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News & Events Contents:
Michael Gillum published "Milton's Roses and Amaranth" in ANQ, Winter 2007 and read a paper on Milton at the NEH conference on Science and the Humanities. Cindy Ho says: I have been on Professional Leave in the fall working on a number of projects, both in Italy and back home in Saluda. After a few years of interest in non-European medieval narratives, I have returned to an earlier obsession, the form and meaning of European religious didactic narrative. I am working on two projects connected to the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. First, I am editing a collection of essays from a variety of scholars who all seek to situate Francis within the particular discourses of their various disciplines. More important to me personally is the second project on the Sacred Mountain of Orta, which tells the life of Francis in twenty-one freestanding chapels. I am comparing the original medieval sources on Francis’ life, later sixteenth and seventeenth Franciscan works, and the chapels themselves in order to understand the development of the Francis legend. Cynn Chadwick: My novel, Babies, Bikes, and Broads has been acquired by Bywater Books Inc. (September 2008), and has garnered the Bywater Prize in Fiction to be awarded at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans next May. I am happy to report that my novels Cat Rising and Girls With Hammers have also found a new home with Bywater Books Inc. I spent the summer finishing a new Southern novel, tentatively titled (thanks to Dawn McCann), “As the Table Turns...,” (Dr. Hobby thinks that both “Alpaca Sunrise” and “The Table Turns” also sound appealing J) and have begun querying agents. I have also rewritten my novel The Flying Sperm Donors, which is now back in agent circulation. I am especially enjoying my Lang 120 classes this semester, where film is the first medium for exploring art and the creative process as experienced through the lives of artists such as Diane Arbus, Jackson Pollack, Pablo Naruda, and Leonardo da Vinci. Blake Hobby finished editing the Student Encyclopedia of Great American Writers, 1945-1970, early last summer and has since been working on eight volumes for the upcoming Bloom’s Literary Themes series. For more information on the Harold Bloom series, which will contain many articles by literature and language faculty, see: facstaff.unca.edu/bhobby/bloom.htm. Hobby is now serving as the Interim Director of the UNCA Honors program and as Junior Member at Large of the Philological Association of the Carolinas. His article, “The Form of Emptiness: Aesthetic Ambivalence and Moral Obligation in Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage,” will appear in the Fall 2007 volume (#33) of Religion and Public Life, an annual series published by Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University Press. This particular volume focuses on “The Moral Dimensions of Literature.” Dee James spent the spring semester on faculty development leave during which she completed an extensive entry for The Student Encyclopedia of Great American Writers (1945-1970), Facts on File (forthcoming) on the African American poet Robert Hayden, Poet Laureate of the US 1976 and 1977. Dr. James is currently writing essays on Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God for Bloom’s Literary Themes Series, Facts on File/Chelsea House, spring 2007-present. She also spent a week in London, touring and visiting friends Jo and Richard Pryke in Chester, England. But her most consuming project at the moment is work she shares with her husband, Dr. Charles James of the Chemistry department, crafting a Study Abroad cluster for Ghana. To prepare for this program, she traveled to Ghana this past summer as a guest of the NCSU program. Plans are to take a pilot group of students and staff this summer (08). Anyone interested should contact her at djames@unca.edu. This spring she will be teaching Senior Seminar. The mandatory meeting for that is Thursday, Dec. 6 from 12:30-1:30 in the Lit. Student lounge. Katherine Min is teaching a special topics LANG 373 course on Memoir Writing that will be cross-listed as a literature course. She says, “We’ll read a number of memoirs and work on short memoir pieces, and students will end up with a substantial memoir piece at the end of the semester.” Min is also teaching the Senior Seminar, Lang 120 Honors and Advanced Fiction Writing, which will focus on developing voice. She says,” We’ll be reading some great short story collections by a single author in that class.” The paperback of Min’s Secondhand World is coming out in February, with Anchor Books. It was a 2006 PEN/Bingham Award finalist for “an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose debut work represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.” She also has two exercises in Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, edited by Bret Anthony Johnston, with exercises by people like Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Robbins, Dorothy Allison, and Richard Bausch. It will come out in January 2008. Min was asked to serve on the editorial board of Natural Bridge, the literary magazine of the University of Missouri at St. Louis’s MFA program. This November, she will travel to the University of Illinois, Urbana, as part of the MFA Program’s Carr Visiting Author Reading Series, where she will read from Secondhand World, and talk to classes. Min’s story, ”Courting a Monk,” will be reprinted in Approaching Literature in the 21st Century, edited by Peter Schakel and Jack Ridl, Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, in January 2008 Lorena Russell's essay, "Defense of Family Acts: Queering Familia in The Sopranos" is forthcoming in the collection Considering David Chase (Ed. Thomas Fahy, McFarland Press). Her essay on Six Feet Under was published in the same series in Nov. 2006 (Considering Alan Ball). She's also had recent articles published on Fay Weldon and Michael Ondaatje (the latter in editor Merritt Moseley's Booker Prize Winners collection [see below]). Russell has written encyclopedia entries on Angela Carter (Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature, Routledge 2006) and "Colonial/Postcolonial" (Encyclopedia of Sex and Love, forthcoming). She's currently drafting a conference paper on the film Heading South (Vers de Sud) for the fall 2007 PCAS conference, and an article on James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room for a collection edited by Blake Hobby (Bloom's Literary Themes).
