mjr100 – Page 5 – Department of English

November 19, 2019mjr100 No Comments

Miscellany – issue 5 – fall 2010

September

MATC student Vita Haake gave birth on August 27 to Evelina Michelle (Evie). Evie was 7lbs 4.5oz and 20”long. Vita and Evie are both doing ne.

MATC alumna Sarah McNeely and husband Jeremy Bagley proudly announced the birth of Nora Kathryn McNeely-Bagley on ursday, July 29. Sarah, in the doctoral program at TCU, baby, and husband are all doing well.

e current issue of Technical Communication Quarterly includes an article co-authored by Dave Yeats, Ph.D., who is teaching a course in Project Management with the MATC program this fall. e article, “Mapping Technical and Professional Communication: A Summary and Survey of Academic Locations for Programs,” is written by Yeats and Isabelle ompson. Yeats, who has a doctorate in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech and has taught at Auburn University, is a partner in Sentier Strategic Resources in Austin, which does usability studies.

Tim’ O’Brien’s e ings ey Carried has been published by Houghton Mi in Harcourt in a special twentieth-anniversary hardback edition. Designated by e New York Times as a Book of the Century, e ings ey Carried now has more than two million copies in print.

Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler’s “ e First ‘Royal’: Charles I as Celebrity” will appear in the October 2011 issue of PMLA.

Michelle Detorie, MFA poetry graduate and former TA and KAP House Writer-in-Residence, has been hired to coordinate the Writing Center at Santa Barbara City College in California, where she had been working as an adjunct for several years.

Casie Moreland, Shana Hamid, Kristin “Cheyenne” Riggs (all MARC students), and Octavio Pimentel comprise the panel, “Ya Basta Con el Racismo!: Time to Recognize the OTHERS’ Space,” which has been accepted for the 2011 College Composition and Communication Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

e audio version of Tom Grimes’ Mentor: A Memoir has been published by Audible Books (read by the author). e book, published in August by Tin House Books, has been reviewed in e New York Times, e Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, e San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. Michael Dirda, reviewing for the Post, writes, “From now on, anyone who dreams of becoming a novelist will need to read Tom Grimes’s brutally honest and wonderful Mentor.”

Stacy Muszynski, MFA ction graduate and former TA, is beginning a new job as a technical writer for Dell.

Priscilla Leder has published Seeds of Change: Critical Essays on Barbara Kingsolver (University of Tennessee Press). is edited collection, with an introduction and essay by Priscilla, contains pieces by Robin Cohen, Susan Hanson, and MFA poetry graduate Meagan Evans.

Through Texas State’s program to recognize influential faculty, Graeme Wend-Walker received several appreciation letters from students graduating in May.

Debra Monroe’s On the Outskirts of Normal: Forging a Family against the Grain, published in May by SMU Press, has been cited or reviewed by People, Vanity Fair, Salon, O: the Oprah Magazine, and several national newspapers. Chitra Divakaruni, reviewing for the Houston Chronicle, observes that the book is “infused with humor and compassion, by turns hilarious and heartbreaking.”

In May, MATC student Susan Rauch presented “Apocalypse Now Y1K: What a Revelation! A comparative-critical literary analysis of Anglo-Saxon text disguised as New Testament biblical study” at the International Congress in Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. is past July she presented “Christiana: e Reincarnation of Margery or Bridget? Discerning authorship and characterization in e Pilgrim’s Progress: Part Two” at the Sixth International Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, held at Keele University in England. At the October meeting
of the Rocky Mountain MLA, she’ll read “Where the Boys (and Girls) Are: From the Pastons’ to Mulcaster’s English.”

Nelly Rosario participated in the “(Black) Movements: Poetics and Praxis” Conference, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia July 2010 and sponsored by Callaloo. In addition, Nelly is the recipient of the 2010 Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral (ACDM) Award, a grant created by author Sandra Cisneros to support Texas writers whose works show exceptional merit and who exhibit both extraordinary talent and profound commitment to the craft of writing.

Pinfan Zhu and co-author and Kirk St. Amant published “An Application of Robert Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction to the Teaching of Website Localization” in a recent issue of the Journal of Technical Writing & Technical Communication. Pinfan also published “Problematic Graphics at A ect International Business” in the Journal for Global Business Education.

Ryan Bayless’ poem, “ e Forest’s Daughter,” appears in the current issue of Hawk & Whippoorwill.

MFA ction graduate Scott Blackwood’s debut novel, We Agreed to Meet Just Here, was a nalist for the 2010 PEN/USA ction award.

Suzanne Jamir – 2004 MFA ction graduate, former TA, and PhD in English from Florida State University – is now teaching at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU).

In August, Kendall Klym, 2003 MFA ction graduate and former TA, completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

e Southern Review has accepted Tomas Morin’s poem “Carita Romana” for publication in
a special Americana feature next Spring. In addition, Tomas was chosen as the winner of the Boulevard 2010 Emerging Poets Contest; the prize is $1,000 and publication in the Spring 2011 issue of all three poems in his winning entry.

Twister Marquiss’ photo portfolio, “Wyoming, Summer 2010,” will be featured in an upcoming issue of Narrative Magazine. e collection includes 13 images of northeastern Wyoming ranchlands.

William Jensen, MFA ction student, has just had his rst two stories accepted: “A Voice in the Wilderness” by e Warehouse, and “Women and Children” by New Plains Review.

Tom Grimes’ Mentor: A Memoir has been selected as a featured memoir by Apple’s iBooks store and as a recommended book by McSweeny’s. He will be interviewed this fall for the “Conversations with the Iowa Writers Workshop” series, and an interview with him will appear in a forthcoming issue of e Associated Writing Program’s Writer’s Chronicle.

MFA poetry student Scot Briggs has two poems – “Not for Identi cation” and “Target Practice” – in the current issue of Blood Orange Review.

Nancy Wilson’s interview with Dr. Sylvia M. Casillas Olivieri, Director of the Reading and Writing Center at the University of Turabo in Puerto Rico, will appear in the next issue of Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. e interview was conducted and will be published in both Spanish and English.

Graeme Wend-Walker recently completed Allies training, joining a number of English Department faculty and sta who have participated in the workshops.

A panel organized by Octavio Pimentel for the 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication, comprised of three graduate students from the MARC program, has been

selected as a “featured panel” for the convention next March. is designation is rare, perhaps unprecedented, for a panel consisting of three Master’s students from a single school. It will bring national exposure to the MARC.

In its summer issue, Poetry Quarterly will publish two poems by MFA poetry student Jason Coates: “Void” and “Symbols for Loss and the Intangible.”

Two more photo portfolios by Twister Marquiss have been selected to appear in Narrative Magazine. ese second and third portfolios – “Skies” and “Spaces,” both from the Wyoming, Summer 2010 collection – will appear in issues over the next year.

e September 30 University Star o ered a front-page article on the Writing Center’s rst speaker in its “Writing Beyond the University” series – Dan Quinn, communications director with the Texas Freedom Network.

