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The newsletter of the Student Association of Graduates in
English (SAGE)
at the University of Kansas SAGE Advice |
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Winter 2004 |
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Student
Spotlight: Sam Parkes
By Brooke Stokley Finan |
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If you’ve spent much time
on the first floor of Wescoe in the past few years, or if you’ve
recently had delicious cupcakes baked for you in honor of your birthday,
chances are that you already know Sam Parkes. But in case you’ve never
had the pleasure of meeting her, be sure to make an effort to get to
know her before she leaves us for the Peace Corps in June.
Allow me to introduce my friend and officemate to you. You may know that
Sam is about to graduate this month with an M.A. in Language,
Literature, and Composition, and you also may remember her as one of
SAGE’s former co-presidents from the 2003-2004 academic year. But did
you also know that Sam’s list of extra-curricular activities is just as
impressive as her list of academic achievements? Here is a graduate
student and GTA who also manages to have a full, rich life outside of
Wescoe’s dilapidated halls. To give you some idea of just how rich that
life is, consider some of Sam’s many activities: she has been active as
a lay minister in her church, she has volunteered as a writing
instructor at First Step House (a women’s transitional facility in
Lawrence), she performed a few weeks ago as a member of the Independence
Messiah Choir, she is a former board member of ECM (Ecumenical Campus
Ministries), and she currently volunteers for Hospice. Who says that all
graduate students are bookish, self-absorbed, and completely cut off
from the outside world?
Nothing could be further from the truth in Sam’s case, which is obvious
given her choice to commit twenty-seven months of her near future to the
Peace Corps. When I sat down with Sam recently over some baked goods
(Sam is also a master baker!) during some rare quiet time in our office,
I asked her what made her want to serve in the Peace Corps, and why now?
“I really wanted to do it when I graduated from college, but I had a
music performance degree, and an English lit and creative writing
degree. So I didn’t feel I had much to offer then in terms of measurable
skills,” Sam explained. “Now I feel like I will have had three years
teaching experience, and all this education, and I have lived on my
own.” In short, she is ready. “I’ve been in school a long time,” she
added. “I need a break before deciding whether or not to go on for a
PhD.”
Her teaching experience as a GTA at KU will serve her well when she goes
to the Peace Corps to teach TOEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign
Language) at the university level. Sam has just learned that she will be
living and working somewhere in the country of Moldova (a small country
located between the Ukraine and Romania). “It’s like the Mississippi of
Europe,” Sam explains—it is Europe’s poorest country, despite its high
literacy rate. Sam leaves for Moldova June 6, 2004, where she will
report to the city of Hincesti, for 10 weeks of training. Most of this
will be language immersion (Moldova’s principal languages are Russian
and Romanian), and Sam will spend the final two weeks of the training in
a teaching practicum. She will live with a host family for the first six
months, which should give her an excellent introduction to Moldavian
culture.
But before Sam embarks on this life-changing adventure, she will stay on
at KU next semester as a lecturer in the English department. She has
been a “Rhet/Comp” fan since she started at KU, and she credits Dr.
Farmer and her experience in his English 800 class for sparking her
interest in writing pedagogy. She feels very passionate about the
teaching of writing, and this shows in her attitude towards her students
as well as her own research and course work. Our loss will surely be
Moldova’s gain, but in the meantime, I make no secret of my delight that
she will be with us for one more semester.
If you don’t know her, make a point this spring of stopping by 1080
Wescoe to get to know one of SAGE’s friendliest and most well-rounded
members. You will be glad you did. |
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Inside this issue:
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2004-2005 SAGE Officers
Co-Presidents: Kristin Bovaird-Abbo, Karla Knutson
Secretary: Mindi McMann
Treasurer: Jennifer Floray-Balke
First-Year Liaisons: Leslee Friedman, Alicia Sutliff
Advisory: Samantha Parkes (Fall), John Wiehl (Spring)
FSE : Brian Harries, Shelly Manis, Joe Sommers
Graduate: Jennifer Humphrey |
Graduate Assembly: Kristin Bovaird-Abbo, Matthew Candelaria
GTA/Lecturers: Brooke Stokley Finan, Corinee Guy
Lecturers/Readers: Ellen Fangman, Becky Miller
Library: Will Ferleman
NLC: Lesley Bartlett, Shelly Manis
Supplemental Funds: Karla Knutson
SAGE Advice: Kristin
Bovaird-Abbo
SAGE Events: Beth Lagaron, Mindi McMann |
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Dear Dr.
