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Monthly Archives: July 2018

Monday Missive - July 30, 2018

July 31, 2018 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

Arrival and Departure — If you have driven to the Charlotte Douglas International Airport lately, you may have noticed the new control tower that is currently under construction.   This spring the tower topped out at 370 feet, making it the second tallest control tower in the United States.   The new control tower will not be operational anytime soon, but its exterior appearance is already pretty close to what it will look like when it replaces the current control tower in 2020.

My interest in this topic stems in part from my short-lived ambition to become an air traffic controller when I was in high school.  I had read Arthur Hailey’s Airport, and I was intrigued by his depiction of the inner workings of a busy airport.  For some peculiar reason, the prospect of overseeing the arrivals and departures of lots of planes struck me as the perfect career choice.  In fact, back then I thought I couldn’t ask for anything more.  I never dreamed of becoming a pilot, like the cab driver in Harry Chapin’s hit song “Taxi.” However, like the cab driver in Chapin’s song, I sort of got what I “asked for such a long, long time ago.” Chapin’s cab driver imagines that he is flying in his taxi, and I spend part of my time dealing with arrivals and departures.

If I had an “Arrivals and Departures” sign in the lobby of the English Department, I would list Clayton Tarr on the arrivals side of the sign.  In fact, Clayton has already touched down in Charlotte, and he will soon be arriving at his gate.  Well, it’s not actually a gate; it’s a freshly painted office.  Clayton is joining the English Department this fall as a lecturer.  He has a joint appointment with the English Department and the University Writing Program.  On the departures side of my make-believe sign, I would list Kailan Sindelar.  Kailan has taught in our English Department as a visiting lecturer in our technical communication program for the past year, but she will soon be taking off to begin Clemson University’s PHD program in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design.

I welcome Clayton to our English Department, and I wish Kailan all the best as she pursues her doctoral degree.

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:

Joan Mullin, Jan Rieman, and Heather Vorhies recently gave a joint presentation titled “The Work Continues: Identity Building in an Evolving Multi-Unit Independent Writing Program” at the Council of Writing Program Administrators conference in Sacramento, CA.  Also at this conference, Joan presented a paper titled “The Crossover of FYW, WAC, WID to BS (BA): Using What We Know as WPAs to Create and Sustain Undergrad Degrees in Writing.”

Upcoming Events and Meetings  Here is a list of upcoming events and meetings related to the start of the fall 2018 semester:

–University Convocation     Thursday, August 16    8:30am reception in Lucas Room/9:30am-11:00am Convocation in McKnight Hall

–Classes Begin                Monday, August 20    Classes begin at 5:00pm/First day of daytime classes is on August 21</span

–CLAS All Faculty Mtg    Friday, August 24       8:30am-12:00pm in McKnight Hall

–English Department Mtg   Friday, September 7          11:00am-12:30pm in Fretwell 280C (English Department Conference Room)

Quirky Quiz Question —  “Taxi” was Harry Chapin’s first hit single.  One of his other hit singles is a song about the relationship between a father and his son over the course of many years.  What is the title of this song?

Last week’s answer: Penny Marshall

One of the films that Chris Arvidson will be covering in her course on Baseball in Film is A League of Their Own.  Does anybody know the name of the woman who directed this film?

Monday Missive - July 23, 2018

July 23, 2018 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

For the Love of Baseball — Chris Arvidson, one of our part-time faculty members, has a passion for the game of baseball.  Not only has she co-edited a collection titled The Love of Baseball:  Essays by Lifelong Fans (2017), but she has also helped organize two upcoming baseball-related events.  These events will take place on the weekend of August 4 and 5and involve the participation of Park Road Books and the Charlotte Knights.

On Saturday, August 4, Park Road Books is hosting a reading/signing featuring Chris’s book.  The event will begin at 2:00 p.m. and will feature several people associated with UNC Charlotte, including Chris, Henry Doss, Stephen Ward, Nancy Gutierrez, Rachel Bratcher Laxton, and Ellyn Ritterskamp.

On Sunday, August 5, the Charlotte Knights is sponsoring Women in Baseball Day at BB&T Park. As part of this event, Chis and some of the contributors to her book will be on hand to sign books. Chris informed me that the Charlotte Knights are offering a special ticket offer. She wrote, “For twenty bucks you get a really great seat and a book.” Game time is 5:05with the Durham Bulls.

