Letter from the Chair – November

Hi all.

I hope that everyone is well and had a good October. Registration for Spring semester classes began a week ago on Monday. Ads for the tenure-line positions in Creative Writing and Digital Humanities have now been posted on Niner Talent. Please share with potential applicants. Our next department meeting is November 15th, from 11 until 12:30pm. 

FYI 

Our first English major recruitment signs were put up around campus in late October before Spring registration. Thanks to Jadeiah for designing them!

The October Issue of the WRC Newsletter, The Write Place, is attached. The goal of The Write Place is to provide insight into our community and encourage students to feel excited about seeking writing support.

The second Gingko Salon will be held at the Independence Picture House on Monday, November 11th. History professor Heather Perry will be speaking on the importance of Charlotte’s Fort Greene for WWI preparations and its impact on our city. The folks at Ginkgo have generously invited you to have a glass of wine or beer or soda or popcorn on them.

A Digital Humanities @ Charlotte meetup will be held on November 14th from 9:45 until 10:45 in Area 49 in Atkins Library. Register here.

The UNCC Theatre Department will be staging Clybourne Park this coming November 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th. Inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun and winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and London’s Olivier Award for Best Play, the play is about race, real estate, and the volatile values of each. 

Congratulations!Pilar Blitvich published the co-edited volume Influencer discourse: Affective relations and identities with John Benjamins. She also delivered a plenary address at the 6th International Pragmatics Association Conference. Bryn Chancellor recently was an invited featured reader at the inaugural Punch Bucket Literary Festival in Asheville, NC, where she presented her fiction at two readings. She also taught a fiction-writing workshop, “Borrowed Scenery: Inviting the World into Stories,” on October 29 for Charlotte Center for Literary Arts.Boyd Davis published the co-edited volume Language, Aging and Society: What can Linguistics Do for the Aging World? with Palgrave-McMillan.
Paula Eckard published an article titled “War, Motherhood, and Disability in Lee Smith’s On Agate Hill” in the North Carolina Literary Review Online. The article, which appears in a special issue on North Carolina Disability Literature, applies theories of narrative medicine to Smith’s novel.

Giania Holiday, Marc Rebello, and Jonah Dennis were selected to receive Mark West Study/Abroad Study/Away Awards. A big thanks to Twig and Barbara Branch for funding these grants!

Liz Miller‘s chapter “Exploring language teacher emotions of belonging and identity formation from a critical poststructuralist perspective” was recently published in Language teacher identity and wellbeing by Multilingual Matters.Alan Rauch delivered the paper “Autobiography: A Darwinian Event” at North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference in Montreal. He also gave talks on the sloth to the Barclay Community (a Residence) for CHESS and in Wilmington as part of “Slothapalooza” (sponsored by Pomegranate Books and the Cape Fear Museum of Natural History). MA graduate Kristen Reynolds successfully defended her dissertation at the University of Minnesota last academic year and is now on a postdoc at Brown.Mark West participated in a virtual panel on the “Freedom to Read” sponsored by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and gave a community presentation titled “The Enduring Appeal of the MGM Classic Film The Wizard of Oz” at the Myers Park Baptist Church. He was also named University Marshal for the upcoming December 2024 Commencement. CHESS also posted this article about him being named as finalist for the Bank of America Teaching Award: https://chess.charlotte.edu/2024/10/15/mark-west-honored-as-a-2024-bank-of-america-award-for-teaching-excellence-finalist/.