English professor Lynn Shelly, who also directs the IUP Punxsutawney Writing Center, assisted the students in writing, revising, and editing their work for publication. The students wrote news articles about events taking place on the branch campus as well as feature stories about staff members.

Department of English

LGBT Visibility Week Events

Tuesday: “Out in the Oak Grove” – LGBT Community Day

• 11:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
• Stop by the table where we will be giving away several items, including ribbons, buttons, and a poem by Lesléa Newman.

Wednesday: Readers’ Theater

• “October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard” by Lesléa Newman
• 7:00 p.m., McVitty Auditorium, Sprowls Hall

Friday: Lavender Graduation

• 5:30 p.m., HUB Susquehanna Room

For additional information, contact Tedd Cogar at tcogar@iup.edu.

The LGBT Commission is an advisory group to the president that works to improve the climate for diversity within IUP and specifically to address issues affecting the welfare of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members of the university community.

Please Note: Lesléa Newman will be an artist in residence at IUP, October 6–9, 2013.

Department of English

The Writing Across the Curriculum initiative is in its beginning stages of development. In Fall 2012, the English Department and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences committed to creating a universitywide initiative with four main goals:

• Provide faculty development for those teaching writing-intensive courses, including workshops and training for those interested in proposing writing-intensive courses, and support for all faculty across the university in implementing writing assignments into their courses
• Provide support and consultation to the Liberal Studies Committee as needed in revising writing-intensive course requirements
• Create a research agenda for studying and understanding the effectiveness of how writing is taught and learned in the university curriculum
• Foster a community of writers through various media (such as contests, readings, workshops, newsletters, etc.) and relationships (with the Writing Center, the IUP Libraries, and various departments across campus)

For more information about WAC at IUP, please contact Siegel Finer at brynasf@iup.edu.

Department of English

What would digital scholarship and the humanities disciplines be like if they centered around processes and possibilities of social and cultural transformation as well as institutional preservation? If they centered around questions of labor, race, and gender and justice at personal, local, and global scales? If their practitioners considered not only how the academy might reach out to underserved communities, but also how the kinds of knowledge production nurtured elsewhere could transform the academy itself? Exploring the conversations that have centered around the Twitter hashtag #transformDH in the past two years, this essay argues that such questions are not hypothetical and that these digital humanities already exist. With the intention of inspiring further work in a similar vein, we offer a curated list of projects, people, and collaborations that suggest the possibilities of a transformative digital humanities.

Department of English

Lothian looks at fans’ remix videos that critically engage genre television from a feminist perspective.

Department of English

English Department faculty member Mike Sell, host for the event, comments, “Collaboration is fundamental to the arts. Even when we celebrate the most ruggedly independent individual artist, the reality is that even she depends on a network of influences, rivals, friends, mentors, assistants, and peers to create and share their art. Teamwork is the keynote of 21st-century art creation, no matter what medium.”

For more information, contact Professor Mike Sell at msell@iup.edu.

Schedule of Events

Thursday afternoon, Stapleton Library, 2:00–5:00 p.m.

• A panel discussion on interarts collaboration with IUP Emerita Rosaly Roffman, IUP faculty member Holly Boda, music composer and educator David Berlin, and composer and music promoter Rob Voisey. Berlin, Boda, and Roffman have collaborated on multiple projects, and their experiences with the challenges and opportunities of collaboration are surprising and enlightening. Voisey’s work with 60x60 is driven by a passion for new, innovative, team-based art. This discussion will be transcribed for “Archiving Rosaly Roffman,” a special issue of the international journal Works and Days.
• A screening of Triptych, a film of the three-part collaborative intermedia project created by IUP emerita professor of English Rosaly Roffman, David Berlin, Holly Boda, and IUP dance students.
• A poetry reading by Rosaly Roffman of poems used in the works she has created with Berlin and Boda.

Thursday evening, Sprowls Auditorium, 6:00 –8:30 p.m.

• A presentation by former Carnegie Mellon University instructor and Pennsylvania arts advocate David Berlin on the role of collaboration and digital media in secondary education.
• A presentation by the internationally recognized music composer Rob Voisey on the 60x60 project, the worldwide phenomenon that invites artists in all media to develop 60-second works that are then combined into one-hour sequenced performances.

Park’s article links theory to practice by looking at how writing as a method of enquiry aids adult English language learners in completing their Cultural and Linguistic Autobiography (CLA). Thus, Park highlights the concept of writer identity in relation to learners’ self-assessment of what they gained from the CLA assignment. Read a full-text PDF of the article.

Department of English

Abstract

Teachers in search of ways to help students get ready to write authentically and critically in response to challenging texts can find a novel approach in the practices of “The Harold”, a long form improvisational performance developed by Del Close and others associated with the Improv Olympic Theater in Chicago.

This presentation describes how the stages of “The Harold,” based on Wagner’s Ring Cycle, may be enacted in classrooms as a set of generative activities to help students to engage, playfully yet meaningfully, with complex source materials.

In an extraordinarily diverse anthology of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and graphic essays by contemporary Appalachian writers, Red Holler takes us over and beyond the stock imagery of rural mountain communities. We travel into housing projects, forest-stripped ravines, and trailer high-rises, exploring the vibrant migrant tradition of Appalachian culture. Editors Branscum and Wayne Thomas have assembled a collection spanning 10 years and the mountain range from Mississippi to New York, placing fresh new voices alongside widely known and celebrated authors. Spanning Native American myth, African American urban legend, folk culture, and European ghost stories, this is an anthology of disenfranchised, yet robust peoples. The stories and poems of Red Holler elegantly cohere to perfectly depict what makes Appalachia so fascinating: its irreverent and outlaw challenges to the notions of propriety and convention.

Branscum grew up in Kentucky, Arkansas, and California. He is currently a professor of creative writing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a member of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs pedagogy committee, and text editor for Black and Grey Magazine. His fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have won the national Ursula K. Le Guin Award for Imaginative Fiction, several Academy of American Poets awards, and appearances in Best American Non-required Reading and Best American Horror.

Thomas teaches creative writing at Tusculum College, a small school located in the northeast Tennessee mountains. He is editor of the Tusculum Review.

This makes the third book published/accepted for publication for Carvalho in 2013. Puerto Rico is in the Heart: Emigration, Labor, and Politics in the Life and Work of Frank Espada is currently in production and set for release in mid-April with Palgrave, and a poetry chapbook, Headlong Into the Cloudburst Naked, was released on his newly launched imprint, PAresia Press, in March.

President Driscoll; Bill Speidel, vice president for University Advancement, and Yaw Asamoah, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, offered tremendous support by driving one-and-a-half hours each way to attend the Friday plenary lunch and to support the conference. Lingyan Yang, associate professor in the English Department and director of the Women’s Studies program at IUP, was the MELUS 2013 Conference Committee chair and MELUS program chair/vice president, who has organized and coordinated the conference since June 2010.

Photo: Vice President Bill Speidel (University Advancement), IUP President Mike Driscoll, Associate Professor Lingyan Yang, and Dean Yaw Asamoah (College of Humanities and Social Sciences), at Conference Plenary Lunch

MELUS is a nationally and internationally prominent field of studies and professional organization on the research and teaching of American multiethnic literature, criticism, arts, and cultures.

The MELUS 2013 national conference was cosponsored by MELUS, IUP, and Delaware Valley College. Everything in the conference went very well. About 230 to 240 scholars, teachers, graduate students, and guests presented and attended the conference, including national and international presenters as well as about 45 IUP faculty, student, and leaders presenting and attending; about 70 attending from multiple universities in Pennsylvania; and another 10 to 15 attendants from Ohio. The four plenary presentations by seven leading multiethnic scholars electrified, excited, and engaged the audience critically. About 72 sessions/panels/events went very well, with lively scholarly exchanges. Attendants socialized at two receptions hosted by MELUS and Oxford University Press respectively. Three professionalization workshops on academic job search, surviving in academic institutions, and academic publishing benefited graduate students and faculty alike.

President Driscoll may be one of the few presidents from a MELUS hosting institution to have personally attended and welcomed conference participants in the past 10 to 15 years. Such overwhelming presidential and institutional support and hospitality moved all conference attendants, presented IUP in honorable and dignified scholarly manners nationally, and set a high standard for future MELUS conferences.

A profound “thank you” goes to all of the following IUP cosponsorship for their extraordinary support for the MELUS 2013 conference: President Driscoll and the President’s Office; Provost Moerland and the Provost’s Office; Vice President Wooten and the Office of Administration and Finance; Vice President Speidel and the Office of University Advancement; Michele Petrucci and the Office of International Education; Dean Yaw Asomoah from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; Hilliary Creely and the School of Graduate Studies and Research; Professor Gian Pagnucci, chair of the English Department, and Jackie Rohrabaugh from the English Department; Professor David Downing, director of the graduate English program in Literature and Criticism; all colleagues and Sharon Aikins from the Women’s Studies Program; Maureen McHugh and Theresa McDevitt from the President’s Commission on the Status of Women; Malinda Levisfrom the PASSHE Women’s Consortium; Sarah Wheeler from the Latin American Studies Program; and Toni Linta from the University Printing Center.

Yang and her team of five IUP doctoral students in the graduate English program in Literature and Criticism—Jennifer Matos Ayala, Rachael Warmington, Kittiphong Praphan, Carolyn Marcille, and Ibrahim Azizi—won respect and appreciation from the conference participants for their dedicated and outstanding work.

Among the roughly 46 IUP presenters and attendants, about 30 were doctoral and master’s students from the graduate English program in Literature and Criticism, 11 were faculty, and four were university leaders. Ten were international graduate students. About 25 of IUP presenters/attendants were women faculty and students. Additionally, three presenters were IUP alumni.

See photos from the 2013 MELUS Conference.

Here are a few selected evaluations from the MELUS 2013 conference:

“The MELUS conference (2013) in Pittsburgh was superb in every way . . . It was quite splendid to have your President and Dean in attendance at the luncheon where I presented a plenary address . . . In brief, Prof. Yang, MELUS 2013 was a near-perfect conference.”
—Houston A. Baker, Distinguished University Professor, Vanderbilt University

“Lingyan . . . It was a great conference. One of the greatest. Thanks for your hard work.”
—Fred Gardaphe, Distinguished Professor of English and Italian American Studies, Queens College, CUNY, Former MELUS President, 2003–2006, 2007–2009

“Dear Lingyan . . . The entire conference was absolutely lovely; you and your institutional supporters did a brillian, beautiful job!”
—Joycelyn Moody, Sue E. Denman Distinguished Chair in American Literature, University of Texas at San Antonio, Former Editor, African American Review

“Dear Lingyan, What a fantastic conference! I have heard nothing but praises, and congratulations!”
—Wenying Xu, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Chatham University, Former MELUS President, 2009–2012

“Dear Dr. Yang . . . I enjoyed greatly working with you and the team for MELUS 2013 conference. It was a great and enlightening experience, especially seeing the enjoyment and satisfaction of the members with your hard work. Everybody that I talked to had a compliment for your hard work. You have set the bar high for those that following in your footsteps for future conferences. You rocked!”
—Jennifer Matos Ayala, Doctoral Student, Graduate English Program in Literature and Criticism, Member of the IUP MELUS 2013 Conference Team

“I would like to thank you and your team for all your hard work to make MELUS 2013 conference such a rewarding and stimulating experience.”
—Emily Rutter, Graduate Student, Dept. of English, Duquesne University

Department of English

The colloquium panel focuses on “Teacher Identity Research Today: Implications for Teacher Education.”

Other invited presenters are Suhanthie Motha and Manka Varghese from the University of Washington, and John Trent from the City University of Hong Kong.

A Brief Summary of the Colloquium

Recent research on language teachers’ identity construction have largely taken a sociocultural view on identity, framing the construct as dynamic, multiple, and negotiated. In light of this new view on identity, in this presentation we take a look at language teacher identity research today, explore teacher identity from multiple vantage points (both geographic as well as psychological/social), and discuss the implications of language teacher identity research findings for teacher education.

Department of English 

On March 12, 2013, at the IUP Punxsutawney campus, Kendia Canada (Communications Media), Shelae Davenport (Business), Chasity Schreckengost (Sociology), Porche Smith (Nursing), and Megan Uplinger (Sociology) presented their insights on navigating the highs and lows of scheduling, campus living, and academic culture with students currently enrolled at IUP Punxsutawney. The point of the evening's activities was to give special insights from the student perspective to first-year student on how to survive the critical sophomore year.

Judith Villa and Rosalee Stilwell, codirectors of the IUP Bridge Program and members of the English Department, along with Dani Cypher (English master’s program), coordinated the event.

Downing is a member of the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities.

Department of English 

The students had gathered for an English Book Club meeting to discuss volumes 1 and 2 of the best-selling graphic novel series The Walking Dead, written by Robert Kirkman and illustrated by Tony Moore. As the students were waiting in line to get pizza during the meeting, Gian Pagnucci, chair of IUP English and University Professor, spotted the zombies at the door of Leonard Hall’s Nicholson Library and shouted a warning in the nick of time.

The students used pens and books to fight back the zombies. “We thought this was just going to be an ordinary book club meeting,” said one unidentified English major. “Who knew the story would be coming to life?”