Chris’s interest in baseball is also reflected in her teaching.  For example, this coming fall semester, she is teaching a special topics course called “Baseball in Film.”  In her official description of this class, she writes, “Students will examine, analyze, and write about the ways baseball in film has served as a cultural barometer and reflection of American life.” In addition to covering a number of classic baseball films, she will have her students read the literature that has often inspired these films.

In the world of academia, sports are often seen as extracurricular activities, which means that they exist “outside the regular curriculum.”  However, at least in our English Department, baseball is finding a place within the the work of the department.  If one were to think of the English Department as a ballpark, the story of Chris’s baseball-related activities is an inside-the-ballpark story.

Kudos  — As you know, I like to use my Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.  Here is the latest news:

Boyd Davis recently learned that a grant she wrote for a pilot study titled “Tablet-Based Program to Address Pain and Fatigue in Older Adults” has been approved.  Boyd has also just published reviews of two books that deal with patient care.

Maya Socolovsky recently presented a paper titled “Surveillance and Perspective: Depictions of Nations and Borders in José Manuel Mateo’s Migrant” at the Latino/a Studies Association Conference.

Quirky Quiz Question — One of the films that Chris Arvidson will be covering in her course on Baseball in Film is A League of Their Own.  Does anybody know the name of the woman who directed this film?

Last week’s answer: Bobbie Cavnar

The current Teacher of the Year in the United States is a high school English teacher who graduated from our M.A. program.  Can you name this celebrated teacher?

Monday Missive - July 16, 2018

July 16, 2018 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

From Graduate Students to Teachers — My career as a university administrator can be traced back to the fall of 1990 when I became the English Department’s Director of the Graduate Programs.  In the process of serving in this position, I learned a lot about the demographics of our graduate program.  At the time, most of our graduate students were teachers.  Back then, many North Carolina school districts incentivized their teachers to go to graduate school by providing them with raises once they completed a master’s degree.  As a result, we had many high school English teachers in our graduate program.  Such incentive programs disappeared years ago, but our graduate program still attracts some students who plan to pursue teaching careers, and these students often go on to experience success in their careers as teachers.  I was reminded of this aspect of our graduate program when I received excited emails from two recent graduates of our M.A. program.

A few weeks ago Melody Vaughn sent me an email message. Melody was my teaching assistant last year, so I got to know her pretty well.  Throughout last semester, she kept telling me that she was applying for positions involving the teaching of English at high schools in her native state of Virginia.  In her email, she wrote, “I have officially accepted an offer to teach high school English (and yearbook) at Thomas Dale High School in Chesterfield County, VA. Chesterfield was my top choice, so I’m very excited!”  A week or so later, I received an email from Kevin Chauncey, who, like Melody, completed his M.A. in May.  He wrote, “I just wanted to update you and let you know I have been offered and have accepted a job working as a Writing Coach at Gaston College’s Writing Center.  I’m really pleased to be able to continue working with students in a college environment.  I can’t help but feel just how fortunate I am to have been a part of our group there in the English Department.”

I know that all of us who taught Melody and Kevin are pleased that they succeeded in getting teaching positions in their fields.  Their successes are but two examples of the many fine teachers who have graduated from our M.A. Program over the decades.  I am proud of them all.

 

Learning Community News — Tiffany Morin attended the 20th Annual National Summer Institute on Learning Communities at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, last week. The institute is designed to help teams develop a two-year action plan for their Learning Community Program through in-depth workshops and cluster meetings. UNC Charlotte’s team of seven members developed a plan in conjunction with Housing and Residence Life that aims to give students a more holistic first year experience to improve student satisfaction and aid in retention rates. The English Learning Community is recruiting for the 2018-19 academic year and is pleased to report that we already have twenty members. Please let Tiffany know if you would like to include the ELC in any of your programming this fall.

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:

Meghan Barnes recently had a book chapter titled “You Can’t Un-see Color: A PhD, a Divorce, and The Wizard of Oz ” published in Feminism and Intersectionality in Academia: Women’s Narratives and Experiences in Higher Education  (Palgrave Macmillan). She also just learned that she received the 2018 Outstanding Reviewer Award for English Teaching: Practice and Critique.

Pilar Blitvich recently published a co-authored article titled “Relational Work in Multimodal Networked Interactions on Facebook” in the journal Internet Pragmatics. This is a new journal published by John Benjamins. Pilar was invited to be a member of its editorial board, and she accepted this invitation.

Kirk Melnikoff delivered the welcome address at the 8th annual conference of the Marlowe Society of America in Wittenberg, Germany. As President of the organization, he also helped plan and run the meeting.

