The Scrivener - ODU English Alumni Newsletter

2008-2009 Edition

2009-05-13T19:02:00.212-04:00

The Scrivener
2008-2009 Edition

Summer is Icumen In

is perhaps the oldest example of a traditional English round,
from a manuscript in the Reading Abbey. The composer
of this six-part polyphonic round written in Middle English
is unknown-- but it is thought to date back to 1260.
The mansucript resides at the British Library.

( Image source on right: http://tinyurl.com/qclahm )

Summer is a-coming in,

Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
The seed grows and the meadow blooms
And the wood springs anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!
The ewe bleats after the lamb
The cow lows after the calf.
The bullock stirs, the stag farts,
Merrily sing, Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing, cuckoo;
Don't you ever stop now,
Sing cuckoo now. Sing, Cuckoo.
Sing Cuckoo. Sing cuckoo now!

*
The Vegetable Air
by Cathy Song

You’re clean shaven in this country
where trees grow beards of moss,
where even bank tellers
look a little like banditos ...

[Read more from web source: The Poetry Foundation]

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Letter from the Department Chair

Dear Alumni and Friends,

After a seven-year hiatus, I returned to the office of department chair in summer 2008 when, after his two years in the chair’s position, Dr. David Metzger became dean of the Honors College. I am grateful to Dr. Metzger for his service to and leadership of the department between 2006-2008 and look forward to building on his good work.

Once again, it is my privilege to introduce this newsletter about achievements and activities in the department. In seven years (2001-2008), a lot changed; and in one year a lot more has changed. We now have 45 full-time faculty and 70-75 part-time instructors and graduate teaching assistants, making English the largest department on campus. With more than 300 BA majors and another 150 students in four different graduate programs, we have thriving programs. And by teaching courses that serve everything from General Education to Elementary Education Teacher Preparation to Women’s Studies, English accounts for more than 10 per cent of total enrollments on campus. It can truly be said that our department is at the core of the university.

As you know, this has been a challenging year for the university—and probably for you, too. During the financial crisis, we were asked to be prepared to give back teaching positions; other funding was reduced or eliminated. Thus, despite the large increase in student enrollment, we were facing having to deal with it with a reduced teaching staff. Fortunately, for this year at least, the prospect of federal stimulus money has reduced the severity of cuts. Not only will we be able to hold on to current teachers, but we have been able this year to replace those who have left or will be leaving the university. As I write this, we are still in the midst of hiring, but things look good for us to have several new faculty members in the fall.

One of those new people is Dr. Delores Phillips, a recent PhD from the University of Maryland. Dr. Phillips will be teaching new literatures in English, Anglophone writing outside of Britain and the United States. Another new hire is Dr. David Roh, who earned his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Roh will be teaching contemporary American literature and digital humanities, a new field. We are delighted to have these two rising scholars join our department. We also welcome Ms. Beth Backes, who will teach linguistics and composition at the Virginia Beach campus. We are also in the final stages of hiring another person to teach digital journalism, a position that we share with the Communications department. Three other positions—a lecturer generalist, an assistant professor of rhetoric, and assistant professor in linguistics—are in various stages of the search process.

These hires mean that we must say goodbye to those they replace. Dr. Craig Stewart, a rhetorician, will be taking a new position at the University of Memphis, and Dr. Iryna Kozlova, a linguist, will be moving to Canada. I want to thank both of these fine scholars for their service to our department. In addition, I want to thank Ms. Farideh Goldin for teaching in the new literatures slot this year and Ms. Ashley Hall for filling the position in digital journalism. Ms. Hall will be leaving Old Dominion to complete her doctorate in English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In addition, we say farewell to Ms. Catie Berkenfield, a lecturer in linguistics at Virginia Beach, who will also be completing her doctoral studies, and Ms. Tracey Mershon, a generalist lecturer, who will still be teaching part-time for us but spending more time on her writing. The department is grateful to each one of them for their contributions to our programs.

Over the last year, we have made a number of changes in the administrative personnel in the department. In August, Dr. Joyce Neff (former department chair) took over the leadership of our PhD program. In January, Dr. Joe Cosco became graduate program director for the MA in English. This summer, Dr. Joanne Scheibman will replace Dr. Janet Bing as GPD for the MA in applied linguistics, and Dr. Luisa Igloria will take over from Ms. Sheri Reynolds as program director of the MFA in creative writing. I cannot thank Professors Bing and Reynolds enough for their excellent stewardship of their programs. Dr. Bing was the founding director of the applied linguistics graduate program; its success is owed largely to her leadership. Professor Reynolds has run the MFA program with efficiency and aplomb. Fortunately, both will remain on the faculty doing what they do splendidly—teaching and writing.

The department has recently been the beneficiary of targeted financial gifts that will help us greatly in a couple of areas. A memorial fellowship dedicated to Robin L. Hixon has been established by her husband, James A. Hixon, to support faculty research in literature. The first recipient of the Hixon Fellowship is Dr. Imtiaz Habib, who will be working on a book connected to his research on race in early modern England. Next year’s fellow will be Dr. Edward Jacobs, who will use his funds to research a project on changes in the British newspaper over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The department is very grateful to Mr. Hixon for his establishment of this fellowship in honor of Robin Hixon, a great lover of literature.

In addition, we recently received word of a bequest to the department that will enable us to fund student scholarships. The Ralph Harrison Jackson and Clara Jackson Kingsbury Memorial Scholarship fund will support English majors with a 3.0 or better grade point average and who demonstrate financial need. Dr. Jackson attended Old Dominion more than fifty years ago and died recently, but he will not be forgotten as we move toward enabling worthy students to secure scholarship funding. I hope this will be first of other opportunities to provide financial aid to English majors, especially in this time of rising tuition costs.

In the meantime, The Scrivener contains the achievements of the department as well as alumni news. I hope that you will stay connected with us. Feel free to contact any department member, me included, if you have news of your life after graduation. We especially want to hear what people do for a living to help us answer that age-old question, What can you do with an English degree? We can do a lot, and the more we hear from alumni, the better.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey H. Richards
Professor and Chair

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PROGRAM & DEPARTMENT NEWS

PREVIEW of "WRITERS IN PEACE AND WAR" -

ODU's 32nd Annual Literary Festival (6-9 October, 2009)

MFA Creative Writing faculty Michael Pearson and Janet Peery, directors of the 2009 ODU Literary Festival, share with us an exciting line-up of writers under this year's festival theme,“Writers in Peace and War”.

