Mark West

National Poetry Month Meets Earth Day —

April is National Poetry Month, and April 22 is Earth Day. As I see it, these two celebrations not only overlap in terms of time, but they also speak to each other in meaningful ways. Since ancient times poets have been inspired by the natural world. Many of today’s poets also write about nature and the relationship between humans and the natural world. Three such poets are Christopher Davis, Allison Hutchcraft, and Grace Ocasio, all of whom teach poetry in our creative writing program. I contacted Chris, Allison and Grace and asked them to share one of their poems that relates to Earth Day. Here are the poems that they sent to me:

Excerpt from “Shell Island” by Christopher Davis

It’s weathered subject matter, this boutique hotel,
a revamped Holiday Inn at the end of a sand bar

pulled this way and that, eroded by wind, rain,
currents, tides flooding the inland waterway.

To restore expensive real estate, bulldozers
added three thousand more feet of beach

a little to the north, destroying habitats
for plovers, black flyers, sanderlings.

White water fowl wings
skim breaking waves.

“Shell Island” originally appeared in December in 2016.

Two excerpts from “Out the Birds, Out” by Allison Hutchcraft. This poem looks to the ways in which invasive species brought by humans irrevocably changed the ecosystems of the dodo’s home, what is now the country of Mauritius, contributing to the bird’s quick extinction:

Now the hogs keep hogging
all the fruit.
The rats swing
like bats from the trees,
the monkeys

eating everything green.

The poem also addresses the transition between the original environmental conditions before colonialists landed on the island and after:

For years: a coco-tree,
a rotted branch,
a lyre of weeds.
Then those pigs—
voracious,

flattening the grass,
sending their snouts
into daybreak,
your home, uncovered,
nested.

“Out the Birds, Out” originally appeared in the Kenyon Review in 2015.

“Great-Aunt Ruby” by Grace Ocasio

Could it be your rant was not meant for me but for shadows tugging at your sleeves?
Paddy rollers you might have dreamed––your mind consumed by the vision of you
as Negress––petticoated, shifted, and jacketed during slavery?

I always believed your words could overturn injustice like a mother
right siding an upside-down child.

The smile you wore most days was crooked as a broken hook-and-eye door latch,
but I sought you out anyway, implored your hands to tell secrets of your girlhood
in South Carolina.

Did you seek shelter in brooks near your childhood home?
Could brooks offset flickers of white hands dismissing you
when you entered five-and-dimes?

After you departed my home, I kept your wash basin, perhaps to begin an ablution
of our past, a way to untap our trickly connection
until it teemed, fertile as a rain forest.

I wanted to consult you like an older sister, wrap my arms around you,
as though you were a live oak, infuse your sap into my veins.
At times, your glare uprooted my heart, turned its soil to soot.

But then, I discovered your artful tongue’s stories of how you apprenticed
under Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, groomed students to hammer tent poles
in front of courthouses, mechanics’ shops, ice cream parlors.

The day you left my home for the hospital I found the pixie-girl photo of you.
The pixels of your eyes shined tawny-olive as a wood thrush.

Those days you lived with me, I sunk your red clay deep into my nails,
inhaled, never exhaled it, spread your loam all over my skin
like a lotion that never expires.

“Great-Aunt Rudy” originally appeared in Poetry South in 2016.

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

Nadia Clifton, an M.A. candidate with a concentration in literature, has accepted the offer of admission from UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science. In August, she will begin an M.S. in Library Science, specializing in Archives and Records Management.

Katie Hogan delivered an invited talk at the annual colloquium for the Cultural Studies Ph.D. Program at George Mason University on April 13, 2017. Katie’s talk, “Complicit: On Being a WGSS Director in the Neoliberal University,” resonates with the colloquium’s 2016-17 theme, “State of the University.” A GMU doctoral student conducted an interview with Katie. Also, Katie has just received a courtesy appointment to the graduate faculty at Oregon State University so that she can work with a Ph.D. student at OSU.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about upcoming events.

Feb. 21 — The English Department meeting will take place on April 21 from 11:00 to 12:30 in Atkins 125.

Feb. 21 — The English Department’s Student Award Ceremony will take place on April 21 from 12:30 to 2:00 in the Dale Halton Reading Room in the Atkins Library.

Quirky Quiz Question — Chris Davis’s poem “Shell Island” relates to a beach just east of Wilmington, NC. Some people think it is named after Orville and Wilbur Wright, but it is not. What is the name of this beach?

