Visiting Winnie-the-Pooh in Atlanta — This past weekend my wife and I went to Atlanta in order to attend a wedding for one of her college friends.  While we were there we visited the High Museum of Art and saw a a special traveling exhibition called “Winnie-the-Pooh:   Exploring a Classic.”  This exhibition will remain on view at the High Museum of Art through September 2, 2018.  For more information about this exhibition, please click on the following link: https://www.high.org/exhibition/winnie-the-pooh-exploring-a-classic/

Organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, this exhibition features photographs, original letters, and memorabilia related to A. A. Milne’s Pooh stories, but what makes this exhibition so special to me are the dozens of original sketches and illustrations by E. H. Shepard, the illustrator of the classic versions of the Pooh stories.

The exhibition provides visitors with insights into Shepard’s creative process.  In many cases, visitors can see a series of preliminary sketches leading up to the final published illustration.  The exhibition also includes greatly enlarged versions of some of Shepard’s illustrations, and these giant versions help visitors see some details that are hard to notice in the originals.  I especially liked seeing the original and enlarged versions of the illustration of Pooh standing at the entrance of Owl’s home.  I based one of my yard art projects on this particular illustration, so I felt a personal connection when I viewed these images.

Visiting the exhibition reminded me that I am not the only member of our English Department who has taken an interest in the Pooh stories.  Both Paula Connolly and Sarah Minslow have written scholarly works focusing on Milne’s Pooh stories.  Paula wrote about the Pooh stories in her book Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner:  Recovering Arcadia, which is part of the Twayne’s Masterwork Studies Series.  She has also published two essays related to the Pooh stories in edited collections.  Sarah wrote an essay titled “A.A. Milne (1881-1956):  Influencing American Childhood after World War II.”  Her essay will be published this fall in a collection titled Shapers of American Childhood.  

In their scholarship, both Paula and Sarah comment on the ongoing appeal of the Pooh stories.  Observing the enthusiastic responses of the many children and adults at the Pooh exhibition this past weekend, I, too, am convinced that these books continue to resonate with countless readers of all ages on both sides of the Atlantic.

Linguists on the Loose — It is sometimes difficult to keep track of the whereabouts of the linguists in our English Department, for they are often trotting around the globe, presenting papers at various international conferences.  There is, however, one person who has made it her business to monitor and report on the professional travels of these footloose faculty members, and that person in Liz Miller, who herself is something of a globetrotter.  Much like Winston Churchill, who followed troop movements by putting pins in maps, Liz uses a bulletin board, a world map, thumbtacks, and yarn to keep track of where our linguists have been giving their presentations.

To see Liz’s amazing bulletin board, you don’t have to go to London and tour Churchill’s War Room.  You just need to go through the main entrance of the English Department, turn left down the first hallway, and keep a lookout for the bulletin board on your right that is marked “Applied Linguistics.”  My guess is that they use the word “applied” because they all have applied for the new “Global Entry” system that is so popular with international travelers, but I am not sure if that’s true.

What I do know is true is that next to the “Applied Linguistics” label there is a smaller label that reads, “Where in the world have UNC Charlotte applied linguistics faculty been?”  The phrasing of this question reminds me of another globetrotter, the famous PBS character Carmen Sandiego.   I contacted Liz to learn more about her bulletin board and see if there is some secret connection between our applied linguists and the elusive Carmen Sandiego.   Here is her response:

In Summer 2017, I decided that the linguists’ bulletin board was badly in need of an update and thought that it could serve as a site for letting students and other visitors to the department learn about some of the work we linguistics professors do outside the classroom. Students often don’t realize the international impact of the English Department, and the linguists–like all professors in the department–contribute to that through their participation in international academic conferences. Drawing on the title for the 1990s TV game show for children Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, I decided to make a bulletin board with the title “Where in the World have the UNC Charlotte Applied Linguists been.” (I know, not nearly as catchy!) With the help of a world map and some yellow yarn, I was able to create a visual representation of the linguists’ far-reaching conference activity from Fall 2016 to the present. You will now find tags on the map to Athens, Helsinki, Shanghai, and Toronto among many other domestic and international cities.

The Child in Southern Literature and Film Update — Sarah Minslow, Consuelo Salas, Amy Arnott (recent MA graduate), and Savannah Woodell (English major) facilitated a book club on Saturday at ImaginOn as part of the NC Humanities Council funded project The Child in Southern Literature and Film. The group includes 13 middle school students from CMS. They discussed endangered species in the Southeastern United States and how kids can help protect them in relation to Carl Hiaasen’s novel Scat, which is set in the Florida everglades.

Sequential Art and Storytelling — This coming weekend, fans of comic books, graphic novels, and manga will gather in Charlotte for the annual Heroes Convention, also known as HeroesCon.  One of the largest such conventions in the country, HeroesCon will take place at the Charlotte Convention Center from June 15–17.  The fact that this event is big enough to fill Charlotte’s largest venue for conventions is a clear indicator of the importance of these forms of popular culture.