Be sure to mark your calendars, invite your friends, students, and networks ~ and join us on campus for the following events (all events are on the ODU main campus in Norfolk, unless otherwise indicated):

Tuesday 6 October

11 am Norton Girault

2 pm Joyce Hoffmann / Panel Discussion
7 pm Dalia Sofer

Wednesday 7 October

11 am Brian Turner

2 pm Jim Sheeler
7 pm Farah Nosh (Gallery Talk in Chandler Hall)

Thursday 8 October

10 am Al Arater (CoffeeHouse/Bookstore)
11 am Luisa Igloria

12:30 Leslea Newman (at VBHEC)
1 pm Al Arater (Coffee House/Bookstore)

2 pm Helon Habila

7 pm Mark Bowden (Presidential Lecture Series; Webb Center)

Friday 9 October

11 am Jon Pineda

2 pm Writers’ Workshop with Steve Almond (limited to 30 registrants)

3 pm Leslea Newman

7 pm Steve Almond

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Dismal History: Documentary on the Great Dismal Swamp

Image Source: http://tinyurl.com/qsr3wo

Imtiaz Habib, professor of English and recent recipient of the Burgess Research Award (the highest honor given to faculty in the College of Arts & Letters), and ODU English major Richard Green, have co-produced "Dismal History" -- a documentary on the subject of runaway slave populations living in the Great Dismal Swamp before the American Civil War.

The film was screened recently at Norfolk State University. Green handled most of the cinematography. Habib said, “With this film, we interrogate popular knowledge and popular history... [a] subject that historians have largely ignored and dismissed.” The film examines archaeological evidence suggesting that runaway slaves lived in the Great Dismal Swamp, a marshy region between southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, from as early as the 17th century.

“Dismal History” features interviews with archaeologists, researchers and scholars like Dan Sayers of the College of William and Mary, Cassandra Newby and Tommy Bogger of Norfolk State University, and Brent Morris of Cornell University.
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ODU English Department Rocks CCCC '09

Our English Department had a strong presence at the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) in San Francisco, 11-14 March 2009.

The following graduate students and faculty gave papers:

- Andrea Dace (doctoral student): “From Writers to Editors: Using Wiki Projects to Demonstrate Principles of Academic Writing in Introductory Science Writing Classes."

- Hannah Kimberley-Scialdone (doctoral student): “Cooking is for Girls?: The Case for Cookbooks as Technical and Scientific Writing.”

- Heather Lettner-Rust (doctoral student): “Making Transfer Visible: Case Study of a Civic Writing Seminar as General Education Capstone."

- Elizabeth Vincelette (doctoral student): "Vice and Advice: Technical Writing and the American Domestic Manual."Just before San Francisco, Elizabeth gave another paper at the Women in the Archives Conference at Brown University, March 5-7, 2009: "Independent Women: Recovery, Genre, and Identity in the Archive," based on her dissertation work.

- Katie Retzinger (doctoral student): “Immediacy, Desire, and the Other: MMORPGS and Constructions of Identity.”

- Jennifer Odom (doctoral student): "POST YOUR INFRINGEMENT HERE: The Breach of Copyright Law in Blogs."

- Leslie Norris (doctoral student): “Research Study: Multimodal Texts Help Basic Writing Students Create Effective Essays.”

- Joyce Neff (Professor and GPD for the PhD in English): “Staying or Leaving or Doing Both: Professional Commitments during Retirement.”

- Lindal Buchanan (Assistant Professor, English and Women’s Studies): “Making Waves: Rhetorics of Race, Pregnancy, and Civil Rights."

- Liza Potts (Assistant Professor, English): “Social Software Ecologies: A Fieldtrip into the Wake of Disaster.”- Kevin DePew (Assistant Professor): “Triangleman Meets Universeman: Resolving the Conflict from Using Rhetorically Grounded Triangulation to Study Distance Learning”

- Julia Romberger (Assistant Professor): “Rhetorics of Efficiency: Ideological Impacts on Technology Use, Institutional Decision Making, and Pedagogical Practice”

- Kathie Gossett (Assistant Professor): “Multimodal .WAVs: Basic Writers ‘Drop In’ on Freshman Writers”

- Megan Edwards and Ella Shaffer, both part-time faculty members and MA graduates of our program, gave their paper, "Intellectual Property and Copyrights for Non-traditional Compositions: Opening the Conversation for Instructors."

- Ashley Hall, who was a visiting lecturer in English and Communications this year, was unable to attend; but her film, "Camcorders - they aren't just for birthday parties anymore: What Protools Have to Do with Writing,” was shown at the same panel by Kathie Gossett.

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Congratulations to the 2008-09 ODU College Poetry Prize Winners

In 1955, The Academy of American Poets established its University and College Poetry Prize program at ten schools. The Academy now sponsors over 200 annual prizes for poetry at colleges and universities nationwide, and has awarded more than $350,000 to nearly 10,000 student poets since the program's inception. Many of America's most esteemed poets won their first recognition through an Academy College Prize, including Diane Ackerman, Toi Derricotte, Mark Doty, Alice Fulton, Tess Gallagher, Louise Glück, Allen Grossman, Jorie Graham, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Li-Young Lee, Brad Leithauser, J. D. McClatchy, Heather McHugh, Gregory Orr, Robert Pinsky, Sylvia Plath, Mark Rudman, Mary Jo Salter, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, George Starbuck, Mark Strand, and Charles Wright.

Three years ago, through the efforts of then Virginia Poet Laureate Carolyn Kreiter Foronda, the Poetry Society of Virginia arranged for the endowment of the Old Dominion University-Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize

The winners in the undergraduate and graduate categories received certificates during the last MFA Creative Writing Program Poetry & Fiction Reading of the year in April:

Undergraduate Category

First Prize Winner: "Attention. Deficit. Bird," / William Meade Stith

First runner-up: "The Pictures On Your Walls" / Emily Bonner

Second runner-up (Tie): "Contemplating Nyx" / Ryan Glass and "The Morning After" / Sarah Pringle

Graduate Category

First Prize Winner: "Definitive" / Christian Anton Gerard

First runner-up: "Wood-turner" / Andrea J. Nolan

Second runner-up (Three-way tie): “Prahera” / Andrea J. Nolan “Frontiersmen” /
Christian Anton Gerard "Departure of a neighbor" / Zsuzsanna Basca Palmer

This year, poet Rick Hilles served as contest judge. Rick was born in Canton, Ohio and educated at Kent State, Columbia, and Stanford. His first poetry collection, Brother Salvage, won the 2005 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and was named the 2006 Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Magazine. In 2008, Rick received one of the prestigious Whiting Writers Awards. He was the 2002-03 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar and has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Ruth and Jay C. Halls Fellow at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and the recipient of the Larry Levis Editors’ Prize from The Missouri Review. His work has appeared in Harper’s, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, Salmagundi, Field and Witness. He teaches in the MFA Program at Vanderbilt University.

Rick wrote: "One sign of a healthy creative writing program is when the work coming from it exhibits a wide range of styles and approaches to the art we love. Thus, I was thrilled to find such inspired and inspiring evidence of divergent sensibilities, of genuine individual voices,among this year’s submissions to the Academy of American Poets Prize. When work is this rich, and vibrant, and varied, as its benefactors, everyone wins. "The somewhat capricious nature of contests, of course, is that they also have specific winners. In the end, the poems that I chose were simply those whose pleasures and surprises—whose meanings and mysteries—stayed with me most, rewarding (even as they challenged) my various attentions."

