Our seminar students will be creating digital manuscript and film/audio archives, re-designing gift shop products, and building a traveling museum for the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library.  Because of great publicity like this, we are already receiving requests for the products of our seminar, and we’ve only just begun.  Stay tuned because we have big things to unveil as our seven month-long project unfolds. Click the link below to view the full article from “The Digital Shift.”

“Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library Tackling Digitation,” from “The Digital Shift:” http://bit.ly/tUidZD

I thought the Semester at Sea study abroad program was a scam up until the moment I shuffled tentatively aboard the ship in Canada.  I couldn’t believe I would be able to visit eight countries in the span of two months on a cruise liner for college credit.  As we puttered across the ocean toward the Mediterranean, our classes started right away.  In addition to our 2 to 3 elective classes, everyone was required to take Global History.  Global history is a lot more fun when you visit the countries shortly after learning about them in class and you can say “Hey, I learned that in class!”  The opportunity for me to study important political situations, history, and current news en route to the locations enhanced the classroom learning environment and fixed itself more permanently in my mind.

We, as writers, tend to write about the familiar, which usually happens to be within the United States and even within a certain state or city. What happens when you make the rest of the world just as familiar?  As a part of an educational study abroad with an effective system of using time on the ocean for class days and having every day in the countries off from school, I entered those eight countries with more knowledge about the history of the country in addition to current events.

For my trip abroad during the summer of 2010, I bought a Flipcam (a portable video camera) in order to document the people, environment, and specific places in these countries so they wouldn’t fade from my mind if I decided to write about them in the years to come.  My friends rolled their eyes as I videotaped us walking down a backstreet in Rome.  Who knows, maybe my character will run down the same street, bumping into the small water fountain set on each corner of the intersection.

My biggest worry about the trip was not making any friends in the eleven days between Nova Scotia and our first country, Spain.  With over seven hundred students who also boarded the ship without knowing anyone else, I had nothing to worry about.  By the time we reached Spain, everyone had met their friends for the rest of the two month experience.  In two months, my two friends, Chrissy and Gina, became lifelong friends in whom I would trust my life.  There is something special about exploring unknown and potentially dangerous countries with friends you’ve known for what would be half of a school semester.  A year later, Chrissy, Gina, and I reunited again in Florida at Disney World.  Over Thanksgiving break, I’m visiting one of them in New Jersey.  For our next reunion we plan on meeting up in Australia.

From Canada to Spain, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco, I had the opportunity to interact with different people and learn—as an 18-year-old sophomore university student—to navigate by myself in countries where I spoke a minimal amount, if any, of the language.  By the time I returned to Virginia two months later, I had seen the famous La Sagrada Mi Familia in Spain, traveled to a popular island in Greece and learned how to barter in Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco.  In Greece I learned how to avoid getting pick pocketed; I stripped naked in front of an elderly lady for a popular Turkish bath in Turkey; and I fainted from dehydration in front of King Tut’s throne at the Egyptian Museum (I never actually saw the rest of the treasures, unfortunately).  In Egypt, my friends and I got lost and wandered into the local part of city, passing through alleyways full of barefoot children splashing through dirty puddles filled with trash and past loose chickens and goats.  I was surprised at myself when I cried for days about the way I had treated an Egyptian local who had tried to scam us out of money to help feed his children while I had remained dry-eyed for losing a papyrus painting I had paid $70 for and only regretted wasting my money on something so useless.

My stories could go on forever.

With my own personal experiences aside, I gleaned even more story ideas from other students who shared their insights, stories, and experiences at a special event the evening we embarked from every country.  I wrote pages and pages in my journal about the settings and places I had been in the country so I could write about those countries from personal experience rather than from pictures or Internet research.

When my friends found out where I was going to be for two months of summer, they called it a vacation, not school.  Even now, a year later, I can’t dispute that argument, but it was the most educational and momentous event of my life.  I’m no stranger to traveling, but Semester at Sea has significantly impacted my lifestyle.  From listening to the Diplomats who boarded our ship in every country to talk about politics, to volunteer opportunities in each country for orphanages or psychiatric centers, there are endless opportunities to inspire your own life in addition to your writing.

Semester At Sea is a study abroad opportunity that everyone should experience, whether or not you plan on being a writer.  Even if you can’t afford something so extravagant (there are scholarships available!), take every opportunity to write outside of your comfort zone, even if it’s just doing something local that you haven’t done before.  From volunteering at soup kitchens to volunteering at Habit for Humanity, you can turn anything into inspiration for your writing.  As an English major, the more you know about the world, the more variety you can write!

