a feast of words - Department of English

Transcription

College of Liberal Arts &
Human Sciences
a feast of words
department of english magazine | spring 2012
in this issue:
english goes international
table of contents
a. . .feast
. . . . . . . . .undergraduate
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .conference
.......................
. . . . . . .of
. . .twenty
. . . . . . . . .years
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . english
message
. . . . . . . . . . . . from
. . . . . . .the
. . . . chair
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . exits:
. . . . . . .welch,
. . . . . . . . ruggiero,
. . . . . . . . . . . .brumberger
......................
meet
. . . . . . . the
. . . . .associate
. . . . . . . . . . . .&
. . .assistant
. . . . . . . . . . . chairs
. . . . . . . . . . . alumni
. . . . . . . . .profile
........................................
english
. . . . . . . . . international
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conference
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . student
. . . . . . . . . .profiles
.......................................
jane
. . . . . . wemhoener’s
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .african
. . . . . . . . .adventures
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . alumni
. . . . . . . . .news
........................................
c21s
. . . . . . .takes
. . . . . . . on
. . . . the
. . . . .world
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . faculty
. . . . . . . . .news
........................................
katy
. . . . . . .powell’s
. . . . . . . . . .journey
. . . . . . . . . to
. . . sri
. . . .lanka
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . student
. . . . . . . . . .news
......................................
internationalizing
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the
. . . . .writing
. . . . . . . . center
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . meet
. . . . . . . the
. . . . .feast
. . . . . . .staff
..............................
fred
. . . . . . d’aguiar:
. . . . . . . . . . .goldsmith’s
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .fellowship
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . honor
. . . . . . . . roll:
. . . . .thank
. . . . . . . you
. . . . . .to
. . .donors
....................
london
. . . . . . . . . calling:
. . . . . . . . .study
. . . . . . . abroad
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . blacksburg
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . photo
. . . . . . . . gallery
...........................
writers & designers
cover image
bob siegle
a feast of words
323 shanks hall
virginia tech
blacksburg, va 24061
e-mail: [email protected]
http://www.english.vt.edu
jennifer mooney
katie mawyer
beth thompson
mike breitenbach
kevin burke
whitney jones
allison hammond
sean simons
karen spears
suzanne reisinger
faculty editor
jen mooney
associate editors
katie mawyer
beth thompson
a feast of twenty years
text jen mooney | page design kevin burke
This year, the department’s alumni newsletter
celebrates its 20th anniversary! Since Fall 1992, when
it was called News from NowHere, it has brought you
a variety of stories about our department. From a
story about upgrades to the department’s computer
lab in the very first issue to a feature on collaborative
research in the Center for the Study of Rhetoric in
Society in the latest, we have covered the stories that
define us as a department and as a community.
1992
2001
Beginning with this issue we
will broaden that scope of
subjects to include a more
comprehensive look at the
department as a whole – what
we’re doing, what we have
planned, what we’re celebrating
– with sections devoted to
current students and to alumni.
The new online format
permits us to do things with
the newsletter – now thought
of more as a magazine – than were ever possible
with a printed version, which was both expensive to
produce and limited what we could do in terms of
using photographs and color. Now we can provide
you with larger pictures, more eye-popping color, and
more news about the English Department community
– which includes YOU. Our new horizontal layout is
designed to work well on computers of any size, on
tablet devices, and smartphones. Yes, it looks a bit
different than would a vertical layout, but you won’t
have to scroll down the “page” to read all of the text.
We have also added levels of interactivity to the
A FEAST OF WORDS | Spring 2012
magazine. What does that mean? It means that if
you are reading the magazine and you run across a
reference to, say, a program on campus or a company
name, you should be able to click on that title and
open the web site for it. Beyond that, we have tried
to make room for a lot of visuals by presenting some
of them in thumbnail galleries. Roll over or click a
thumbnail, and you will open a larger version of it,
in full color and detail. Finally, we hope to bring you
links to videos and music files that will enhance your
knowledge about particular
subjects we cover in our stories.
Additionally, we move this
year to an annual publication
schedule and will produce a
single, larger issue each April.
What’s more, the magazine will
now be produced in part by a
small group of undergraduate
students who will plan, research,
write, and design each issue.
This way, it will provide a handson learning experience for students who plan careers
in writing, editing, and design.
As the cover images on this page show, A Feast of
Words has over time changed greatly in appearance
and layout. This will, no doubt, be its most dramatic
transformation. Please know, though, that within
its pages -- whether they are paper or virtual -- it
will remain true to its intention: to bring you news
about the community that makes up the English
Department, past, present, and future. We hope that
you will enjoy reading the final version as much as we
enjoyed producing it.
2003
2010
Table of Contents
message from the chair
joseph eska
As I come to the end of my first year as Chair of the Department of English, during which my principal
focus has been on first steps towards the internationalization of the experiences that we provide to
our students, it is gratifying that the first issue of Feast of Words to appear during my tenure focuses
upon international matters.
At the end of March, in collaboration with the Virginia Council for International Education, Inc., the
department successfully co-hosted a conference called Internationalizing the Curriculum. Finding the
World in English, which brought together international education professionals and English faculty
interested in international education from around the Commonwealth of Virginia (and as far away as
Switzerland). The goal of this conference was to bring together people to establish work groups to
share information and develop best practices for internationalizing the curriculum.
We’re off to a great start and hope to establish Virginia Tech as the flagship for internationalizing
the experiences — ever more important to employers in an increasingly globalizing world — that
English majors receive in their education. Steve Kark, our Coordinator of Internships, is actively
gathering information on internships both in the Blacksburg area and in northern Virginia which can
provide international experiences for students, and Jim Dubinsky, our Director of the Undergraduate
Curriculum, is leading a task force whose ultimate aim is to develop a plan whereby all Virginia Tech
English majors will receive international experiences during their career here.
But there’s even more going on internationally. Jane Wemhoener, our Director of International
Initiatives, continues to run our stellar summer abroad program called London Calling!, and is also
involved, along with a team of other Virginia Tech English faculty, in an outreach project teaching
writing to medical students at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Tanzania. Katy Powell,
who also serves as the Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program, is actively involved
in building collaborations in Sri Lanka, and Bob Siegle is directing the new Center for 21st Century
Studies which features a nomadic summer abroad experience that will bring students to Morocco,
Turkey, and Sri Lanka this summer.
Please give us feedback on this first electronic version of Feast of Words. We value our dialogue with
you as we try to keep you up to date with what is going on in the Department of English.
page design & layout | beth thompson
Table of Contents
major waves of change
text & page design katie mawyer | photos compliments of virginia tech
For 34 years, Tony Colaianne has witnessed the inner workings of The Big Tent. “Literature,” he says, “is
an extensive field of study; it’s huge. The magnitude of English is a lot to take in. It’s a ‘big tent’ discipline,
if you will.”
As his 35th year of teaching at Virginia Tech approaches, Colaianne took an appropriate pause to reflect
on the changes the English Department has undergone during his era. From physical location to building
design to altered emphasis and expanded curriculum, Colaianne has been a part of the department’s
“greater growth toward becoming more professional.”
Colaianne came to Tech in 1977 along with 12 other newly appointed doctorates. “We referred to
ourselves as ‘the class,’” said Colaianne. “We were all relatively young.” The group marked the first of
doctoral stuff to come through Tech in some time and was the result of a major new hiring initiative
untaken by the dean of arts and sciences.
“I would think that of all the things I’ve seen over the years, in terms of major waves of change, what’s
happened in the department is reflective of the shift in where we are located and the building design of
that location,” said Colaianne. “They’ve altered the way to relate to each other,” he said.
Colaianne believes the evolution of the English department and the university mirrors that of the
revolution of the 1970s and 80s. According to Colaianne, what started as a movement in France spread to
the Western world, and eventually the influences worked their ways into the universities. “Academically,
what happened was that there suddenly was a great attention to the otherness of people, of groups, of
the estranged,” said Colaianne. “In the broad patterns of history, it’s all connected to the rise of social
justice.”
When Colaianne arrived to Tech, “we were adjusting to the particularly volatile times for the American
Academy,” he said. During this time, Tech taught a traditional curriculum, including British and American
literature. “We were never too rigid, but we had a lot of coverage…in the historical evolution in which we
saw ourselves mirrored.”
Colaianne also recalls the rise of women’s literature in the 1990s. “It had never been defined as a separate
body of literature,” he said. “Women’s literature was an intellectual response. We developed courses
for and about women. We also went more toward teaching the other, as might be determined by race,
gender, or other variables. So much so, that as the arc of these courses developed, we attracted professors
to our faculty who were interested in working at the margins of
the field—where English intersects with science.”
A similar trend exists in the area of Appalachian studies.
Colaianne says: “We have a lot of people interested in
Appalachian studies, and many years ago that was just a
glimmer really; it was a glimmer in someone’s eye. It would
occasional be offered, but not with a great deal of expertise.
And we took off with that discipline.”
As years passed, the English Department “got more world
coverage” and shifted their emphasis toward internationalizing
the entirety of the curriculum. “Where English can make a
unique contribution is in developing courses based on literature
in translation,” said Colaianne. “We can exchange culture
through literature.”
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major waves of change
Colaianne says that although the department would like all students to be
able to have study abroad experience, it might not be economically viable
for everyone. He feels the department can accomplish a great deal, inside
Virginia Tech doors, by orienting students toward global perspectives. “Study
abroad is great and we’re doing more and more of it,” he says, “but at the
same time, we’re augmenting the curriculum to enrich that aspect here.”
“Let me make a prediction,” Colaianne proposes. “Or rather a wish. I’m hoping
that in the years ahead, people will consider working in cooperation with the
department of foreign languages and teach literature and culture as a way of
educating everyone on global perspectives.”
As associate chair of the department, Colaianne’s interest lay in making the
administration “distinctive in its own way,” and he aims to “improve what can
be improved.” With guidance from colleague and old friend, Nancy Metz,
Colaianne was able to fulfill the requirements and serve as “the advocate for
instructors.”
“Unlike working in the classroom where you’re patiently nurturing things
along…administration is much more about processing the day-to-day while
you’re shaping plans for longer-termed things,” said Colaianne. “I’m fortunate
in being able to work with many really good colleagues in various areas. I
think that’s really the heart of what we do.”
Colaianne spoke of other waves of change: “Others like the rise of professional
writing, the development within the English Department of specializing the
education of people so that they might go out into the world and become
professional writers,” he said. “Along with that is the rise of creative writing
and its spread. See, we’ve participated in all of that…at the end of the day,
we have an already well-ranked Master of Fine Arts program that’s very
competitive and attracts a lot of people.”
Aside from a developed curriculum, according to Colaianne, an appetite for
continuous remolding is key for keeping a department alive.
“I tend to think that what makes for a healthy department and what kind of
puts us in that weird company is constant experimentation, a feeling where
you don’t really reach a point that you’re self-satisfied with the curriculum…
you’re trying new things, stretching out a little bit, keeping your mind open
and seeing how things are working,” he said.
Colaianne believes the innovations of the English Departments, its modifications and its
improvements are all synchronized with Virginia Tech as a whole.
“We are more in harmony with the university in terms of its intent,” he says. “That sets us
apart…and we will undoubtedly bare witness to additional waves of change as we continue
progressing. I wonder, I wonder what they shall be.”
suzanne reisinger: new assistant chair
text ally hammond
Beginning this upcoming summer,
Suzanne Reisinger will become
the Assistant Chair of the English
Department. Currently, Reisinger is a
senior instructor of English, teaching
classes ranging from first year
composition, to American Literature,
to Southern Literature.
Reisinger states that, “Although I
do love teaching, I’m interested in a
different aspect of the university…a
different piece of the whole puzzle.”
In the new position, she will continue
to teach, but her main responsibility
will be to work with the registrar to
schedule all classes and classrooms for the English Department. In addition to scheduling,
she will work with the director of first year composition to coordinate all composition classes,
and make sure the program runs smoothly.
When asked what she was most excited to do with her new position, she responded with a big
smile, followed by, “I love the energy and the students—[with this job] I’ll see students in a
different context, I’ve advised for several years, and this is a good way to work with students—
and my colleagues—in a different way.” She laughed and added, “I like my colleagues a lot.”
With her passion for students and enthusiasm for the English department, Reisinger will
surely succeed in her new position. Even with all of her enthusiasm she still states, “I am
really conscious of the fact that Cheryl Ruggiero has been great, and taking over after her is a
little intimidating, frankly. I can only hope everything will go well.”
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exploring english
page design ally hammond & beth thompson | photos beth thompson
a key international conference
Representatives from nearly 20 colleges, universities,
and organizations across Virginia gathered March
29-31 at Virginia Tech for a conference titled
Internationalizing the Curriculum: Finding the World
in English. Billed as a “working conference building
bridges across the campuses of Virginia,” the event
was co-sponsored by the English Department and the
Virginia Council for International Education (VaCIE),
with support from several other agencies.
Its goal, noted Jessica Bates (MA, ENGL, 12),
conference graduate assistant, was “to get people
to think internationally about what they teach in the
classroom, to question whether there is a cultural bias
to what they teach, and [how] to expand students’
opportunities for future study and careers.”
It is the first time that such a conference has been
held with a specific focus on how the curriculum
can be adapted to embrace global concerns. Joe
Eska, representing the English Department, and Jane
Wemhoener, Executive Director of VaCIE and Director
of International Programs for English, planned the
three-day event.
Sessions focused on integrating interdisciplinarity with
internationalism, creating opportunities in faculty
and student engagement, and perspectives in study
abroad. Although Study Abroad traditionally serves
as the most visible means of international study at
a university, conference sessions showed how other
groups within the higher education setting could work
to integrate global topics into their individual areas.
The first session, on integration of international
subjects into an interdisciplinary course, featured
topics as diverse as viewing argument as a “doubleedged sword” in international engagement, teaching
of American literature with a transnational scope, and
using the epic tradition to teach about international
issues. All presentations shared a common goal,
however: how to integrate global subjects effectively
into the classroom.
Sunithi Gnanadoss, of Germanna Community
College, spoke in “The Rhetorical Argument Mediates
Terrorism” about using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
to frame an argumentative assignment, while in
“Cross-Cultural Literacy,” Hampton University’s Mabel
Khawaja introduced and discussed the wide variety
of methods by which she has brought international
issues into her classroom. In their presentation, Joy
Hendrickson and Amee Carmines, both of Hampton
University, outlined their “interdisciplinary course on
English language revisions of Homer’s Odyssey and
the 13th century epic from Mali, Son-Jara, in dialogue
with models of leadership and the formation of civil
societies.”
Session 2, which focused on “Opportunities in
Faculty and Student Engagement,” brought to the
conference Erich Thaler and Philipp Schweighauser,
of the University of Basel (Switzerland), who in
“Internationalizing the Curriculum: a European
Perspective,” spoke about the administrative and
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exploring english: virginia tech’s international conference
academic implications of their university’s “successful,
ongoing internationalization of the curriculum.”
In addition to discussing the variety of models
administrators can use, Thaler and Schweighauser
also considered how internationalization affects the
by Guru Ghosh, VT Associate Vice President for
International Affairs, and gave speakers from several
institutions an opportunity to share their experiences:
Dudley Doane, UVa; Marcelo Siles, ODU; Arlene
Jackson, American Association of State Colleges and
Universities; and Anne Schiller, George Mason
University.
For “The World is Your Classroom: English
Courses as Vehicles of the International
Academic Experience,” the final session,
Katherine Hawkins, Dean of College of
Humanities and Social Sciences at Radford,
chaired a roundtable panel focusing on the
impact of international education on English
majors. CNU’s Jean Filetti closed the conference
with “Interdisciplinary Study Abroad.”
job market and how an American Studies course at
their school reveals the “challenges and benefits
of scholarly exchanges across continents.” Andrew
Creamer (PhD candidate, Teaching and Learning, VT)
also spoke about a collaboration between VT and Tufts
University’s International Bridge Program to develop
a course curriculum “aimed at helping Chinese bridge
program students studying at Tufts adjust to the
culture of the American university classroom.” Nicole
Sanderlin, Director of International Programs in VT’s
College of Engineering, closed the session.
Provost and Professor of History at George Mason
University, afternoon sessions opened with a panel
discussion on “Key Elements of Comprehensive
Internationalization at the Institutional and National
Levels.” This roundtable discussion was chaired
The conference was opened on Thursday
evening by Dr. Ralph Cohen, Gonder Professor
of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at
Mary Baldwin College and Director of Mission
and co-founder of the American Shakespeare
Center (Staunton). Breakout working group sessions
closed the conference on Saturday morning,
after a breakfast address by Dr. Joan Gore, Senior
Academic Development Director for the Foundation
for International Education and Director of Adult
Education Travel Programs in the School of Continuing
and Professional Studies at the University of Virginia.
did you know?