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Writing Tutorial Services at the Norfolk main campus

At the beginning of the Fall 2008, Writing Tutorial Services (WTS) opened in its new location on the first floor of the Batten Arts and Letters Building (BAL 1002). The new location not only offers a bigger space which allows tutorials to be conducted comfortably, but it is more visible to the student population. Students who had used our services in previous semesters expressed their appreciation of the new space.

During the semester, WTS continued to provide quality writing advice to the campus population. With the diversity of expertise that the tutors—Victor Barrett, Brandon Geter, Chinchi Kungaa, Eric Obrynba, Chvonne Parker, Dana Staves, Randi Tucker, and Emily Louise Zimbrick—brought with them, WTS was capable of addressing many ODU students’ writing inquiries. Also, our graduate writing tutor, Erin Pastore guided many graduate students through their term papers, theses, and dissertations.

Throughout the semester, we continued our weekly workshop series. Each week we offered a workshop on a new topic from Understanding Audience to Plagiarism and Citations to Common ESL Errors. These workshops were well attended, often drawing fifteen to thirty students per session. We plan to continue the workshop series during the next school year and would be interested in topics that you want to see covered.

Finally, WTS, with the support of a Faculty Innovator Grant, tested the Macromedia Breeze software as a means of supporting our online tutorials. With this software we hope to expand our services to students at a distance and offer tutorials similar to those that we conduct face-to-face. Macromedia Breeze facilitates real-time video and audio conferencing while tutor and student look at the same document. While not all students will have the capability to take full advantage of the software’s features, we see this as a step towards incorporating distance students into the ODU culture. We will keep you updated on our progress. ( -Kevin DePew)

Writing Tutorial Services at the Virginia Beach Higher Education Center

The Writing Tutorial Service at the Virginia Beach Higher Education Center is proud to offer a tutoring service for ODU’s students at a location, which is convenient for those enrolled here. We offer all of the services provided by the WTS at the Norfolk campus, and our services are available to any who attend ODU regardless of where their classes are located. WTS strives to provide a learning experience for students to enable them to learn strategies to perfect their writing regardless of their current level. We accomplish these goals by providing tutorials which target global errors in grammar, mechanics, organization, adherence to guidelines specified by the APA and MLA, construction of the thesis sentence, etc. Students can bring us papers from any class in any subject at any point in the writing process, and we are glad to provide direction and assistance as well for students who do not speak English as their first language. Our ultimate goal is to equip students with the necessary means to correct their own papers and avoid making similar mistakes across multiple assignments. Even as we help the students, we enable them to improve their overall writing skills while maintaining their own unique voice. Comments such as “I’m feeling a lot better about this paper...your comments helped trim it down” (Sadie), “Oh yeah, that makes sense now” (Stacy), and “Just wanted to let you know I really appreciate your help and really have learned a lot ...You provided me with a lot of useful information” (Rachel) let us know that we are on the right track and that we are helping students.

This year, our numbers have nearly doubled, and we are proud to have been able to serve so many students. This increase in students is in part due to our online tutorial system. Because there is only one tutor (Helena Osborne) for this campus, the possible times that students can get their papers edited are reduced. In order to avoid turning away students, an online tutorial system was implemented to meet these increasing demands. Students from any campus can email a draft of an assignment and their assignment sheet to the tutor and get feedback without ever having to leave their homes. This means that students whose work and class schedule prohibit them from being able to meet with a tutor during office hours can still get their papers reviewed in a timely fashion. Several students have expressed appreciation and commented that this is a convenient, and in some cases, the only way for the tutorial to have been accomplished.

While we are excited about many of the changes we have made and the accomplishments we have achieved, we continue to strive to improve this service. We hope to continue working with professors at all campuses to get the word out about the existence of the WTS at the VBHEC. There is no way that we could help as many students as we do without the continued support and recognition from professors at ODU, and we hope to continue working with them at a heightened level to raise awareness about the services we provide. The Writing Tutorial Services at the Virginia Beach Higher Education Center is proud to serve the students and faculty of ODU, and we hope to continue to do so even more in the future. ( -Julie Manthey)

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HIGH NOTES ~

Awards;

Tenure & Promotion;
Publications;

Conferences & Presentations;

Scholarly & Related Activities

- The Cambridge Scholars Press released Once Upon a Time: Myth, Fairy Tales, and Legends in Margaret Atwood's Writings (December 2008), edited by Sarah Appleton.

- The Washington Post published Michael Blumenthal’s essay “Learning to Speak Baboon” (19 October 2008). His seventh book of poems, And, was released by BOA Editions in early 2009. His poem "What I Believe" was the selected reading on Garrison Keillor's daily radio segment, "The Writer's Almanac," on 28 February.

- Matilda Cox , who coordinates Freshman Previews in Arts & Letters and is a recent MFA Poetry graduate, was admitted to the competitive Cave Canem Summer Writers' Retreat in Greensburg, PA (22-29 June 2009).

- Farideh Goldin published "My Iranian Sukkah" in Where We Find Ourselves: Jewish Women around the World Write About Home, edited by Miriam Ben-Joseph & Deborah Nodler Rosen; State University of New York Press, 2009. Her "My Hanukkah Gift" was featured in NPR’s Hanukkah Lights (December 2008). She will be guest editor and contributor for The Ghosts of our Mothers: Iranian Jewish Women Writers (NASHIM: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues; Brandeis University, August 2009). Goldin also gave two talks this spring: on March 19, “Iranian Jewish Women Immigrants in Los Angeles” at the University of Illinois in Chicago; and on March 24, as the keynote speaker at Moriah High School, Englewood, New Jersey.

- Kathie Gossett won a Teaching with Technology Award this year.

-Lenore Hart's interview with Norris Church Mailer will be in the Fall '09 issue of Provincetown Arts.Lenore has begun a new novel (working title Nevermore) acquired by St. Martins' Press, about Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm. She was Visiting Fiction Writer at Elizabethtown College (PA) in 2008-2009.

- Luisa A. Igloria's tenth book, Juan Luna’s Revolver, received the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize for poetry from the University of Notre Dame Press; she read at the 2009 Sandeen Prize Series reading at the University of Notre Dame on 18 March. She published the following poems in the past year: "Fear Factor" (Pushcart Prize nomination) and "Email to the Tender Committee of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation" in the Pop Culture issue of Umbrella literary journal (Winter 2008); "The Gods Must Be Crazy" in the Humor issue of poemeleon (Winter 2008); "The Wives of Chang and Eng", "Garment" and "Mangkik" in The Poet's Picturebook; "Yo Yu" and "Christopher Reeve's Filipino Nurse" in the inaugural issue of Sweet. Luisa was the featured reader at Molly Malone's, hosted by Nina Corwin and Al DeGenova in Forest Park, IL in early February; she also participated in two panels at the 2009 AWP (Association of American Writers and Writing Programs) Annual Conference in Chicago: "Lyric Selves and Global Imperatives" with Honoree Fanone Jeffers, Andrew Kaufman, Christine Casson and Vivian Teter, and "Archipelagoes of Dust, Habitations of Language: Reiterating Landscape, History and Origin" with Grace Talusan, Marianne Villanueva, Angela N. Torres, and Karen Llagas.

