{"id":1405,"date":"2018-03-26T11:28:17","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T15:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2018-03-26T11:28:17","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T15:28:17","slug":"monday-missive-march-26-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2018\/03\/26\/monday-missive-march-26-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – March 26, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Memories of Julian Mason<\/b>\u00a0— Julian D. Mason died on March 20, 2018, at 2:28 p.m., but his devotion to our English Department and the larger university will not soon be forgotten.\u00a0 Julian joined the faculty of our department in 1966, and he served as the English Department Chair from 1978 to 1984.\u00a0 He continued to teach in the department until his retirement in 1989.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 For those of us who had the privilege of knowing Julian, he left us with a treasure trove of memories.\u00a0 I contacted some past and present members of our department who knew Julian well, and I asked them to send me a paragraph about one of their memories of Julian.\u00a0 What follows are the responses I received.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Julian cared deeply about educating students and helping them pursue their goals.\u00a0 Paula Eckard is one of Julian’s former students, and she comments on Julian’s impact on her education in the paragraph that she sent to me:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Julian’s Southern literature class was the last course I needed for my bachelor’s degree in English.\u00a0 I knew it would be challenging, and it was.\u00a0 Each week he gave me writers I could relate to:\u00a0 William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Lee Smith, Thomas Wolfe.\u00a0 For the first time in my adult intellectual life, I felt like I had found home.\u00a0 These were my people.\u00a0 Their language was my language, and their stories were ones I knew from living in the South.\u00a0 Julian must have sensed this awareness in me, too, and set about to persuade me to enroll in the English Department’s M.A. Program. Toward the end of the semester, he pulled me aside and said, “You should go to graduate school so you can teach.” “Why?” I asked, not really comprehending the import of what he was saying, “I am a nurse, not an English teacher.”\u00a0 He replied, “Well, I think you would be good at it.”\u00a0 Those words changed my life.\u00a0 The work I do today, every rich aspect of it, is the direct result of Julian’s encouragement and belief in me.\u00a0 His love of literature, sense of excellence, and generous humanity continue to inspire me and others who were fortunate enough to study with him at UNC Charlotte.<\/p>\n

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Julian also took an interest in helping faculty members develop their careers.\u00a0 Sandra (Sandy) Govan comments on this side of Julian in her paragraph:<\/p>\n

I am about to depart for CLA–the College Language Association–conference in early April.\u00a0 I mention this fact only because it was at a CLA conference where I first met Julian.\u00a0 During the Q & A of a session that had just concluded, Julian was peppering a presenter with pointed questions.\u00a0 Or, I was and he was supporting my critical commentary.\u00a0 It’s a bit hazy now.\u00a0 Anyway, after the session we chatted a few moments about how the presenter could have done a decidedly better job.\u00a0 The next time I met him was at the 1982 MLA conference held in LA.\u00a0 This is a far more distinct memory because the first thing Julian did was offer to take me to lunch (and food was always important in our relationship) before he set about convincing me to leave the University of Kentucky, a flagship school, to come to UNCC–at that time a picket boat.\u00a0 A prescient man, Julian assured me the status of the school would change and that I could be part of that change.\u00a0 He also assured me that I would not be a “first” nor an “only”–as in. the only African American faculty member in the English Department because Mary Harper was already ensconced here and. the department has a strong connection to developing Black Studies Program–now Africana Studies.\u00a0 He told me I could plant a flag in each camp; and for awhile, I did.\u00a0 But probably my clearest “most best” memory of the man were the steps he willingly took to assure that I came to Charlotte and to make certain that I would be happy here.\u00a0 It wasn’t the salary bump he offered; it wasn’t the way he tested my interviewing skills.\u00a0 Rather, the wily Julian took me to my first grand Motown concert!\u00a0 Despite a hearing problem in one ear, the Chair of the English Department took me to see Diana Ross at Ovens Auditorium–large, loud, cavernous Ovens.\u00a0 Now that, I submit, is a department chair willing to go that extra mile.\u00a0 I would be remiss if I didn’t add in closing that despite his retirement. Julian and Elsie remained close to me.\u00a0 Here in this 2018 NCAA tournament season you should know that Julian (who once played percussion in the pep band that accompanied UNC to b-ball games) and I shared a love of basketball.\u00a0 And over the retirement years, we continued to share an appreciation of basketball, books, poetry, chocolate, and golden cake with chocolate icing.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Julian also helped Anita Moss during the early stages of her career as a member of our English Department as she explains in her paragraph:<\/p>\n