Comic books, graphic novels, and manga all use sequential art to tell stories.  Most examples also include text, but the text is generally subordinate to the visual images.  The use of sequential art as a way to convey narratives can be traced all the way back to cave paintings.  Over the years, this approach to storytelling has developed its own conventions and rhetorical devices.  Understanding the nuances of comics and similar forms of culture requires consumers/readers to have a grounding in a specialized type of visual literacy.  Well, this sounds like a job for super professors. In fact, several professors in our English Department cover sequential art in their classes and/or their scholarship.

Paula Connolly covers the inner workings of comics and graphic novels in a graduate course she teaches on the visual semiotics of children’s literature.  She also regularly includes graphic novels in her various children’s and adolescent literature classes.  In an email message she sent to me she wrote, “This year the graphic texts in my classes range from fantasy to realistic discussions of civil rights, including Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman (one of the earliest wordless graphic texts in children’s lit), John Lewis (et al)’s March series, Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese, Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, and Brian Bendis’s Ultimate Comics:Spider-Man Vol 1 (aka ‘Black Spiderman’ issue). What’s particularly fascinating is the development of hybrid novels, like Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, in which graphic and traditional forms intersect as a way to create new narrative possibilities–in DiCamillo’s book, for new character points of view.”

Alan Rauch’s interest in comics and graphic novels stems from his childhood.  In an email message to me, he wrote, “I read comic books from an early age (much to my father’s chagrin).  I did do a lot of illustration and contemplated a career as either an artist or illustrator.  In college, I did illustrations and cartoons for the school newspaper, The McGill Daily and I continued to do work as a designer/graphic artists well into my doctorate. Two of my illustrations are in a Tech Writing textbook (Scientific and Technical Writing, Harcourt, 1984).  And I did a couple of illustrations for the sloth book.  Even though I was fascinated with illustration and design, and addressed both in all of my classes, I didn’t really consider the graphic novel as an important genre, until I read Spiegelman’s Maus. Since then, I have taught classes on the Graphic Novel in general and in Jewish Identity and the Graphic Novel. For the latter course, I draw on ‘traditional novels’ such as The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep. I am fascinated by graphic novels that address science, such as the books by Jim Ottaviani, Jay Hosler, and more recently physicist Clifford Johnson’s Dialogues, published by MIT Press.”

Juan Meneses’s scholarly and teaching work with comics takes a global approach. His publications in comics studies demonstrate this approach, such as his article titled “Reconsidering International Comics: Foreignness, Locality, and the Third Space,” in which he considers the possibilities of comics to establish global links between modes of representation (images and text) as well as aesthetic traditions. In the classroom, this work has translated in the course “Graphic Novels and Animation from Around the Globe,” in which he and his students study a number of global topics such as immigration, globalization, and war.  He also incorporates comics in other courses, such as Peter Kuper’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, which he assigns in his “Modern World Literature” course in tandem with Kafka’s text.  More recently he has developed an interest in the representation of environmental issues in comics.

Balaka Basu teaches “Superheroes on Screen,” at the 2000 level, which explores how comics travel from panel to cineplex and television and uses these immensely popular movies designed for young people (of all ages) to introduce film and literary theory. She also advises graduate students who study or create superhero comic books for their thesis projects. Superhero comics both reflect and effect important moments in American culture and politics, as is evident from the enormous impact that Black Panther (2018) has had on diversity in film, with its proud Afrofuturism. Black Panther is part of the groundbreaking effort begun in 2008 by Marvel Studios (in association with Disney) to create a shared, continuous universe called the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) with storylines culled and adapted from the original comic books, a phenomenon that Balaka is exploring in a chapter of her current book project.

As these aforementioned examples illustrate, our English Department is at the forefront of the field that is sometimes referred to as comics studies.  For students who want to study comics and graphic novels, our English Department is the place to pursue this interest.  For anybody who wants to participate in a comics-related convention, HeroesCon is the place to go to this coming weekend.

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:

Jeffrey Leak and Malin Pereira presented papers, with two other colleagues from France and Austria, as part of a panel on Transnational Cultural Kinships and the African American Experience at the biennial conference sponsored by the Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas. The conference took place at Karl-Franzens-Universitat in Graz, Austria (May 30-June 2). Jeffrey’s paper is titled “The Kin You’re Born With, the Kin You Find: Rosey E. Pool, Transnational Kinships and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s.”  Malin’s paper is titled “Flying Home? Race, Identity, and Transnational Kinship in Contemporary Black Poetry.”

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:

Sarah Minslow received a Certificate of Merit for Excellence in Advising in the New Advisor category from the National Academic Advising Association in Charleston, SC, at the Regional Conference on Tuesday, May 29.

Lori Beth Johnson, a recent graduate of our MA program, just sold her debut novel to Razorbill at Penguin.  Here is a link with more information:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/77030-rights-report-week-of-may-28-2018.html

Daniel Shealy recently presented a paper titled “‘Wedding Marches’: Alcott, Marriage and the Newness of Little Women” at the American Literature Association Conference held in San Francisco.