- Joyce Magnoto Neff was named University Professor as of spring 2009. She led a workshop on Grounded Theory as research methodology (co-presented with Ph D student Beth Vincelette) at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (2-4 April, New Orleans). Joyce was also elected Assistant Chair of the National Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition. Other presentations included a workshop on Writing Across the Curriculum to 30 faculty at Virginia Wesleyan College (16 April); with Kevin DePew, Matthew Oliver, and PhD students Cynthia Pengilly and Andrea Murphy - a panel titled “Academic applications of workplace software: Adobe Connect for tutoring, collaborative writing, and advising from a distance at the Computers and Writing Conference (June, University of California, Davis). Further, Joyce reports that the PhD English program is doing well, with a record number of applications for fall 2009. Five students from the first class (fall 2006) have passed their candidacy exams and started on their dissertations.

- David Pagano published “The Space of Apocalypse in Zombie Cinema” in Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, ed. Marc Leverette and Shawn McIntosh (Scarecrow Press, 2008) and “Narrative Unreliability in Film and Literature” in Notes on American Literature; 16.2 (2007). 8-10.

- Michael Pearson published Innocents Abroad Too: Journeys Around the World on Semester at Sea (Syracuse University Press, 2008); it was listed in the Denver Post City Bestseller List for February 2009. Mike has also published a number of essays: “Epilogue: Where Stories Come From and Where They Take Us,” The Literary Review Web, 3, Fall 2008, pp.41-51; “Western Dreams: Taos, Santa Fe, and Home,” The Literary Review Web, 3, Fall 2008, pp.29-40; “Burmese Days,” The Truth About The Fact: International Journal of Nonfiction, Volume III, Number 1,Spring 2008, pp.158-172 . He has been busy giving readings in local bookstores as well as in Denver, New York, and the Virginia Festival of the Book.

- Janet Peery won the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction, and the 2008 WILLA Literary Award for her novel What the Thunder Said.

- Jeffrey Richards was awarded Honorable Mention for the Foerster Prize (given by the American Literature section of the Modern Language Association for the best article to appear in the journal American Literature during 2008). He published "Sati in Philadelphia: The Widow(s) of Malabar" in vol. 80, no. 4 of American Literature; a review of Tice L. Miller's "Entertaining the Nation: American Drama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries" (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007) in vol. 42, no. 4 of Comparative Drama. Other publications include a review of Eliza Richards' "Gender and the Politics of Reception in Poe's Circle" (2004) in vol. 72, no. 1 of the South Atlantic Review; a review of Jill Lane's "Blackface Cuba, 1840-1895" (2005) in vol. 1, no. 1 of Ecumenica: Journal of Theatre and Performance [formerly Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance". He also gave a paper, "Seeing the Unseen: Servitude and Stage in the Early Republic", at the Society of Early Americanists biennial conference in Hamilton, Bermuda.

- Sheri Reynolds released a new novel, The Sweet In-Between.

- Tim Seibles published three poems in Ploughshares this spring, and will have poems appearing in the new anthology Black Nature (a collection of nature poems by African American authors) from the University of Georgia Press. Tim read at the Russell Memorial Library with poets Jon Pineda and Dorianne Laux for the Chesapeake Poetry Festival; at Virginia Wesleyan College in April, and also in Boston for the 14th Annual Brookline High School Poetry Festival.

- Craig Stewart published the following articles: "Social cognition and discourse processing goals in the analysis of 'ex-gay' rhetoric" in Discourse & Society, 19, 63-83; and "Conversational argumentation in decision-making: Chinese and U.S. participants in face-to-face and instant messaging interactions" (co-authored with Setlock, L.D. and Fussell, S.R.) in Discourse Processes, 44, 113-139.

Student & Alumni News

Shan-Estelle Brown is currently a 4th year doctoral student in Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. Her research area is medical Anthropology and her dissertation research investigates perceptions of risk and informed decision making regarding carrier testing for sickle cell disease in Guadeloupe, France. She teaches writing-intensive introductory Anthropology classes and work as a tutor at the University Writing Center. She is currently looking at prejudiced language in undergraduate student writing and strategies to help tutors help identify biases in students' papers. Findings in this research were presented, along with her colleague, Mandy Suhr-Sytsma, at the International Writing Centers Association conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in October 2008 and the University of Connecticut Freshman English Conference in March 2009.

After graduation in 2007, Kristen Davis taught Freshman and Sophomore English at Christopher Newport University. She is currently in the doctoral program in literature at West Virginia University, where she also teaches Composition 101 and 102. This summer she is doing an independent study course on Queer Gothic in Fin de Siècle Britain.

Eddie Dowe has two poems in Boiling River: “Burden” and “Dissolve.”

Applied Linguistics student Deborah Edds presented "Experiences with young Spanish as second language learners" at the Congresso Internacional de Estudos Lingüisticos e Literários na Amazonia; April 6-8, 2009. Universidade Federal do Pará. Belem, Pará, Brazil.

Joanna Eleftheriou received a "Shining Star Award" for her exemplary teaching in the previous year. Her nonfiction essay, "The Other Side", will appear in the Crab Orchard Review "Color Wheel" issue this fall.

Free Lunch awarded Christian Gerard its Rosine Offen Memorial Prize for his poem "First Time," which appeared in issue 39 of the magazine. Poetry East, Faultline and Phoebe recently accepted poems by Christian; he also has poems in Waccamaw, the new online journal out of Coastal Carolina University, and Orion magazine. For the second year, Christian was accepted at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference with a scholarship. He will begin the Ph.D. program at the University of Tennessee in the fall.

Norton Girault's story, "You Must Remember This," was published in a little magazine called The Wordstock Ten, which contains the ten finalists in the 2008 Wordstock Short Fiction Competition, judged by Ursula LeGuin. Another story, "Bum's Rush," was ccepted by The Rome Review published by George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Elif Guler is the recipient of the 2009 Sigma Tau Delta (International English Honor Society) Scholarly Paper Award for the paper she presented at the 13th Biennial National Conference of the Rhetoric Society of America in May (Seattle, WA): “Science and Reason in the Public Discourse of Kemalism: A Pentadic Analysis of Ataturk’s Speech on the 10th Anniversary of the Turkish Republic.” Elif also received the 2009 Sigma Tau Delta Regnery runner-up Scholarship. She presented “Choosing to Veil and its Implications for Women’s Identities in Contemporary Turkey: A Communication Theory of Identity Approach” at the 79th Convention of the Southern States Communication Association (Norfolk, VA; 1-5 April 2009) on a panel organized by Craig Stewart, who also presented a paper with Margaret J. Pitts from the Communication Department.

Katherine Jackson nominated English major Meredith Brier Lee for the Kaufman award, and Meredith was one of the ten finalists.

Bob Kunzinger’s (MFA Nonfiction ;04) essay "Sliced Bread" was listed in Best American Essays 2008 as one of the notable essays of 2007.

