Monday Missive

Visiting Pippi Longstocking — When this Monday Missive shows up in your inbox, I will be in Vimmerby, Sweden, doing research related to Astrid Lindgren, the author of Pippi Longstocking. In preparing for this trip, I come to realize that Lindgren holds a very prominent position in contemporary Swedish society.  There are numerous cites in Sweden where visitors can learn more about Lindgren and her novels about Pippi Longstocking.  I am focusing my trip on Astrid Lindgren’s World, which is located in Lindgren’s native city of Vimmerby.  However, visitors can also go to museums and attractions elsewhere in Sweden that have Lindgren connections.  Lindgren and Pippi Longstocking also show up in the major guidebooks, tourist information websites, and general publications about Sweden.

It seems to me that the character of Pippi Longstocking plays a role in Swedish culture that is similar to the role that Tom Sawyer plays in the popular culture of the American Midwest.  In fact, Pippi and Tom share many of the same traits.  They both are prone to exaggeration.  They both love to engage in pretend play, and they both have an irreverent attitude toward adult authority.

The similarities between Pippi and Tom might help explain why Pippi appeals to so many American children. She is just one of a handful of characters from 20th-century European children’s literature to be fully embraced by American readers, including the boy version of me.  I read the Pippi Longstocking books during my childhood, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.  Needless to say, this trip to Sweden is not just a research trip for me; it is also providing me with an opportunity to pay a visit to my old friend Pippi.

Summer Book Club for Kids — As part of the North Carolina Humanities Council funded project titled The Child in Southern Literature and Film, the English Department is sponsoring a book club for middle-school kids.  Sarah Minslow and Consuelo Salas will lead three book club meetings designed to explore the the diversity of Southern childhood.  These meetings will take place at ImaginOn from noon to 2 pm on June 16, July 21, and August 18.  For more information, please click on the following link:  https://thechildinsouthernlitandfilm.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/125/#more-125

Memorial Day — Today is Memorial Day.  Originally called Decoration Day, this holiday can be traced back to the years right after the Civil War when the families of fallen soldiers decorated the graves of their relatives who died during the war.

For most Americans, Memorial Day is a paid holiday, but not for the staff at UNC Charlotte.  If staff members want to stay home and observe Memorial Day, they need to deduct the hours from their vacation time.  I objected to this practice in the Monday Missive that I wrote two years ago at this time, and I still object to it.  For many staff members, Memorial Day has a deep, personal meaning.  UNC Charlotte should recognize the significance of this special day by making it a paid holiday for the staff.

Weddings in Literature — With the world awash with news of the recent royal wedding, now seems an apropos time to write about the depiction of weddings in literary works.  I decided to focus on works that relate directly to courses that we regularly offer in the English Department.

Weddings figure prominently in several of William Shakespeare’s plays, but my favorite is A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  In this carnivalesque play, Shakespeare evokes the surreal nature of many weddings.  As is so often the case in Shakespeare’s comedies, this play features couples who get mixed up, resulting in complicated plot twists.  These complications are reflected in one of the most famous lines from the play:  “The course of true love never did run smooth.”  For me, this line is the perfect response to the snafus that sometimes occur during grand wedding celebrations.

In Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Meg March has a small and simple wedding:  “There was no bridal procession, but a sudden silence fell upon the room as Mr. March and the young couple took their places under the green arch. Mother and sisters gathered close, as if loath to give Meg up. The fatherly voice broke more than once, which only seemed to make the service more beautiful and solemn. The bridegroom’s hand trembled visibly, and no one heard his replies. But Meg looked straight up in her husband’s eyes, and said, ‘I will!’ with such tender trust in her own face and voice that her mother’s heart rejoiced and Aunt March sniffed audibly.”  And yet even though the wedding itself is simple, Jo March’s response to it is complicated.  For Jo, seeing her older sister get married stirs up contradictory emotions.  She wants her sister to be happy, but she resents the way in which her older sister’s marriage will change their family dynamics.   As Alcott captures in Little Women, weddings have a way of bringing all kinds of emotions to the surface, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why weddings are such memorable events.

A much more recent book about a wedding is Dorothy West’s The Wedding, which came out in 1995.  One of the writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance, West published her first novel, The Living Is Easy, in 1948.  After the publication of this novel, she focused on writing short stories and columns for many years.  She started writing The Wedding in the 1960s, but she put it aside.  It was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who encouraged her to complete it.  In The Wedding, West deals with the complications that arise when a mixed-race couple decides to get married.  Set in Martha’s Vineyard during the 1950s, this novel shows how racism and other social problems can affect relationships.  However, West also shows how relationships can transcend such differences.   As she states in The Wedding, “Because if you don’t know someone all that well, you react to their surface qualities, the superficial stereotypes they throw off like sparks… But once you fight through the sparks and get to the person, you find just that, a person, a big jumble of likes, dislikes, fears, and desires.”