David
Hopes's latest book of poetry,
A
Dream of Adonis, is scheduled for am "early autumn" release
from Pecan Grove Press. Hopes is also watching his play
Edward the King, which was the toast of GayFest in New York
this summer, make its way through the production process with SunnySpot
Productions. Music is being written and cast being finalized, for a full
run in New York. Rick Chess's third book, THIRD TEMPLE, was published in May 2007 by the University of Tampa Press. Information on the book and links to his work on-line can be found at www.richardchess.com. I have a recent short essay called "Klezmetrics," written to introduce my poem "Klezmer," both of which can be found on www.jbooks.com. I have recently become the poetry editor for Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture: www.zeek.net. A new essay of mine, "What About God?", will be published in Image (www.imagejournal.org) this fall, 2007, as part of its symposium on the question "Why I Believe in God." In the spring of 2007, I composed a poem for QuickMuse (www.quickmuse.com). I was paired with Marge Piercy. We each were given 15 minutes to compose a poem in response to the same prompt. The prompt came from playwright David Mamet's rabbi. I continue to enjoy teaching for the Bread Loaf School of English (http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/blse/). I am also now the assistant director and member of the faculty of the Jewish Arts Institute at Elat Chayim (http://elatchayyim.org/jewisharts/), a two year program dedicated to advancing the evolution of Jewish arts education in the U.S. and abroad. Jeff Rackham Retires Fall 2006
On December 6th, 2006, the Literature and Language hosted a retirement party for Dr. Jeff Rackham. Stay tuned for more photos from this event and details on Professor Rackham's impressive career at UNCA.
The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 326: Booker Prize Novels, 1969-2005, has just appeared, edited by Merritt Moseley and containing chapters by department members Cindy Ho, Blake Hobby, David Hopes, Merritt Moseley, and Lorena Russell. Merritt Moseley In August 2005, he was appointed Key Center Professor, to supervise UNCA's Key Center for Community Citizenship and Service-Learning. Dr. Moseley and Cindy Ho continue to serve as editors of Postscript, the journal of the Philological Association of the Carolinas; in summer, 2006, he finished the project of putting the 23 previous volumes of Postscript on the web, at www.unca.edu/postscript. Merritt has recently finished two books. One is a volume in the Understanding Contemporary British Authors series from the University of South Carolina Press, on novelist and playwright Michael Frayn. The other is an edited reference work, Booker Prize Winners, published by Bruccoli Clark Layman. He continues to review new fiction for the Denver Post, most recently novels by Michel Houellebecq and Carlos Fuentes, and is also reading proofs on a collection of essays called The Academic Novel: New and Classic Essays, to be published by Chester Academic Press, probably in 2007. David Hopes created a stage play out of the ancient epic (and Humanities reading) Gilgamesh, which will be presented in September, 2006, as part of Chancellor Ponder's installation ceremonies. Gilgamesh will have public performances at the Diana Wortham Theater the last weekend in September, 2006. UNCA choreographer Ann Dunn is supplying dance and UNCA music instructor Matthew Richmond original music.Hopes's plays Saint Patrick's Well and Anna Livia, Lucky in Her Bridges, won first prize from the Arch Brown Foundation at the Lambda Awards this summer in Washington, DC. Anna Livia is being produced by the Foundation for a full run in February, 2007, at the Thorny theater in Palm Springs, California. A Dream of Adonis, Hopes's first full length collection of poetry in nine years, is due from Pecan Grove press in late in 2006.Hopes is in a quasi-historical mode in playwriting, having just completed For the Angel Who Announces the End of Time, about the writing of Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" in a German prisoner of war camp, and Edward the King, a contemporary take on Marlowe's Edward II. Also look for his holocaust-themed story Moonlight in The Sun
Jim Driggers & Lorena Russell enjoy a beer at Munich's Hofbräuhaus in May 2006. More studious time was spent at the Egyptian Museum (Driggers) and the Gay and Lesbian Archives (Russell), both in Berlin. Research findings are forthcoming in Driggers' HUM 124 (Fall 2006) and Russell's Queer Fiction (Spring 2007).
