Bookends — I often think of the the beginning of the fall semester and the end of the spring semester as the bookends for the academic year. This year’s bookends were all about our English Department’s commitment to excellent teaching. The academic year started off with the announcement that the English Department was named the recipient of the 2017 Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and that Kirk Melnikoff was selected as a finalist for the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence. The academic year ended with the announcement that Kevin Chauncey received the Graduate Teaching Assistant Award and that Valerie Bright received the CLAS Outstanding Teaching Award by a Part-time Faculty Member. As these awards demonstrate, the commitment to teaching is part of our departmental ethos. Our professors, lecturers, part-time faculty members, and teaching assistants all highly value teaching.
The English Department’s commitment to excellent teaching goes back to the very beginnings of our department. One simply needs to look at all of the awards displayed on our Wall of Fame to see how many members of our department have been honored for their teaching over the years.
However, until two weeks ago, something important was missing from our Wall of Fame. Anita Moss received the NCNB Teaching Award (now known as the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence) in 1988, but for thirty years there was no plaque on our wall proclaiming Anita’s award. After Anita’s death this last month, her daughters found the missing plaque in a closet in Anita’s home. They kindly donated this plaque to the English Department, and it is now prominently displayed on our Wall of Fame. When we installed Anita’s plaque on the wall, I felt that we were not only celebrating Anita’s career-long commitment to teaching, but we were also preserving our memories of our time with Anita. To quote Paul Simon, “And what a time it was.”
Kudos — As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department. Here is the latest news:
Pilar Blitvich recently presented two papers at the VIII International Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics held in Seville, Spain. One of the papers is titled “‘You are ashamed for speaking it or for not speaking it good enough’: Paradoxical Status of Spanish in the US Latino Community.” The other paper is titled “Relational Work in Multimodal Networked Interactions on Facebook.”
Andrew Hartley’s latest thriller, Lies That Bind Us, is currently the top-selling book on Amazon.
Becky Roeder recently delivered a keynote presentation titled “The Dynamics of 3rd Dialect Formation: Mid-century Evidence on the Low Back Merger from Victoria, BC” at the Conference of Change and Variation in Canada, which took place in Winnipeg.
Maya Socolovsky recently presented a paper in Las Vegas titled “Dear Mrs. Trump, Please Read This Picture Book: The Ethics of Counting and Border Crossings in Jairo Buitrago’s Two White Rabbits” at MELUS (the Society for Multi Ethnic Literatures of the U.S.).
Upcoming Events and Deadlines — Here is information about upcoming events and deadlines:
May 12 — The English Department and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library are co-sponsoring a screening of The Night of the Hunter at the Francis Auditorium in the Main Library (310 N. Tryon Street) on Saturday, May 12, at 2:00 p.m. This event is supported by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council.
May 12 — The Commencement for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will take place on Saturday, May 12, 2018, at 3:00 p.m.
May 14 — Final grades for the Spring 2018 term must be submitted by Monday, May 14 at noon.
Quirky Quiz Question — Andrew Hartley’s new thriller titled The Lies That Bind Us is published under a new pen name. What pen name is listed on the title of this novel?
Last week’s answer: Simon and Garfunkel
The heading for today’s Monday Missive is a nod to a famous folk-rock duo from the 1960s and early ’70s. Can you name this duo?