With its International Strategic Plan of 2004,
VT pledged a “commitment to enhanced
international and cross-cultural awareness
and understanding.”
plenary address
“Improving the global understanding of our students
is one of the top two or three challenges facing
the American higher education system,” Peter
Stearns, Provost and Professor of History at George
Mason University, told those gathered for the
Internationalizing the Curriculum: Finding the World
in English Conference. “The curriculum is the first step
-- and the single most important step -- toward global
education.”
In his plenary address, Stearns – who created GMU’s
Global Affairs Program – discussed three initial aspects
of integrating a global perspective successfully into
the curriculum. He advocated deep connections
with departments of foreign languages; providing
coursework opportunities for students in global topics;
and administering, offering, and requiring international
courses to build student interest in global subjects.
Colleges and universities must make an “effort to think
about new ways to bring students up to speed on
global issues,” he said, “particularly issues that cross
disciplinary lines.”
Using GMU’s efforts at internationalizing the
curriculum as examples – both positive and negative
– of how those attending could proceed at their own
schools, Stearns urged attendees to “learn from our
experience.”
He also characterized the global focus in education as
a “constant invitation to innovation.”
To expand the concept beyond the generalized
classroom model, he argued for bringing currentlyenrolled international students into the effort, taking
advantage of technology to offer courses team-taught
with international colleagues, and undertaking new
programs with international universities that would
benefit the students of both institutions.
Table of Contents
“mimi najali wewe je?”
jane wemhoener’s african adventures
text & page design katie mawyer | photos jane wemhoener
“How are you going to move this forward?” These are the
words that rest on Jane Wemhoener’s office wall. They lie
on a frame that pictures Mount Kilimanjaro, a beautiful,
tranquil mountain that symbolizes her days in Africa, where
she assists medical students at the Kilimanjaro Christian
Medical Centre (KCMC) in professional writing.
Wemhoener argues that knowing English isn’t necessary
to “get by,” but it’s vital to change the policy of a nation.
Thus, Wemhoener and Armstrong collaborated with
Duke and Harvard medical schools, as these schools
were involved in writing the grant initiatives that helped
launch KCMC.
“It was interesting to be in a place that was dominated by
identifying with the mountain. I live in the mountains here,
but this was different,” said Wemhoener, senior instructor
of the English department and coordinator of international
programs.
Wemhoener returned to Africa in March 2011, at the
request of Duke University and KCMC faculty, to create
a professional writing program for KCMC medical
students. Without hesitation, Wemhoener agreed to
return to a country that had changed her life.
Wemhoener first traveled to Tanzania, Africa in 2005 and
became involved with KCMC. At this time, she was the
assistant director of the Professional Writing program and
traveled alongside fellow English faculty member Mark
Armstrong. Together, the duo conducted a workshop for
KCMC faculty, which assisted faculty in building the skills
necessary for writing grants. The ultimate goal was to help
KCMC students and faculty become self-sufficient.
“Going to Africa, for me, it felt like going home,” said
Wemhoener. “It’s just difficult to explain, even for
someone whose profession is with words, but it was like
going home. I fell in love with Mount Kilimanjaro but
also with something more.”
“In order for KCMC to become self-sufficient, said
Wemhoener, “its faculty needed to participate in the
grant writing themselves. If you want to change a nation’s
welfare, if you want to get a well for your town, if you want
to get a grant for your school, you have to do it in English,”
she said.
Although the official language of Tanzania is English, that
language is used only in textbooks and scripted lectures;
in everyday encounters, Tanzanians speak Kiswahili.
What prompted Wemhoener’s return was a Middle
East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) grant worth $10
million that Duke and KCMC received.
According to the U.S. Department of State, the MEPI is “a
regional program that helps citizens in the Middle East
and North Africa develop more pluralistic, participatory,
and prosperous societies.” Ten institutions on the
continent of Africa, included Tanzania, received this
MEPI grant, which is supported by President Obama
and funded by multiple donors.
The MEPI grant has an overall goal of improving medical
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“mimi najali wewe je?”: jane wemhoener’s african adventures
essential for encouraging students to work together and collaborate, something that
doesn’t happen in Tanzania.
“You’ll find English programs for medical students are going to be about medical language,
but these are students who need language fluency,” said Wemhoener. “They need to be
able to craft a sentence with nuance. They need to be persuasive. You don’t learn that
through medical language; you learn that through understanding lively verbs and how to
build sentences.”
Wemhoener travels to Tanzania for a two-week stay every November. On her most recent
trip, fellow English instructor Ed Weathers accompanied Wemhoener, and together they
met each cohort of 16 students three times. Although the two weeks might be all the
time Wemhoener can afford to spend each year, KCMC staff is ready for her to move there
permanently.
“I’m just not ready for that, just not yet. I’ve got dogs here. And students here who I happen
to love, too,” said Wemhoener. “I’ve got a husband and children, and, not to mention my
dogs,” she said.
education in Africa. The grant also includes the resources necessary for medical
training for physicians, with a particular interest in teaching information
technology and language skills. Wemhoener became a part of the five-year
grant project toward the end of its first year in action when she was asked to
create a teaching cohort and design a distanced writing program that would be
complemented by on-site instructional visits to Tanzania. She gathered teachers
primarily from Virginia Tech’s English Department but from other universities,
such as Harvard, as well. Wemhoener’s daughter, a student at Washington
University in St. Louis, is also on board with the teaching team.
Despite her inability to move to Tanzania just yet, her students are forever grateful of
her efforts. Goodwill, a graduating doctor, writes Wemhoener often. A recent email read:
“Dear Madam, please be blessed. Can you help me with my resume?”
“When I get these emails,” said Wemhoener, “it reminds us how gorgeous our English
language is. They use it in ways different than our quick, business ways. It’s wonderful,”
she said.
Innocent, another one of Wemhoener’s students, “doesn’t yet know how to build an
English sentence, but I can figure out what he’s trying to say to me,” she said. “The words
“We’re building from the ground up,” said Wemhoener. “No one has ever done just go down and I figure out where we’re going.”
it. I don’t want to say it’s unique — because I’m afraid of that word — but no
Wemhoener has developed a level of understanding and appreciation for her students and
one that I’m aware of has ever done that,” she said.
their progression with the words and their relationships to one another.
KCMC operates off of a European system, which means these medical students
are 18 and 19 years old. Wemhoener also works with nuns, nurses, and people “It’s hard, almost without crying, to talk about the power of their writing, the beauty of
that are as young as 17. According to Wemhoener, building these cohorts is their writing,” she said. “When they write about who they are and what they want, when
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“mimi najali wewe je?”: jane wemhoener’s african adventures
they write about losing a brother, or a sister, or a
parent to AIDS or to chronic diarrhea, their writing
is true.”
Wemhoener will continue her endeavors for the
next four years as she follows her cohort through
to graduation. Each year she will bring on additional
teachers to assist in the education of these aspiring
medical professionals.
“It’s kind of like driving down a road in a car that we’re
building while we’re driving it,” said Wemhoener.
“That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Nonetheless, they’re doing exactly what the
memorable poster in Wemhoener’s office reads —
they’re moving forward.
“I’ll be really sad when it’s over,” she said. “Maybe
that’s when I’ll move to Africa. There will come I time
when I think I’ll stay there. Why not?”
did you know?
• Tanzania is located in East Africa bordering
the Indian Ocean, between Kenya and
Mozambique.
• Tanzania lies just south of the equator.
There are two rainy seasons, generally
the heaviest rains (called Masika) usually
fall from mid-March to May and a
shorter period of rain (called mvuli) from
November to mid-January. The dry season,
with cooler temperatures, lasts from May
to October.
“It was interesting to be in a place that was
dominated by identifying with the mountain. I live
in the mountains here, but this was different.”
-- Jane Wemhoener
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on the ground, in the field
c21s takes on the world
text jen mooney | photos bob siegle
Bob Siegle’s home and his university offices – one in Shanks; the other in the new Residential College in
Ambler-Johnston – provide ample and colorful evidence of his long-standing interest in South Asian and
North African cultures. Batik prints and devil-dance masks from Sri Lanka. Gold-threaded tapestries from
India and stupas from Nepal. Clay figurines from Turkey and Buddhas from China.
Those who know Siegle or who have experienced his Studies in Contemporary Culture or Contemporary
Fiction courses likely are not surprised by the idea that he prefers the road less traveled. From his “twopage interventionist blog posts” that replace traditional literary analyses to his assignments requiring
students to “make art and then write their own catalog essay for the film, painting, or writing they’ve
done,” Siegle has always preferred a more “out of the box” approach to teaching that asks students to
become immersed in their own development of awareness.
This summer, Siegle will merge his love of different cultures and his break-with-tradition teaching
methods when he takes a group of 17 students to Sri Lanka, Morocco, and Turkey for the first-ever run of
the Nomadic Study Abroad Program, the centerpiece of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences’
(CLAHS) new Center for 21st Studies – and his brainchild.
The germ of what was to become the Center for 21st Century Studies was planted in September 2009.
CLAHS Associate Dean for Academic Policy and Procedures Debra Stoudt asked members of the Dean’s
Advisory Committee on International Initiatives for – wonder of wonders – “out of the box” ideas about
what the college could do in terms of international programs.
Members were tasked to show up for the next meeting armed with proposals, which for Siegle was a
cake assignment on a couple of levels: (a) he pretty much thinks out of the box on a daily basis and (b)
he already had an idea. To the next meeting, he brought a three-page proposal that worked through
the mechanics of what he called the “Center for Twenty-First Century Studies.” In those three pages,
Siegle outlined the plan for a center that would “involve faculty committed to fresh approaches to the
challenges of life in this century.”
Plans included an 18-hour minor that would cross disciplines in new and challenging ways and a study
abroad “immersive international experience” that would put students on the ground and in the field in
You have to get out there and
see for yourselves what it’s like
to live in the grain and texture
of daily life in cultures that work
by logics different from what
you’ve always assumed was
just “human nature.” --C21S web site
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the countries and communities they would study back in the classroom at VT.
That “Nomadic Educational Machine,” as Siegle called it then, has become the
core of the new center and its mission.
Members of the advisory committee and CLAHS Dean Sue Ott Rowlands – who has
called the concept “bold and experimental” – greeted the idea with enthusiasm,
and in spring 2010, a steering committee was formed to shepherd the proposal
through a year-long development process that identified “specific courses, travel
objectives, international partners, and a fund for donations to make it affordable
to all Virginia Tech students.” Rachel Holloway, Brian Britt, Karl Precoda, Diana
Ridgwell, Yannis Stivachtis, Debbie Stoudt, and Janell Watson – all members of
that committee – put in the hours of creativity, Siegle says, necessary to make the
center happen.
If you visit the C21S web site, you will find the center described as a
“transdisciplinary program,” which Siegle explains is a nod to the idea of a subject
moving or transiting between disciplines – which is most certainly the case here.
In his original proposal, Siegle mentions that the program will draw upon several
diverse fields, among them cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, media
studies, and digital studies. In addition – and perhaps this is the benchmark
for how truly transdisciplinary the program is – among the 17 students (from
freshmen to seniors) enrolled in the preparatory first course in the minor, C21S
2104, 13 separate majors are represented. They range from French to Biological
Sciences, Sociology to Public and Urban Affairs, English to Engineering.
This first course in the minor introduces students to “thinking in 21st century ways
about 21st century issues,” Siegle notes, which requires looking at various cultural
issues in transdisciplinary ways. He adds, “If you are going to deal with 21st century
issues in a 21st century way, you can’t be inside disciplinary silos. You need to think
everything at once if you are going to think meaningfully.”
The course also prepares students for the summer study abroad program by
introducing them to a variety of readings about the various locations they will
visit. Students read about how digital technology “flattens the playing field by
democratizing access to information, technology, and markets.”
Then they move to such nonfiction works as John Richardson’s Paradise
photo gallery
all photos in this gallery were taken by Bob Siegle
as he toured Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Morocco during
summer and fall 2011.
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Poisoned, a study of Sri Lanka’s civil wars, and to the fiction and poetry of Jean
Arasanayagam, whose work deals with the religious and ethnic turmoil in Sri
Lanka. Similar readings orient students to the cultural and historical contexts for
the other locations they will visit during the upcoming summer.
So what exactly do students who pursue the C21S minor study? Their work focuses
on the factors that bear on each nation’s reflection of the 21st century – a focus
that, hopefully, will prompt them to consider how their own country reflects,
inflects, and even subverts the same.
Each country, Siegle notes, “is positioned in a different set of intersections. Their
problems and our problems aren’t the same, and obviously the details matter
hugely.”
By the end of this first course, students will have developed a grounding in all
three countries they will visit, created a theoretical basis on which to think in a
“trans-disciplinary way,” and framed a research project that ties the C21S minor
to a key interest that springs from within their majors and/or their future career
plans.
“They’re no longer International Studies majors or English majors,” Siegle says.
“They’re something else.”
In May, the group leaves for a roughly five-week-long period of research,
service learning, and intensive, hands-on cultural experiences. In each location,
meticulously scouted in 2011 by committee members, they will work with partner
institutions – primarily universities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
– to develop an understanding of how each country or population deals with the
unique cultural issues it confronts.
Make no mistake: students pursuing the C21S minor will not be simply tourists.
As the program’s web site indicates, “life is not a photo album: Nomadic Studies
takes you into the middle of others’ lives so you can experience alongside them
just how they’re reinventing their societies.”
photo by jim stroup
“they’ll be listening
and learning rather
than bringing and
imposing. When they
come back, they’ll
see this country in
the same analytical
way they’ve seen
other countries.”
The students will travel first through Morocco, where they will spend time in
the coastal city of Rabat, the country’s modern capital. Here, in the government
center, they will learn about how their host-partner, EGE University -- L’Ecole de
Gouvernance et d’Economie de Rabat – trains the next generation of leaders.
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After that, their work takes a more “hands on” approach: they journey to the
small city of Azrou, in the Atlas Mountains, where under the guidance of an
international friendship group, they will interact with the Berber population,
undertake home stays, and teach language building skills at the local school. The
medieval Fes (Fez) comes next, where they will spend time “reading the city.”
Their experience there will be “as close to tourism as we’ll get,” Siegle says. They
will study the old city, he adds, to see how it brings together the modern and
historical components of the first two Moroccan locales.
In the ancient city of Istanbul, the group will participate in seminars with VT’s
partner institutions, Kadir Has and Koç universities, in an effort to understand
Turkey’s unique placement at the intersection of Islamic and European cultures.
They will end their travels in Sri Lanka, where they will work with Sarvodaya, the
world’s largest NGO, an organization based on Buddhist principles that teaches
villages self-sufficiency and self-development. Village home stays will be followed
by retreat time in Sarvodaya’s international institute before the group boards a
plane for its return trip to the US. Several students will stay longer in Sri Lanka to
extend their service work with Sarvodaya.
Siegle is confident that while the students undoubtedly will face a certain amount
of culture shock, they also will be literate as to what they will experience in
each country and open to the lessons their travels promise. The journey will be
“momentous, transformative,” Siegle believes. “They’ll be listening and learning
rather than bringing and imposing. When they come back, they’ll see this country
in the same analytical way they’ve seen other countries.”
But their experience does not end there. In the fall semester after their nomadic
study abroad, students begin work on their capstone project, which could run
the gamut from a traditional research paper to a film to an art installation and
beyond.
As Siegle speaks about the center and the nomadic studies experience, it becomes
clear that he sees himself as equally invested in the learning process, a continuing
student. His enthusiasm derives in part from what he describes as “a reimagining
of the university-level education, one that moves out of the disciplines, that
moves out of the classic contact-hour-in-the-classroom model of education.”
student focus:
shelby ward
text kevin burke
Shelby Ward has always wanted
to study abroad since coming to
Virginia Tech. So when she heard
about a new minor with a potential
study abroad program from Dr.
Robert Siegle, she jumped on.
This summer, Ward, who plans to graduate in December
2012, will spend a month visiting Morocco, Turkey, and Sri
Lanka as part of the the Century for 21st Studies minor.
While there, she plans to use her English major to research
folklore and stories and their roles in the specific cultures.
“My methodology is going to be doing a lot of interviews
and asking people to tell me the stories,” Ward said. “How
do different people in different demographics tell the
story? Will a male college student tell the story differently
than (someone) when we go on a home stay?”
Ward, who admits this will be her first time out of the
country, saw this option as a “nontraditional way” of
studying abroad.
