Monthly Archives: January 2016

For me, this past weekend was all about playing in the snow.  I woke up on Friday morning to the news that the university was closed on account of the winter storm.  The day began with an invitation to play.  The invitation came from Maggie, our old golden retriever.  She dashed off into our snow-covered backyard, and she kept looking at me as if to say, “Come on.  Let’s romp in the snow.”  I soon joined her, and she ran around in circles and thrashed in the snow and acted like she was a puppy instead of the eleven-year-old dog that she actually is.  As the day progressed, neighborhood kids and their parents started sliding down the hill in front of our house.  On Saturday, I joined in on the fun and built a snow sculpture version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Several kids and other passersby stopped to check on my progress and offer words of encouragement.  My weekend ended by watching Cam Newton skip and cavort on the football field.  While I am not a big football fan, I love watching Newton’s joyful approach to playing his sport.

Quirky Quiz Question — Shakespeare once wrote the following line: “The play’s the thing.”  Can you name the work by Shakespeare in which this line appears?

For young people who want to know more about Dr. King as well as several other African American leaders, I highly recommend Hand in Hand:  Ten Black Men Who Changed America by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney.  Published in 2012, this beautiful volume won the Coretta Scott King Book Award.  In addition to covering the life of Dr. King, the Pinkneys include chapters on Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Malcolm X, and President Barack Obama.  Hand in Handis a companion book to Let It Shine:  Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters.  A few years ago, I taught Hand in Hand in my graduate seminar titled Children’s Literature Award Winners, and my students and I all agreed that this book provides lively and engaging introductions to the lives and contributions of these important players in American history.

Kirk Melnikoff has for the last three years taught the LBST course Sexing Shakespeare with Religious Studies professor Kent Brintnall. The class reads Shakespeare on the stage and page through the lens of gender and sexual theory, introducing students to the ideas of Girard, Foucault, Bataille, and Butler in the context of plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream andRomeo and Juliet. With Jen Munroe, Kirk has also worked for the last decade with Theatre professor Andrew Hartley on the UNC Charlotte Theatre Department’s Shakespeare in Action Initiative, planning events, running talkbacks, and giving public lectures on Shakespeare and early modern British culture. This semester, SIA is concluding its six-year Thirty Six in Six project with events dedicated to The Comedy of Errors,Cymbeline, and As You Like It.

Ralf Thiede and Dan Boisvert of the Department of Philosophy will be teaching LBST 2213 ‘Language: Where it can take us’ (a Prospect for Success course) for the third time this Fall. Ralf and Dan share interests in logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind (Ralf started out as a double major in English and Philosophy at the University of Münster). Their course combines current perspectives from philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and cognitive science and explores linguistic cooperation; the language of power and the power of language; and language as a resource that can be shared, denied, or fought over. They adopt the emerging metaphor of the brain as a narrating device and are completing the first draft of a book manuscript on language and cooperation.

January 21 — The last day to add/drop with no grade.

January 22 — The English Department meeting will take place on January 22, 2016, from 11:00–12:30 in the English Department Conference Room.

Quirky Quiz Question — Our culture is replete with famous examples of collaborative works.  Listed below are five such works along with a list a famous collaborators.  See if you can match each work to the collaborators who created it:

January 21 — The last day to add/drop with no grade.

January 22 — The English Department meeting will take place on January 22, 2016, from 11:00–12:30 in the English Department Conference Room.

Quirky Quiz Question — When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884, it was the tallest structure in the world.  However, in 1889 another tower eclipsed it as the world’s tallest structure. What is the name of the tower completed in 1889?