Merritt
Moseley Honored by UNCA Alumni: Maggie Alvarez Wins UNCA's Highest Academic Award:
UNCA Students Present Papers at PAC:
Four UNCA Literature students, Ben McDonald, Maya Hussey, Emily Atkins and Carleigh McNight joined Merritt Moseley, Cindy Ho and Lorena Russell at the 2004 Philological Association meeting where they presented individual papers on their research.
Thelma
& Louise were recently sighted in Karpen parking lot. They posed briefly
for this picture before disappearing in a cloud of dust.
Peter Caulfield having just returned from an off campus teaching assignment, has completed a literary/historical novel whose working title is Frail Spells. Peg Downes President of the National Association for General and Liberal Studies, will preside over the organization's annual conference this October 2005 in Washington, D.C. She will also visit LeMoyne-Owen college in Memphis, TN, working as a general education reform consultant. She visited Mumbai, India, for two weeks in July 2004, lecturing (on Blake; History of English; US Higher Education, and the Concept of 'The West') to undergraduates at six universities. Dr. Downes was also the recipient of the Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching (the fourth year in a row this award has been presented to someone in our department). David Hopes' book of poems A Dream of Adonis, has been accepted by Pecan Grove Press at the University of Texas. His play, The Faith Healer, will be premiered by Abingdon Theatre in New York. His book of essays, The Third Soul, has been accepted by Blue Raven Press. He will have plays performed this fall 2004 by Monday Morning Productions in New York and the Liverpool Festival Theater in Liverpool, UK. He will be, briefly, writer-in-residence at Southern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA, believe or not. He will also be appearing in the ARC production of NUTS. Cindy Ho is editing a collection of essays on St. Francis. She and Jim Driggers are co-authoring an article, "Outwit, Outlast, Outplay," this fall 2005 that compares medieval morality texts and reality TV. She has assumed her new position as NEH Distinguished Professor in the Humanities. She will serve a three year term. Cindy had a full summer. For three weeks, she studied Japanese Culture at Tokei University in Honolulu. Fro the final seven weeks of summer she was in Italy, traveling around the sites associate with Saint Francis of Assissi through a NEH grant. She will have a volume of essays on Francis and his biographer, Bonaventure, published in the spring. Her essay on Maharastrian mystic Bahina Bai appeared in a volume of Asian Cultures of Authority. Merritt Moseley In August 2005, he was appointed Key Center Professor, to supervise UNCA's Key Center for Community Citizenship and Service-Learning. At Founders Day 2005 Merritt received the Distinguished Professor award from the alumni . He is spending the fall 05 semester on leave from teaching, working on a book about England. Dr. Moseley is happy to announce the birth of His grandson Charlie, born August 2005. He and Cindy Ho continue to serve as editors of Postscript, the journal of the Philological Association of the Carolinas. Merritt is currently at work on two major projects. One is a volume in the Understanding Contemporary British Authors series from the University of South Carolina Press, on novelist and playwright Michael Frayn. The other is a reference work, to be called Booker Prizewinners; it will be published by Bruccoli Clark Layman. Both manuscripts are due to their publishers in January, 2005. He's also writing two chapters for Blackwell's Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000, working on the newly refurbished Asheville Institute on Liberal Learning with Peg Downes. At home, Merritt is enjoying his new granddaughter Caroline, born May 2003. Ed Katz has moved into administration, accepting a three-year term as Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. He will continue to teach one course in the department. Rick Chess's
poem "Kaddish" appears in BEST AMERICAN SPIRITUAL WRITING 2005, out his
month. He has a new work forthcoming in Prairie Schooner and Image at
some time within the next year. He'll be chairing a panel and delivering a
paper at the AWP conference in Austin this spring 2006. The topic:
"The American Psalm." The University of Tampa Press will be publishing his
third book of poetry either in Fall 2006 or Spring 2007. The book's working