Julian was invariably generous to his colleagues.\u00a0 In 1977, I returned to the department after completing my doctoral coursework from Indiana University, but I still needed to take my doctoral exams.\u00a0 That meant expensive and exhausting trips to Indiana.\u00a0 One day Julian asked if I knew that the graduate director at Indiana University would probably allow him to administer the exams, a solution saving me time and money.\u00a0 Julian took his valuable time to administer the exams and later proudly announced that I had passed with distinction.\u00a0 I believe Julian was genuinely pleased at the accomplishments of his colleagues.\u00a0 My other memory concerns Julian as sleuth.\u00a0 Once there was an outbreak of\u00a0 crime in the English Department– stolen purses out of offices, toilet paper thefts in the restrooms, a streaker who once raced totally nude down the corridor in Garinger, and a hateful trickster who filled the locks of our offices with super glue.\u00a0 During this period Julian took to wearing his Sherlock Holmes hat as he made his inquiries and observations, and engaged in deep thinking.\u00a0 I do not know whether or not any of the miscreants were apprehended.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Anita’s memory of Julian as sleuth has points in common with Jay Jacoby’s memory of Julian as trickster:<\/p>\n

Julian had a playful, impish side.\u00a0 I learned this the hard way at the first faculty party I attended.\u00a0 It may have been held at Julian and Elsie\u2019s home.\u00a0 As what I would now consider an act of faculty hazing, Julian came up to me to offer some freshly picked scuppernongs (the official state fruit of NC, I later learned).\u00a0 Julian seemed to take devilish delight as I popped a scuppernong into my mouth, smiled at the sweetness of the fruit, and then winced at the bitterness of the fruit\u2019s leather-tough skin, which was not meant to be chewed or swallowed.\u00a0 I can still see the smile playing on Julian\u2019s lips as he offered me a napkin into which I could discretely dispose the remains.\u00a0 It was Julian\u2019s way of welcoming this Philadelphia Yankee to the South. I have to share another memory\u2014one which reveals Julian\u2019s sensitivity toward students.\u00a0 At a faculty meeting, he chided several of us who insisted that student papers be typed.\u00a0 He reminded us that there were some students who didn\u2019t own typewriters, and that we should accept handwritten work.\u00a0 I can\u2019t imagine anything like that happening today.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Julian played important roles in helping to develop new programs although he never glossed over the problems involved with starting something new.\u00a0 Ann Carver comments on this side of Julian in her paragraph:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Julian was on leave at the Library of Congress when I was hired (1969).\u00a0 When he came back to our department, I had been appointed chair of the faculty-student committee charged with creating a Black Studies Program.\u00a0 One afternoon soon after Julian’s return I was grading papers in my office when Julian marched in and, without any preamble, began firing questions at me about African American poets from Phillis Wheatley and Jupitor Hammon to Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Sonia Sanchez, and Amiri Baraka.\u00a0 Somewhat taken aback and wondering what in the world was going on, I fired the answers to his questions right back.\u00a0 It was like a Ph.D. oral exam.\u00a0 When Julian had determined to his satisfaction my knowledge and qualification, at the same time demonstrating to me his own, he sat down and offered his support and assistance in the arduous task of creating a Black Studies Program.\u00a0 Julian’s support was unwavering and his help invaluable.\u00a0 I turned to Julian many, many times when facing a particularly difficult problem.\u00a0 That is how I came to appreciate (and learn to use) Julian’s problem-solving method, which appeared to be negative at first glance but proved to be extremely effective.\u00a0 First Julian would identify all of the problems, roadblocks, reasons it couldn’t be done.\u00a0 Then he would turn around and, one by one, analyze the issues identified and develop strategies to overcome them and ultimately succeed.\u00a0 Julian played an essential role in the creation and institutionalization of a Black Studies Program (now the Africana Studies Department) with intellectual integrity and high academic standards.\u00a0 Thank you, Julian.<\/p>\n

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In his paragraph, Sam Watson also comments on Julian’s methodical approach to problem solving:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
From his get-go as Chair, Julian’s goal was to meet individually and at length with every member of the the department.\u00a0 He wanted to know what everyone was thinking and hoping to do.\u00a0 I was the Director of Composition then, and my meeting with Julian lasted over two days.\u00a0 Whenever I had a bright idea for something I thought we should do, I would wait for a relaxed late afternoon to go into his office and tell him my idea.\u00a0 Julian would listen.\u00a0 His eyes would slowly glaze over, and he would give me several reasons why the idea would not work.\u00a0 That reaction was invariable.\u00a0 I once told Julian that if the Arabs hired him to drill for water in the Sahara Desert, before he put a bit in the earth he would insist on plans for a flood control project, just in case.\u00a0 He agreed that would be a good idea.\u00a0 But within a week or so, Julian would be in my office explaining how the idea COULD work.\u00a0 That too was invariable.<\/p>\n