Tiffany Morin served as a mentor for English major Makalea Bjoin as part of the Charlotte Community Scholar Program this summer.

Quirky Quiz Question — The current Teacher of the Year in the United States is a high school English teacher who graduated from our M.A. program.  Can you name this celebrated teacher?

Last week’s answer: Early Modern Paleographic Society
In addition to participating in the Charlotte Research Scholars Program, Jen Munroe is also serving as the faculty advisor for a student organization known as EMPS.  What does EMPS stand for?

Monday Missive - July 9, 2018

July 09, 2018 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

Summer of Research — Teaching is not just about conveying information to students;  it is also about developing students’ research skills.  This aspect of teaching often takes the form of mentoring, and it can involve including students in faculty members’ own research projects.  UNC Charlotte sponsors several summer programs that are intended to facilitate the development of students’ research skills by having them work closely with participating faculty members.  These programs include the Charlotte Research Scholars Program (CRS) https://uge.uncc.edu/OfficeofUndergraduateResearch/charlotte-research-scholars-program/, the Charlotte Community Scholar Program (CCS)https://ccs.uncc.edu/, and the Charlotte Teachers Institute’s Summer Research Experience for Teachers (SRET) https://charlotteteachers.org/science-research-experience-for-teachers-2017/2018-sret/.  I am pleased to report that faculty members in our English Department are participating in all three of these programs.

Janaka Lewis is participating in both the CTI’s Summer Research Experience for Teachers and the Charlotte Community Scholar Program.  I recently asked her about her involvement with these programs, and she provided me with the following information:

I am mentoring two teachers in the CTI Summer Research Experience for Teachers and one Charlotte Community Scholar (they are working as a team for three weeks) on the project “Black Girlhood, Literature, and Community Engagement.”  The CTI participants, Effuah Sam and Tiffany Craig, are CMS educators who teach theater and Special Education, respectively, and they are working with me to develop K-8 course lists featuring literature that represents black girlhood in connection with various (local and global) communities.  Kim Sanders, the CCS participant, is developing a reading list specifically for middle school girls in the Charlotte community in connection with two local organizations (Girl Aspire and LEAP).  The final list will be workshopped with community students this summer and topics discussed have included adapting literature for performance, creating writing prompts, and helping students find themes of empowerment in the selections.  We have been fortunate to have ImaginOn library and the Center City Campus as our “labs.”<

Jen Munroe is working with an undergraduate student this summer as part of her involvement with the Charlotte Research Scholars Program.  In a recent email that she sent to me, Jen summarized the nature of this student’s summer research project:

I am serving as a faculty mentor for Gabrielle Cuffee, a CRS student, who is also an English Honors (and University Honors) student. Her project, which helps advance the broader research efforts of EMROC (Early Modern Recipes Online Collective), uses the 17th-century English manuscript recipe book by Margaret Turner as it aims to position women’s domestic labor as a scientific endeavor. She focuses on how women’s domestic medicine and cookery employs methods and demonstrates knowledge that is akin to that related to early modern scientific discourse, even though women’s labor was largely devalued as an amateur activity.

Alan Rauch is involved with both the Charlotte Research Scholars Program and CTI’s Summer Research Experience for Teachers.  In response to my request for some details about his involvement with these programs, Alan sent me the following information:

I am working with Zach Margolis on a project under the CRS program.  We have been looking at ideas of natural conservation in the latter part of the Victorian era… leading to the modern era. We have focused on W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, and Sir Patrick Geddes, all of whom are responding to overpopulation, air pollution, and the degradation of natural spaces. Their objective was to achieve a balance among nature, industrialism, and  consumerism.  I am also working with two CTI SRET (Summer Research Experience for Teachers ) Fellows, Tamara Babulski and Todd Statome.  Together, we’re exploring interpretations of the natural world in the Victorian era through the lens of religion and colonialism.  The many institutions, including the British Museum for Natural History, the London Zoo, and the Crystal Palace, were all designed to resemble temples of devotion which tacitly endorsed British imperialism which was sustained (at least in part) both by political and divine authority.

 

For Janaka, Jen, and Alan, this is a summer in which their love of research and their love of teaching have merged together in productive and creative ways.

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 gave the inaugural plenary talk titled “Smart Mobs, Cyber Public Shaming, and Social Justice” at the 11th International Symposium on Politeness that was held at the University of Valencia, Spain.