“I’m seeing places that I probably won’t get another
chance, for at least a long time, to see myself,” she said.
“I’m super excited.”
Ward is one of just two English majors to be taking the
trip. Prior to leaving, she’ll have to complete a full research
proposal and research all of the stories she wants to know
more about. She also plans to spend an additional month
after the trip for an internship in Sri Lanka with 6-8 of the
other participants.
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You know, that thinking outside the box thing.
Yet there is more to it. Yes, he will be showing students a part of the world that
he himself clearly loves. And, yes, the journey brings the goals and promise of the
center – his own idea, after all – to fruition. But, even more, you get the feeling
that Siegle can’t wait to see how his students will respond to walking the dusty
streets of the medina in old town Rabat, Morocco; visiting the Haghia Sophia and
climbing the 14th Century Galata Tower in Istanbul; eating koola’ya and roti in Sri
Lanka. He has already gauged their excitement, and he sees in it an enthusiasm
for learning that reinforces his belief that they will do just fine.
“Anybody who sits and makes tired, cynical comments about today’s students,”
Siegle says, “ought to have sat in on discussions with students interested in the
program, because these are amazing young people.”
did you know?
While Virginia Tech has centers in India and Egypt, they are fixed
locations, with permanent residences. The nomadic studies
abroad program is the first truly mobile “center” in Asia and
Africa.
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katrina powell’s journey to sri lanka
text & page design karen spears | photographs katrina powell
During summer 2011, Katrina Powell, Associate Professor of English
and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies, ventured to Sri
Lanka to build foundations for a study abroad program, discuss
displacement narratives with Sri Lankan authors and professors, and
strengthen ties between Virginia Tech and the Sri Lankan community.
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While in Sri Lanka with her colleagues Ann Kilkelly, Sue Ott Rowlands, and Bob
Siegle, Powell met with a number of individuals and groups who could strengthen
the ties between that country and VT.
One of them was Tania Brassey, a freelance journalist and travel writer who
established Ceylon Hospitality Consultants and devised the first Insight Guide
to Sri Lanka. With Powell, Brassey discussed her research and experiences with
an orphanage in Sri Lanka for white children. Brassey’s vivid narratives address
biracial children who were hidden from society. These narratives directly relate to
Powell’s displacement narrative research of Virginian families who forced from
their homes in the 1930s to form Shenandoah National Park.
In her discussions with Sri Lankan scholars and authors on displacement narratives,
Powell searches for “how that story is told, and [whether] there are similarities
across those stories.” Powell incorporated some of Brassey’s influential work in
her Feminist Autobiography Spring 2012 course.
“Because my research area is in displacement, identity, and
narrative, I was excited to be in Sri Lanka where many of
the scholars . . . are studying those kinds of issues on lots of
different levels. Some of the research coming out of Sri Lanka
and those issues are really important to scholars across the
globe.”
During visits to the University of Colombo, Sri Palee campus, the Sri Lanka
International Buddhist Academy, and with author Jean Arasanayagam (bottom
left), Powell met with many interesting students and faculty who were enthusiastic
about intellectual conversations on writing, theatre, society, and politics.
VT students who accompanied Powell also found the experiences at the
International Buddhist Academy enlightening. “Our four students who attended
classes…had a fantastic opportunity while they were there,” Powell notes. “to
work with faculty and to teach conversational English to students.”
Powell remembers how Molly Cooke (above), an International Relations Major, felt
that “one of her greatest experiences was teaching English as a second language
experience -- and that’s part of what really excited her about the program, having
that kind of opportunity.”
During the trip, Powell also met Neloufer de Mel, Professor Department of
English, Director of International Relations, author of Militarizing Sri Lanka:
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Popular Culture, Memory and Narrative in the Armed Conflict and After the
Waves: Tsunami and the War. Powell and De Mel hope to create a US student
exchange involving teaching English to Sri Lankan students at the University of
Columbo.
Powell says that one of the most unforgettable experiences in Sri Lanka was her
interactive participation in Kilkelly’s Theatre Workshop at the Sri Palee Campus of
the University of Colombo. Kilkelly asked the students to “sculpt” an image of a
social condition using just their bodies.
but also listening to them tell what kinds of issues were important to them
because most of those students… had lived in a country in civil war.”
The students and faculty were engaged by Kilkelly’s approach, responding to her
prompts with enthusiasm and deeply reflective and personal responses. After
the experience, Powell and Kilkelly discussed ways that writing might also be a
component of this workshop.
Powell will be going back to Sri Lanka this summer with Kilkelly and Rowlands
“I was in the line of people to be sculpted,” Powell notes, “so one of the Sri Lankan
students was moving my body to sculpt into a particular way, which represented
an issue that was important to her. And just that interaction with students and
working that closely and intimately with students was a really great experience…
“They had really interesting stories to tell, and interesting ways
to tell the stories. So I could imagine being there, conducting
interviews with them, and doing research with them, or
conducting writing workshops with them.”
to do “a Virginia more intensive workshop” with “a writing component” to “give
the students an opportunity to examine those issues more deeply, perhaps write
about them, as well as do theater and an active workshop.”
Powell and Kilkelly will be “developing the program further so that when Tech
students go, all those [components] will be in place.”
“I think English students would love this experience because you get a chance
to teach English and study at the Academy,’ Powell says, “whether you are an
English major, whether you are a Theater major or a religion and culture major.
You can go to Sri Lanka and be able to look at a number of issues from multiple
perspectives, whether it is from a cultural perspective or a professional writing
perspective or theater perspective.”
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the writing center globalizing english
text, page design, & photos beth thompson
On any given day, the Virginia Tech Writing Center
is bustling with students. Since its relocation to the
second floor of the Newman Library, the center has
been busier than ever.
The Writing Center is an on-campus resource open
to all Virginia Tech faculty and students. Its purpose
as an organization is to utilize tutors to build better
writers, not to offer editing services. Along with this
goal comes a unique position—it supplements English
education and bridges a language gap that may exist
with international students.
Roughly one-third of the students who come to the
Writing Center are international students who do
not speak English as their first language. Tutors are
specially trained through a class to work with many
types of students, papers, and writing. So, working
with international students is nothing new. Josh
Thompson, a tutor who has worked at the Writing
Center for two years, says in the course, classmates
discussed specific issues that would arise with English
as a Second Language (ESL) students, and they learned
how to approach and strategize those sessions.
During the class, potential tutors are also involved in
an internship component where they coach sessions
with students, something tutor Andrew Sporrer
laughingly called “trial by fire.” This gives tutors
the opportunity to experience all different kinds of
tutoring sessions.
In addition to the training tutors are given in the class,
the Director of the Writing Center, Diana George,
and Assistant Director, Jennifer Lawrence, also hope
to expand the international horizons. Lawrence
has been taking graduate level courses to obtain a
Teaching English to the Speakers of Other Languages
(TESOL) Professional Certificate. She is currently
enrolled in Linguistics for TESOL. The course explores
the English language from the viewpoint of linguistics,
the discipline which examines the nature and use
of human language. She has also been recruiting
multilingual tutors for the Writing Center class.
George is in the process of creating a study group
for undergraduate and graduate tutors on transglobal language issues. She is collaborating with two
professors from University of Louisville, Min-zhan
Lu, an internationally respected language specialist
and professor of English, and Bruce Horner, the
endowed chair of Rhetoric and Composition, both
who have written some award winning pieces on
globalizing English. She hopes that if this program
can gain funding it will broaden tutors’ ability to work
with international students by reading theory and
conversing about global language issues.
The Writing Center does not deliberately market
to international students, but word of mouth is a
powerful tool. The website is a universal location
for students to discover information about the
center (and it gets more visits than any other English
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the writing center g l o b a l i z i n g e n g l i s h
department webpage). Though its advertising
strategies have stayed the same, the percentage
of international students visiting the Writing
Center has been steadily rising from 25% in
2007 to 33% in 2010, when it was last recorded.
The majority of graduate students that visit are
also international.
When asked why the Writing Center is so
important to international students, George
said, “When people talk about international
programs and internationalizing the school,
they leave out things the Writing Center does,
like working with different languages and
learning about different cultures.” Essentially,
working at and coming to the Writing Center is
an experience in learning how different people
work together.
George works as a tutor, and she shared some
of her memorable experiences. Laughing, she
said international students always surprise her.
She says they may come in focused on one small
issue, like word-usage or articles. However,
these language issues are not nearly as much of
an impediment as they think. Really, the kinds
of issues they come to work on are just as varied
as US students. No matter what, there will be
different levels of students and different places
they are in their writing.
George also says, “When many people read
international writing and it doesn’t look perfect
or familiar, they categorize the students as not
as bright, though they speak several languages
that are dependent on highly sophisticated
skills.” Reducing students and their abilities to
their writing or misuse of articles does not fairly
display their intelligence.
Sporrer says like all sessions, it’s about helping
students through a project, “helping someone
purge themselves of their notion.” He enjoys
learning about new things, especially getting
to experience a different personal world that
he otherwise couldn’t. Thompson enjoys
international sessions because the students
really do want to be there and learn. He also
says tutoring sessions teach tutors about others
and themselves, something Thompson says has
made tutoring “one of the best experiences at
Virginia Tech.”
According to Akiko Nakamura, a PhD candidate
majoring in Chemistry who fequently
schedules sessions at the center, “The
Writing Center is important for all students
at VT—domestic and international students,
as well as undergraduate and graduate
students—because we have a number of
writing assignments every semester, and
building good writing skills is essential for
effective communication and successful
educational experiences. The Writing Center
has contributed to developing my writing
skills, and I have witnessed the same for all
types of other students.”
For directors and tutors alike, international
students are just a part of the Writing Center
scene. Like everyone coming to the center, they
need help with their writing. George says that
English needs to be globalized in international
terms, and the Writing Center is the first place
for international acceptance. “We don’t like to
separate people based on their languages. It’s
simply part of the richness that adds to the
Writing Center and helps make us who we are.”
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d’aguiar earns goldsmiths fellowship
text & page design kevin burke
Sometimes it’s the unexpected things in life that turn
out to make your day. For professor Fred D’Aguiar,
that unexpected occurrence was a letter in the mail
from Goldsmiths University of London.
“At first, I thought ‘What is this, a bill?’” D’Aguiar said.
“I opened it and it wasn’t a bill, it was a summons…
offering me an honorary fellowship.”
D’Aguiar immediately accepted the fellowship via
e-mail and was one of seven honored this past
January from the institution. The honorary fellowship
distinction is reserved for those that Goldsmiths feels
best recognize what the university is all about. The
institution looks for people that embody what the
faculty, students, and research interests are meant to
be like. As for the perks of the fellowship? D’Aguiar will
now be able to use
the university’s
library free of
charge and be
put up the by
the college at a
concession rate.
The
fellowship
is just another
achievement in
a storied career
for
D’Aguiar,
which
didn’t
start out the
way one might
think. Growing
up in London, he
originally went to school at the University of Kent
and trained to be a psychiatric nurse. But once he
completed the requisite three-and-a-half years of
training, D’Aguiar decided it wasn’t for him.
“I realized I (couldn’t) do it because it’s hard work,
badly paid, and it’s just very demanding,” he said. “I
wanted to read more and be on a different schedule,
not shift work.”
From then on, his career flourished, as D’Aguiar has
authored “about a dozen books.” He’s also received
an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the
University of Kent. Nothing, though, compares to
publishing a book.
“The book is a thing,” D’Augiar said. “It’s always a
thing and everything that spins off as a result, you’re
quite pleased.”
That’s not to say D’Augiar isn’t pleased with the
honorary fellowship to Goldsmiths. It’s actually quite
the opposite.
“It’s a validation of your critical work as well as the
creative side,” D’Augiar said. “It shows that people
are watching, reading, and that what you’re doing
coincides with movements in the academy.”
As a result of the honor, D’Augiar has witnessed a
slight increase in publicity in the United Kingdom,
mainly with newspaper articles with some interviews
mixed in here and there.
Of course, in addition to his writing career, D’Augiar
continues to teach in the English graduate program
at Virginia Tech. His current balance between writing
and teaching is an “ideal engagement,” he says. But
then again, who knows when another unexpected
occurrence could come about that could change
everything for the better!
did you know?
D’Aguiar joined six other honorands this January in
receiving fellowships from Goldsmiths. The other
honorands include:
- Brian Ferneyhough, Stanford music professor
- Chris Jenks, sociologist
- Gary Hume, artist
- Geoffrey Crossick, former Goldsmiths Warden
- James Lingwood, Artangel Co-Director
- Michael Morris, Artangel Co-Director
For more information, click here.
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london calling: an international affair
Studying in London last summer was a
highlight of my college career – unmatched
by any of my experiences on campus in
Blacksburg. Any opportunity to study
abroad is a chance for students to apply
their interests and knowledge while
absorbing everything they’re exposed to.
For English majors, this is where the London
Calling Program comes into play.
After she joined the department, Jane
Wemhoener worked on redeveloping the
London program that had previously been
run by Professor Charles Modlin. Traveling
to London while on an International
Faculty Development grant in Switzerland,
Wemhoener built the foundation of the
program that exists today. Her work was
not just for the benefit of the English
department, but also for that of the entire
university.
Now, the program continues to serve as
an opportunity for students to be engaged
in the world of learning outside of a
college community. The London Calling
Program has expanded to include an
exciting internship program, which offers
select students an opportunity to work
internationally in a field of their choice. The
possibilities are endless, and contribute
greatly to a student’s work experience.
Though this is an optional component, it
allows for more than just a great study
abroad experience – it opens the doors
to thinking about working abroad, living
abroad, and adopting international
practices. Wemhoener initiated the
internship program after realizing that
“internships are playing an increasingly
prominent role in job placements and
rounding out one’s education,” and how
an international internship would further
contribute to a student’s education.
While in London last summer, I was fortunate
enough to intern with a local publication.
The experience was not only eye opening
for my career path, but also educational
beyond
my
wildest
expectations.
Conducting interviews, writing articles,
and planning events on a professional
level quickly revealed to me what I would
be facing in the publishing world postgraduation. Combined this internship with
the study abroad program, I was exposed
to more rewarding experiences than I could
have anticipated.
Working with professors in various
departments across campus, the London
Calling Program has grown to encompass
fields such as architecture and theatre.
It’s an obvious decision, to open a study
reflective essay & page design sean simons
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London calling: an international affair
abroad program that offers such historical and artistic wealth to more than just
one department. The program’s initial intent has always been to serve as a “crosscollege study abroad venture,” according to Wemhoener. The program continues
to be “refined every year and marked by the special interests and talents of the
faculty who direct it,” making each year a unique and new experience
What this means for students, though, is that the experience in London is not
just enriching because of its location – but also because of the students who are
attending. The diverse mix of studies and interests that create the program summer
after summer give way to an unparalleled learning experience. Witnessing the
passion of my peers last summer, I can attest to the intrigue that follows exposure.
As much as I learned from the city, I learned from my fellow students.
Of course, the city element is not to be dismissed. This is London, after all, and
it possesses a history much older than our own. Wemhoener recognizes that
students “have the opportunity to claim London in a way in which a tourist or a
touring program can never do.” Again, the program is built around the students
and faculty involved – and most importantly, it allows for a personal experience
for each and every student.
What was a culinary and cultural adventure for me was a theatrical and literature
invested experience for another. I was able to build my own identity with the
city of London, something no other program or travel opportunity would allow –
short of moving there.
Though Wemhoener has been to London multiple times, she still finds her own city
every summer. What Wemhoener loves most about returning to London, is “the
surprise. I never know what we’ll see, or hear, or do. People are extraordinary.
What I cherish most about London Calling, when I go, has always been and will
always be the men and women with whom I travel. I see everything for the first
time with them, and I see it more clearly.” This passion is something I can attest
to witnessing when I travelled last summer with the program. Jane Wemhoener’s
passion for her students and their experiences in education and abroad is
invigorating and contagious, making for an incredible journey.
student spotlight:
james atkinson
photo beth thompson
Returning to London again this summer for
an opportunity to work as an intern in the
“diverse and thriving” city, James Atkinson
hopes to reconnect with the city he first
studied in last summer. James “couldn’t
pass up the chance to gain knowledge” in his
intended field, law — a sharp contrast from
his studies in creative writing.
Atkinson says the London Calling program offered freedoms he
had not experienced abroad before, recalling a trip in high school
where students “didn’t stay very long in any one place and didn’t
really get to see what each of the places had to offer.” Finding
that his last journey with the London Calling program gave way to
developing a more personal connection with the city, James hopes
to immerse himself again in the history and culture of the bustling
metropolis.
