International Connections — Every September UNC Charlotte holds its now famous International Festival. This year’s 44th annual International Festival will take place on Saturday, September 21, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. in and around the Barnhardt Student Activity Center. For more information about this year’s International Festival, please click on the following link: https://ifest.uncc.edu/
Given that the International Festival is just around the corner, I started thinking about the English Department’s many international connections. Numerous members of our department are engaged in research projects that are international in nature. Examples include Liz Miller’s research on the teaching of foreign languages in Germany, Jeffrey Leak’s research on the Dutch/British editor Rosey Pool and her promotion of African American poetry, and Pilar Blitvich’s recent article titled “Globalization, Transnational Identities, and Conflict Talk: The Complexity of the Latino Identity,” which appeared in the Journal of Pragmatics in 2018.The English Department’s international connections are also reflected in the courses that we teach.
This semester, for example, Boyd Davis is teaching a course on the “History of Global Englishes” in which she provides her students with an overview of how English became the global lingua franca. Another example from this semester is Juan Meneses’s “Modern World Literature.” As Juan states in his official course description, “This course investigates a series of 20th- and 21st-century works with the objective of studying some of the most important questions at the center of world literature: universal values, the dissemination of ideas across borders, the relationship between national literary traditions, translations, and cosmopolitanism.”
The English Department also provides students with opportunities to include international experiences as part of their education. Next semester, for example, Jen Munroe will take a group of students over spring break to London and Stratford for “Shakespeare in England.” More than just experiencing Shakespeare’s works in performance in the cities that shaped his career, though, this course exposes students to a new country, with its own traditions and way of being. Students have regularly commented after taking the course that they were amazed by the differences between the US and the UK, despite our speaking the same language.
As the aforementioned examples illustrate, our English Department’s international connections are numerous, diverse, and ongoing.
Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department. Here is the latest news:
Boyd Davis has been named to the Data Safety Monitoring Board as part of the NIA-funded SPEEKO dementia caregivers project headed by Kristine Williams, U. Kansas. Also, Boyd and Margaret Maclagan are presenting a poster titled “Pictures without Frames: Lexical Bundles and Multiword Expressions in Dementia Discourse” at the 13th World Congress on Dementia.
Tiffany Morin and Malin Pereira were selected as finalists for the 2019 J. Murrey Atkins Library Faculty Engagement Award. Both Tiffany and Malin will be recognized at a ceremony and social on October 2 at 4:00 PM. For more information please click on the following link: https://library.uncc.edu/2019FacultyEngagement
Upcoming Events and Deadlines — Here is information about upcoming events and deadlines:
September 13— English Department meeting will take place on Friday, September 13, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Fretwell 290B (seminar room).
September 13— The EGSA Graduate Student Social will take place at the Wine Vault on Friday, September 13, at 5:00 p.m.
Quirky Quiz Question — Our English Department is not the only place in Charlotte with international connections. The Charlotte Douglas International Airport offers international connections of a different sort. The Charlotte airport became an international airport in 1987 when a now defunct airline introduced flights between Charlotte and London. What is the name of this airline?
Last week’s answer: Industrial Workers of the World
Mother Jones was one of the founders of a union whose members were often called Wobblies. What is the name of this union?