One Book. One week. One community— The Charlotte Mecklenburg Library is sponsoring a week-long, community-wide reading of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. This project will take place from April 13-19, and it involves many related events at the various library branches and other places in the community. I am scheduled to lead a book discussion at the the Beatties Ford Road Branch of the library on April 17 from 6:00-7:30. For more information about these various events, please click on the following link: www.cmlibrary.org/onebook
Fahrenheit 451 came out in 1953, the height of the McCarthy era, and the book’s anti-censorship theme had direct connections to the wave of censorship that was sweeping America at the time. However, the problem of censorship is not, unfortunately, a relic of days gone by. Just last month In our neighboring state of South Carolina, the state’s legislators voted to cut state funding to the University of South Carolina Upstate and to the College of Charleston to punish these institutions of higher learning for assigning LGBT books. The two books these legislators are attacking are Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Reading and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. As Ray Bradbury makes so clear in Fahrenheit 451, the suppression of books is really about the suppression of ideas and ultimately the suppression of people. Bradbury’s classic is 60 years old, but the theme of his book is still very relevant to our world and our time.
Kudos— As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department. Here is the latest news:
Liz Miller recently attended the annual conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics in Portland, Oregon. She co-organized a colloquium on “Socially Mediated Agency and Second Language Learning: Theory, Analysis, Pedagogy” which included scholars from Finland, Sweden, France, Spain, Canada and the US. She also presented a paper titled “Social Sustainability: Is there a Definition in the House?”. This past weekend she presented a poster titled “Starting the Conversation: Social Sustainability as Discursive Object” at the second annual conference of the Integrated Network for Social Sustainability, hosted at the Center City building in Charlotte. She also spoke on the same topic to the full assembly.
Becky Roeder and Matt Hunt Gardner (U Toronto) recently presented a paper titled “A Tale of Two Phonologies: English in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia” at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics.
Erika Romero, one of our M.A. Students, has been accepted into the Ph.D. program at Illinois State University, with full funding. She plans to study children’s literature.
Ralf Thiede recently presented a paper titled “Grammar for Writing: Discovering the Language of Power and the Power of Language” at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics.
Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is a date to keep in mind:
April 11 — The EGSA Professional Day will take place throughout the afternoon.
Quirky Quiz Question — The central character in Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag. What is Guy’s job?