{"id":1700,"date":"2019-01-07T10:07:21","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T15:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2019-01-07T10:07:21","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T15:07:21","slug":"monday-missive-january-7-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2019\/01\/07\/monday-missive-january-7-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – January 7, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
The Inclusion of Science in English Courses-<\/b>– Last semester I recorded an episode for the NPR program called “The Academic Minute” in which I argued that the humanities and the sciences should be seen as overlapping circles on a Venn diagram.\u00a0 I went on to discuss how professors in our English Department draw on insights from the sciences in their research.\u00a0 Since I had less than two minutes to make my points, I did not discuss how our faculty also incorporate the sciences in their teaching.\u00a0 However, many of our faculty members have a strong background in the sciences, and they draw on this background in their classes.\u00a0 I recently contacted a number of these faculty members and asked them for information on how they incorporate the sciences in their teaching.\u00a0 Their responses are listed below.<\/p>\n

Paula Eckard regularly teaches a course called Literature of the American South.\u00a0 In her response to me, she explains how she includes the sciences in this course:\u00a0 “When I teach the novel\u00a0The Evening Hour\u00a0<\/i>by Carter Sickels, I use various aspects of science and technology to examine the novel, including coal mining technologies, environmental destruction of mountains, and heavy metal contamination of groundwater and waterways.\u00a0 We also discuss health implications related to these environmental issues, as well the health and social science aspects of opioid addiction, illness, and aging in Appalachia.\u00a0 When I teach works by Thomas Wolfe, including\u00a0The Lost Boy\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Look Homeward, Angel,\u00a0<\/i>we discuss issues related to infectious disease in the early 20th century, including typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and influenza.\u00a0 As a registered nurse, I had many courses in the sciences, so bringing those topics to bear on literary discussions seems a relevant thing to do.”<\/p>\n

Jen Munroe has researched the roles that women have played in the history of science.\u00a0 In her response to me, she discusses how this research interest relates to her teaching:\u00a0 “Last spring I taught an upper-division course titled Gender, Science, and Nature. I asked the students to consider how the development of scientific discourse in the seventeenth century in England (the origins of our modern scientific methodology) cast the nonhuman world (plants and nonhuman animals) as objects of inquiry divorced from the human world and how notions of male, elite ‘objective,’ scientific knowledge was posed as in opposition to amateur experimentation and knowledge of non-male, non-elite groups and resulted in the further marginalization of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and the poor. In our course, that is, we considered how studying the ways that gender, science, and nature (and their interconnections) came to mean in a certain way three hundred years ago has informed tensions between Humanities and STEM today.”<\/p>\n

Alan Rauch has a graduate degree in biology, and he frequently draws on his background in the sciences in his scholarship.\u00a0 In his response to me, he explains how he incorporates science and technology in many of the courses that he teaches: \u00a0“Book History, which I frequently teach, is always and inevitably about science and technology, to say nothing of literacy and the rise of ‘knowledge’ (often scientific) as a commodity.\u00a0 The Graphic Novel, relying as it does on visual representation is enabled and driven by technologies of print and the cognitive awareness of how readers process image and text together.\u00a0 Finally, Animals, Culture, & Society addresses the very essence of our scientific selves, and the cultural identities that we manufacture out of our organismal selves, and the animals around us.\u00a0 My interest in animals, culture, and society stems, of course, from the many years I spent studying zoology, but also draws on a lifelong commitment to scientific knowledge.\u00a0 That commitment was predicated on a model that rejects the idea of overlapping circles in a Venn diagram, in favor of a synthetic matrix in which the terms science and culture are merely different terms that describe the same idea.\u00a0 Cultural studies of animals, which looks at behavioral, ecological, physiological, and anatomical variations of living beings, underscores the idea of a synthetic matrix because we can never get ourselves out from under our own interpretations of ourselves as scientific and cultural creatures.”<\/p>\n

Matthew Rowney has an expertise in the relationship between literature and the environment especially as it relates to the Romantic period in British literature.\u00a0 In his response to me, he writes about the various ways he draws on this expertise in his teaching:\u00a0 “In my Romanticism and Ecology course, I ask students to consider the first published account of the life of a black woman, Mary Prince, which details ten years working in the\u00a0salt<\/span>\u00a0ponds on Turks Island, then part of the British colony of The Bahamas. We consider the importance of this substance in part through an understanding of its scientific qualities, including its geological formation and contribution to the tectonics that shape the earth’s surface, its chemical qualities, which enable its use as a preservative throughout much of human history, and its physiological effects, particularly in terms of the epidemiology of hypertension among members of the African diaspora.\u00a0 My experience has been that when students consider cultural and scientific representations side by side rather than in isolation, they gain unique insight into how we might face contemporary global challenges.”<\/p>\n

