{"id":1781,"date":"2019-04-08T15:14:47","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T19:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=1781"},"modified":"2019-04-08T16:21:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T20:21:23","slug":"monday-missive-april-8-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2019\/04\/08\/monday-missive-april-8-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – April 8, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Shall We Dance<\/b>\u00a0— Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were both magnificent dancers on their own, but when they danced together they created cinematic magic.\u00a0 One of the ten films that they did together was\u00a0Shall We Dance,\u00a0<\/i>which came out in 1937.\u00a0 I watched this film several years ago on my return flight after giving a talk at the National University of Singapore. The airline offered a whole array of old musicals, and I watched one after another.\u00a0 I saw\u00a0Shall We Dance<\/i>\u00a0on a tiny screen with the sound coming through the cheap earbuds that airlines provide on transoceanic flights, and yet I was still swept away by the power of Astaire and Rogers’s performance.\u00a0 When the two of them appeared together on the screen, they seemed to engage in conversations just through their movements. \u00a0 As dance partners, each augmented the performance of the other.\u00a0 By lifting each other up, they succeeded in reaching heights that neither could reach as solo dancers.<\/p>\n

Like Astaire and Rogers, our English Department excels when it collaborates with partners.\u00a0 In recent years, the department has had the good fortune to dance with some wonderful partners, both in the Charlotte community and the campus community.\u00a0 Two of our most frequent dance partners are the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens, and both of them are on our dance card this month.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, April 10, our English Department and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library will co-sponsor a production titled “Challenging the Good Ole Ways: \u00a0Exploring Southern Childhood Narratives.” \u00a0The production will take place in the Francis Auditorium of the Main Library of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library from 6:00 p.m. to 7:45 p.m.\u00a0The production will feature twenty of our students who will perform a series of scenes and skits that reflect their inquiry into the unique experiences of Southern childhood.\u00a0 The students will be joined by Ashley Hanson, a 2018 Obama Foundation Fellow, and actress Dame Jasmine Hughes from Placebase Productions.\u00a0 Sarah Minslow, Henry Doss, and Sam Shapiro are the key organizers of this event.\u00a0 This production is supported by a grant from the NC Humanities Council.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, April 23, our English Department and the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens will co-sponsor an event titled “Gardens and Verses: \u00a0An Earth Day Celebration.” \u00a0The event will take place in the Botanical Gardens from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.\u00a0 The event will feature poetry readings about nature, on-site writing opportunities, and games all in celebration of the relationship between gardens and language.\u00a0 Jen Munroe and Matt Rowney from the English Department and Jeff Gillman from the Botanical Gardens are the key organizers of this event.<\/p>\n

As these two upcoming events demonstrate, the reach of our English Department is far greater because of our partnerships.\u00a0 Our willingness to collaborate with various partners is a trait of the department that I just take for granted.\u00a0 In a sense, the title of the film\u00a0Shall We Dance<\/i>\u00a0captures this trait.\u00a0 The phrasing suggests that it is a question, but there is no question mark.\u00a0 The title is more of a statement than a question.\u00a0 Perhaps the film should have been titled\u00a0We Shall Dance. \u00a0<\/i>In all of the films starring\u00a0Astaire and Rogers there is no question that they will be dance partners \u00a0The same can be said about our department’s willingness to collaborate with our dance partners.<\/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

Meghan Barnes<\/b>\u00a0led a workshop titled “Writing on the Fringes” at the NC English Teachers Association Spring Symposium in Statesville this past Saturday.<\/p>\n

Pilar Blitvich<\/b>\u00a0recently co-organized the inaugural Radical Right Research International Network (RIN) Workshop which was held at Swansea University. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together a network of researchers and stakeholders interested in the study of extreme far right groups from an interdisciplinary and global perspective.\u00a0 This invitation-only event hosted scholars from Europe, Australasia, North America, and South America.\u00a0 The panels consisted of papers which examined current trends within the radical right-wing scene, insights into current online\/offline activities, hate speech and social media, as well as identity constructions of the far right.\u00a0 Besides co-organizing the event, Pilar also presented a co-authored paper titled \u201cRadical Right Women in Greece and Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cara DeLoach<\/b>, a recent graduate of our M.A. with a concentration in literature, will be entering the Ph.D. in Leadership and Policy Studies program at Vanderbilt University in the fall, with a full funding package.<\/p>\n

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

April 10 — The last EMPS (Early Modern Paleography Society) meeting of the year will take place Weds, April 10, 3:30-5pm in the Conference Room (280C).<\/p>\n

April 10 — A group of twenty of our students will participate in a performance titled “Challenging the Good Ole Ways: Exploring Southern Childhood Narratives” on Wednesday, April 10, 2019, in the Francis Auditorium of the Main Library of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. This “Performance Narrative” is part of a grant from the NC Humanities Council.<\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/b>\u00a0\u2014 One of Ginger Rogers’s best friends ran an entertainment company called Desilu Productions.\u00a0 What is the name of this friend of Ginger Rogers?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Last week’s answer: Batman<\/strong><\/div>\n
What crime-fighting icon of American popular culture turned eighty this week?\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shall We Dance\u00a0— Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were both magnificent dancers on their own, but when they danced together they created cinematic magic.\u00a0 One of the ten films that they did together was\u00a0Shall We Dance,\u00a0which came out in 1937.\u00a0 I watched this film several years ago on my return flight after giving a talk […]<\/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-1781","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\/1781","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=1781"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1792,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1781\/revisions\/1792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}