Panels & Presentations

Bob Siegel's new play, "Jerusalem," was workshopped at the Rialto Theater in Raleigh on December 6th by the Equity theater company, Burning Coal. ("Equity" means that only members of the Actors Equity Association, the famous New York-based union, were able to perform.)  The Burning Coal Theatre Company was founded in 1996 by husband-wife team, Jerome Davis and Simmie Kastner.  Although each of their seasons has included one Shakespeare production, Burning Coal is better known for their contemporary plays, mostly staged in the Kennedy Theater in downtown Raleigh.  Joseph Megel directed.  Megel is the Associate Artistic Director for The StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance, a performing arts and educational center based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, founded in Chicago in 1992.

Gregg Hecimovich chaired the Folklore Session titled, "Charms, Riddles, Word Puzzles, and Folk Tradition," at the 73rd Annual SAMLA Convention held November 14-16 in Atlanta, GA. Hecimovich presented his essay, "Anagrams, Charms, and the Riddle of Wuthering Heights," a piece from his book-in-progress Puzzling the Reader: Charms, Riddles, and the Folk Tradition of the British Novel.  Also at the Folklore Session, Jim Kirkland presented "Frost and Fire: Charm Magic and Folk Medicine,"  that concerns  a burn healing charm (dating back to the Middle Ages and still current in Eastern NC) in which the healer addresses two angels, one bearing frost and the other fire.  The closing lines of the charm (one of many variants) says, "In frost, out fire, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

Resa Crane Bizzaro presented "Representations of WAC in Writing-Intensive Courses" at the Writing Program Administrators Conference in Grand Rapids, MI, in July.

Tom Douglass presented "Kesey to Appalachia, Over? The Beat Generation and the Appalachian Renaissance" at the Ken Kesey Symposium, November 14-16, held at The University of Oregon in Eugene.  The Merry Pranksters, writers Ken Babbs, Ed McClanahan, and Barry Lopez, various relatives of Kesey and Jerry Garcia, and, in fact, the whole town turned out for the celebration.  Douglass discussed the relationship between Gurney Norman's Divine Right's Trip and The Last Whole Earth Catalog and the influence of Kesey on Appalachian literature.

At the 2003 Carolina TESOL conference held November 13-15, in Greenville, SC, graduate student Josh Iorio presented "The Community College Curriculum: Balancing Concerns." Iorio's paper recognizes that "Adult ESL learners bring various goals to the multi-level community college classroom.  When creating a competency-based curriculum that addresses these goals, curriculum designers must be able to balance: 1.) the needs of the learners, 2.) the limitations of the program administration, and 3.) a variety of constraints on the instructors."  Andrea McKee presented "Up the Stream without a Language," which observes that "K-12 mainstream teachers have to develop strategies to integrate an increasing number of non-English-speaking students into their classes.  This presentation provides an overview of the teaching circumstances and practices in one rural county, highlighting problems teachers have identified, successful activities, and recommendations to ESL teachers for working with mainstream teachers."  And Anna Mikhaylova presented "Feature Films in Multilevel Multiethnic ESL Classrooms."  Mikhaylova asserts, "In multilevel and multiethnic ESL classrooms, feature films are effective, authentic sources for developing the students' awareness of the American culture and traditions, enhancing their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, and for improving their pronunciation skills.  The demonstration provides a range of task ideas and lesson plans."  The Conference was chaired by Ahmar Mahboob and attended by 400 ESL teachers and teacher educators from North and South Carolina.

Christine Hutchins organized and chaired a session titled "Paratext on the Page: Editorial Practices in Annotated Renaissance Books" sponsored by the Paratext Study Group at The Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Pittsburgh, October 30 - November 2.  Hutchins spoke on the "Foxe and Printing" roundtable sponsored by The British Academy John Foxe Project.  "John Foxe (1517-87) was one of the most influential writers of the English Reformation.  In the forty years between 1547 and his death, he produced some forty works in English and Latin.  However, both in his own lifetime and since and has been principally known for only one of them, The Acts and Monuments of the English Martyrs.  A twenty-first century electronic edition of Acts and Monuments, true in structure and content to the 1583 edition (the last for which Foxe was personally responsible) is in preparation.  The textual development, using the 1583 edition as the base text, will be indicated, and a full apparatus criticus will be included."

C.W. Sullivan III presented "The Convict Transportation Diary: A Document of Psychological Adjustment" at the Mid-Atlantic Regional meetings of the American Conference for Irish Studies titled "Material Ireland/Virtual Ireland" at the University of Maryland, October 24-25.  Sullivan's paper examined evidence in various diaries which indicates that the political transportees underwent a significant psychological transformation from despair to hope as they sailed farther from Ireland and closer to Australia.  Sullivan further argued that this psychological transformation is one of the significant differences between the convict diaries and the emigrant diaries written at the same time.  Much of the research for this paper was completed in Australia during spring term 2003.

Peter Makuck read from his poetry and his book of short stories, Costly Habits, on December 3 in Donovan Lounge of Greenlaw Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as part of the UNC Dept. of English Reading Series.

Pat Bizarro conducted a seminar on "Writing Introductions to Your Medical Documents" for the Brody School of Medicine on Nov. 4, a workshop at Gurganus Elementary School on "Writing to Learn" on Nov. 7, and a workshop at the ECU College of Nursing on "Writing in Nursing: Basic Skills" on Nov. 10.