Ralf Thiede is interested in the relationship between language acquisition and the science of brain development.\u00a0 In his response to me, he comments on how this interest relates to some of the linguistics courses that he teaches: \u00a0“Since 1990, I have been teaching a course called The Mind and Language that explores how brain architecture and language shape each other (within and across brains).\u00a0 This semester, I am teaching (for the fifth time) a course in the linguistics of children’s literature, this time with an emphasis on what children’s books uniquely contribute to neural development that is not already present in child-directed speech.\u00a0 And in the Fall of 2019, I am going to teach an honors course that explains linguistic inequality in evolutionary terms.”<\/p>\n

Greg Wickliff has conducted extensive research on the connections between the history of science and the development of technical communication.\u00a0 In his response to me, he explains how this research interest informs his teaching: \u00a0“I integrate science into several of my English courses that examine how formal arguments are constructed through technology, writing, and illustration. For example, in my course titled Visual Rhetoric, students are introduced to material from Lorraine Datson (a historian of science) and Peter Galison (a physicist) about the history of the concept of\u00a0Objectivity<\/i>, then they read and discuss material from Colin Ware (a data visualization expert and oceanographer) in\u00a0Visual Thinking for Design<\/i>, about the physiology and perceptual psychology of vision.\u00a0 Students also explore the treatment of\u00a0Photography and Science<\/i>\u00a0by Kelley Wilder (a historian of photography) and go on to study selections from a book by the historian of science Klaus Hentschel:\u00a0Visual Cultures in Science and Technology: A Comparative History<\/i>. By the end of the course, questions of computer modeling and measurement come to the fore in selections from the computer scientists Julie Steele and Noah Illinsky\u2019s\u00a0Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data Through the Eyes of Experts.”<\/i><\/p>\n

As these six examples illustrate, our English Department has many connections to the STEM disciplines, and these connections are often reflected in the courses that we offer.\u00a0 At least in terms of our English Department, there really isn’t a conflict between the humanities and the STEM disciplines.\u00a0 For our department, this much ballyhooed conflict is just a false dichotomy.<\/p>\n

Kudos<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0\u2014 As you know, I like to use my\u00a0Monday<\/span>\u00a0Missives<\/span>\u00a0to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.\u00a0 Here is the latest news:<\/p>\n

Bryn Chancellor<\/b>\u00a0last week was a Visiting Writer for Converse College\u2019s low-residency MFA program in Spartanburg, SC. She gave a\u00a0craft lecture titled \u201cLater, and Later Still: Exploring the \u2018Nth’ Perspective and the Retrospective \u2018I\u2019,\u201d and a fiction reading from\u00a0Sycamore.<\/i><\/p>\n

Katie Hogan<\/b>\u00a0recently delivered the following two papers at the Modern Language Association Conference in Chicago: \u00a0\u201cNarrating Queer Disaster\u201d and\u00a0\u201cCompounded Exploitation: Race, Gender, and Contingency.<\/p>\n

Jen Munroe<\/b>\u00a0recently published a co-authored article titled\u00a0\u201cBecoming Visible: Recipes in the Making\u201d in\u00a0Early Modern Women Journal,\u00a0<\/i>13(1) 2018: 132-142.\u00a0 She was also\u00a0a respondent for the “Marlowe and Ecology” roundtable at the Modern Language Association Conference in Chicago.<\/p>\n

Upcoming Events and Meetings<\/b>\u00a0— Here is a list of upcoming events and deadlines:<\/p>\n

January 9 — First day of classes for the Spring 2019 semester.<\/p>\n

January 16 — Last day for students to add or drop a course with no grade.<\/p>\n

January 29 — The Personally Speaking presentation featuring Janaka Bowman Lewis will take place on Tuesday, January 29, 2019, at UNC Charlotte Center City.\u00a0 Janaka’s presentation on her book\u00a0Freedom Narratives of African American Women<\/i>\u00a0will begin at 6:30 p.m.\u00a0 A book signing and reception will follow her presentation. For more information and to RSVP, please click on the following link: \u00a0https:\/\/exchange.uncc.edu\/how-early-womens-writings-led-to-civil-rights-discourse\/<\/a><\/p>\n

February 7 — Grace Ocasio will participate in a poetry reading at the Waccamaw Library on Pawleys Island, SC, from 3:00 to 4:00.<\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/b>\u00a0\u2014 This Monday Missive spotlights six faculty members who incorporate science in their English courses, but these faculty members are by no means the only English faculty members who draw on the sciences in their teaching.\u00a0 For example, another faculty member is teaching a course this semester on the “Rhetoric of Science.” \u00a0What is the name of the professor who is teaching this course?<\/p>\n

Last week’s answer: Apple Records<\/strong><\/div>\n

“Imagine” was originally released on a record label that was founded by the Beatles in 1968.\u00a0 What is the name of this record label?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Inclusion of Science in English Courses-– Last semester I recorded an episode for the NPR program called “The Academic Minute” in which I argued that the humanities and the sciences should be seen as overlapping circles on a Venn diagram.\u00a0 I went on to discuss how professors in our English Department draw on insights […]<\/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-1700","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\/1700","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=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1703,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions\/1703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}