Most importantly, James says he learned how to explore the city
last summer. “If you want to explore a city just pick a random street
and walk down it. Turn when you feel like it. You’ll be amazed
at the kinds of things you can find,” Atkinson’s past travels have
taught him that, “It’s important to get off the beaten path to really
see what London is about.”
This belief is something James has applied to his future work life,
as well, commenting that his internship in London will show him
a different way to work in the business world. “My real hope is
that the experience will contribute by not only showing me what
it is like to work in an environment as stressful as London, but also
how I can take the positive work habits of that culture and adapt
them to my own.” Atkinson’s interest in applying his experiences
from London to his future here at Virginia Tech, or elsewhere, is
exactly what the London Calling program aspires to do.
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students take control*
text jen mooney
photos hannah boutwell (right) & beth thompson (next page)
photo gallery page design & layout beth thompson
Change is not always an easy thing to accept, particularly when the current model of whatever it is we have created
works so well and has garnered so much praise. Such change is scary. Not only that – it’s risky.
But this year’s 7th English Undergraduate Research Conference – with the theme “Writing Worlds” – proved that
change can not only succeed but also be envisioned as a cooperative, team-based learning experience for those
involved. For the first time, two groups of students in concurrent independent study and undergraduate research
courses, along with several student volunteers, took responsibility for the event’s planning, publicity, scheduling,
and operation.
Not that students have been uninvolved in years past. In fact, they have always proven their eagerness to plan the
details, sweat their way through setup, greet visitors, and clean up afterward. This time, however, the students
have spent the semester in courses designed to provide them with both conference-related experiential learning
opportunities and a philosophical grounding for their work: ENGL 4994: Undergraduate Research, co-taught by Jim
Dubinsky and Vanessa Ruccolo, and ENGL 4974: Independent Study: Leadership and Advocacy, taught by Dubinsky.
Five students participated in Dubinsky’s independent study: Sarah Schaefer (program), Kathyn Econom (assorted
logistics), Kelsey Frey (registration, PR), Courtney Ricks (food), and Victoria James (PR). A long-time advocate of service learning, Dubinsky saw the course as a chance to teach students about hands-on
leadership. “My primary reason for involving students as planners and leaders is that I wanted to further develop
the conference along its evolutionary path – an additional opportunity to showcase our students and their many
talents,” he notes. “We did not set out to change anything, as the conferences in the past had been very successful.
Instead, we were examining whether there were other options or opportunities to enhance student learning.”
WRITING
WORLDS
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH CONFERENCE
SHANKS HALL | 6 APRIL 2012
The conference poster was designed by
Professional Writing/Creative Writing major Sean
Simons. The design was also used on a t-shirt.
That they succeeded is apparent. “I think the students did a wonderful job working on the conference this year,”
Ruccolo states. “We were so fortunate to work with such a talented bunch of students! I hope we get to work with
them once again next year.”
*(of the undergraduate research conference, that is)
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winning conference papers
Poster/Creative Media: James Donahue presenting a silent Shakespeare
film
Creative Writing: Chelsea Gillenwater with “What We Make”
Composition: Alexis J. Livingston with “From the Kitchen into the Limelight:
The Role of Women in Advertising”
Professional Writing: Vaccination Research: A Panel Discussion (Moderator:
Heidi Lawrence) with Rachel Dinkins, Olivia Kasik, Dasha Nesterova, & Karen
Spears
Literature, Language, and Culture: Lara Mangum with “Evelina and the
French Connection: The Madame Duval Subplot”
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dennis welch retires
after 30 years at vt
After 41 years as a professor – 30 of them spent at
VT – Dennis Welch retired from the Department
of English at the end of Fall 2011. He came to the
university in 1981 while on sabbatical from Clarkson
University in upstate New York, accompanying his
wife, Kathy (shown here with Dennis at Mesa Verde
National Park, CO), who had begun graduate work in
Psychology. As a faculty member in the now-defunct
Center for Programs in the Humanities, he was put
in charge of creating a new course, “Humanities,
Science, and Technology,” and over the course of
his tenure here, he often divided his time between
English and Interdisciplinary Studies.
Blessed with a seemingly endless reservoir of energy,
Dennis -- who has just been granted emeritus status
by the university -- has long devoted a goodly
measure of that vitality to supporting student writing.
In the late 1990s, he was instrumental in pushing
for the creation of an online departmental journal
that featured critical writing by undergraduates in
English courses. That journal, Ex Libris, ran for several
years, with an editorial staff comprised entirely
of undergraduate students. Moreover, one could
always count on seeing many of his students listed in
the program each year for the English Undergraduate
Research Conference.
Dennis’s influence on students has been lasting.
They tend to remember his exuberance for the
material, his encouragement of their talents, and his
willingness to help them improve their writing.
“Dennis greatly influenced me by making me want
to pursue a career in higher education,” says Douglas
Root (BA, English, 02), now a Post-Doctoral Fellow
at the University of Georgia. “[He] was able to cut
through the typical B.S. and tell me that, while the
road would be long and hard (and he was right), I was
capable of getting the job done. . . . In the classroom, I
will never forget (and have often tried to emulate) his
exuberance and dedication to his students’ needs.”
Mark Dewyea, who graduates this spring with a BA
in English, is equally enthusiastic. He notes that he
will remember about working with Dennis “both his
passion for the course material as well as his care for
his students and willingness to do anything possible
to insure that they grew intellectually and thoroughly
understood the principles of their studies.”
“His class was actually my first English class in college,”
Mark adds, “and he definitely made the transition
much easier by honing my skills of organization,
clarity, and concision. His dedicated instruction laid
the intellectual framework necessary for me to have
a highly successful undergraduate experience.”
Dennis and his wife are moving to Cary, North
Carolina, where they have already bought a house,
to be near their daughter and her family. Although he
will definitely have plenty to do in his new hometown
-- like catching up on his reading, attending events at
the local universities, and visiting Baseball USA, he
will miss, he says, “the interaction with students . . .
I’ve tried mightily to really make literature a part of
their lives and to help them see that there is great,
great pleasure in just thinking. . . . The wish I have
for all is that they find a line of work that’s also a
passion. If they do, they will always enjoy that work
and love life.”
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cheryl ruggiero retires: family time follows!
When Cheryl Ruggiero retires in June, having been at Virginia Tech since January 1974, she will take with her years
of experience, teaching excellence, and institutional memory that can’t be matched by that of anyone else in the
English Department.
text suzanne reisinger
photos courtesy cheryl ruggiero
As Assistant Chair of the English Department for the past ten years, she has worked with three Chairs and two
Associate Chairs. Over the years she also has served as Assistant Director and Director of the Writing Center, GTA
Mentor and Coordinator of GTA Advising, Co-editor of the department’s custom text—and the list goes on.
She will leave a legacy of attention to detail and an incredible ability to work through the complicated tangle of
scheduling classes. Most importantly, she will leave a huge hole. One of her colleagues has remarked, “it’s hard
to imagine the department without Cheryl; she has contributed to the department in multiple ways that are so
automatic to us that we don’t always recognize them.”
A second hat Cheryl wears is that of Assistant Director of Composition, working with the Director to administer
the first-year writing program. It’s a big job: in a typical year the English Department offers
more than 120 sections of first-year writing each semester; that works out to around fortyeight hundred student seats.
But it’s the third hat, that of department scheduler, that faculty and graduate students are
most aware of. Working almost a year in advance, Cheryl creates the schedule that will
introduce thousands of students to not just first year-writing, but to classes such as Writing
for the Web, Southern Literature, Introduction to Creative Writing, and Chaucer. Cheryl is a
wizard and a master puzzle-solver, as she works to schedule classes with student needs and
instructor preferences in mind.
And she is a master teacher, as well. She has taught classes in composition, science fiction,
short fiction, advanced grammar, and technical writing (both in-class and on line); she
developed and taught Grammar for Writers and Grammar for Teachers.
Nancy Metz, Associate Chair of the department from 2002-11, notes Cheryl’s ability to
“reinvent herself constantly,” as a classroom teacher and as a researcher and writer. She’s
been at the forefront of the “technology curve” for a long time, as grants to support technology
efforts such as a Plagiarism Module and Grammar Gym (an on-line tutorial for students and
instructors), and other on-line applications attest. In a department where outside funding is
somewhat rare, she has obtained over $155,000 in grants (all in collaboration with colleagues,
she is quick to add). In the past few years, Cheryl joined Sue Hagedorn’s innovative work
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cheryl ruggiero retires: family time follows!
in creating an online course
in science fiction, which,
with Karen Swenson’s wiki
expertise and Randy Patton’s
chat talent, has become a
popular course and online
community. Cheryl, Karen
(middle, in the photo at
right) and Sue (left) have
even presented on the
course.
Cheryl’s success in the
classroom can perhaps be
partly explained by her
own writing: “teaching and
writing take the same kind
of energy; they draw the
same kind of juice,” she remarks. She’s been writing since she was ten, and as a creative
writing major in college produced a lot of poetry and short fiction, all of which she has
trashed (a “good decision,” she says). She took up writing again about twenty years ago, and
again discarded her work. Ten years later, she had gone back to poetry and fiction; her first
published work came in 2003.
Since 2005, the publications have not stopped: a chapbook of poems, eighteen short
stories—only four of which are not science fiction/fantasy—and one story published in
Crime Wave, a British quarterly anthology of crime fiction. Her chapbook, Old Woman at the
Warm Spring, is filled with poems about life, love, and family.
There’s a brand-new grandson in her life, as well, born just as this article was written. He
joins two other grandsons, who, with husband Jim and two sons, will play a prominent role
in her after-English-Department life.
While we will miss Cheryl, we’re happy that she can spend more time with her rediscovered
love of writing and her expanded family. After all, isn’t that what a great retirement is all
about?
Spring Equinox
An ordered cupboard in my soul,
emptied of sweet preserves
through winter›s war and wear,
finds itself replenished by romping chaos
in my kitchen- whiskery husband in percussive collusion with two grandsons, one chrome colander,
two spoons, and a kazoo,
sons scrambling eggs and warming maple syrup under hammering hot water,
sons’ wives, one calm madonna of the toaster waffles,
one sifting laughter in like cinnamon,
bellows, beagles, elbows.
Love is friable as frost-heaved soil,
trusty as returning sunlight.
--Cheryl Ruggiero,
from Old Woman at the Warm Spring
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eva brumberger off to asu
Eva Brumberger is much more generous than am I. Back in Fall 2008, I shadowed her in ENGL 3824:Designing Documents
for Print. I attended her class, read the textbook, stole her PowerPoints, and worked on the side to prepare a report
to show that I was absorbing the material and would be prepared to teach it in the future. Yes – that’s right: teach it.
Here she was, a seasoned professor, willing to share with me not just her knowledge but also a course she had shaped
and made her own. Once Eva joined the faculty in 2001, she had been the only person to teach Designing Documents
for Print. She was the go-to design expert. She knew her fonts and her schools of design and how not to use Comic
Sans. Not only was she prepping me to teach what I had come to think of as HER course, but sometimes I would be
teaching it when she wasn’t. It was, at the time, an odd thing to consider.
But she was so very . . . cool about it. And, although we had worked together for several years before that as members
of the Professional Writing team, the more time we spent together, the more I realized that she was fast becoming
both a mentor and a friend.
It hardly seems possible that nearly four years have passed since then. What seems even less
possible is that when school starts again in the fall, Eva won’t be just down the hall or teaching in
Shanks 360 before me. No, she’ll be more than a thousand miles away on the campus of Arizona
State University, where she has accepted a position as an Associate Professor.
The new position is a dream job: at ASU, Eva will be directing the technical communication program.
For a dedicated Professional Writing person, that’s an opportunity too good to let pass. And she’ll
be moving back to the Southwest, which is an area I know she loves. It’s rare to be able to go back
to a place that felt so much like home the first time one lived there. So that’s good, too. In fact, for
Eva and her family, it’s totally a win-win situation.
But it still feels painful and crushy to think that she’s leaving. Without her kindness and generosity, I
would never have learned what I have about design or about how to teach it. So I thank her for that.
More than that, however, I thank her for being my friend, and I hereby promise -- in a thoroughly
public venue -- that I will come to visit you, Eva. And your pool.
--Jen Mooney
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Back in Chatham, where she was raised, Sarah Finkner’s
middle school teacher called her “Animal Girl.” It was
a moniker that had nothing to do with her general
demeanor, but everything to do with her affinity for
pretty much any creature she ran across. She says she
can’t remember a time when she didn’t have a dog
or a cat – or a sampling of both – hanging out in her
bedroom. And now they hang out in her office – when
they aren’t sitting on her desk or in her lap.
Sarah, who graduated in 2006 with a dual focus on
creative and professional writing, is founder and sole
owner of NRV Varmints Pet Sitting Agency, a business
that in 2011 celebrated a 10-year anniversary of sorts.
It was in 2001, when she was pursuing her degree and
working part-time at the old Zooquatics pet store in
Blacksburg, that Sarah and a coworker decided to start
pet sitting. She took Blacksburg as her territory, the
coworker took Christiansburg, and by word-of-mouth
advertising alone, the seeds of NRV Varmints were
planted.
With her love of animals, it is no surprise that Sarah
actually started in a major like Wildlife Science. She
notes, somewhat sheepishly that it was back in 1999
when she actually started work on her undergraduate
degree, but she worked part-time to pay her way and
the semesters were mostly part-time.
it’s a dog’s life
for alumna sarah finkner
text jen mooney | photos beth thompson
Eventually, when she realized that a degree in WS would
require additional education and that she had actually
“lost interest in the specific idea of what [she] would be
doing” after graduation, she made the switch to English,
where she found her niche and developed what she
describes as strong communication skills.
She points out that those skills came in handy when
the time came for NRV Varmints to become “official.” In
roughly 2004, she began advertising her business; by the
next year, she had a person working with her. By 2007,
to pet sitting – visiting people’s houses to feed and take
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care of their pets while they were away – Sarah eventually added unofficial
daycare services in the house she had bought in McCoy. A growing list of
clients had asked for it.
“People were loving the services,” she notes. “Our pet sitting was continuing
to grow, as well as our day care.” Between 2007-2008, Sarah estimates that
the business saw a growth rate in its clientele of 55%; between 08-09, 50%.
In 2008, NRV Varmints moved into its first official home in North Blacksburg,
but its setting up shop there did not occur without some ticklish moments.
It was then that Sarah’s communication skills began to serve her well. That
year and the next, two other pet sitting/daycare services lodged complaints
because Sarah’s business had been permitted to locate within town limits,
while theirs had not. Altogether, Sarah estimates that she has spoken in
front of and presented proposals and other business documents to various
boards and zoning agencies – quite successfully, it bears noting – six to
eight times.
“A lot of the skills I’ve put to use come from my English background,” she
adds.
NRV Varmints relocated to its current location near Montgomery Regional
Hospital in 2010 in order to provide an outdoor space for dogs. Currently,
the business has 900 clients, with 750-800 using pet sitting services. Sarah
employs 12 full-time pet sitters who either visit with pets several times a
day or spend the night in clients’ homes. She marvels at the willingness
with which she and her sitters have been embraced by their clients.
streets -- literally. She helps run the dog parade in Blacksburg’s Summer
Solstice Festival, which she also serves as a planning committee member,
and has established a “Canine Corral” each year at Steppin’ Out, where
dog owners can let their pets play while they take in the sights.
On the day the interview for this article took place, 12 dogs of various sizes
– from a tall and serious St. Bernard to a Yorkie that moves between her
lap and the floor, her lap and the floor – mingled together in the sunny yard
and cooler interior play spaces. In the back of the facility, two spaniels and
a small bulldog – all more rambunctious than the other dogs – played in
their own rooms. Sarah knows them all by name, and they looked to her
excitedly when she stands near them to list the variety of their breeds.
With the clear love Sarah has for her wards and the success with which her
homegrown business has met, it might surprise that she would eventually
like to return to school for a master’s degree. As she pursued her degree,
though, she also worked almost full-time in a mental health facility, and
she grew to love the positive results she saw there. One day she would like
to earn a Master’s in Social Work – but not THIS day. And probably not any
day in the near future.
“I’m not really in a rush,” she says, as she picks up the Yorkie once again.
“It’s a mysterious thing to me sometimes that people ever let us in,” she
says. “But we’ve really developed special relationships with our clients.
If you have someone who’s willing to write you in as a pet sitter, they’re
basically inviting you to eat out of the fridge. They’ll say ‘here’s the shower,”
and they’ll put out pretty soap. The way that they trust is phenomenal.”