Ryan Bayless’ poem, “Gulf Oil Spill: Day Negative One,” was recently published in Poets for Living Waters, a “poetry action” website created in response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Another of Ryan’s poems, “At the Exact Moment the Car Slammed into Me,” will appear in the October issue of Right Hand Pointing.

Sonya Kraus, from the O ce of the Vice President for Student A airs, reports that the following faculty received letters of appreciation from students graduating this past summer: Libby Allison, Deb Balzhiser, Rebecca Bell-Metereau, John Blair, Paul Cohen, Robin Cohen, Pat Evans, Nancy Grayson, Chad Hammett, Susan Hanson, Elvin Holt, Rebecca Jackson, Caroline Jones, Priscilla Leder, Dan Lochman, Patty Margerison, Debra Monroe, Susan Morrison, Marilynn Olson, Kathleen Peirce, Octavio Pimentel, Jon Marc Smith, Graeme Wend-Walker, Nancy Wilson, Steve Wilson and Pinfan Zhu.

MFA student Colin Pope’s poem “Doggy Heaven” appears in the current issue of Slate. October

Nancy Wilson notes that William Pate, MARC student, is volunteering as Coordinator of the Writing Center’s “Writing Beyond the University” series. e rst speaker – Dan Quinn from the Texas Freedom Network – did an exceptional job and was very well received by the students. e next speaker is Sam Martin, Director of content strategy at frog design and editor-in-chief of frog’s print magazine design mind. He’ll be speaking on October 21 at 4:00 P.M., in FH G04. e third and nal speaker in the series will be named soon.

e Summer 2010 issue of Modern Language Studies contains Rob Tally’s book review of editor David Damrosch’s Teaching World Literature (MLA 2009). Rob’s essay, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Orcs: Simple Humanity in Tolkien’s Inhuman Creatures” will appear in the Fall / Winter issue of Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Mythopoeic Literature.

Southwestern American Literature is pleased to announce several major accolades, both for the journal and its writers. First, Best of the West 2010 includes two stories published in SAL in the last year: “Cinéma Vérité” by John Blanchard is a featured piece, and “Wildlife Rehabilitation” by Lowell Mick White is listed under “Other Notable Western Stories of the Year.” ( e New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and Glimmer Train were among the few other journals/magazines with two or more pieces listed). Poet Sherwin Bitsui, whose work appeared in the special poetry issue of SAL last year, has been named winner of the 2010 PEN Open Book Award; the poems published in SAL are part of his winning collection, Flood Song. And Texas State MFA ction graduate Anna Green’s story “Hohokam,” which appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of SAL, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Green will be reading the story at the Western Literature Association’s national conference in Prescott, Arizona, later this month (SAL assistant editor Twister Marquiss and editorial advisor John Dean will be appearing on that panel as well).

A review of Tom Grimes’ Mentor: A Memoir appeared in the October 12 Austin-American Statesman. About the book, reviewer Avis Shivani wrote “Grimes has perhaps written a memoir that exceeds its own bounds, delivering more than he set out to write. at’s a very good thing to say about any book.”

Deb Balzhiser and Becky Jackson will each present papers on their panel, “Mapping Contested Spaces for the Undergraduate Major in Writing and Rhetoric,” at the 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Atlanta, GA.

Congratulations to ction graduate Amelia Gray, whose second work of ction, Museums of the Weird, was published this month and reviewed in e New York Times Book Review.

Steve Wilson’s essay “Journeys Westward: e Complicated Irish West in Somerville & Ross’ ‘Matchbox’ and ‘An Irish Problem’” will appear in an upcoming issue of CEA Critic.

Marc Watkins is now a Contributing Editor at Boulevard. He also has a new story published in the online edition of Dark Sky Magazine.

Ben Engel’s story “In the Forest” was published in the October Queer-themed issue of Pank. MFA ction graduate Owen Egerton’s MFA thesis novel, e Book of Harold, the Illegitimate

Son of God, has been published in a handsome hardbound edition by Dalton Publishing.

On October 19, Rob Tally was featured as one of the “Texas State Faces” on the University’s blog. e feature, entitled “Professor pioneers geocritical approach for studying literature,” can be read here: http://txstateu.wordpress.com/.

Former Administrative Assistant and MA Literature graduate Leslie Allen has a new job in Miami, where she and her daughters moved after Leslie left her position in the English Department. Leslie is now executive assistant to the Director of Marketing and Advertising for Miami Today. Her job involves general administrative duties and a great deal of writing and editing.

November

MATC student Susan Davey has been awarded Sta Educational Development Leave for Spring 2011. e program pays full tuition and reduces a semester’s weekly work hours for a sta member to help her/him complete coursework.

Robin Cohen’s article, “Landscape, Story, and Time as Elements of Reality in Silko’s ‘Yellow Woman,’” from the fall 1995 issue of Weber: e Contemporary West, will be reprinted in the new edition of Short Story Criticism, a reference work published by the Gale Group.

On October 28th, Tom Grimes read from his memoir, Mentor, as part of the “Live from Prairie Lights” series. e reading was streamed live from Iowa City via Iowa Public Radio.

MA Literature graduate Elizabeth Welch has been hired the teach composition courses next spring at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina.

John Blair’s poems, “Oleander,” “Winter Storm, New Orleans” and “ e Dogs of Grass,” were accepted for the next edition of e Southern Poetry Anthology; and his poem, “ e Capillary Attraction of Planetary Gravities,” was accepted for the special “Americana” issue of the Southern Review. In addition, John won the St. Petersburg Review’s annual poetry prize ($1000 & publication) for his poem “ e Yellow Christ.”

MFA graduate Trey Moody’s chapbook, Climate Reply, was just published by New Michigan Press. Dan and Alice Lochman are grandparents. Baby Ivy Alice Lochman was born in Austin November 2 to Michael and Kelly Lochman. Ivy weighed in at 9 lb, 5oz and measured 21.”

MATC alumna and former MATC Graduate Assistant Melanie (“Lonie”) McMichael has completed her Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University.

Tomas Morin’s two poems, “ e Grave of the Left Hand” and “Pagliacci,” appear in the fall issue of the on-line journal Cerise. In addition, Tomas’ interview with poet Robin Ekiss is published in the current issue of Boxcar Poetry Review.

Paul Cohen was chosen as a Favorite Professor by the Texas State chapter of Alpha Chi National College Honor Society.

MA Literature student Heather Anastasiu has just signed with an agent from Inkwell Management for her young adult novel, Glitch.

“Drunk At Dodge City On Karaoke Night Watching Him Play Pool,” a poem by MFA poetry student John Fry, appears in the October 2010 issue of Breadcrumb Scabs: a poetry magazine this spring; the poem was chosen as the Editor’s Pick for the October issue. In addition, St. Sebastian Review has accepted his poems “On e Nature Of ” and “Like A Partial Lunar Eclipse In February” for their inaugural issue.

MFA ction graduate Bob Pomeroy has been hired as a paralegal by the Legal Aid Society of New York.

