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Monthly Archives: July 2015

Monday Missive - July 27, 2015

July 27, 2015 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

books Mark NY tripThe Enduring Power of Books — As I was flying back to Charlotte last night, I reflected on my week in New York City.  Over the course of the week, I focused much of my attention on researching Theodore Roosevelt’s personal library at his Long Island home, which is called Sagamore Hill.  However, I also took advantage of some of the unique cultural opportunities available in the city.  I went to the Morgan Library where I saw their exhibition titled “Alice:  150 Years of Wonderland.”  I also saw Matilda:  The Musical, which is based on Roald Dahl’s last children’s novel, also titled Matilda.  In reflecting on these experiences, I realized that they all relate to the enduring power of books.

When viewed collectively, the books in Roosevelt’s personal library have the nearly magical power of making Roosevelt come alive.  Roosevelt’s presence comes through clearly when one sees the 8,000 books that he collected and, in many cases, read.  His books reflect his passions, his personality, and his personal history.  Because these books are shelved in the same book cases that he and his family used so many decades ago, the arrangement of the books also speaks to his tastes and intellectual proclivities.  One can see how he grouped books, how he favored certain books by giving them prime bookshelf space, and how he displayed his books with other objects that had meaning for him.  Roosevelt was an avid reader, and his library captures this important side of his life.

One of the books that Roosevelt enjoyed and often quoted in his correspondence was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, so it seemed fitting that I was able to see the Alice exhibit during my week in New York.  As I viewed the exhibit, I marveled at how many other people were also there to see the exhibit.  During the two hours I spent at the Morgan Library, scores and scores of children and adults came to see the Alice exhibit, and they took their time examining the various items on display.  The popularity of the exhibit underscored for me the power that certain books have among readers.  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland came out exactly 150 years ago, but it still has the power to captivate readers of all ages.

My wife and I saw Matilda on the last night of our visit to New York, and we both enjoyed it immensely.  The musical is quite true to Roald Dahl’s story.  As those of you who have read this story already know, Dahl’s tale is a celebration of books and reading.  In the story, Matilda is a brilliant girl who loves to read, much to the chagrin of her crass and neglectful parents.  Matilda turns to books to cope with her difficult life at home and school.  Through her reading, Matilda finds the power to endure and eventually overcome the obstacles that face her.   Of course, Roosevelt never read Matilda, but he too had a difficult childhood although for different reasons.  He suffered from severe asthma as a child, and it was not until his teenage years that he had the stamina to engage in the strenuous physical activities that he so much enjoyed as an adult.  Like Matilda, the young Roosevelt turned to books to help him overcome the limitations that constrained his childhood.  His passion for reading can be traced back to his childhood, and throughout his life he continued to love the books that he had enjoyed as a boy.

There is a lot of power in books, I thought to myself as the plane reached cruising altitude.   And then I pulled out a biography of Roosevelt and read until the plane touched down in Charlotte.

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, Jackie Guendouzi and Margaret Maclagan have just published “Expanding expectations for narrative styles in the context of dementia,” Topics in Communication Disorders 35: 237-257.

Allison Hutchcraft recently read her poetry as part of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative’s Reading Series in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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

August 3 — Last day of classes for the second summer session.

August 10 — Grades due for all classes taught during the second summer session.

Quirky Quiz Question — During my visit to Sagamore Hill, the recent PBS documentary The Roosevelts:  An Intimate History was playing continuously in the gift shop.  Who was the director of this documentary?
Last week’s answer: Owen Wister
One of Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite novels was The Virginian.  Who wrote this novel?

Monday Missive - July 20, 2015

July 20, 2015 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

Sagamaore HillTheodore Roosevelt’s Books — I am about to travel to New York City where I will be conducting research on President Theodore Roosevelt’s personal library. Roosevelt’s books are still located in his home in Long Island. Named Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt’s home is now owned and administered by the National Park Service. For the past three and a half years, Sagamore Hill has been closed to the public while a major restoration project has taken place, but the home reopened to the public earlier this month. The Park Curator has agreed to talk with me about the restoration project and Roosevelt’s library.

Roosevelt called himself a “book lover,” and he devoted part of nearly every day to reading books. He often wrote letters to the authors of his favorite books, and he sometimes invited these authors to visit him. His library reflects his passions, his political causes, and his literary tastes. Through my research, I hope to develop a better understanding of Roosevelt as a reader and collector of books.

Writing Project — Anyone who has been in the English Department during the past few weeks has undoubtedly noticed all of the activity and excitement generated by the participants in the Writing Project. I asked Lil Brannon, the Director of UNC Charlotte’s Writing Project, for more information about what the Writing Project’s participants are up to this summer. Her response is listed below:

I would be delighted to tell you what all the Writing Project has been doing. You know that the Writing Project was started in l980 by Sam Watson and Leon Gatlin as an English Department Partnership with Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. Our site (The UNC Charlotte Writing Project) has offered Invitational Summer Institutes (like the one we were doing these last three weeks) every summer since then. We are one of the original sites of the National Writing Project. So for 35 years, the UNC Charlotte Writing Project has grown and prospered.