The services Sarah provides are not merely a means to an end in terms
of pet care; they also help nurture the deep bond that people develop
with their pets. She tells the story, for example, of a woman in the armed
forces who has been deployed overseas for nine months. She is a single
pet owner, and her family members live elsewhere, so she turned to NRV
Varmints to take care of her five cats and three dogs while she was gone.
Sarah has also worked hard to create a bond between NRV Varmints and its
community. She donates to local causes, but also takes her services to the
Yorkie Alex belongs to Ginney Fowler
and Nikki Giovanni. She has been with
NRV Varmints for years.
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student profiles
phd program
section design mike breitenbach
If his high school guidance
counselor had been able to
exert more control over him,
Evansville, IN, native Tim
Lockridge might have ended
up with a marketing degree,
wearing a three-piece suit
and sitting behind a desk in a
high-rise. As it was, he found
himself a year and a half into a
marketing/advertising major, in
college at his parents’ behest,
and hating the fact that in
his reluctantly-chosen field
“people were statistics.”
So he dropped out to work at a
movie theater and play music
on the weekends, touring with
his band in a cargo van called
“Gladiator.” It took a random
stop at a bookstore and the
purchase of Dave Eggers’
Pulitzer
Prize-nominated
piece, A Heartbreaking Work
of Staggering Genius, to show
him that “the rules of writing
weren’t really rules” and to convince him to return to college at the University of
Southern Indiana – this time, as an English major.
tim lockridge
“My education,” he notes with a laugh, “has always been most poignant when I
realize you can do things you aren’t supposed to do.”
Take, for example, the somewhat circuitous post-BA route he took to VT’s MFA
program. Near the end of his BA, Tim finally asked a favorite professor and mentor
how he could end up doing what the teacher did. Although the professor told
him about MFA programs, he worked random jobs for a couple of years before
participating in a New Harmony, IN, creative writing summer program RopeWalk
Writers Retreat. There, someone offered him a quirky piece of advice about
selecting an MFA program: if you have writer whose work you admire, find out
where he or she is teaching and go there.
Which is precisely how Tim ended up at VT, from which he earned his MFA in
Poetry and New Media Creative Writing in 2008. His committee was chaired by
that “writer whose work he admired” – Bob Hicok.
But he wasn’t quite finished. Way back in about 1995, when he was still in high
school, his parents had purchased a computer, but didn’t want him to access
the then relatively-new internet on it. In another random-but-invaluable turn of
events, a fellow down the road from where he lived opened an internet café,
which Tim would visit almost daily after school. After time, the café owner realized
that Tim exhibited a facility for navigating the web, so he asked him if he would
be interested in helping his wife set up a web site. Despite knowing nothing about
how to do that, Tim said yes – and then turned to the local library for assistance.
He taught himself HMTL, created the wife’s web site, and even built a few more.
Then, when the café folded and became instead a computer repair shop, he found
himself working there full time.
So it’s no surprise that after earning his MFA, he transitioned quickly into the
PhD program and has since developed an impressive body of presentations and
publications in the areas of digital rhetoric, web writing and design, and new
media and multi-modal composition. His dissertation, entitled “Beyond Invention:
How Hackers Challenge Memory and Disrupt Delivery,” actually links his MFA and
PhD work because it considers questions of ownership on the web.
And when this summer he leaves Blacksburg for an assistant professorship
in multimedia writing in Communication Studies at St. Joseph’s University
(Philadelphia, PA), it will be to what many in his position would consider a dream
job: helping to build a new program from the ground up.
All in all, not bad for a guy who used to tour the Midwest with his band in a van
known as “Gladiator.”
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student profiles
phd program
Amy Reed was toiling diligently through the first-year rigors of medical school when she realized she no longer wanted to be a doctor. A BA in English and BS in
Biology from Ohio State University had prepared her with both the communication and scientific skills she needed to succeed, but something was missing from the
experience.
It wasn’t until she withdrew from medical school and enrolled in the master’s program at the University of Dayton that she discovered her true direction. She found
she could parlay her dual interests in the humanities and the sciences, particularly medicine, into a career in Rhetoric and Composition – a path that would eventually
lead her to the PhD program at Virginia Tech.
“I didn’t think it was possible to join my interests,” Amy says. “I had a foot in both worlds, but
I didn’t know anything about Rhetoric and Composition or Professional Writing when I did my
undergraduate education.”
At Dayton, Amy studied genre theory and began reading about developments in the rapidlyevolving field of medical writing. When she began the PhD program, though, her initial goal was to
undertake research on Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), collaborative plans prepared by
parents, teachers, and administrators to meet the educational needs of children with disabilities.
Her interest soon shifted, however, the more IEPs she read. “I realized there was medical language
where I didn’t think it needed to be,” she says of the documents.
Work already being produced in the Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society (CSRS) – Paul Heilker’s
work on autism and Kelly Pender’s on breast cancer, for example – helped lead Amy toward the
field of medical rhetoric. Since making that move, she has worked as a research assistant and grant
co-writer with various research groups within the CSRS, including the Epidemiology of Information
and the Rhetorical Situations in Bioethics groups. Even after her official coursework was finished,
she extended her experience in the field by enrolling in Bernice Hausman’s medical rhetoric course.
Amy’s dissertation – “Rhetorics of Down Syndrome” – draws on medical rhetoric and disabilities
studies to examine the subject of prenatal testing for Downs, which she indicates is “the most
common cognitive congenital disability.”
amy reed
Amy also has honed her teaching skills in both the Composition and Professional Writing programs, having tackled such diverse courses as freshman writing, Technical
Writing, and Literature, Medicine, and Culture. For the past year, she has also worked with the Engineering Communications Program, serving as program assistant
but then moving to assistant and then lead instructor of various Materials Science Engineering courses.
All of this experience will serve her well when she steps into her new role this fall: Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing Arts at Rowan University in
Glassboro, NJ. Although she has come a long way from that year in medical school, she will nonetheless continue working and teaching in the field of medical writing,
furthering her love of the sciences in the writing classroom.
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student profiles
ma program
Jessica Bates would likely be the first to admit that she is still searching for what she wants to
do with her life. To her way of thinking, though, that inquisitiveness is not only natural, but
also inspiring. “I’m kind of a searcher,” she says. “I like being creative, and I like learning about
a lot of different things.”
At Hendrix College, a small liberal arts school in Arkansas that she describes
as a “hippie school,” she considered pre-med before graduating in 2006 with a
degree in English and a History minor.
Then, still searching, Jess went to work. She spent a year in Little Rock as a
copywriter at an ad agency before following her sister to Washington, DC.
Temporary positions as a technical editor at the Solidarity Council and as an
international coordinator at the Cotton Council kept her busy for a year or so
before she settled in for a two-year stint at the Society for Neuroscience, where
she served as editorial assistant for the society’s Journal of Neuroscience.
Finally, in 2010, Jess made her way to Virginia Tech’s MA program, from which
she will earn her degree this spring. When she entered the graduate program,
she had plans to study the metaphor of the robot. To some degree, that subject
still found its way into her thesis, which studies the conceptual art of American
R&B/soul musician Janelle Monae. A self-described “music nerd,” Jess found
the perfect research outlet in what she calls the “trans-media storytelling” of
Monae, whose work comments on the status of African Americans using music
and performance art with sci-fi and technological themes.
jessica bates
After graduation, Jess plans to return to Washington, where her brother also now lives.
There, she will seek writing and editing positions that permit her to – no surprise here! – “do
a lot of things, that will let me be creative in some way.”
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student profiles
ma program
Dickenson County, VA, native Bruce Blansett actually finds it a bit “odd” – his word – that he is about to earn his MA in English, because
his journey didn’t start in that direction at all. In fact, when he enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia at Wise, he was
determined to study Biology, attend medical school, and become a pharmacist. Things did start out that way. But a second-semester course
in “London in Literature” – an interdisciplinary course he chose to complete an Honors requirement – “clicked” for him, and by his third
semester he had become an English major.
Yet he has not fully abandoned his interest in medicine. His thesis, on late 19th-early 20th
century American writer and social activist Charles Chesnutt merges the two interests:
it explores how the author’s collection of short stories, “The Conjure Woman and Other
Conjure Tales” (1899), serves to critique the traditional medical professional. His research
argues, Bruce explains, “how the African-American or slave community could gain power
through their own sources of medical expertise.”
Bruce’s forays into English and into an MA program might have been slightly accidental, but
they have been fruitful. In addition to chairing a panel on “Mulitmodal Sex: Perspectives
on Sex and/or Violence in Texts & Digital Environments,” he has delivered a paper entitled
“Exploring Science and Race in Nineteenth Century America” at the 2011 meeting of The
Philological Association of the Carolinas. In addition, he has a chapter forthcoming in the
anthology Beyond Southern Frontier Humor: Prospects and Possibilities. That essay, “From
Swamp Doctor to Conjure Woman: Exploring ‘Science’ and Race in Nineteenth-Century
America,” examines how Henry Clay Lewis’s Odd Leaves “functions as a thematic, stylistic,
and subversive antecedent” to Chesnutt’s “The Conjure Woman.”
bruce blansett
He has also been nominated for the Richard Hoffman GTA Award for superior teaching by
a GTA. “I love teaching because I love writing,” he says. “It gives me the chance to show
students my passion for it and get them excited about something that they have to take. I
try to show them how they can find their voice and become empowered by it.”
While Bruce would like to teach after completing his MA, he is not ruling out an alternative
career that would let him hone his writing and editing skills. And he plans to read for pleasure, a hobby he has had to postpone while pursuing
his MA. The first book he will read? The Man Who Made Lists, the biography of Peter Mark Roget, British physician and lexicographer. Not
a surprising choice, when you think about it.
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student profiles
mfa program
text whitney jones
The small farming village of Stevensville, MI, where Rob Kenagy grew up, is a mere 57 miles from Chicago. Close
enough for him to make multiple runs to the farmers market there when he worked for nearby Mick Klug Farms
and to move to when he decided he wanted to try his hand at being a musician. Close to home, family, and friends.
So it seems a bit odd that this committed Midwesterner would end up hundreds of miles away in Blacksburg. End
up here he did, though, drawn to the MFA Program by a desire to “do it right” – to be a poet who is also a teacher.
Had things turned out differently, he could have been wearing khakis, parlaying a summer and occasionally fulltime job as a park ranger at Silver Beach County Park into a full-time gig. But that momentary idea of “going into
parks and recreation” soon gave way to another idea – trying a career in Chicago’s music scene, where he played
with friends’ bands and started his own – before it evolved yet again, and Rob found himself on the VT campus.
“It’s sort of been a series of trying things,” he says with a laugh.
A 2008 English and Philosophy graduate of Michigan’s liberal-arts based Hope College, Rob remembers how two
undergraduate workshops with poet Jack Ridl focused his attention on writing as a vocation. Ridl was one of those
teachers, Rob says, who “cracked the world open” for him.
Rob has, in turn, tried to do the same for his own students in such courses as Introduction to Creative Writing.
“I love teaching,” he states. “It’s so cool to see people tiptoe into new worlds. I’m constantly surprised by my
students and how weird they are – in a good way!”
rob kenagy
Although he has been busy recently putting the finishing touches on his MFA manuscript, a collection of poems
entitled “Jalopy Hymnal”, he has multi-tasked his way to publications in Midwestern Gothic, Gargoyle Magazine,
and Opus, as well as through a variety of regional readings and a number of guest workshops in the classes of
colleagues. He has also won a variety of awards for his work, including one presented by Virginia Tech and the
Poetry Society of Virginia.
MFA in hand, he will return to Michigan to be near family and friends. He hopes to find an adjunct teaching
position, but the “real plan is just to keep writing,” he says. “I try to just write. It’s all about surprising myself and
challenging myself. . . . I take pride in what I’ve done.”
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student profiles
mfa program
text whitney jones
Sandra Yee studied acupuncture in Sri Lanka and then practiced it for several years in Atlanta,
before admitting to herself that all she really wanted to do was write. “My first love, writing,
was calling me home,” she says.
Before reaching this conclusion, Sandra gained a variety of experiences in places all over the
world. For a time, she worked for the designer Vivienne Westwood in London, taught English
in Chengdu, and even became an amateur filmmaker, creating a documentary about her and
her grandmother. Her film was featured in a couple of film festivals in Atlanta and was even
shown at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
The Phoenix, AZ native earned a BFA in studio art and has used her design skills as co-curator
and coordinator for the Connecting Ridges Reading Series. She also served as the graduate
student liaison for the 1st Glossolalia Literary Festival at Virginia Tech and as communications
chair for the English Graduate Student Organization (EGSO) Annual Conference.
With an avid interest in natural medicine, recycling, organics and health foods, and the
environment, it comes as no surprise that Sandra would pick somewhere like Blacksburg to
spend three years concentrating on her writing.
As her vita indicates, Sandra has been working on her writing for much of her academic
career. “I am a workaholic,” she says, “and I do not recommend it.” Her list of publications is
extensive. Most recently, her “Weather that Asks for the Lighting of Candles” was featured in
The Lantern Review.
Even though Sandra says she has been “trying to get away from Phoenix, AZ ever since she hit
puberty,” she is now thinking of returning to work in her family grocery store. She describes
the store’s location as a “food desert,” figuratively and literally. And since Sandra enjoys
diverse opportunity, it is easy to envision her hopes of turning it into a health food store with
an adjoining community library and literacy center.
sandra yee
Turns out, for Sandra, home and writing are where the heart is.
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student profiles
creative writing
text mike breitenbach
Even a brief conversation with Drew Knapp reveals his creativity. His gaze seems fixed beyond his target,
but should not be mistaken as apathetic. The gears of his mind turn in a constant and visible motion as he
carefully listens and selects his words.
Drew came to Virginia Tech to study business, which he pursued for a year and a half, unknowing that
he would graduate as a published novelist. He took Introduction to Creative Writing as an elective and
soon decided that he wanted writing to be the focus of his academic career.
Writing was a part of his life before college, but he claims that his work was “terrible” before he
received the guidance of his professors. In Knapp’s opinion, “some of the best teachers at Tech are
in the English Department.” He credits Robin Allnutt and Matthew Vollmer as particularly helpful in
his writing. He says his favorite class is the Advanced Fiction workshop, which he took with Ed Falco.
Drew prefers the laidback atmosphere of workshops because they allow him to be more productive
than in lecture classes.
After a few semesters in the English Department, he has already published one novel, Out of My Body
Flowers Will Grow, and a novella, Slug. As a result, he is graduating with plenty of writing experience
and familiarity with the “cutthroat” publishing industry.
drew knapp
Drew credits his success simply to writing “way too much.” He is known for sometimes overwhelming
his teachers by bringing too much work to class. “I’m actually interested,” he says. “That’s the biggest
thing I bring to the table.”
He writes his stories mostly based off of his own experiences or stories from his friends. “A lot of
my fiction,” he says, “is just nonfiction with the names changed. That way, it comes out more honestly,
because you already know what you are talking about.”
Upon graduation, Drew plans to attend graduate school for Creative Writing.
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student profiles
creative writing
“The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that will.” One of Elisha Votruba’s favorite
quotes from novelist Chuck Palahniuk describes her approach to writing perfectly. Elisha’s unbridled thirst
for experiencing life and trying new things fuels her writing. She describes herself as “accident prone”
with no inhibitions or patience, a lifestyle that is apparent in her works of humor nonfiction.
Elisha, “a writer from day-one,” is a senior in the Professional and Creative Writing concentrations. As
a child, she wrote stories about her dog’s adventures in the woods and received complaints from her
teachers for reading under her desk during class. Today, she seeks work with a more technical background.
She began her college career in Harrionsburg at James Madison University (JMU) as a communications
major but transferred to Virginia Tech during her sophomore year, and she has since lived her college
experience to the fullest. Upon transferring, she felt “immediately welcomed” and has enjoyed the sense
of community and complete acceptance of the Hokie nation.
Elisha’s writing is strongly influenced by her professors, peers and family. Her skills were recognized in
high school, but she felt that she needed more assurance in her writing. She claims that the support
from her Virginia Tech professors and classmates truly made her believe in her abilities. Professors Fred
D’aguiar and Bob Hicok, she says, were her most influential mentors in the department.
She earned a second place Virginia Tech Literary Award for nonfiction in 2011 and was nominated for
fiction as well. She was also selected to participate in the 2012 Sweet Briar Creative Writing Conference,
which invites the top twelve writers from universities across the country.
elisha votruba
In the fall, Elisha will be working at General Dynamics as an integrated cost and scheduling specialist.
After a few years of “experiencing life,” she hopes to go to graduate school for Creative Writing. Until
then, she will continue writing.
