English Newsletter Fall 2014

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Chair’s Greeting

Calendar

The English Department recently adopted a new mission statement: “Through the study of literature and writing, the Department of English prepares students to communicate effectively, think imaginatively, and live wisely in a diverse world.” As our new mission suggests, we are a department committed to student success. This inaugural issue of our newsletter highlights the success of two of our alums, the many activities English majors are involved in at USI, the department’s support of veteran students, and recent faculty accomplishments in creative work, scholarship, and teaching. The expertise of faculty and interests of students are intersecting in new classes in folklore, world literatures, young adult literature, science fiction, and the poetry of mixing. Our new Master of Arts in English program accepted its first students this fall. This newsletter will help us celebrate the great things our students and faculty are doing and help all of us stay connected. — Dr. Stephen Spencer

Department workshops: “How to write a Conference Proposal” was held

November 3, 2014: 12-1 PM, OC 2028 (led by

Jill Kincaid) Revisions 4 Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Conference CFP

Deadline: December 20 Sigma Tau Delta events: New member induction was held

November 7, 2014: 6 PM at Tin Man Annual holiday party

December 13: 7 PM, Location TBA

Student and Alumni News “Italian Sonnet about Nihilism” by: Jake Tapley (ENG 402) Part of me is burning, I watch my wick or what is left of it, become a stub.

And what is left of me is not enough, like time or like wax to a candlestick.

And “what is more often less,” that shtick is so worn out. If all we are is love, and there are ground below and sky above, but maybe, maybe nothing more than this, then I will not waste my breath except to extinguish gently the fire in my heart that fizz and pop and stay ablaze apart from me, for I cannot, will not move on into the night like an animal carcuss hit by a car, its purpose foregone.

• Creative Writing students Amber Cunningham and Jake Tapley read from their creative work during the third Tuesday Coffee House in Owensboro, KY at the Bluegrass Museum.

They were featured alongside USI faculty John Beardsley and Marcus Wicker.

• Creative Writing student Kelson Hatfield published his poem “Looking Up When the Doors Close” in Apeiron Review.

What Can I Do with an English Degree?

The English Department presented its first symposium on Recruitment and Retention.

Former USI English majors Candice (2006) and Craig Fehrman (2007) discussed how to prepare for a job in the literary world. Ms. Fehrman is a freelance book editor for Rizzoli International Publications in New York.

Mr. Fehrman is finishing up his PhD at Yale University and is a freelance writer for a number of national magazines and newspapers, as well as the author of the forthcoming book, Author-in-Chief (Simon and Schuster).

Held: Friday, September 12 3 PM OC 2036

Faculty News Dr. Oana Popescu-Sandu’s paper “Staging the Post-Socialist Woman: Saviana Stanescu’s Alternative Transnations” was accepted to be presented at the American Comparative Literature Association National Convention in Seattle in March 2015.

Abstract: Saviana Stanescu’s career is a product of transnational flows enabled by the opening of borders after 1989. Stanescu’s physical and linguistic deterritorialization as a writer together with her deterritorialized characters create an innovative space in American literature—literally the dramatic stage—where identities are shifted and negotiated.

It is a new geographical consciousness, which according to Paul Giles, has the possibility to destabilize the standard formation of local subjects (2011). This paper argues that Stanescu builds a “mutilingual, multidirectional, multigeneric” (Dimock 2010) dramatic world in which the female characters’ identity excess allows them to shift direction and reinvent themselves and create a different transnational space.

Dr. Oana Popescu-Sandu presented “From Orientalized Others to Cosmopolitan Selves: The Worldling of Eastern European Writers” at the English Language and Literature Association of Korea, November 20-22, at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea.

Dr. Melanie Lee presented her talk on “Resisting the Trope of the Schoolmarm in the Writing Classroom” in Octopber at the Indiana College English Association (ICEA) conference in Hammond, Indiana.

