EMLAccent

Spring 2014

Mansfield UniversityEnglish and Modern Languages Newsletter

Review: The Blending of Space and Time

–By Rosalie C. MackayAssia Djebar’s film La Nouba des Femmes du Mont

Chenoua, demonstrates the strength, perseverance, and the voiceof a female culture that still exists today. This antiquated filmconveys a sense of ‘something cherished.’ Real Berber womenreenacting the plight of their people was powerful. The blendingof space and time was intriguing as well and symbolic. Thebeginning of the film starts with a wide scope then narrows in toclose proximity of the intimate space of

My Time at MacDowell

–By Louise Sullivan-Blum

I arrive at the MacDowell Colony after dark, havingmade my way across the mountains of Vermont on a two-lane highway in driving snow, carrying three boxes ofbooks, a crate of essential files, a draft of my manuscript, asuitcase of warm clothes, and four pounds of coffee. Iquickly become accustomed to complete solace in mystudio (where James Baldwin, Alice Sebold, and Mary Karrhave also worked). Breakfast is prepared for me eachmorning, my lunch is delivered in a picnic basket every dayat noon, and dinner is served each night at 6:30. Whilethere, I immerse myself in reading, write every day, makenew friends, walk in the woods, do yoga every day, andwatch snow fall for entire days at a time. I make fires in myfireplace while I write. My days rotate between profoundinspiration, absolute euphoria, and bone-chilling failure ofnerve. There are days I struggle to write a paragraph, andothers where I revise two or three chapters in a matter ofhours. I stagger out of the woods two months later with a400 page manuscript of 111,000 words (too long, alas, asalways far too long) that will inevitably require much, muchmore revision before I am done. It has been two monthssince ventured outside of a two-mile radius. Two monthssince I last listened to the news. Ifeel simultaneously guilty andserene. Terrible things havehappened in the world, and theyhave not touched me. I feelblessedly un-depressed. I say mygood-byes and head for home.The work, I fear, has only justbegun.

Contributions:

Annotating Carlyle……….………………………….………..7

Can’t Stop Teaching…….…….………………………….…..8

Morning in the Window…………………….……….……….11

My Time at MacDowell……………………………….………1

Review: The Blending of Space andTime……………………...………………………..……1

News:

EML Student Awards..……………………………….……….2

Faculty Spotlight…………………………………………….…8

Graduating Seniors……………………………………..…….3

News from Abroad…………………………………….………3

Poetry Out Loud…………………….……………………..… 7

Professional Writing………………………………………….10

Retiree Profile: Tom Murphy…………….……………..……5

Retiree Profile: Linda Rashidi……………………………..…4

Shakespeare Field Trip………………………………….……4

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Please, send news,announcements, and

contributions to:

lpifer@mansfield.edu

Editor’s note: Professor Sullivan-Blum is on sabbaticalleave for the Spring 2014 semester. She was awarded aneight week writing residency fellowship at the prestigiousMacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where she workedon her latest novel.

The Blending of Space and Time(Continued from page 1)

home. The impotent man watches helplessly as Lila is in herown world of caring forself and her daughter: man on theoutside, yet always close. Her world is private yet opened forall to see. Djebar uses narrative, memories, and dreams todepict the Algerian revolution and sings the praises of Algerianheroes and heroines. Outside the house, the village, the town, and into the cityLila meanders in and out space and time as she searches for herfamily member’s death. The Berber women help to guide heron this quest. From the cave of waiting to the fields of grain thelocal women work together to explain what happens and tocomfort Lila as well. They cook outside, draw water from wellsoutside; they sit outside for meals and companionship. Alwaysoutside, outside the world, outside of the other continent,outside of the human race. Djebar portrays life outside of the home many times duringthe film: baking bread in a community oven, sharing in thefellowship of food and friendship, of family and home. Thechildren’s job seemed to be drawing water from the wellsoutside. Children drawing on the hope of the future as theypour out the essence of life. The Berber women of Mt.Chenoua share in this hope as they wash their faces with thewater, then offer their child a drink from the palms of theirhands. The female ancestry continues to nourish the young. Through this nouba (oral narrative), Djebar takes theaudience on a journey with Lila to discover the events that tookplace during the Algerian Revolution. Throughout the film, theevents travel through time, back and forth from the past to herpresent and for us, the future. The film maker is able to tie allthe elements of time as she remembers the past, while dealingwith problems of the present; she often looks out across theland from a mountain or high position. She is looking into thefuture.

