Monthly Archives: November 2018

Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Dr. Julian Dewey Mason, Jr. –The English Department is sponsoring a celebration of the life and legacy of Julian Mason, who died on March 20, 2018.  This event will take place in the English Department’s Seminar Room (Fretwell 290B) on Friday, November 30 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm.  The department is organizing this event at the request of Julian’s wife, Elsie Mason, along with a group of Julian’s friends, professional colleagues, and former students.

Julian joined the English Department in 1966, and he served as the English Department Chair from 1978 to 1984.  He continued to teach in the department until his retirement in 1989.  During his years as a faculty member, he introduced courses on Southern literature, founded the American Studies Program, and helped create the forerunner to our current Africana Studies Department.

As a scholar and writer, Julian is best known for The Poems of Phillis Wheatley.  The University of North Carolina Press published the first edition of this book in 1966.  The same press published a revised and enlarged edition of this book in 1989.  Julian also wrote poetry.  A collection of his poems was published in 2016 under the title of The Net Needle.  This collection will be available at the gathering on Friday.

Julian had a passion for book collecting, and he knew a great deal about rare books.  A longtime supporter of Atkins Library, he often donated rare editions of notable books to the Special Collections Department of the Atkins Library.  In 2016, Julian and his wife, Elsie (a former librarian who worked for many years at Atkins Library), donated a very rare copy of Olaudah Equiano’s famous slave narrative, Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, to Atkins Library as part of the library’s special event to celebrate the acquisition of the library’s two millionth volume.

On a personal note, I feel a special connection to Julian, for he hired me in 1984.  I was the last person he hired before he stepped down as the Chair of the English Department.  Over the course of my career, I have followed in Julian’s footsteps. Like Julian, I served as the Director of the American Studies Program and went on to become the Chair of the English Department.   In a very real sense, I am part of Julian’s legacy.

The Night of the Hunter — The Fall Film Series of the NC Humanities Council grant funded project, The Child in Southern Literature and Film, continues today (November 26) at 5pm in the Student Union Theater with a screening of the 1955 thriller The Night of the Hunter.  In this film, the children in a family are threatened by a corrupt minister.  Sam Shapiro will introduce the film and lead a discussion after the screening.  Everyone is invited to attend.

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:

Boyd Davis has agreed to serve as a keynote speaker at an international conference titled “Seniors, Foreign Caregivers, Families, Institutions:  Linguistic and Multidisciplinary Perspectives.”  This conference will take place in Varese, Italy, in April 2019.

Janaka Lewis published an article titled “A Tale of Two Sisters:  An Appreciation of Sisters & Champions:  The True Story of Venus and Serena Williams” in the Winter 2018 issue of RISE:  A Children’s Literacy Journal.

Sarah Minslow published an article titled “The Magic of Exploring Literary Wonderlands” in the Winter 2018 issue of RISE:  A Children’s Literacy Journal.

Upcoming Events and Meetings — Here is a list of upcoming events and meetings:

November 29 — Public reception and presentation by Daniel Shealy on the history of Little Women will take place on Thursday, November 29, in Atkins Library’s Halton Room from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

November 30 — Department Meeting, 11-12:30, in the conference room (Fretwell 280C).

November 30 — ELC Faculty Meet and Greet, 12:30-1:30 in the faculty lounge (Fretwell 248C).

November 30 — Faculty Talk – Pilar Blitvich, “Smart Mobs, CyberPublic Shaming, and Social Justice,” 1:00-2:00pm in the English Department Conference Room.

November 30 — There will be a gathering in celebration of the life of Dr. Julian D. Mason, Professor Emeritus at 3:00pm in the seminar room (Fretwell 290B).

Quirky Quiz Question — The famous film critic Roger Ebert described The Night of the Hunter “one of the most frightening movies” ever made.  Ebert’s fame was tied to a television program that he did in collaboration with another film critic.  What is the name of Ebert’s collaborator?

Location, Location, Location — This past weekend, I saw Being There, the final film in the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s film series titled “Hal Ashby in the Seventies.”  Sam Shapiro, the organizer of this film series and a part-time faculty member in our English Department, introduced the film by commenting on the making of the film and discussing the relationship between Hal Ashby (the director) and Peter Sellers (the star of the film).  For Sellers, Being There was his final film.  Being There was released in 1979, and Sellers died in 1980.  Sam then concluded his introductory comments by mentioning that most of the movie was filmed at Biltmore House in Asheville.

Having toured Biltmore House, I enjoyed seeing the various ways in which this house figures in the film.  I took pleasure in recognizing specific rooms, gardens, and landscape features associated with Biltmore House, but it all seemed different seeing these features within the context of the film.  When I toured Biltmore House, it struck me as something of a grand tourist attraction.  However, when I saw Biltmore House portrayed as a lived-in residence in the movie, it seemed more like a real house to me.

The first time I ever gave much thought to film locations was in 1969, and it involved the movie Downhill Racer, starring Robert Redford.  Several scenes in the movie were shot less than a mile from my childhood home on South Turkey Creek Road near Conifer, Colorado.  In the movie, these scenes are presented as taking place in the Colorado town of Idaho Springs.  However, I knew exactly where these scenes were shot, and they were many miles from the town of Idaho Springs. Our whole family went to see the Downhill Racer as soon as it was released, and we couldn’t help but announce to everyone in the theater that those scenes took place on our road.   I enjoyed seeing our familiar road in the movie, but I remember thinking that the film was distorting reality.

