{"id":2085,"date":"2019-12-09T14:05:16","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T19:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=2085"},"modified":"2019-12-09T14:05:16","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T19:05:16","slug":"monday-missive-december-9-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2019\/12\/09\/monday-missive-december-9-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – December 9, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Storied Places<\/strong>\u00a0— I just return last night from participating\u00a0in a symposium at Oxford University.\u00a0 The symposium was interesting, but what I enjoyed\u00a0the most was wandering the streets of Oxford.\u00a0 As a children’s literature professor, I think of Oxford is a special place.\u00a0 It is associated with a number of important children’s books, including Lewis Carroll’s\u00a0Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,\u00a0<\/em>J.R.R. Tolkien’s\u00a0The Hobbit,\u00a0<\/em>and C.S. Lewis’s\u00a0The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0The good people of Oxford celebrate their connections to the classic works of children’s literature that were\u00a0written there.\u00a0 There are plaques and guidebooks that point out special places in Oxford associated with children’s literature, and most everyone, including me, is eager to help visitors as they go on their literary pilgrimages.\u00a0 When I walked to the site of the symposium, I went right by the pub called The Eagle and Child, where Tolkien, Lewis and some of their colleagues met every week to visit and to critique each other’s manuscripts.\u00a0 As I was walking by the pub, a woman asked me if I would take her picture standing under the sign.\u00a0 We ended up\u00a0chatting for several minutes about Tolkien.\u00a0 This type of interaction is common in Oxford.\u00a0 The city’s connections\u00a0to children’s literature fosters a sense of community that I find appealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not the only member of our English Department who is interested in the connections between place and stories.\u00a0 Daniel Shealy, for example, has a deep-seated\u00a0interest in the many authors from Concord, Massachusetts, including Lousia May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.\u00a0 As a frequent visitor to Concord, Daniel has developed an expertise in the unique literary culture that emerged in Concord in the mid-nineteenth century and persists to this day.\u00a0 Another example is Bryn Chancellor.\u00a0 Bryn spent some of her formative years in the American southwest, and she often sets her stories in this region. For Bryn, the desert-like conditions in American southwest spark her imagination.\u00a0 In her novel\u00a0Sycamore,\u00a0<\/em>the setting is so important to her story that almost seems like a character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reflecting on the relationship between places and stories, I am reminded that stories can also take us to places just through the act of reading.\u00a0 For me, one of the pleasures of being an English professor is that I am able to introduce students to a wide variety of wonderful places.\u00a0 My students might not be able to stroll the streets of Oxford, but they can experience some of the magic of storied places by picking up a book.\u00a0 As Dr. Seuss once said, “You’re off to Great Places!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kudos<\/strong>\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\n\n\n

Meghan Barnes<\/strong>\u00a0recently presented the following three papers at the Literacy Research Association Conference held in Tampa: “You Can’t Un-See Color:\u00a0 A PhD, a Divorce, and The\u00a0Wizard of Oz;”\u00a0<\/em>“Contested Pasts, ComPlicated Presents:\u00a0 Pre-Service Teachers’ Developing Conceptions of Community;” and “Activism and the Academy:\u00a0 Public Literacy Scholars’ Reflections on our Past and Future Work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paula Connolly<\/strong>\u00a0recently published a book review of\u00a0Radiant with Color & ARt:\u00a0 McLaughlin Brothers and the Business of Picture Books”\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>in the\u00a0Children’s Literature Association Quarterly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dina Massaachi,<\/strong>\u00a0one of our part-time faculty members, recently published an article titled\u00a0\u201c’Written Soley to Please Children’: Is Oz Still A Story for Kids?\u201d in\u00a0The Baum Bugle.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ralf Thiede<\/strong> published an article titled “Synesthetic Entrainment in Interactive Reading Sessions of Children’s Books” in the\u00a0Children’s Literature Association Quarterly.<\/em>\u00a0His was one of five articles selected for a special issue on “Cognitive Approaches to Children’s Literature.” The same issue also contains a very favorable review by Hugh Crago of Ralf’s book\u00a0Children’s Literature, Brain Development, and Language Acquisition<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/strong>\u00a0— In addition to writing children’s books, Lewis Carroll spent many years teaching at Oxford University.\u00a0 What subject did he teach? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week’s answer: Tom Hanks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fred Rogers was a big advocate of pretend play as is reflected in the following quotation by Rogers: “When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality.\u00a0 A stick can be a magic wand.\u00a0 A sock can be a puppet.\u00a0\u00a0 A small child can be a superhero.”\u00a0 What is the name of the actor who plays the role of Fred Rogers in the current film about Fred Rogers’s life?\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Storied Places\u00a0— I just return last night from participating\u00a0in a symposium at Oxford University.\u00a0 The symposium was interesting, but what I enjoyed\u00a0the most was wandering the streets of Oxford.\u00a0 As a children’s literature professor, I think of Oxford is a special place.\u00a0 It is associated with a number of important children’s books, including Lewis Carroll’s\u00a0Alice’s […]<\/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-2085","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\/2085","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=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2088,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions\/2088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}