La nouba is a story that has been waiting so long to betold. The viewer can feel the passion, even with Lila’s flataffect. There is very little facial expression, but the passionruns deep like the wells of Chenoua. Silence speaks volumes asthe sister sits in the tree waiting. After she witnesses the deathof her brother no words can express the pain in her heart. Theheavy weight of the truth hangs like a thick blanket over theBerber village, over Algeria, over Assia Djebar. She is still thevoice crying out for the captives to be set free. Maybe one dayshe will be heard.

Note: This film is in the MU’s DVD collection. Check it out!

A number of EML students have been awardedacademic prizes for the 2013-2014 academic year.

Outstanding Achievement in 1�� year French: TaylorStupksi

Outstanding Achievement in 2ⁿ� year French: KathrynJanover

Outstanding Achievement in 1�� year German: HeathDegaramo, Jourdan Buckheit

Outstanding Achievement in 2ⁿ� year German: ChelsiWood

Outstanding Modern Language major: Jenna Alderman

Henry Dyck Award for Outstanding Achievement inHistory of the English Language: Hunter Hill

Bernie Koloski Award for Outstanding Achievement inAmerican Literature: Miranda Peery

Larry K. Uffleman Award for Outstanding Achievement inBritish Literature: Emily Smith

Outstanding English major: Courtney Wark

Outstanding Senior in English: Rachel Sterling

Two English majors, Melissa Walker and Chelsi Wood,have won a North Hall Prize for outstanding studentessays that use North Hall library resources andservices. Melissa Walker is a freshman English major,and her essay, “Perceptions of Beauty in ‘Beauty andthe Beast,’” originally submitted for FYS 1100 GrimmVariations, won the short paper category. Chelsi Woodis a graduatingEnglish major, andher essay, “Elizabeththe Rhetor: TheMakings of a FemaleKing,’” originallysubmitted for HST4496 SeniorSeminar, won thelong paper category.Each student wins a

EML Student Awards

Editor’s Note: Rosalie Mackay is a student in Dr. LindaRashidi's ENG 3305: African Literature, which is anelective in the Women's Studies Minor.

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Graduating Seniors’ Plans for the Future

Curtis Evans will be focusing on his fiction writingand attempting to get some of it published.

Matthew Getz will be applying for teaching positionsand plans to work as a substitute teacher in theLycoming county school districts.

Jordan Hallock plans to teach English abroad ineither Europe or South America after graduating. Heplans on continuing his Spanish studies while abroadand teaching both English and Spanish in the future.

Marta Knapp intends to apply for a teaching positionin Costa Rica after graduation.

Olivia Mishler is student teaching in Alaska. Sheplans to return to New York and seek her New YorkCertification as well as an English Second LanguageCertificate.

Cameron Murphy has been accepted to St. John’sUniversity to study for his M.A. in English.

Emily Smith plans to become both a writer and aneditor after education.  She hopes to eventually own apublishing house in order to give inspirational andabstract writers a louder voice within our society.

Emily Wolfel plans to start an MFA program inJanuary for Fiction Writing and later plans to pursue aMaster's and PhD in English Literature.

Chelsi Wood will be attending Marywood Universityin order to earn a Master's degree in Teaching Englishand History.

News from Abroad

–By Monique Oyallon

Last year (the summer and fall of 2013) has seen agood participation in study-abroad programs, with severalof our English and Modern Languages students, JordanHallock (BSE English) and Marta Knapp (English andSpanish BSE), participating in a six-weeks intensiveSpanish course in the Universidad Blas Pascal in Argentina,and Hannah Lopez (BA Spanish) spending six weeks at theUniversidad Pública de Navarra in Spain. Hannah continuesher stay in Spain for the 2013–2014 academic year and iscurrently studying at the university in Almería. Finally,Jeffrey Johnson is completing his BA in Spanish thisSpring at the Universidad de Murcia.

Marta and Jordan are applying to an internshipprogram offered by the Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio forelementary and secondary education graduates (in Englishor Spanish). If selected, they will be trained to be teacherassistants for the university’s partner schools in Madrid.

Students from other departments at MU are alsousing some of the options offered by the InternationalStudent Exchange Programs (ISEP) network in Italy(Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), India (University ofHyderabad), Finland (the University of Helsinki and theAbo Akademi), Sweden (Mälardalen University), andScotland (Napier University).

As in previous academic years, one can studySpanish, German, or French in any semester at universitiesin Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico,Spain, Uruguay, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, aswell as in theReunion Island andthe French Antilles(Guadeloupe andMartinique).