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student profiles
literature, language, and culture
text whitney jones
It is a very good thing that high school geometry and trigonometry exist, for without them,
Patrick County, VA native Josh Thompson might never have decided to become an English
major.
But it was his 11th grade Honors English teacher, Mr. Henderson, who verified for him what
geometry and trigonometry had started. It was that teacher, Josh explains, who opened
his eyes to the possibilities inherent in the study of English: “He basically showed me this
whole other side to English – literary analysis. You can actually see into the literature . . . it
speaks about people and society, this whole intersection of everything.”
Ordinarily, Josh would be finishing his college career in a few weeks, but since the
beginning of the Fall 2011 semester, he has been dual-enrolled in Tech’s MA program in
English Education, from which he will graduate to begin his own career as a high school
English teacher. While many students have dual-enrolled the second semester of their
senior year, Josh is the first student to be enrolled as an undergraduate and a graduate
candidate for the entire year.
“I’ve always wanted to teach,” he says. “I don’t know why, but it has always been there.
Nothing has made me second-guess myself. It has just affirmed what I know: I want to be
a teacher.”
As an undergraduate, he has already begun to make his mark in the fields of teaching
and literature. He has worked for two years as a tutor in the Writing Center, published an
article about tutoring in The Writing Lab Newsletter, and presented papers on children’s
literature at several conferences, including the Virginia Humanities Conference and the
Midwest Popular Culture Association.
Josh is multi-faceted, though. Since his arrival at Tech as a freshman, he has been a
member of the Marching Virginians, serving as drum major when he was a junior and
rank captain the fall of his senior year. He is also a member and current president of the
co-ed music fraternity Delta Omicron.
josh thompson
Yet English remains his first love. In a few years, a classroom or two of high school students
will be very happy about that.
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student profiles
literature, language, and culture
text whitney jones
Hope Wilkes has a dog named Harper Lee, a golden lab who “is too pretty for us not to take pictures
of constantly.” It comes as no surprise that Hope would name her dog after a major figure in American
literature, but the fact that she recently met a golden retriever named Boo Radley, well, that’s a little
unexpected.
Or, then again, maybe not. For those who know Hope, the unexpected definitely can be the expected.
Like hanging out with teachers beyond the classroom. “She’s smart, intellectually curious, diligent,”
says Steve Mooney, who remembers numerous conversations with Hope in his office about “books
and ideas,” as he puts it.
“It was almost like an informal independent study – for no credit!” he added.
And pushing herself physically, not just academically? Yep. An avid runner, Hope often participates
in marathons. In May 2011, she ran for the first time the Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon in
Fredericksburg, VA, an endeavor she will repeat this year. She has run the Marine Corps 10K Marathon
twice, and in February of this year, she participated in the Virginia is for Lovers 14K. But, the “good
stuff,” she says? On April 1, she ran the Raleigh Rocks Half Marathon “a mere two weeks after finishing
my first marathon, the Publix Georgia Marathon on 3/18/12.”
Hope’s immediate plans after graduation sound deceptively typical as well: she has planned a couple
of vacations. This summer she will be taking off on an island getaway – the Galapagos Islands, that
is, where she will be touring while toting around a copy of Darwin’s book The Origin of Species. She
also hopes to attend the 2012 NCAA Division I Softball Championship, a part of the Women’s College
World Series of Softball, in Oklahoma City, OK. It will be her second trip there, the first occasion being
an item she ticked off her bucket list.
Her career plans are likewise intriguing: she will join the Marine Corps, entering as an officer. “I enjoy a
physical challenge,” she says about her decision. “I have strong leadership skills, and I have a desire to
serve my country. I chose the Marine Corps specifically because of its focus on its history, traditions,
and honor.”
In truth, not unexpected at all!
hope wilkes
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student profiles
professional writing
Senior English/Professional Writing major Lindsey Brookbank began her exploration into
her future coursework early. In high school, she wrote for her student newspaper and
chose to continue writing during her college career at Virginia Tech.
“I just knew I wanted to be a writer,” Lindsey says. Initially, she didn’t know what field
she wanted to enter into, but during her junior year, she began her second major in
Communications with an emphasis Electronic and Print Journalism. During the same year
she also began working as the Managing Editor at the Collegiate Times. From then on, her
goals were clear.
After three years at the Collegiate Times, The Virginia Tech student-run newspaper, she
considers her work there to be her most valuable experience of her academic career. She
oversees the work of all the editors, reads the stories, and puts the paper together every
night. Though her workload is often stressful, she reflects, “It has given me real-world
experience that I don’t think I would have gotten elsewhere.”
In October 2011, she won second-place for the Associated Collegiate Press Reporter of the
Year Award, beating a reporter from Harvard and falling just behind a reporter from UCLA.
She also attended the Associated Collegiate Press National College Media Convention in
Orlando, FL, where she received the award.
Lindsey attributes her success to a unique mix of creative and journalistic writing, which she
has gained through her combination of English and Communications studies. She mentions
Ed Weathers as a particular inspiration in the English Department, who made her believe
that writing could be “an actual profession.”
In her time at Virginia Tech, Lindsey has particularly enjoyed a course, Designing Documents
for Print, with Jennifer Mooney, and Writing for the Web, with Tim Lockridge. Bother
courses, she says, have given her valuable technical skills which she has applied in her work
and internships. In the fall, she hopes to apply these skills by working for a newspaper in
northern Virginia.
lindsey brookbank
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student profiles
professional writing
English was Olivia Kasik’s favorite subject since elementary school. A self-proclaimed “horrible”
creative writer, she discovered during high school that she wanted to study writing from a
technical, business-related perspective. When it came time to apply to universities, Virginia Tech
was an easy choice, being one of the few schools in Virginia with a specific Professional Writing
program.
Olivia is a senior double majoring in English/Professional Writing and Psychology with a minor
in Philosophy. Her impressive course work is also very cohesive. “Philosophy and Psychology
definitely influence how I look at Literature and Professional Writing,” Olivia says. She claims that
Psychology has been instrumental to her development as a professional writer because it helps
her understand audiences, an absolutely essential skill in her field. She also values her study of
Philosophy for improving her ability to analyze discourse.
Supplementing her coursework, Olivia says that internships have been her most valuable
experiences of her academic career. As a junior, she interned with Virginia Tech Magazine where
she conducted interviews and met with faculty and staff members, learning many things about
Virginia Tech that she wished she had known before. She is currently involved with the Center for
the Study of Rhetoric in Society where she has prepared materials for a federal grant proposal and
helped with research for the vaccination research group. Olivia embraces the diverse experiences
she has gained through these opportunities. She says that “vaccines are not something you talk
about very much in English, but it’s something that I have enjoyed because of that.”
Olivia emphasizes her gratitude for those who have helped her throughout her academic career,
particularly Dr. Kelly Pender, Dr. Bernice Hausman, Dr. Jim Dubinski and Heidi Lawrence. Olivia is
also grateful for the many scholarships she has won, including:
•
•
•
•
Joyce Gentry Smoot Scholarship (Fall 2009)
Alfred E. Knobler Scholarship (Spring 2011)
Jenkins M. Robertson Scholarship (Fall 2011-Spring 2012)
Robichaud Family Scholarship (Fall 2011-Spring 2012)
olivia kasik
Upon graduation, Olivia will put her writing skills to work as a Documentation Specialist at Dovel
Technologies, Inc. in McLean, VA.
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alumni news
2011
Carey Bald (Professional Writing, left)
has accepted a position as Marketing
Coordinator for Athletics at Arizona
State University. She will be in charge
of all marketing efforts (marketing
plan,
promotional
scheduling,
sponsorship maintenance, and game
operations/event
management)
for volleyball, wresting, women’s
basketball, and softball; and she will
contribute to football program efforts. While there, she will begin working on
her MA in Higher and Post-Secondary Education. Since she graduated, she has
worked as an intern for VT’s Athletic Department, where she reports she gained
“a ton of experience.”
another graduate student, Elias Simpson, who she met when she shared an
office with him in Shanks. They have a beautiful daughter named Lucia.
Seneca Sok (Pre-Law and Cultural Studies) will graduate in May 2013 from
George Mason University’s MPA program and is
currently working at the U.S. State Department
under Special Representative for Intergovernmental
Affairs Reta Jo Lewis.
current AOE PhD. candidate) on August 13, 2011 in Blacksburg. Their ceremony
and reception were held at the Peggy Hahn Horticulture Garden on campus. She
notes that, alas, there was no Hokie Bird present.
Arianne (Arshad) Urena (Professional Writing,
right)) worked in Business Development and
Marketing at CommPartners in her hometown of
Columbia, Maryland for 6 months after graduation.
In December, she married Benjamin Urena, an
officer in the US Army, and moved with him to
Italy, where he is stationed until July 2013. Arianne
reports that she cooks, thrifts, takes care of her
husband, and assists the Warrior Transition Unit
soldiers with their professional development.
Brian Gogan (PhD), an Assistant Professor at Western Michigan University, has
Julia Viets (Professional Writing & Creative
Anna (Derlaga) Blevins (MA) married Joseph M. Derlaga (VT AOE BS ‘07,
published “Revising Ownership in the Critical Classroom: Writing, Rhetoric, and
the Wager of Reciprocity” in the collection Who Speaks for Writing: Stewardship
for Writing Studies in the 21st Century (Peter Lang 2012).
Tess Jeans (MA; BA, Pre-Eduction, 08) married her college sweetheart two
weeks after receiving her degree. She has been working as an 11th grade English
teacher at Riverbend High School in Fredericksburg, VA.
Sarah Ryan (CW) currently works as an administrative assistant to Workforce
Development at Wytheville Community College and also serves as an adjunct
English instructor. She bought a house and is getting married on September 8,
2012.
Lindsay (Ehrlich) Simpson (MA) has, since graduating, worked at Virginia
Western Community College, and she now teaches for the English Department
at the VT Language and Culture Institute. On October 29th, 2011, she married
Writing) will graduate this August from the
University of Pittsburgh with an MLIS and a
specialization in Archives, Preservation, and Records
Management.
Casey Whitehead (Professional Writing, right) works
in the client services department of a small business in
Alexandria, VA called 25K Digital, which specializes in
developing custom software, applications, and websites.
She started working there the summer following her year,
writing contracts, editing documents, and guiding the
initial stages of projects over the summer. She continued
working for the company through her senior year,
handling social media and writing a weekly newsletter
for clients. She was offered a full-time position there
after graduating.
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alumni news
2010
Jessica
Bergersen
(Razumich)
(Professional
Writing, left) currently works for
the Department of Defense in
Maryland. She is now married to
Brandon Bergersen, an Ensign in
the United States Navy.
Ally
Haak
(Literature)
graduated with a Master’s in
English Education from Stanford
in 2011. She is about to finish
her first year of teaching (10th
grade literature).
Caitlin Laverdiere (Literature?) currently serves as the Internship Coordinator
at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.
Sarah E. Plummer (MA) works as the education and performing arts beat
reporter for The Register-Herald based in Beckley, W.Va. She is also teaching
three classes a semester at Bluefield State College, a combination of Modern
Literature, Regional/Ethnic Texts, Freshman English, and Writing from Research.
Brittney
Trimmer
(Professional
Writing, left) was promoted to Research
Manager for the Richmond, VA, based
company Feedback, which specializes
in audience research. She heads the
majority of the company’s research
projects and in the last year has traveled
for her job to New Orleans and London.
She has worked at Feedback since 2011.
Alli Vail (Pre-Education) finished her
masters in education in Summer 2011
from the State College of New Jersey and now teaches grades 6, 7, and 8 at Terrill
Middle School in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.
L. Lamar Wilson’s (MFA, Creative Writing, above right) manuscript Sacrilegion
was chosen by Lee Ann Brown as the winner of the 2012 Carolina Wren Press
Poetry Series. Lamar has poems published or forthcoming in
journals and anthologies such as jubilat, African American
Review, Callaloo, Rattle, Vinyl, The 100 Best African-American
Poems and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of
Contemporary Persona Poetry. He also won the 2011 Beau
Boudreaux Poetry Prize and was twice a finalist for the New
Letters Poetry Prize. Currently, Lamar is pursuing a PhD in
English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
studying 20th-century African-American and Caribbean
poetics.
2009
Brittany (Sanders) Cowan (Literature) graduated with a Masters of Arts in
Literature from North Carolina State University in Spring 2011. She had a Hokiethemed wedding with her college sweetheart, Jonny Cowan
(Mechanical Engineering ‘08, ‘10), in August 2011. Currently,
she works as an adjunct instructor teaching Expository
Writing, Argument Based Writing and Southern Literature at
Rowan-Cabarrus Community College in Concord, NC.
Jeremy Griffin (MFA) published A Last Resort for Desperate
People, a first collection of short stories and a novella, with
Stephen F. Austin UP.
Rachel Milloy (MA; Professional Writing, 07) is finishing her
third year in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication
Ph.D. program at New Mexico State University. There, she
co-authored the school’s first-year writing textbook, Paideia.
Recently, the graduate school awarded her the Outstanding
Graduate Assistantship Award for contributions to the research and teaching
mission of New Mexico State University. Soon, she will be moving back to VA to
begin her dissertation research. She will work with community college faculty
and developmental writing students to determine how writing technologies can
be used to strengthen writing skills and help students move through non-credit
course much more quickly.
Sara Musick (BA, Pre-Ed) graduated from Virginia Tech in December 2011 with
a Master’s in Human Development, concentration in Strengthening Families and
Prevention Education in Nonprofit Organizations. In January, she was offered
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alumni news
and accepted a position at the Women’s
Resource Center of the New River Valley
as a Child Sexual Abuse Counselor. Sara
says she feels lucky to work on a daily basis
with children and their families in Giles
and Montgomery Counties. She lives in
Blacksburg with her Corgi-Bassett Hound,
Adrienne.
Kathleen (Cooperstein) Neace (PreLaw. left) will graduate from Yale Law School
this May. She is then moving to Washington,
DC, to clerk for a federal judge.
Matt Sams (Professional Writing) lives in Roanoke, VA, and serves as the
she had held the previous summer.
During this time, she taught herself
to play guitar while also writing for
the military newspaper called The
Globe. She ended up moving back
to the DC area all while continuing
to write songs. She played her first
show in DC at Artomatic, a summer
festival, and she reports “it’s been
up and onward from there.” While
performing in and around the DC
area, including coming back to
TOTS last fall to perform for Coach
Fosters charity event at Virginia
Tech, she has been working for Accenture.
Marketing Specialist at Carilion Clinic. In his current role, he serves as the
marketing adviser for various departments within the organization, while also
specializing in web production, social media strategy, search engine optimization,
and project management. In his spare time, he works as a freelance web/social
media producer and continues to strive for Virginia Tech football tailgating
perfection.
She has released Ready or Not, her first album, independently to great reviews.
In Fall 2011, she traveled to Nashville several times and recorded a new album
with singer/songwriter friend named Trent Dabbs and producer Jeremy Bose.
Stay tuned, she says, to find out when the album will be coming out.
Jamie Sinclair (Literature Minor) will this May
a Career Advising Fellow at Elon University in Elon, NC. During Summer 2012,
she will be in Los Angeles, serving as assistant coordinator for the Elon in LA
summer undergraduate internship program
and program coordinator for Elon Bridges: LA,
Elon’s new post-graduate transition program.
receive her J.D. from New York Law School, located
in NYC. She is on the editorial board of the law
review and the VP of the labor and employment
law society at NYLS. After graduating, she will be
studying to take the N.Y. Bar Exam in July.
Daniel Tinsley (BA in English & Political Science)
has published his first novel, The Noble Ones, which
takes place in the late 18th century and chronicles
the journey of young Aidan “through enchanted
forests, across sprawling countrysides, and into
the underbelly of corrupt cities where he battles
political adversaries who will stop at nothing to
maintain the status quo.”
2008
Barbara “Bobbie” Allen (Professional Writing, above right) moved back to
Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to live with her parents and continue an internship
Marianne Brigola (Pre-Law and Professional Writing) is currently working as
Kara LeFleur (MA) has accepted a position
as Grants Manager at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, where she will help raise
funds for special exhibits, a ten-year capital
campaign, and art conservation initiatives.
Bonnie (Short) Ramsey (Literature,
right) is currently a Junior Proposal Manager
with Harris Corporation for Western U.S.
and Canadian Land Mobile Radio System
Solutions. She and her husband, Todd, just
welcomed a baby boy, Harker Michael, on
November 29, 2011. They are continuing to
restore their 1946 Sears home in Lynchburg,
and Bonnie is hoping to run her third half marathon by next February.