(Ph.D., not M.D.)
Dear Dr.
I’m having trouble walking up Mount Oread without an oxygen mask! How do I
juggle course work, teaching, writing, and paper grading…and still make time
for that ugly thing called exercise?
Signed,
Breathless
Dear Breathless,
I know Mount Oread is a demanding hike, and
exercise would certainly help. But if I may ask, do you also smoke?
If so, I’m not here to judge. As a young
doctor, my father smoked nearly a pack a day, even though his colleagues and
patients could detect the savory smell of tobacco on his breath, and (heaven
forbid) his operating jacket. Later, he resorted to smoking in the garage at
home, sometimes several in a row, enough to trouble his sleep and leave him
huffing on the job at the end of a long workday. He’s since quit, thanks to
the patch, the gum, and the nagging of his one smoke-free daughter, who
shall here remain nameless.
You’re a poet, you say. Wheezing and typing
go hand in hand! And you’re not alone. You’re glad to follow in the
footsteps of fabled poets of old, who decorated the cafes of Paris, as they
wined and dined, wrote and remembered, exhaling stories from their fiery
hearts, toxic spills of the De Lillo sort, as intoxicating as the touch of |
that first breath of smoke on
those fiery throats! As all smokers, ex-smokers, and wanna-be smokers (i.e.
poets) know, it’s mighty fun to light up the page as you light up a fag.
Now, instead of glamorizing the act of
smoking, as I have done here, try picturing yourself in twenty years. You’re
a full professor at the University of Kansas, and you’ve just been demoted
to a yellow parking pass, due to construction in the gold, red, and blue
zones. Not a gondola in sight to lift you to your office on third floor, and
it’s sleeting to boot. Sure you’re wearing comfy shoes, but the hike to
third floor will be a lot more invigorating if you’ve kicked your nasty (but
oh-so-glamorous habit)!
I recommend the book, Humbler Acts: How
to Quit Smoking in Fifty Days, and if you’re so inclined, you may as
well quit cold turkey and ease into an exercise routine that will make the
ascent of Mount Oread seem like a walk in the park. If you own a daily
planner or a palm pilot, you might record a time that works for you, just a
good half hour of good steady walking every day, until your lungs are
healthy enough to start training for that marathon next fall!
One day at a time.
Dr.
Ellen Fangman is a writer who is
studying for her comprehensives, trying to quit smoking, and training for
the St. Louis Marathon in April. Prayers, pilgrimages to miraculous shrines,
and harsh reprimands are welcome. |
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Teaching Tips... |
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Creative Corner |
| Kevin
Rabas offers some brief
tips for using the blackboard: |
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Blackberries
all over the trail today, everywhere
something an arm’s length away, above, on every side.
I praise God I live not more than three miles from this trail,
and I raise my hands and pick and pick, and eat
the sweetness of a day outdoors, walking home gingerly,
satisfied, and not quite full.
Kevin Rabas |
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“Remember, the best way to
write on a chalkboard is right to left. That way you are never in front
of your text. So, even though this may seem backwards, this is how, for
right handers, it should be done. If you feel like getting creative,
bring colored chalk. Just be sure to test the chalk by making a small
mark near a corner, first; and erase that. Make certain the marks
erase.” |
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Welcome to the New Graduate
Students!
Once more the
Executive Committee of SAGE descended upon the new graduate students
during Orientation week. Hopefully as the semester has progressed,
everyone’s had a chance to get acquainted with the new faces—but here
are a few tidbits to help us all become more familiar with this diverse
group of new graduate students! |
Erin
Williams joins us from Marshall, Missouri, and plays the cello and
claims to be a decent soccer player. The best movie she’s seen recently?
Super Size Me.