To learn more about the Semester at Sea study abroad program, see their link at http://www.semesteratsea.org/

Photo courtesy of Bridget Gelms

In our latest post, first year graduate student Bridget Gelms discusses how getting involved is more important than ever as a Master’s student. She advocates for GSAB (Graduate Student Advisory Board) and its commitment to linking life in academia with the professional world. Bridget describes several opportunities she has been afforded through the Board, including a GSAB-sponsored conference, which will be held on February 10th this year. See the full post below.

When I made the decision to come to graduate school, I felt overwhelmed. No one from my family has ever had to navigate this process, so it was important to me as a first-year Master’s student at Ball State to get involved with the department. I wish I had gotten more involved in my undergraduate work, and graduate studies adds a layer of investment that isn’t necessarily present as an undergrad: negotiating a medium between being a student and also being a professional. GSAB is something that helps me do both.

I decided to attend the first Graduate Student Advisory Board meeting with another first year Master’s student because we were both curious as to what goes on during the meetings and eager to meet other students in the department. As soon as we walked into the room, we were welcomed by the group, and the first meeting was spent going over the sorts of activities the group sponsors and attends. In fact, we held a GSAB sponsored party at my house at the beginning of the semester as a way to introduce new students and welcome back returning students to the 2011-2012 school year. We had great food, great drinks, and awesome company—you can imagine what sorts of conversations went on considering there were creative writers, linguists, rhetoric and composition scholars, and literature enthusiasts at the party.

Essentially, GSAB acts as a liaison of sorts between the graduate students and the department, and being involved with the group has afforded me a wonderful opportunity for professional development with the added bonus of being able to meet other graduate students across all the disciplines of the English department. Instructors and other students always stress how English is such a collaborative field, and GSAB is the perfect example. We have members from literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition, and English studies (that’s me!). One of the things I’ve noticed since becoming a graduate student here at Ball State is how friendly and unified the English department is. Almost immediately, I felt like I was part of a community, and GSAB is the perfect venue for graduate students to bridge that gap between being a student and becoming an active, even professional, presence in the department.

Service is vital to academia, and I can’t think of a better way to participate in service than to volunteer my time to a group dedicated to helping English graduate students, because… well… I am one. As a graduate assistant, I am a part of the T-prep program where I’ve been learning all kinds of things about becoming an instructor and building my professional life. One of the things my teachers have stressed to me is the importance of publishing and attending conferences as a way to simply stay involved. Every discipline in English studies is continuously evolving, so it’s of monumental importance that we stay current. We are the future of these fields. We will dictate where things go from here.

I’ve also learned that conferences allow you to network. You can’t be an island in our field, and conferences are great for collaborating with people who have similar interests. I love it when I’m able to meet people I can nerd out with about the usefulness of Twitter in a composition classroom or about obscure pieces of literature I thought only existed on my bookshelf. I think it’s important to be aware that we aren’t alone in all of this.

I have never been to a professional conference before and am unfamiliar with the culture, but I know that as a Master’s student who has intentions of getting a PhD, conferences will be an integral part of my life. This is another area where GSAB has helped me tremendously. The annual conference we put on, Practical Criticism Midwest, is a venue where Ball State graduate students from each discipline in the English department can gain practical experience with the conference process—submitting proposals, writing papers, presenting, sitting on a panel, etc. I think helping organize PCM (I’m working on the catering and the website!) will ease some of my anxieties over my unfamiliarity with conferences.

My first semester as a graduate student has flown by and looking back on what I’ve accomplished so far, I think my experience would have been vastly different had it not been for GSAB. I’ve met fantastic people who I now consider friends and have gained invaluable experience not only as a student, but also as a newcomer to the professional realm.

*We welcome all English graduate students to attend our meetings. Feel free to contact me (bcgelms@bsu.edu) with any questions about how to become involved with GSAB!

*Practical Criticism Midwest 2012 will be held on Friday February 10, 2012 at the Virginia Ball Center. You can get more information at the conference and view our call for papers at our website http://pcm2012.weebly.com. Please email your questions to gsab@bsu.edu.

Tell me about the awards and nominations you have received and which works they were awarded for.

