Monthly Archives: January 2015

Heather Vorhies’s Excellent Adventure–Heather Vorhies met President Obama on Friday, January 23. Heather’s husband, James, recently ended seven years of service with the National Security Council, and the White House arranged for a ceremony to recognize James’s years of service. Heather had her photograph taken with President Obama in the Oval Office, and along the way she got to hang out in the Palm Room, sit on some White House furniture, and meet the First Family’s dogs, Sunny and Bo. She also had a brief conversation with the President about her research, to which he replied,“There was a lot of rhetoric in the eighteenth century.”

English Graduate Student Association Conference —The 15th Annual English Graduate Student Association Conference took place last Saturday at the Student Union. The conference was a great success. Our graduate students did an excellent job of organizing this conference, and the quality of the papers presented impressed all of us who attended. This year’s conference attracted graduate students from many universities in addition to UNC Charlotte. Among the other universities represented were Clark University, East Carolina University, George Mason University, Harrison Middleton University, N.C. State University, Old Dominion University, University of Alabama, University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Birmingham, UNC Asheville, and UNC Wilmington. The conference ended with the EGSA’s Professor of the Year presentation. This year the award went to Tony Jackson.

Celebrating Jim McGavran — I am working closely with Deje McGavran, the wife of Jim McGavran, to organize a campus event that we are calling “A Celebration of Jim McGavran.” This celebration will take place on Friday, February 20, from 2:00-4:30 in the Rowe Recital Hall (Rowe 140). The official program will begin at 2:30 to be followed by a reception in the main lobby of Rowe. More details will be made available in the near future.

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:

Henry Doss, the Executive-in-Residence for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a graduate of our English program, recently published a co-authored book titled The Rainforest Scorecard: A Practical Framework for Growing Innovation Potential.

Kirk Melnikoff was given a Cambridge University Press contract for his co-edited collection Booking Christopher Marlowe: Cultures of Performance and Publication. The volume will be published in 2016.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is a date to keep in mind:

February 10 — The third presentation in this year’s Personally Speaking Series will take place on Tuesday, February 10, at 6:30 at UNC Charlotte Center City. John David Smith will speak about his recent book Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops. On March 24, Paula Connolly will give the fourth and final presentation in this year’s Personally Speaking Series. She will speak about her book Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790-2010.

Quirky Quiz Question — During her recent visit to the White House, Heather Vorhies met the First Family’s dogs, Sunny and Bo. Sunny and Bo belong to what breed of dogs?Last week’s answer: “The New World”

The Freedom Riders — On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we honor Dr. King and his legacy. However, I believe that we should also honor the many other people who contributed to the Civil Rights Movement, including the brave young people known as the Freedom Riders. In 1961, hundreds of college-aged students from different races sat together on interstate buses and bus terminals in the South in an effort to challenge the Jim Crow travel laws that were still in force in many southern states at the time. Often met with violence, these Freedom Riders played an important role in challenging the legality of racial segregation. My dissertation advisor was one of the Freedom Riders, so I heard many stories from him about this chapter in the history of the Civil Rights Movement.More recently, one of my students, an English major named Amber Monroe, brought up the topic of the Freedom Riders during a meeting that she scheduled with me last semester. As a student in my Children’s Literature course, she knew that I had some experience conducting interviews with authors. In our meeting, she explained to me that she was interested in learning more about the Freedom Riders and wanted to conduct an interview with an expert on this topic. I agreed to work with her, and after several meetings, she decided to request an interview with Ann Bausum, the author of Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movement. Bausum’s book is intended for children, and this appealed to Amber since she wanted to know more about nonfiction for children. Amber prepared a list of questions, consulted with me several times about conducting interviews, and then sent Ann Bausum a formal written request. About two weeks ago, I received an email form Amber in which she excitedly told me that the interview was great success and that she now plans to use her interview findings as part of a larger research project. Needless to say, I am proud of Amber, and I am very pleased that a student with her initiative and curiosity has chosen to major in English.

Remembering Blair Rudes — The other day I was thumbing through the most recent catalog from the University of Toronto Press, and I was so pleased to see an announcement for a new paperback edition of Blair Rudes’ Tuscarora-English/English-Tuscarora Dictionary. Blair taught linguistics in our department for a number of years. He died in 2008, but his scholarship on the languages of Native Americans is still having a major impact in the fields of linguistics and Native American studies. I am excited that his ground-breaking dictionary will now be available to a wider audience.

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:

Boyd Davis has just been asked to be on the Editorial Board to review and add terms/definitions, particularly in the area of dementias for the 10th edition of Mosby’s Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing & Health Professions (Elsevier).

Allison Hutchcraft attended the 33rd annual Key West Literary Seminar and Writers’ Workshop Program, for which she received a scholarship. The theme of this year’s seminar was “How the Light Gets In.”

Becky Roeder recently presented a paper titled “City, Province, or Region? What Do the Vowels of Victoria English Tell Us?” at the American Dialect Society Conference held in Portland, OR. She also recently published an article titled “Talking about Accent: The Canadian Shift and Canadian Raising” in Contact Magazine: Teachers of English as a Second Language Association of Ontario.
Sam Watson, a retired member of the English Department, recently published a poetry collection titled So Far As I Can Say.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is a date to keep in mind:

January 23 — The first department meeting of the spring semester will take place from 12:00-1:30 in the English Conference room. Please note that this meeting will take place an hour later than our customary start time for department meetings.