John Wiehl spent his summer reading, sleeping, and Targetting. If
he could be any literary character, he would be Heathcliff, the fat
yellow cat.
Susan Thomas enjoys singing and making her cat dance, and, if
given the opportunity, would be Britomart from Spenser’s Faerie
Queene. She hails from Fargo, North Dakota.
Alicia Sutcliff is from Rapid City, South Dakota, and hopes to be
a Shakespeare professor! Her favorite literary character? She’s torn
between Puck (Midsummer Night’s Dream) or Viola (Twelfth Night).
Ben Storey hails from Little Rock, Arizona, and enjoys spending
his Saturdays by playing FIFA 2004 on his play station. He hopes to be a
novelist, but would settle for being either Gollum or Tom Jones.
Shannon Pufahl, from Berryton, Kansas, spent her summer driving
around in the South, whitewater kayaking, and managing a bar. She
aspires to be a painter when she grows up.
Gaywyn Moore joins us from Longmont, Colorado. Her favorite
literary character is Hermione from Harry Potter, and she enjoys
gardening, making jewelry, and cooking.
Ryan McCarty, from Michigan, hopes to be laid-back when he grows
up. In the meanwhile, if given his choice of literary character, he
would like to be either Moby-Dick or Spider-Man.
Michelle Lee, from Texas, has a very special talent—she can
navigate the entire KU campus while on crutches! She would like to be
Becky Sharp—”she’s evil, yet fun.”
Heather Krasovec plays the piano and hopes to be an English
professor when she grows up. She would like to be either Dorothea Brooke
from Middlemarch or Lucy Snowe from Villette.
Jennie Joiner hails from California,
and spent her summer traveling around the U.S. The best movie that she
has seen recently is Lost in Translation.
Micah Hawkinson, from Manhattan, Kansas, hopes to be a “Word
Doctor” when he grows up. He enjoys reading, playing games, listening to
music, running around aimlessly, and cuddling with a puppy.
Emily Hall can’t decide on which literary character she would
like to be—either Little Red Riding Hood or the Wolf! She has a great
memory and she can speak fluent Swahili.
Amanda Sahlfeld spent the summer lounging at the pool in Beloit,
Kansas. She enjoys acting, drama, and teaching, and the best movie that
she’s seen recently is The Last Samurai.
Todd Giles would like to be a
professor of Post-Modern Literature and Theory, and admires the
character of Satan. The best movie he’s seen recently? Hud. |
Kendra
Fullwood joins us from Raleigh, North Carolina. Her literary
character? Madam Alberta K. Johnson—a character in a series of Langston
Hughes poems.
Kit Frankenfield, from Spring Hill, Kansas, enjoys playing the
flute, cooking, being a mom, teaching, and motivating students. She
spent her summer teaching at JCCC.
Leslee Friedman, from Overland Park, Kansas, makes yummy baklava!
She is a Harry Potter-phile, and thoroughly enjoyed Harry Potter and
the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Will Ferleman is from Edwardsville, Kansas, and spent his summer
attending concerts—namely, Rush and Black Sabbath. He hopes to be a
contortionist when he grows up, and enjoyed the film The Dreamers.
Katie Egging joins us from Chadron,
Nebraska. She would like to be Tess Durbeyfield—minus the fatal end! She
would like to be a teacher and an activist when she grows up.
Linda Cozad, from Platte City,
Missouri, spent her summer remodeling a house and fretting about
graduate school. She too would like to be Becky Sharp! The best movie
that she has seen recently is De-Lovely.
Bill Church prefers to spend his Saturdays resting for Sunday. He
would like to be Inman of Cold Mountain, and refuses to grow up.
Emily Bobo’s special talents include saying the wrong things,
making salsa, and bumping her head. Love Actually is the best
movie that she has seen recently.
Jerry Bingham hails from
Washburn, Missouri, and hopes to be a compiler and critic of
ethnographic literature when he grows up.
Rachel Bateman calls Kansas City home. This previous summer, she
worked and went to L.A. and Canada. She would like to be the lead
character of Monkey, a Chinese folktale.
Heather Bastian is from Bastian,
Pennsylvania. Her literary character of choice—Alice from Alice in
Wonderland. She enjoys spending her Saturdays in bed, watching
movies.
