March 2023
Tuesday, March 7, 2023Dear Colleagues,Welcome back from Spring Break! I hope you had a restful, relaxing, productive, or adventurous time, depending what you needed the break to be. Your colleagues have been busy recently, and I am happy to share news of their accomplishments. Also included are news items about our amazing current and former students. KUDOSTwo of our faculty have been awarded Small Research Grants from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to help fund their projects. Meghan Barnes received a grant for her project “Critical English Educator Collaborative.” Allison Hutchcraft received funds to write new poems for her second collection. Bryn Chancellor discussed creative writers using a notebook to sharpen their observation skills in rece
nt column for Lit Bits from Charlotte Lit.Janaka Lewis gave a presentation titled “Right to Grow: Stories of Land and Social Justice Movements” at Winthrop University’s Interdisciplinary Studies Conference, “Movement(s) in a Dynamic World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” In other activities, Janaka was a panelist and featured author for a National African American Read-In event coordinated by Charlotte Mecklenburg Libraries and held at Sugar Creek Charter School. She was also a featured Black History Month author and reader at Lake Norman Charter School, Niner University Elementary School, and University Park Elementary School.
Janaka also moderated “The Black Read,” a space created by J. Murrey Atkins Library for students to share their stories and literature that speaks to them and co-hosted The Watermelon Woman discussion with alumna L’Monique King at Independent Picture House after the screening. Juan Meneses presented a paper titled “Eroded Citizenship: The Figure of the Denizen in J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K” at the Modern Language Association Conference. Daniel Shealy’s edited collection Little Women at 150 received a favorable review in Choice.Ralf Thiede’s book Language, Mind, and Power: Why We Need Linguistic Equality, co-authoredwith Dan Boisvert, a received positive (and lengthy) review by Yuanyuan Zhang at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. https://ijehss.com/uploads2022/EHS_5_456.pdfMark West published an article titled “The Joy of Rereading The Wind in the Willows” in Early Children’s Literature and Culture Chronicle.https://preview.mailerlite.com/d5r4z9b0z4/2140807704774448905/v1j8/
He also published an article in CLTure about a new poetry collection by Jay Ward, Poet Laureate of Charlotte. https://clture.org/charlotte-poet-laureate-junious-jay-ward/The International Committee of the Children’s Literature Association recently posted a blog related to Storybook Worlds Made Real, a book that Mark co-edited with Kathy Merlock Jackson. https://childlitassn.wixsite.com/intlcommittee/single-post/an-international-tour-of-story-based-amusement-parks-and-literary-playgroundsSTUDENT NEWS:Undergraduate student Erin Dulin has been accepted for M.A. graduate study at Brandeis University and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Rhian Parker, who is currently in her second year of our dual degree program in creative writing, published her poem-collage “Imago” in Hyperrhia: New Media Cultures. You can read the poem here: <http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz25/>.Former M.A. student Cody Ward, who is completing his Ph.D. in English at UNC Chapel Hill, won the Languages and Literatures Graduate Student Award for his paper titled “Weird Object Relations, Ecology, and Apocalypse in Cormac McCarthys’ The Passenger and Jeff VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander,” which he presented at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference (SWPACA).
As a reminder, please send me news of your accomplishments. If I overlook anything that you have previously sent, do not hesitate to let me know. Thank you and congratulations to the faculty and students above!
Paula