Monthly Archives: November 2015

Faculty Achievement — The Celebration of Faculty Achievement, an event sponsored by the Dean’s Office of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, takes place on Wednesday, December 2, from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm in the Harris Alumni Center. This event honors faculty who published books this past year or who received external funding for research between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015. Eight members of the English Department will be honored at this event. Bryn Chancellor, Peter Larkin, Elizabeth Miller, Jennifer Munroe, Lance Phillips, and I will be recognized for publishing books in 2015, while Lil Brannon and Boyd Davis will be honored for receiving externally funded grants. I am very proud of these achievements by members of our faculty, and I am pleased that the department with the most books published in 2015 is the English Department.

Although publishing books and receiving grants are important faculty achievements, I am well aware of the many other faculty achievements that often go unheralded. These achievements include publishing articles, editing journals, developing new classes, helping graduate students with their applications to doctoral programs, organizing events and readings, and working with community organizations. As we celebrate the faculty achievements that are being recognized during the event on Wednesday, I think we should also remember to celebrate the many other achievements of our faculty. In fact, one of the reasons I include the “Kudos” section in my Monday Missive is to recognize such achievements.

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:

Pilar Blitvich just returned from Valencia, Spain, where she co-directed a new conference on Approaches to Digital Discourse Analysis (ADDA) http://adda.blogs.uv.es. The conference attracted 145 participants, including linguists, IT scholars, communication specialists, and rhetoricians. ADDA II will be held at UNC Charlotte in the fall of 2017. ADDA III will be held in Finland 2019. In addition to her performing her organization duties, Pilar presented a paper, co-authored by Becky and Liz (Roeder, Miller, Blitvich – order of authors) based on research done on our Language and digital communication concentration. The title of the presentation is “Pedagogy, audience and attitudes: Influencing metalinguistic awareness about text practices.”

Jeffrey Leak authored the opinion piece “UNC Charlotte and the faculty pay raise” published in the Charlotte Observer.

Janaka Lewis has been invited by the Chris Canty Foundation to participate with”Brown All Over” in their Women for Literacy Book Fair from 1-4 this Saturday at the Arboretum Barnes and Noble.

Lara Vetter presented a paper titled “Outside the Margins of Modernism: Spirituality and Women Writers” at the recent Modernist Studies Association conference. She also chaired a roundtable on women’s writing in the World War II era.

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

December 10 — The English Department holiday party will take place on December 10, 2015, from 11:30-1:30 in the faculty/staff lounge. As usual, this will be a potluck event. There is a potluck sign up sheet at the front desk.

Quirky Quiz Question — Pilar Blitvich just returned from Valencia, Spain, which is sometimes called the Orchard of Spain. Valencia is especially famous for what type of fruit?

Last week’s answer: Z and Q

In the game of Scrabble, each letter has a point value. What two letters have the highest point values?

Games and Puzzles — I recently learned that the week of Thanksgiving is also National Games and Puzzles Week. The game I always associate with departments of English is Scrabble. When I was in graduate school, the teaching assistants in the English Department played Scrabble on a weekly basis. They even organized Scrabble tournaments. I remember thinking at the time that I would never meet anybody else who played in Scrabble tournaments, but I was wrong. I heard a rumor that our former colleague Jay Jacoby regularly participates in Scrabble tournaments, so last week I sent him an email and asked him if there is any truth to the rumor. Here is what he had to say:

I’m afraid the Scrabble rumors are in fact true. About three and a half years ago I took an 8-week class in “How to Play Scrabble like a Champ” offered by UNCA’s Osher Life-long Learning Institute (a college for seniors at which I often teach and take classes). I have enjoyed playing Scrabble since I was a kid, but this was an introduction to the world of competitive Scrabble, tournament-level play (with timers, rules, cut-throat strategies, etc.). It didn’t take long for me to become hooked.

I began playing Scrabble at the local Asheville Club that meets every Sunday from 2-6 and draws between 12-20 participants each week (check out their web site to learn more than you ever wanted to know: www.ashevillescrabble.com). Members range in age from folks in their 20s to those in their 70s, active and retired teachers, doctors, realtors, truffle-farmers, pool-cleaners, etc. I also became one of the 6,000+ members of the North American Scrabble Players Association, and started participating in regional tournaments. Such tournaments are held every week-end across the country (during the next two week-ends there will be tournaments in Lexington, KY, Dallas, Princeton, Brooklyn, Potomac, MD, Elmhurst, IL, Ontario, and British Columbia–number of participants vary: Asheville hosted a tournament a few weeks ago that attracted 80 people; about 125 folks are expected for an early January tournament in New Orleans). National Tournaments, in places like Reno or Buffalo, attract several hundred participants. Prize money is good for those who play well.

Speaking of playing well, I’m sad to say that after over three years and 15 tournaments, I am still pretty mediocre. I have won a few tournaments, but that is rare. Still, I really do enjoy the competition and the camaraderie–I’ve met tons of people from all over and we are all word freaks.

In celebration of National Games and Puzzle Week, we have set up a Scrabble game and a book-themed jigsaw puzzle in the faculty/staff lounge. Have at it!

