April 2020, No. 2
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
I hope the final days of your classes are going well and that you are looking forward to a well-deserved break in the coming weeks. Thank you for your enduring concern for our students and for helping them finish what has been a difficult semester. Your efforts have made such a difference. I also want you to know how much it means to me to be part of such a generous, supportive department. I don’t think I imagined my first semester as department chair being quite like this. But again, you have made a world of difference in my semester as well. Thank you.
KUDOS
April brings more outstanding news about our students and faculty:
Peter Fields, who received his BA and MA in our department, has been accepted into the University of South Florida’s Ph.D. program in Rhetoric & Composition this fall and will attend with full funding.
Shannon Murphy, who is president of both the Children’s Literature Graduate Organization (CLGO) and the English Graduate Student Association (EGSA), has been given the Student Leadership Legacy Award for her work in CLGO this year.
Steven (Philip) Perry, who received his BA and MA in our department, has been accepted into New Mexico State University’s MFA program and will attend with a fully-funded graduate assistant position.
Kristen Reynolds, who received her BA and MA in our department, will be starting the Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota after, according to Janaka Lewis, “getting in everywhere she applied.”
JuliAnna Ávila has received an advance book contract for Ávila, J., Rud, A.G., Waks, L., & Ring, E. (Eds.). The Contemporary Relevance of John Dewey’s Theories on Teaching and Learning: Deweyan Perspectives on Standardization, Accountability, and Assessment in Education (Routledge International Studies in the Philosophy of Education).
Boyd Davis has six chapters and articles due out soon from Cambridge and Palgrave. COVID-19 has caused a delay, but the works are currently in press:
Davis B, Language, aging and dementia. Ch 19 in Susan Conrad, ed, Cambridge Handbook of Applied Linguistics. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp 278-291, & 15 pp to be online material for student activities, book’s website (Will now appear 2020).
Davis B, Maclagan M. Signposts, guideposts, and stalls: pragmatic and discourse markers in dementia discourse. Ch 4, Learning from the talk of persons with dementia, ed T. Stickle. London: Palgrave, 2020, 18 pp.
Davis B, Pope C. Challenges in recording people with dementia. Ch 2, Learning from the talk of persons with dementia ed T. Stickle. London: Palgrave, 2020, 22 pp.
Davis B, van Ravenstein K, Pope C. Digital communication: telehealth for patients andproviders. In Louise Mullany, ed., Language in the Professions: Consultancy, Advocacy, Activism. London: Palgrave, 2020, 22 pp.
Van Ravenstein K, Brotherton S, Davis B. A pilot study to investigate the feasibility of using telehealth to deliver a fall prevention program, in press Journal of Allied Health, 2020, 20 pp.
Davis B, Maclagan M. Neurocognitive disorder: Alzheimer’s disease. Palgrave Encyclopedia of Critical Perspectives on Mental Health, a 2-year project, which will now appear in 2021.
Janaka Lewis published an article titled “Handle Us Warmly: Girlhood, Community, and Radical Creativity in for colored girls at 44,” in the CLAJ special double issue on Ntozake Shange.
Kirk Melnikoff has received a NEH summer stipend for research on his book Bookselling in Early Modern England. He plans to conduct research at Oxford and London in the summer of 2021.
Liz Miller published a co-authored chapter “‘Critical incidents’ in language teachers’ narratives of emotional experience” in the edited volume Language Teaching: A Emotional Rollercoaster (Multilingual Matters).
Maya Socolovksy was scheduled to present a paper titled “Erasing Guatemala: Narratives of American Passing and Conversion in Alejandra Díaz’s The Only Road and The Crossroads” at the MELUS Conference in New Orleans.
Clayton Tarr published an article titled “Stillborn Plots: Revolution, Imagination, and the Failure of Romanticism.” Nineteenth Century Literature 74.4 (March 2020): 415-47. Here is the link to the journal: https://ncl.ucpress.edu/. Clayton also recently learned of his re-appointment for a three-year term as a lecturer in English and WRDS.
Mark West’s recent “For the Love of Libraries” post has been published by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library at https://foundation.cmlibrary.org/your-impact/libraries-matter/
Lara Vetter’s fame as graduate director continues to grow. Here is an article about her Reynolds Award that was published in UNC Charlotte’s Exchange: https://exchange.uncc.edu/english-professor-receives-reynolds-leadership-award-for-focus-on-students/
Best wishes, everyone!
Paula