title is Seventy Faces. He has three articles forthcoming in
Holocaust Literature,
a two-volume reference book being published by Routledge this fall. He's putting
finishing touches on "Echoes of Revelation," an essay on the poetry of
Cynthia Ozick which will appear in a book on Ozick to be published next year by
Wisconsin. Rick taught at the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College
this summer. His first book of poetry, TEKIAH, originally published by
the University of Georgia Press in 1994, has been reissued by the University of
Tampa Press this past summer. Cynn Chadwick's Girls With Hammers was nominated for a Stonewall Award (American Library Association), a Lambda Award, and a Golden Literary Crown award for which she was a finalist. She is currently shopping for an agent for The Flying Sperm Donors and is working on a new novel, And Then Came Jake. Her novel Cat Rising is out and selling well. Haworth Press has also accepted the sequel Girls With Hammers, which is due for release in January, 2004. Cynn is currently working on the third book in the series entitled Between Here and Motherwell. Blake Hobby has written a series of entries Andre' Gide for the upcoming Compendium of 20th Century Novel. Additionally he has finished an article on Buddhism in Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and is working on two Aldous Huxley essays for new Dalkey Archive editions of Point Counterpoint and Brave New World. He will be giving a paper on "Music and the Experience of time: The Modernist Obsession with Consciousness" at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference in October 2005. Lori Horvitz' personal essay, "Unloading Bones," is forthcoming in the Southeast Review. This past summer 2005, she was awarded two writer-in-residency fellowships, one at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the other at the Ragdale Foundation in Illinois. Her one act play, "Shiksa in My Living Room," was included as part of Asheville Vaudeville, performed this past August 2005, at various downtown Asheville locations. Two of her short stories have recently been published in literary journals: "My Imaginary Aunt Fanny' in The Jabberwocky Review, and "The Knot Lady" in Descant. Lorena Russell enjoyed two weeks in Italy this summer 2005 with humanities faculty. She participated in a summer Asheville Institute for COPLAC (public liberal arts institutional organization) where she spoke on "Effective Uses of Technology." She recently completed two articles: "Latent Lesbians and Heterosexual Narrative: Tracing a Queer Poetics in Fay Weldon's Fiction" in Literary Representations of Queer Heterosexuality, ed. Richard Fantina (MacFarland 2006) and "Strangers in Blood: The Queer Intimacies of Six Feet Under" in Considering Alan Ball, ed. Thomas Fahy (MacFarland 2006). Over fall break 05, she will be heading to UNC Chapel Hill English Department where she'll speak to faculty and graduate students on "Teaching in a Liberal Arts University." Lorena traveled to the Narrative Society Conference in April 2005 to present a paper on Salman Rushdie and Angela Carter. She is currently revising her book-length manuscript Queering the Pulpit: Fears and Pleasures in British Feminist Metafiction. After Gwen Ashburn's semester of off-campus scholarly assignment, she continues to work on her Remarkable Women of Asheville project. Currently she is interviewing Dr. Margaret Burns, a ninety-year-old psychiatrist and Asheville native, who is helping me understand the contributions of a number of women physicians in Asheville. Dr. Burns knew Zelda Fitzgerald's physician at Highland Hospital and told Gwen that Fitzgerald probably died in the fire due to fatal attraction. Surely one day, she will stop researching and write a book on the accomplishments on these unheralded women. |
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Shad
Marsh had a story published in
this recent anthology of flash fiction, Blink.
Graduating
literature major Maggie Alvarez was awarded the prestigious Manly Wright
Award at the May 2005 graduation ceremonies. The award is given annually to
the UNCA senior graduating with an outstanding record of scholarship. Maggie
also shared the department's 2005 Bryan Award for Best Senior Paper
for her work on Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. The other winner of
the Bryan Award was Josh Tinsley, who wrote on "Mythmaking in Cormac
McCarthy's Blood Meridian."