Last week’s answer: Shakespeare

John McNair was one of the first professors in the English Department to deal with science in his teaching and scholarship.  However, his academic specialty was in a completely different area.  Does anybody remember John McNair’s academic specialty?

Sigma Tau Delta News — The 2017 Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society Convention took place in Louisville, Kentucky, from March 29 through April 1under the theme of “Recreation,” and UNC Charlotte students represented the English Department well.  On Thursday, Thomas Simonson, Chelsea Moore, Sara Eudy, Kelly Brabec, and Maria Lignos presented a panel that they proposed on Recreation of African American Female Identities.  On Friday morning, Carissa Wilbanks presented “Queer Utopian Potential in Literary Studies” on a panel called “Making Space for Queer Theory.”  On Saturday morning (bright and early at 8 am), Thomas, Sara, Carissa, and Shelby LeClair presented papers on a roundtable that they proposed called “The Candidacy of Gender: 2016 Presidential Election,” and that afternoon Tayler Green read “Orpheus and Eurydice” on an original fiction panel at the same time that Thomas presented “Trethewey’s Reclaiming & Reimagining of Race” on a “Poets Recreating America” panel.  Rachel West and Hannah Brown also represented our chapter at panels and events, which included author readings and keynotes by Marlon James and others, workshops, and the Sigma Con cosplay and literary trivia night (where our team advanced to the second round but not to the finals).

The National Endowment for the Humanities was signed into law in 1965.  Can you name the president who signed this legislation?

Celebrating Our Part-Time Faculty Members — This weekend I received an email from Paula Martinac informing me that her new novel, The Ada Decades, has just been published Bywater Books in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  After congratulating her on this significant publication, I asked her for more information about her novel.  She responded by sharing with me what she calls her “elevator speech.”  The Ada Decades, she wrote,”is a historical novel-in-stories that looks at the intersections of race, class, and LGBT experience in the life of one North Carolina woman over seven decades. It takes place mostly in Charlotte.”  She also informed me that there will be a reading and book celebration on Wed., April 26 at 7 p.m. at Charlotte Center for the Literary Arts, 1817 Central Avenue and all are welcome to attend.

The publication of Paula’s novel underscores for me what a talented and dedicated group of part-time faculty members we have in the English Department.  I know that many administrators refer to such part-time faculty members as “adjunct faculty,” but I don’t like or use this term.  My old copy of the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines adjunct as “something joined or added to another but not essentially a part of it.”  As I see it, our part-time faculty members are an essential part of our English Department.  Our part-time faculty members teach core courses in creative writing, technical and professional writing, children’s literature, literature surveys, general education, pedagogy, introductory linguistics, to name just some of the different types of courses that they cover on a regular basis.  Our part-time faculty members regularly publish as is reflected in the publication of Paula’s novel.  Our part-time faculty frequently participate in department events and projects.  Our part-time faculty members might not teach on a full-time basis, but they are hardly adjuncts to the department.

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

Kevin Chauncey, one of our graduate students, presented a paper at the SouthEastern Conference on Linguistics titled “The Effects of Stereotype Threat/Awareness on Accommodation in Turn-Taking Conversations.”

Sarah Minslow facilitated two workshops for North Carolina educators at the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching last Saturday. The workshops were on using children’s literature to teach the Holocaust and contemporary conflict.
Ralf Thiede presented a paper at the SouthEastern Conference on Linguistics in Charleston titled “Baby Chomsky vs. Baby Aristotle: The Acquisition of Speech Sounds,” reconciling two opposing theories of language acquisition in cognitive science and linguistics. At the meeting, he assumed the presidency of SECOL for a two-year term.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about an upcoming event.

March 21–  The next Personally Speaking Series event will take at 6:30 p.m.Tuesday, Mar. 21, at UNC Charlotte Center City.  Peter Thorsheim will give a presentation based on his book titled Waste into Weapons:  Recycling in Britain During the Second World War (Cambridge University Press).

The event is free, but registration is ​​​requested.  (Register) A reception will follow. Complimentary parking is available at 422 E. 9th St. across Brevard from the Center City building. Information will be emailed about how to obtain a parking pass. This is the final Personally Speaking event of 2016-17​, and t​he books and authors for the 2017-18 season will be announced.

​Personally Speaking is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, J. Murrey Atkins Library and UNC Charlotte Center City. For more information, visit exchange.uncc.edu.

Quirky Quiz Question — Paula Martinac’s new novel is published by Bywater Books in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  In addition to being the home of Bywater Books, Ann Arbor was home to famous chain of bookstores that once rivaled Barnes and Nobel.  What is the name of this now defunct bookstore chain?