MFA Nonfiction graduate and English teacher James Lidington was awarded second place for The Agnes L. Braganza Award for Nonfiction on March 28 at Christopher Newport University’s 28th Annual Writer’s Conference. Lidington’s winning piece was “Hallways, Here We Come". Jay teaches British Literature and Journalism at Hampton Roads Academy.

Rania Mahmoud (M.A. English Literature '04) is now working on her Ph.D. at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her dissertation entitled "Mythologies of Revolution: Narratives of Egyptian Selfhood and British Imperialism, 1881-1952" explores the representation of Egypt's resistance to British colonialism. Focusing on Egypt's three revolutions, the first of which brought about the British occupation and the last of which ended it, Rania examines the competing nationalist and imperialist narratives of Egyptian revolutions in British and Egyptian film and literature.

One of Paula McMahon’s stories (MFA Fiction '09) won First Place in the 2009 fiction competition for Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, published by Fairfield University. Paula's story "The One That Got Away" received Honorable Mention in the AWP fiction competition. Go to the AWP website to see Paula representing ODU among the winners. Together with Andrea Nolan (MFA Fiction '09), Paula recently attended the Aspen Summer Words Conference.

Myreen Moore Nicholson (B.A.1962) also earned her graduate degree from ODU. While in school Myreen put her art background and English literature to effective use. Hired as the Norfolk William and Mary Library artist, she processed and recataloged books and set up the ODU archives. Additionally, she was newspaper Copy Editor, did the covers of the Student Directory and the stone lithography frontispiece for the yearbook. In 1969, she had an English minor for her Master's in Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After receiving the Master's, she worked for the downtown Norfolk Public Library system for twenty years, as head of the Model City Program; Art Librarian; and Research Librarian. In her career, she was also a certified English, art and media teacher, department head in a business college, and a hearing reporter for the City Planning Commission. She taught college English in South Carolina and for the Navy in Norfolk. She got her second master's with an English and art emphasis through the ODU Department of Humanities. A Civil Rights activist at ODU,she was one of only four Caucasians to attend the scheduled speech of Martin Luther King at the Norfolk arena. For a short time, she edited a Civil Rights newsletter. She gave a thank-you party at her home for the students who came here from Oregon the year of Mississippi Burning to register voters, as local residents were afraid to do so. A Poet-in-the-Schools for Virginia Beach, she has been included in more than a dozen books, and served as a top officer for the Poetry Society of Virginia for ten years. Serving on the staff of MidAtlantic Antiques Magazine for ten years, she also published an article on ODU's' first Black professor, artist Alex B. Jackson, in The Maine Antique Digest (June 2007). This year, she is mentioned again in the Marquis' Who's Who in America, considered the most legitimate reference biography. It is the only biography that was placed in the 2000 time capsule in D.C. Currently an art appraiser, Myreen uses her English background to write reports.

“Edges,” a nonfiction essay by Andrea Nolan (MFA Fiction '09) appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Potomac Review.

A story by Eric Ramseier (2nd year MFA fiction) will appear in an upcoming issue of Stone’s Throw Magazine.

Jesse Scaccia (3rd year MFA Nonfiction) launched Teacher Revised, an education blog, this spring. The blog is a mixture of reflections on teaching practices and musings on all things ed-related: "real talk from real teachers".

Potomac Review published "Come In, La Bamba", a nonfiction essay by Anne Wilson (MFA Fiction, '04) in its Spring 2009 issue. Wilson’s poem “Warning to the Hunter” appeared in the June 2009 issue of Gargoyle.

“Save the Bay, Eat a Ray,” BC Wilson’s story on eating Chesapeake Rays, will appear in the summer edition of Edible Chesapeake magazine.

Seth Sawyers, an MFA Nonfiction graduate, just won a Writers at Work Fellowship.
Dana Staves (3rd year Fiction) won the graduate division of the ODU Women's Studies Essay Contest for her paper, "'Girls Like Us': Queering Fatness in Hairspray". Dana also received a competitive internship at the Provincetown Arts Center this summer.

Two recent graduates of the MA in Applied Linguistics have been accepted with funding into PhD programs in linguistics for the fall: Wan Vajrabhaya at the University of Oregon; and Randi Tucker at the University at Buffalo SUNY.

Mary Westbrook (3rd year MFA Fiction) will be attending the highly competitive Breadloaf Writers' Conference this summer.

Thomas Andrew Yuill’s book of poems, Medicine Show, has been accepted by the University of Chicago Press.

2007-2008 Edition

2008-06-10T23:35:00.103-04:00

THE SCRIVENER's New Look

We hope you'll like this new, web-based (and environmentally friendly!) blog format for The Scrivener, the English Alumni Newsletter of the Department of English at Old Dominion University.

With active links and the ability to position the newsletter so it is easier to access from the internet for alumni near and far and for other readers at large, The Scrivener in its new format hopes to make it even more possible for all of you out there to keep close ties with the English Department at Old Dominion University.

We'd love to hear from you-- send us your news!
Write us at TheScrivenerAtODU@gmail.com

Woman Writing A Letter,
by Dutch artist Frans Van Merris (1680)

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NEWS FROM THE OFFICE OF THE DEPARTMENT CHAIR

David Metzger, professor and chair of the Old Dominion University English department, has been appointed as the new Dean of the ODU Honors College. Chandra De Silva, Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and Dr. Metzger met with faculty of the English Department on 11 June to discuss the transition. On 1 July 2008, Metzger officially succeeds longtime dean Louis H. Henry, who retired at the end of the spring semester.

Dr. Metzger, who joined the ODU faculty in 1993, has spent his entire career at the university in the English department. In addition to his teaching duties, he founded the Writing Tutorial Service, which currently serves roughly 2,000 students. Metzger has also served as director of the Jewish Studies Program (2000-07), and he established the Graduate Writing Assistance Program. As a scholar, Metzger is the author and/or editor of four books, guest editor of three special issues of journals, and author of over forty articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics in rhetorical and pedagogical studies.

Metzger’s duties as Honors College dean are not expected to affect his teaching load, although he now will split his classes between the English department and the college. Provost Carol Simpson said, "Professor Metzger is an excellent choice for the dean of the Honors College at Old Dominion University. He brings a special combination of talents and abilities to the role. He is a brilliant and articulate teacher as well as a highly respected scholar. His special interest in interdisciplinary dialogue is particularly relevant to the mission of the college." Simpson added, "David's vision for the college matches well the mission of the university to enrich the lives of students, faculty, alumni and the community at large. I look forward to working with him to enhance the contributions of the Honors College, especially in the development of an undergraduate research culture at ODU. I am confident that David will be a superb dean of the Honors College."

The Honors College was established in 1997 as a means of furthering the university's commitment to academic excellence. The college offers qualified students the opportunity to enroll in a four-year honors program, which features the best of aspects of both a large-university education and a small-school experience. High school students who apply for admission to the Honors College are evaluated by grade point average, SAT scores, class rank and a written personal statement. Honors College students enjoy low-enrollment courses designed specifically for the college, which emphasize teaching and innovation. Students are free to select any major. Majors currently being pursued by Honors College students include English, economics, history, political science, accounting, finance, education, criminal justice, sociology, biology, nursing, music, sports medicine and physics.