“Most recently, I’ve been celebrating the release of my third full-length poetry book, “Damnatio Memoriae,” which won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest.  There’s also “Pure Elysium,” my fifth chapbook and winner of the Palettes and Quills 2nd Biennial Chapbook Contest.  My poem, “December Mourning,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, as well as the Best of the Net Anthology from Sundress Publications.”

Cover of Damnatio Memoriae by Michael Meyerhofer

It must be exciting to be recently nominated and to receive so many awards. How does it feel?

“Horribly depressing.  Just kidding.  Actually, it’s great to get validation because this business is so competitive yet so solitary.  In a sense, awards are just another form of publication, and publication is about more than networking or feathering one’s literary headdress; it’s about getting your work out there, having it read and, hopefully, enjoyed.”

What current projects are you working on?

“Let’s see… Currently, I’m putting the finishing touches on my fourth full-length poetry manuscript, as well as the sequel to my forthcoming fantasy novel.  I’m also the Poetry Editor for Atticus Review, which takes up some time, but is a great side project.   Aside from that, I always have a few poems, novellas, and raw ideas rattling around in my head and hard drive, hopefully some of which will actually turn into something.”

How do you balance your writing with your teaching? How do the two affect each other?

“I haven’t quite figured out yet how to add more hours to the day; luckily, though, I love interacting with students, and even though that takes a lot of time and energy, it’s incredibly inspiring in terms of my own creative projects.  Students are fellow human beings, after all, and since we’re all basically after the same things and asking ourselves the same questions, the more perspectives we can bring into the conversation, the better.  I think the trick is to avoid that natural inclination to separate one’s own creative self from one’s professional self.  I’m always telling my students that you can’t write when your lens is cloudy; that is, you can’t really understand, let alone express, a deep insight or emotion if you’re walled off.  I think the same goes for teaching. The less walled off you are, the more vulnerable, sure, and the more energy you have to put in; on the other hand, I think you stand to gain a lot more.”

Tell me about your background. How did you get where you are today?

“I ask myself that a lot…  Well, I grew up in a small town in northern Iowa.  If you’ve never been, northern Iowa is a lot like Indiana, except with more hills, cattle, and snow.  My roots are strictly blue collar, which definitely informs and grounds a lot of my writing.  Especially early on, I had horrible stage fright and little or no self-confidence; writing, teaching, and publishing helped with that.  I remember being in grad school and walking around campus, grinning like an idiot, because I finally felt like I belonged somewhere.  I don’t just mean academia; I mean being around other writers, other people who actually cared about and actively valued this bit of oddball craftsmanship, who understood that it’s not a job but a vocation.  Aside from that, in terms of publishing and accolades, it was just a matter of hard work, naiveté, anger, sappiness, and general stubbornness.”

What advice do you have for readers on writing, education, and life?

“Good writers have to be good readers–that’s obvious–but it also helps if we can temper our reflexive self-involvement with humility, plus the dedication to glean from even a seemingly pointless event or unapproachable text whatever insight or lesson it has to offer.  I haven’t learned from my mistakes nearly as much as I should; on the other hand, my mistakes taught me more than anything else.  Other than that, don’t forget to enjoy yourself.  Go outside.  Stare at a tree or something.”

An example of a roadside cross on I-69.

Immersive learning. As Ball State students, or even local residents, it is difficult to have not encountered this phrase floating around in our daily lives: it’s everywhere from billboards to the university website. Unfortunately, I believe that a true understanding of the philosophy behind this phrase eludes many of us. Students and parents are told that Ball State is unique because of its commitment to immersive learning. We are told that we will be hard pressed to find other comparable universities that have this dedication to immersive learning. Where this might be an effective marketing strategy, the simple, and even unfortunate, truth remains that until the immersive learning approach is experienced first hand, its true benefits cannot be measured. And make no mistake that when I say “benefits,” I truly believe that immersive learning positions students (and even instructors on some level) to examine their strengths and utilize them in a manner that allows for the greatest amount of potential.

I had the immeasurable pleasure of landing a spot of my own in one of these immersive learning projects. Ball State, through various foundations, has been gifted with the ability to offer an immersive learning program called the Virginia Ball Center for Creative Inquiry, which essentially is a semester-long program in which students concentrate their entire class load into a single seminar class. This allows for an extensive and in-depth investigation of a topic, which may otherwise fly beneath the radar. For example, the seminar I’m in the process of finishing has focused on “Vernacular Memorials,” or memorials which do not necessarily follow the structures of religious or governmental organizations. Some might term this an “unofficial memorial.”

