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Dr. Nickoson gets a co-teacher for the day

Local Elmwood Middle School eighth grade honor student Ashley Anteau recently joined Dr. Lee Nickoson, Associate Professor and Rhetoric & Writing faculty, to experience life as an English professor for a day.  Ashley visited BGSU as part of Elmwood’s Job Shadow Day, an annual event in which students seek out hands-on learning experiences at a professional setting of their choice.  Ashley, an avid reader and prolific creative writer, is interested in pursuing a career as an English professor.  Before spending the day on campus, Ashley researched what it means to be an English major.  She also studied the English Department’s web site to learn more about what it means to teach English at BGSU.

For her day on campus, Ashley joined Dr. Lee Nickoson and kept busy by attending a doctoral dissertation workshop, touring the library and campus, and enjoying lunch in the union.  The highlight of the day, at least for Dr. Nickoson, was Ashley’s visit to Dr. Nickoson’s English 4840: Foundations of Writing class, where Ashley shared her experiences with writing.  Ashley shared her thoughts on effective writing pedagogy with the class, reminding the group that teachers of writing must respect their students and treat them as capable learners if they want those same students to engage and take risks.  Good advice for any future literacy educator to remember.

Ashley Anteau (third row, third person from the left) with her English 4840 colleagues for a day.

We look forward to Ashley enrolling at BGSU and majoring in English one day soon!

Creative Writing alum wins Iowa Short Fiction Award

Tessa Mellas (Creative Writing MFA, ’05), has won the prestigious Iowa Short Fiction Award.  Tessa worked for GSW as an instructor for three years and then went on to a doctoral program at the University of Cincinnati.  Her book, Lungs Full of Noise will appear in the fall of this year.

In announcing the award, the editors of the University of Iowa Press write:

In the thirteen stories of Lungs Full of Noise, Mellas explores a femininity that is magical, raw, and grotesque. Aghast at the failings of their bodies, this cast of misfit women and girls set out to remedy the misdirections of their lives in bold and reckless ways. Figure skaters screw skate blades into the bones of their feet to master elusive jumps. A divorcée steals the severed arm of her ex to reclaim the fragments of a dissolved marriage. But it is not only the characters who are in crisis; personal disasters mirror the dissolution of the natural world. The sky erupts with feathers as all the birds in a city crash into glass towers. In another story, all the color has drained from the sky and grandmothers believe the whiteness will blind everyone. Orringer says, “Mellas is a visionary, possessed of the ability to take us to worlds we’ve never imagined but that reveal our all-too-familiar hopes, fears, and vulnerabilities. Her stories are lyrical, laced with exquisite detail and image. They show their intelligence not only through their originality but also, and perhaps more importantly, through their sense of humor. Our children may baffle us, bodies may deceive us, our friends may confound us, but at least, these stories suggest, we are not alone. Tessa Mellas has made our human community richer with this deeply original and unforgettable book.”

Congratulations Tessa!

Theresa Williams profiled in campus newspaper

Click on the link to read a profile of our very own Theresa Williams in today’s edition of The BG News, BGSU’s student run campus newspaper.

Prairie Margins and Sigma Tau Delta present Music Melee

Undergraduate Literary magazine Prairie Margins and English Honor Society Sigma Tau Delta are hosting a “Music Melee”on Saturday January 26 in the Multi-Purpose Room of the Bowen-Thompson Student Union. Five local bands will perform: Will the Spacekid, The Bandulu Territory, Kitty Glitter, and Skaptamistic.

Advance tickets are $4 and can be purchased at the BTSU on Januar 23-24th from 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., and on the 25th from 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Tickets at the door for $5. The event starts at 7:00 p.m.

The African Boy-Soldier: Gender Damage

Painting by Daren Chambers

Narratives about boy-soldiers in Africa constitute a new globally popular genre.  Many of these narratives are written by former child-soldiers attempting to create meaning out of trauma.  However, they tend to reproduce an all-too-familiar set of ideas about Africa as the site of seemingly insoluble disorder and carnage.  The figure of the boy with the gun is shorthand for the failure of the modern African state. Novelists in Nigeria, a country that has not experienced recent warfare, have produced rich fictional accounts of the boy-soldier; these are also stories about damaging initiations into masculinity, in which sexual violation is central.

Dr. Brenna Munro, Associate Professor of English at the University of Miami, will give a lecture entitled “The African Boy-Soldier: Gender Damage,” which takes place at 7:00 p.m. tonight, Monday, November 5, 2012, in 314 BTSU. In her lecture, Dr. Munro will suggest that we must understand the emergence of this queer figure of anti-modernity in the context of the politics of sexuality and stigma, on a thoroughly globalized continent marked by the AIDS epidemic, the rise of rape as a weapon of war, and the emergence of both a new African gay rights discourse and new forms of homophobia. This lecture is free and open to the public. Faculty, graduates, and undergraduates welcome!