This summer, the next to last week of June, we held our Partnership School Institute along with our Teacher Research Institute. The UNC Charlotte Writing Project has several partnership schools who send teachers to our campus for professional development in the teaching of writing. The Writing Project Teacher Consultants provide workshops for partnership teachers in a week-long conference-like setting on-campus. This year, we held one-day of the Institute at the Center City Campus so that partnership teachers could learn more about “museum pedagogy,” having their students take advantage of the many wonderful museums in downtown Charlotte. We focused attention on Discovery Place, the science museum in downtown Charlotte, with whom we have a partnership. We also had a writing marathon in NoDa, starting out at Amelies with side visits to Makerspace Charlotte and coffee at the Smelly Cat.

The Teacher Research Institute ran in conjunction with the Partnership Institute. Teacher Research brings experienced Writing Project teacher consultants to campus for a week of writing and of reflecting on our practices as teachers of writing. Heather Coffey and I lead this group, many of whom were professional articles, drafting dissertation chapters, rethinking curriculum, and catching up on reading in the professional literature.

Between the two groups we had over 40 teachers that week working in the seminar room, conference room, and at the various coffee shops on campus.

The last week of June through July 16, we hosted 15 area teachers at the Invitational Summer Institute. Each February teachers apply to participate. The Writing Project interviews all the applicants and selects out 15 outstanding teachers to come. The Institute contains three strands: teacher as inquirer (researcher); teacher as leader, and teacher as writer. So the days are filled with writing; with inquiring into questions about the teaching of writing and of engaging the professional conversation about writing; and with these teachers and the Writing Project leaders all conducting teaching demonstrations from their classroom and reflecting on those practices. Once teachers complete the institute they continue with the Writing Project as Teacher Consultants.

During all of these activities, we had meetings of the Education Innovator team of middle grades teachers who worked with the Writing Project this year on “Making Their Worlds,” a grant we have with the National Writing Project and the MacArthur Foundation to bring the idea of “make” to middle school English language arts classrooms so that students can do larger projects on social justice issues that matter to them and their communities. We also are working with Discovery Place and the Renaissance West community in Charlotte to plan a CMS K-5 school which will open in 2017 so that “make” and literacy are central to the work of the school. This coming year, the Writing Project and Discovery Place will be hosting maker faires and literacy activities (performance poetry, writing marathons) as the community builds and designs the new elementary school in partnership with us.

So it has been a very busy summer, with lots of people in our Fretwell digs, and it was exciting to be in our English home and feel the energy, support, and excitement of 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:

Aaron Gwyn’s novel Wynne’s War is now available in a handsome paperback edition published by Eamon Dolan/Mariner Books.

Alan Rauch recently presented a paper titled “The Enchanting Life (and Death) of Charles Darwin” at the North American Victorian Studies Association Meeting held in Hawai’i.

Angie Williams recently received the Golden Nugget Award from the Staff Council for “going above and beyond the call of duty and representing UNC Charlotte in a manner in which we can all be proud.”

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

August 3 — Last day of classes for the second summer session.

August 10 — Grades due for all classes taught during the second summer session.

Quirky Quiz Question — One of Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite novels was The Virginian. Who wrote this novel?

 
Last week’s answer: receipts
As Bonnie and Jen well know, recipes have been around for a long time, but the term “recipes” did not come into widespread use until the second half of the 19th century. What term was used before then?

Monday Missive - July 13, 2015

July 13, 2015 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive
victorian-life-in-britain-study-guide-victorian-times-food-3
Food for Thought — When I began my career at UNC Charlotte back in 1984, I thought one of the great advantages of being a professor is that much of one’s work as a professor can be done at home.  I used to work from home a lot, but I found that I preferred keeping my home life and my work life separate.

For the longest time,I thought I was the only person in the English Department who liked to write at work, but now Bonnie Shishko has joined the club.  She has been coming into the department almost every day to put the finishing touches on her dissertation.   Her dissertation deals with the discourses of food in Victorian times, and she is paying particular attention to the development of the cookbook during this period.  I have had several conversations with Bonnie about her research, and she has helped me understand how cookbooks reflect societal values.

There are several other members of our department who have written about food and food preparation.  Jen Munroe has researched the development of recipes during the age of Shakespeare, and she participates in a blog that features early modern recipes:  http://recipes.hypotheses.org/5452.  Beth Gargano has also written about food in literature.  In fact, she has published an essay on this topic titled “Trials of Taste:  Ideological Food Fights in Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.”  Our Dean, Nancy Gutierrez, wrote about food-related issues in her book titled Shall She Famish Then?  Female Food Refusal in Early Modern England.