One can alsostudy Russian at theUniversity ofLatvia, Polish atWroclawUniversity, andArabic at theAmericanUniversity ofSharjah in theUnited ArabEmirates.

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(Continued on page 10) The Pitfalls of Studying Abroad

–By Lynn Pifer

After earning a B.A. in liberal arts from College ofWooster and an M.S. in education from SyracuseUniversity, Linda Stump Rashidi began her career inthe Peace Corps, teaching at Kabul University inAfghanistan. She also taught English as a secondlanguage in Tokyo, Japan, before returning to thestates to earn her M.A. in English linguistics and herPh.D. in linguistics from Michigan State University.She taught at Alma College, Jilin Teachers Collegein China, and Al Akhawayn University of Ifrane inMorocco before coming to Mansfield University in1999. We have benefited from her linguistic skilland knowledge of the world ever since.

Dr. Rashidi has been an active member of theEnglish and Modern Languages department,teaching English Grammar, History of the EnglishLanguage, Modern African Writers, and anIntroduction to Linguistics course that she designedfor our university. She is the author of a book,(Re)constructing Reality: Complexity in Durrell'sAlexandria Quartet. (2005 by Peter Lang) and theeditor of a special issue of the journal Languagesand Linguistic, titled “Language and Gender inIslam” (2002). She has also published severalscholarly articles and traveled to conferences aroundthe world to give presentations

Since she is retiring at the end of the springsemester, EML Accent has asked Dr. Rashidi to tellus a little about her career at Mansfield (and aroundthe world).

What was the most exciting or rewardingexperience you've had abroad?

Places where I have taughtoutside the USA (in this order):

Shakespeare Field Trip to see Titus Andronicusat Cornell University.

–By Ed Washington

On Saturday, February 8, 2014, Dr. Ed Washington, English,arranged for a group of 13 students, faculty members, and friendsto attend a stage production of Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy,Titus Andronicus, at the Cornell University Schwartz Center for thePerforming Arts in Ithaca, New York.

Dr. Washington drove a University van filled with present andpast Shakespeare students to the play. The English departmentgraciously covered the cost of transportation. The group departedfrom MU campus at 10:00 on Saturday morning. Students had twohours on their own to explore the Cornell campus and local collegeeateries in College Town. The play started 2:00 p.m. and the groupreturned to campus by 7:00 p.m. the same day.

Everyone agreed that the play was outstanding, especially for auniversity production where all but one of the cast members werestudents; and where half of the actors were not theater majors.Much credit for the fine production goes to student director,Spencer Wale: he filled the stage with fast- paced action andfeatured many striking props that percolated with significance.Wale made the 400-year-old play come alive for a contemporaryaudience. In the impromptu talk-back session with the cast afterthe play, an MU student commented on the quality of the acting;the lead player responded that the cast had worked together for ayear and had jelled beautifully with this director for thisproduction.

The playgoers all agreed that the Cornell production of TitusAndronicus was an excellent piece of theater which encouragedthem to attend moreplays in the future.Those participating inthe field trip included:Courtney Wark, ZachMinier, Kat Drexler,Chelsi Wood, JoshuaWood, Emily Wolfel,John Dubel, BenHockenberry, EmilyHockenberry, RachelSterling, Krysta Fuller,Curtis Evans, Dr.Rashidi, and Dr.Washington.

Retiree Profile

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India (an orphanage in Bombay), Afghanistan(Kabul University), Japan (Tokyo English Center),China (Jilin Teachers College), Morocco (al-Akhawayn University), and Bulgaria (SophiaUniversity). Afghanistan was certainly theexperience that I cherish the most, for a number ofreasons. First, I was young and idealistic, and stillthought that I could change the world. This was1967; Afghanistan was at peace and a place nobodyhad heard of-except WTs (those hashish-smokingworld travelers) and my fellow PCVs (Peace CorpsVolunteers). It was a time and place of innocence,and I felt free in a way I have not felt since. But myjob at Kabul University as a teacher trainer was oneof enormous prestige (a heady experience for a 20-something): I was responsible for training womenteachers and placing them in girls' schools aroundthe country. Second, Afghanistan is a country ofbreathtaking beauty, something that all thosenewscasts miss. I remember flying into Kabulairport over the Hindu Kush; the moment I alighted,I felt at home, like I had landed exactly where Ibelonged. I fell in love with a country-and later itspeople. Third, it was in Afghanistan that Idiscovered that I could function in a foreignlanguage, a life-changing experience. Fourth, inAfghanistan I also discovered that I loved teaching--that this was something that I was good at-and thatI was captivated, mesmerized by linguistics.