Forty-two years after the release of Downhill Racer, the topic of film locations again surfaced in my life.  Gavin, our son, found out that The Hunger Games was being filmed in the Charlotte area, and he auditioned to be an extra.  He ended up spending the entire summer of 2011 working as an extra, although he is only in the film for about a nano-second.  Because of Gavin’s involvement in the film, I knew the specific places in the Charlotte area where the film was shot.  Nevertheless, when I saw the film in the theater, I did not have a sense that I was seeing scenes from Charlotte on the screen.   Through the magic of movie making, the real places that were used in the film were so completely transformed that they appeared to be from an entirely different world that had nothing to do with Charlotte.

By studying films, we can better understand how talented filmmakers, such as Hal Ashby, use their films to portray, distort, and transform reality.  In a sense, films provide with us with opportunities to see our familiar world in different ways. This theme runs through the various film studies courses that we offer in the English Department.  In the spring 2019 semester, for example, we are offering several such courses, including Sam Shapiro’s “Paranoid Cinema:  American Movies in the 1970s” and Henry Doss’s “Southern Childhood in Films, Stories, and Performance.”  These various film studies courses will cover many movies, which were filmed in many different locations.  However, if one were to look for a great location to study films, one need look no further than our own English Department.

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 “Fan Fiction as Literature: Post Canonical Writing and the Poetics of Genre” at Fan Studies Network – North America in Chicago at DuPaul University.

Clayton Tarr recently presented a paper titled “Counting Cards: Enumeration and Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” at the Victorians Institute Conference in Asheville.

Upcoming Events and Meetings — Here is a list of upcoming events and meetings:

November 14 — As part of International Education Week, on Wednesday, Nov. 14th from 9-3:30 Sarah Minslow’s War and Genocide in Children’s Literature class will host their annual Promoting Peace Project. This year they will create murals of handprints to symbolize the role each of us plays in creating a more peaceful society. Stop by to make a donation and add your handprint for peace to the mural. All donations will support refugee children. It will be held in the courtyard between CHHS and CoEd.

Quirky Quiz Question — In addition to starring in Being There, Peter Sellers starred in the original Pink Panther movies.  What was the name of the character he played in these films?

Contributing to Charlotte’s Literary Scene — Members of our English Department regularly contribute to the Charlotte area’s literary scene, but this past week our department shifted into overdrive.  Members of our department made contributions to three separate literary events in the span of three days.

It all started on Thursday, November 1, with Verse & Vino, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation’s annual celebration of literature.   This gigantic fund-raising event takes place at the Charlotte Convention Center in the largest ballroom in the city.   Setting up for this event is a tremendous challenge, but there is no challenge too big for our Angie Williams.  This year, just as she has done for the past three years, Angie volunteered to help set up for Verse & Vino.  I know the organizers who put Verse & Vino together, and they all commented to me on how valuable Angie’s help was in transforming the cavernous ballroom into a celebratory space.

The very next day, Bryn Chancellor played host to the North Carolina Writers’ Network’s conference.  I emailed Bryn asking her for news about the conference, and she sent me the following response:

The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network, the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization, holds three annual conferences that bring together hundreds of writers from around “The Writingest State” for workshops, readings, and lively discussions in support of their mission statement that writing is “necessary both for self-expression and community spirit, that well-written words can connect people across time and distance, and that the deeply satisfying experiences of writing and reading should be available to everyone.” The network rotates conference locations, and Charlotte was the city for fall. Organizers reached out to UNC Charlotte Department of English to see if we would want to sponsor an event, which we did: a pre-conference “tailgate” open to all to kick off the weekend. I led writers in exercises focused on observation and memory intended to help them find material for their stories and poems as well as to sink into the writing mindset. Throughout the weekend, the conference offered myriad sessions focused on the craft and business of writing, as well as panels, social events, and readings, including a wonderful staged performance during the evening banquet. Paula Martinac presented a session on creating diverse characters, and I led one on dialogue and setting in fiction writing.

On Saturday, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation held EpicFest, a free literary festival for children and their families that takes place at ImaginOn.   I serve on the steering committee for this festival, but I was not the only member of our department who contributed to the success of this event.   A number of the students from our English Learning Community volunteered.  Several of our graduate students also volunteered, including Samantha Holt and Shannon Murphy.  Moreover, Kelly Brabec, who recently graduated with an English major, volunteered for the third year in a row.

One of the reasons our English Department is able to play such important roles in supporting so many cultural events in the Charlotte community is that our department is itself an inclusive community that encompasses not just faculty members but also staff members, undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni.  With such a large and diverse community, we have the people, expertise and willingness to help out with a wide variety of cultural projects and events.

Southeastern Renaissance Conference — The 75th annual meeting of the Southeastern Renaissance Conference (SRC) took place on October 19-20, 2018, at Queens University of Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte Center City campus. The conference was supported by the English Department and College of Arts and Sciences at Queens and by the UNC Charlotte English Department. Helen Hull from Queens University and Kirk Melnikoff served as the conference co-hosts.  Both Kirk and Jen Munroe also presided over sessions at this 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:

JuliAnna Ávila‘s article titled “Compliant ‘Devices of Art’: Enlisting Dewey to Question Mandates” was just published in Teachers College Record.

Meghan Barnes recently wrote a piece about the women at the homeless shelter, and this story has been published on the Urban Ministries Center blog. You can check it out by clicking on the following link:  https://www.urbanministrycenter.org/what-is-community/

Mark de Castrique, a graduate of our M.A. program, recently published a mystery novel titled Secret Undertaking.

Quirky Quiz Question — Veterans Day will take place on Sunday, November 11.  What was the original name for this holiday?