MATC alumna Teri Speece and her husband Jason, of San Antonio, welcomed their new baby boy, Dylan Richard Speece, on Oct. 13, 2010.

The latest issue of Front Porch, edited by MFA students, is now online.

MFA ction student Gwynne Middleton reports that the new issue of Precipitate is online. Gwynne co-edits the journal, and is assisted by a number of MFA students, some of whom also contributed reviews to the current issue.

Steve Wilson’s poem, “L’Hotel des Grands Hommes,” will appear in Classi eds: An Anthology of Prose Poems, forthcoming in 2011.

e November 17 Texas State University blog o ers a story about the “Teaching Poetry to Children” Honors course taught by MFA poetry graduate and Associate Director of the Honors Program Diann McCabe. e blog includes comments from several of the undergraduate students, including English major Valerie Vera, who are enrolled in the course and have served as visiting poetry teachers at Crockett Elementary this semester. Diann was recently inducted into the San Marcos Women’s Hall of Fame for her many contribution to the community.

December

e Hu ngton Post lists Front Porch, the online literary journal edited by Texas State MFA students, among the top ve online literary journals. In addition to the article ranking us among the top 15, a readers’ poll has us ranked as number 1.

Tom Grimes’ novel City of God has been reissued by Narrative Library in POD (Print On Demand) hardcover, POD softcover (in January), iBook, Kindle, and other e-book formats.

MA Literature student Sarah Youree has just published an article in the online journal Teaching American Literature: A Journal of eory and Practice. Adapted from a chapter in her recent thesis (Sarah will graduate this December), Sarah’s essay (“’ e Immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored’: Exploring the Ocean as Heterotopia in Moby-Dick”) can be found here.

Oscar Houck, a student in Susan Hanson’s ENG 3311 class, has just published an essay written for Susan’s class on the Cell 2 Soul: e Humane Health Care Blog, published by the online journal Cell 2 Soul.

Kristi Rickman, Student Services Coordinator at the Round Rock Higher Education Center,
wrote Writing Center Director Nancy Wilson to praise Lisa Tomacek-Bias’ work as Coordinator
of the Writing Center’s Round Rock branch: “I just wanted to write a quick note about Lisa. Our students here are constantly expressing how wonderful she is to work with. She is very patient, thorough, and can explain concepts in a way that our students really grasp the feedback. ank you so much for sharing her teaching and tutoring talents with the RR students.”

Ben Engel, a recent graduate of the MFA program in poetry who was an adjunct lecturer in the English Department, has accepted a job in Minneapolis serving as an ELA specialist for Data Recognition Corporation, a publishing company specializing in education materials.

Jaime Mejia has been appointed to the Editorial Board of College Composition and Communication.

Kristin “Cheyenne” Riggs (MARC student) and Sonia Arellano (MA Literature) have been selected as two of ten recipients, chosen nationally, of the 2011 Scholars for the Dream Travel Awards
to attend the College Composition and Communication Conference in Atlanta, Georgia this upcoming spring.

e November 23rd edition of the Texas State blog highlighted Steve Wilson’s work as Campus Representative for the Fulbright Program.

Debra Monroe’s book On the Outskirts of Normal is featured in the 2010 Barnes & Noble Review “Year’s Best Reading.” Amy Benfer writes that the book “transmutes [an] everyday struggle into something approaching inspiration.”

Octavio Pimentel will present at e Southwest Council of Latin American Studies (SCOLAS) conference, to be held in Puerto Rico next spring.

Recent MFA poetry graduate Heather Robinson has accepted an o er from Trofholz Technologies Inc., for whom she will teach ESL full-time at the Defense Language Institute, Lackland AFB, in San Antonio.

A short story by MFA ction student Ali Haider, “Ten-Pin Knockdown in Hurricane Alley,” will appear in the next edition of Mary Magazine, an online journal based out of St. Mary’s College of California.

English major Valerie Vera has been selected to serve as a 2011 Fellow in the Moreno/Rangel Legislative Leadership Program. Moreno/Rangel Interns are placed with a member of the Texas House of Representatives and work full-time during the legislative session as paid policy interns alongside experienced Legislative sta . Valerie’s internship runs for the entire Legislative session: January 11 through May 30. is is an extraordinary honor for Valerie. We are proud to claim her as an English major.

Tom Grimes’ Mentor: A Memoir has been chosen as a “Best Winter Reading Selection” by American University Radio. e book also was selected as a “Best Non ction Book of 2010” by e Washington Post.

Aaron Deutsch had two poems accepted by Willows Wept Review for their January issue: “ is Witch’s Glass” and “A Compliment Under Porch Light.”

MFA ction student Collin Bost’s “Alternative Education,” the title story for his MFA thesis, will be published in the Spring/Summer issue of Quarterly West.

Graeme Wend-Walker’s article “ e Inexplicable Moon and the Postsecular Moment: e Apollo Program in Two Picturebooks” has been selected for publication in Children’s Literature.

November 18, 2019mjr100 No Comments

Studying Abroad While Earning English Credit

Every summer, hundreds of Texas State students apply for passports, pack their bags, and leave the U.S. to study in foreign countries that become their homes and classrooms for several weeks. Over the past two summers, I, Zane Altemus, Gabriella Cusato, and Gloria Russell were among the many students from the English Department who took part in Study Abroad programs while earning credit for courses at Texas State.

Zane (an English and Mass Communication double major) and Gabriella (a Mass Communication major and English minor) studied English in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain this past summer as part of the Texas State in Spain program, directed by Dr. Edna Rehbein. Zane says he embarked on his study abroad trip because “everything fell into place” and he was able to cover costs with grants and scholarships available through the university. He and Gabriella enrolled in Studies in World Literature (ENG 3341) and The Interdisciplinary Approach to Literature (ENG 3343) to satisfy two Advanced English requirements. However, while the trip allowed Zane to satisfy some important degree requirements, he soon found himself captivated by the Spanish culture and people. Zane recounts how, one afternoon, following a long walk outside of Barcelona, he and his fellow students were entranced by the country’s scenery. Planning to take pictures at the base of a cliff outside the city, Zane’s group wandered upon a soccer game played by local children and they stopped to watch. “It was one of the more human moments of the trip,” he explains. Zane’s trip offered him the unique opportunity of interacting with the culture and places he was studying in the classroom, one of the primary benefits of participating in a study abroad program.

Aiming to “see a new piece of the world, experience a new culture and broaden [her] perspective,” Gabriella was also able to explore the world by participating in the Texas State in Spain program. Noting she wanted to “challenge [her]self to grow and adapt in a new environment,” she describes the first-hand experiences she had while immersed in Spain’s cultural traditions: “an incredible flamenco show, original Picasso paintings, centuries-old architecture,” as well as “visiting an old bullfighting ring in Madrid and learning how important the tradition of bullfighting is to the Spanish people.” She treasures her experiences abroad, finding that “every bit of Spain is dripping with passion.”