Quirky Quiz Question — In addition to conducting scholarship on Native American languages, Blair Rudes served as a consultant on Native American languages for major film. What is the title of this film?

Last week’s answer: Samuel Clemens lived in Hartford, Ct. His house there is now a museum.

English in Demand — The preliminary enrollment figures for the spring 2015 semester provide solid evidence that the demand for our undergraduate English courses is continuing to increase. This spring semester, the combined registration numbers for all of our undergraduate courses is 2,126. In spring 2014, the comparable number was 1,914. In spring 2013, the number was 1,824. In spring 2012, the number was 1,679. As these numbers demonstrate, our courses are in high demand and the demand is on the rise. In fact, nearly all of our undergraduate courses have hit their registration caps. I cannot speak for other English departments, but our English Department is offering courses that clearly appeal to a wide range of our undergraduate students.

After reviewing these registration numbers, I am reminded of the following quotation that is often attributed to Mark Twain: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Similarly, the reports of the demise of English Studies as a discipline, at least at UNC Charlotte, are about as accurate as the report that Mark Twain had died in 1897 when in fact he was alive and well at the 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:

Balaka Basu presented a paper at MLA titled “I hear of Sherlock everywhere: Digital Scrapbooks and the Curation of Female Desire.” The paper was part of a panel called Textual Assemblage: Readers, Remixing, and the Reconstruction of Books organized by the Discussion Group on Bibliography and Textual Studies.

Sonya Brockman organized and presided over a special session titled Literary Rape Culture at MLA. She also has an article forthcoming in the Journal of Early Modern Studies titled “Tranio Transformed: Social Anxieties and Social Metamorphosis in The Taming of the Shrew.”

Malin Pereira presented a paper at MLA titled “Wanda Coleman’s ‘Retro Rogue Anthology’ in Mercurochrome.” She also presided at the ADE-sponsored “Pre-convention Workshop for Job Seekers.”

Alan Rauch organized a panel at MLA titled “The Ballad Beyond Bibliography.” As part of this panel, he gave a paper titled “The Logic of the Ballad: An Introduction.” He also organized the session for the Council of Editors of Learned Journals of which he remains president. His paper for this panel is titled “Editing a Critical Journal: Pitfalls and Possibilities.”
Heather Vorhies will be attending the Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute at University of Wisconsin-Madison this June. Also, she will be presenting “Transatlantic Adaptations of Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres” in July at the International Society for the History of Rhetoric.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here are some dates to keep in mind:

January 16 — Last day for students to add courses or drop courses with no grade.

January 19 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day – University Closed.

January 23 — The first department meeting of the spring semester will take place from 12:00-1:30 in the English Conference room. Please note that this meeting will take place an hour later than our customary start time for department meetings.

Quirky Quiz Question — Mark Twain is associated with his boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri, but he spent his most productive years as a writer living in New England. What is the name of the New England city that he called home for many years?

Faculty Achievement — The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences annual Celebration of Faculty Achievement took place on December 18, 2014, and the achievements of many members of the English Department were recognized. The event celebrated faculty who published books in 2014 or who received external funding for research projects between July 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014. A total of fourteen English faculty members were recognized at this event—eight for publishing books and six for receiving external funding. During the ceremony, the English Department was singled out as the department the produced the most books in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 2014. The faculty who were recognized for publishing books are JuliAnna Ávila, Pilar Blitvich, Aaron Gwyn, Cy Knoblauch, Jeffrey Leak, Ron Lunsford, Elizabeth Miller, and Lara Vetter. The faculty who were recognized for their sponsored research projects are Balaka Basu, Lil Brannon, Paula Connolly, Boyd Davis, Paula Eckard and Aimee Parkison.

Our friend and colleague Jim McGavran attended this event. He and I stood together during the ceremony, and he mentioned to me how proud he was of the accomplishments of his colleagues. The very next day he had his stroke. It seems somehow fitting to me that the last time Jim set foot on our campus was to help celebrate the achievements of his colleagues. His devotion to the English Department, his pride in the successes of his colleagues, and his generous and collegial approach to life are all reflected in his decision to attend this event even though he was not one of the faculty who was being recognized. In my view, Jim’s steadfast support of his colleagues is a special achievement itself and is one of the reasons why we will always honor Jim in our department.

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:

JuliAnna Ávila received the 2014 Edward B. Fry Book Award from the Literacy Research Association at the association’s annual conference on December 5, 2014. She received this award for her book Critical Digital Literacies as Social Praxis, which she co-edited with Jessica Zacher Pandya. For more information about this award, please click on the following link: https://exchange.uncc.edu/english-faculty-receives-prestitious-award-for-book-on-critical-digital-literacies/

Susan Gardner recently published an article titled “Subverting the Rhetoric of Assimilation: Ella Cara Deloria’s Writing in the 1920s” in Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Liberation.

Angie Williams was recently promoted to Business Services Coordinator. This new title recognizes the level of work she performs for the English Department.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is a date to keep in mind:

January 7 — First day of classes.

January 16 — Last day for students to add courses or drop courses with no grade.

January 19 – Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. Day – University Closed.

January 23 — The first department meeting of the spring semester will take place from 12:00-1:30 in the English Conference room. Please note that this meeting will take place an hour later than our customary start time for department meetings.