Abstract: Feminists from Luce Irigaray to Hélène Cixous argue that the idea of authority and knowing itself is masculinized, and scholars from Robert Connors to Susan Miller argue that composition teaching is feminized and rhetorical theorizing is masculinized. I claim that masculinizing the knowing we call logos not only proscribes the idea of textual authority and scholarly ethos as male and causes dysfunction for female writing faculty, but also fails to recognize plentiful ancient images of powerful women rhetors. Moreover, female writing faculty who resist the trope of the schoolmarm’s submissive echo of current traditional pedagogy in the composition classroom and in response to student texts through dialogue about ideas, rather than correcting students’ errors, face recrimination from students, colleagues, and administrators who do not see women as (author)itative, but rather as what Susan Miller calls “sad women in the basement.”

Matthew Graham has had a new poem accepted by the Great River Review, scheduled for publication in Spring 2015.

Marcus Wicker was the visiting writer at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. His poem, “Silencer Through the Heart While Jogging Through a Park,” was picked up by Oxford American.

His long sequence poem “Cul-de-sac Pastoral” was picked up

by Midwest Gothic.

Allen Helmstetter presented “Setting Minds on Fire: USI’s Humanities Program” at this year’s ICEA conference.

Abstract: To borrow a phrase from the conference title, it was to set “minds on fire” that the Humanities Program at the University of Southern Indiana was created some twenty years ago. A two-semester sequence of inter-disciplinary courses, the program is intended to help students integrate their knowledge of the liberal arts, broaden their cultural perspectives, and inspire them to reflect upon what it means to be human. As director of the program for the last six years, I have witnessed changes to the program that were made in response, at least to some degree, to challenges facing the liberal arts in general. For example, to reflect a more global perspective on the humanities (and to remain in the university’s Core Curriculum) the focus of the courses has been broadened from the Western Tradition to include world humanities.

Dr. Susanna Hoeness-Krupsaw presented “Online Inspirations” at the annual conference of the ICEA, October 24, at Purdue University Calumet.

Abstract: In my presentation, I will share practical tools for overcoming barriers to successful student learning, techniques that facilitate student-faculty and studentto-student interactions, and exercises that engage humanities students effectively in online course content.

My online teaching ventures have made me rethink how I interact with students. I was forced to redesign course materials for the online environment and to weigh their usefulness in terms of quality course design.

Over all, I have found this a valuable and invigorating experience that has also positively impacted my face-toface teaching.

and “Archeologies of Urban Trash in Nicolas Dickner’s Nikolski and E.L. Doctorow’s Homer&Langley” at the annual conference of the Midwestern Modern Language Association in Detroit, November 13.

Abstract: The paper explores how Canada Reads winner Nikolas Dickner and National Book Award recipient E.L. Doctorow use city living and the waste it creates in very similar ways: Both suggest that it is trash that connects otherwise isolated individuals and phenomena in a modern megalopolis, such as Montreal or New York.

A discarded book in Dickner’s novel connects three destinies whereas Doctorow’s novel features a collection of trash that spans an entire century. These trash collections reveal what humans today desire and what ails our societies.

Leisa Belleau: “What Will She Do Next?: Writing Answers to Combustible Questions” Abstract: The challenge for fiction writers, then, is to challenge our characters in moments of immediate, intense, plot-directing conflict and then carefully construct what they do in response.

This requires more time, critical thinking, observational skill, self-awareness, and curiosity than readers might imagine; a good writer must first be a good student of humanity before even the strongest technical skill can bring the page alive. All writing requires this same examination and willingness to ask uncomfortable questions without preemptive self-editing and so this applies to academic composition as well as fiction.

For example, if my composition students are that proverbial pile of dry tender, I must ask myself what kind of question I can ask them that will ignite their minds and allow them to discover the power of writing. My choice: a decision that someone will make in the heat of a staggering moment.

and at the American Folklore Society Meeting, “The King’s Daughter No More: One Woman at the Crossroads of Past and Future” Abstract: This presentation excerpts a fictional frame narrative beginning mid-seventeenth century and ending current day.

