{"id":1606,"date":"2018-10-15T10:41:16","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T14:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=1606"},"modified":"2018-10-15T10:41:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T14:41:16","slug":"monday-missive-october-15-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2018\/10\/15\/monday-missive-october-15-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – October 15, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"
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National Hispanic Heritage Month<\/b>\u00a0— Today marks the culmination of the 2018 National Hispanic Heritage Month.\u00a0 Officially described “as a way to promote the history, culture and contributions of Hispanic-Americans. Specifically \u2014 those whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America,” National Hispanic Heritage Month takes place each year from September 15 though October 15.\u00a0 Given the goals associated with this special month, I think it is especially fitting that members of our English Department recently launched several initiatives that relate to these goals.<\/p>\n

Maya Socolovsky has been teaching a special topics course titled “Introduction to U.S. Latinx Literature” for a number of years, and the course has attracted strong interest from our students.\u00a0 She recently proposed making this course a permanent course with its own course number.\u00a0 At its last meeting, our Undergraduate Committee approved Maya’s proposal and sent it to forward for departmental approval.\u00a0 During last week’s department meeting, the faculty voted in favor of this proposal.\u00a0 By voting to make this a permanent course, the department not only embraced this particular course, but it also recognized the importance of Latinx literature as a vibrant and vital part of America’s diverse culture.<\/p>\n

Of course, Latinx culture also involves more than literature.\u00a0 Another important aspect of this culture involves foodways.\u00a0 Next semester Consuelo Salas will teach a graduate seminar in which she will address this aspect of Latinx culture.\u00a0 When I asked her for more information about her plans for this seminar, she sent me the following email: “In the Spring, I’ll be teaching ENGL 6062, which I have themed the Rhetoric of Food.\u00a0 As part of the course, I plan to have students examine community foodway literacies and practices in the Charlotte area.\u00a0 The students will be exposed to various Latinx communities, their foodways, and explore the ways that different Latinx communities have made a food home for themselves in the area.”\u00a0
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JuliAnna \u00c1vila is interested in helping Latinx students find a home for themselves within the university.\u00a0 Last week, she initiated the formation of an honors society for Latinx students.\u00a0 In an email that she sent to faculty, she wrote: “I’m working to create a university-wide Latinx Honor Society, and am looking for students to help establish this group. So, I’m writing to ask for your help with two things.\u00a0 First, if you have students who you think might be interested, please send names along to me.\u00a0 Although membership criteria will need to be set by the group itself, I’m guessing that it will include a g.p.a. of at least 3.5 and some level of community involvement.\u00a0 Second, if you have had experience with helping create a student group and have advice, I would appreciate hearing it.” \u00a0I spoke to JuliAnna a few days after she sent out her email, and she informed me that she is already getting a very positive response, especially from members of the English Department.<\/p>\n

As these three examples illustrate, our English Department will continue to support the goals associated with the National Hispanic Heritage Month even after the special month draws to close.<\/p>\n

Kudos<\/b>\u00a0\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

Allison Hutchcraft\u00a0<\/b>is the subject of an interview that has recently been published on\u00a0The Massachusetts Review<\/i>\u00a0website:\u00a0https:\/\/www.massreview.org\/node\/7155<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Paula Martinac<\/b>\u00a0will be presenting and reading at the NC Writers’ Conference in Charlotte, Nov. 2-4. She was recently featured on their website:\u00a0https:\/\/www.ncwriters.org\/index.php\/our-members\/network-news\/9929-fc18-pm<\/a><\/p>\n

Kirk Melnikoff<\/b>\u00a0recently published the article “Shakespeare’s Urban Comedies and the Lure of True Crime and Satire” in\u00a0The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy<\/i>. (Oxford UP 2018).<\/p>\n

Daniel Shealy<\/b>\u00a0delivered a presentation titled “‘Duty chains me to my galley’: Publishing Louisa May Alcott” at the Concord Free Public Library in Concord, MA.\u00a0 on October 13, 2018.\u00a0 The presentation was in celebration of the 150th anniversary of\u00a0Little Women<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Clayton Tarr\u00a0<\/b>recently presented a paper titled “‘[A] daring imposture’: Registration and Impersonation in Wilkie Collins’s\u00a0The Woman in White<\/i>” at the North American Victorian Studies Association Conference.<\/p>\n

Heather Vorhies<\/b>\u00a0recently presented a paper titled “Enthusiastic Bodies; Republican Minds” at the Rhetoric and Religion in the Twenty-First Century Conference.<\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/b>\u00a0\u2014 The National Hispanic Heritage Month focuses mostly on cultural topics, but it also has connections to Latin American politics.\u00a0 For those interested in keeping up to date on Latin American politics, they should check out the weekly blog on this topic that is written by a UNC Charlotte faculty member\/administrator.\u00a0 What is the name of the person who writes this Latin American Politics Blog?<\/p>\n

Last week’s answer: Louis Armstrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the members of our English Department went to New Orleans to participate in the 2018 Conference of the Popular Culture Association in the South, they flew in and out of the major airport in New Orleans.\u00a0 This airport is named for a famous former resident of New Orleans.\u00a0 What is the name of this famous person?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Hispanic Heritage Month\u00a0— Today marks the culmination of the 2018 National Hispanic Heritage Month.\u00a0 Officially described “as a way to promote the history, culture and contributions of Hispanic-Americans. Specifically \u2014 those whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America,” National Hispanic Heritage Month takes place each year from September […]<\/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-1606","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\/1606","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=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1610,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}