This passion and history also influenced recent graduate Gloria Russell, who completed her degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing in 2018. Gloria participated in two study abroad programs during her time at Texas State: the Texas State in Ireland and Texas State in Canterbury programs. Gloria took Anthropology courses in the latter program to support her degree requirements; the Texas State in Canterbury program currently offers a wide range of Anthropology and Social Work courses taught by Ms. Stacy McGee and Dr. Jon McGee. Gloria remembers particularly the moment France won the 2018 FIFA World Cup. On a weekend trip to Paris to explore the catacombs below the city, Gloria found herself exiting this historic underground space to the lively streets of Paris, where French flags hung from the windows above as crowds gathered for an impromptu parade celebrating the French victory. Gloria witnessed the parade unfold on the streets, meeting friends and returning a celebratory “Viva France!” to the locals she passed. Thinking back on that moment, she explains that she “didn’t speak French, but [she] didn’t have to.”

Gloria also had the opportunity to participate in the Texas State in Ireland program, the longest-running Study Abroad English program in the English Department. Spending five weeks in Ireland’s second largest city, Cork, students such as Gloria and myself studied Irish Literature (ENG 3341) and Mythology (ENG 3329), taught by Mr. Steve Wilson and Dr. Nancy Wilson. While exploring a country steeped in centuries-old mythology, students in this program investigate the mythological foundations that still influence the architecture, landscape, agriculture, and belief systems of Ireland. During my time in Ireland, I was often surprised and humbled by my introduction to the humorous and kind Irish people whose fictional counterparts appeared in the literature I studied during the program, as well as on my daily walks down Western Road toward the University College-Cork campus and the city. My own curiosity had me on a bus or train almost every spare moment as I went off to explore nearby towns and cultural sites. My favorite of these adventures was to the small town of Ballyvourney, where, after a bus ride to the west of County Cork followed by a short hike, I discovered the Holy Well and Monastic Site of St. Gobnait, a medieval Irish saint. This remarkable experience supported my discussion of St. Gobnait and her mythological representation as a goddess in the paper I completed as part of my coursework.

Many Summer 2020 Study Abroad programs, like the ones highlighted above, are accepting applications now for students interested in fulfilling degree requirements abroad. Among these is a new program that caters to students looking for English courses in study abroad: Texas State in Merida. Based in Mexico, the program offers Mexican Translation in Literature (ENG 3341) and Travel Writing (ENG 3311), in which students will evaluate translated Mexican literature, from pre-indigenous stories to 20th century poetry; and complete a travel blog. Program Director Dr. Laura Ellis-Lai explains that the location is the true standout of this program though, describing the program’s highlights as “living with local families in homestays, swimming in cenotes, visiting Mayan pyramids, going to the beach, visiting museums, enjoying traditional siestas in hammocks, and reading some of the best authors from the rich literary landscape of Mexico.”

To obtain more information about the Texas State in Spain, Texas State in Canterbury, Texas State in Ireland, and Texas State in Mexico programs, or others that will support English degree requirements, students should attend the upcoming Education Abroad Fair on October 30th. They can also contact the directors of the various programs, which can be found at the Education Abroad website.

— Kennedy Farrell, English major

November 18, 2019mjr100 No Comments

News – Special Topics

From exploring texts about Chicana/o border ballads to evaluating the Blues as an influence on African-American literature, each semester professors in the Texas State English Department teach a broad range of Special Topics Advanced English courses that inspire student curiosity and excitement. These courses reflect the diversity of student interests at Texas State, as well as the talents and scholarly interests of the faculty who create them. Many of these courses are offered only once, providing students unique experiences to examine timely, intriguing topics as part of their college educations. Among the many Special Topics courses on offer for the upcoming Spring 2020 semester are Dr. Eric Leake’s course on “The Rhetoric of the Emotions” (ENG 3318, Group D), Dr. Elvin Holt’s single-author course on African-American writer August Wilson (ENG 3341, Group B), Dr. Sara Ramirez’s “Chicana/o Myth” course (ENG 3329, Group B), and Mr. Steve Wilson’s course on “The Literature of Resistance” (ENG 3340, Group B).

Students taking Dr. Leake’s course, “The Rhetoric of the Emotions,” will investigate representations of emotion in writing from “rhetorical, cultural, social, and embodied perspectives.” Their multidisciplinary study of the “theories of emotion and how emotions function rhetorically in everyday texts, experiences, and relations” will culminate in a personal journaling project, in which students will write about events from their own lives. In another project, students will select an emotion and research “the rhetorical significance of that particular emotion” in literature, scholarship, and their lives. Together, these projects will allow students to share and evaluate their own experiences with emotion, promising an exciting intersection between literary scholarship and personal experience.

Dr. Holt’s “August Wilson” course will consider Wilson’s undeniable influence on African-American literature, as well as the social impact of Wilson’s work and his treatment of race and history. According to Dr. Holt, students will discuss the “four B’s’ … Romare Bearden (collages), Amiri Baraka (black nationalism), Jorge Luis Borges (magical realism), and the blues (creative aesthetic),” each offering a lens through which to examine Wilson’s plays and highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the course. Not only will students enrolled in this course study Wilson’s creative and cultural influence, but they also will perform a scene from one of the playwright’s works as part of their course project – encouraging them to become both young literary scholars and artists themselves.

Dr. Ramirez’s course on Chicana/o myth will investigate important elements of Chicana/o mythological narratives, beginning with “Aztlán, the mythical homeland, and its characterization in various cultural productions.” Students also will consider several deities from the Nahua and Mayan mythological pantheons that offer a framework for discussing Feminist Chicana mythology. Transported to mythologized border spaces, students will focus on assigned texts – Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Virginia Grise’s blu, and Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman – that will instruct their study of border ballads as they relate to Feminist Chicana myth. Dr. Ramirez notes that the course is interdisciplinary in its examination of mythological adaptation, addressing, in particular, “the three mothers known in Chicana/o mythology: la Llorona, la Malinche, and Guadalupe.”

Students enrolling in Mr. Wilson’s course on “The Literature of Resistance” may find themselves similarly transported as they evaluate “the complicated relationship between aesthetics and politics” in texts portraying resistance by and reactions to oppressed groups. The required texts address such topics as gender, sexuality, race, and class-based oppression – from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, set in a dystopian future; to Helena Viramontes’ Under the Feet of Jesus, set in California and exploring the lives of Latin-American migrant workers. Discussing methods of resistance and the characterization of this resistance in literature will allow students to draw conclusions about the social impact of politicized texts that influence a variety of audiences and strive for social reform.

The courses highlighted above are only a few of the Special Topics courses available during the Spring 2020 semester. The full list of Spring 2020 Special Topics courses, as well as course descriptions for all Spring 2020 Advanced English classes, are available at the English Department website. These documents provide course codes, CRN, descriptions, names of faculty, and the degree requirement each course satisfies. Registration begins October 22, 2019.