Pagnucci said the attack was completely unexpected. However, he said he was still able to react in time because he had recently been discussing post-apocolyptic threats with Wendy Carse, associate professor of English. Pagnucci noted that Carse has been working on a paper entitled “Propelling the Zombie Narrative: ‘It’s Never Going to Be the Same Again’ in The Walking Dead.” “Dr. Carse’s insights about zombies were pinpoint accurate,” said Pagnucci.

Fortunately, no students or faculty were injured during the attack. Following the attack, Elizabeth Elmore, an officer in the IUP English Club, commented, “A lot of students might have been too scared to defend themselves from such an horrific attack. Fortunately, in the English Department we are taught to think both critically and imaginatively, and that helped us get past the shock in time to save ourselves.”

The next English Book Club meeting is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, April 16, at 4:30 p.m. in Leonard Hall’s Nicholson Library. The English Book Club will be discussing The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Copies of the book are available for checkout from the main English Department Office in 110 Leonard Hall. English Book Club meetings are open to all IUP students, faculty, staff, and administrators.

“The Night Circus is a terrific novel and there are no zombies in it, so I don’t expect this meeting to be quite so nerve wracking,” said Pagnucci. “But the book does contain a lot of magic, so I’m hoping some new people will join us for the next meeting. You never know what might happen!”

Participants will develop cases for a year-long project in which they use advanced technologies to augment their research on sound, and then will present scholarship based on these new modes of inquiry and critique the tools and approaches implemented during the development year.

Sherwood, codirector of the IUP Center for Digital Humanities and Culture, has previously presented and published research on performance poetry and the analysis of recorded poetry audio. The HIPSTAS research he will conduct involves the PennSound audio archive of American poetry.

At IUP, he currently teaches doctoral courses in the Literature and Criticism program on Modern American Poetry, Postmodern Poetry, Digital Literature, and Digital Teaching. In the Spring 2013 semester, his students in Postmodern literature are learning about transcription and analysis using Pennsound poetry audio. Previously, he edited the scholarly website AudibleWord.org (2004-2010) with participation of IUP graduate students.

The graduate program in Literature and Criticism gives students the opportunity to develop digital humanities skills through coursework (including a newly created course in Digital English Scholarship) and participation in projects such as Livingston Online, led by DHC codirector Adrian Wisnicki.

Department of English

MLA is the largest and most prestigious professional organization and annual convention on all fields of English, languages and literatures. Each year, about 8,000 scholars, teachers, and graduate students present research and/or attend.

Yang is a faculty member in the graduate English program in Literature and Criticism, director of the Women’s Studies Program, and program chair and vice president of MELUS.

The MELUS 2013 national conference promises to be an intellectually stimulating and vigorous academic event with about 230 national, international, regional, and IUP attendants, with about 70 sessions and events, four large pleanry presentations, three professionalization workshops, books and journal exhibitions, and two receptions hosted by MELUS and Oxford University Press. Hosting of the conference by IUP will enhance the university’s national scholarly reputation; promote multicultural, global, and gender awareness as important to high-quality higher education; and benefit faculty and students’ professional growth.

Conference Schedule of Events (pdf)

Download the Conference Poster (pdf)

MELUS is a nationally and internationally prominent field of studies and professional organization on the research and teaching of American multiethnic literature, criticism, arts, and cultures in the national, global, regional, or local contexts, which are ethnically specific European American, such as Italian American and Irish American, Jewish American, African American, Asian American, Latino/a American, American Indian, Arab Amerian, and so forth.

The seven prominent ethnic pleanry speakers and panelists include Houston Baker, one of the world’s most respected African American literary theorists, Distinguish University Professor at Vanderbilt University, annd author of more than 20 books, and who was elected president of MLA in 1992; David Palumbo-Liu; Louise Hewlett Nixon, professor, director of the Department of Comparative Literature, and director of Asian American Studies at Stanford University; and Mary Jo Bona, a highly respected feminist scholar on Italian American women’s literaure and a professor of Italian American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University. Additionally, there will be three professionalization workshops on academic job search and interviews, surviving in the institutions after one gets a job, and academic publishing, which will benefit all attending gradaute students and faculty alike. Oxford University Press, one of the most prestigious academic publishers in the world and the current publisher of the journal of MELUS, will hold one table of book exhibitions on all four days and will host a wine and cheese reception on Friday, March 15.

The MELUS 2013 national conference is cosponsored by MELUS and IUP. The remarkable and generous support from the following cosponsors is deeply appreciated: President’s Office, Provost’s Office, Office of Vice President for Administration and Finance, Office of International Education, College of Humanities and Social Sciencs, School of Gradaute Studies and Research, English Department, Graduate English Program in Literature and Criticism, Women’s Studies Program, President’s Commission on the Status of Women, PASSHE Women’s Consortium, and Latin American Studies Program.

IUP will make an impressive scholarly presence at the MELUS 2013 conference with about 43 faculty, gradaute students, and university leaders attending, presenting, organizing panels, and chairing panels, with an additional three IUP alumni presenting. Twenty-nine of all IUP presenters/attendants are women. IUP presenters and attendants include 28 doctoral and master’s student presenter/panel organizers/panel chairs, all from the graduate English program in Literature and Criticism. They will benefit and grow enormously by professionalizing in a national conference. Additionally, 12 IUP faculty will present at or attend the MELUS conference, including two faculty members (Joan Van Dyke and Holly Boda-Sutton) from the Department of Theater and Dance and the College of Fine Arts, one faculty member (Nurhaya Muchtar) from the Department of Communication Media and the College of Education and Education Technology, and one faculty member(Edith West) from the Department of Nursing and the College of Health and Human Services.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) sends out a large and impressive scholarly team of 36 presenters and attendants alone to the MELUS 2013 conference, including 28 doctoral and master’s student presenters (19 women graduate students) from the graduate English program in Literature and Criticism and eight faculty from the English Department (David Downing, Gail Berlin, Susan Comfort, Michael T. Williamson, Tanya Heflin, Todd Thompson, Ed Carvalho, and Lingyan Yang). Five CHSS presenters/attendants are affiliated faculty from the Women’s Studies program. Five doctoral students from the graduate Literature and Criticism program (Jennifer Mato Ayala, Rachael Warmington, Kittiphong Praphan, Carolyn Marcille, and Ibrahim Azizi) deserve special thanks for serving as excellent Conference Committee members, offering a great deal of assistance and finishing a lot of work. As the MELUS 2013 Conference Committee chair, MELUS program chair, and vice president, Yang has been working diligently on organizing it for the past two years and 10 months, and will run the whole conference.

The overwhelcoming support from the university leaders, colleagues, students, and the campuswide community is deeply appreciated. Registration is required to attend all events at the MELUS 2013 conference. If you have questions or inquiries, please e-mail Yang at lingyan@iup.edu.

Yang is a faculty member in the graduate English program in Literature and Criticism, director of the Women’s Studies program, and a respected Asian American feminist scholar,

The essay contemplates how the rhetorical ecology of the author's home place interacts with a colonizing tradition of energy extraction.

Specifically focusing on the rhetoric surrounding the process of Marcellus Shale drilling in western Pennsylvania, this discussion of the rhetorical complexities of this issue works toward an understanding of how a region can move beyond and heal from the colonizing aspects of energy extradition.

Department of English

The program administrators, Judith Villa and Rosalee Stilwell, as well as Dani Cyphert (graduate student in English Studies), welcomed back students who successfully made the transition from the Punxsutawney campus to the Indiana campus. The students returned to enjoy socializing, excellent food catered by Chef Bob Stevens, and an organized session of questions and answers with students who expect to transfer to the Indiana campus for the Fall 2013 semester.

The event was funded by a Residence Life Grant, awarded to IUP Residence Hall Director Dave Berberich, and was hosted by IUP Bridge Program personnel.

The impressive turnout of 104 former and current Punxsutawney students was informative and enjoyable! Following the “Return of the Heroes,” Joe Martin, founder of Real World University, spoke to an enthralled audience of 196 students, faculty, and staff about his story, and motivated them to share their own stories. He presented his interactive motivational speech “It’s Good to be Ugly!” to help get his audience “motivationally supercharged.”

Thank you to all involved who made this a successful event!

Department of English 

The IUP Alumni Gathering will be on Friday, March 15, 2013, from 5:00–7:00 p.m. at El Segundo Sol. There will be complimentary appetizers and beverages, so be sure to come early before they run out! The restaurant is about a 15-minute walk from Riviera Casino and Hotel. We look forward to seeing all of you there.

Click here for a map to both places.

This event is for all students, professionals, and friends of IUP. Please pass this message on!

Department of English

Their colloquium panel focuses on “Negotiating the Language of a Globalized Academy: Preparing Multilingual Writers and Teachers to Embrace the World Englishes Paradigm.”

A Brief Summary of the Colloquium: In a globalizing world, academics must examine the ways in which English is perceived, learned, taught, and used in disciplinary communities. Grounded in the World Englishes paradigm, the panelists discuss how multilingual writers construct and negotiate identities through “performing” digital literacies, code-meshing, writing center tutorials, and academic writing and publishing.

In addition, Park and fellow applied linguistics scholars Sedef Smith, Lisya Seloni, Mary Jane Curry, and Christine Casanave will present at the International TESOL Convention in Dallas, Texas, in March 2013. The colloquium panel will focus on “Multilinguals Navigating Advanced English Literacies in Higher Education.”

This panel explores aspects of advanced academic literacies, ways of engaging with academic texts, and activities in higher education. The presenters will share findings from studies that showcase how multilingual graduate students and scholars participate in and navigate advanced literacy texts and contexts, and particularly writing, in English.

IUP Oxford Summer Study: Interest and Information Meeting, 4:30 pm on February 20 in 105 Leonard Hall..

Students interested in the IUP Oxford Summer Study Program are invited to attend an Interest and Information Session from 4:30–5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 20, 2013, in Room 105 Leonard Hall.

On the agenda will be information about courses offered, applying for the program, securing air travel, program fees, and other matters of interest.

Several courses will be available again in summer 2013:

• Shakespeare
• Photojournalism
• Young Adult Authors in the British Tradition
• Family Nursing (from Bloomsburg University)
• Comparative Politics (from East Stroudsburg University)

Interested students are invited to visit the IUP Oxford Summer Study website and/or contact Program Director Lynne Alvine at lalvine@iup,edu.

PBCOHE considers applications from all graduate programs in Pennsylvania, but awards only one graduate scholarship per year.

Salako’s scholarship proposal is based on her dissertation directed by English faculty member Lilia Savova. Her research focuses on Nigerian English vernacular and its socio-cultural uses disclosed through conversation and discourse analysis.

Peschock, who won two academic grants from the graduate school during the research for her dissertation, traveled to both the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, where the research notes of Capote and Lee are housed. She combed meticulously through both authors’ notes and juxtaposed them to one another in order to reveal what Lee’s contributions to Capote’s nonfiction novel were.

Peschock’s dissertation is becoming known among literary critics and has been referred to recently in the September 13, 2012, edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Department of English

The Fulbright ETAs are sponsored by the U.S. Department of State via the Institute of International Education’s (IIE) annual scholarship competitions to teach, conduct research, and study all over the world.

Park, as an English Language Teaching (ELT) and Teaching English (TE) specialist, was invited initially in 2012.

The IIE invites area specialists and authorities in ELT and TE to review over 70 teaching assistant applications and nominate candidates to the award sponsors.

You can earn English credit and/or Biology credit.

• Where: Leonard, Room 102
• When: Thursday, November 29
  • 1:30–2:30 p.m.

For more information, contact:

• Professor Adrian Wisnicki (English Dept., adrianw@iup.edu)
• Professor Carl Luciano (Biology Dept., luciano@iup.edu)

The annual event is organized by the IUP Punxsutawney Writing Center director, Lynn Shelly. She was assisted this year by English graduate assistant Rachel Griffo. Rod Taylor, also a graduate student in English, served as one of the judges.

The winner of this year’s Poetry Slam was Will Rouse with his poem titled “Hey There, Pops.” Perfect scores were also achieved by Tycheonah Harris, Khalik Long, DeQuan Stubbs, and Ryan Jeffries. Aria Nunez served as MC.

Department of English

This article captures the life histories and professional futures of preservice teachers at three institutions of higher education. In this article, they focus on the experiences and expectations of four preservice teachers. They find that, although African American and white preservice teachers both see themselves as advocates for their students, those teachers envision different approaches to advocacy and their agency along racial lines. African American preservice teachers envision advocacy as serving as role models for their future students, while white preservice teachers advocate for their students through their instructional actions in the classroom. This study complicates ideas of race, agency, and teacher advocacy. Read the article here.

Mawhinney, L., Rinke, C., & Park, G. (2012). Being and becoming a teacher: How African American and White preservice teachers envision their future roles as teacher advocates. The New Educator, 8:4, 321-344.

Traditionally, IUP is very well represented at the conference. This year, it became clear that students value the opportunity to share their work as early as their first semester of study. In 11 presentations and 26 posters, IUP participants showed a wide range of linguistic and pedagogical accomplishments. Many of these students from the IUP M.A. TESOL, M.A.T.E., M.A. Literature, M.A. Generalist, Ph.D. in Comp and TESOL, and Ph.D. in Literature programs had attended Lilia Savova’s workshops on conference proposal writing in the Fall 2012 semester, where they learned about the features of effective proposals.