Dr, Munro’s publications include the book South Africa and the Dream of Love to Come: Queer Sexuality and the Struggle for Freedom, and articles on “Caster Semenya: Gods and Monsters” in Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies; “Queer Family Romance: Writing the ‘New’ South Africa in the 1990s” in GLQ;  “Letters Lost at Sea: Edwidge Danticat and Orality” in Echoes of the Haitian Revolution 1804-2004; and “Queer Futures: The Coming-Out Novel in South Africa” in  African Literature: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

Mid-American Review’s 2012 Fineline Competition for Prose Poems, Short Shorts, and Anything In Between!

More news from outgoing Mid-American Review editor Mike Czyzniejewski (now teaching at Missouri State University).

Congratulations to Diane Seuss of Kalamazoo, Michigan, for being selected as first-prize winner in Mid-American Review‘s 2012 Fineline Competition for Prose Poems, Short Shorts, and Anything In Between! Judge Amelia Gray selected Seuss’ piece “I emptied my little wishing well of its emptiness” out of nearly 1,000 entries. The work will appear in MAR’s forthcoming fall issue, coming soon!

Congratulations Diane (and Mike)!

More alumni news . . .

Julia Strange (English ’03) has been appointed Director of Programs and Policy at DC-based Collective Action for Safe Spaces, which is a grassroots organization aiming to empower Washingtonians to build a community free from public sexual harassment and assault. CASS works via online activism, public policy and advocacy, community workshops, and direct services.

Congratulations Julia!

Alumni news

Click here to read writer Seth Fried‘s piece in the latest New Yorker magazine. Seth is a 2009 graduate of the Department, with a minor in Creative Writing. You can visit his blog here.

Gender, Family, and Fear: The Case of Contagion

 

Please join the BGSU Women’s Center this Friday, April 6th, from 1:30-3:00 p.m. for a talk by Associate Professor of English Dr. Bill Albertini, entitled “Gender, Family, and Fear: The Case of Contagion.”

Popular representations of contagious disease have historically focused on the danger posed by bodies coming into contact, especially those bodies tagged as public health problems through markers of race or ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, class, and gender, such as the famous case of “Typhoid Mary.” Contagious disease is popularly understood as a spreading through physical contact and is thus treated as something to be investigated, tracked, blocked from transmission, and inoculated against. However, stories of contagion inevitably focus not just on disease transmission, but emotional fallout, especially fear and grief. Bill’s talk examines recent representations of contagious disease—especially the 2011 film Contagion—and pays special attention to the film’s use of gender and the heterosexual family to explore contagion.

Stephannie Gearhart, BGSU Master Teacher, brings Shakespeare to life for wary students

Our very own Dr. Stephannie Gearhart, Assistant Professor of English, has been awarded the 2012 Master Teacher Award!

Here is BGSU’s press release announcing the honor:

A faculty member with an infectious passion for British literature has been chosen by the students as the 2012 Master Teacher. Dr. Stephannie Gearhart, an assistant professor of English, has taught at Bowling Green State University for six years, sharing her love of Shakespeare and inspiring students to tackle difficult texts to find the meaning within.

Along with the admiration of her many students, Gearhart received a $1,000 check, presented by the Student Alumni Connection at the Faculty Recognition Reception March 29. The Master Teacher is the highest teaching award given by the University because students select the recipient.

In today’s fast-paced, technology-saturated environment, it might come as a surprise that students would choose a professor whose work is so firmly rooted in the past, but Gearhart bridges the divide of time and takes her students with her.

“Stephannie is one of the most caring and knowledgeable teachers I have ever met,” wrote nominator Kala Zink. “She loves the subject she teaches and is so passionate about what she’s learning that she shows that through her teaching. There is never a dull moment or boring subject when Stephannie is teaching. She also loves to teach — you can see that by just sitting in one small section of class. I loved going to her class.”

Making Shakespeare come alive seems to be her specialty. Wrote nominator Maggie Long, “She is a dedicated educator who tries her best to make sure her students are engaged in the material and understand the real world applicability of what many students find to be a dense and boring subject.”

“Stephannie is an amazing professor and deserves this more than anyone I know,” Zink said.

In her own research, Gearhart is especially interested in age relations in early modern English literature and culture and is at work on a book about drama and generational conflicts in Shakespeare’s England.

Gearhart received her bachelor’s degree from BGSU and her master’s and doctorate from Lehigh University, all in English.

Congratulations Stephannie!