, has a wealth of experience at the University.  I believe that she may be the only member of the department who has painted residence halls, served as a security guard, worked as an orientation aide, and copy-edited The East Carolinian, among other duties!  She now faces the somewhat more prosaic task of assisting with the undergraduate program and serving as the departmental receptionist.

As we move into February, we will continue to welcome prospective colleagues to campus and will complete the revision of the undergraduate program that we began at our departmental retreat last year. 

--Bruce Southard 

In Print

<  Arnold

Ellen Arnold's Conversations With Leslie Marmon Silko has just been published by the University of Mississippi Press; the volume is a collection of interviews that span Silko's career, including Arnold's own 1998 interview with her. And Arnold's co-authored essay "The Cherokee Indians and the Internet," appears as a chapter in the new book Web-Studies: Rewiring Media Studies For The Digital Age (London: Edward Arnold Publishers). 

The Autumn 2000 issue of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction features Donald Palumbo's essay "Reiterated Plots and Themes in Asimov's Robot Novels: Getting Away with Murder and Overcoming Programming." 

Robert Siegel's article "The Metaphysics of Tennessee Williams" appears in the current issue of the journal American Drama (Winter 2001). 

Collett Dilworth's article "Assessing Writing Across the Curriculum as Dialogue" appears as a chapter in Assessing Writing Across the Curriculum, a new volume edited by Charles R. Duke and Rebecca Sanchez and published by Carolina Academic Press. 

The November 2000 edition of The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts features Roger C. Schlobin's essay "'Rituals' Footprints Ankle-Deep in Stone': The Irrelevancy of Setting in the Fantastic." 

Richard Quinn's review of The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia and The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History by Scott DeVeaux appears in the current issue of The Social History of Alcohol Review .

<  Deana

Canonization, Colonization, Decolonization: A Comparative Study of Political and Critical Works by Minority Writers, by Seodial Deena, has just been published by Peter Lang Publishing. 

Peter Makuck's review of North Carolina Poet Laureate Fred Chappell's Family Gathering appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer on December 24; on January 7, the N&O ran Makuck's review of Barry Lopez's new short story collection, Light Action In The Caribbean. 

Laura Micciche's "Teaching and Disappointment," a paper she originally gave at 4Cs, has been selected to be an ERIC document and is now available on microfilm. 

Panels & Presentations

Ellen Arnold presented a paper, "Worlds into Words: The Poetry of Carter Revard," at the Western Literature Association in Norman, OK, in October. 

At the Modern Language Association Conference in Washington DC this past December, Margaret Bauer gave "Fairy Tales, Southern Style: Jill McCorkle's Short Story Transformations"; Bauer's session was sponsored by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. 

<  Aceto

Michael Aceto presented his paper "Dual Identities And Names In Anglophone Afro-Caribbean Communities In Latin America" at the meeting of the Linguistic Society of America/Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in Washington, DC, in January. 

On September 26, Seodial Deena lectured on Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea in Jacksonville, NC, as part of the North Carolina Humanities Council's program "Let's Talk About It." And in November, Deena gave "The Significance of Caribbean Criticism in Postcolonial Studies" at the Third Annual "The Islands In Between: Language, Literature, and History of the Eastern Caribbean" Conference, held in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. 

At the Seventh International Conference on World Englishes, held December 14-16 in Portland, OR, Sandra Tawake presented her paper "The Eyes Have It: Patricia Grace's Vision of Maori Culture and Values." 

In November, Peter Makuck conducted two creative writing workshops at the North Carolina Writers Network's Fall Conference in Raleigh; in December, Makuck read from his story "Persistence" at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books as part of a series of readings for UNC Press's new anthology This Is Where We Live: Short Stories by 25 Contemporary North Carolina Writers. Farther from home, Makuck was interviewed on-camera for "Crossing Borders: The Life and Works of Leslie Norris," a documentary on the celebrated Welsh poet. The hour-long program aired on Utah Public Television in early December and has been re-broadcast a number of times since...

Awards & Appointments

... and continuing the previous item, last November Peter Makuck was invited to join the four-judge panel for the prestigious Taylor Aiken Poetry Prize, sponsored by The Sewanee Review and the University of the South.  Just this week, Makuck has learned that two published pieces -- his poem "Pennywort" and his short story "Palliatives" -- have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

Roger C. Schlobin has been asked to submit reference texts for the study of fantasy literature to the Fields of Knowledge website.

Graduate Creative Writing student Marie Griffin has recently been appointed associate poetry editor of Dead Mule Literary Magazine, a journal of Southern literature.

Working with the ECU Grants Outreach Network, recent graduate Jennifer Karasow and graduate students Cindy Rayburn, Angela Farrior, and Lynne Frey helped secure a grant of $17,000 from the North Carolina Division of Tourism, Film and Sports Development. The grant will benefit the town of Weldon, NC, and will be used for civic improvement and beautification. Jan Tovey serves on the grant committee as faculty advisor. 

Just a few hours before publication, TCR learned that Gay Wilentz has won a Board of Governors' Teacher-Scholar Award.

Miscellany: Bedside Books

Andy Robbins is reading two books at the moment: The Country Road by James Laughlin, which he calls "beautiful lyrics informed by a passionate understanding of world lit," and In Defence of Rhetoric by Brian Vickers, which Robbins recommends as "astonishingly learned and engaging. Last night I really needed to know the precise meaning of 'Homoioptoton.' This book told me, and I slept in peace. A great treat for Shakespeare fans because all of the examples come from his work. Definitively bedside." 

<  Weedman

The Common Reader's new Assistant Editor Chantal Weedman is reading Faithful Travelers by James Dodson. "This book was written by an ECU alumnus whom we hope to feature in an upcoming edition of The Museletter. Subtitled 'A Father. His Daughter. A Fly-Fishing Journey of the Heart,' this autobiographical account is a touching tribute to the special relationship between a father and daughter who share a love of fly-fishing and the outdoors. As an avid hiker myself, I'm enjoying Dodson's scenic descriptions of some of the best fishing and camping areas across the country. If this story sounds familiar, you might have seen the recent CBS made-for-TV movie, based on Dodson's book." 

After having just completed James Patterson's Kiss the Girls and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Sharon Raynor is currently re-reading an old favorite from her middle school days: The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson. "As you can tell," Raynor says, "I like to frighten myself just before falling asleep. A little scary, it seems. However, I minored in psychology and I have always been intrigued by the workings of the 'criminal mind.' Plus these kinds of books make awesome movies."

"Right now on the bedside table is Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country," reports Tom Shields, "a travelogue set in Australia in the late 1990s. What appeals to me is Bryson's Midwestern sarcastic and at the same time self-effacing humor -- too much like my own, probably." Shields says he's been reading Bryson for the past year or so, making his way through A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail; Notes From a Small Island (Bryson's tour around England and Scotland); and "my personal favorite, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, in which the author starts from his mother's home in Iowa and travels around the United States in a subcompact, seeing everything from small town diners to the cheapo tourist traps his father wouldn't stop at when Bryson was a kid."

Doug McMillan tells TCR, "I'm currently reading Robert Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus for fun. It deals with the historical James from a Bible scholar 'detective' perspective, shedding much light also on the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Christianity. Also fun but work too are seven medieval/Renaissance books I'm reading for my third essay review for Religion and the Arts. I consider all of these 'bedside books' because there are no deadlines." 

From The Editor