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alumni news
Matthew Strittmatter (Pre-Education) was
wife Christine welcomed their first child, Addelyn
Margaret, born on February 27.
elected as the 2012-14 Commission Chair for the
Advising Students with Disabilities Commission of the
National Academic Advising Association (NACADA). She
has been involved with the organization since 2007, has
presented at numerous meetings, and was chosen to
serve the conference Advisory Board. Rebecca works
as an Academic Support Counselor and Study Abroad
Coordinator at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
in Tifton, GA.
Miranda (Puckett) Williams (MA) married
Jaquisha Kearson (Professional Writing, right)
married on July 9, 2011. He and his wife Mallory
work as teachers in Chesterfield County. They
bought their first house in Richmond and adopted
a yellow lab, whom they promptly named “Hokie”!
Nathan Walker (Pre-Education, left) and his
Andrew Holt Williams May 27, 2011, in San
Francisco, CA. They now live in the DC area.
2007
J. Seth Lee (MA 2007; Pre-Option BA, 05) got married July 30, 2011 to Julie
Naviaux, a fellow PhD student studying African American literature at the
University of Kentucky. This past fall he passed his qualifying exams and began
drafting the first chapter of his dissertation this semester. The project earned a
Faculty Emeriti fellowship for the summer of 2012.
Nicole Patino (MA; BA, Literature, 05) currently works as a substance abuse
counselor in Galax,VA, but is planning on starting law school in August. She has
been been offered scholarships from SUNY-Buffalo and Elon School of Law.
Traci Wilmoth (MA; BA. Literature, 05) currently teaches 10th grade honors
English at Halifax County High School. She has taught high school -- grades
ten through twelve –at all levels: inclusion, general education, and advanced
classes. She is also an online adjunct with both Strayer University and Everest
College, where she teaches
remedial writing and both sections
of freshman composition. Two
years ago I bought a house, and
this summer she is getting married.
2006
Rebecca Daly Cofer (MA; BA,
received her masters in Pastoral Counseling from
Loyola University Maryland in May 2011 and as of
September 2011 also became a nationally certified
counselor. In October 2011, she became a Licensed Graduate Professional
Counselor in Maryland. She works as a Psychotherapist for the Dhyana Project in
Baltimore, MD, and as mental health
therapist for Generations Counseling
Center LLC. In the last couple of
years, Jaquisha has become an avid
distance runner and often competes
in marathons.
Kara Lee (Haggard) Rowe (MA;
BA, Professional Writing, 04; right)
has been busy since graduation.
She taught English as a second
language at a middle school in Seoul,
South Korea, then she taught in
the Advanced Writing Program at
Clemson before beginning her career
as a law student at George Mason
University School of Law, at which she had been offered a scholarship.
She graduates this May, and after she takes the bar, she plans to join the family
law firm at which she currently works. When she can, she also assists with pro
bono work in the areas of family law and immigration. In addition, her Master’s
thesis The Textuality of the Body: Orlan’s Performance Art as Subversive Act was
published by a German press and is available on Amazon.
Literature, 04, left, with husband
Jordan Cofer) was recently
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alumni news
2005
Benjamin
Horton (Creative Writing)
currently works as an Account Coordinator at
GRM Marketing, a sports marketing firm in
Charlotte, NC.
Jennifer (Hilty) Tellis (Professional Writing)
2002, left) has been promoted to Associate
Dean of Arts and Sciences at Hocking College
in Nelsonville, OH. She also welcomed her first
child, Ruth Ann Clever, into the world on January 30, 2012.
graduated with a J.D. from the George Mason
University School of Law, passed the bar, and
married her husband Sunil Tellis – all in 2007!
They settled in Ashburn, VA, and have two
daughters -- Madeline Elisabeth (2008) and
Katharine Rose (2010) – with another baby due
to arrive in October. In 2009, Jennifer says that
a “struggle with cancer humbled [her] worldly
ambition,” and she left work to “pursue the
adventures of stay-at-home motherhood.” We
are happy to know that you are doing well,
Jennifer!
Mary Beth Pennington (MA 04) has worked as an assistant professor
Joey Tran’s (BA, Cultural Studies) latest film,
2004
Sarah Parker-Clever (MA, ; BA, Literature,
(Rhetoric and Composition) in the English and Fine Arts department at the
Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia since August 2010. She received
her PhD in English from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro in May
2010.
Singularium, was accepted into its first film
festival, the Fourth Annual SENE Film, Music
& Arts Festival on April 11-15 in Rhode Island!
Check out a teaser.
Mike Pilola (BA, Creative Writing) published several short stories in Poor
Mojo’s Almanac(k), Ascent Aspirations, and the Taj Mahal Review before
entering the MFA program at Hollins University in 2007. After graduating
in 2009, he decided to pursue a career as a high school English teacher, get
married (wife’s name is Agatha), and start a small-time literary blog called Ad
Hominem Art and Literature Review in 2010, about the same time he was
added as a managing editor of PoemoftheWeek.org. Though Mike reports
that his ability to update Ad Hominem has been limited recently, he plans to
return to the blog this summer. Until then, he says
he is content to work quietly on a steampunk novel
and watch old episodes of Doctor Who.
Samantha (Ellis) Spittle (pre-option BA) gave
birth to her second child, Conner Ellis Spittle, on
February 24. He joins his big sister, Riley Grace, 18
months old (born Sept 17, 2010).
Katherine Blair (White) Steele (pre-option
BA, left) and her husband Quincy Steele (VT 2002)
welcomed a baby boy, Micah, on October 29, 2011.
Blair teaches in the Fluvanna County School System.
2003
Lauren (North) DiSalvo (Literature) married Josh DiSalvo in May 2008, and
they bought our first home. She is currently teaching high school English in
Loudoun County, VA, and reports that she and her husband stay busy with our
family, friends, and work, but that
they love to travel and try to explore
as often as they can.
2002
Douglas Root (Pre-Option BA,
02) is currently in the last year of
a Fellowship at the University of
Georgia and is applying for jobs.
Alpha (Glass) Wingfield (Pre-
Option BA, 02, right) has worked with
the US Department of Transportation
since graduating. She began as an editor, but eventually developed an affinity
Table of Contents
alumni news
for the layout and graphic
design aspect of publishing and
has been working as the sole
visual information specialist for
her department for the past
5 years. In 2005 she married
Mack Wingfield and in 2009
they bought their first home
together, which is decorated in
her favorite Mid-Century style.
2001
Allyson Armistead (MA; BA
1999; left, with husband Chris
McClinch) graduated with an MFA in fiction from George Mason University in
2010, and has been regularly publishing short fiction in literary journals across
the country, including Narrative Magazine, Emprise Review, Coal City Review,
Ruminate, River and Sound Review, and others. In 2009, she was listed in
Narrative Magazine as one of 30 Under 30 exceptional emerging authors and
has been nominated for 2012 Best American Short Stories, Best New American
Voices, a Pushcart Prize, and a PEN/O. Henry Prize. In 2011, her short story
“Oasis” was awarded the $1,000 William Van Dyke prize by Time magazine ‘s topfive bestselling author, Leif Enger. Currently, she is at work on a novel, The Way
of Lien, which has been partially funded by a generous fellowship from George
Mason University. She resides in the
Washington, DC area with her husband,
Chris McClinch (MA 2001; BA, 1999); her
cat, and soon-to-be baby daughter. Read
more about her fictional pursuits at her
blog.
Justin Van Kleeck (Pre-Option BA;
left) earned his PhD in English from the
University of Virginia. After that, he
left academia (although he still does
independent scholarship on William
Blake) to work as an editor and writer
for three years at Rosetta Stone. Now,
he works for a non-profit organization, the Staunton Creative Community Fund,
doing community development and small-business lending, in addition to
working for the Harrisonburg Farmers Market and being very involved in the
local community. He also just got married to, in his words, “the most wonderful
woman in the world. Ever.”
2000
Joshua Reid (BA, right) will
graduate in May from the University
of Kentucky with a PhD in English and
an MA in Art History. He and his wife,
Erin, welcomed their first child, a
daughter named Juliet, in November
2011. Currently, he works as the
Coordinator of Learning Services at
Illinois State University.
1993
Shaya Misra Fitzgerald (pre-option BA) works as an
Orthopaedic Physician’s Assistant and is married to fellow VT
ENGL major Ben Fitzgerald. Ben is a partner with a law firm in
Northern Virginia. They live in Ashburn with their
daughter, who is almost two years old.
1992
Donna Lewis Cowan’s first book of poems,
Between Gods (Cherry Grove), will be published
in March 2012. Her work appears in Crab Orchard
Review, DMQ Review, Notre Dame Review, 32
Poems, and Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry,
among other publications. She is an experienced
technical writer and computer programmer in
the Washington, D.C. area, and attended the MFA
program in Creative Writing (Poetry) at George
Mason University. Visit her website.
Submit news at
Alumni News - Feast of Words!
Table of Contents
faculty news
english awarded ‘exemplary department’ status
The English Department was one of two to receive a 2011 Exemplary Department or Program Award.
The annual award began in 1994, and this is the second time the English Department has been chosen as a recipient. In 1995, the department received the award
for its efforts to manage faculty resources of time and talent effectively and creatively to fulfill stated departmental or program missions.
This year, the winning programs were chosen for their achievements in effectively linking assessment with instruction to improve student learning, the annual
theme set forth by the University Exemplary Department or Program Awards Committee.
Susan Allender-Hagedorn published “Public Perception
of and Public Participation in Microbial Source Tracking,”
in Microbial Source Tracking: Methods, Applications, and
Case Studies, ed. Charles Hagedorn, Anicet R. Blanch, and
Valerie J. Harwood (New York: Springer, 2011), pp. 281-99.
Linda Anderson presented a paper entitled “‘Remember
thee?’: Memory and Death of Fathers in Hamlet and All’s
Well That Ends Well,” in the seminar entitled “Memory and
Trauma in Shakespeare” at the International Shakespeare
Association’s Ninth World Congress, Prague, the Czech
Republic, July 2011.
Eva Brumberger presented at the annual conference of
the International Visual Literacy Association in Galloway,
NJ, September. Her presentation was entitled “Evaluating Visual Communication,
Assessing Visual Literacy.”
Gena Chandler was the keynote speaker for the 15th annual Mason–Sekora
Lecture on March 23 at North Carolina Central University. Her talk on the topic,
“Charles Johnson Revisions Dr. King,” highlighted the ways that National Book
Award winner Charles R. Johnson’s short story collection, “Dr. King’s Refrigerator,”
and his novel, “Dreamer,” examine the life, history and fictions surrounding Dr.
Martin Luther King. The annual
Mason–Sekora Lecture is named
in honor of Dr. Ernest Mason and
Dr. John Sekora, NCCU professors
who stressed an interdisciplinary
approach
in
learning
and
scholarship.
Katherine
Combiths
(right)
worked with students in the ESL
Program at National College. She
conducted a mini-workshop and
presented a lecture, ”A Quilter’s
Heritage,” in January for students in the ESL Program at National College. Female
students in the program discussed the needlework traditions in their countries
after seeing the quilts she and her grandmothers had made. In February, male
students from Saudi Arabia visited the Virginia Tech campus and enjoyed student
activities of bowling, ping-pong, and pool in Squires. Katherine and her husband,
Peter Laws, Director of the ESL Program at National College, gave the students
the opportunity to visit and explore the Blacksburg community as prospective
students of VT after completing certificates that show proficiency in the English
language.
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faculty news
Fred D’Aguiar published the poem “Yesterday’s News” in the Spring 2012 issue
Serena Frost and John Langley,
of Poetry London. He also has an essay forthcoming: “Wilson Harris: the Writer
as Surveyor,” in Another Life, Mélanie Joseph-Vilain & Judith Misrahi-Barak, eds.
Coll. Horizons anglophones, Series “PoCoPages”. Montpellier: Pulm.
senior Political Science major, (shown
with Silas House, middle) traveled to
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
for the 35th annual Appalachian
Studies Association conference. Their
panel presentation -- “Moonshine
and Politics: A Modern Day Victory
in Tennessee?”
-- explored the
complexities of the 2009 “legalization”
of moonshine and the distillery which
opened in the wake of the new law in
Gatlinburg, Tennessee. This is not the first conference that the pair has attended
together. In fact, John has been a part of Serena’s student/teacher research team
for the annual Appalachian Studies conference for three out of his four years as
an undergraduate student. As a freshman, John presented alongside two other
students in Portsmouth, Ohio on his experience with being a “Hybrid Appalachian.”
For his sophomore year, Serena led the team to Dahlonega, Georgia where they
presented a documentary on Big Coal.
Charlene Eska was elected Vice President of the Celtic Studies
Association of North America. She also presented a paper at the
34th Annual University of California Celtic Studies Conference/
Annual Meeting of the Celtic Studies Association of America at
UCLA in March: “Celtic and Germanic Light on Hittite Divorce
Law.” Additionally, she published “Marriage by Purchase in Early
Irish Law” in Tome: Studies in Medieval Celtic History and Law
in Honour of Thomas Charles-Edwards, ed. Fiona Edmonds and
Paul Russell (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011), pp. 183–91.
Joe Eska presented a paper at the 34th Annual University of California Celtic
Studies Conference/Annual Meeting of the Celtic Studies Association of America
at UCLA in March: “TeuoχTonin! and Related Matters.”
Carlos Evia and Tim Lockridge presented “Balancing Entertainment and
Information Content in Technical Communication Comics” at the Annual
Conference of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, in St. Louis in
March.
Ed Falco, Associate Professor and Director of the Creative Writing
Program, has been presented by CLAHS with an Excellence in
Research and Creative Scholarship Award for showing “evidence
of sustained effort and achievement in the generation of new
knowledge” in his field. In addition, his novel The Family Corleone, a
prequel to The Godfather, will be published in May by Grand Central
Publishing.
Virginia Fowler, for her efforts in assisting undergraduate students with course
selection, career guidance, and placement, has been selected as a recipient of the
CLAHS Excellence in Undergraduate Advising Award. Fowler is the former Director
of the Literature, Language, and Cultural Studies Program.
Tom Gardner published John in the Company of Poets:
The Gospel in Literary Imagination (Studies in Christianity
and Literature; Baylor UP). Larry Woiwode, Poet Laureate of
North Dakota, says of the book: “The masterful explication
of the poems chosen by Gardner draws their texts, along
with the reader, deep into the gospel’s sometimes elusive
significance so that, all in all, John in the Company of Poets
stands as the best contemporary rediscovery of the gospel I
have read.”
Nikki Giovanni stayed very busy during the last year. She
authored two books: These Women (with John McCormick)
and Nikki G: A Portrait of Nikki Giovanni in Her Own Words (Illustrated by Tim T.
Thomas. New York: DL Publishing); five new poems, three nonfiction essays, three
book blurbs, one book introduction. She saw nine works reprinted and received
19 awards or forms of recognition for her work, including being an honoree at
the 2012 National Black Writers Conference at Medgar Evers College and an
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faculty news
eportfolio team wins xcalibur award
For their work on the English Studies ePortfolio Project, a 16-member eam won a 2011 XCaliber Award for “excellence in creating and applying technologies on
a large-scale team project.”
That team included 10 English Department members: Nancy Metz, project coordinator; Ginney Fowler; Lissa Bloomer, Kaye Graham, Jenny Lawrence,
Julie Mengert, Steve Oakey, Victoria Le Corre-Cochran, Vanessa Ruccolo, and Todd Stafford, PhD candidate.
The XCaliber Award – short for “exceptional, high caliber work” – was established in 1996 by the Office of the Provost.
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Word – Poetry. She was interviewed
numerous times and spoke across the campus, region, state, and country. Please
note: those were just SOME of the numerous activities in which she was engaged!
At some point, we sincerely hope that she took a
vacation, too!
Diana George is one of the new co-editors of the
journal Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric,
Civic Writing, and Service Learning. She shares
that honor with Paula Mathieu of Boston College
and Cristina Kirklighter of Texas A&M-Corpus
Christi. Also, the 8th edition of her Reading Culture:
Contexts for Critical Reading and Writing, written
with John Trimbur and published by Pearson/Longman, came out in 2012. In
October 11, she was invited to speak to members of the Boston College Writing
Program and to Emerson College writing faculty.
and practices is savvy and strategic in removing the debates
from personal stories and investments to the ways in which this
volatile topic becomes embedded in cultural values, language, and
imagery.”
Christine Kiebuzinska published two articles: “Bertolt Brecht
and Luther’s Bible.” (Invited) Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its
Reception (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012, 459-464) and “Violence
and Pornography in Elfriede Jelinek’s Princess Plays” Gender and
Trauma: Interdisciplinary Dialogues. Ed. Fatima Festic. (Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2012, pp. 153-190). She also presented at a
conference: “The Plague and Cruelty in Artaud: Or the Director as Dictator.”