Lesley Bartlett, from Hector, Arkansas, was a basketball player
in her previous life; now, she wants to teach. She enjoyed The Bourne
Supremacy and would like to be Scout Finch from To Kill a
Mockingbird.
Sandy Anderson spent her summer teaching for Upward Bound at KSU.
Her special talents include web design, computers, and arts & crafts.
She’s torn between wanting to be like Tyler from Fight Club or to
be like Christopher Robin.
Katy Martin hopes to be a critically popular musician with a
small but fiercely loyal following when she grows up. Her favorite
literary character? Lolita. |
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Conference News |
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The Midwest Modern Language Association
Convention, held November 4-7, 2004, in St. Louis, Missouri, had a
strong showing from our department this year. Here are some of the
diverse offerings: Joe
Sommers organized a session
entitled “The Performative Aspects of the Confessional Hemingway.”
Across a short survey of primary texts and cultural materials, this
panel attempted to explore and rationalize the narrative consciousness
of Ernest Hemingway the writer, the character and the legend to both the
critical and casual reader. The panelists sought to investigate
Hemingway as a literary figure prone to confession and constructed
within a network of confession from his boyhood days in Oak Park,
Illinois, long throughout his expansive career as an expatriate writer.
Central to the narrative construction of both his protagonists and
himself as a protagonist (and his protagonists as his construction of a
textual selfhood), Hemingway consistently creates figures flawed and
scathing both self-reflexively and to others as he searches for outlet
through his audience-base. The panel’s analyses illustrated an evolution
of these tyro protagonists through his work as these characters seek to
attain a maturity present but often mutually exclusive to their
condition as central figures; the figures exorcise their own
short-comings, fears and irrationalities through their narrative
performance in text. The presenters for this panel included Bill
Church, “The Nervous Necessity to Joke”: Humor and the Hemingway War
Hero,” Carey Voeller, “He Only Looked Sad the Same Way I Felt”:
Hemingway, Hunting, and the Narrative Confession,” and Joe Sommers,
“Chronicling Life in the Shadow of the Unattainable: Autobiographical
Hemingway’s Narrative Confessions and the Villains He Creates in Order
to Surpass Them.” |
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Jennifer Floray Balke
presented her paper “Reimagining the Frēoðuwebbe: The Role of the
Feminine in Baker’s Beowulf and McTiernan’s The Thirteenth
Warrior” in a session on “Gender and Medieval Film.” Jennifer argued
that in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, Hrōðgār’s wife
Wealhþēo serves an important function in her role not only as the queen
but also as that of a frēoðuwebbe,
or peaceweaver. Peaceweavers such as Wealhþēow held various
responsibilities, which included acting somewhat as a diplomat between
comitatus. Twentieth-century film interpretations of Beowulf have
reconfigured this vital position in different ways including Graham
Baker’s decision to provide Hrōðgār and Wealhþēow with a daughter who
assumes the queen’s responsibilities after her death. This paper looked
at two late twentieth-century Beowulf films – Baker’s 1999 Beowulf
and John McTiernan’s 1999 The Thirteenth Warrior – and examined
how modern filmmakers reimagine the peaceweaver role. Jennifer explored
the manner in which the portrayals of the peaceweaver in the films
differ from that traditional Anglo-Saxon role and what effect that had
on the gender dynamics within the films. Ultimately, one must consider
the ways in which this transformation not only reflects society’s image
of Anglo-Saxon life but also reinforces or questions current gender
hierarchies. |
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Geneva Diamond presented
her paper “The Problems and Promises of Teaching Medieval Literature
Through Film” in a session entitled “Representing the Middle Ages in
Film.” Geneva noted that nearly all literature instructors turn to
“movie days” at some point during their teaching to supplement the work
that occurs in a classroom. Whatever the literary text studied, bringing
film into the classroom forces an instructor to balance the pedagogical
problems inherent in employing movies with the possible benefits of this
teaching strategy. Using film adaptations of medieval literary works
presents even more problems than generally associated with employing
film in a literature class. The scarcity of film versions of medieval
works itself forces instructors either to use very flawed films or to
have no films at their disposal. What commercially-produced films are
available often vary so much from the original medieval work that their
classroom use produces an intellectual “free day” for students, while
films produced specifically for academic use can present a “true”
version of the literary work that induces boredom instead of engagement.