-Kennedy Farrell, English major

November 18, 2019mjr100 No Comments

Dr. Victoria Smith – English Department Chair

Sept. 23rd, 2019

A portrait of Dr. Victoria Smith in a blue jacket

Dr. Victoria Smith, who became Chair of the English Department this Fall, has always loved traveling and exploring new places. During the senior year of her undergraduate studies, she had the opportunity to study abroad in Greece, and this passion for immersing herself in another culture only grew. Each morning she woke up in her apartment on Democritus Street, the smell of warm bread filling the air as it wafted up from the bakery below. On Thursdays, beginning in the early hours of the morning, this aroma scented the bustle of vendors setting up their stalls for the weekly street market. Excitement on the street grew equally with anticipation for the market and the desire to socialize, which is characteristic of the very expressive Greek people. Dr. Smith reflects on this formative experience by noting that “being immersed in that culture and being able to travel and learn about it was one of the best experiences of my life.”

Dr. Smith describes herself as an “army brat.” Traveling from France, to Italy, to Washington DC, to New Orleans, she had no choice but to adapt to the different places and cultures she encountered. Exploring the world during her adolescence taught her an invaluable lesson that shaped both her current outlook on the people around her and her career path. Still a lover of exploring, Dr. Smith finds joy in traveling because “it reminds [her] that people are different.”

She carried this important lesson forward as she pursued her college education, realizing that cultural differences don’t make one group better or worse than another. Dr. Smith earned a Bachelor’s degree in English from Pomona College; a Master’s degree in English from the University of Texas-Austin, with a minor in Radio-Television-Film; and a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from the University of California-Santa Cruz. While pursuing her Ph.D., she explored how Modernist female authors write about loss. She investigated the social traditions that instruct this demographic’s characterization of loss as a consciousness represented in their writing, aiming to prove that women writers internalize society’s limitations of their gender and write about loss in a melancholic way.

Dr. Smith’s respect for cultural differences also informs her current scholarship and teaching. In “The Heterotopias of Todd Haynes: Creating Space for Same Sex Desire in Carol,” she analyzes the film employing Foucault’s concept of “other space,” exploring how a queer counterspace is created through the film’s “framings, textures, color, and spatial relations.” In another project, “Highways of Desolation: The Road and Trash in Boys Don’t Cry and Monster,” she considers how familiar tropes and genres such as melodrama and the road movie make characters accessible to an audience. Dr. Smith explains that this project evaluated how speaking to an audience’s understanding of social class and norms allows the characters’ transgressions to “draw attention to the larger hierarchical structures of power in American society.” Scholarly projects in Film Studies and Gender Studies that examine portrayals of sexuality and race suggest Dr. Smith’s varied interests, which she also incorporates into her English classes such as her Fall 2019 course on Mainstream Queer Film.

Dr. Smith laments that she will miss teaching as often as she’d like now that she has taken on the administrative responsibilities of Department Chair. “I love teaching, so [becoming Chair] was never a goal of mine,” Dr. Smith explains, reflecting on her new position. Even so, she hopes her new role will allow her to continue promoting diversity; over the next two years, she plans to work with her colleagues in the English Department to revise the English major curriculum – “to improve the curriculum, change it, make it more reflective of what student needs are and how students have changed.” Dr. Smith explains the English major “hasn’t been changed in twenty-one years,” and she hopes a new curriculum will formalize the offering of classes that promote diversity – classes often taught in the English Department but under the current curriculum only scheduled as “topics courses.” Such courses reflect the rich complexity of the English Department and Texas State University as a whole, diversity of the University, and the varied interests of its students and faculty.

Kennedy Farrell, English major

November 18, 2019mjr100 No Comments

Archiving Civil Rights Movements

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a core component of the Voting Rights Act, weakening the federal government’s oversight of voting rights. In recent years, the impact of this ruling on marginalized groups in particular has been dramatic: lack of transportation to a shrinking number of polling places, voting roll purges, and new requirements regarding what forms of identification are valid as proof of eligibility to vote. Such attempts to make voting more complicated are not new. In her latest article, “Technologies of Disenfranchisement: Literacy Tests and Black Voters in the U.S. from 1890-1965,” Dr. Miriam Williams, an English professor in the MATC program at Texas State, discusses how laws affecting Black voters have existed for years in the United States, especially in the South.

Co-written with Dr. Natasha Jones of the University of Central Florida and forthcoming in a Fall 2018 special issue of Technical Communication focused on election technologies, Dr. Williams’ article explains how discriminatory voter registration cards and literacy tests appear innocuous on paper while, in practice, targeting Black voters. For example, from 1890-1965, voter registration forms that were written in race-neutral language were used to collect housing and employment data about Black voters. This data could then be used to report those voters to their employers or landlords who would, in turn, threaten them with loss of home or job if they went to vote. In their research for the article, Drs. Williams and Jones also recovered documents (manuals, reports, and graphics) created by Civil Rights activists to help Black voters successfully navigate the obstacles designed to prevent them from voting. Because these archives exist, we can see how activists resisted oppression when it came to unfair voter registration practices.

Dr. Williams also examines the archival history of activism in another recent essay, “#BlackLivesMatter: Tweeting an Essay in Chronos and Kairos” (included in Texas State professor Octavio Pimentel and Cruz Medina’s edited collection, Racial Shorthand, recently published by Computers & Composition Digital Press). The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on Twitter acts as a living archive, documenting instances of police brutality and sharing them across the Internet, thereby serving as a platform that facilitates activists’ organizing and resisting. Dr. Williams explains that technical communication, in part, studies how digital media tells stories, and she uses that perspective to illustrate how people used the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to chronicle “a story of oppression and resistance.”

Attention to voting laws that may seek to disenfranchise marginalized Americans matters, as does the way we treat the activism surrounding that disenfranchisement. Dr. Williams’ research explores how activists have sought to archive their own fights for social justice, and hopefully, we can learn from these archives in preparing for our country’s future.

– Gloria Russell, English major

November 18, 2019mjr100 No Comments

Fall 2018 New Faculty

This fall, the Texas State English Department welcomed four new tenure-track faculty members. While each has origins in Texas, making their arrival at Texas State something of a homecoming, their scholarship attests to their pursuing very different research and teaching interests. From Irish Modernist studies to analyses of comic book superheroes, our new faculty ensure exciting new courses and research over their coming years at Texas State.

James Reeves

While he was earning his Master’s degree at Oxford, studying John Milton, Dr. James Reeves wandered into Blackwell’s Bookstore. The religion section shocked him. He grew up in Hutto, Texas, with an extended family of evangelical Christians, and though he had studied authors like Milton while earning his undergraduate degree at Texas Tech, he hadn’t considered the scope of religious studies. “From then, I was fascinated by how religions are related and how they represent each other,” he says.

Dr. Reeves changed his focus from Milton to 18th-century British literature, exploring authors like Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, whose works deal with shifts in religious thought and secularization. After earning his Master’s degree at Oxford, he went to UCLA for his PHD, investigating how atheist characters were represented in that time period. Literature from the 18th century often imagined worlds dominated by atheism or with atheist characters, suggesting a shift towards secularization that manifested itself in its representation of atheist themes.