Seminar on Dramaturgies in Crisis, American Comparative Literature Conference,
Brown University, Providence, RI 29 March-1 April 2012.
Jenny Lawrence, Coordinator of the University’s Writing Center and Advanced
Undergraduate Research,” at this year’s meeting of the Virginia Humanities
Conference in Roanoke on March 24. Alumnus Orlando Dos Reis and spring
graduate Josh Thompson also presented.
Instructor of English, waas named Virginia Tech Teacher of the Week in January
by the Center for Instructional Development and Educational Research (CIDER).
She has been recognized for her teaching of composition, the department’s
ePortfolio development course, and an advanced Writing Center Theory and
Practice course.
Bernice Hausman published Viral Mothers: Breastfeeding in the Age of HIV/
Victoria LeCorre-Cochran was named the new Assistant Director of the
Kaye Graham presented a paper, “The Culture of Childhood as a Gateway to
AIDS (U of Michigan P). Alison Bartlett, University of Western Australia, says of
the book: “Hausman’s focus on cultural representation rather than real mothers
Literature, Language, and Culture Program.
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faculty news
Jeff Mann published two novels: Fog: A Novel of Desire
and Reprisal (August 2011) and Purgatory: A Novel of
the Civil War (March). Both books were published by
Bear Bones Books/Lethe Press. Richard Labonté, a wellknown gay editor and critic, named Fog as one of his
“10 Favorite Fiction Reads of 2011.” In addition, Jeff was
named the new Director of the MFA Program; published
poetry in Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry, The Lambda
Literary Review, and Appalachian Heritage, among
others; published short fiction in numerous journals and
books; and saw his novella Camp Allegheny anthologized.
Erika Meitner won the The Emily Clark Prize for Poetry
from the Virginia Quarterly Review for her series “This Is Not a Requiem for
Detroit” (Spring 2011 issue). Her poem “Elegy with Construction Sounds, Water,
Fish” was included in The Best American Poetry 2011 (Scribner), edited by David
Lehman and Kevin Young, and she also was included on Rita Dove’s list of Young
Poets to Watch (see Bill Moyers’ website). Additionally, she also published poems
in Sou’wester, Painted Bride Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, and Salt Hill, with
additional work up online at The Rumpus and Poetry Daily; and read at a variety
of festivals and universities
Nancy Metz published “Dickens and the American Millennium: The Uniformitarian
Argument of Martin Chuzzlewit.” Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens. Special Issue,
Dickens in the New Millennium. February 2012, pp. 285-296.
Jennifer Mooney presented at the annual conference of the International
Visual Literacy Association in Galloway, NJ, in September. Her presentation was
entitled “Place and the Shaping of Visual Literacy: The Case of Shelby Lee Adams’
Appalachian Photography.” She was also elected to the IVLA Board of Directors.
Steve Mooney was interviewed by Richard Paul for an upcoming Kennedy Center
giovanni, heilker join global scholars program
Nikki Giovanni and Paul Heilker are on the 2013 faculty for the new
Presidential Global Scholars Program, a collaborative learning community
sponsored by the Office of the University President and University Honors.
The program will, according to its web site, “provide Virginia Tech honors
students with the opportunity to discover their niches in an interconnected
society and to empower them to contribute positively to our transforming
world.” The program will take students to Riva San Vitale, Switzerland.
to appreciating as well as understanding Berry’s work. . . .
Highly recommended.”
Kelly Pender published Techne, from Neoclassicism to
Postmodernism: Understanding Writing as a Useful,
Teachable Art (Parlor Press, May 2011).
Katy Powell, Associate Professor and Director of the
Women’s Studies Program, has received an Excellence in
Outreach Award from the College of Liberal Arts & Human
Sciences. The award is presented annually for “outstanding,
focused, and innovative outreach program(s) geared to
solve current problems or recognized needs of people or
organizations.”
Vanessa Ruccolo presented, along with Linda Vick, on
“Appreciate Advising” at the University’s Second Annual
Advising Matters Conference in March.
educational podcast on coal mining music, to be used by teachers.
Fritz Oehlschlaeger published The Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard
History of Love (Culture of the Land Series; UP of Kentucky). CHOICE Reviews says:
“As much homage as critical discourse, Oehlschlaeger’s study is indispensable
Cheryl Ruggiero and Susan Allender Hagedorn
collaborated on and published “Stuff of Dreams,” in
Bewildering Stories. Issue 464, 30 Jan 2012. Web. *First
Quarterly Review 2012 Editor’s Choice
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faculty news
Steven Salaita was named Director of the Literature, Language, and Culture
Program. He and his wife Diana welcomed a son, Ignatius Steven, in late March.
Scott Loring Sanders’s short story “The Pawn” was republished in Prime Number
Magazine’s annual anthology in January. In addition, the story was picked up by
My Audio Universe: A Literary Magazine of Sound, where it was recorded and has
been re-broadcast on radio stations across the country. It will be on WVTF in the
near future. He also had stories published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
and Everyday Fiction.
Joseph Scallorns was named as the Assistant Director of the Creative Writing
Program, beginning this July.
Matthew Vollmer was promoted to Assistant Professor. In July, he will become
the Director of the Creative Writing Program. Recent stories have appeared in
Glimmer Train, Tampa Review, Willow Springs, Barrelhouse, Unstuck, PANK
(online) and Cold Mountain Review. Recent creative non-fiction has appeared or
is forthcoming in Passages North, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New England Review,
Ecotone, The Sun, LUMINA, Grist, The Pinch, Phoebe, Fringe, Dark Sky Magazine,
elimae, DIAGRAM, The Collagist, and Carolina Quarterly. A collection of stories,
which he co-edited with David Shields--Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews,
Faux Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found Texts,” and Other Fraudulent Artifacts--is
forthcoming from Norton this fall.
student news
graduate
Megan O’Neill (right) successfully defended her
dissertation in Sp 12. She also received Honorable Mention
for the 2012 Graduate Student Excellence Award sponsored
by the Alumni Association.
Ph.D. student Franny Howes was been selected by the
VT Graduate School to participate in its Diversity Scholars
Program, which encourages scholarship and mentorship
through diversity initiatives. Franny, who received an MA
in Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing from Michigan
State University, notes on the English Department’s web site
that she is “interested in visual rhetoric and the rhetorical
study of comics. . . . [as well as] the relationship between
composing in human languages and computer languages,
disability studies, the canon of memory, and decolonial histories of rhetoric and
writing.”
Molly Scanlon, Franny Howes, and Dr. Dan Lawson (Central College, VT PhD
2011) presented a panel entitled “The Panel is a Gateway: Comics, Multimodal
Writing, and Rhetorical Transition” at the Conference on College Composition and
Communication on Friday, March 23 in St. Louis, Missouri.
Jane Wemhoener was selected as a recipient of the
Libby Anthony, Kathy Kerr, and Molly Scanlon will be publishing an article
2012 Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award,
which is chosen by the Academy of Teaching Excellence, is
given to just two VT faculty per year. It means that Jane,
who won a Certificate of Teaching Excellence in 2010, will
be inducted into the Academy of Teaching Excellence! A
multi-talented and expert multi-tasker, Jane is involved
in international work as well and is one of the organizers
of the first international conference to be held at VT (cosponsored by the English Department, March 29-30).
Rob Kenagy, whose poem “End Notes” has won the Virginia Tech/Poetry Society
entitled “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to (Community) Literacy: An Interview with Eli C.
Goldblatt” in the Spring 2012 issue of Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric,
Civic Literacy, and Service Learning.
of Virginia Award, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. MFA writers
Michael Roche and James Stolen placed, respectively, as first and second
runners-up. Rob and Michael both will be nominated for the 2012 Best New Poets
anthology from the University of Virginia Press. Nominated poets get to submit
two poems each to Best New Poets, which showcases the work of 50 emerging
writers each year.
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student news
Tim Lockridge presented, with Carlos Evia, “Balancing Entertainment and
Josh Thompson (Pre-Education, 12) has been busy this year. He has presented
Information Content in Technical Communication Comics” at the Annual
Conference of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, in St. Louis in
March. Tim also successfully defended his dissertation.
three papers: “Matrimony and Motherhood: The Effects of the Wife and Mother
Roles in Harry Potter” at the Midwest Popular Culture Association’s conference in
Minneapolis, MN on October 2, 2010; “Meditations on Mortality: Keats’ Odes of
1819 as an Ode-Sequence” at the English Department’s Undergraduate Research
Conference on March 25, 2011; “Matrimony and Motherhood: The Effects of the
Wife and Mother Roles in Harry Potter” at the Virginia Humanities Conference at
Roanoke College on March 24, 2012. He also had two articles published: “Music
and Words: How Band Camp Taught Me to be a Better Writing Center Tutor in the
September/October 2011 issue of The Writing Lab Newsletter, and -”Whistling,”
in the 2011 edition of Silhouette. Josh is also dual-enrolled in the School of
Education’s English Education graduate program.
Kedon Willis won the Virginia Tech Fiction Prize for his short story “Sat’day.” Mark Derks and Sandra M. Yee placed, respectively, as first and second
runners-up. Kedon’s story will earn him a small cash award, and Virginia Tech will
also nominate his story for the 2012 Intro Journals Project, an annual competition
from the Associated Writing Programs. Eventual winners of the Intro competition
will receive an award letter, publication, and a $100 honorarium.
undergraduate
Lurlene Barnes and Brooke Fiesthumel presented presented at the National
Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing at Florida International University on
November 4-6, 2011. Barnes presented a poster, “Dealing with Challenging Sessions
in the Writing Center,” while Fiesthumel presented her paper, “Recognizing the
Unique Needs of the High School Writing Center Client.”
Lara Mangum (double major in LLC-Literature and
French; left) presented her research project “The
French Connection: The Madame Duval Subplot in
Burney’s Evelina” at the 7th Annual ACC Meeting of
the Minds undergraduate research conference (The
Inn at VT, March 30-April 1). As part of her research
into English Francophobia in the eighteenth century,
Lara located and analyzed French letter-writing
guides contemporary to Burney’s novel, contrasting
the advice offered about genteel behavior in these
“foreign” books to that given in English conduct books
of the period. Her goal was to contextualize for modern
audiences the “Frenchified” characters of the novel
and its strain of foreigner-baiting farce. Lara wrote the
paper for Nancy Metz’s The English Novel course.
Table of Contents
meet the team behind this year’s feast
mike breitenbach is a graduating senior in Professional
katie mawyer is a graduating senior in Communication, with
Writing. He currently works as an editorial assistant for
Practicing Anthropology and races bicycles for VT Cycling
Team. He hopes to working in a college development office
while searching for long-term writing and editorial positions
that relate to his interests in cycling or music.
minors in Professional Writing and Humanities. She works as
an oral communication coach in VT’s Communication Lab, as
well as with Virginia Tech Athletics Communications. Katie has
also participated in several undergraduate research projects.
She will pursue a master’s degree at Clemson University.
kevin burke is graduating senior in Communication, with
sean simons is a graduating senior in Professional and
a Professional Writing minor. He is currently an intern with
Virginia Tech IMG Sports Network. Kevin has a passion for
sports writing and broadcasting. He will move to Corvallis,
Oregon to work as a broadcaster for the Corvallis Knights
summer college baseball team.
Creative Writing. He is currently the graphic designer of
SLAM (Silhouette Literary and Arts Magazine) and helped
organize Glossolalia, a literary festival held this spring at VT.
Sean hopes to work in publishing, be it journal/magazine or
book -- or in a bakery.
ally hammond is a graduating senior in Literature and
karen spears is a graduating senior in Professional Writing.
Professional Writing from Charlottesville, Virginia. Ally
currently runs her own creative and work-related blog, works
at the Virginia Tech Writing Center, and as a writing tutor for
student athletes. She hopes to pursue a career in editing and
publishing.
She works for the Scholar system as a technical writing intern,
A Ban Against Neglect as a proposal writer, the Vaccination
Research Group as a website developer, and Philologia as
an associate and web editor. Karen will pursue a career in
website creation, graphic design, writing, and editing.
whitney jones is graduating senior in Professional Writing,
beth thompson is a graduating senior in Literature and
who hails from Tazewell, Virginia. She has been a tutor for
the Virginia Tech Literacy Corps and is currently a Writing
Center tutor. Although her dream is to write a bestselling
novel, she hopes first to pursue a career in print and web or
document design.
Professional Writing. She spends most of her time working
as a tutor, both at the Virginia Tech Writing Center and at
Student Athlete Academic Support Services. Beth is also the
photographer for A Feast of Words, and she will pursue a
career in print and web design.
jen mooney, faculty advisor, graduated with a Literature degree from the University of Virginia at
Wise (‘83) and spent two years working as a reporter for The Coalfield Progress newspaper before
pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Kentucky. She has a PhD in Victorian Literature, but
now teaches in the Professional Writing Program. She has been at Virginia Tech since 1996.
page design
whitney jones
Table of Contents
a “thank you” to friends of english
Your gift to the English Department is important to the students we serve. Your generosity assists us in providing
scholarships for deserving and accomplished undergraduate and graduate students. In addition, your gifts help support
student programs and activities that enhance curricular education.
Please join the growing circle of alumni and friends who are making a difference with a gift. Visit www.givingto.vt.edu
(specify “English Department”).
If you would like more information about assisting with our student scholarship and education programs through a
bequest, estate/trust, or outright gift, please contact John Howard King, Director of Development, College of Liberal Arts
and Human Sciences at [email protected], direct 540-231-8734, or toll-free 866-261-4443.
Thank you to the following alumni and friends for their gifts and pledges to the English Department (as of March 2012):
PATRONS $5,000+
Armstrong Family Foundation
Joan Morrison (L)
Robert and Eileen Patzig
Pearson Education
SPONSORS $1,000+
Anonymous
Anonymous
Robert C. Arthur
Lisa M. Derx
William Carl Hankla
Kiplinger Foundation
Brian P. Liswell
Carroll and Darrel Mason (L)
Raleigh and Linda Seay (C)
Robert Hale Tate
Virginia LTC Network
FRIENDS $250+
Anonymous
Clyde D. Bailey
Frankie Y. Bailey
Heather A. Barker-Church
James D. Beckner
Gerald C. Canaan (L)
Charles D. Fisher, Jr.
Virginia Fowler (L)
Karen Gibbs
Kathryn and Peter Graham
Sandy S. Hagman
IF Marketing & Advertising
Mary Denson Moore
Mary Jane Morrison
Thomas and Martha Morrison
Kelleigh N. Moyer
Carole Nickerson
Lucinda Roy
Carolyn and Donald Rude
Scott and Jocelyn Sanders
Dawn Krumwiede Watkins
Amy L. Widner
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Zhong-Hao Howard Xie
DONORS
Jennifer F. Adams
Linda M. Anderson (L)
Richard H. Borgman
Joy M. Curry
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Karen M. Coats
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Dennis K. Folsom
Nikki Giovanni (L)
Richard R. Guevara
Lisa Gunderman
Amanda S. Hanks
Regina Hedgepeth
Patrick J. Irving
IBM International Fndtn
Kylie H. Johnson (L)
Donna Mays-Gillenwater
and
Denis Gillenwater
Thomas W. McGhee
Miriam H. McLeod
KPMG Foundation
Lisa Ann Olson
Otter River Elementary
School
David Wayne Pitre
Andrew and Katherine Stone
Katherine Long Wahlers
Wells Fargo Foundation
Elizabeth Emery Wright
2011 award recipients:
Caroline Pace Chermside Award
Richard Todd Stafford
Honorable Mention
Daniel Herbert
Robert Chermside Award
Amy Gay
Charles Martin Award
Jessica Cohen
Creative Writing Awards
Poetry Lisa Minner
Fiction Adrienne Rush
Nonfiction Matthew Clark
Emily Morrison Prize for Poetry
Sandra Yee
Robert H. Dedman, Jr. Award
Holly Kays
Richard L. Hoffman
GTA Teaching Award
Therese Sell
(L) Legacy Society
(C) Caldwell Society
(U) Ut Prosim Society
Composition Program
GTA Teaching Award
Brian Gogan
Sharon Messer Award
Emily Reed Love
Ut Prosim Service Awards
Caitlin McHale
Chelsea Skelley
Table of Contents
the times, they are
a-changin’
Virginia Tech is an ever-changing place,
constantly undergoing construction and
renovation. In this photo gallery you can
see some of the new attractions of Tech and
the beauty of your favorite town in Spring.
Simply roll your mouse over the images to
expand them.
Table of Contents

a feast of words - Department of English

Transcription

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