This paper considered the problems of employing film as a tool to teach
medieval literature and offered possible approaches to using film in the
classroom that can help instructors realize the promise that films offer
as a pedagogical tool. |
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Matthew Candelaria
presented an essay entitled “’The Victorian
Cockroach’” City Limits?: The European City 1400-1900” on October 1-2,
2004, at the Hotel Fort Garry Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Matthew
writes, “This was a fun little conference, and my first experience
attending one with a genuinely ‘foreign’ flair, although I can’t say
whether that sense of foreign-ness came more from the Canadian nature of
the conference, or from the preponderence of historians. Most of the
papers presented were historical in nature, and as such dealt with
enumerating documentation, etc, but some of them were quite compelling,
such as the paper on ‘Apocalypse and Apotheosis in the Myth of St.
Petersberg,’ which tied fictional representations of the city together
with actual construction plans and realities. In general, the conference
ran only one program at a time, and everyone came and went as a group,
with a surprisingly large fraction of participants attending all the
sessions.
“Winnipeg was cold, of course, bitterly
cold one day, but the conference was very hospitable. They provided good
coffee and fresh pastries twice every morning, lunch the first day, and
a lot of social activities, many of which I did not participate in
because I was visiting my in-laws: my wife Tracy’s originally from
Winnipeg and still has a lot of family there. I got to meet genuine
old-school British-style scholars: an interesting mix of sonorous,
almost hypnotic voices, cryptic insights, and shockingly bad dentition!
“My paper had been the subject of much
conjecture, apparently, from the moment it appeared on the program.
People were curious what, exactly, I was going to talk about, and they
usually picked up on my name when I introduced myself, saying, ‘Oh,
you’re the cockroach guy.’ This made me nervous, since I hadn’t looked
at my paper in a while, and I hadn’t finished editing it for
presentation, but all turned out well. Not only did people enjoy my
paper, but it inspired a lot of questions, and was even alluded to in
other presentations the following day. Most exciting of all, a professor
in the audience approached me afterwards about the possibility of
including my paper as a chapter in his book proposal. The project is
entitled Enemies of Humanity: Terror and Terrorism in the Victorian
Era, and my chapter will include not only the construction of
cockroaches as enemies of humanity, but combine that with my
science-fiction interests by exploring the use of non-human enemies by
H. G. Wells.
“Overall, this was a fun, entertaining,
and fulfilling conference, well worth the long drive up and back for the
weekend.” |
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This past summer, Kristin
Bovaird-Abbo traveled to Glasgow, Scotland, to present her paper,
“Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve: Gender and the Heart in Chaucer’s
The Canterbury Tales” at the New Chaucer Society. Her paper explored
the uses of “herte” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales,
where it appears quite frequently (46 times in The Knight’s Tale,
32 times in The Clerk’s Tale, and over 95 times in The
Parson’s Tale). What is significant about the use of “herte” in
these texts is the gendering of the terms. The heart of man combines
with violence (often initiated by women) whereas the heart of woman
offers a window into her soul, as suggested by the Wife of Bath: “She
knew myn herte, and eek my privetee”. A woman is completely embodied by
her heart. In The Man of Law’s Tale, Constance’s heart is the
“verray chambre of hoolynesse”; as a result, she is the epitome of
virtue. As for the men, we see a distinction drawn between them
according to the prominence of their hearts. Some men are driven (and
destroyed) by this central organ, as Arcite is in The Knight’s Tale.
Their hearts are pierced, with love or with a weapon. Other men,
however, exist separately from their hearts; for Walter in The
Clerk’s Tale, his heart becomes a conference room, in which ideas
may be explored, but need not direct his actions. Our view of the man’s
success as a ruler, warrior, or just as a man depends on how he
interacts with his heart. Ultimately the successful man does not wear
his heart on his sleeve, as a woman does; instead he keeps it deep
within himself. |
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