{"id":693,"date":"2016-01-19T10:18:11","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T15:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=693"},"modified":"2016-01-19T10:18:11","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T15:18:11","slug":"monday-missive-january-18-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2016\/01\/19\/monday-missive-january-18-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – January 18, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day<\/b> — The life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is celebrated today although the 15th of January is his actual birthday.\u00a0 MLK Day, as it is often called, should remind us of the important role that Dr. King played as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, but I fear that for many Americans, especially those who were born after Dr. King’s death in 1968, the man behind MLK Day is often left in the shadows as they enjoy their long weekend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For yo\"MLK<\/a>ung people who want to know more about Dr. King as well as several other African American leaders, I highly recommend Hand in Hand:\u00a0 Ten Black Men Who Changed America <\/i>by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney.\u00a0 Published in 2012, this beautiful volume won the Coretta Scott King Book Award.\u00a0 In addition to covering the life of Dr. King, the Pinkneys include chapters on Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Malcolm X, and President Barack Obama.\u00a0 Hand in Hand<\/i>is a companion book to Let It Shine:\u00a0 Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters.<\/i>\u00a0 A few years ago, I taught Hand in Hand <\/i>in my graduate seminar titled Children’s Literature Award Winners, and my students and I all agreed that this book provides lively and engaging introductions to the lives and contributions of these important players in American history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Collaborations<\/b> — It is often assumed that scholars in the humanities work alone while those in the sciences work collaboratively.\u00a0 In our English Department, however, many of us take collaborative approaches to research and teaching. \u00a0 I could list at a least a dozen examples, but today I want to draw attention to the work of three of our professors who are currently engaged in collaborative projects with fellow UNC Charlotte faculty members from other departments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Janaka Lewis <\/b>is collaborating with Tehia Glass of the College of Education on a research project that will create resources for caregivers and educators of preschool and early elementary aged children to use African American and multicultural literature in discussions about race. They are assessing how literary texts (including Janaka’s picture book titled Brown All Over<\/i>) are beneficial in discussions about race. Janaka and Tehia were recently awarded a joint Faculty Research Grant to support this research project.<\/p>\n

Kirk Melnikoff has for the last three years taught the LBST course Sexing Shakespeare <\/i>with Religious Studies professor Kent Brintnall. The class reads Shakespeare on the stage and page through the lens of gender and sexual theory, introducing students to the ideas of Girard, Foucault, Bataille, and Butler in the context of plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream <\/i>andRomeo and Juliet<\/i>. With Jen Munroe, Kirk has also worked for the last decade with Theatre professor Andrew Hartley on the UNC Charlotte Theatre Department’s Shakespeare in Action Initiative, planning events, running talkbacks, and giving public lectures on Shakespeare and early modern British culture. This semester, SIA is concluding its six-year Thirty Six in Six <\/i>project with events dedicated to The Comedy of Errors<\/i>,Cymbeline<\/i>, and As You Like It.
\n<\/i>
\nRalf Thiede and Dan Boisvert of the Department of Philosophy will be teaching LBST 2213 ‘Language: Where it can take us’ (a Prospect for Success course) for the third time this Fall. Ralf and Dan share interests in logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind (Ralf started out as a double major in English and Philosophy at the University of M\u00fcnster). Their course combines current perspectives from philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and cognitive science and explores linguistic cooperation; the language of power and the power of language; and language as a resource that can be shared, denied, or fought over. They adopt the emerging metaphor of the brain as a narrating device and are completing the first draft of a book manuscript on language and cooperation.<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/div>\n

These three examples demonstrate that our English Department is not an isolated academic silo, nor are do we always fly solo.\u00a0 As I see it, one of the many strengths of our department is our willingness to reach across disciplines and work collaboratively with colleagues across our campus and beyond.<\/p>\n
Kudos<\/b>\u2014 As you know, I like to use my Monday<\/span> Missives<\/span> to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department.\u00a0 Here is the latest news:<\/p>\n

Bryn Chancellor<\/b> recently participated in \u201cThe Writing Show: The Art of the Short Story\u201d at the Spartanburg, SC, Public Library. \u201cThe Writing Show\u201d is an educational program about the craft and business of writing created and hosted by the Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Upcoming Events and Deadlines<\/b>\u2014\u00a0Here are some dates to keep in mind:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

January 21<\/span><\/span> \u2014 The last day to add\/drop with no grade.<\/p>\n

January 22 \u2014 The English Department meeting will take place on January 22, 2016, from 11:00<\/span><\/span>–12:30<\/span><\/span> in the English Department Conference Room.<\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/b>\u00a0\u2014 Our culture is replete with famous examples of collaborative works.\u00a0 Listed below are five such works along with a list a famous collaborators.\u00a0 See if you can match each work to the collaborators who created it:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Gilded Age
\n<\/i><\/div>\n
Yesterday
\n<\/i><\/div>\n
The Madwoman in the Attic
\n<\/i><\/div>\n
Lyrical Ballads
\n<\/i><\/div>\n
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/div>\n

William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge<\/div>\n
Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert<\/div>\n
Carole King and Gerry Goffin<\/div>\n
Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner<\/div>\n
John Lennon and Paul McCartney<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Last week’s answer: The Eiffel Tower<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884, it was the tallest structure in the world.\u00a0 However, in 1889 another tower eclipsed it as the world’s tallest structure. What is the name of the tower completed in 1889?<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — The life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is celebrated today although the 15th of January is his actual birthday.\u00a0 MLK Day, as it is often called, should remind us of the important role that Dr. King played as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement of […]<\/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-693","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\/693","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=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":696,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions\/696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}