Miscellany

The 5th TALGS Conference was held on Saturday, February 16, 2008, in the Bate Building, featuring keynote speaker Walt Wolfram, William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of English Linguistics at North Carolina State University where he also directs the North Carolina Language and Life Project.  He has pioneered research on social and ethnic dialects since the 1960s, authoring or co-authoring more than 20 books and more than 250 articles on regional, social, and ethnic dialects of American English.  In current research he is examining the emergence of Hispanic English in the Mid-Atlantic South as well as dialect recession in Coastal North Carolina. Wolfram is the author of Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks : The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue (1997), Development of African American English (2002), and Dialects in Schools and Communities [4th ed.] (2007), among others.  Wolfram presented "Southern-Bred ESL: Hispanics in the Mid-Atlanic South" in Bate 3008, which addressed the impact that Southern English speakers have had on first-generation born American Hispanics.  The conference presenters and workshop leaders included faculty, graduate students, and public school teachers from six states, three countries, and nine universities.  The mission of TALGS is to encourage a dialogue between novice researchers and practitioners in the fields of English studies, discourse studies, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, foreign languages, psychology, and other disciplines. For the archive or presentation schedules and abstracts see (TALGS 2004-2007).  Stephen Hinman and Jennie Whitehead organized the conference under the direction of Lida Cope.

John Hoppenthaler is the featured poet this month at Verse Daily February, 2008, and  "December Settles In Over HaverStraw Bay" by John Hoppenthaler is the 12th time a poem from Tar River Poetry has appeared on Verse Daily.

Joseph Horst's play Enemies was performed at Mendenhall Student Center February 16-19.  The play, written by Horst as his Master's thesis in the Creative Writing program, is a psychological thriller that explores the issues of identity and sanity against a realistic background of police officers and their professional and personal lives.  The play was attended by this caveat:  "Enemies is rated 'R' for harsh language, violence and adult situations; therefore, the play is definitely not suitable for children under the age of 12, if not under 17.  I hope everyone can come out for a night of what we are calling 'theater noir'!"

Seodial Deena is organizing a global humanitarian book project for the University of Guyana this spring.  The goal is to ship over 5,000 books from all disciplines, including medical books.  Deena has already donated some 3,000 volumes to the University of Belize on behalf of ECU and the late Gay Wilentz -- naming a section of the library "The Gay Wilentz Special Collection."