Charlotte Research Scholars — Every summer the Graduate School sponsors its Charlotte Research Scholars Program. This program is intended to provide high-achieving undergraduate students with opportunities to collaborate with faculty members on research projects. Another goal of the program is to encourage the student participants to pursue graduate degrees. This summer four members of the English Department are working with undergraduate students as part of this program.
Janaka Lewis is working with Chelsea Moore on representations of black girlhood and natural spaces in literature popular culture of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Examining such works as Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything (currently featured in film), Chelsea is exploring how nature comes to serve as freedom from more disciplined and restricted spaces for black girls in more contemporary texts.
Sarah Minslow is working with McKenzie Fortner on a project on war-affected children. For this project, McKenzie is researching child soldiers and displaced children with an emphasis on the different roles that children play during violent conflicts and how this influences their identity development.
Jen Munroe is working with Jenna Hainlen on a project that that involves transcribing from the manuscript recipe book of Lettice Pudsey (ca. 1675), which she is using to conduct original research that uses manuscript recipe books to rethink the role of such books and women’s domestic work in our understanding of the social history of the book.
Malin Pereira is working with Kelly Brabec on a project on contemporary African American poetry. As part of her research, Kelly is examining how African American poetry relates to questions of identity, race, and aesthetics.
Another way in which members of the English Department are contributing to Charlotte Research Scholars Program is by giving presentations on writing for the students in the program. Greg Wickliff gave a presentation on “Professional Writing in Science and Engineering,”and Sarah Minslow gave a presentation on “Professional Writing in the Humanities.” In an email to me about these presentations, Greg wrote, “We talked with the students about the process of entering a research community though reading and writing, the role of peer review, the value of conference papers, abstracts, proposals, and publishing articles in the discipline.”
I am very pleased that the English Department is so well represented in the Charlotte Research Scholars Program. For more information about this program, please click on the following link: http://graduateschool.uncc.edu/deans-office/partnerships-and-initiatives/charlotte-research-scholars
Quirky Quiz Question — The Charlotte Research Scholars Program is sponsored by the UNC Charlotte’s Graduate School. Does anybody know the name of the current Dean of the Graduate School?
Last week’s answer: Charleston
Angie’s Aunt Lou grew up in West Virginia, and she will be buried in Montgomery, West Virginia. One of the major cities in West Virginia has the same name as a major city in South Carolina. In this tale of two cities, what is the name that these cities have in common?