Last week’s answer: And To Think That I saw It On Mulberry Street.

At this year’s Seuss-a-Thon, Anita Moss read Dr. Seuss’s first book for children.  What is the title of this book?

A Community of Scholars — As a member of our English Department, I highly value the many opportunities I have to learn from my colleagues.  I often read scholarship by members of the department, and I always enjoy the discussions that I have with faculty members about their current research projects.  I also enjoy hearing scholarly presentations by members of our department, and I always learn from these presentations.  It is not often that I have the opportunity to hear three such presentations in the span of three days, but that is exactly what happened last week.

My cornucopia of presentations started on February 22 with Alan Rauch’s talk titled “Fantastic Beasts and Why You Find Them.”  Alan tied his talk to the traveling Harry Potter exhibit that the Atkins Library hosted last semester, but he talked about much more than the animals in the Harry Potter stories.  One of his points that stuck with me involved the ways in which we as humans project aspects of ourselves onto animals.

Two days after Alan’s talk, Jen Munroe gave a presentation titled “Shakespeare, Ecofeminism, and the Power of the Not-Yet-Known.”  Among the topics that Jen addressed was the portrayal of non-humans in Shakespeare’s plays.  As I listened to Jen’s talk, I began drawing connections between her talk and Alan’s talk.  I realized that both Jen and Alan had a lot to say about humans’ attitudes toward the natural world.

An hour after Jen’s talk, Maya Socolovsky gave the keynote speech at the 4th Annual Graduate Student Colloquium on Children’s Literature sponsored by the Children’s Literature Graduate Organization.  Titled “Running, Reading and Writing:  Material Literacies in Mexican American Children’s Picture Books,” Maya’s talk focused on a picture book about a girl from one of the indigenous groups in Mexico.  This girl is living in the United States, but she continues to embrace her native culture.  In her talk, Maya explained how this picture book captures the cultural and political tensions in this girl’s life as she faces a system that seeks to control rather than understand.  In some ways, Alan, Jen and Maya all touched on the issue of how many people from dominant cultures seek to control those who are defined as “other.”

The experience of attending these three faculty presentations last week underscored for me that we are much more than a collection of academics housed in the same building.  In a very real way, we share our research, we learn from one another, and we support one another in our research endeavors.  We are truly a community of scholars.

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

Boyd Davis gave a co-authored poster/presentation titled “The Carolinas Conversations Collection: Pragmatic Spaces in Pauses, Prepositions and Reported Speech” at the Corpora for Aging, Language and Research 3, Freie Universität Berlin, 6 March 2017.

Sam Shapiro recently published a book review of George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo in the Charlotte Observer.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about an upcoming event.

March 4 — The English Department and Park Road Books are co-sponsoring the annual Seuss-a-Thon on Saturday, March 4, from 11:00 to 3:00 at Park Road Books (4139 Park Road).  This event will involve people reading their favorite Dr. Seuss books aloud to children.

Quirky Quiz Question — In his presentation on “fantastic beasts,” Alan Rauch discussed a “real” fantastic animal that combines the bill of an aquatic bird with the body of a mammal.  As he explained, the first zoologists who examined specimens of this animal initially thought it was a hoax.  What is the name of this animal?

Last week’s answer: Who killed his neighbor’s dog.

In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the central character is investigating a crime.  What is the crime that he is investigating?

A Curious Incident — About two weeks ago I received an email from Provost Joan Lorden regarding one of the plays sponsored by the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.    As she explained to me in her email, the Blumenthal had arranged to bring a touring production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to Charlotte, and they were looking for moderators to lead a discussion of the play after each performance.  The Provost asked if I would be willing to serve as one of the moderators, and I said yes.

This past Sunday evening I went to the play and then led the group discussion after the performance.  Afterwards, I reflected on the various ways that this experience related to my personal and professional life.  This play is based on a young-adult novel by Mark Haddon, and both the novel and the play are told from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old boy who has Asperger’s Syndrome.

My father had Asperger’s Syndrome, so much of the play resonates with my memories of my father.  Like the central character in the play, my father was brilliant in terms of certain academic subjects, but he had a great deal of trouble relating to people on an emotional basis.   In a way, I had a sense that this play was as much about my father’s troubled adolescence as it was about the experiences of the central character.

Experiencing this play also tied directly to my work as a children’s literature professor.  In fact, I directed Victoria White’s honors thesis last semester on the value of teaching the novel to high school students.  I was very pleased to see Victoria and another of our English honors students show up for the discussion after the performance.   Having two of our honors students participating in this discussion underscored for me the many ways in which our teaching and our community service interrelate.