The weddings in the aforementioned literary works, like the recent royal wedding, are celebrations of romantic relationships, but they are also revealing rituals that tell us a lot about family dynamics, societal values, and cultural traditions.

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:

Tony Jackson recently published an article titled  “Oceania’s Totalitarian Technology: Writing in Nineteen Eighty-Four” in Criticism.

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

June 1 — Wiley Cash, the author of The Last Ballad and A Land More Kind Than Home, will give a reading and lecture on June 1, 2018, at 7:30 pm at the Levine Museum of the New South (200 East 7th Street).  This event is sponsored by the American Studies Program.  Registration is required.  To register, please click on the following link:  https://goo.gl/forms/aNtdRgfTXf8MnsNp2

Quirky Quiz Question —  The marriage of Meg March is a key moment in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.  Does anybody know the name of Meg’s groom?

Last week’s answer: Math

UNC Charlotte’s commitment to excellent teaching started with Bonnie Cone, the founder of our university.  Does anybody know what subject Bonnie Cone taught?

Teacher Appreciation — I had no idea that last week was Teacher Appreciation Week until one of the students in my children’s literature class gave me a card at the same time that she handed in her final. In her card, she wrote that since it was Teacher Appreciation Week, she wanted me to know how much she liked the class. She mentioned that she is a marketing major, and she took the class in order to earn three elective credit hours. However, as she went on to explain, the class became her favorite class in part because it reintroduced her to the pleasure of reading novels. She concluded by saying that she wanted to express her appreciation for enriching her education at UNC Charlotte. She then added a postscript in which she said that she intends to keep reading novels even though the class had officially ended.

This student’s note prompted me to reflect on the impact that teachers can have on our lives. My life was completely transformed by the English teacher I had in junior high school. I went to a very small and under-funded school in the mountains of Colorado, and the school lacked many of the resources that were available in the other larger schools in the county. As a result, my dyslexia went undiagnosed. Throughout my elementary-school experience, most of my teachers viewed me as being “mildly retarded” as my third-grade teacher once told my mother. It was Mr. Neiman, my seventh-grade English teacher, who recognized my potential despite my learning disability. Because of the extra time he took with me and his constant encouragement, I gradually overcame the reading and writing problems associated with dyslexia. I am an English professor today in part because of the skills and confidence I gained from Mr. Neiman. When I was in college, I visited Mr. Neiman during one of my spring breaks. He was dying from cancer at the time, but he was pleased to hear that I was doing well in college. I expressed my appreciation to him for making such a big difference in my life, and I am glad I took the time to tell him. He died a few months later.

Teacher Appreciation Week ended on Saturday, but I hope that we always appreciate the important role that teachers can play in the lives of students. During the hectic business of grading finals and term papers and posting grades, it is easy to lose sight of what is really important in realm of education. Grades must be recorded and credit hours must be calculated, but education is not really about grades and credit hours. In the end, what counts the most and lasts the longest is the learning that occurs when students and teachers connect.

Commencement Report — Last Saturday the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences held its spring commencement ceremony, and for 104 of our students, this ceremony marked their transition from current students to graduates. A total of 17 of our graduate students are listed in the commencement program, and 87 undergraduate students are listed.

I was especially impressed with how many of our BA students fall under the heading of “Graduation with Distinction.” Of the 87 students, 14 earned the distinction of Cum Laude (GPA between 3.4-3.7), 8 earned the distinction of Magna Cum Laude (GPA between 3.7-3.9), and 10 earned the distinction of Summa Cum Laude (GPA between 3.9-4.0). This total comes to 32 students. I am very proud of all of our graduating students, but I want to mention by name the 10 students who earned the distinction of Summa Cum Laude. Their names are Desiree Michelle Brown, Briana Lynn Calloway, Jordan Ashlee Costanza, Diana L. Diaz, Hannah M. Edwards, Julia Diane Foster, Jenna Elizabeth Hainlen, Tahira Nicole Huff, Hayley Louise Lawson, and Christina Marie Ramsey.

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:

Bryn Chancellor has been awarded an artist residency at The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences in Georgia. She will be a fellow for three weeks in May-June, working on a new novel.

Misha Lazzara, our Robinson scholar and a creative writing student in our MA program, has won a $5,000 summer fellowship to support her work on her thesis.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines — Here is information about upcoming events and deadlines:

May 15 — The Confucius Institute is sponsoring an exhibit of Chinese picture books. The opening of this exhibit will take place at ImaginOn on Tuesday, May 15, from 5:30 to 7:00. I have agreed to participate on a panel discussion during this event. Here is a link with more information: https://exchange.uncc.edu/event/childrens-picture-books-from-china-exhibit-and-opening-night-panel-discussion/

Quirky Quiz Question — UNC Charlotte’s commitment to excellent teaching started with Bonnie Cone, the founder of our university. Does anybody know what subject Bonnie Cone taught?

Last week’s answer: Andrew Hart

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?

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?