In an effort to not over-complicate my and my classmates’ endeavors over this semester, I’ll describe our three most distinct end projects and how immersive learning allowed us to realize these accomplishments. We knew going into this seminar that we hoped to produce an interactive online map, a documentary chronicling our efforts, and most importantly, a fully published book. While I can’t speak for my thirteen other classmates, I’m willing to assume that the skills they brought to this class, and much more importantly, what they took away were honed and polished and manipulated in such a way as to fit a much more “real world” environment. For our map team, this might include learning how to operate a software program that they will continue or go on to use in their careers. Or perhaps our documentary team was able to utilize its textbook knowledge and create a widely distributed documentary from beginning to end: from scripts to lighting to image and sound editing and everything in between. And then there’s our book. To condense an entire sixteen-week odyssey into a few sentences is impossible. As I mentioned above, to understand the immersive learning environment, you must immerse yourself in it. Let me just say that, especially as an English major, publishing a book ripped me from the desk in our classrooms and put me into a position which was, admittedly, uncomfortable in the beginning. My classmates and I were forced to collaborate and design a full-length publication. This involved odd hours and unending communication, something I’m not sure many students have really ever had to adjust to. It involved cold-calling complete strangers and asking to interview them. It involved endless hours of editing. It involved more editing. Several of us learned creative software from scratch, and some of us wore our imagination down to its bare essence by examining and reexamining photos and audio and film and text and research. We were made to step up and become leaders. Similarly, we were made to concede our efforts to the greater good of our seminar. Never have I been so interconnected to other people and their efforts. It’s odd to understand that without one of us contributing at full capacity, our project could have very realistically fallen apart. All in all, our seminar was not class. It was not work. It was a beautiful amalgamation of knowledge and skill-building and contributing to the outside world of greater understanding.

This all seems sporadic to read. But in the end, isn’t that exactly what the world outside of the comfort of the university is? After class and homework and portfolios, we spend hundreds of hours in academia attempting to learn and polish our craft. Unfortunately, this will never fully prepare us for the sporadical nature of our respective careers and endeavors. And this is where I believe immersive learning seeks to intervene. I have lived the late nights of editing and reading and working. I have understood the nature of collaboration and dependencies. I have been criticized and learned to accept my faults in an attempt to see the bigger picture. I have thrown myself into unknown territory and discovered talents otherwise unbeknown to me. And most importantly to me, I have published a book. Through it all, I have gained an understanding that my instructors will never be able to offer in a regular classroom.

Do not take immersive learning for granted. Ball State has capitalized on one of the most important attributes to my learning career. If not to have a book under your belt, or new and marketable skills uncovered, attempt the immersive learning approach for nothing else but to enter into an often-turbulent world after college with a firm grip on the anchor that is your career.

To see more from this particular seminar, visit the official website here.

Signed,
Tyler

The cover of the seminar's full-length publication.

Victoria Barrett’s fiction press, Engine Books, released its first original title, Patricia Henley’s OTHER HEARTBREAKS, this month.  Victoria coordinated the Writers’ Center of Indiana’s “Gathering of Writers” on Saturday, November 12^th.   Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Martin gave the keynote address, and twelve writers from around the state formed the faculty.  Victoria also read her own fiction at The Writer’s Center of Indiana’s “Indy Underground” reading series on Thursday, September 29^th, alongside emerging literary/crime fiction star Frank Bill.

Peter Bethanis has poems “The Deer in the Barns” and “American Future” forthcoming in the Anthony Hecht Poetry Anthology.

Jill Christman’s memoir Darkroom: A Family Exposure has been released in paperback.  Recent essays (with accompanying author interviews), “Bird Girls” and “Nineteen Weeks and One Day,” were published last summer in Willow Springs and r.c.v.r.y respectively. In October, she had the pleasure of reading for Vouched Books Presents in Indianapolis and at the fifth annual Mother Words reading in Minneapolis.  She’s looking forward to joining her creative writing colleagues—and as many students who can make the trip to the windy city—in Chicago next March at the AWP (Assoc. of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference where she will be reading in Ashland University’s Fifth Year Anniversary Creative Nonfiction reading (Sat., March 3, 2012 at 3 p.m.) and giving a paper on “The Rooted Narrator: Negotiating Time and Narrative Distance in Nonfiction” (Fri, March 2, 2012 at 10:30 a.m.).

