English

Departmental Activities

Highlights from academic year 1999-2000 (including activities and events our department sponsored, produced, or participated in):

• We held our annual World Poetry Day (an event celebrating poetry, with community members reading poems of their choosing);
• We celebrated the publication of Cantilevers 2000 (our creative writing magazine) with readings from our guest poet, Bernard Quetchenbach, and from Cantilevers contributors;
• We awarded the Wesley Ryals Creative Writing Awards to Lisa Reynolds (poetry) and Heather Childree (short fiction), with Elizabeth Peloso and Ben Harben receiving Honorable Mention citations;
• We taught classes in the Honors Program;
• We taught classes in the May Option/Travel Abroad Program;
• We sponsored a reading by the poet Lola Haskins;
• We co-sponsored a career panel focusing on "What can you do with an English major?" where lawyers, editors, technical writers, and publishers extolled the virtues of the major;
• We began an internship program;
• We celebrated the return of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society, with the re-organization of our chapter, Psi Epsilon;
• We took great pride in having one of our seniors, Kathleen Ball, win the Sigma Tau Delta Regnery Publishing Internship award;
• We took two field trips to see Shakespeare plays in Orlando;
• We had faculty members make various presentations to the college community, to the families of students, and to the community at large.

Faculty Achievements

Dr. Mary Pharr saw the publication of her work The Blood Is the Life: Vampires in Literature (ed. with Leonard G. Heldreth [Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press]).  She also published "The Evita Quilt: Eva Perón as Postmodern Folk Icon" in Proteus: A Journal of Ideas and contributed

Dr. Alexander Bruce was selected as one of only 15 scholars nation-wide to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Anglo-Saxon England; he also published "Strategies for Introducing Old and Middle English Language and Literature to Beginning Students" in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching.

Dr. Catherine Eskin published "The Rei(g)ning of Women's Tongues in English Books of Instruction and Rhetorics" in Early Modern Women's Education, ed. Barbara Whitehead (NY: Garland, 1999) and two book reviews as well in Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. XXX (Winter 1999).

Dr. Bernard Quetchenbach had poems selected to appear in various journals and also has his book Back from the Far Field: Late Twentieth Century American Nature Poetry ready for publication by the University Press of Virginia.

Various professors read papers at conferences:

Dr. Rebecca Saulsbury read "A Morally Transforming Regeneration: The Virtuous and Exotic Body in Maria S. Cummins' El Fureidis (1861)" at the Fifth Annual Women's Studies Conference at Valdosta State University.

Dr. Paula Buck and Dr. Claudia Slate (with Dr. Sharon Masters, Dr. Marie Hardin, and Mr. Larry Burke) presented an overview of women's accomplishments in the fields of literature, sports, media, and music at the 5th Annual Women's Studies Conference at Valdosta State University.

Dr. Peter Schreffler presented "Beyond Behaviorism: The Promise of Self-Motivation in the Writing Classroom" at the annual meeting of the Florida College English Association.

Dr. Bruce read papers at both the New College Conference on Medieval-Renaissance Studies and at The Popular Culture Association in the South meeting.

Dr. Eskin read papers at the GEMCS conference and at the New College Conference on Medieval-Renaissance Studies.

Dr. Quetchenbach read a paper at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment conference in Kalamazoo last June.

Dr. Pharr presented papers on recent popular fantasy works (the movies The Matrix and The Phantom Menace and the novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon) at three different conferences.