Heather Vorhies recently attended the Thompson Faculty Write Program at Duke University. While there, she worked on an article on physiological psychology and style in Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Belles Rhetoric and an article on medical communication in the early American republic.

Quirky Quiz Question —  Astrid Lindgren grew up in Vimmerby, Sweden, but she spent most of her adult life in the capital of Sweden.  What is the capital of Sweden?

As Toppman points out, the students in our marching band are excited about their upcoming trip to Normandy.  Once they arrive, they will play their instruments and participate in ceremonial activities.  However, they will also learn about the history of D-Day and gain insights into the causes and casualties of war.  For these students, going to Normandy is not just a trip–it is part of their college education.

There is another reason I like to tell stories about Julian, Anita, Stan, and all of the other colorful characters who have contributed so much to our English Department over the years.  In a sense, I see myself as playing a similar storytelling role to the role that L. Frank Baum assigned to himself when he wrote the Oz series.  Baum often called himself the Royal Historian of Oz.  Given my long association with this department, I sometimes feel as if I am one of our department’s resident historians.  Many people have helped build our department, and our department would not be the same without their contributions.  For this reason, I believe it is important to share our history with the newer members of our department.  Through organizing events like Sunday’s gathering for Stan or the recent celebration of Anita’s life or through writing about former colleagues in my Monday Missives, I am trying to use stories to bridge our past and our present–like a bridge over storied waters.

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 published an article in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literature (JAAL) titled “Centering the How:  What Teacher-Candidates’ Means of Mediation Can Tell Us about Engaging Adolescent Writers.”Ralf Thiede presented a paper on April 20 at the SouthEastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) titled “The Bigger Picture of Parameter Theory: Interfacing Language and Cognition.”

Remembering Stan Patten — Dr. Stanley Ray Patten died on April 18, 2018, but for those of us who had the pleasure of knowing Stan, our memories of him will always be with us.  Here is the link to his obituary:  http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/charlotte/obituary.aspx?n=stan-ray-patten&pid=188789665

Stan taught in our English Department from 1982 to 1999.  During his career at UNC Charlotte, he played a key role in developing and leading our Writing Resources Center (WRC).  One of the first faculty members in the department to appreciate the value of computers in the teaching of writing, Stan obtained grant funding to equip the WRC with computers.

He was also an early supporter of the Women’s Studies Program, and he was the first male to teach a Women’s Studies course at UNC Charlotte.  Stan thought that the Women’s Studies Program should broaden its scope to include gender studies, and I am sure he would be pleased that the program is now called the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.

When Stan taught in the English Department, the acronym LGBTQ was not yet in use.  However, Stan was already at the forefront of the movement to support all of our students no matter what their sexual orientation or gender identification might be.

When I first moved to Charlotte in 1984, Stan and I would occasionally have beers together at various bars in Dilworth, where he lived at the time.  I loved hearing his stories about the two years he spent in Ethiopia when he was in the Peace Corps.  He also told riveting stories about his involvement with the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta.  He liked to talk about his childhood and youth in a small town in Indiana, and he seemed to be pleased when I told him that my mother also grew up in a small town in Indiana.  Sometimes Stan would talk about his years at Purdue University, where he earned his PhD, but he talked more about his experiences as a high school English teacher.

Stan liked to talk about computers, and he was pleased when my wife and I finally purchased our first Mac computer.  We had trouble setting it up, so I called Stan.  In no time, he came over to our house and set up the computer for us.  That is the kind of person he was.

Stan’s teaching career at the UNC Charlotte came to an end in 1999 when he was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, but he remained in Charlotte for the rest of his life.  Stan’s final years were difficult because of his serious health problems.  However, he still took pleasure in interacting with his friends and neighbors in Plaza Midwood, where he bought a house on a street called Mimosa.  One of his other sources of pleasure was writing poetry.  In 2013, he published some of his poems in a chapbook titled Betrayals.  Stan sometimes felt betrayed by his body, but not by his friends.  He gave me a signed copy of this chapbook a couple of years ago.  I will always treasure it, just as I will always treasure my memories of Stan.

I am organizing an open house for Stan’s friends and colleagues to gather and share memories and stories about Stan.  This event will take place next Sunday (April 29) in the English Department Lounge (Fretwell 248C) from 1:00 to 3:00 pm.  Everyone is invited.  I will bring some homemade food, but everyone should feel free to bring something to share.  I hope to see you on Sunday.

Our Students’ Winning Ways —  Last Friday was an award-winning day for a number of our students.  At three separate events, our students received various awards.  During a ceremony sponsored by the Center for Graduate Life, Kevin Chauncey received the Graduate Teaching Assistant Award in recognition of his work as a teaching assistant in lecture classes offered by Ralf Thiede and Alan Rauch.  The Undergraduate Research Conference also took place on Friday, and our students were well represented.  Kelly Brabec, Jenna Hainlen, and Jordan Costanza all won awards for their presentations.  Late Friday afternoon, the Honors College Awards Ceremony took place, during which Kellyanna Atwell received a Delbridge E. Narron Scholarship and Travel Award.