What's your most memorable teaching moment (atMansfield or elsewhere)?

I am a grammar freak; I could spend every wakingmoment 'doing grammar' in any number oflanguages. And I have so enjoyed teaching EnglishGrammar here at MU. I'm not sure I have one most-memorable moment, but those days when aclassroom full of students gets charged withanalyzing a sentence, arguing for their owninterpretation, challenging each other with difficultstructures is a pure joy that I will miss. One of mylasting memories is of Max and Jason nearlycoming to blows over competing analyses. Martawas literally out of her chair ready to separate them!Grammar boring stuff about where to put yourcommas? Never.

Since coming to Mansfield, you created ENG 1175 Introto Linguistics. What other new courses have you taughthere?

Retiree Profile

Tom Murphy

–By Lynn Pifer

Dr. Thomas Murphy has been a professor atMansfield since 1990. He holds a B.A. in English fromFordham University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Englishfrom Ohio State University. His teaching specialtieshave been in British Literature, particularly Old andMiddle English, and in Nature Writing. He has designedand offered a wide variety of courses while atMansfield, including The Films of Terry Gilliam, Filmsof Coen Brothers, King Arthur and Robin Hood, and aSenior Seminar on Chivalry.

Tom has published numerous nature writing essays,and has co-edited Literature, Writing, and the NaturalWorld with Jimmy Guignard (2009). His essay, “TheFeeder Tree: An Album,” from his collection, ThirteenSugar Maples, was selected as a finalist for Elsewhere'sScott Russell Sanders Prize for nonfiction in 2008.

EML: You worked for a long time outside ofacademia. Why did you leave your previous careerto teach at Mansfield?

It was 1988 and I was working as Assistant to the VicePresident of Labor Relations for Consolidated RailCorporation in Philadelphia. I was forty-four and hadbeen working for Conrail since 1976 (after teaching atDePaul University for a year). I did not conceive ofmyself as a business executive, but I realized that ourthree children had known me as only that. Between thecommute and my work day I was gone for 12 hours aday.

My wife Madalene and I began to talk about how wewere living and then included the kids in theconversation. We thought that we could simplify ourlives and get along with less so that we might be moreflexible with what I could do. Finding a teaching jobseemed unlikely, so I began to do

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ENG 1175: Nature of Language is actually a courseI taught at Central Michigan University when I wasan adjunct there. I also taught this course (a non-technical look at language and how it functions inour daily lives) at al-Akhawayn University inMorocco. But as I developed it for our students, Ikept in mind that this course is also an anthropologycourse. And since I am essentially ananthropological linguist, I built in lots of fieldresearch. In fact, field work (in its many forms) is abig component of all my language courses, as wellas my Comp I course. I like to have students go outand get their hands dirty, so to speak.

Besides being the residing linguist, I have alsotaught a number of literature courses, all revolvingaround Islam, North Africa, and/or women. Isuppose my other narrow field of interest (besidesgrammar) is the intersection of language, gender,and religion. So here at MU, I have created andtaught: African Literature, Women and Islam,Women Writing the non-Western World, andHumanities I: the Islamic World. Today in AfricanLit, we began our discussion of Naguib Mahfouz'sArabian Nights and Days; within an hour, as wetalked about the metaphysical underpinnings of thetext, students brought in the Koran, the Bible, Greekmythology, and the Bagavad Gita. It is a smallworld.

And, of course, what are your plans for retirement?

My plan for retirement is that I have no plan. It maysurprise those of you that know my penchant forplunking myself down alone in remote locales, butmy first plan of travel is a slow drive up throughNew England in the Fall. After that I may go toRomania.

some freelance writing and we started to grow more of ourown food to see if we could do it. One incident happenedduring this time that solidified my resolve. I was offeredthe job of Assistant to the President; this involved workingdirectly with the president of the company for two yearsand then being placed in a relatively senior positionsomewhere in the company. I decided not to take itbecause we were starting to craft our escape and this jobwould be a time sink. I made an appointment with thepresident and as I walked in the door and across the floorof his large office on the top floor of the building, hereached under the top of his desk and flipped a switch andacross the room the door closed. As I sat down in thechair, I realized this was not my world and I was well outof it.

We settled on Northern PA, were taken by Wellsboro,found an old farmhouse and some land, sold our 18th

century stone farmhouse in Bucks County, I quit my job,and we moved to Tioga county. I put my name in to teachat MU, not expecting much to come of it, but much did.