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ACCOLADES

Dr. Bridget LeAnn Anderson, Assistant Professor of English and Applied Linguistics, received a 2008 State Council of Higher Education Virginia (SCHEV) Outstanding Faculty Award in the category of "Rising Star." Bridget is a sociolinguist specializing in acoustic phonetics and language variation. Her theoretical work demonstrates the interaction of phonetic principles with social and ideological factors in structuring sound systems of American English, with a focus on "everyday" types of speech found in oral histories and personal narratives. Her first book, Migrati on, Accommodation, and Language Change: Language at the Intersectio n of Regional and Ethnic Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) examines the linguistic consequences of the "Great Southern Migration," the largest internal migration in US history. The methodological combination of ethnographic fieldwork and laboratory-standard acoustic analytic procedures yields an analysis which demonstrates the interaction of linguistic processes (e.g. coarticulation and phonological leveling) with social and ideological factors (such as the social salience of residential segregation) in the speech sounds of African American and Appalachian White Southern migrants and their descendants in the Detroit metro area. Her second book, Smoky Mountain English: Appalachian English in the Great Smoky Mountains of the American South (Dialects of English Series, Edinburgh University Press, anticipated for release in late 2008 or early 2009) is based on data she collected during ethnographic fieldwork from 1995-2000 in the rural Smoky Mountains of far western North Carolina.

At Old Dominion University, Dr. Anderson incorporates research and service learning into her pedagogical practices. She directs Tidewater Voices, a community language and oral history project whose goal is to allow the people of the Tidewater region to tell their own stories, in their own words and in their own language-- thus providing a living cultural and linguistic history that captures the distinct dialect features of this historical region. Students are trained to create archival-quality recordings, to conduct linguistic analyses, and to write descriptions of Tidewater dialects. They also complete service learning projects employing the tools of linguistics to address social problems involving language, and providing specific social benefits. Bridget holds an MA in English with a concentration in Linguistics from North Carolina State University, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Joyce Neff received one of two Teaching With Technology Awards for 2008 for her contributions and leadership in the application of instructional technologies to writing instruction. Joyce has been a leader in distance education for the last fourteen years. The award came with a $3000 check and an Apple video iPod.

In addition to the Teaching with Technology Award, Joyce also received the Faculty Innovator Grant along with Kevin DePew and Matt Oliver. The grant is given by the Center for Learning Technologies, and will be applied to the study of conferencing software to facilitate collaborative learning from a distance. Joyce was also recently elected Assistant Chair of the National Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition.

Dr . J effrey Richards was honored as a 2007 Eminent Scholar at the 2008 Faculty Awards Program in the spring.

At the same program, Dr. Michael Pearson of the MFA Creative Writing Program was recognized for 20 years' service to the University.

Dr. Janet Bing was a 2007 University Finalist, State Council of Higher Education Virginia (SCHEV) Outstanding Faculty Awards Program.

Dr. Luisa A. Igloria was one of the Finalists for the first Doctoral Mentoring Awards given by the University in the spring of 2008 to four faculty members selected from across campus. She was also recognized at the 2008 Faculty Awards Program for the 49th Parallel Poetry Prize, the James Hearst Poetry Prize and the National Writers Union Poetry Prize, among other poetry awards she received in 2007.

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PROGRAM NEWS & RELATED UPDATES

WTS Opens in New BAL Location

At the beginning of fall 2008, Writing Tutorial Services (WTS) opened in its new location on the first floor of Batten Arts & Letters Building (BAL 1002). The new location not only offers a bigger space which allows tutorials to be conducted comfortably, but it is also more visible to the student population. Students who had used WTS services in previous semesters have expressed their appreciation of the new space.

During the academic year, WTS continued to provide quality writing advice to the campus population. With the diversity of expertise that tutors (Victor Barrett, Brandon Geter, Chinchi Kungaa, Eric Obrynba, Chvonne Parker, Dana Staves, Randi Tucker, and Emily Louise Zimbrick) brought with them, WTS was capable of addressing many ODU students' writing inquiries. Graduate writing tutor Erin Pastore also helped to guide many graduate students through their term paper, theses, and dissertation writing experiences.

WTS conducted weekly workshop series as well, covering topics from Understanding Audience to Plagiarism and Citations, to Common ESL Errors. These workshops were well attended, often drawing fifteen to thirty students per session. Similar workshops will be offered in the coming academic year, and WTS is interested in hearing about additional topics that might be covered.

Finally, WTS, with the support of a Faculty Innovator Grant, tested the Macromedia Breeze software as a means of supporting online tutorials. With this software, WTS hopes to expand services to students at a distance and offer tutorials similar to those conducted in a face-to-face setting. Macromedia Breeze facilitates real-time video and audio conferencing while tutor and student look at the same document. While not all students might have the capability to take full advantage of the software's features, WTS sees this as an enhanced step towards incorporating distance students into the ODU culture.

For further inquiries, please write or call Kevin Eric DePew,
Director of Writing Tutorial Services
(757.683.4019 and kdepew@odu.edu)

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WTS at the Beach

Lecturer Julie Manthey is happy to share that she has worked hard to organize the Writing Tutorial Services for our students at the Virginia Beach Higher Education Center (VBHEC). Our student base at the Beach continues to grow, and Julie has been ably assisted by graduate assistant Virginia Amberman.

New Courses in Professional Writing Emphasis

The Professional Writing emphasis is busy reviewing and revising the curriculum at the MA level. New courses have also been developed. These include, at the undergraduate level, Introduction to Digital Writing and Client-based Research Writing; at the graduate level, new courses include Writing with Video, New Media Theory, and Practice I and II. Dr. Kathleen Gossett came on board in fall 2007 as an expert in new media studies; another new faculty member in professional writing will begin teaching in fall 2008.

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1st Publishing Festival Held at ODU

On 29 March, the MFA Creative Writing Program and the English Department hosted the first Publishing Festival on campus, dubbed "So You Think You Can Write? Straight Talk About Writing." The intensive one-day program was co-coordinated by MFA alumni and English Department faculty members Anne Wilson Gregory (MFA 2004, Adjunct Instructor) and Kathy Fowler (MFA 2003, English Lecturer and IDS Coordinator).

Editors and publishers of literary journals and magazines including Blackbird, Smartish Pace and Potomac Review; successful authors across several genres; and publishing representatives gave pragmatic advice and insightful talks on all aspects of the writing process; also featured was a nontraditional panel with one of the speakers based in the west coast, on the future of the book in a digital environment.

L-R: Anne Wilson Gregory, Kathy Fowler, MFA poetry grad Christian Gerard,
Poetry East Editor Richard Jones, Luisa Igloria, Smartish Pace Editor Stephen Reichert

The day's programs were capped off by a Keynote and Reading delivered by poet and editor Richard Jones, who was the MFA Creative Writing Program's Spring 2008 Visiting Poet in Residence.