After earning his PHD and teaching at Franklin & Marshall, a private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, he applied for a job posting at Texas State. He wanted to raise his family where he’d grown up and where his extended family lives, and he finds the public-oriented goal of state schooling compelling. At Texas State, he currently teaches First-Year Writing classes and a British literature course on the Restoration and Augustan periods.

His research projects include reshaping his PHD dissertation into a book and writing an article about how British abolitionists’ view of the slave trade impacted the concept of a Christian hell.

Sara Ramírez

Although she claims San Antonio as her home, Dr. Sara A. Ramírez grew up in Dallas. She attended Notre Dame as a first-generation college student with the intent to become a medical doctor, but her passion for literature, outstanding performance as a writer, and urging from her English professors convinced her to become an English major.

After she graduated from Notre Dame, Dr. Ramírez attended graduate school at UT-San Antonio, where she began to “cultivate a sense of Chicana feminist consciousness.” She wrote her thesis on madwomen in literature, and when she went to Berkeley for a Master’s and then PHD in comparative ethnic studies, she began to understand madness as a reaction to trauma. Because of this understanding, she began studying Chicana representations of historical and intergenerational trauma, an interdisciplinary endeavor involving psychiatric and indigenous interpretations of madness.

While doing dissertation research in San Antonio, she worked in the Women’s Studies program at UTSA from 2013-2017. She then pursued a postdoc at the University of Minnesota before applying to work at Texas State. Texas State stood out to her as a Hispanic-serving institution, or HIS, because it meant she could relate to and mentor Latinx/Chicanx and first-generation college students. “On the first day I ask them what they need to know about college,” she says, “because I had no one to talk to when I went.” At Texas State, she teaches First-Year Writing and a class on Chicano Narratives and Social History.

Currently, Dr. Ramírez is writing a philosophical article on how Chicana subjects can recognize themselves through indigenous (Nahua) ideas of the self.

Julie McCormick Weng

While she was earning her Master’s at Texas A&M, Dr. Julie McCormick Weng came across an article by John Eglinton (William Kirkpatrick Magee). The article, titled “Mr. Yeats and Popular Poetry,” discussed the connection between literature and new technologies and sparked her interest in machines’ representations in Modernism. “Modernism rethinks not just style and form but also the way we relate to the tactile and technological world around us,” she says, “and that captivated me.”

She went on to earn her PHD at the University of Illinois, where she looked at the intersections of Irish Modernist literature with questions about science and technology. She attended Georgia Tech for her postdoc, and there explored the possibilities of digital pedagogy. Her students created podcasts, dramatic recordings of poetry, and infographics of literary texts. “This media lets students explore a range of possible responses to literature from different angles,” says Dr. Weng.

After completing her postdoc at Georgia Tech, she came to Texas State University. She wanted to teach in her home state, and the Texas State student body’s reputation for friendliness promised innovative and creative classroom discussions. She teaches First-Year Writing and twentieth century British literature.

Currently, Dr. Weng is editing a collection of essays titled Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism, which is scheduled for release in 2019. She is also working on an article concerning digital student projects in the classroom, as well as a book manuscript about Irish modernism, transportation technologies, and gender politics of the early twentieth century.

Samuel Saldivar

When Dr. Samuel Saldivar left his hometown of Weslaco, TX to go to college at Ohio

State, he was surprised to find that there was a whole area of study focused on the very community with which he had grown up. For this reason, when he worked on his Master’s in English with a specialization and certification in Chicanx studies at Ohio State, he first was interested in Victorian literature, but felt drawn by “the opportunity to talk about authors of color who have been forgotten over time.”

After his Master’s, he pursued a PHD in Chicanx Studies at Michigan State University, writing his dissertation on Chicanx representation in American media. Specifically, he studied the shifting ways Chicanx people are portrayed for American audiences. As a result, his work is extensive, ranging from 1970’s poetry by Corky Gonzales, to Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldua, to even modern-day comic book representations of Chicanx/Latinx superheroes.

Dr. Saldivar worked as an associate professor and undergraduate coordinator at the University of Michigan for a year and half before coming to Texas State. He was eager to return to Texas and explore how students at a predominantly Hispanic institution would respond to his field of study. At Texas State, he teaches First-Year Writing and an American literature course spanning from 1930 to the present day.

His current research includes researching a Puerto-Rican superhero named Vibe from the DC franchise and exploring how Vibe’s representation over time has changed since he first made his appearance in the 80’s. Dr. Saldivar is also working on book chapters focused on Chicano heroes and their representation in American film; and just finished a short piece on the diversity of Tejanx people, highlighting the largely ignored Afro-Latinx associations of the term.

by Gloria Russell, English major

November 18, 2019mjr100 1 Comment

Distinguished Professor, Dr. John Blair

Dr. John Blair, professor of English, has been awarded the title of Distinguished Professor at Texas State University for teaching, research, and service that has been recognized at the state, national, and international levels.

For the duration of his time at Texas State, Dr. Blair will keep the title “Distinguished Professor.” Along with the title, he will receive a one-time $5,000 cash award, a commemorative medallion, and recognition during the fall convocation. In addition, he will be considered by the Texas State University System (TSUS) Board of Regents for the Regents’ Professor Award.

Dr. Blair came to Texas State University in 1989. He is a professor in the English Department and directs the undergraduate creative writing program. His collection of short stories American Standard was the 22nd winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and his third poetry collection, Playful Song Called Beautiful, is the 2015 winner of the Iowa Poetry Award. Among his other literary prizes are the Sewanee Review’s Andrew Lytle Prize for Fiction, the Texas Institute of Letters’ Helen C. Smith Award for Poetry, the Phoebe Winter Fiction Prize, the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize in Poetry, and a nomination for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award.

Dr. Blair says that he is “very happy and grateful” for the opportunity to work and teach at Texas State. He is currently working on his fourth book of poetry, with the working title Misericordia.

–Gloria Russell, English major

November 18, 2019mjr100 No Comments

The Cradle of Digital Literature: The Saga of the Lindsey Reading Series

In a locked closet, in another locked and little-used room in the English Department at Texas State University, lay hundreds of dusty and nearly disintegrating VHS tapes and DVDs. These recordings, however, weren’t just old home movies of picnics and fundraisers, but constitute perhaps one of the most significant archives in the literary world, a collection now valued well north of $1 million dollars. Until 2005, the tapes had been stacked on shelves, filed away and forgotten, some for nearly 30 years, and they were just awaiting the digital era for their re-discovery.

Originally entitled the Therese Kayser Lindsey Readings Series, visiting writers have come to campus to deliver lectures, read from their work, hold Q&A’s with graduate students, and host workshops at the Katherine Anne Porter House. Previously, each event has been filmed and shared with English Department faculty for their research and teaching purposes. Now, preserved digitally for the first time, these recordings have been re-mastered, archived, and made available to the public in a way none of the original organizers and participants could’ve imagined.