Bonnie tells me that there is an emerging field of scholarship called “food studies,” and it seems to me that our department is already gathering at this table.

Quirky Quiz Question — As Bonnie and Jen well know, recipes have been around for a long time, but the term “recipes” did not come into widespread use until the second half of the 19th century.  What term was used before then?

Last week’s answer: Math

Monday Missive - July 6, 2015

July 06, 2015 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

Transitions — The 2015-2016 academic year is now upon us, and with this change come other transitions. Two of our long-time colleagues—Meg Morgan and Cy Knoblauch—now officially have emeritus faculty status.

Meg joined the English Department in 1987. Over the course of her career, she has taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. Her strength as a teacher is reflected in the fact that she won the Bank of America Award for Teaching in 2008. Her commitment to teaching is also reflected in her two published books: Strategies for Reading and Arguing about Literature, which she co-authored, and Strategies for Technical Communication: A Collection of Teaching Tips, which she co-edited. She has served in several administrative positions, including the Director of Rhetoric and Writing from 1994 through 2003. Recently Meg has taken responsibility for the English Department’s internship program, and I am pleased to report that she will continue playing this role as a part-time faculty member.

Cy joined the English Department as Chair in 1998. During his 17 years at UNC Charlotte, Cy played several key administrative roles. He served as the Chair of English from 1998 to 2007, as the Interim Chair of the Department of Biology from 2008 to 2011, and as the Director of First Year Writing from 2011 to 2012. He has also taught a wide variety of courses in rhetoric, writing, and British literature. Over the course of his career, Cy has written or co-written six books. Perhaps his most important publication is a recently published book titled Discursive Ideologies: Reading Western Rhetoric.

Both Meg and Cy have made many important contributions to our department, and I am pleased to include them among our impressive list of retired professors who have emeritus faculty status. In the near future, the English Department’s website will provide a complete listing of the former members of our department who have emeritus faculty status. Alan Rauch and Anita Moss are working together on this project, and my thanks go to both of them.

150 Years of Alice — This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This classic work of children’s literature can actually be traced back to July 4th, 1862, when Carroll told Alice Liddell and her sisters a shorter version of the story while they were on a boating trip on the River Thames. In alice-cards-newcommemoration of the 150th anniversary the book’s publication, the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City is sponsoring an exhibition called Alice: 150 Years of Wonderland (http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/alice).

Alice is quite at home in our department. Carroll’s classic is regularly taught in our children’s literature and Victorian literature classes, and several members of the department have written about the book. For example, Sarah Minslow devoted much of her dissertation to analyzing Carroll’s approach to nonsense literature, and Balaka Basu is writing about Alice in her current book project tentatively titled Reading Digitally with Children’s Literature.

News from Our Foreign Bureau — A few weeks ago I started featuring news about members of our department who have been globe trotting this summer. This week I am featuring Ralf Thiede.

Ralf recently returned from a trip to Germany. I asked him about his adventure, and here is what he had to say. “I saw very little of Mainz, Germany, where I went to attend (and present at) the world’s first colloquium on the linguistics of children’s literature, but thank goodness the meeting room was air conditioned. So, the Europeans are a bit ahead of us here: I took copious notes on a day’s worth of papers on such fascinating research as how adults interact with children during shared picture book reading. It’s a discipline in the making, and I thought that our department probably has the combined knowledge and skill set to become the leader in the US. Anyone interested?”

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 presented two co-authored papers at the 13th annual Communication, Medicine & Ethics conference (COMET) held in Hong Kong on June 25-27. One paper was titled “Dropped cues: Missed opportunities in the talk of tele health encounters,” and the other was titled “Politeness strategies in response to directives in the preliminary English version of the Assessment Battery for Communication.”

Paula Martinac’s short story, “Eds and Meds,” was a finalist in the 2015 Prime Number Short Fiction Contest. Prime Number is a literary journal published by Press 53 in Winston-Salem. Her story was one of the 10 stories chosen from 225 entries.

Joan Mullin recently presented a paper titled “Expanding or Limiting Access: Re-visioning the Calls For and Affordances of International English-Medium On-Line Publication,” at the European Association for Teachers of Academic Writing in Tallinn, Estonia.

Jen Munroe co-lead (with Rebecca Laroche) a workshop titled, “Teaching Recipes in the Digital Age” at the Attending to Early Modern Women Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin June 18-21.

Malin Pereira just returned from presenting a paper in Liverpool, UK, at the Collegium for African American Research bi-annual conference. Her paper was titled “The Politics of Memorializing Family and Place: The ‘Phototexts’ of Natasha Trethewey and LaToya Ruby Frazier.”

Quirky Quiz Question — In addition to writing the Alice books, Lewis Carroll spent many years teaching at Oxford University. What subject did he teach?

Last week’s answer: Charlie was Steinbeck’s dog

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