Games and Puzzles — I recently learned that the week of Thanksgiving is also National Games and Puzzles Week. The game I always associate with departments of English is Scrabble. When I was in graduate school, the teaching assistants in the English Department played Scrabble on a weekly basis. They even organized Scrabble tournaments. I remember thinking at the time that I would never meet anybody else who played in Scrabble tournaments, but I was wrong. I heard a rumor that our former colleague Jay Jacoby regularly participates in Scrabble tournaments, so last week I sent him an email and asked him if there is any truth to the rumor. Here is what he had to say:

I’m afraid the Scrabble rumors are in fact true. About three and a half years ago I took an 8-week class in “How to Play Scrabble like a Champ” offered by UNCA’s Osher Life-long Learning Institute (a college for seniors at which I often teach and take classes). I have enjoyed playing Scrabble since I was a kid, but this was an introduction to the world of competitive Scrabble, tournament-level play (with timers, rules, cut-throat strategies, etc.). It didn’t take long for me to become hooked.

I began playing Scrabble at the local Asheville Club that meets every Sunday from 2-6 and draws between 12-20 participants each week (check out their web site to learn more than you ever wanted to know: www.ashevillescrabble.com). Members range in age from folks in their 20s to those in their 70s, active and retired teachers, doctors, realtors, truffle-farmers, pool-cleaners, etc. I also became one of the 6,000+ members of the North American Scrabble Players Association, and started participating in regional tournaments. Such tournaments are held every week-end across the country (during the next two week-ends there will be tournaments in Lexington, KY, Dallas, Princeton, Brooklyn, Potomac, MD, Elmhurst, IL, Ontario, and British Columbia–number of participants vary: Asheville hosted a tournament a few weeks ago that attracted 80 people; about 125 folks are expected for an early January tournament in New Orleans). National Tournaments, in places like Reno or Buffalo, attract several hundred participants. Prize money is good for those who play well.

Speaking of playing well, I’m sad to say that after over three years and 15 tournaments, I am still pretty mediocre. I have won a few tournaments, but that is rare. Still, I really do enjoy the competition and the camaraderie–I’ve met tons of people from all over and we are all word freaks.

In celebration of National Games and Puzzle Week, we have set up a Scrabble game and a book-themed jigsaw puzzle in the faculty/staff lounge. Have at it!

English by the Numbers — At last week’s English Department meeting, Aaron Toscano gave a presentation on the numbers of undergraduate students who have declared English as their major or who have signed up for one of the English Department’s minors. As Aaron made clear, the numbers of English majors have increased steadily since 2013. Listed below is a snapshot of where we currently stand in terms of English majors and minors:

English Department Majors and Minors

Majors Enrolled Fall 2015

· General: 187· Creative: 85

· Lang & Dig Tech: 61

· Lit & Culture: 73

· Pedagogy: 46

Total (enrolled): 452 (458* as of 11/19/2015)

Minors Enrolled Fall 2015

· Children’s Lit: 207

· Diverse Lit: 10

· English: 84

· Linguistics: 30

· Tech/Prof: 41

· HTAS: 8

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:
Bryn Chancellor recently gave a fiction reading at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, as part of Winthrop’s Writers Reading Series.

Katie Hogan presented a paper titled “Complicit: On Being A WGSS Program Director in the Neoliberal University” at the National Women’s Studies Association’s Annual Conference. The conference was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 13 to November 15.

Tony Jackson recently published an article titled “Prime Time: Visual Cognition in the Prelude to Citizen Kane” in Style (Winter 2015).

Juan Meneses has recently been notified that his essay “Historical Restoration, Narrative Agency, and Silence in Graham Swift’s Waterland” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Modern Literature.

Quirky Quiz Question — In the game of Scrabble, each letter has a point value. What two letters have the highest point values?

Last week’s answer: The Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Dormouse
The high tea at CLGO’s recent event was inspired by the mad tea party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In addition to Alice, who else participates in this mad tea party? Here is hint: there are three other participants.

The student involvement in these two recent events underscore for me the many and diverse strengths of our students.