EML: What's your most memorable teachingmoment?

It is hard to identify a most memorable one. The momentsI like the most are when the light goes on for students:· the student who has grown up in a world where pain

is bad and should be medicated out of existence, butwho reads the fifteenth-century mystic Julian ofNorwich’s Showings and sees how suffering can beennobling and instill insight;

· or the student who has hunted deer all his life, writingwith excitement about how beautiful the one is that heis observing closely.

I also enjoy when I suggest to students that they explorefurther an issue in a piece they have written, and they doand end up in a surprising new place so that a good pieceof writing becomes excellent.

The best times in the classroom are when I see afterwardsthat what I was doing and what the students were doingformed a complete whole, and something flamed out likeshining from shook foil. I like Parker Palmer’s metaphorof subject-centered teaching, which emphasizes thatneither the teacher nor the student is the center of activity,but the subject as a living presence that engages everyone.That apotheosis does not often happen, especially ondreary Monday mornings, but when it does, it lights up theroom and everyone in it.

After retirement, Dr. Murphy and his wife will move toMassachusetts. Best wishes and happy trails, Tom!

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the rainon his window

He just loved

Poetry Out Loud at MU

–By Ed Washington

For the second year running, the Mansfield UniversityEnglish Department has worked with the Bradford CountyRegional Arts Council (BCRAC) to bring the nationally-acclaimed Poetry Out Loud (POL) recitation contest to theMU campus, February, 2014. Dr. Ed Washington, English,worked this year with Cat Badger and Jennifer Swain ofBCRAC to provide a welcoming atmosphere for POL inMU’s Allen Hall Auditorium.

POL is a National Endowment for the Arts / PoetryEndowment-sponsored competition for high school studentswho recite renowned poems before an audience. Throughthe program, students get a chance to read and comprehendgreat poetry, to hone their public speaking skills, and tobuild confidence in their ability to follow through on a longterm project that has the potential to open up furtheropportunities for academic and occupational growth.Regional winners move on to the statewide competition inHarrisburg, and state winners go on to compete nationally.Expenses to state and national events are paid for by NEA,cash prizes are awarded to state and national winners, andschools sponsoring these winners and runners up receivecash awards to purchase poetry books for their libraries.

This year, the English department expanded itsinvolvement with the program by working with BCRAC toenlist the services of the MU student public relationsorganization (PRSSA), to schedule opening remarks byEnglish department chair, Dr. Teri Doerksen, and byarranging for an intermission presentation by students fromthe MU literary writers club (SWAP). Judges slated for thecompetition included Dr. Ed Washington, Ms. LilaceGuignard, and Mr. Mitch Goldwater, all members of the MUEnglish department. Additionally, on behalf of the Englishdepartment, Dr. Washington solicited a larger involvementby the MU Admissions Office to use the MU/POLcollaboration as a recruiting tool for prospective students,especially aspiring English majors and Creative Writingminors. Janet Yoder, admissions counselor (and MUEnglish major), agreed to work with the English departmentto incorporate the POL event into the Admissions Office’srepertoire of marketing tools to bring talented students toMU.

Alas, despite the many hours of planning and arranging,bad weather caused the cancellation of POL at the MU sitethis year. The competition did take place at BCRAC inTowanda the following week—but plans are alreadyunderway to bring the contest back to MU next year. Theregional winner went on to compete in Harrisburg in Marchand the State-wide contest will occur later this month.

Annotating Carlyle–By John Ulrich

This academic year, I have been granted a sabbatical leave toco-edit a volume of essays by the Victorian writer ThomasCarlyle (1795-1881). The book is part of the Strouse Edition ofthe Works of Thomas Carlyle, a series of volumes published bythe University of California Press. The volume I’m working on,Carlyle's Essays on Politics and Society, gathers together twenty-two of Carlyle's essays published over a fifty-year span, from the1820s to the 1870s.

Thomas Carlyle was a highly influential, but alsocontroversial, Victorian prose writer whose impact was felt onboth sides of the Atlantic. He was widely known (and sometimesvilified) for his thunderingly prophetic rhetorical style and hisindignant expressions of moral outrage. Although Carlyle wasacknowledged as a major figure by his contemporaries, scholarsand students interested in studying Carlyle today face a majorobstacle: the lack of fully annotated, textually authoritativeeditions of his writings. This is most unfortunate, for Carlyle'srhetorical style is difficult and highly allusive, steeped inreferences to people, events, and ideas from the ancients to theVictorians. In his books and essays, Carlyle frequently alludes topolitics, economics, literature, history, art, science, religion,philosophy, and philology, sometimes all in the same paragraph!The Strouse edition volumes address this gap in scholarship; inaddition to providing the reader with accurate, authoritative textsand an accessible introduction, each volume includes fullannotations for Carlyle's many references and allusions, as wellas historical collations of any textual variants and emendations.