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A common thread that runs through all of the comments people sent to me is Julian’s efforts to help students and colleagues.\u00a0 I will conclude with Boyd Davis’s paragraph about how he helped her:<\/p>\n

Julian was a man of glorious contradictions. A staunch civil rights activist, and cognizant of all the latest trends in books and scholarship and politics, he absolutely despised computers. Knowing I was already involved with them — and this is pre-World-Wide-Web, mind you — he called me to his office to proudly display why he felt he didn’t need them.\u00a0 They were trackers, he said, glorified calendars. His desk was covered with small scraps of paper he was recycling and they were covered with notes in his miniscule writing. They did the job, he felt. Then he lobbied the vice-chancellor and dean for desktop computers for everyone in the department who wanted one. I never dared ask him about cellphones. Nobody could have been more supportive of faculty needs or committed to diversity. He took 24 hours (or more) to work through every issue, every question or request and then marshaled whatever help was needed. And because he was a man of incandescent (and sometimes blistering) honesty, he neither minced words of concern nor withheld words of praise.\u00a0 He pushed me into increasing my research, nudged me into trying different outlets for my writing, showed me how to collaborate with others. Thank you, Julian, then and now.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n

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Kudos<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0\u2014\u00a0As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.\u00a0 Here is the latest news:<\/p>\n
Bryn Chancellor<\/b>\u00a0was an invited speaker last week at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, VA, where she presented on the panel \u201cSecrets and Betrayals: Fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shelby LeClair<\/b>, a December graduate of our BA program, won the Carol Gay Award from the Children’s Literature Association for her essay “Serious Matters:\u00a0 How Humor Functions in Young Adult Literature about the Holocaust.”\u00a0 The Carol Gay Award recognizes an outstanding essay written by an undergraduate student.\u00a0 Sarah Minslow nominated Shelby for this award.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Ron Lunsford<\/b>\u00a0recently presented a paper titled “The Letter of Medical Necessity as Genre:\u00a0 Who Creates It and Who Controls It” (with Christopher D. Lunsford) at the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing Conference held in Kansas City.<\/p>\n

Lara Vetter<\/b>\u00a0has been awarded a Beinecke Library Visiting Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.\u00a0 She will spend May of 2019 in residence at Yale University working on a scholarly edition of H.D.’s short fiction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Greg Wickliff<\/b>\u00a0recently presented a paper titled “Evolution, Physiology, and the History of the Conflict between Science and Religion” as part of a panel on Religion and Technical Communication for the Conference on College Composition and Communication.<\/p>\n

Upcoming Events and Deadlines<\/b>\u00a0\u2014 Here is information about an upcoming event:<\/div>\n

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April 7<\/span><\/span>\u00a0— The English Department and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library are co-sponsoring a screening of\u00a0Sounder<\/i>\u00a0at the Francis Auditorium in the Main Library (310 N. Tryon Street<\/a>) on\u00a0Saturday, April 7, at 2:00 p.m.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0 This event is supported by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
April 10<\/span><\/span>\u00a0— The English Department\u00a0will be hosting Leslie Howsam, one of the most renowned historians of the book in North America, to give an open talk titled: “Book<\/span>\u00a0History: a Niche for\u00a0Nerds<\/span>, or Essential Knowledge?<\/b>” on\u00a0April 10th at 4:00 pm<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0in the Atkins Library (Halton Room).<\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/b>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\u00a0Julian’s Mason was a widely recognized authority on an early African American poet.\u00a0 What is the name of this poet?
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Last week’s answer: The modern Prometheus<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
Mary Shelley’s\u00a0<\/span>Frankenstein\u00a0has a subtitle that is tied to Greek mythology.\u00a0 What is this subtitle?<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
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Memories of Julian Mason\u00a0— Julian D. Mason died on March 20, 2018, at 2:28 p.m., but his devotion to our English Department and the larger university will not soon be forgotten.\u00a0 Julian joined the faculty of our department in 1966, and he served as the English Department Chair from 1978 to 1984.\u00a0 He continued to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-missive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}