In addition, Savova held a one-hour workshop for ESOL teachers from Western Pennsylvania as part of the conference. She focused on “Using Wikis to Create Learning Communities” and introduced teachers to ways in which they could design and use wikis in K-12 and college classrooms, illustrating the potential of wikis as individual teacher/student pages, networked classrooms, and school districts and virtual campuses. Workshop participants engaged in creating dynamic interactive pages for their classrooms.

See a complete list of all conference presentations.

View photos of our students and their posters.

Assistant Professor Tanya Heflin, who specializes in 19th- and 20th-century American literature, presented on “‘Yet What Is Any Ocean but a Multitude of Drops?’: Isolation, Connectivity, and the Transhuman in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.” Heflin also organized three separate PAMLA sessions on autobiography, her primary research area.

At a session devoted to classical traditions in modern fantasy, Associate Professor Christopher Kuipers delivered a paper entitled “Mark Smylie’s Artesia: The Female Alexander and Post-Classicizing Fantasy.” In addition to classics, fantasy and science fiction, and the contemporary graphic novel, Kuipers’ areas of interest include comparative literature and the history of literary canons and anthologies.

Doctoral candidate Diana Leach presented “’Tis Nobler in the Mind to Suffer’: Resisting Patriarchal Ideology in Shakespeare’s Hamlet” for a session on Shakespeare and related topics. A specialist in Renaissance studies, Leach is planning a dissertation on representations of Queen Elizabeth from the early modern era to the present.

The main purpose of the teaching circle is discussion of issues and ideas about teaching writing in classes across the curriculum. Support from the Center for Teaching Excellence will allow the group to purchase current WAC/WID texts for discussion and pedagogical development. The grant will also allow the faculty group to offer a WAC workshop highlighting pedagogical ideas and strategies employed in accommodating English as an Additional Language (EAL) students courses that require writing. This focused workshop is a timely and critical topic as the university continues to admit EAL students from around the world.

The article addresses how issues of privilege and marginalization intersect by discussing Bourdieu’s forms of capital/privilege for women and demystifying the model minority ideology using Kumashiro’s concept of oppression/marginalization. The end result is that—for the women in this article and perhaps elsewhere who come from similar educational, cultural, and social backgrounds—there are dimensions of privilege and marginalization that coexist in their lives, and it is the responsibilities of faculty and educators to raise awareness of such coexistence. This consciousness-raising can be done via conducting research with our students as well as through reconceptualizing courses and restructuring the teacher education/TESOL programs that continue to admit international students.

Ryuko Kubota, professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of British Columbia, states that “juxtaposing privilege and marginalization as a conceptual focus is groundbreaking in the field of second language education, which tends to soley focus on the oppression of second language speakers. Dr. Park compellingly demonstrates how these women’s economic and cultural capital, which they gained in their home country, is not converted into cultural capital in a new social environment where whiteness and/or standard language speakerness prevail as the norm.”

Then please join us for this unique recruitment event on Wednesday, October 24, from 3:00–4:30 p.m. in the Student Lounge of Leonard Hall, room 113.

You'll have the chance to:

• learn more about the English program
• discover some of the exciting courses we offer
• meet faculty from the department
• talk with current English majors and minors

There will also be first-class refreshments and snacks served. Please join us!

Books and T-shirts will be sold both days. The open mic begins on Saturday at noon. 

Both events are free and open to the public.

Four readers from the English Department will read their work beginning at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday:

• Professor Patrick Bizzaro, author of nine books and chapbooks of poetry. He frequently reviews peers’ work in the Asheville Poetry Review, North Carolina Literary Review, and Appalachian Journal, among other publications.
• Wesley Dunning, doctoral student in Composition and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. He'll read poems from his master’s thesis, “Rooted Down.” He received a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Memphis.
• Mitch James, English instructor and doctoral student in Composition and TESOL. James, who received a master’s degree in literature from IUP, has poetry forthcoming in Digital Americana and Blue Earth Review, as well as a short story collection, The Cut Worm Forgives the Plow, from Etopia Press.
• Johnny Hrebik, English instructor and doctoral student in Composition and TESOL. Hrebik received a master’s degree in creative writing from Chatham University.
  

IUP students can earn credits toward program completion while spending three weeks in the beautiful surroundings of Oxford University and exploring London and other U.K. sites.

Several courses offered in the past will be available again this coming summer:

• Shakespeare
• Devised Theater
• Drawing and Painting
• Photojournalism
• Family Nursing (from Bloomsburg U.)
• Comparative Politics (from East Stroudsburg U.)

This year, for the first time, we are considering offering a special version of a course in literature for young people that will meet the requirement for Adolescent Literature for English Education students, but that also may have appeal for B.A. English majors and teachers. The course will include literature for young readers that has sprung from the British tradition, including works by J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, J.K. Rowling, and others.

For our planning purposes, please let Lynne Alvine, IUP Oxford Summer Study program director, know if you are interested in taking ENGL 434: Shakespeare or the course in literature for young readers in Oxford this coming summer—or any of the other courses.

Information about last summer's program is still available on the Oxford Program website. Most information regarding costs and other details will be the same.

Contact Lynne Alvine (lalvine@iup.edu) for further information and/or to indicate your interest in the program. You may also want to attend the Study Abroad Fair in the HUB Ohio Room on Tuesday, October 23, 2012, from noon to 3:00 p.m.

Department of English

The article was nominated for the award by Terese Thonus, director of the University of Kansas Writing Center. Babcock’s article “speaks to us of writers on the margins of our everyday tutoring and administration, and challenges us to examine what normal means in the light of different needs,” according to Thonus.

The 2011 IWCA Best Article Committee was chaired by Jackie Grutsch McKinney of Ball State University and included Beth Godbee, Karen Rowan, and Nancy Grimm.

Babcock is currently working on several books, including a single-authored book to be published by Gallaudet University Press based on her dissertation, which was completed under the supervision of Ben Rafoth, director of IUP’s Writing Center. She is collaborating on two books for Peter Lang Publishers, including Researching the Writing Center: Toward an Evidence-Based Practice, and another for Fountainhead Press entitled Writing Centers and Disability.

The article, “Critical Praxis for Researched Writing (CPRW): A Rhetorical Model for Teaching Students to ‘Do Research’,” encourages educators to “teach students to do research in a way that more resembles the way real-life inquirers find answers and is more rhetorical in nature.” It describes a pedagogical model, Critical Praxis for Teaching Researched Writing, and provides practical classroom examples.

The conference took place at California University of Pennsylvania on September 15, 2012.

The subjects discussed were the value of mentoring young women from their first-year experience through graduate school, with a special focus on the Bridge Program, which enables new students to transition smoothly from their first year at IUP Punxsutawney to the rest of their college experience.

The presenters included four students from the IUP Punxsutawney regional campus (Berkey, Coston, Mitchell, and Piett) who shared their insights into the new challenges that college life has presented them. Also presenting were two women who have benefited from intensive mentoring and the experience of classroom internships in the past and spoke about how mentoring helped them achieve success (Lemmon and Jefferson).

Participants should prepare a three-minute reading based on the prompt “Why I Write.”

Writing is defined broadly—a grocery list, an e-mail, a curriculum proposal, an essay for class, a selection of tweets, a poem—at IUP, we all write!

This event is hosted by the Writing Across the Curriculum initiative through the IUP English Department. For more information, please e-mail Bryna Siegel Finer at brynasf@iup.edu.

Recognizing the importance of writing in the lives of us all, the National Council of Teachers of English established and celebrated its first National Day on Writing on October 20, 2009. In 2011, at the organization’s request, the U.S. Senate passed Resolution S.298 declaring October 20 the National Day on Writing. Because the National Day on Writing falls on a Saturday this year, IUP will celebrate on October 17.

Please join us on Thursday, September 6, from 3:00–4:30 p.m. in Leonard Hall, Room 112 (Nicholson Library) for an ice cream social to welcome back our all of our English majors. Come on out and see what the English Department has to offer, won't you? We'd love to see you there!

The book, edited by Masood Raja and Hillary Stringer, will be published by Palgrave/Macmillan in December 2012.

Department of English

Traditionally, when scholars create a new work, such as a book or article, such items are submitted to an academic press or journal publisher for peer review and potential publication. With the international advance of digital scholarship, however, sites such as NINES are now playing an analogous role.

Wisnicki’s site was submitted to a rigorous review process that included formal review by two unnamed experts in the field who produced detailed reports about the site. The reports were very favorable, with one reviewer describing Wisnicki’s project as “a remarkable collaborative achievement that combines new spectral imaging technology, sophisticated web design, and good old fashioned meticulous scholarship.”

Wisnicki’s project will soon be integrated into NINES and will become one of about 20 “federated websites” currently published by NINES.

Department of English

Volume 1, Issue 1 of this new journal is now available.

Department of English

The invitation came from the Institute of International Education (IIE) board of trustees and Allan Goodman, president and CEO of IIE.

The Institute of International Education annually conducts scholarship competitions for U.S. graduate students wishing to pursue study, research, or professional training abroad under the Fulbright-Hays Program, sponsored by the United States Department of State, and for other awards offered by foreign governments, universities, and private donors. To assist in the selection of candidates, the Institute convenes a national screening committee comprised of area specialists and authorities in various fields to review applications and nominate candidates to the award sponsors.

Craig was one of 40 writers selected from over 1,000 applicants.

Hedgebrook was founded in 1985 as a haven to support the creativity of women writers.

The article argues that graphic literature (comics and graphic novels) represents a new paradigm in literary history. It stems from a presentation entitled “Epic, Roman, Graphic Novel: Three Royal Genres,” delivered in November 2011 at the first International Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain. This presentation was supported by a University Senate Research Committee grant for international travel.

Abstract

I attempt to place graphic literature in a long, polysystemic view of the culturally ascendant genres in global literary history. Linked to the structuralist ‘dominant,’ Ireneusz Opacki’s concept of the gatunek koronny/ “royal genre” suggests that, at different times, certain literary genres dominate their historical genre system, exerting sway over other contemporary genres. I would argue that in “the visual turn” the next iteration of “normal literature” will be irrevocably marked by a new royal genre, namely graphic literature. Comparatively, the scale of this change is on the lines of two other great royal genres of the past: the epic for the classical period, and the novel for modernity. Retranslating Opacki’s gatunek koronny and supplementing Hardt and Negri’s concepts of Empire and Multitude, I elaborate a new genre system terminology: “king genre” (epic), “empire/queen genre” (novel), and “paradigm genre” (graphic literature). In addition to their sequential differences, I draw out salient parallels between the three genre systems, including their epigenesis (unpredictable emergence), their polygenesis (independent emergence in multiple locations), close interrelationships with their contemporary technologies of media, and their thematic connections to empires and the global condition of war. Graphic literature has a particular affinity to nonfiction, particularly life writing, and, although still melded to the ongoing print paradigm, will interface well with new media. Since all three genre systems have developed a range of short and long forms, the term “graphic novel” will be an awkward term going forward.

Their paper analyzed how the exclusion of superhero literature from serious academic consideration relegates a significant aspect of U.S. cultural history to the confines of the kid section of the library. Additionally, the paper discussed that, as an archetype for the American hero, superheroes provide a focal point for exploring what American culture values in its leaders and in the people who selflessly endanger themselves for the good of the innocent.

Pagnucci and Romagnoli presented on Wednesday, April 11, at 3:00 p.m. in the Simmons Room of the Boston Marriott Copley Place.

Department of English

The reception will be held in Breezedale from 2:00–4:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 3, 2012, and is being hosted by the Composition and TESOL faculty and the American Language Institute. Light refreshments will be available.

At the MELUS national conference in San Jose, Calif., on April 19–22, 2012, Yang presented a paper, “Between the Brutal Winter and the Free Spring in Post-Cultural Revolution China: Asian Diasporic Literary Naturalism in Yiyun Li’s ‘The Vagrants’.” She also chaired two panels on Asian American and global literature in the same conference.

US interest in the Arab world has never been greater, and a need to cross the divide between the Arab world and the West has never been more urgent. Starting from this point, in this course we'll read (in translation) some of the finest works of recent Arabic fiction from both the Middle East and Africa. Students will end the course with better insight into some of the key issues that have shaped Arabic literature and Arabic literary traditions during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

The presentations included: “Collaborative Writing in an Online Environment,” “Tips for Improving Online Instruction,” and “Teaching Professional and Technical Writing in a Virtual Environment.”

Collaborative Writing in an Online Environment

Having students work in a group can be a challenging experience in a virtual environment. The challenges of working with a fellow group member in another state or country or never seeing a group member face-to-face can be a unique experience for most students. This session discussed the advantages and disadvantages of a synchronous/asynchronous environments, group interaction, team conflict, team assignments, deliverables, and presentations.

The presentation demonstrated the following:

• Overview of organizing an online collaborative project
• Applying practical applications and real-life scenarios in the lessons and lecture
• Instructional design technologies
• Collaboration efforts between students and teacher(s) during group projects
• Demos of flash presentations and tutorials
• Samples of student assignments
• Demonstration of real online classroom interaction
• Grading rubric
• Alternative assignments and discussion questions

Tips for Improving Online Instruction

(Copresenter: Gail White)

This presentation discussed tips for improving online instructions based on academic research and practical experience. The session included supplemental bibliography, examples, and handouts. This information was useful for beginning and intermediate online instructors.

Teaching Professional and Technical Writing in a Virtual Environment

(Copresenter: Gail White)

Teaching professional and technical writing in an online format has many advantages and challenges. This session presentation demonstrated tutorials, flash presentations, podcasts, and other methods to teach students this craft.