Valerie Bright had an article titled “The Wild World of Beatrix Potter” published in the the spring/summer 2018 issue of RISE:  A Children’s Literacy Journal.

Janaka Lewis had an article titled “Celebrating the Contributions of African American Women to the Space Program:  An Appreciation of Hidden Figures:  Young Readers’ Edition” published in the the spring/summer 2018 issue of RISE:  A Children’s Literacy Journal. She also had a review called “Reconstruction, Reunion, and Representation in American Literary Histories” published in the June 2018 Reviews in American History Journal that discusses Timothy Sweet’s Literary Cultures of the Civil War (2016) and Brook Thomas‘ The Literature of Reconstruction: Not in Black and White (2017). 

Samantha Martin had an article titled “Wild Animals in Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox” published in the the spring/summer 2018 issue of RISE:  A Children’s Literacy Journal.

Liz Miller recently had a co-authored article titled “Positioning in Classroom Discourse Studies: A State-of-the-Art Review” appear in the journal Classroom Discourse. She also had a review of Christian Chun’s 2017 book The Discourses of Capitalism: Everyday Economists and the Production of Common Sense published in the journal Discourse & Communication.

Quirky Quiz Question — In addition to participating in the Charlotte Research Scholars Program, Jen Munroe is also serving as the faculty advisor for a student organization known as EMPS.  What does EMPS stand for?

Last week’s answer: The Alamo

This year’s Children’s Literature Association Conference took place in San Antonio, Texas.  San Antonio is also the location of a famous Catholic mission and fortress compound that is now a World Heritage Site.  What is the name of this site?

Monday Missive - July 2, 2018

July 02, 2018 by Mark West
Categories: Monday Missive

A Room for Anita Moss — Shortly after Anita Moss’s passing, I contacted the leadership of the Children’s Literature Association and shared with them the sad news about Anita.  I knew that Anita had been a very active member of the Children’s Literature Association during the late 1970s and ’80s, and I was sure that the current leadership of the Association would want to know that Anita had died.  The chair of the 2018 Conference Planning Committee and I exchanged several emails about Anita, and she informed me that she was going to do something to commemorate and celebrate Anita during the 2018 Children’s Literature Association Conference, but she did not tell me exactly what she was planning to do.

Just before Balaka Basu, Ralf Thiede, and I left for San Antonio last week to attend the conference, we were sent an electronic copy of the conference program, and we all noticed that one of the meeting rooms was named the Anita Moss Room.  The conference planners not only named one of the rooms for Anita, but they also provided an official sign and a poster listing some of her accomplishments.  Throughout the conference, children’s literature specialists gathered in this room to share their research and discuss children’s books.  I cannot think of a more fitting way to remember Anita and her many contributions to the field of children’s literature studies.

One of my last conversations with Anita was about the Children’s Literature Association Conference.  She informed me that she had a paper accepted for presentation at this conference, and she said that she was looking forward to attending the conference along with her daughter Pamela Hausle.  Anita was not able to present her paper or attend the conference in a physical sense, but in a non-corporal way, she very much was a presence at this year’s Children’s Literature Association Conference.

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:

Balaka Basu recently presented a paper titled “Death in the Water:  Queer Drowned Creatures in L. M. Montgomery, Madeleine L’Engle, and Susan Cooper” at the Children’s Literature Association Conference,  which took place in San Antonio, Texas.

Liz Miller recently presented a paper titled “Crossing Temporal Borders: Language Teachers’ Reflections on Past “Critical Incidents” in Constructing Professional Identities and Gaining Emotional Competence” at the Sociolinguistics Symposium held in Auckland, New Zealand.

Becky Roeder recently gave a poster presentation titled “Best Practices in Automatic Vowel Production Analysis” at the Sociolinguistics Symposium held in Auckland, New Zealand.

Matthew Rowney recently had an article titled “Preserver and Destroyer: Salt in The History of Mary Prince” published in European Romantic Review.

Ralf Thiede recently presented a paper titled “Turbulent Waters at William R. Scott:  The Bizarre Tale of Cottontails” at the Children’s Literature Association Conference,  which took place in San Antonio, Texas.

Quirky Quiz Question — This year’s Children’s Literature Association Conference took place in San Antonio, Texas.  San Antonio is also the location of a famous Catholic mission and fortress compound that is now a World Heritage Site.  What is the name of this site?

Last week’s answer: Ashdown Forest
The Pooh stories take place in the Hundred Acre Wood, which is based on a real forest.   Does anybody know the name of this forest?
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