English by the Numbers — At last week’s English Department meeting, Aaron Toscano gave a presentation on the numbers of undergraduate students who have declared English as their major or who have signed up for one of the English Department’s minors. As Aaron made clear, the numbers of English majors have increased steadily since 2013. Listed below is a snapshot of where we currently stand in terms of English majors and minors:

English Department Majors and Minors

Majors Enrolled Fall 2015

· General: 187· Creative: 85

· Lang & Dig Tech: 61

· Lit & Culture: 73

· Pedagogy: 46

Total (enrolled): 452 (458* as of 11/19/2015)

Minors Enrolled Fall 2015

· Children’s Lit: 207

· Diverse Lit: 10

· English: 84

· Linguistics: 30

· Tech/Prof: 41

· HTAS: 8

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:
Bryn Chancellor recently gave a fiction reading at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, as part of Winthrop’s Writers Reading Series.

Katie Hogan presented a paper titled “Complicit: On Being A WGSS Program Director in the Neoliberal University” at the National Women’s Studies Association’s Annual Conference. The conference was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 13 to November 15.

Tony Jackson recently published an article titled “Prime Time: Visual Cognition in the Prelude to Citizen Kane” in Style (Winter 2015).

Juan Meneses has recently been notified that his essay “Historical Restoration, Narrative Agency, and Silence in Graham Swift’s Waterland” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Modern Literature.

Quirky Quiz Question — In the game of Scrabble, each letter has a point value. What two letters have the highest point values?

Last week’s answer: The Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse
The high tea at CLGO’s recent event was inspired by the mad tea party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In addition to Alice, who else participates in this mad tea party? Here is hint: there are three other participants.

The student involvement in these two recent events underscore for me the many and diverse strengths of our students.

This Wednesday (November 11), the Children’s Literature Graduate Organization (CLGO) is presenting a public event that they are calling Alice’s (un)Birthday Party.  This event will take place in the Student Union Room 340B from 4:00 to 5:30.   Professor Jan Susina, an internationally recognized expert on Carroll’s writings, will deliver a keynote address.  Professor Susina is a Professor of English at Illinois State University and the author of The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children’s Literature.  Following the keynote address, there will be a panel discussion featuring Professor Susina, Sarah Minslow, and Alan Rauch.  Everyone who attends will have an opportunity to participate in a Victorian tea party complete with tea, sandwiches, and scones.   I hope to see you there.

Heather Blain Vorhies recently presented “Doing Business Over There: Misunderstanding the Place of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing in the Place of Business” at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference in Tempe, Arizona.
Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is a date to keep in mind:

November 13 — Shakespeare in Action is presenting a lecture by Paul Menzer titled “Every Bad Quarto Deserves a Good Theory” on Friday, November 13, at 6:00 pm in Robinson Hall’s Black Box Theater.

Quirky Quiz Question — The character Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is based on a real girl whose first name was Alice.  Does anybody know the last name of the real Alice?

Last week’s answer: Steampunk

Gears and clockwork figure prominently in a popular fantasy genre that is set in a world in which advanced electronics and digital technology never developed.  What is the commonly used term for the fantasy genre?

Drawing by Nafis Bilal

Engagement — I associate the word engagement with an image of engaged gears spinning around like clockwork.  This image seems appropriate to me within the context of the engagement activities associated with our faculty and students.  As I see it, the teaching/learning that takes place in the classroom is like the main driver gear (sometimes called the primary gear).  However, when this gear meshes with other gears, the motion or energy that starts with the driver gear can power a much larger and more complex operation.  Something similar happens when classroom activities are connected to the world outside the classroom–the gears engage and a complex operation is set in motion.  Within the past two weeks, members of the English Department have engineered numerous examples of this type of engagement.  Here are four examples.

Through the Chancellor’s Diversity Fund grant, students in ENGL 4254/5254, English methods, worked with the Poetry Project, The UNC Charlotte Writing Project, and Discovery Place, Inc., to host a family literacy night for the Renaissance West and Little Rock Charlotte communities. Over a hundred people attended this event.  UNC Charlotte students are working with the Poetry Project on ways of teaching performance poetry to urban youth, and this event gave English students the opportunity to put into practice the power of poetry and the spoken word.  UNC Charlotte Writing Project teachers were also involved and they connected this out-of-school work with families to ways performance poetry happens in the classroom to increase student engagement and deepen their knowledge.  Discovery Place, Inc., worked with our students and the families on the science of sound through informal science learning which integrated literacy and science through hands-on science activities.

The English Department co-hosted a meeting of the Charlotte Regional Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) last Wednesday night. The topic was the job search and the role of LinkedIn. Roger Gilmartin and Sonia McCallum, two officers from the local chapter, made presentations and led a discussion that focused on how LinkedIn differs from other forms of social media and can be used as an electronic portfolio tool. They led a discussion of effective rhetorical strategies for traditional resumes and interviews as well. The event was well attended. Another STC meeting on campus is planned for next April, to exhibit the work of students in our programs in Technical/Professional Writing and Language and Digital Technology.

As these examples illustrate, engagement activities mesh perfectly with the work of the the English Department.

Last week’s answer: Novello

EpicFest follows in the tradition of an earlier literary festival sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.  Does anybody remember the name of this earlier festival?