The highly successful event was advertised to members of the Hampton Roads writing community, but was primarily conceived to meet the needs of ODU's MFA Creative Writing Program students.

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2008 ODU-Poetry Society of Virginia-
Academy of American Poets
College Poetry Prizes Announced

Undergraduate Ryan F. Glass and MFA poetry student Myrna Amelia Mesa (expected to graduate August 2008) are the top winners in this year's ODU College Poetry Prizes co-sponsored by the MFA Creative Writing Program, the Poetry Society of Virginia, and the Academy of American Poets.

Ryan's poem "To a Rainy Day Woman" received an Honorable Mention Award in the Undergraduate Category; and Myrna's poems "All I Know About My Grandmother, Guillermina" and the sonnet crown "Cuban War Letters" received the First Prize in the Graduate Category; Myrna's "Cuban War Letters" also just recently placed Finalist in the 2008 Columbia Poetry Contest and Finalist in the 2008 Poetry Contest of the Nimrod International Journal of Poetry and Prose.

Other winners in the Graduate Category are MFA poetry grads Matilda Cox (First Runner-up) for her poem "Illustrating Life;" and Eddie Dowe (Second Runner-up) for his poem "Burden."

Vivian Teter, professor of English at Virginia Wesleyan College, Pushcart Prize nominee and author of Translating a Bridge (Quartet Series, 2007; Toadlily Press), judged the contest.

The ODU College Poetry Prize Contest for the 2008-2009 academic year will officially open in fall 2008, with an expected entry deadline in early to mid-January 2009.

In 1955, The Academy of American Poets established its University and College Poetry Prize program at ten schools. The Academy now sponsors over 200 annual prizes for poetry at colleges and universities nationwide, and has awarded more than $350,000 to nearly 10,000 student poets since the program's inception.

In 2007, the Poetry Society of Virginia through the efforts of current State Poet Laureate Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, named our MFA program for an endowment enabling the Academy of American Poets to count Old Dominion University among the colleges and universities at which the annual College Poetry Prize is offered.

Many of America's most esteemed poets won their first recognition through an Academy of American Poets College Prize, including Diane Ackerman, Toi Derricotte, Mark Doty, Alice Fulton, Tess Gallagher, Louise Glück, Allen Grossman, Jorie Graham, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Li-Young Lee, Brad Leithauser, J. D. McClatchy, Heather McHugh, Gregory Orr, Robert Pinsky, Sylvia Plath, Mark Rudman, Mary Jo Salter, Gjertrud von Schnackenberg, George Starbuck, Mark Strand, and Charles Wright, among others.

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Graduate Student Workshops on Crafting a Career

In April this year, Dawn Thacker and Timothy Richardson, both ODU alums, led workshops on "Crafting a Career: Graduate School and Beyond."

Dawn Thacker (MA English, 2005) has just defended her dissertation ("Silent Soldier: Rhetorical Constructions of Subjectivity in the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Army") under the direction of Sharon Crowley at Arizona State University. Her research interests include postmodern and feminist rhetorics, and queer theory.

Tim Richardson (MFA 1997) is currently assistant professor of rhetoric and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Texas-Arlington. He received his PhD in English from Loyola University (2004), and has published poems in the Paris Review and other journals. He is completing work on his first scholarly book manuscript, It is Not in Heaven: Rhetoric, History, and the Possibility of Writing.

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FACULTY NOTES ~

Awards;
Tenure & Promotion;
Publications; Scholarly & Related Activities

Nancy Topping Bazin (Eminent Scholar and Professor of English) is now an artist (and even has a business license!); her paintings, in a variety of media and styles, are displayed continuously at two Virginia Beach Galleries. She has a changing display on a wall at the Artists Gallery (608 Norfolk Ave.) and also participates in monthly exhibits on different themes. Nancy is also one of the five Managing Artists at the Pembroke 4 Art Gallery.

Adjunct Professor in English Composition Pierre Beauregard was Finalist in Meridian's Editor's Prize in fiction, with his short story "Autumn." The story was published in the May 2008 issue.

Graduate Program Director in Applied Lingusitics, Janet Bing published "Liberated Jokes: Sexual Humor in All-Female Groups" in (Volume 20, Number 4); and "Module 1: Fundamentals of Interpersonal Communications," "Module 2: Home Culture Orientation" in Humor: International Journal of Humor ResearchInterpersonal Dynamics in Cross Cultural Communication (prepared for the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command; 2007). With Charles Ruhl, Janet also published "It's All My Fault! The Pragmatics of Responsibility Statements" in Journal of Pragmatics (Volume 40, Number 3).

Michael Blumenthal, Darden Endowed Chair in Creative Writing, published the article "Baboon Heaven" in Natural History Magazine; he has had his poetry and fiction featured in The Chattahoochee Review, New Works Review, New Letters, The Southern Review, Green Mountains Review, Poetry East, Cutthroat, and The Yalobusha Review.

Matilda Cox, Director of Advising for the College of Arts & Letters, was awarded a place in the Cave Canem Summer Retreat for Writers.

Kathy Fowler published a story in The Powhatan Review, and her "The Between Molecules, Then Atoms" was published as the Hot Opener on Potomac Review's website. With Anne Wilson Gregory, she successfully co-directed the 'So You Think You Can Write?' One-Day Publishing Festival in March.

Lenore Hart's new novel, Becky: The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher (St. Martin's Press, January 2008) was selected as an alternate selection of the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club (both Doubleday book clubs). Lenore wrote the lyrics of a four-part oratorio called Nativity in Black and White (music composed by Stefan Dulcie); it was performed in the spring by the Salisbury University Music Department with tenors, a soprano, and a thirty-member chorus. In addition, with David Poyer she co-authored "How to Win A Novel Contest" which appeared in The Writer (April 2008). Lenore's interview with Norris Church Mailer will appear in the fall 2008 issue of Provincetown Arts. She is at work on a new novel on Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm (St. Martin's Press), and she will be Visiting Fiction Writer at Elizabethtown College, PA, for the coming schoolyear.

Michelle "Dee" Heart was recognized by students of the Residential College with a "Star Faculty" award in the spring semester.

The Ragdale Foundation awarded the Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Fellowship to Luisa A. Igloria (summer 2008). Luisa will work on a new poetry manuscript and give a reading during this Ragdale residency. Some new poems have been published in Poetry East, Natural Bridge, qarrtsiluni and in the persona poem issue of Poemeleon.

Tom Long, who has taught as Adjunct Assistant Professor of English for us, is leaving the Hampton Roads area this summer. He will accept an Associate Professor in Residence position at the School of Nursing, the University of Connecticut. Previously he had worked as writing coach for faculty and doctoral students in the SON programs. He will be on the graduate faculty, will write and edit SON publications, and continue his own research in medical humanities (representations of the body, sexuality and disease).

Manuela Mourao's "Whitewash" and other paintings were part of an exhibit and international symposium on Art and Cartography-Cartography and Art (a collaboration of the Technical University Vienna, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and RMIT University, Melbourne) from 30 January to 3 February. She also exhibited her works at the Selden Gallery in downtown Norfolk.