The presentation demonstrated the following:

• Overview of organizing an online creative writing class
• Applying practical applications and real-life scenarios in the lessons and lecture
• Instructional design technologies
• Collaboration efforts between students during group projects
• Demos of flash presentations and tutorials
• Samples of student assignments
• Demonstration of real online classroom interaction
• Grading rubric
• Alternative assignments and discussion questions

Department of English

Writing centers have become home to a growing number of English language learners—students, tutors, and instructors who regard writing centers as safe places where their writing, spoken accents, and cultural identities are welcome. Tutors and teachers will appreciate Park’s study, which examines the topic of teachers’ linguistic identiies.

Abstract

With an increase in the number of learners and speakers of English as an additional language entering the English language teaching field, especially in Outer and Expanding Circle countries and some migrating into the Inner Circle countries (e.g., Jenkins, 2009), there is an urgent need to prepare and understand the experiences of English language teachers from diverse backgrounds in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) programs. In view of this burgeoning need, TESOL programs could tailor their curricula to meet the academic and professional needs of all students planning to teach English in worldwide contexts. To this end, this article presents one thread of a larger study examining the experiences of five East Asian women before and during their TESOL programs. Snapshots are provided of one TESOL student whose academic and professional experiences highlight the disconnectedness between her experiences in China, her TESOL program, and her mentored student teaching experience. An exploration of this student’s identity transformation is followed by a discussion of implications for TESOL programs.

Department of English

Students may select one course from a variety of offerings in English, theater, art, journalism, nursing, and political science.

For information about logistics and application to the program, see the IUP Oxford Summer Study website, or contact program director Lynne Alvine, Department of English.

In the review essay, published on the website Review 19, Thompson assesses Mark Canada’s work, Literature and Journalism in Antebellum America.

Review 19 solicits and publishes reviews of scholarship on American and British literature of the 19th century. Its goals are to post reviews within 90 days of a book’s publication and to allow authors to respond to those reviews within 30 days.

Department of English

Through a case study, the article highlights how perfectionism can be a form of trauma that composition instructors should be aware of in some high-achieving students.

Perfectionism is a common issue dealt with at college counseling centers. Such students are often a joy to teach, while their instructors do not recognize the toll that perfectionism is taking on the student.

Department of English

Courses for 2012 include: Photojournalism, Shakespeare, Devised Theater, Painting and Drawing from the British Landscape, Introduction to Globalization, and Family Nursing.

This program has been highly successful over the past 25+ years, and we hope to make it available again this summer. Interested students should review the information and application packet at the IUP Oxford Summer Study website, and contact Alvine at lalvine@iup.edu with any questions about the program.

Students are advised not to purchase airfare until they have received confirmation of acceptance into the progam.

Department of English

The Delegate Assembly is the representative governing body of the MLA.

Department of English

The process of going through theory, plan, client analysis, proposal, and storyboard to prototype was completed in phases by students from each program.

Students used the Applied Media and Simulation Games Center to conceptualize their ideas and work on their prototypes. Project outcomes included market analysis and Web-based gaming projects to enhance business website customers. Professors Tim Hibsman, Luis Almeidia, and David Smith coordinated the cross-disciplinary learning activity.

Learn more about the Applied Media and Simulation Games Center.

Several new courses will be offered next summer, including ART 481: Sense of Place: Painting and Drawing from the British LandscapePLSC 481/581: Comparative Judicial Process; JRNL 223: Photojournalism, THTR 481: Devised Theatre, and SOC 481/581: Introduction to Globalization: Colonialism, Neo-colonialism, and Trans-nationalism. Courses returning in the program for 2012 include,ENGL 434: Shakespeare, NUR 82.310: Family Nursing, POLS 332, 540, Comparative Politics, and and THTR 420, 520: Myth and Ritual in Theatre.

Each student may take one Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) course taught by a PASSHE professor. For additional information and application forms, see the IUP Oxford Summer Study Program website, or e-mail program director Dr. Lynne Alvine, Department of English, at lalvine@iup.edu.

The Fulbright National Screening Committee is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the Institute of International Education. Its mission is to hand-pick English language teachers for English Language Teaching Assistanships in Malaysia.

The first installment of the dialogue on the significance of interrogating whiteness in international, global contexts was published in the October 2011 edition of the newsletter.

Watson is the only contributor of the six whose training is outside of the field of sociology.

For the full story, see the article by Michelle Fryling in the IUP blog, Around the Oak Grove.

Department of English

Marking the completion of a six-year research project, The Avant-Garde: Race Religion War tells an unprecedented story of radical cultural production in the modern era. Rejecting the idea that the avant-garde is only about art and insisting that it is much more than a European phenomenon, Sell redefines the historical, geographical, ideological, disciplinary, and theoretical boundaries of avant-garde studies.

The article considers Franklin’s personae Silence Dogood, Obadiah Plainman, and Poor Richard Saunders as characters representative of their readership’s class and political identities.

On October 19–21, 2011, he attended the annual CAFPRR meeting at MLA headquarters in NYC.

Downing has also been appointed to the three-person subcommittee to draft the MLA policy on academic freedom.

Department of English

He made a presentation at the twenty-second annual conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association (MAPACA).

Dr. Pagnucci was joined on the panel by Alex Romagnoli, a doctoral student in IUP’s Graduate Studies in Composition and TESOL program.

The MAPACA Conference brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to explore how trends and events in popular culture shape the world in which we live.

David Schaafsma, the author of the recently published On Narrative Inquiry (Teachers College Press, 2011), will talk about the process of how he came to think of storytelling as one viable form of research into lives and classrooms. He will give some insight into how the book, written in collaboration with four other authors, got written in narrative as one way of modeling the process of storying the world.

The conference theme was “English in the Digital Age: Developments in Language, Literacy, and Literature.”

Dr. Hibsman’s presentation suggested taking the subject and creating a business environment where students use a variety of skills to complete their English assignments. These student-centered skills include business dynamics, group projects, computer technology, critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and others.

Creating assignments that have practical applications empower the students to think creatively to satisfy customer needs. Taking a business perspective helps to transform ordinary essay assignments into dynamic, real-life application projects for the student.

Be a part of the English Club’s book group and check out your copy of this semester's selection, The Hunger Games. You can still sign out your copy today in Leonard 110.

Here is a summary ofThe Hunger Games:

“In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the games.”

Adam grew up in New Jersey and studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. His fiction has appeared in the Boston Review, the Chariton Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, and others. He has received awards from the Boston Review and the Santa Fe Writers Project, and was a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize and the Flannery O’Connor Award.

Adam lives and works in Brooklyn. He recently won Boston Review's seventeenth annual fiction contest, judged by Chang-rae Lee and published in a special issue edited by Junot Diaz. He has also worked as a professional drummer and has recorded with several Indie acts, including Sufjan Stevens, St. Vincent, and Via Audio.

Learn more about Adam Sturtevant.

Workshop 1

Knowledge of Learners through their Autobiographies

• October 13
• 2:30–4:00 p.m.
• Leonard Hall, Room 105
• Facilitated by Ruba Alnowaisir, Mohammed Alqahtani, Saeun Lee, and Tong Zhan

Workshop 2

Knowledge of Learners’ Sociocultural and Sociopolitical Contexts

• October 20
• 2:15–3:45 p.m.
• Leonard Hall, Room 105
• Facilitated by Abdullah Alshakhi, Young-Ken Choi, and Hlaviso Mothaka

Workshop 3

Knowledge of Learners’ Sociocultural and Sociopolitical Contexts

• November 3
• 3:00–4:15 p.m.
• Leonard Hall, Room 105
• Facilitated by Anas Almuhammadi and Satam Alotaibi

For more information and to reserve a seat, please contact Dr. Gloria Park, M.A. TESOL program director, at Gloria.park@iup.edu.

This book will be published as part of a new series entitled “Critical Climate Change,” by Open Humanities Press.

The conference, October 28–30, is sponsored by Boston College’s Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

“Grieving Ceremonies” explores the rural Pennsylvania site of the Flight 93 crash on September 11 as related to the work of the local coroner and funeral director.

The festival is being held on each of the five Sunday evenings in October. The location is Beard Auditorium in Stouffer Hall at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

On October 9, the eve of National “Coming Out” Week, the festival features 3 Veils, a poignant drama that follows the stories of three young Middle Eastern women living in the U.S., each with her own secret. The lives of the three women intertwine as each struggles to defy tradition and create her own reality. This film was selected for screening the night before the IUP Six O’Clock Series presents Hidden Voices, the Lives of LGBT Muslims.

On the third Sunday, October 16, the feature film will be a drama titled The Green. This film follows the struggles of a gay male high school teacher and his partner who leave New York City for a small coastal town in Connecticut, where the teacher is charged with “inappropriate behavior” when he helps a student who has run away from home.

On October 23, the festival continues with a powerful documentary titled Gen Silent. The film follows six lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LBGT) seniors, bringing to life a growing epidemic: LGBT seniors so afraid of discrimination, or worse, in long-term health care that they go back into the closet. The surprising decisions of these men and women are revealed through access to their day-to-day lives across a year in Boston.

On the final night, October 30, the festival will offer a double feature: The Night Watch and Wish Me Away. The first film is an adaptation of Sarah Water’s acclaimed historical novel Night Watch, the tale of two women whose lives are intertwined during World War II in London. The 2011 LGBT Film Festival closes with the award-winning Wish Me Away, a documentary of the coming-out story of country singer Cheley Wright.

Selected short films, including Poker Face; Rainbow Rabbit Reliant; Loop Planes; and Tell Me a Memory will be shown before the feature film each of the first four weeks.

There is no admission charge; donations are accepted. The Indiana LBGT Film Festival is made possible with funding from various departments and organizations at IUP, PFLAG of Indiana, and ICC and with the support of individual donors. IUP organizations cosponsoring the festival include Pride Alliance, the GLBT Commission, the Lively Arts at IUP, Women’s Studies, the Cook Honors College, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the departments of English, Political Science, and Sociology.

Beard Auditorium is located in Stouffer Hall at 175 Maple Street on the IUP campus.

Directions and a map 

For additional information about the Film Festival and other ICC events, write to ICC at indianacarescampaign@yahoo.com or go to the Indiana Cares website.

The Blue Room will open at 5:00 p.m., and the program for Karen will begin at approximately 5:20 with various speakers reflecting and remembering Karen’s numerous academic and scholarly contributions to the English Department and to IUP. Light refreshments will be available.

Anyone with questions regarding the program is encouraged to please contact the English Department office at 724-357-2261.

Dr. Dandurand arrived at IUP in 1986 and served as director of Graduate Studies in Literature and Criticism for several years. She was a beloved teacher who was known for her interests in nineteenth-century American literature, women’s literature, autobiography, and letters.

Dr. Dandurand received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass. A scholar of the poet Emily Dickinson, Dr. Dandurand helped published some works by the famous poet. Dandurand identified two anonymous poems published in 1858 and 1864 by the Springfield Republican as Emily Dickinson’s works. Dandurand’s “discovery” in the 1980s accounted for two of the seven in the Republican, and are the latest Dickinson poems to be identified.

She won the Norman Foerster Prize in 1984, and was also involved with the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Mass., as well as the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society at St. Francis University in Loretto and the Olana Partnership of Hudson, N.Y.

Karen served as vice president of Development (2008–2009) for the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, and she was one of the founding editors of Legacy, a journal of American women writers now published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Posted on the Legacy website:

“A well respected scholar whose work focused on Emily Dickinson, she exemplified our ideals of archival recovery work and opened a venue through which many of us found support for and furtherance of our own scholarship on women.

“Karen exemplified the qualities of feminist scholarship. She was a mentor to many, drawing from them their best work through example and through her tireless support.

“We will miss her terribly.”

Friends will be received on Thursday, September 15, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Robinson-Lytle Funeral Home in Indiana.

A service will take place at Robinson-Lytle on Friday at 11:00 a.m.

Thanks to a grant from ArtsPath and matching funds from the Punxsutawney Trust, Shelly will collaborate with artist Michael Stadler in integrating visual arts into English 100 and English 121. The residency will culminate with the display of student projects at a Celebration of Learning in December.

Be a part of the English Club’s book group and check out your copy of this sesmter’s selection, The Hunger Games. You can sign out your copy today in Leonard 110

Now in paperback, the book no one can stop talking about . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the games.

Rhetoric scholars in multiple disciplines from twenty-nine countries attended the conference.

The book is edited by Jeffrey J. Williams and Heather Steffen, and published by Columbia University Press.

This essay was initially published in the Minnesota Review in 2009.

Join us in celebrating their many years of dedicated service:

• Dr. Nancy Hayward, 25 years
• Dr. Ron Emerick, 30 years
• Dr. Jeannine Fontaine, 23 years
• Ms. Barbara Kraszewski, 42 years
• Dr. Cate McClenahan, 16 years
• Dr. Elaine Ware, 16 years
• Dr. Ron Shafer, 41 years
• Graduate English Secretary Bertha Cecconi, 35 years

Light refreshments will be served. Please join us!

Come create your own sundae! This event is free of charge and open to all English majors.

Please phone 724-357-2261 if you have any questions about this event.

The article analyzes how adult English Language Learners’ (ELL) lived experiences help construct identities. Dr. Park not only analyzes adult ELLs and their experiences, she utilizes narratives highlighting some of her own lived experiences as a teacher of adult ELLs.