Patrick Collier will be directing the London Center next fall.  Also, he spoke at a roundtable on the work of Robert Scholes at the Modernist Studies Association in Buffalo in October and read a paper on “Literary and Imperial Spaces in the Illustrated London News” at the “Mediamorphosis” symposium, which he co-organized with Ann Ardis, at the University of Delaware in September.

A musical based on Cathy Day’s novel The Circus in Winter and written by Ball State students was performed by the Ball State Department of Theater and Dance in September and October.  The musical sold out all eight of its performances, and the project sparked a number of interesting results, including a Ball State TV commercial.  Prof. Day talks about it all on her blog, which can be found here: http://cathyday.com/2011/10/23/the-circus-in-links/#more-1284

Graduate students Tess Evans and Matt Balk attended the Indiana Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute. They both completed the 4-week program in July this year.  You can find more information, along with some photos, here:  http://iwpnews.blogspot.com/2011/07/meet-2011-iwp-teacher-consultants.html

Graduate students Hideki Goya, Jiutian Cai, Qi Ding, and Alison Fecher were published in the 2011 INTESOL Journal as the authors of “Development of Vocabulary Use in ESL Composition.”  (Qi graduated this summer and the rest are current graduate students.)

Robert D. Habich has been invited to write the chapter on Ralph Waldo Emerson for Oxford University Press’s new Oxford Bibliographies Online, an interactive web guide networked and linked to online journals, databases, and other electronic resources.  He is also working on the essay on biography for the book Emerson in Context (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press) and will be one of three author society presidents giving opening talks at “Conversazioni in Italia,” a transatlantic conference to be held in Florence in June 2012.

Pamela Hartman and Lynne Stallings, with recent department alumni Luke Boggess and Philip Call, presented “Bridging Literacies:  Teaching ELLs to Use Visualization and Drama to Powerfully Create and Read Texts” at the November 2011 National Council of Teachers of English Convention in Chicago.

Mai Kuha presented a poster titled “Indiana Speakers’ Perceptions of Southern Indiana Speech: Nice and Slow” at the Diversity Research Symposium here at Ball State in October.  Mai’s essay, “The Case of the Dog Who Ate Bamboo” was published recently in Language & Ecology. For a short commentary see http://www.ecoling.net/dogwhoatebamboo.pdf.  Mai has also recently published an essay titled, “Degrees of Anthropocentrism in Accounts of Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions,” in Society & Animals.

Sean Lovelace’s stories “Three Histories” and “Elvis Visits the Blackjack Table” have been accepted by Hobart for its upcoming fall 2011 print issue on the theme of “Luck.”  The Chattahoochee Review has accepted his flash fiction “University of A” for its upcoming fall 2011 print issue.  Booth Magazine recently published Sean’s story, “Winesburg, Indiana: The Processed Cheese Product Man.”  You can find the story here: http://booth.butler.edu/2011/10/07/winesburg-indiana-the-processed-cheese-product-man/.  This story will later appear in a print anthology titled, Winesburg, Indiana, which is a homage to and a rewriting of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.  Sean’s new book, Fog Gorgeous Stag, was recently noted by two European reviewers, The Short Review  (http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews/SeanLovelaceFogGorgeousStag.htm) and Red Fez (http://www.redfez.net/nonfiction/321)

Carolyn J. MacKay and Frank R. Trechsel presented a paper titled, “Relaciones internas de las lenguas totonaco-tepehuas”  at the Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America V (CILLA) in October.  They have a forthcoming publication, “A Sketch of Pisaflores Tepehua Phonology,” appearing in the International Journal of American Linguistics.  Carolyn and Frank have also received $200,000 for an NEH Documenting Endangered Languages Grant  to work on A Dictionary of Pisaflores Tepehua.

Michael Meyerhofer’s third poetry book, Damnatio Memoriae (winner of the 2011 Brick Road Poetry Book Contest) was just released, as was his fifth chapbook, “Pure Elysium” (winner of the 2nd Biennial Chapbook Contest from Palettes and Quills).  His poem, “December Mourning,” was nominated for both the Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize, and he also recently had poems accepted by Hayden’s Ferry Review, Southern Indiana Review, Portland Review, and other journals.  Two of Michael’s poems, “Dust” and “The Birthdays of Ex-Lovers,” were reprinted on Verse Daily, and he also had a literary fantasy novel accepted for publication, due out as an e-book in about a year.  Last but not least, Michael recently gave readings and presentations for St. Fishers College and the Just Poets Group in Rochester, NY, and will be reading in St. Louis this month at the invitation of River Styx Magazine.