Joyce Neff was promoted to Professor in July 2007. Her book Across Distances and Disciplines: Writing Research and Pedagogy in Distributed Learning (co-authored with Carl Whithaus) was recently released by Lawrence Erlbaum/Taylor & Francis (New York, 2008).

David Pagano published "The Space of Apocalypse in Zombie Cinema" in Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, eds. Marc Leverette and Shawn McIntosh (Scarecrow Press, 2008); and "Narrative Unreliability in Film and Literature" in Notes on American Literature (Volume 16, Number 2).

Michael Pearson has published the following works: "Western Dreams: Taos, Santa Fe, and Home" in Literary Review Web; "Burmese Days" in The Truth About the Fact: International Journal of Nonfiction (Volume III, Number 1); "Twists and Turns in Burma: A Place Where Anything Can Happen" in The Atlanta Journal and Constitution; and Innocents Abroad Too: Journeys Around the World on Semester at Sea (forthcoming from Syracuse University Press).

Janet Peery and Sheri Reynolds (MFA Creative Writing Faculty) have been promoted to Full Professor. Janet's novel What the Thunder Said is available in paperback this June from Picador.

Jeffrey Richards published "The Adventures of Emmera, the Transatlantic Novel, and the Fiction of America" in Early American Literature (Volume 42, Number 3); and his review of Eliza Richards' Gender and the Politics of Reception in Poe's Circle (Cambridge University Press, 2004) in South Atlantic Review (Volume 72, Number 1).

Craig Stewart published "Social Cognition and Discourse Processing Goals in the Analysis of 'Ex-Gay' Rhetoric" in Discourse & Society (Volume 19, 63-83); and "Conversational Argumentation in Decision-Making: Chinese and US Participants in Face-to-Face and Instant Messaging Interactions" in Discourse Processes (Volume 44, 113-139).

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STUDENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Second year MFA poetry grad Christian Anton Gerard has received a full fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference this summer.

Second year Ph.D. student in Rhetoric and Textual Studies Elif Guler won the 2008 Sigma Tau Delta Henry Regnery Endowed Scholarship; the award is given annually to an outstanding student scholar.

Mary Hanlin, MFA poetry/MA student, was one of 120 Librarians from across the country selected as an Emerging Leader by the American Library Association (ALA). A native of Norfolk, Mary has a Bachelor's degree from Christopher Newport University and a Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

English Composition student Manuela Hansmeier's "The German Way Into Your Heart" was published in the Virginian-Pilot's Co-Pilot section.

Rachel Inghram has won this year's English Undergraduate Literary Essay Contest with "A Busy Actor in Their Play: Rosalind as a Changing Character in Shakespeare's As You Like It." The essay was written in fall 2007 for Dr. Imtiaz Habib's English 303/Shakespeare's Histories and Comedies. This year's judges were Dr. Jeffrey Richards, Dr. Joseph Cosco, and Dr. Manuela Mourao.

English Lecturer and VBHEC English Coordinator Katherine Jackson's English 110 Composition students were recently published by the Virginian-Pilot: Nicole Agnese, "For this Family, Fish is the Dish of Unity (3 December 2007) and Delont'e Parker, "Coming In Right on Time" (12 December 2007).

Mimi Leonard published "Podcasting's Possibilities" in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges (Volume 13, number 1, Spring 2008).

Leslie Norris won one of the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication) 2008 Scholars of the Dream Award for her proposed paper "Multimodal Pedagogy in Basic and Freshman Writing Courses."

Sarah McCoy (MFA 2007) has landed a two-book deal with Shaye Areheart Books. Her debut novel The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico is a young girl's coming-of-age story set in 1960s-era Puerto Rico.

Heather Lettner-Rust, with four co-authors, published "Writing Beyond the Curriculum: Transfer, Transition and Transformation" in Across the Disciplines.

MFA Fiction student Dana Staves won the Women's Studies Essay Contest (Graduate Division) for her paper "Girls Like Us: Queering Fatness in Hairspray."

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PRESENTATIONS & CONFERENCES

English Adjunct Instructor and Arts & Letters Graduate Style Editor Alicia DeFonzo (MA Literature, 2007) presented her essay "Servants as Unwitting Accomplices in Late Gothic Fiction at the National Popular Culture Association Conference in San Francisco (March 2008). Her essay "The Monster's Request for a Sister in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" was accepted at the International NarrativEncounters Conference at UCC Ireland in February, though she was unable to attend.

Applied Linguistics faculty Janet Bing and Joanne Scheibman will be presenting papers at the International Gender and Language Association Conference in Wellington, New Zealand (3-5 July), together with (now graduated Linguistics students) Natasha McKeller and Sibley Slinkard.

Elif Guler presented and designed the poster "Orientalist Rhetoric and its Paradoxical Role in Representing Turkey's Identity" for Research Expo 2007: 400 Years of Discovery, Old Dominion University (April 2007). In addition, she presented the following papers at these conferences: "Science and Reason in the Public Discourse of Kemalism: A Pentadic Analysis of Ataturk's Speech on the 10th Anniversary of the Turkish Republic" at the 13th Biennial National COnference of the Rhetoric Society of America (Seattle, WA; May 2008); and "Literacy and Affordances in Different Writing Systems: The Transition of Turkish from the Arabic Script to the Latin Alphabet" at the 3rd Biennial Conference on Intercultural Rhetoric and Discourse, Ohio State University (Columbus, OH; June 2007).

Joyce Neff presented "The Literacies of Online Learning" at the Composition Studies Conference: Literacies - Personal, Professional, Academic (University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH; 13 October 2007). She also presented "Writing Across the Curriculum as a Rhetoric for Distance and Distributed Learning" at the Rhetorics and Technologies Conference, Penn State University, State College (8 July 2007).

MFA faculty member Luisa A. Igloria keynoted the Virginia Humanities Conference at Radford University in April 2008.

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OTHER NEWS

Remica Bingham (BA 2002), who received her MFA from Bennington College (2005) and has taught as an Adjunct for the English Department, has been awarded fellowships from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshops and Cave Canem. Her first book of poetry, Conversion, won the 2007 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award (Lotus Press, 2007). Currently, she is the Writing Competency Coordinator at Norfolk State University.

Karen Brown (nee Williams; BA English, 1996) received her Master of Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina in May 2003. She has worked as Serials and Electronic Resources Catalog Librarian at North Carolina State University, and is currently Reference Librarian at the University of South Carolina's Thomas Cooper Library. She also teaches a one-credit information iteracy course, and co-directs the university's Fall Festival of Authors event.

Natalie G. Diaz (MFA 2007) has been accepted into the Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership program at Grand Canyon University.

Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers (MFA 2007) is the YA Librarian in the Norfolk Main Library.

Felicia Sawyer (BA English 1970) of Portsmouth, VA, wrote to share the news that her son James Parnell Sawyer, who graduated from Woodrow Wilson HIgh School in 2006), was accepted at the College of William & Mary and received a Eure Scholarship from his area bowling youth league.