Bibliographic information for Dr. Park’s article:

Park, G. (2011). Adult English language learners constructing and sharing their stories and experiences: The cultural and linguistic autobiography(CLA) writing project. TESOL Journal, 2(2), 156-172. doi:10.5054/tj.2011.250378.

Tiffany Dyer was selected for the senior award and Shannon (Shay) Scalise was chosen for the undergraduate new leader award.

The award is sponsored by the Center for Student Life and is competitive, i.e., our students were selected over some very impressive women leaders on campus.

Tiffany will receive a Chacivity Award on May 5 for her work with Lavender Graduation, and recently received the annual student award from the GLBT Commission for her work improving the climate for GLBT students on campus.

Titled “An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Society and Identity,” the book outlines the relationship between language and social identity.

Learn more about the book.

The theme of the issue is “Rhetoric and Subjectivity.”

The yearbook is a prestigious journal followed by scholars of rhetoric in Europe and the United States. Publication in the yearbook is by invitation only.

This event is free and open to everyone. Since it will be over the lunch hour, we will also have free pizza.

Smits will read from his poetry collection, Push. The book will also be available for purchase at the reading in case you would like to have it signed.

Smits is a recently retired IUP English professor. He was a beloved teacher who taught English at IUP’s Northpointe campus for many years.

His poems are fabulous and will interest even people who rarely read poetry. Please encourage your students to attend the reading and please come yourself. His poems will energize you as you enter the last few weeks of the semester.

Among the many in attendance this year were a number of IUP faculty members and students presenting their work in a variety of panels. IUP master’s and doctoral students in both the Composition and TESOL track as well as the Literature and Criticism track were represented.

The theme of this year’s CEA conference was “Fortunes.” Among the presenters were Gian Pagnucci, Hayat Messekher, Jade Emhoff, Abigail Grant, Carolyn Marcille, Abdullah Al-Dagamseh, Nicholas Beishline, Brad Baumgartner, Dennis Ledden, Wendy Carse, Eric Meljac, Natalie Yegenian, David von Schlichten, Courtney Ruffner, Amanda Lagoe, and Maggie Herb.

For more information about CEA or for a complete 2011 conference listing, please visit the College English Association website.

Brad Baumgartner (Literature) and Tony Lang, Jeannette Burgan, and Alison Bernet (all MATE) will present “The War on Education: Defending Students from the Past and Arming Them for the Future.”

Brad Baumgartner from the Graduate Literature program, Tony Lang, Jeannette Burgan, and Alison Bernat from the MATE program will present “The War on Education: Defending Students from the Past and Arming Them for the Future”

Department of English

The title of her speech was “The ESOL Textbook: Dead or Alive.” In it, she addressed major teacher concerns about the use of ESOL textbooks.

The presentation clarified textbook selection and adaptation as well as the nature of textbooks as objects and constructs. It positioned the discussion in the context of an ecological approach to the ESOL classroom, which encourages a dynamic view of educational environments. It treated textbook use as part of a system whose effects emerge from the interaction of its components, as interconnected in a curriculum system that changes constantly (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). In short, applying complexity theory to the analysis of ESOL textbook use, it viewed it as part of a complex and dynamic ecosystem (Larsen-Freeman, 1997).

The two papers were:

“Designing Electronic Career and Course Portfolios”

This presentation demonstrated some examples of student portfolios, as well as some practical suggestions for instructors considering implementing portfolios in their courses.

“Advantages of Teaching Writing Online”

This presentation demonstrated some of the strategies and techniques to teaching writing skills via an online environment.

Each year, Pearson Education presents travel awards to graduate students working in composition, rhetoric, or business and technical communication and to adjunct faculty members in order to cover the costs of attending the 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication.

More information about the Pearson’s 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Emerging Pedagogies and Travel Grant.

Department of English

We’ll be discussing The Book Thief by Markus Zusack. The thief is a young girl, the setting is World War II Germany, and the narrator is none other than Death. This Printz-award winner is a book for adults both young and old. Please see Kelly in the main office to borrow copies of The Book Thief.

English Club President Liz Elmore wrote this rave review of the book:

Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief is far more than it seems. Although labeled as a novel for young adults, The Book Thief possesses far more depth than most books written for adults. The story’s narrator, Death, gives the reader a unique perspective, and is particularly apt for the book’s setting of Germany in the midst of World War II.

Death tells us the story of Liesel, a foster-child attempting to have a normal childhood amidst the chaos of the world around her. Surrounding Liesel are several other amazing characters, such as Max Vandenburg, a Jewish man (and astonishing storyteller) hidden away in the basement of Liesel’s foster parents.

The book is difficult to describe simply because of its multitude of important themes and characters, but one thing is certain: this is definitely worth reading. Even the prose itself is beautiful. At times hilarious, and other times tragic, The Book Thief will resonate with you for a long time after you’ve finished its final pages.

Department of English

Her work is also featured the magazine’s February podcast, with her reading of one of her poems, “Why Poetry Cannot Be Skimmed,” followed by the editors’ discussion of her poem.

Check out the February issue of Poetry magazine.

This event is designed to stimulate an academic conference atmosphere and to foster collegiality among students and faculty in interdisciplinary approaches to teacher-scholarship work.

Both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as their faculty, are doing work related to critical perspectives on teacher scholarship. You are encouraged to submit proposals in one of the following formats:

• Single/Co-author Paper Presentation (20 minutes)
• Panel Presentation (60 minutes)
• Theory to Practice (Praxis) (Interactive) Workshop (60 minutes)
• Poster Presentation 

The 2011 Teacher Scholar Symposium will be on Friday, June 17, 2011, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Some of the highlights of the Second Teacher Scholar Symposium:

• Opening Plenary: Katherine Sohn, the author of Whistlin’ and Crowin’ Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices since College
• Luncheon Plenary: Veronica Watson, Brian Jones, Crystal Machado, and Mary Lou Metz, board members of the Frederick Douglass Institute

For more information, contact Dr. Gloria Park at g.park.od@gmail.com or visit the C&T Conferences page.

The research projects are “Undergraduate Research Writing Students’ Exploration of Issues of Diversity and Social Justice” and “A Critical Look at International Students in Higher Education Contexts; Understanding Critical & Postrmethod Pedagogy ion Two West African Pre-service Teachers.”

Plenty of space is still available in the IUP Oxford Summer Study Program! For additional information and application forms, see the IUP Oxford Summer Study Program website, or e-mail program director Dr. Lynne Alvine, Department of English, at lalvine@iup.edu.

Each student may take one Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) course taught by a PASSHE professor.

2011 IUP Oxford Summer Study Program Courses

• ENGL 434: Shakespeare (IUP)
• LBST 499: Rock and Roll and Society (IUP)
• LBST 499: You’ve Got Rights!(IUP)
• NUR 82.310 Family Nursing (Bloomsburg University)
• THTR 420/520 Myth and Ritual in Theatre (East Stroudsburg)

Full information is at the IUP Oxford Summer Study Program website.

This is a two-day seminar designed to facilitate scholarly dialogues around selected advanced dissertation students’ work, specifically focusing on the areas of teaching and teacher education.

Congratulations, Hayat!

Department of English

Michele Eodice, a member of the selection committee, stated that “the dissertation tackles issues of standardized instruction and assessment, and is impressive in its treatment of the writing center as both research and vernacular site. The dissertation is most impressive in its sustained attention to its leading research questions and in the freshness of its portrait of peer tutors as caught between worlds, one pressing for standards, the other for students’ finding themselves as writers and learners.”

Congratulations to Dr. Fels.

Department of English

Emhoff will present her paper, “Discovering a Meaningful Life: The Importance of Place in Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs.”

Grant will present her paper, “Mutuality in the Asynchronous Online Composition Classroom.”

This book (published by Palgrave/Macmillan in December 2010) was the subject of Stanley Fish’s essay, “We’re All Conservatives Now,” which appeared in the New York Times online “Opionator” section on December 20, 2010.

In the InsideHigherEd interview, Carvalho and Downing addressed Fish’s piece, the book itself, and more general issues about the role of the American Association of University Professors, the current economic crisis with respect to academic freedom, and the outlook for higher education under the Obama administration.

For more information, check the following link:

InsideHigherEd: “Academic Freedom in the Post-9/11 Era”

Each student may take one Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) course taught by a PASSHE professor. For additional information and application forms, see the IUP Oxford Summer Study Program website, or e-mail program director Dr. Lynne Alvine, Department of English, at lalvine@iup.edu.

2011 IUP Oxford Summer Study Program Courses

ENGL 434: Shakespeare (IUP)

LBST 499: Rock and Roll and Society (IUP)

LBST 499: You’ve Got Rights!(IUP)

NUR 82.310 Family Nursing (Bloomsburg University)

THTR 420/520 Myth and Ritual in Theatre (East Stroudsburg)

Composition and TESOL Ph.D. student Shannon Tanghe was awarded a $1,000 grant for her “Transnational Praxis Project” grant proposal.

Tanghe is investigating the implementation and effects of a transnational cooperative classroom project between graduate students in two TESOL graduate school classes, one in the United States and one in South Korea. Shannon is collaborating with Dr. Gloria Park on the project.

Department of English

NCTE is the governing body of K-12 English teachers and teacher educators, and is devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. The council’s mission statement, from its website: “The Council promotes the development of literacy, the use of language to construct personal and public worlds and to achieve full participation in society, through the learning and teaching of English and the related arts and sciences of language.”

The resolution states that the National Council of Teachers of English will:

• support efforts by educators to teach about social injustice and discrimination in all its forms with regard to differences in race, ethnicity, culture, gender, gender expression, age, appearance, ability, national origin, language, spiritual belief, sexual orientation, socioeconomic circumstance, and environment;
• acknowledge the vital role that teacher education programs play in preparing teachers to enact and value a pedagogy that is socially just;
• advocate for equitable schooling practices that reinforce student dignity and success; and
• oppose policies that reinforce inequitable learning opportunities or outcomes for students.

This resolution will help change the way we think about and employ social justice work throughout K-12 and teacher education literacy practices. For more information, please visit the National Council Teachers of English website.

Park’s responsibilities of this position include soliciting reviews of recently published books focusing on TESOL and applied linguistics. She will also review the incoming book reviews, and provide feedback for publications.

The essay is part of his collection of golf-themed creative nonfiction.

Ferrence has also been named web editor for Stymie Magazine: a Journal of Sport & Literature. Stymie publishes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with thematic intersections in sport and games.

Nienkamp presented on “Foundations of Internal Rhetoric: Dialogical Selves in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature” and “Internal Rhetoric: An Introduction to a Rhetorical Perspective on the Dialogical Self.”

The title of Dr. Park’s keynote workshop was “Pedagogical Content and Learner Knowledge in World Englishes: A Critical Call for Raising our Awareness and Enacting Change.”

This is the abstract to Dr. Park’s keynote workshop:

With globalization and internationalizing influencing the ways in which the fields of TESOL, Applied Linguistics, and Composition explore what we do as teacher-scholars, there is an urgent need to examine and reconfigure how the English language is perceived, learned, and taught in the academy. For instance, one area to explore is to understand how issues connected to world Englishes help both teacher-scholars and their students to (re)conceptualize what we teach and how we teach English as an international language, problematizing the issues related to "standard English" and "NES/NNES dichotomy." Another area to explore is the notion of "best practices,” and how this construct often overlooks the specific needs of our students’ educational goals and the contexts in which they learn and use the English language. Hence, “best practices” should take into consideration the many varieties of English spoken by our students in their particular contexts. As such, there is a critical need to raise our awareness about alternative pedagogies that are practical, particular, and possible for multilingual students all over the world. Let’s continue to remind ourselves as advocates of our students to deconstruct these notions of "one-size fits all" approach to teaching and see English as a “standardized,” not “standard,” language, taking into consideration multiple varieties of Englishes that can equally be standardized.

With this as a brief overview, this interactive workshop will begin with reflecting on what world Englishes is and how we are all affected by this call for a sociocultural and sociopolitical curricular change. Second, we will look at some world Englishes literature to ground our argument for promoting the use of world Englishes in Inner, Outer, and Expanding Circle countries. I conclude this talk with some pedagogical suggestions and implications for embracing world Englishes in our teaching and scholarship.

For more information on the Three Rivers TESOL conference, please visit the the Three Rivers TESOL website.

In this course, students will have opportunities (1) to understand the theoretical principles that underscore approaches to (English language) teaching; (2) to gain skills in describing, analyzing, and interpreting teaching through observation, tutoring (both individual and group), and peer teaching; (3)  to understand how observation as well as teaching can be used to gain awareness of our teaching beliefs and practices and the way we talk about teaching; and (4) to gain insight into what “good teaching” means, and to obtain the skills necessary to be comfortable in their teaching roles.

Students preparing to be teachers in the Masters of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MATESOL) learn to be reflective, to develop a broad repertoire of teaching skills, to develop sound relationships with culturally and linguistically diverse students and colleagues, and to base their teaching practice on sound theory and research. We believe that effective English as a second/foreign language educators need to draw upon many types of knowledge, including:

1. knowledge of curriculum (KC)
2. knowledge of learners (KL)
3. knowledge of subject matter (KSM)
4. knowledge of educational goals and assessment (KEGA)
5. knowledge of social contexts (KSC)
6. knowledge of pedagogy (KP)

The reading list for this course will be available shortly.