This Wednesday (November 11), the Children’s Literature Graduate Organization (CLGO) is presenting a public event that they are calling Alice’s (un)Birthday Party.  This event will take place in the Student Union Room 340B from 4:00 to 5:30.   Professor Jan Susina, an internationally recognized expert on Carroll’s writings, will deliver a keynote address.  Professor Susina is a Professor of English at Illinois State University and the author of The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children’s Literature.  Following the keynote address, there will be a panel discussion featuring Professor Susina, Sarah Minslow, and Alan Rauch.  Everyone who attends will have an opportunity to participate in a Victorian tea party complete with tea, sandwiches, and scones.   I hope to see you there.

Heather Blain Vorhies recently presented “Doing Business Over There: Misunderstanding the Place of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing in the Place of Business” at the Feminisms and Rhetorics conference in Tempe, Arizona.
Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is a date to keep in mind:

November 13 — Shakespeare in Action is presenting a lecture by Paul Menzer titled “Every Bad Quarto Deserves a Good Theory” on Friday, November 13, at 6:00 pm in Robinson Hall’s Black Box Theater.

Quirky Quiz Question — The character Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is based on a real girl whose first name was Alice.  Does anybody know the last name of the real Alice?

Last week’s answer: Steampunk

Gears and clockwork figure prominently in a popular fantasy genre that is set in a world in which advanced electronics and digital technology never developed.  What is the commonly used term for the fantasy genre?

Drawing by Nafis Bilal

Engagement — I associate the word engagement with an image of engaged gears spinning around like clockwork.  This image seems appropriate to me within the context of the engagement activities associated with our faculty and students.  As I see it, the teaching/learning that takes place in the classroom is like the main driver gear (sometimes called the primary gear).  However, when this gear meshes with other gears, the motion or energy that starts with the driver gear can power a much larger and more complex operation.  Something similar happens when classroom activities are connected to the world outside the classroom–the gears engage and a complex operation is set in motion.  Within the past two weeks, members of the English Department have engineered numerous examples of this type of engagement.  Here are four examples.

Through the Chancellor’s Diversity Fund grant, students in ENGL 4254/5254, English methods, worked with the Poetry Project, The UNC Charlotte Writing Project, and Discovery Place, Inc., to host a family literacy night for the Renaissance West and Little Rock Charlotte communities. Over a hundred people attended this event.  UNC Charlotte students are working with the Poetry Project on ways of teaching performance poetry to urban youth, and this event gave English students the opportunity to put into practice the power of poetry and the spoken word.  UNC Charlotte Writing Project teachers were also involved and they connected this out-of-school work with families to ways performance poetry happens in the classroom to increase student engagement and deepen their knowledge.  Discovery Place, Inc., worked with our students and the families on the science of sound through informal science learning which integrated literacy and science through hands-on science activities.

The English Department co-hosted a meeting of the Charlotte Regional Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) last Wednesday night. The topic was the job search and the role of LinkedIn. Roger Gilmartin and Sonia McCallum, two officers from the local chapter, made presentations and led a discussion that focused on how LinkedIn differs from other forms of social media and can be used as an electronic portfolio tool. They led a discussion of effective rhetorical strategies for traditional resumes and interviews as well. The event was well attended. Another STC meeting on campus is planned for next April, to exhibit the work of students in our programs in Technical/Professional Writing and Language and Digital Technology.

As these examples illustrate, engagement activities mesh perfectly with the work of the the English Department.

Last week’s answer: Novello

EpicFest follows in the tradition of an earlier literary festival sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.  Does anybody remember the name of this earlier festival?

EpicFest — Over the years, I have collaborated with the the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library on many worthwhile events and projects, but I am especially pleased to be on the Planning Committee for EpicFest. Sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation, EpicFest is a free literary festival for children of all ages. It will take place on Saturday, November 7, at ImaginOn, and it will feature nine award-winning children’s authors. The festival will also include learning activities, a family concert, and book signing opportunities. Students from our English Learning Community will be volunteering at this event. For more information about EpicFest, please click on the following link: http://foundation.cmlibrary.org/epicfest

Poetry Reading — Our creative writing program is having a poetry reading on 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28 in Fretwell 290B. The reading will feature Cedric Tillman and Coen Crisp. The poets also will hold a Q&A with the audience, and light refreshments will be provided. The event is sponsored by the Department of English with support from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Here is more information about the featured poets:

Cedric Tillman holds a BA in English from UNC Charlotte and graduated from American University’s Creative Writing MFA program. He is a prestigious Cave Canem fellow and a former Boston Review “Discovery” contest semifinalist. Cedric’s poems appear in several publications including Crosscut, Folio, Kakalak, The Chemistry of Color, and Home Is Where: An Anthology of African American Poets From the Carolinas, edited by Kwame Dawes. His debut collection, Lilies in the Valley, was a semifinalist selection for the 2011 42 Miles Press Poetry Award, and was published by Willow Books in 2013. He is the inaugural winner of the Willow Books Emerging Poets & Writers Award. Cedric lives in Charlotte.

Coen Crisp is a writer living in Greensboro, NC. His recently published book of haiku, 575, deals with life as a transgender male transitioning in the South. His work has also appeared
in Original Plumbing Magazine, FTM Magazine, and TransLife.

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:

Malin Pereira recently published an article titled “A Seat at the Front of the Bus of American Poetry: Wanda Coleman’s ‘Retro Rogue Anthology’ in Mercurochrome” in Hecate 40.1: 97-115. The article appeared in a “Focus Section” of the issue, with six essays on Coleman, the first issue of a journal focusing on Coleman’s work.

Alan Rauch recently gave a presentation titled “Rain, Steam and Speed: What’s So Great about the Greatest Painting of the 19th Century” at an area assisted living center.

Becky Roeder recently co-presented a talk titled “Simultaneous Innovation and Conservation: Unpacking Victoria’s Vowels” at the New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference in Toronto, Ontario.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here is a date to keep in mind:

November 4 — Bryn Chancellor will give a reading and sign her new book, When Are You Coming Home?, at Park Road Books at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4. http://www.parkroadbooks.com/event/2015-11

Quirky Quiz Question — EpicFest follows in the tradition of an earlier literary festival sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. Does anybody remember the name of this earlier festival?

Last week’s answer – Dia de las Muertes

In Latino/Latina culture, a major holiday is celebrated in the beginning of November.  What is the name of this holiday?  For extra credit, what is the Spanish name for this holiday?

The topic of Latinos/Latinas in the New South is of interest to several members of the English Department.  Maya Socolovsky addresses this topic in her book titled Troubling Nationhood in U.S. Latina Literature.  In her book, Maya examines fiction by several contemporary Latina authors, and she shows how these works reflect changing attitudes concerning nationality among recent immigrants to the New South and elsewhere in the United States.  Another member of the English Department who has taken an interest in this topic is Becky Roeder.  Recently, Becky, in collaboration with former graduate student Chase Walden, has studied Spanish on public signage in the first ring suburban area of Charlotte along Eastway between N. Tryon and Central.  Liz Miller is addressing this topic in one of her classes.  Liz’s graduate-level class, Seminar in Language, Culture, and Society (ENGL 6127), will be focusing on the intersection of language, race and ethnicity over the next few weeks. One of the research articles that her students will present and discuss focuses on the ideologies that inform Anglo-Americans’ joking use of “Mock Spanish” and how such seemingly innocuous utterances can reinforce racial/ethnic inequality.  As these three examples illustrate, the English Department is engaged in the recent conversations related to Latinos/Latinas in the New South.

Paula Martinac‘s short story, “Comfort Zone,” was accepted for publication by The Raleigh Review.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here are some dates to keep in mind:

October 28 — A poetry reading featuring Coen Crisp and Quentin Talley will take place on October 28 at 4:00 p.m. in Fretwell 290B.

November 4 — Bryn Chancellor will give a reading and sign her new book, When Are You Coming Home?, at Park Road Books at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4. http://www.parkroadbooks.com/event/2015-11

Quirky Quiz Question — In Latino/Latina culture, a major holiday is celebrated in the beginning of November.  What is the name of this holiday?  For extra credit, what is the Spanish name for this holiday?

Last week’s answer: DC

The Folger Shakespeare Library was founded by Henry Clay Folger and Emily Jordan Folger.  It opened in 1932 and is known today as the premier center for Shakespeare studies outside of Great Britain.  In what American city is the Folger Shakespeare Library located?