This selection occurs late nineteenth century in Niagara, New York, and involves one character of a matriarchal genealogy based on historical documents, legends, and interviews about filles du roi, a thousand women at the ethnological crossroads of language, custom, and gender/social challenge during the early settlement of New France in North America, who struggled to meet the shifting demands of a new world yet maintain the foundations of their origin.

Other USI Faculty who presented at the American Folklore Society Meeting in Santa Fe: Jenn Horn: “Veterans, Non-Veterans, and Heroes Meeting at the Intersection of Life Experience.”

Abstract: We see the traditional hero story appear in culture time and time again in a variety of ways and in a variety of mediums. Despite these retellings and modernization, the core of our hero and her/his story remains the same. This presentation, based on a new pilot program of Veterans Outreach, will take an ethnographic look at the ways hero narratives, such as those of Hercules, Rama, and Cuchulain, can allow our military veterans a place to safely share that military experience with non-military students through the commonality of language, culture, and tradition in the hero narrative.

Brianne DiBacco: “At the Crossroads of Culture and College in Basic Writing Programs.”

Abstract: Teachers of Basic Writing often struggle to engage students in course content because it is generally uninteresting and compartmentalized. This presentation will demonstrate how the use of ethnographic-based assignment design can reinvigorate the Basic Writing class with the use of story-telling, cultural studies, and narrative.

Intersecting at the crossroads of observation, language use, oral tradition, and writing, BW teachers can create a dynamic pedagogical approach that encourages reflection, learning, and adaption to the academic world. Folkloric aspects combined with ethnographic-based research can allow students to gain confidence as they enter academia.

USI’s English Department Supports Our Vets Members of the USI English Department are supporting our veterans, the largest minority group on campus, by offering courses that include components that address issues specific to this population. The goal is to help veterans assimilate into the traditional college community while honoring their unique experience and perspective. The program was inaugurated in Fall 2014 with five such courses; it has now grown to 11 classes for Spring 2015 with offerings in rhetoric and composition, literature, folklore, and creative writing. For more information contact English Department Chair, Dr. Stephen Spencer (sgspencer@usi.edu), or Dr. Paula von Loewenfeldt (pmvonloewe@usi.edu).

Eng 101 101.002 101.009 101.017

Rhetoric/Composition I: Literacy/Self MWF 8:00 – 8:50

Xavia Harrington-Chate MWF 11:00 – 11:50 Brianne DiBacco TR 1:30 – 2:45 Leisa Belleau

Eng 105 105.002 105.001

Introduction to Literature MWF 10:00 – 10:50 MW 3:00 – 4:15

James Hunter Brianne DiBacco

Eng 201 Rhetoric/Composition II: Literacy/World 201.N01 M-F Online Xavia Harrington-Chate 201.019 MWF 1:00 – 1:50 Paula von Loewenfeldt Eng 226 226.001

Introduction to Folklore MWF 1:00 – 1:50

Eng 255 255.002

Introduction of British Literary History TR 3:00 – 4:15

Paula von Loewenfeldt

Eng 288 288.001

Introduction to Women’s Literature MWF 10:00 – 10:50 Xavia Harrington-Chate

Eng 302 302.003

Creative Writing TR 1:30 – 2:45

Jennifer Horn

Matthew Graham

Other News • Ron Mitchell’s 20th Anniversary Southern Indiana Review (SIR) reading panel was accepted for AWP 2014. The readers include: Michael Waters, Patricia Smith, Robert Wrigley and Marcus Wicker.

• SIR Press Published Doug Ramspeck’s 6th book of poetry, Original Bodies.

Dr. Molly Brost and Dr. Melanie Lee ran the Evansville Museum’s Runaissance 5K on November 8 and placed in their respective divisions.