My co-editors are Dr. Chris Vanden Bossche, professor ofEnglish at the University of Notre Dame, and Dr. Lowell T. Frye,Elliott Professor of Rhetoric and Humanities at Hampden-SydneyCollege. Dr. Frye and I are responsible for annotating the essaysand writing the introduction to the volume. For my portion of theproject, I am annotating Carlyle's "Signs of the Times" (1829),“The Death of the Rev. Edward Irving” (1835), "Chartism"(1839), "The Opera" (1852), "Suggestions for a NationalExhibition of Scottish Portraits" (1855), "Illias (Americana) inNuce" (1863), "Inaugural Address" (1866), "Letter on the WarBetween Germany and France" (1870), and "The Portraits ofJohn Knox" (1875). To date, I have drafted over 1,000annotations – more than 200 pages worth.

So what exactly gets annotated? We compose notes for alldirect and indirect references to people, places, and historicalevents, as well as references to contemporary events and materialculture; for all direct quotations from, paraphrases of, or allusionsto a wide variety of previously published material in severallanguages; for all direct quotations or allusions to contemporarynewspaper and journal articles; and for all words, phrases, orideas frequently used by Carlyle throughout his writings(including 30 volumes of his published work and 40+ volumes ofcorrespondence).

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Questions about the POL program at MU may bedirected to Dr. Ed Washington, coordinator, atewashing@mansfield.edu.

(Continued on page 8)

Writing annotations for a scholarly edition can be a highlygratifying experience—it's quite like detective work—but theprocess is tremendously time-consuming, necessitating careful andthorough research, a good deal of patience, and clear, precise, andconcise prose. Notes must attend to the contextual use of the wordor phrase in the essay, and not merely identify a person, place, orquotation out of context. For example, when Carlyle alludes in"Signs of the Times" to Pierre Jean George Cabanis's Rapports duPhysique et du Morale de l'Homme, the editor needs to compose anote that illuminates Carlyle's assertion that "[Cabanis] fairly laysopen our moral structure with his dissecting knives and real metalprobes," and not merely report on the identity of Cabanis and thebibliographic facts of his Rapports (though these would also, ofcourse, be included in the note).

My sabbatical project will conclude this summer, and I'llreturn to full-time teaching in Fall 2014. I look forward to sharingthe knowledge and experience I've gained with my students, notonly in courses focused on British literature, but also in the manycourses I teach in which research is a vital component.

Can't Stop Teaching Writing–By Judith Sornberger

I have always thought that it would be fun to teachwithout having to grade. Nirvana, right? But I have to admitthat my first thought when I retired was not about finding newvenues for teaching. My focus was onwriting, healing from the loss of myhusband, Dr. Bruce Barton (a formermember of the English and ModernLanguages Department), and travelling.Since May I've travelled toWhidbey Island in the PugetSound, to Kansas andNebraska to visit family, toSalem, MA, with my sonJamie, and to Finland withmy friend Dr. ShawnHolderby (History Department atMU). I've had lots of fun, includingdriving a dogsled inside the Arctic Circle, but once a teacher . .. . One of my former students (an MU graduate) posted onFacebook that she was having trouble with her writing andwondered if I might want to work on it with her. Othergraduates--English majors, Creative Writing Minors, andWomen's Studies minors--had talked of how they missedwriting and lacked the motivation to go it on their own. Enterone former English/Poetry/Women's Studies professor whosort of missed teaching. I don't mean the overwhelming load ofteaching four courses a semester, attending department andother meetings, and grading endlessstacks of papers. I mean working with

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Faculty Spotlight:Dr. Teri Doerksen presented her paper“ and the appropriation ofCatholic iconography” in the New Approaches toSamuel Richardson colloquium at the ASECS(American Society for Eighteenth-CenturyStudies) conference in Williamsburg, VA, inMarch. The colloquium included elevenRichardson scholars sharing summaries of theircurrent work; papers were circulated in advanceand the panel session was spent discussing thework in progress.Lilace Guignard’s poem, “Packing Up MyParents’ House,” appears in the latest issue of