As I look back on my 34-year career as a professor in our English Department, I am aware that Anita was always there for me at just the right moment with just the right words.  Thank you, Anita.

Quirky Quiz Question —  The name for the “Garden and Verses” event is tied to the title of a book a book by a Scottish that was originally published in 1900.  Do you know the title of this book?  For extra credit, can you name the author of this book?

Does anybody know the name of the new park that is situated between UNC Charlotte Center City and ImaginOn?

The Center City Literary Festival as Civic Engagement — In what has become an annual event, the Center City Literary Festival will take place on Saturday, April 14, at UNC Charlotte Center City, 320 E. 9th Street. Co-sponsored by the English Department and UNC Charlotte Center City, this festival is divided into two parts. The day-time part is intended for children and their families and will run from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The evening part is intended for adults and will run from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Both parts of the festival are free and open to the public.

The part for children will feature appearances by children’s authors, creative activities, a live puppet show, and a dance performance by Dances of India. Among the children’s authors who will participate are Tia Capers, Janaka Lewis, and Lisa Klein.

The part for adults will feature appearances by five writers, an opening reception, poetry and fiction readings, and a book signing. The writers who will participate are Jill McCorkle, Gary Jackson, Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, Paula Martinac, and Siobhán Campbell.

The organization of the Center City Literary Festival is a collaborative effort, but three people have played especially important roles in planning for this event: Bryn Chancellor, Janaka Lewis, and Angie Williams. Without the the hard work of these three members of the English Department, there would be no Center City Literary Festival. An example of the preparatory work that has gone into planning this event is a recent blog post that Bryn wrote for the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts. Here is the link: https://www.charlottelit.org/blog/chancellor-uncc-literary-festival/.

The Center City Literary Festival is an example of how the English Department contributes to UNC Charlotte’s “Civic Action Plan.” As stated in the published report that came out earlier this spring, “The Civic Action Plan is a sustainable and long-term approach to fully activate the University’s mission to address the unique needs of the Charlotte area.” Please find here, the final draft of UNC Charlotte’s Civic Action Plan from the Office of Academic Affairs. Among the needs mentioned in this plan are the Charlotte region’s cultural needs. The English Department is especially well suited to address the cultural needs of our region. The Center City Literary Festival is one of the ways in which we are already demonstrating our on-going commitment to civic engagement.

Welcome Siobhán Campbell — Poet and critic Siobhán Campbell is joining the English department this April as the 2018 Kingston Visiting Writer. Campbell is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Heat Signature, and the co-editor of Eavan Boland: Inside History, a book of essays on the work of Eavan Boland. She has received awards in the National Poetry Competition and the Troubadour International Competition and is the recipient of an Arts Council award and the Templar Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared regularly in the literary journals of the US and the UK/Ireland, including Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Agenda, and Magma Poetry. This April, Campbell will teach Advanced Creative Writing and read her work at the Center City Literary Festival on April 14.

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:

Desiree Brown, one of our undergraduate students, has been accepted to NYU’s MFA program.

Paula Martinac is a 2017 Foreword INDIES Finalist for LGBT Fiction. Foreword Reviews is a journal devoted to reviewing books from independent and university presses. She was also the guest speaker at the March meeting of the Charlotte Writers’ Club. Her talk was titled “Writing Diverse Characters in Fiction.”

Kirk Melnikoff attended the Shakespeare Association of America meeting in Los Angeles, California, where he presented his paper “‘[T]il some household cares mee tye’: Isabella Whitney, Richard Jones, and Luckless Authorship” in the seminar “Women, Gender, and Book History.”

Juan Meneses recently presented a paper titled “Post-Politics and the Valences of Literary Critique” at the Association of Comparative Literature Conference held at UCLA.

Liz Miller recently presented a paper titled “A History-in-Person Approach to Teacher Dispositions and Practices: Orienting to the Personal as Sociocultural Phenomena” at the American Association of Applied Linguistics conference held in Chicago. A few days later, she presented another paper at the TESOL convention, also held in Chicago. This second paper was titled “A Critical Approach to Understanding Language Competence.”

Grace Ocasio recently gave a poetry reading as part of Mitchell Community College’s Spring Literary Festival.

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

April 7 — The English Department and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library are co-sponsoring a screening of Sounder at the Francis Auditorium in the Main Library (310 N. Tryon Street) on Saturday, April 7, at 2:00 p.m. This event is supported by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council.

April 10 — The English Department will be hosting Leslie Howsam, one of the most renowned historians of the book in North America, to give an open talk titled: “Book History: a Niche for Nerds, or Essential Knowledge?” on April 10th at 4:00 pm in the Atkins Library (Halton Room).

Quirky Quiz Question — Does anybody know the name of the new park that is situated between UNC Charlotte Center City and ImaginOn?

Last week’s answer: Phyliss Wheatley

Julian’s Mason was a widely recognized authority on an early African American poet.  What is the name of this poet?