{"id":1576,"date":"2018-09-17T14:11:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T18:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=1576"},"modified":"2018-09-17T14:14:59","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T18:14:59","slug":"monday-missive-september-17-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2018\/09\/17\/monday-missive-september-17-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – September 17, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Storms and Stories<\/b>\u00a0— While I was watching the television coverage surrounding the arrival of Hurricane Florence, I heard an anchorperson say, “Hurricane Florence is taking aim at North Carolina.” \u00a0The scientific side of my brain immediately objected to this comment because of the implication that Hurricane Florence is sentient and is intentionally making decisions as to where it plans to wreak havoc.\u00a0 However, as I reflected on this comment, I realized that the anchorperson was simply following an age-old tradition of turning storms into characters in stories.<\/p>\n

In the realm of mythology, there are countless stories about storm gods.\u00a0 In fact, the word\u00a0hurricane\u00a0<\/i>is based on\u00a0Hurac\u00e1n, the Mayan god of the storm.\u00a0 Other storm gods include the Norse god Thor, the Greek god Poseidon, the Egyptian god Set, and the Japanese god Futsushi.\u00a0 All of these storm gods are characters in stories associated with severe weather.\u00a0 In some cases, they take the form of a storm. In other cases, they wield the power of a storm.\u00a0 In all cases, they provide narrative contexts that help people better process the phenomena of hurricanes and other dangerous storms.<\/p>\n

Two members of our English Department have engaged in scholarly research on the relationship between storms and stories.\u00a0 Toward the beginning of her career, JuliAnna \u00c1vila conducted an extensive project with children displaced by Hurricane Katrina in which she helped these children use digital storytelling to express their experiences related to this catastrophic storm.\u00a0 JuliAnna published the results of this research in an edited volume titled\u00a0Research on Sociocultural Influences on Motivation and Learning.<\/i>\u00a0 Paula Connolly published an article titled “Surviving the Storm: Trauma and Recovery in Children\u2019s Books about Natural Disasters” in\u00a0Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature<\/i>.\u00a0 In response to an email message that I sent to her asking for more information about this article, she wrote: \u00a0“I examined three types of children’s books (including non-fiction first person accounts) that depicted the effects of Katrina (2005) and the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004). The essay explored the books’ narrative\/visual tensions representing death and trauma while also addressing the resilience necessary to survive catastrophic disasters.”<\/p>\n

Both JuliAnna and Paula focused their research on stories associated with 21st-century storms, but their research has points in common with the ancient myths about storm gods.\u00a0 What JuliAnna, Paula, and the ancient myths all tell us is that we need the structure of stories in order to cope with storms.\u00a0 That’s why we give hurricanes human names and use anthropomorphic language when we talk about them.\u00a0 Meteorologists can tell us the science behind hurricanes, but it takes storytellers to help us understand how such storms shape our experiences.<\/p>\n

Kudos<\/strong> \u00a0\u2014 As 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 a featured author last week at the On the Same Page Literary Festival. She gave a reading and talk at the Ashe County Public Library in West Jefferson, NC.<\/p>\n

Paula Eckard<\/b>\u00a0recently published an article titled “Queerness, Opioids, and Mountaintop Removal: The Politics of Destruction in\u00a0The Evening Hour<\/i>” in a special issue of the\u00a0South Atlantic Review<\/i>\u00a0on political literature.\u00a0 The issue can be found at this link:\u00a0https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/s\/da97r8wfn2y3w17\/SAR_83.3.pdf?dl=0<\/a><\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/strong> \u2014 When the Norse god Thor isn’t creating lightening and thunder, he enjoys traveling across the sky in a chariot pulled by two large animals.\u00a0 What sort of animal pulls Thor’s chariot?<\/p>\n

Last week’s answer: Fiddler on the Roof<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zero Mostel won a Tony Award for his performance in\u00a0<\/em>A Funny\u00a0Thing\u00a0Happened on the Way to the Forum. \u00a0Two years later he won the Tony Award for his performance in another musical in which he played a character named\u00a0Tevye.\u00a0 What is the title of this 1964 musical hit?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Storms and Stories\u00a0— While I was watching the television coverage surrounding the arrival of Hurricane Florence, I heard an anchorperson say, “Hurricane Florence is taking aim at North Carolina.” \u00a0The scientific side of my brain immediately objected to this comment because of the implication that Hurricane Florence is sentient and is intentionally making decisions as […]<\/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-1576","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\/1576","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=1576"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1581,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions\/1581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}