Begun in 1978, almost exactly 40 years ago, Louise Lindsey Merrick created the series as a living memorial to her mother, Therese Kayser Lindsey, a Texas writer born in 1870 in Chappell Hill, one of the many scrub-grass towns that dot the hill country between Austin and Houston. Lindsey was a poet, newspaper writer, and producer of operas, known for a narrative poem about the 1900 Galveston Hurricane’s destruction. Lindsey graduated from Texas State University in 1905, and throughout her life, invested heavily in the future of literature in Texas, establishing the Poetry Society of Texas in 1921. Mrs. Lindsey was a resident of Tyler, TX until her death in 1957.

First recorded event

The first recorded event in 1978

The first event was entitled “The American Southwest: Cradle of Literary Art” and featured Larry McMurtry, John Graves, R.G.Vliet, and Lon Tinkle. In the early 80’s, the series expanded to feature other Texas and notable southwest writers like Bill Wittliff, James Dickey, and Thomas Berger. As the series continued growing in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the department brought many titans of the literary world, authors such as Allen Ginsberg, Margaret Atwood, Ken Kesey, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Sandra Cisneros.

Despite the obstacles, the department arranged for each event to be filmed. Recently retired Professor Nancy Grayson, the TKL coordinator from 1983-1986, helped make the reading series an institution at Texas State and fought to get each event recorded, no small feat given the cumbersome recording equipment of the analogue era.

“The goal,” Grayson said in an email, “was to ensure that as many students and faculty as possible heard our speakers and to give them the opportunity to hear and experience Q&As with great literary artists…. Obviously, filming has enlarged audiences extensively by continuing to provide access to the presentations down through the years.”

Fast-forward again to 2005 and the tapes in the Brasher closet and Tom Grimes, then the Director of the MFA in Writing Program, when he “rediscovered” the tapes. Professor Grimes imagined what few others could: a digital home for these events, where anyone in the world could, with a touch of a button, hit “Play,” and beam some of the world’s foremost authors into their living rooms, where viewers could watch them read, hear them answer questions, and marvel at humanity’s urge to tell stories. Given the nascency of the Internet and digital-streaming services at the beginning of this century, Grimes’s foresight also cannot be understated. He knew this was an important resource for the university and that’s why he’s “pushed so hard to get these videos online,” he said.

Still, given the technological, professional, and contractual limitations, it would take another decade to realize this concept. The archive currently stands just shy of 500 events, or nearly one terabyte of data, and grows every year. This information needs a secure location with regular backups and high-speed servers for hosting streaming content. Another battle has been the lack of technical expertise in developing the website and video-player interface, two subjects largely beyond the department’s knowledge.

Stack of VHS tapes

One stack of VHS tapes

In 2014, the English Department paired with the Learning Application Solutions component of the office of Instructional Technologies Solutions. With the help of ITS, the department secured the necessary server and bandwidth space and helped finish the re-mastering process, where additional graduate students converted all of the DVD files into high-quality MPEG-4 files better suited for adaptive bitrate streaming.

With an estimated 95% percent of the files online, the department begins to focus on the second stage of development. They’re in the beta-testing stages of a new portal interface that will allow for an improved user experience, one of the biggest shortcomings so far. This new portal will offer more intuitive content hierarchy, improved search capabilities, and eventually transcript files.

“The focus now,” said English Department Chair Dr. Dan Lochman, “is to make these videos accessible to scholars and academia.” However, in the future, they plan to group these talks, readings, and Q&A’s into learning modules, organized by creative writing craft elements and techniques. The hope is that these adaptable learning modules will expand awareness and access to “develop lesson plans for everyone, not just within academia,” Lochman said.

Yet, challenges lie ahead. Closed Captioning and ADA compliance and slow-streaming speeds are several of the problems viewers encounter. Additionally, many of the events from the first two decades either never had a permanent copy stored or weren’t ever filmed, and so are likely lost forever.

But there’s little doubt the archives will continue to grow in ways that we can’t even begin to imagine, because these events and their recordings bridge a divide in the writer-reader relationship. Authors can seem remote, almost superhuman when hidden behind their words, but seeing them read and speak about their work allows anyone a glimpse at the wizard pulling the strings. This act of connection in an otherwise solitary experience, perhaps, represents something new in the literary world, as one can imagine other closets, at other universities, that also possess hidden gems awaiting their own re-discovery for the digital age.

If nothing else, as Professor Grimes said, the Lindsey Archives hope to “give everyone, everywhere, online access to one of the richest — if not the richest — literary video archives in the country.”

More information:

The collection is housed via the English Department’s graduate-run literary magazine, Front Porch Journal.

For a list of this year’s writers and events: The Katherine Anne Porter Center and The Wittliff Collections.

For a more in-depth biography of Therese Kayser Lindsey see the book Texas Women Writers: A Tradition of Their Own.

Written by Eric Blankenburg with reporting by Gloria Russell

November 18, 2019mjr100 No Comments

“A Space in Which to Listen: Naomi Shihab Nye on Joining the Texas State Faculty”

At three p.m. on a Friday afternoon in February, the Katherine Anne Porter House, a creative epicenter for the MFA program at Texas State, buzzes with students who are waiting for the day’s workshop to begin. While students fill their mugs with steaming coffee, others unfold chairs around a circle of conference tables. Floor-to-ceiling windows let in afternoon light. Outside, two cats bask in the sun. Inside, bookshelves filled with the works of previous visiting writers line the walls, and beside them, framed event posters announce this year’s slate of writers: names such as Ocean Vuong, Karen Russell, and Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Impressive names no doubt, but today, the students have come to participate in the long-anticipated workshop of one of the most celebrated poets in this country and the newest member of the creative writing faculty at Texas State University.

While the last few students trickle in, Naomi Shihab Nye quietly transcribes a Mary Ruefle poem into her notebook. Once everyone is settled, Nye closes her notebook and begins.

“Most often, we can’t change things,” she says, “but as poets, we can notice.”

To start the day’s discussion, Nye asks students to consider the value of poetry in the age of breaking news. The conversation leads into a recognition that in recent years the world seems to be growing more chaotic, a result perhaps of the 24-hour news cycle. Nye nods in affirmation. As the daughter of a Palestinian refugee journalist, Nye inherently understands how quickly things can change and the necessity for writers to monitor current events.

Born in the U.S., Nye spent much of her adolescence in Jerusalem and San Antonio. This multicultural upbringing taught her the value of accepting people from different belief systems. As one graduate student, Katharine Kistler, said after the workshop, Nye brings “a special focus on family and heritage” to the poetry world. This understanding of international relationships and their effects on current events heavily influence how Nye writes and how she leads her workshops.

For her, she tells students, one of the few things that can withstand the tumult of modern life is poetry, and poetry workshops in particular, she says, help us to “find [a] deeper meaning for why we are writers and why we need writers.” Now, Nye has come to Texas State to instruct the next generation of poets.

Her three-hour workshops, held six times a year, are voluntary, so students come and go as they please. After wrapping up the current events discussion, students with new poems distribute them to the group and take turns reading aloud and discussing them afterward. Even people who didn’t bring work are encouraged to speak, because for Nye, one of the key values of a workshop is to help writers obtain as many different perspectives as possible.