Department of English

Here is a more detailed description of the course:

This course offers a variety of effective strategies for ESOL materials design. Based on established as well as innovative approaches to curriculum design, it focuses on both curriculum philosophies and on design principles. It discusses materials as one of the three physical components of the ESOL classroom, the other two being teachers and students. Furthermore, it offers a more recent differentiation between materials as static objects and materials use as a dynamic construct. Students will engage in the design of personally meaningful semester-long projects and classroom tasks that place learning in the center of instruction and allow the incorporation of contemporary media and multimodal discourses.

Gaiman’s book won the 2009 Newbery Medal for the best young adult novel of the year. Before moving into young adult literature, Gaiman rose to fame as a writer of the comic book series The Sandman, particularly for his portrayal in that series of a female Death character.

Come join in a lively discussion of Gaiman’s book, and help pick the next book the club will be reading. New English Book Club members are always welcome. (Please note that students do not have to be English majors to take part—everyone is welcome!)

Contact Dr. Gian Pagnucci, Professor of English, by e-mail at pagnucci@iup.edu for more information.

Course Description:

ENGL 846: Advanced Seminar in Literacy – Foundational Texts

Have you ever sat in a class and nodded your head when a fellow student or a professor made reference to text you know about but have not really read. Perhaps you said to yourself, ‘Gee, I hear about this scholar’s work all of the time; I really should read that book.” Then the time goes by and other assignments or class preparations absorb all of the time and the next time you hear a reference to the same scholar, you think “Wow, I never did get that read.” Students who enroll in ENGL 846: Advanced Seminar in Literacy – Foundational Texts will read and discuss texts that may be referenced, but typically may not be assigned in courses. We will focus on the writings of important thinkers who have made significant contributions to both theory and practice in teaching writing. We will read and discuss key essays and/or books (foundational texts) of some the following important thinkers: Mikhail Bakhtin, Ann Berthoff, James Britton, Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, Peter Elbow, Janet Emig, Paulo Friere, Donald Graves, Patrick Hartwell, Shirley Brice Heath, Suzanne Langer, Ken Macrorie, Nancy Martin, James Moffett, Donald Murray, Michael Polanyi, Mina Shaughnessey, and Lev Vygotsky. We may also read more contemporary ‘classics’ such as works by Richard Rodriquez, Mike Rose, and Victor Villanueva. Perhaps we will identify additional foundational texts to explore as we move through the semester together. I will invite those enrolling in the course to communicate with me about our intentions for learning together so that I can create a syllabus that works well for all of us.

The conference takes place February 18–20, 2011, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The title of the talk will be “Social Justice: How Spacetime Affects its Relationship to Classroom Practice.”

Change Matters provides researchers, university instructors, and preservice and inservice teachers with a framework that pivots social justice toward policy. The chapters in the volume detail rationales about generating social justice theory in what Freire calls the revolutionary process, through essays that support research about teaching about the intersections between teaching for social change and teaching about social injustices, directing us toward the significance of enacting social justice methodologies.

The text unpacks how education, spiritual beliefs, ethnicity, age, gender, ability, social class, political beliefs, marital status, sexual orientation, gender expression, language, national origin, and education intersect with the principles by which we live and the multiple identities that we embody as we move from space to space.

Adrienne Rich writes of Nowak that “he is generating a new poetics of class, bringing to his project . . . the experience of growing up and working among men and women who . . . are the truth and marrow of whatever this country has been or might become.”

Amiri Baraka praises his “hard but contemporary lyric, and narrative . . . a much needed parade.”

Copies of Nowak’s two most recent books are available from the Co-op Bookstore.

The event is sponsored by the IUP Department of English and the graduate program in Literature and Criticism.

Contact sherwood@iup.edu for more information.

The series is titled “Surviving and Succeeding in the National Academic Job Market: A Series of Five Workshops on Professionalization.”

The five topics include an overview of the job search cycle, writing CV and application letters, dos and don’ts of phone/MLA and campus interviews, how to publish, a mock chair’s interview, and a mock phone/MLA interview.

The job search workshops are for all graduate students in both the Literature and Criticism and the Composition and TESOL programs, as well as for all temporary faculty members, who have just finished the dissertation, or who are writing the dissertation, or who are preparing for comps and proposal, or who are still taking courses at any stage of the graduate program.

The workshops might be most useful for those senior doctoral students who are searching for jobs this year, or who are about to very soon. Please advertise the workshops to all of those graduate students and temporary faculty members whom you teach, whom you know, or whom you think might be interested in them.

“I am grateful for the generous support from our English Department, Graduate English Program in Literature and Criticism, and from EGO,” Dr. Yang said. He added, “We are most grateful for the following wonderful faculty guest speakers, who will dazzle the graduate students. Dr. Gail Berlin will offer a mock chair’s interview in Workshop 5 in mid-November, the first in the history of our department’s training of grad students’ job search skills. Dr. David Downing will join me to share dos and don’ts of phone/MLA and campus interviews in Workshop 3. Dr. David Hanauer will be our solo speaker on how to publish in Workshop 4 in early November. Drs. Todd Thompson and Gloria Park will join me to offer tips on writing CV and cover letters in Workshop 2. Both of them have donated their glowing CVs.”

The festival continues at 6:00 p.m. on each of the remaining four Sunday evenings in October.

Two community organizations—Indiana Cares Campaign to End Homophobia (ICC) and the Parents and Friends of Gays and Lesbians (PFLAG)—are cosponsoring the series, along with several IUP organizations and academic departments.

• On October 10, the eve of National Coming Out Day, the festival features A Marine Story, a drama based on the real-life experiences of lesbians in the military.
• On the third Sunday, October 17, the feature film will be a documentary titled 8: The Mormon Proposition. This film reveals the behind-the-scenes financial support of the Mormon Church in opposing gay marriage in California.
• On October 24, the festival continues with Purple Sea, an Italian language film (English subtitles.) Based on a true story, the film explores the old-world European tradition of women passing as men.
• On the final night, October 31, the festival will offer a double feature: Undertow and Is It Just Me? The first film won a major award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It is a Spanish language film (English subtitles) set in Peru. The festival closes with a romantic comedy about gay men who meet online.
• Several selected short films, including Rockin’ the Rainbow, Do Not Bend, The Queen, Hens and Chicks, The Best Is Yet to Come, and Last Call will be shown before the feature films during the first four weeks.

There is no admission charge; donations are accepted.

The Indiana LBGT Film Festival is made possible with funding from various departments and organizations at IUP, PFLAG of Indiana, and ICC and with the support of individual donors. IUP organizations cosponsoring the festival include Pride Alliance, the GLBT Commission, the Lively Arts at IUP, Women’s Studies, the Honors College, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the departments of English, Sociology, Political Science, and Spanish.

Beard Auditorium is located in Stouffer Hall at 175 Maple Street on the IUP campus. Directions and a map

For additional information about the LGBT Film Festival and other ICC events, write to ICC at indianacarescampaign@yahoo.com, or visit the Indiana Cares Campaign.

This Fall, Dr. Savova will be offering a series of two workshops on:

• Features of Effective Proposals: Thursday, September 30, 9:30–10:30 a.m., McElhaney Lab
• Drafting Own Proposals: Thursday, October 14, 9:30–10:30 a.m., McElhaney Lab

If planning to attend, please e-mail d.poole@iup.edu to reserve a seat and a packet of materials. Also, please note that this is a one-time opportunity which is offered as a professional service to our students.

Contributing authors were IUP English professor Dan Tannacito; alumni Farrell, Widodo, Ozbilgin, Shimoda, and Hara; and M.A. TESOL and Composition and TESOL Ph.D. candidates Chamcharatsri, Messekher, Reilly, Harrison, Alhazmi, Grant, Tudor, and Sarver. The book is published by Lincom Studies in Second Language Teaching in Germany.

Preview:

Grounded in postmodern perspectives on teaching, this much-needed edited volume offers fascinating insights into observation of teaching. As editors, we argue that observation can be a powerful tool for doing research and vibrant teacher professional development. This edition provides the reader with how observation can also be a dialogic inquiry between teachers and students through teaching, teachers, and their colleagues through observing others, and between teachers and themselves through self-inquiry.

Informed by current empirical, theoretical, and practical grounds, the text treats five key issues in observation of teaching, including: (1) conceptual and methodological frameworks for research on teaching, (2) critical self-reflective inquiry as an exploration of teaching, (3) exploration of the pedagogies of others via observation, (4) lessons learned from post-observation discussion as forms of (dis)empowerment, and (5) promoting critical praxis in teacher education programs.

For further information, visit Observation of Teaching: Bridging Theory and Practice through Research on Teaching.

The book offers a collection of articles by world experts on the design of ESOL materials that support a variety of educational strategies and techniques in local and global contexts. Savova is also the designer of the book’s cover.

Dr. Dawn Fels, this year's winner of the Composition and TESOL Promising Future Interdisciplinary Research in Literacy Award, has successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation titled The Vernacular Architecture of Composition Instruction: What the Voices of Writing Center Tutors Reveal about the Influence of Standardized Instruction and Assessment.

The study explored the effects of institutionalized demands for writing instruction and assessment on students’ work, agency, and identities and holds that one of the best ways to identify those effects is to ask students who serve as writing center tutors.

Fels and Jennifer Wells, another IUP Composition and TESOL doctoral student, have previously published a book on writing centers under contract with Teachers College Press. Fels will have a one-year appointment as an assistant professor in the English Department beginning this fall.

The Composition and TESOL program held its 2010 alumni reunion on Friday, July 9, 2010, with more than seventy alumni, current students, and faculty members attending.

Dr. Brian Huot, who received the Distinguished C and T Alumni Award, gave a presentation titled “Writing Assessment: Reliability and Validity Issues.”

In addition, a number of Composition and TESOL students and faculty members also received awards at the reunion for their scholarly contributions.

The Composition and TESOL program sponsored its first summer workshop on Friday, June 18, 2010. The title of the workshop was “Conducting a Critical Review of Literature.”

The workshop was attended by many Ph.D. students who will soon be working on writing their dissertations. The facilitators of the workshop included Dr. Gloria Park, and current Ph.D. candidates: Pisarn Bee Chamcharatsri, Hayat Messekher, and Kyle Nuske.

The workshop is the first in a series of Composition and TESOL workshops to be held during this summer intended to help Ph.D. students in the process of dissertation writing.

The Composition and TESOL and the Literature and Criticism programs sponsored their annual picnic in the Oak Grove on Wednesday, June 16, 2010.

The picnic was attended by Dr. Timothy P. Mack, the dean of School of Graduate Studies and Research; Dr. Gian Pagnucci, director of graduate studies in Composition and TESOL; Dr. David Downing, director of graduate studies in Literature and Criticism; many faculty members; current students; and their families.

It was a wonderful opportunity to see everyone and enjoy the sunny weather, the music and of course the nice food.

The grant will pay for a research trip to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where Thompson will conduct research by consulting the Frederick Douglass papers.

In this project, Thompson will be researching Douglass’s life and writings to ascertain if (and, if so, how) Douglass used satiric strategies—in his newspaper writings, public orations, and private correspondence—to chide white Northerners for their own hypocrisy and racism. Thompson wants to argue that the ambiguity inherent in complex irony, as well as the reassuring tone of humor, allowed Douglass to critique his Northern audience (to which he owed, in part, his continued freedom and his livelihood) without alienating them or ostracizing himself. The research will characterize such rhetoric as satiric du-plomacy in order to capture the multiple aims of such rhetoric.

This year, the featured speaker will be Brian Huot, a graduate of the program in 1988 and currently director of Composition at Kent State University.

For further information, read about the 2010 Composition and TESOL reunion.

The award is a research grant funding that supports teacher-scholarship work on issues of diversity and social justice. The $2,000 grant will support the undergraduate research writing project entitled “Undergraduate Students’ Voices: Raising Awareness of Social Justice Issues through Research Writing.”

The design of the research writing course syllabus and the emergence of the diversity research project are framed within a critical perspective that looks at power structures and ideology embedded in the society. This perspective helps the students unpack the issues of race, gender, class, and language (and other social categories) that privilege some and marginalize others.

With this in mind, Dr. Park states that “as a teacher-scholar invested in issues of social justice, in my research writing course sections, I designed a culminating diversity research project where students conduct empirical research on a topic they desire to investigate as a way to gain knowledge and enact social change beyond the requirements instituted by the course instructor.”

Dr. Park has completed data collection and is currently working on data analysis and manuscript preparation, which will be submitted to refereed journals.

For more information about the article and the interview, please visit Writing Centers: More Than Remediation.

This award will support her research at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in New Delhi, India, for a four-month stay, from January to May 2011.

As part of her sabbatical year, the grant period will allow her to conduct several interrelated research activities centered on the completion of a book-length project on gender and the environment in postcolonial women’s literature. A substantial portion of the project is focused on women’s writing of South Asia. It will address as well the debates that are currently swirling around the environmental and social consequences of development in India’s rapidly growing economy.

MELUS is a prominent professional organization on the studies of American multi-ethnic literatures, which include but are not limited to the studies of European-American (such as Italian-American and Irish-American), Jewish-American, African-American, Asian-American, Latino, American Indian, Arab-American, and other American ethnic literatures.