. She also has two poemsforthcoming in :"Beebalm on the Dooryard" and "Evergreen."Dr. Andrea Harris will present a paper at theAmerican Literature Association Convention inWashington, D.C. in May. Her paper will be partof the Edith Wharton Society panel and isentitled “ ‘A Ruin of a Man’: Non-NormativeMasculinity in .” She also has anessay in submission entitled “Surviving MyFather” at

. In April, she will give a presentation,"Using Feminism to Queer the StraightClassroom" at the Black Students Union 2nd

Annual Operation Ambition Conference atMansfield UniversityDr. Bradley Holtman, Professor of Germanand French, has two book reviews going topress for the spring 2014 issue of

. Thispublication is the official journal of the AmericanAssociation of Teachers of German (AATG). Dr.Holtman is a frequent contributor to the journalas a reviewer, providing detailed information tocolleagues in German about new pedagogicaland reference publications in both German andDutch. Dr. Holtman has long been involved withthe Dutch language and the culture of theNetherlands and Belgium. In fact, hissubspecialty within his Germanic linguisticsPh.D. was Dutch, and he spent a year inGroningen, The Netherlands, on a Fulbrightresearch grant. Dr. Holtman loves to bringknowledge of this relatively unfamiliar languageand culture to a broader audience, so he wasdelighted when the

journal first (Continued on page 9)

Annotating Carlyle

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began to accept contributions about worksdealing with Netherlandic language and culturealongside German. Since that time, he hasreviewed two Dutch grammars, three Dutchlanguage courses, and with the current twoarticles a frequency dictionary of Dutch and anintermediate-level reader for students of thelanguage. He is also under contract for review ofa new English-language history of the Dutchlanguage to be published in the fall 2014 issue.Aside from book reviews, Dr. Holtman translatedinto English a novel by the noted Dutch authorA.F.Th. van der Heijden and is seeking apublisher for the manuscript. He has in recentyears delivered three papers based on thisauthor and on his translation of the novel.Prof. Ed Kozaczka attended the ASECS(American Society for Eighteenth-CenturyStudies) conference in Williamsburg, VA inMarch. He gave two talks: "Queer Mediations,"which was a part of a roundtable titled, "QueerTheory in the Eighteenth Century?" and "ElusiveAllusions: Self-Inflicted Torture and FemaleSexuality in the 1720s." He also gave a lectureentitled “Queer Anarchies” in Allen Hall thisMarch. Ed’s scholarly edition of Penelope Aubin'snovel, , is forthcoming inDecember 2014. This April, Ed will give apresentation, "Professing Queerness," at theBlack Students Union 2nd Annual OperationAmbition Conference at Mansfield University inApril. Andrea Harris and Ed Kozaczka have alsoorganized the panel: "Queer in the StraightClassroom" with five students from variousdepartments:

1. Cierra Peters, "My Sexual Preference isNever" (a talk about asexuality)2. Dana Kushner, "Social Ignorance &LGBTQ Students"3. Jay Biernat, "Challenges Faced byTransgender Students in the Classroom"4. Jessica Ryerson, "Elementary Questionsfor the Adult Mind"5. Brooke Reinhardt, "FAFSA & QueerEducation"

students who are soexcited about writing that they do it even if it has nothing todo with earning credit toward a degree. So I proposed a writing workshop: six Tuesday nightworkshops in my home for which the students pay a relativelysmall registration fee. I provide tea, writing prompts, andsample writings (so far, poems and flash creative nonfiction),and, of course, oracular wisdom. We write together, readaloud, laugh and cry. Participants also bring poems and otherwritings they've worked on during the week, and we discussthem. We are on our second series of workshops now, and Ilook forward to them each week. I currently have sevenparticipants--six former MU students and one communitymember who discovered our little secret and asked to join.Participants have included the following MU students: BobbieVan Druff, Rebecca Webster, Crystal Batista, Chris Rinnert,Terry Babb, April Ganong Thorwardson, and Daisy Jelliff-Bennett. I feel lucky to work with so many talented andpassionate writers, fellow pilgrims on the writing path. But,really, it feels more like play--sacred play--the way writingitself can feel at the best of times.