This process, Nye says, not only builds “a sturdy resilience of spirit,” but also helps students “find ways to inquire about [their] own pieces, so [they] can identify elements that don’t work.”

In addition to gaining multiple perspectives, Nye also finds it important for a poet to share his or her work in whatever ways possible. Nye began sending her own poems to magazines at seven years old and so, from an early age, built a tenacious capacity to publish an astounding thirty-four books, all without an agent. Among these are Hugging the Jukebox (1981), which won the National Poetry Series, and 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002), which was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award in Young People’s Literature.

During the discussion of the students’ pieces, those writers being talked about furiously scribble notes and suggestions from their peers. Engaging and listening to this type of constructive criticism helps students strengthen their own perseverance in overcoming the challenges that writing poetry presents. More importantly, this also helps students recognize that “writing is fluid and it’s changing, and sometimes… it wants to guide us to something else entirely,” Nye tells the class.

Throughout the workshop and in our interview, Nye emphasizes her “profound allegiance” to the process of revision. For her, revision connects to the necessity of viewing one’s work with a sense of flexibility. As she says, “In three days [the poem] might be different,” but hopes that through these workshops, students will have “new ways of thinking about revision.” Despite the critique, Nye’s workshops never become a negative experience, and she reminds the workshop participants to note the positive comments they receive as well.

Nye also encourages her students—and any young writer—to read as much as possible from as many diverse voices as possible to find those texts that serve as “nourishment” to the poet. In addition to reading widely, Nye urges her students to establish a writing routine, even if it’s only for ten minutes a day.

Maintaining a regular writing schedule, Nye believes, helps poets uncover their voice. As a guide for budding poets, Nye aims to help students figure out where they fit in terms of poetic style and determine what their voice will be and how it will sound. As she says, “there’s a satisfaction when you feel your voice is really authentic.”

Teaching students in this manner, Nye hopes to impart a far greater idea to young artists than simple revision: the act of slowing down time. Before our interview, Nye woke up at five a.m., as she usually does, and revised a poem for two hours before sending it off. “Between five to seven,” she says, “I had a full day because it helped my sense of time for the rest of the day—no sense of rushing or distractedness or forgetfulness, all those things that come up when we’re overwhelmed by time.” Poetry, she argues, helps the mind hold onto thoughts and be held by thoughts, providing sustenance to reader and poet alike.

After the workshop, graduate students mill around and discuss the value of having the opportunity to work with a poet like Nye. As one student, Wade Martin says of Nye, “She provides a much-needed down-to-earth element for young poets.”

Ultimately, Nye hopes that these workshops and the practice of writing poetry will help students tune into their own work and budding voices. If successful, students will learn valuable skills that will serve them later, even if, as Nye says, they “can’t say how at this moment.” For now though, Nye’s happy to help students unpack their lives and provide them with a space in which to listen to one another.

By Gloria Russell and Eric Blankenburg

November 18, 2019mjr100 No Comments

Searching for Justice in Literature

If you counted the number of people in prison in Texas for drug possession, you would have a population roughly the size of the student body at Texas State University. If you included other non-violent offenders, this number spikes to over 100,000, much larger than the population of San Marcos. Numbers like these suggest that crime, justice, and prison reform should rank high on topics of discussion in our classrooms. The university’s Common Experience is a way to explore these issues.

Each year, the university selects a theme as its yearlong initiative to cultivate a common intellectual conversation. Designed to enhance student participation and foster a sense of community, the Common Experience brings students together to read and engage with books and other works of art, to listen to visiting speakers, and to engage in classroom discussions in order to explore issues in our society. This year, the Common Experience theme highlights issues such as racial disparity in sentencing and the war on drugs, among other problems in our justice system.

Professor Steve Wilson’s graduate course, “Literature and the Criminal Mind,” provides a model for tackling similar issues in this year’s Common Experience. Professor Wilson’s course offers students the opportunity to read literature through the lens of criminal narrators and their experiences in the justice system. As the course description on his course syllabus suggests, “The goal is to explore the various ways in which texts portray the criminal mind.” While reading novels such as Junky by William S. Burroughs and Pimp by Iceberg Slim, students examine topics such as guilt, psychology and crime, social attitudes toward crime and criminals, redemption, “fugitive” language (as Burroughs phrases it) and punishment.

To get an understanding of how this course relates to this year’s Common Experience theme, I visited one of their discussions. On a muggy October night in Flowers Hall, the students explored ways that literature can bridge the gap between “criminals” and society.

“People are capable of incredible empathy, and literature helps us connect with each other,” Patrick Funderburg said. As the students’ discussion demonstrated, reading texts sympathetic to people unlike them forced them to wrestle with conceptions of right and wrong. This invariably led to questions of justice and fairness in the criminal system. “Criminals can absolutely become a victim of the justice system,” said Eden Jasuta, turning the discussion toward systemic inequalities of racial bias that occurs in all stages of the penal system. But when asked if these texts offer solutions, John McClellan shook his head: “The best literature doesn’t answer questions; it asks them,” he argued.

As the Common Theme and students in Professor Wilson’s class illustrate, it’s one thing to identify the problem, but it’s another thing entirely to find solutions. While the humanizing power of literature can help readers develop a more complex understanding of criminals, a compelling narrative still can’t solve the primary focus of this year’s Common Experience theme: the problem of mass incarceration in America. But as this student-led discussion suggests, complicating one’s conception of what it takes to commit a crime can go a long way in overturning previously held biases and prejudices. This suggests that a first step in addressing our overcrowded prisons is to read stories about the people inside, and read them not as outsiders, but as the criminals themselves see it.

To illustrate this idea, Katharine Kistler used the example of a drug addict. “People say drug addiction is the addict’s choice, but it’s more complicated,” she said while reflecting on Junky, Burroughs’s fictionalized account of using and peddling heroin in the 1950s and its similarity to the War on Drugs. Lisa Magnusson agreed with her, adding, “People get out of prison and go right back out to scratch that itch.”

Unfortunately, the numbers support this claim. Possession and drug-related charges are one of the more common ways people end up with a felony. Compounding the problem, a majority of prisoners suffer from some form of substance abuse, but only 11% receive treatment while incarcerated, according to the Center on Addiction.

In addition to addiction and justice, the class and the Common Experience explore what happens after the offender has paid their debt to society. Regardless of the nature of the crime, a felony conviction will remain on a person’s record forever. With today’s availability of Internet databases, employers can dig into every candidate’s background and often pass on those with a record. This action can hamper the ex-convict’s search for housing and government benefits such as food stamps. As Tyler Newlin argued, “A felony nowadays is a life sentence.”

While these students may not ever have answers to the questions this year’s Common Theme asks them to consider, the number of people in prison for drug possession proves that the need for critically thinking students grows in relation to the prison population. One day, these students might have power to change the system. Ultimately, the idea that having difficult conversations may empower them to improve the world is an idea that lies at the heart of our democracy, and it’s the goal of a humanities education.

–Gloria Russell, English major