May 2021
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Dear Colleagues,
Now that the spring semester is over, I hope you are easing into summer and finding time for rest and relaxation, along with any research, summer teaching, or fall planning you may be doing. I want to thank everyone for your incredible support during my first semester back. I can’t tell you how beneficial work has been for me these past few months. I’d like to thank Liz Miller, Lara Vetter, Jen Munroe, and Mark West for making my transition back to the chair role go so well. They, along with Angie Williams, Jennie Mussington, and Monica Burke, kept the department running smoothly last fall and into the spring.
I’d also like to thank committee chairs and committee members for making sure the work of the English Department was done effectively and efficiently. And a big thank you to those of you who volunteered for faculty governance nominations and committees, as well as for the Race and Social Justice Working Groups. These endeavors are more important than ever, and I am so proud of our faculty’s willingness to step up as participants and leaders.
I also have several people to thank for their help with this year’s annual report. Thanks to input from Liz, Lara, Angie, Mark, Tiffany Morin, Beth Gargano, Juan Meneses, Greg Wickliff, and others, annual reporting was made so much easier. We are so fortunate, I am so fortunate, to work with such amazing colleagues. Our students are wonderful, but today I am especially grateful for each member of our faculty and staff.
As the next few weeks go by, there will be more information forthcoming about our return to campus. For now, I hope you will take time for yourselves and that you put school, the pandemic, and other stressors aside to find moments of peace and renewal. Also, if you have any good news or publications to share over the summer, please send those items to me. I will include them in forthcoming missives. And if I forget to mention any of your accomplishments, please remind me of my oversight and I will remedy that.
I hope you enjoy your summer, and please stay in touch as needed. Here’s my cell phone number: 704-574-4933. And again, many thanks for all that you do in support of your students, your colleagues, and the entire department.
KUDOS
Seven M.A. students presented papers at NC State’s “Visions: Progressive Perceptions” Conference last month: Joanna Bloomquist, Madison Bradburn, Kristina Duemmler, Jordan Frederick, Rachel Needell, Nathan Nicolau, and Cody Ward.
Beth Mason, who graduated this spring from the M.A. program, will be studying rhetoric and composition in the doctoral program at UNC-Greensboro this fall.
Jessi Morton, an instructor in the English Department and former M.A. student, will be studying literature in the doctoral program at UNC-Greensboro this fall.
Meghan Barnes had the following publication appear: Marlatt, R., & Barnes, M. E. (2021). “The voice lies within them”: Teacher candidates’ conceptions of literacy and social justice pedagogy. Journal of Language and Literacy Education.
Aaron Gwyn’s interview with Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead appeared in Publishers Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/86326-a-useful-front-pw-talks-with-colson-whitehead.html
Katie Hogan’s review of Rising Tides: Reflections for Climate Changing Times, edited by Catriona Sandilands, was published in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.
Allison Hutchcraft’s poem “As Lamb in Field” was reprinted in the spring/summer issue of American Poets as part of a feature highlighting new books recommended by Poets Laureate Fellows. Allison’s poem is from her poetry collection titled Swale.
Jeffrey Leak published “Celebrity and Transitions in Black Masculinity at the Turn of the Century in African American Literature in Transition 1900-1910 (Cambridge University Press).
Juan Meneses recently published an article titled “Queering the Nation: Hegemonic Masculinity, Negative Sovereignty and the Great War in Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way” in the journal European Review. Juan also organized and chaired a three-day seminar titled “Post-Politics and the Aesthetic Imagination,” which met at the American Comparative Literature Association’s conference. He presented a paper titled “Sensing the Post-Political” at the seminar, too. Also, a Spanish translation of his essay “The COVID-19 Pandemic and the National Borders of the Imagination” was published in the magazine CTXT. The text is available here: https://ctxt.es/es/20210401/Firmas/35674/pandemia-fronteras-coronavirus-estadisticas-juan-meneses.htm
Liz Miller recently presented an invited paper (via Zoom) that was part of the Frontiers of Foreign Languages and Education Research Lecture Series, hosted by the National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education at Beijing Foreign Studies University. The title of her talk was “The emotional labor of language teaching: Experienced teachers’ accounts of emotional challenges, rewards and management strategies.”
Aaron A. Toscano, with Daniela Dal Pra of the Department of Languages and Culture Studies, translated the subtitles for Andrea Marcovicchio’s forthcoming short film The Last of Us: https://www.andreamarcovicchio.com/project/.
Lara Vetter has accepted an invitation to join the Editorial Board of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature.
Mark West was interviewed by the Charlotte Observer for an article about wearing face coverings in public now that the mask mandate in North Carolina has been lifted for people who have been vaccinated. You can read the article here: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article251553738.html
Ralf Thiede gave a presentation titled “Finite and Non-finite how come: The Michael Montgomery Collection” at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics. He was also honored for an unprecedented 4-year term as president of SECOL and is now ‘former president.’
Best wishes for a wonderful summer!
Paula