Other courses in the program are Family Nursing from Bloomsburg University; and Comparative Politics and Myth and Ritual in Theater, both from East Stroudsburg University. Program dates for 2010 are July 16 to August 7. Interested students should review information on the IUP Oxford Summer Study website and contact Dr. Lynne Alvine at lalvine@iup.edu or 724-357-2744 for response to questions.

This spring conference theme was “Conditions of Women and Gender Equity: The Literatures of Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” 

Presenters include Jeannine Fontaine, Resa Crane Bizzaro, and Melissa Borgia.

The workshop took place at the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research mid-winter conference, held at the University of Pittsburgh.

Founded in 1972, NAM was the leading activist group for socialist feminism in the U.S. In 1982 it merged with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee to become the Democratic Socialists of America. Contributors include leading founding members and other activists such as Michael Lerner, Stanley Aronowitz, Barbara Epstein, Richard Healey, Judith Gardiner, and many others.

This volume also contains a follow-up section on academic freedom, including Ed Carvalho’s interview with Gayatri Spivak and David Downing’s review of AAUP President Cary Nelson’s “No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom.”

He presented his paper, “World Bank University: The War on Terror and the Battles for the Global Commons” at the University of Houston–Victoria.

The conference theme, Methodology Matters, focuses on new research methodologies that have emerged in response to new questions in literacy research, such as the relationship between literacy and identity, longitudinal literacy development, and out-of-school literacies. The conference theme also aims to address current practical, theoretical, and methodological challenges in literacy research, such as collecting rich data within classrooms and managing tensions between “scientifically-based” research and in-depth qualitative research.

Our keynote speakers will speak to the affordances and challenges of various literacy research methodologies, including memoir, oral history, classroom discourse analysis, policy research and teacher/faculty collaborations.

Keynotes speakers include:

• David Bloome, Ph.D., Ohio State University
• Kim and Louis Gomez, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
• Elizabeth Moje, Ph,D. University of Michigan
• Lesley Rex, Ph.D., University of Michigan
• Elaine Richardson, Ph.D., Ohio State University
• Loukia Sarroub, Ph.D., University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Please join us this Friday amd Saturday at the University of Pittsburgh. Visit the NCTEAR website for more details, or contact sj Miller at sjmiller@iup.edu.

Department of English

Attending the conference were writing center directors, tutors, and writing instructors from colleges and universities in the northern California region, including the University of San Francisco, UC Berkeley, California State University at Sacramento, CSU Fresno, Sonoma State University, Menlo College, and Mercy High School. Approximately 175 people attended the conference, cochaired by Jennifer Wells of Mercy High School and Leslie Dennon of the University of San Francisco. It was held at the historic Kohl Mansion and Mercy High School in San Francisco.

Dr. Rafoth has directed the IUP Writing Center since 1988 and served on the executive board of the International Writing Centers Association. He edited A Tutor’ s Guide and ESL Writers (with Shanti Bruce). He received the Ron Maxwell Award for Leadership in Peer Tutoring.

Undergraduate English majors will share their creative works, research projects, and critical papers over the course of the day, and the conference will also feature a keynote panel on “Reading, Writing, and Identity” with several English Department faculty members. Attendance vouchers will be provided.

For more information, contact Dr. Heather Powers or Dr. Cheryl Wilson.

It will appear in the January 2010 issue of Classroom Notes Plus, published by the National Council of Teachers of English.

At the celebration, students in Basic Writing and College Writing displayed projects representing their work in those courses.

Many students created poster projects, some three dimensional, and several produced videos. Prizes were awarded for the best projects. The judges for the event, English Department faculty members Ben Rafoth, Sue Welsh, and Nan Sitler, had a difficult time choosing among the many creative displays.

Lynn Shelly is the director of the IUP at Punxsutawney Writing Center. Graduate student Jess Haggerty serves as assistant director.

This is the first academic book on the subject of nineteenth-century literature and dance—an emerging interdisciplinary field. As such, Literature and Dance fills a scholarly gap, while also contributing to the fields of literary study, dance history, and gender studies. Theoretically grounded in narrative theory, gender studies, and performance studies, Literature and Dance also draws from a range of historical materials, including dance manuals, periodicals, and related ephemera, demonstrating true interdisciplinary scholarship.

A review of the book, written by L&C Ph.D. student Amanda Lagoe, and an interview with Dr. Wilson will appear in the forthcoming issue of Studies in the Humanities.

Dr. Wilson, a professor in the Department of English, recently presented “Gender, Fashion, and Social Power in Emma” at the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Conference (University of Iowa, April 2009); “Rethinking the Silver-Fork Novel” at the Midwest Victorian Studies Association Conference (Indiana University, April 2009); and “Who’s Afraid of the Ballroom? The Dangers of Nineteenth-Century Social Dance” at the MLA Convention (San Francisco, December 2008).

Dr. Wilson continues to serve as president of EAPSU, and, along with several graduate students and colleagues, will be representing IUP at the fall 2009 EAPSU conference at Shippensburg University.

Each student may take one Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) course taught by a PASSHE professor. For additional information and application forms, see the IUP Oxford Summer Study Program website or e-mail program director Dr. Lynne Alvine, Department of English, at lalvine@iup.edu.

2010 IUP Oxford Summer Study Program Courses

• ENGL 434: Shakespeare (IUP)
• LBST 499: Rock and Roll and Society (IUP)
• NUR 82.310 Family Nursing (Bloomsburg University)
• CMST 310/577: Intercultural Communication (East Stroudsburg University)
• THTR 420/520 Myth and Ritual in Theatre (East Stroudsburg)

• “Constructing Tonwenna: A Gesture in Context,” concerning the ancient breast-baring gesture as it appears in the Early Middle English Lawman’s Brut;
• “Behold the Breast: A Gesture and Its History,” a much longer history of the same cryptic gesture, in art and literature, ranging from 2,000 years BCE up to the 1600s and beyond;
• “Like a Duck Before a Falcon: Moses in Middle English Literature,” an examination of the representation and reception of Moses in literature from 1200–1500, particularly in the mystery plays and in Piers Plowman; and
• “There Once Was Elźunia: Empathy in the Teaching of Holocaust Literature.”

Three of these have been submitted for publication; the fourth is on its way.

Dr. Berlin also presented the paper on Tonwenna at the International Lawman’s Brut Conference held in Wales in July 2008. During the trip to England and Wales, she had a chance to visit the Hereford Mappamundi (world map), do research in a medieval chained library (yes, the books are really chained to the book case), and examine bunnies, hounds, musicians, and dancers (to name some of the tamer figures) adorning the wall of a lovely Romanesque church.

Professor Kenneth Sherwood and doctoral students in English curate this exhibition, which “explores the imaginative engagement of poets and fiction writers with the tools of new media... inventing a post-Gutenberg space for literature.” Visitors to the website are also invited to join a forum discussion.

The Kipp exhibit runs November 30 through December 4, 2009, with an opening reception on Monday, November 30, at 5:00 p.m. It is sponsored by the College of Fine Arts and is presented in cooperation with the IUP Center for Digital Humanities and Culture and the graduate program in Literature and Criticism.

Kipp Gallery is located in Sprowls Hall on the corner of 11th and Grant streets on the IUP campus. Hours are noon to 4:00 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.

For more information, contact:

Kenneth Sherwood at Kenneth.Sherwood@iup.edu 
Center for Digital Humanities and Culture 

The winning poem, by first-year student Myriah Ferrare, was titled “Barbie.” Graduate student Mindee Lieske helped to judge the competition, along with three former Punxsutawney students, including new English major Amanda Stamm.

Lynn Shelly is director of the Punxsutawney Writing Center.

This award, selected from a competitive pool of applications, provides full funding for a four-week artist’s residency at the center. The residency will take place in Summer 2010.

This readers’ theater performance (where a text is read aloud in semi-dramatic style by the authors) focuses on the chaotic nature of teaching lives, both inside and outside the classroom. The reading will be accompanied by music and hopes to engage audience members in rethinking their own ideas about what it means to engage in the teaching life.

This performance is sponsored by IUP’s Graduate Studies in Composition and TESOL Program and IUP’s Department of English.

Dr. Schaafsma is director of English Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The author of Eating on the Street: Teaching Literacy in a Multicultural Society and Literacy and Democracy, he is working on a book about narrative inquiry. Dr. Schaafsma also served as co-editor of English Education for several years.

Additional information about the performance can be found on Dr. Pagnucci’s website.

The essay originally appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Stymie magazine.

Department of English

For more than twenty years, Larges has sought ordination as a minister in the Presbyterian Church. Larges is a member of the Noe Valley Ministry, a Presbyterian church in San Francisco. After her talk, Ms. Larges will take questions from the audience. A reception will follow the event.

Ms. Larges’ talk is cosponsored by IUP Pride Alliance and the IUP Unitarian Universalist student group.

Department of English

The Indiana LGBT Film Festival continues at 6:00 p.m. next Sunday evening with two short subject films titled Kaden Later and Reunion. The feature film on October 18 is Hannah Free, produced by and starring Sharon Gless, who played Christine Cagney in the 1980’s TV detective show Cagney and Lacey.

The Indiana LGBT Film Festival is sponsored by the Indiand Cares Campaign, PFLAG of Indiand, IUP Pride Alliance, the IUP Department of English, and various other university departments and organizations.

Duda, author of The Monster Hunter in Modern Popular Culture (MacFarland, 2007) will visit Dr. Powers’s class in LNRD 205 at 1:25 to discuss “Harry Potter and Studying Popular Culture,” and Dr. Slater’s 6:00 class in LNRD 211 to discuss “Women’s Studies and Amanda of the Saw Films.” All are welcome.

These events are open to any faculty member or students. The presentations and discussions are sure to be lively, so feel free to bring your thoughts and questions and join in.

Department of English

Anyone interested in posting news, questions, or ideas is welcome to get involved. Check it out and participate.

Department of English

In Service presents the experiences of Western Pennsylvanians serving in Iraq as soldiers and government officials, and those recording events as journalists. The film weaves first-hand video recordings, interviews, and still photography as individuals from the region recount their tales unfolding on an international stage.

At the foreground are authentic voices, images, and narratives, and the tales coalesce as a cohesive narrative of how world events affect local communities and touch the lives of those just down the street from ourselves.

(Ralph Vituccio; 2009)

Local filmmaker José Muniain produced this exceptional documentary, which has screened at the Three Rivers Film Festival (where it won the Audience Choice award) and the Latino International Film Festival in Los Angeles. It begins as film director Robert Young sits for his first formal portrait with Spanish painter Félix de la Concha in a studio in  Pittsburgh's Hill District.

As we watch de la Concha at work, Young discusses his career filming subjects ranging from nomadic Eskimo tribes to Sicilian slum-dwellers. In the process, the two artists discuss their calling. What drives them to do independent work? How do creative people find their subjects? How are they supported, thwarted, and inspired by what goes on around them?

Muniain is scheduled to appear.

(José Muniain; USA; 2006; 55 min)

Pittsburgh Reframed is a program of shorts by local film and video artists produced as part of the 2008 Three Rivers Film Festival. This anthology celebrates Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary through a series of pieces, each with a run time of two minutes and 50 seconds.

The artists pay tribute to a promotional film commissioned for the city's bicentennial in 1958 by using excerpts from that original work. From there, these artists take their visions in many directions, from documentary of local personalities to impressionistic works of abstract video art. Local artists participating include Tess Allard, Mike Bonello, Tony Buba, Olivia Ciummo, Brian Cohen, Matthew R. Day, Carolina Loyola Garcia, Anna Hawkins, Ben Hernstrom, Charlie Humphrey, Thad Kellstadt, Brady Lewis, Michael Mallis, Jesse McLean, Bob Rutkowski, Elizabeth Seamans, Minette Seate, Chris Smalley, Josh Tonies, and Lucian Wintrich.

(total program: approx. 90 minutes)

Other upcoming films in the Pittsburgh Filmmakers at IUP Film Series include An Independent Portrait, November 11, and In Service, February 24, 2010.

They were recently quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

He will be engaged in March, before the official Big Read kick-off, for a week-long residency that will focus on poetry workshops in area high schools in preparation for the Walworth County Arts Council writing competition. Carvalho’s workshops will be geared towards high school males who are noted as a special concern in the NEA report Reading at Risk.

The article, published on the ten-year anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, gives a critical look at violence in schools.

Department of English

Elizabeth Maroski and Marrissa Michael are English majors, and Andrew Thompson and Ashley Talley are English minors.

IUP Department of English

The “Password Primeval” reading series provides a forum for local (and visiting) writers interested in showcasing original poetic compositions and offers a democratic space for those who prefer to recite selections from poets of their choosing. Over the past year, “I Speak the Password Primeval” has hosted several IUP student and faculty member readings, including Abdullah Aldagamseh, Majid Al-Khalaqi, Mais Al-Qutami, Angel Anderson, Pat Bizzaro, Mitch James, Krystal Hoffman, Tony Lang, Laurie Miller, Ken Sherwood, Justin Watts, and Jen Woolston. Future readers include Sean Carswell, Chauna Craig, Tracy Lassiter, Stacey Mascia, and local poet Jessica Jopp.

“I Speak the Password Primeval” is sponsored by the IUP English Department and convenes at the Commonplace Coffeehouse the last Friday of each month. Open mic signup is available at 6:45 p.m. Readings begin promptly at 7:00 p.m.

Check Password Primeval each month for updates on featured readers and scheduled readings.