Finally, this play, more so than the novel, relates to my longstanding research interest in narrative play.  At a key moment in the play, the central character works out his plans for a trip to London through the use of play objects, such as a train set and toy buildings.  For this character, manipulating these play objects helps him build a personal narrative that gives his life direction and meaning.

In the various roles that we play within the university, we tend to separate our personal life, our teaching, our community service , and our scholarship.   However, as my recent experience at the theater demonstrates, all of these aspects of our lives all come into play with one another.  As Shakespeare once said, the play’s the thing.

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

Boyd Davis recently gave plenary presentation titled “English for Specific Purposes in Technology-Based Healthcare and Training” at the 2017 International Symposium on English Professional Communication and Instructional Technology, which took place at the National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about upcoming events.

Feb. 22 — Alan Rauch will will give a presentation titled “Fantastic Beasts and Why You Find Them” on February 22, 2017, at 4:00 pm in the Halton Reading Room in the Atkins Library.  For more information on his talk, please click on the following link:  https://library.uncc.edu/FantasticBeastsEvent

Feb. 24 — The English Department meeting will take place on February 24 from 11:00 to 12:30 in the English Department Conference Room.

Feb. 24 — Jennifer Munroe will give a faculty talk titled “Shakespeare, Ecofeminism, and the Power of the Not-Yet Known” on February 24 from 1:00 to 2:00 in the English Department Conference Room.

Feb. 24 — The Children’s Literature Graduate Organization (CLGO) is sponsoring a day-long conference of social issues in children’s and young adult literature on February 24from 10:00 to 3:00 in Cone 268.

Quirky Quiz Question — In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the central character is investigating a crime.  What is the crime that he is investigating?

Last week’s answer: Quicksilver

Evan Peters, the star of American Animals, played the role of a mutant in two recent X-Men movies.  Does anybody know the name of the character whom he played in these two films?

Lights, Camera, Action — Usually when I come to the university on the weekends, the Fretwell Building is pretty quiet, but not this past Saturday.  As I walked toward Fretwell on Saturday morning, I kept noticing temporary signs about “catering” and “crew meetings,” and I became curious about what was happening.  I entered Fretwell on the first level, and I suddenly realized that the building had been taken over by a large film crew.  There were “extras” everywhere I looked.  Along one wall a battery of make-up stations had been set up, and a half-dozen make-up artists were hard at work.  Caterers were busy preparing for lunch.  I walked by one of the classrooms, and a man called out to me and asked if I was one of the extras for a particular scene.  I should have said I was.

I eventually ran into a person from the university communications office, and he explained to me that the crew was filming two scenes for a film called American Animals, which stars Evan Peters and deals with a daring heist.  On Saturday they shot one scene in the Storrs Building and the other in the Schley R. Lyons Lecture Hall in Fretwell.

Although the Fretwell Building is not usually an actual film location, it is the home for courses on film taught by faculty members from the English Department.  Just this current semester, the English Department is offering five film-related courses.  Paula Connolly is teaching a course on Disney’s films.  Rebecca Cook (a new part-time faculty member who is also film producer) is teaching a course on the films of Paul Thomas Anderson.  Tony Jackson is teaching an introductory film class for the General Education Program.  Juan Meneses is teaching a course titled “Issue in Global Cinema,” and Tiffany Morin is teaching a course that deals with vampire films.   Given how much interest our students and faculty have in the field of film studies, I suppose that it is fitting that our building doubled as a makeshift movie set for a day.

Bill Brown Conference on Incarceration Across the Americas — English Honors Scholars Sara Eudy and Maria Lignos did a great job presenting original research (Sara from her Independent Study on black women and violence and Maria from her thesis on representations of slavery and childhood by black women writers) as part of the opening panel of the Bill Brown Conference on Incarceration Across the Americas, coordinated by Dr. Andrea Pitts of Philosophy and Latin American Studies and supported by the Center for Professional and Applied Ethics.  This conference took place at UNC Charlotte Center City on February 11, 2017.  Several interdisciplinary and international scholars commented on the strength of their work and presentations.  Janaka Lewis coordinated and was also part of the panel on “Black Women, Police Brutality, and State Violence.”  For more information about this conference, please click on the following link:  https://exchange.uncc.edu/event/2017-annual-bill-brown-conference-incarceration-across-the-americas/

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

Liz Miller and several of her ENGL 6163 Language Acquisition students attended the TESOL / Applied Linguistics Graduate Students Conference hosted by East Carolina University and Greensboro College on Saturday, February 11.  Also, Liz has a chapter, “(In)convenient Fictions: Ideologies of Multilingual Competence as Resource for Recognizability,” in a recently published edited volume titled Diversity and Super-Diversity: Sociocultural Linguistic Perspectives, published by Georgetown University Press. http://press.georgetown.edu/book/languages/diversity-and-super-diversity
Jen Munroe and Kirk Melnikoff were recently interviewed about Shakespeare on Charlotte Community Radio.  Here is the link to the interview: http://charlottecommunityradio.org/2017/02/southern-wonder-feb-8th-shakespeare-with-professors-of-english-jennifer-munroe-kirk-melnikoff/

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about an upcoming event.