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Faculty Spotlight:

Can't Stop Teaching Writing

Professional Writing: Coming Soon to an Eng-lish Department Near You

–By Jimmy Guignard and Brad Lint

I write all the time for my job. So? you think, You’re anEnglish teacher. You should write all the time for your job.That’s probably true, but what would you say if I told you thatmost of the stuff I write, I didn’t learn how to write until I tookmy job? Fortunately, I had enough command of skills like re-searching, thinking about purpose and audience, and writing col-laboratively that I could adapt what I knew about writing aboutliterature to satisfy other purposes. The longer I teach at Mans-field, the more I appreciate how the study of English and rhetorichelped prepare me for one of the most important tasks for manyjobs these days: writing. Simply put, quality writing has become one of the mostvalued skills for employers across all industries and professions.Research bears this out. The National Commission on Writingfound that writing is a “threshold skill.” Employers increasinglyconsider “soft skills” (including writing, critical thinking, leader-ship, and collaboration) to be as crucial as “hard skills” in anyjob. The National Association of Colleges and Employers rankswritten communication third behind “ability to work in a team”and “leadership” in its list of top skills employers seek in collegegrads. A 2011 Graduate Management Admission Council surveyreported that 86% of corporate recruiters value strong communi-cation skills – including writing – far and above other all otherskills. The renewed focus on writing is in many ways a sign ofthe times. As Forbes magazine reported last year, “Writing skillsare back in vogue, as nearly everything is communicated throughweb pages, social media, and email marketing. In the Internetworld, great writing skills can set you apart from fellow jobseekers and keep you employed.”

Good writing that shows attention to purpose and audi-ence and is clear, concise, and grammatically correct can be thedeciding factor in getting to the interview stage, and, once hired,being promoted. My own experience talking with graduatesbears this out. No matter their major, writing matters. Unfortu-nately, the preparation students receive before they come to col-lege doesn’t cut it. The National Assessment of EducationStatistics reported in 2012 that only 24% of students at the 8th

and 12th grade levels write proficiently; 54% were ranked “ba-sic,” 20% “below basic,” and only 3% “advanced.” Collegecomposition classes, then, are not just about learning to writebetter in college: they help you to build valuable, marketableskills that will set you apart and give you a competitive edge inthe marketplace.

The English Department is working on developing aprofessional writing track that would provide a strong core inthe study of literature and writing while offering classes likeENG 3371: Professional Writing, ENG 3400: The EditorialProcess, and ENG 3404: Writing for the Web. The idea is toprepare English students for a range of jobs that emphasizewriting in publishing, non-profits, journalism, law, public ser-vice, technical writing, and many other fields. We believe aprofessional writing track will further develop the already con-siderable writing skills English majors acquire in our program.In short, we want to enhance your skills. We know you’ll havea great deal to offer employers. We want employers to know it,too.

Students can also elect to visit China (Hong Kong orNanchang), where they will find opportunities to studyMandarin Chinese.

Multiple locations across the world offer a largeselection of courses in English as well as introduction tolesser-taught languages and cultures. MU students canstudy and practice music at Lulea University in Sweden,study and volunteer in Ghana, or discover one of the oldestuniversities in Europe (Tartu, Estonia).

MU one-on-one partnerships with Charles SturtUniversity in Australia, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques inToulouse, France, or Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat in Jena,Germany, allows more flexibility and a range of otheroptions.

Next year, the department will propose a new study-abroad opportunity, under the form of a short-term“embedded” program in France: “Paris, the CityExperience.” This ten-day study tour led by Dr. MoniqueOyallon will allow interested students to receive credit.During the stay in Paris, the group will focus onexperiencing and describing life in the city (parks, cafés,monuments), getting to know famous neighborhoods inParis (Latin Quarter, Notre Dame, Montmartre, the gardensaround the Eiffel Tower), visiting museums (the Louvre,and other collections), and getting a sense of working andcreating things in Paris (visit a business or take a cookingclass).

News from Abroad (Continued from page 3)

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Dr. Lynn Pifer will present alecture/workshop entitled “Civil RightsSSDD: Same Sh*t, Different Decade,”examining the struggle for voting rights inthe U.S. before and after the Voting RightsAct of 1965, at the Black Students Union2nd Annual Operation Ambition Conferenceat Mansfield University. Dr. Pifer is also areader for

this semester.

Lynn Pifer and Linda Rashidi werepresented with President’s Commission onthe Staus of Women Mentor Awards thisApril. Dr. Pifer was nominated by Englishmajor, Miranda Peery, and Dr. Rashidi wasnominated by English major, RachelRoupp.

Dr. Edward Washington gave a paper atthe

inBaton Rouge, LA, February, 2014.  Theconference paper was entitled:  "'WhatCares Caliban for the Name of Kings':Authority from Below in Shakespeare's

Faculty Spotlight:(Continued from page 9)