If you would like to read your poetry (or the work of another poet) as a featured reader at “I Speak the Password Primeval,” please send an e-mail to e.j.carvalho@iup.edu.

Their panel was titled “Mapping Programmatic Composition Waters: Does Having a Teaching Vision Matter?” and was chaired by Dr. Kathy Sohn, a C&T distinguished alumnus.

Three C&T doctoral students teamed up with their faculty mentors in C&T’s Teaching Associate Program to report on the development of a teaching vision over the past two years. The student-faculty pairs were

• Dawn Fels and Ben Rafoth
• Mahmoud Amer and Gian Pagnucci
• Whitney Tudor and Sharon Deckert

The session opened with a theoretical framework and review of literature, followed by a description of how the vision was developed and implemented. The panelists also described the stengths and limitations of the vision and their goals for the future of the C&T Teaching Associate Program.

Teaching associates in the C&T Program are typically fiinished with doctoral course work and are working on their dissertations. The TA-ship offers them an opportunity to teach two or three classes during the year and to develop their teaching skills under the guidance of a head mentor, Dr. Sharon Deckert, and other faculty mentors.

The teaching vision for the program is based on three key values and practices: Community-oriented, Learner-centered, and Reflection-driven, or CLeaR.

On March 8, 2009, Stanley Fish in his New York Times opinion piece “Neoliberalism and Higher Education” addressed the latest Works and Days volume, Academic Freedom and Intellectual Activism in the Post-9/11 University. Fish cited Works and Days contributors Sophia A. McClennen, Henry Giroux, and Susan Searls Giroux. McClennen was also one of the speakers at the Works and Days “Academic Freedom after 9/11” symposium on February 23 that featured keynote speakers Cary Nelson and Ward Churchill.

On March 15, 2009, Stanley Fish again cited the Works and Days volume in the New York Times, this time in the opinion piece “To Boycott or Not to Boycott, That Is the Question.” In this article, Fish cited Grant Farrad’s essay “The Act of Politics Is to Divide” from the Works and Days volume.

Since Fish’s publicity, Henry Giroux has published a new essay in CounterPunch (“Making Democracy Matter: Academic Labor in Dark Times”), where he states that the Works and Days volume “may be the best collection yet published on intellectual activism and academic freedom.” Such endorsements follow Marc Bousquet’s proclamation in the on-line edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, that the Works and Days volume is “the best value in academic freedom short of joining the AAUP.” Similarly, in a recent letter to IUP administration, AAUP President Cary Nelson asserts “that the special issue of Works and Days devoted to academic freedom is one of the most important academic publications in recent years.”

SJ Miller also recently became cochair for the National Council Teachers of English Assembly for Research (NCTEAR). Together with University of Pittsburgh, NCTEAR will cohost a national research conference highlighting cutting-edge research in English in February 2010, to be held at the University of Pittsburgh.

She will be on sabbatical in Fall 2009 working on a manuscript about African American literature that focuses on white characters, known as white life literature.

The Weekend Writing Retreat aims to create positive perceptions of and attitudes about the writing/publishing process by providing an intensive focus on scholarship development for women and minority participants. Selected faculty members will work to advance a research project during the retreat and will participate in professional development workshops on topics such as increasing scholarly productivity, the publication process, developing a research agenda, and nurturing your scholarly voice.

The Weekend Writing Retreat proposal was initially envisioned for IUP and submitted as part of the Diversity and Social Equity grant competition, but was adopted by the State System office for implementation statewide. Two Weekend Writing Retreats will be held in Summer 2009, serving over fifty faculty members across the State System.

Keynote Panel:

Dr. Kevin Patrick (Geography)
“You’re Not Dead: You’re in Newark: A Sopranos Geography of New Jersey”

Mr. Matt Ferrence (English)
“The Written Redneck: Regional Image, National Identity”

Dr. Susan Gatti (English Emeritus)
“Leonard Hall and the Democratization of Public Space”

Dr. Stacy Wickers (Geography)
“‘A love affair with a pile of rock’: Landscape and Gender in the Writings of Edward Abbey”

The conference is sponsored by the English Department, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Graduate Program in Composition and TESOL, Graduate Program in Literature and Criticism, Women’s Studies Program, and Center for North Appalachian Studies.

For more information, contact Dr. Lea Masiello (English) or Dr. Cheryl Wilson (English).

Department of English

“‘You Jealous or Something? Huh? Oh, I Bet You’re So Jealous Sweetheart’: Vindicating Nancy Spungen From Patriarchal Historical Revisionism,” will appear in the special “Presence and Importance of Women in Punk Rock” issue of Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal during the 2009–10 academic year.

The conference took place on the Tamkang campus Nov. 30–Dec. 1, 2008, and opened with an address by the university president and a keynote speech by Dr. Ilona Leki.

Rafoth and Pagnucci were invited to speak at the conference by Dr. Peter I-min Huang, chair of the Tamkang University English Department. Excerpts from Rafoth and Pagnucci’s presentations appear below.

IUP enjoys an exchange program with Tamkang University and hosts a number of undergraduate Taiwanese students each year. Tamkang has a strong reputation in Asia for preparing excellent teachers of English. Each year, Tamkang students join IUP’s Graduate Program in Composition and TESOL.

An excerpt from the presentations by Rafoth and Pagnucci:

The training of teachers is a divided enterprise. On the one hand, we expect teachers to learn their subjects through formal and extensive study. On the other hand, we expect them to become good teachers without giving them much preparation. In other words, once teachers have mastered their subjects, we assume they are well qualified to teach, even though we all know from our experience as students that someone who knows a subject well is not necessarily good at teaching the subject to others. In the United States and other countries, curricula devoted to training teachers—the curriculum of pedagogy—is concentrated in Education Departments and methods courses. Even licensing and certification exams tend to be divided into separate sections for subject matter and for teaching.

The division between mastery of a subject and the ability to teach this subject is not a balanced division. Instead, mastery of the subject is considered by many people to be all that is necessary for someone to be a good teacher. We see this mistake occurring in many disciplines. We will turn our full attention to the field of Second Language Writing in a moment, but first, we want to make our point clear in a general way. In Mathematics, for example, it is sometimes assumed that knowledge of mathematical procedures and formulas is sufficient to teach the subject. And indeed, teachers are often hired on the basis of little more than their knowledge of mathematical procedures and formulas. In many countries, this practice occurs in most academic disciplines where newly minted Ph.D.s are hired with little or no formal training in pedagogy or curriculum development. The vast majority of doctoral curricula, including those that are closely aligned with the field of second language writing, require no course work at all in teaching methods or theories. This creates a problem in which people become experts in content matter knowledge without developing adequate pedagogical or curricular knowledge.

What we wish to offer here is a new vision of knowledge which can be used by academic leaders for whom the effective teaching of second language writing is a high priority—faculty members, department chairs, curriculum committees, program coordinators, and administrators. We want to explore a way of understanding knowledge itself which does not fall into the trap of subject isolation identified by Dewey so long ago. In this article, we describe three components of a comprehensive vision that brings coherence and clarity to the challenge of preparing to teach and learn second language writing. Each component refers to a domain of knowledge: Content Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge, and Curricular Knowledge. Altogether, these three domains answer the question, What must one know in order to become an effective teacher of second language writing?

Three English faculty members, Dr. Gloria Park, Dr. Lisya Seloni, and Dr. Lilia Savova, were joined by more than twenty-five Composition and TESOL students, presenting on various topics within the field of TESOL.

Faculty presentations included “Engaging ESOL Student in Autobiographical Narrative Writing” (Dr. Park), “Effective Use of Textbooks” (Dr. Savova), and “Academic Literacy Socialization of Multilingual Students” (Dr. Seloni).

Graduate students in the Composition and TESOL program led conversations on topics, including the incorporation of multimodal theme-sets to facilitate literacy development among English-based Creole-speaking students, developing English proficiency through e-mail exchanges, and reading practices within the EFL classroom, as well as many other topics.

Janet Pierce, president of Three Rivers TESOL, ELL coordinator for Franklin Regional School District, and IUP doctoral candidate, hailed this event as a complete success, partly due to the high level of participation from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

For additional information regarding the Three Rivers TESOL’s 2008 fall conference or membership, visit the Three Rivers TESOL website.

This presentation explored the emergence of Pittsburghese from the same Scots-Irish influence as the Appalachian dialect and how it has been addressed, traditionally, in the classroom. The presentation was followed by a roundtable discussion and brief reception where students and faculty were able to discuss other research they have been conducting.

Johnstone’s most recent publication, Discourse Analysis, has been highly acclaimed for its significant contributions to the linguistics field and is currently being used in the M.A. TESOL program at IUP.

Norris will present "Making Teaching Tangible: Reflections on a Preservice Teacher Education Project that Closes the Gap Between University and High School Spaces" at the 98th National Council of Teachers of English Convention in San Antonio, Texas on November 21, 2008.

Downing, of the Department of English, has written the Afterword to the soon-to-be-released double volume of Works and Days—Academic Freedom and Intellectual Activism in the Post-9/11 University. He will read a paper, “Teaching the World Bank University,” at the MLA annual convention in San Francisco in December 2008. The two most recent reviews of his book The Knowledge Contract: Politics and Paradigms in the Academic Workplace appeared this fall in College English (September 2008) and jac: Journal of Advanced Composition (September 2008).

Carvalho’s interview with 2007 Pulitzer poetry finalist Martín Espada, “A Branch on the Tree of Whitman: Martin Espada on the 150th Anniversary of Leaves of Grass,” currently appears as a reprint in the Summer 2008 print edition of Ed Folsom’s (U of Iowa) Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. In addition to his “The Day After Canticles” poem featured in Indiana University of Pennsylvania's print literary journal New Growth Arts Review no. 28, he has had the following accepted for publication: “In the grain of an oak, a horse” and “The lost chance for epiphany at a gas station in Connecticut,” which will appear in Billy Finnegan's . . . like this (2008-09); and “A bachelor takes his pound of pasta seriously,” “(Finding an Internet Video of) The 1971 ‘Crying Indian’ PSA Commercial,” and “Roach interlude in Leonard Hall (Indiana University of Pennsylvania English Department)” will appear in Viviparous Blenny (January 2009).

Earlier this year, Carvalho received a $1,200 honorarium for a poetry reading and lecture to promote his current book Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Fine Tooth Press, 2007) at SUNY’s North Country Community College. In June, he was selected as one of seventeen international students to participate in the Walt Whitman seminar Dortmund, where he also delivered a paper during the conference symposium. His forthcoming collection of poetry, “If the radiance of a thousand suns”: Songs of the American Hiroshima, is currently under contract with Six Bad Apples Press (forthcoming 2008–09), the release of which will be preceded by an audiobook collection, Chants from the Seven Cities. He is the curator of the local poetry reading series “I speak the password primeval” and founding editor of the newly announced creative and critical journal The Acknowledged Legislator.

“We compare undergraduate teacher education students at three Pennsylvania campuses to capture a range of student backgrounds and educational contexts,” said Park.

His essay “Bohemianism, The ‘Cultural Turn’ of the Avant-Garde, and Forgetting the Roma,” published in last summer’s issue of TDR, the leading performance-studies journal, received Honorable Mention in the Outstanding Article Award competition held annually by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the largest international organization dedicated to drama, theater, and performance studies.

This fall, Sell will present a paper on “Blackness, the Body, and Politics in 1960’s Drama and Performance” as part of West Virginia University’s Eberly Family Distinguished Lecture Series; will be a member of a seminar on right-wing avant-gardes to be held at the American Society for Theatre Research conference; and, in his role as editor of Theatre Survey’s Critical Stages column, will attend the University of California-Berkeley’s groundbreaking conference on African and Afro-Caribbean Performance.

This past spring, he gave a university lecture and public interview as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s biannual Lorraine Hansberry Project.
He is currently developing two anthologies: a collection of essays titled “Vectors of the Radical: Mobile Materialities, Performance, and the Avant-Garde” and a collection of non-European, non-U.S. drama titled “Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1950-2000: The Global Challenge,” which he is coediting with Mary Washington University’s James Harding.

This past spring, Sell was a member of the Franklin Regional School District Strategic Planning Committee, which drafted and successfully passed a six-year curricular plan that emphasizes science, diversity, foreign language, and world-knowledge education.

The funded project for which she will be an EL Fellow is in Malawi, where she will work at Mzuzu University as an instructor and teacher trainer focusing on English for writing and speaking. She will also deal with methodological issues related to student outcomes and academic assessment. Part of her professional duties includes the preparation of future Malawian secondary school teachers and the mentoring of future teacher-trainers. The funded project in Malawi runs from January to October 2009.

A doctoral candidate in Composition and TESOL at IUP, Thomas is working to complete her dissertation which deals with the professional identity development of minorities in higher education. In addition to being a teaching associate in the Department of English, she has also worked as an instructor and reading coordinator at the American Language Institute. In Spring 2007, she received the prestigious Scholars for the Dream Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the National Council of Teachers of English.

IUP, in cooperation with East Stroudsburg University and DeSales University, again offers its popular three-week Summer Study Abroad Program July 18 to August 9.

Participants will study in Oxford, England, with professors from accredited Pennsylvania universities. Classes and accommodations will be provided at St. Edmund Hall, one of Oxford's oldest colleges.

For more information go to the IUP Oxford Summer Study Program website at:  http://www.chss.iup.edu/oxford/.

Or contact Dr. Lynne Alvine in the IUP English Department at: lalvine@iup.edu.