Feb. 13 — The Faculty/Staff performance of “Tales From Down There” will be on Monday, February 13 at 7pm in McKnight Hall. This performance will include appearances by the following people associated with the English Department: Janaka Lewis, Tiffany Morin, Angie Williams, Alison Walsh, and Shannon Bauerle. Advanced tickets can be purchased on-line at https://ecom.uncc.edu/C21561_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=147&SINGLESTORE=true or with CASH only at the door.

Feb. 22 — Alan Rauch will will give a presentation titled “Fantastic Beasts and Why You Find Them” on February 22, 2017, at 4:00 pm in the Halton Reading Room in the Atkins Library.  For more information on his talk, please click on the following link:  https://library.uncc.edu/FantasticBeastsEvent

Quirky Quiz Question — Evan Peters, the star of American Animals, played the role of a mutant in two recent X-Men movies.  Does anybody know the name of the character whom he played in these two films?

Last week’s answer: As part of America’s bicentennial celebration, Carter G. Woodson’s 50th Negro History Week became Black History Month by (Gerald) Fordian decree.  

Black History Month was officially recognized by the United States government in 1976 as part of a larger celebration of American history.  What was the name of this  national event celebrating American history? 

Celebrating Black History Month —  February is Black History Month (also known as African American History Month).  For the members of the English Department, the history of African Americans relates in significant ways to our research and teaching.  A perfect example of this relationship is Janaka Lewis’s current a research project on the history of girls’ play in African American communities.  When I contacted Janaka and asked her for more information about her research, she sent me the following description:

My current research project, “Freedom to Play,” looks at narratives of girlhood in African American literature (19th through 21st centuries) and the ways play is both embraced as a tool of liberation and means of negotiating identity and also used to restrict the spaces in which black girls are able to move.  Using authors that include Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison, I discuss narratives of games that mimic the roles that young girls are expected to embody as adults, stories that are passed down from elders, and lessons that are taught about and through play in formal and informal educational settings.  Along with scholarship about these narratives, my future goals are to create a black girlhood studies reader with excerpts of literary experiences in black girlhood (which I will design for a future course) and to incorporate the narratives as interactive experiences for a broad audience.

As the above description makes clear, Janaka’s current project connects in many ways to the various curricular and research areas that are encompassed within the English Department.  Her examination of works of African American literature supports our concentration in Literature and Culture as well as our minor in Diverse Literature and Cultural Studies.  Her focus on children’s play has direct connections to our minor in Children’s Literature and Childhood Studies.  Her emphasis on the history of African American girlhood contributes to the English Department’s long-time relationship with the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Her consideration of “lessons” and “educational settings” connects to our departmental commitment to English Education.   In other words, the research on African American history that Janaka and other members of our English Department do is integral to the work of the English Department.

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

Paula Eckard recently participated in a panel discussion on The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, the Charlotte Film Society, and Charlotte Lit.

Janaka Lewis recently led a workshop on the book Hidden Figures with a group of middle school students from Hickory Ridge Middle School in Harrisburg.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is information about an upcoming event.

Feb 13 – The Faculty/Staff performance of “Tales From Down There” will be on Monday, February 13 at 7pm in McKnight Hall. This performance will include appearances by the following people associated with the English Department: Janaka Lewis, Tiffany Morin, Angie Williams, Alison Walsh, and Shannon Bauerle. Advanced tickets can be purchased on-line at https://ecom.uncc.edu/C21561_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=147&SINGLESTORE=true or with cash only at the door.

Quirky Quiz Question — Black History Month was officially recognized by the United States government in 1976 as part of a larger celebration of American history.  What was the name of this  national event celebrating American history?

Last week’s answer: Ellis Island

Like many Polish Jews who immigrated to America during the turn of the last century, my father’s grandparents settled in New York City.  However, before they established homes in New York City, they first passed through a famous immigration processing center located on an island.  What is the name of this island?