Jackie Grutsch McKinney has two forthcoming publications.  The first is an article titled, “Beyond Tutoring: Mapping the Invisible Landscape of Writing Center Work” (written with Becky Jackson), and it will be published in the “Focus Articles” section of the Fall 2011 issue of Praxis: A Writing Center Journal.  Jackie also has a book review (written with Ball State PhD student Emily Standridge) of “The Online Writing Conference” by Beth Hewitt, which is forthcoming in The Writing Center Journal.

Matt Mullins’ book “Three Ways of the Saw” will be out in February with Atticus Books. Check out the link for more information: http://atticusbooksonline.com/books/three-ways-of-the-saw.

Graduate student Ashley Murphy is involved in a project sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity. She will be interviewed and her class will be videotaped for a series of videos about diverse teaching pedagogies at Ball State. The videos should be available by Fall 2012.

Mark Neely’s book of poems, Beasts of the Hill, won the 2011 FIELD Poetry Prize, and will be published by Oberlin College Press in March 2012. He also has new poems forthcoming in Gulf Coast, The Pinch, PANK, and Hunger Mountain.

Miranda Nesler participated in the Fall 2011 Newberry Library History of the Book seminar, and she was also accepted onto a Shakespeare Association of America 2012 panel on “Non-Shakespearean Drama.”  Miranda also received the Ball State Aspire New Faculty Start-Up Grant.

 Webster Newbold’s article “Rhetoric, Fiction, and the Appetite for Model Letters in Renaissance England,” was published in Appositions: Studies in Renaissance/Early Modern Literature & Culture.  For more information, check out this link:  http://appositions.blogspot.com/2011/05/w-webster-newbold-rhetoric-fiction.html

Craig O’Hara’s story “Rodent Town” was published recently in the Main Street Rag Press anthology, Altered States.  The Dos Passos Review also accepted his story “The Pawnshop” for publication in their upcoming issue.

Martha Payne gave the presentation ” Ἀναγνώσεως δε ἄξια πράγματα:  Using Non-standard Texts in the Myth Classroom ” at the 107th Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Grand Rapids, Michigan in April.

Rai Peterson was awarded a Provost’s Initiative Immersive Learning Grant. The grant will fund five student groups who will conduct archival research, create a digital humanities database, film oral history interviews, design products, create a traveling museum, and write a 5-year marketing plan for the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis.  This is a cooperative program between the English and Marketing Departments with support from the Provost’s Immersive Learning Fund, the Vice-President for Information Technology, and ten Indianapolis community sponsors.  The funded classes will run during spring and summer semesters 2012, and will culminate with a visit from the new Traveling Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library on Ball State’s campus this summer.

Elizabeth M. Riddle presented a series of 3 invited lectures and 2 workshops on English Linguistics and TESOL at the Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica (Brunca Regional Branch) in Perez Zeledon, Costa Rica in October.

Mary Theresa Seig received a $1 million, two -year grant funded jointly through the State Department and the Iraqi Government (Higher Council for Educational Development in Iraq) to develop and aid in establishing an Intensive English Program linked to the Prime Minister’s Office to educate Iraqi scholarship students in English prior to their undergraduate or graduate study in an English-speaking country.  Grant activities will include creating the curriculum, hiring and training 40 Iraqi instructors, and coordinating the teaching of English in Iraq in both live and DVC formats.

Jared Sexton’s story “It is Wide and It is Deep” was just nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Geralyn Strecker taught a spring 2011 VBC seminar that produced a documentary entitled  Black Baseball in Indiana, which was selected for screening at the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s annual baseball film festival  in Cooperstown, NY in September.  The festival included 17 films, and Black Baseball in Indiana was the only student project.  This was the documentary’s second screening at the Hall of Fame—the first was in June as the opening night event of the Cooperstown Symposium, an annual academic conference for baseball historians.  Geralyn was also recently named book review editor for Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal.

Trey Strecker was named Coordinator for Ball State’s Indepartmental Minor in Sports Studies.

What made you interested in letter writing habits? Also, how long have you studied these habits?

My field of academic research is letter writing in the English Renaissance, the 16th and 17th centuries; and I teach about medieval letter writing (the ars dictaminis) in my graduate class on medieval and early modern rhetoric.  I have been the author of many traditional-type letters over the years, and have been using electronic communications almost as long as email has been generally available–from the early 1980s. So, although I haven’t done formal research on current correspondence patterns, I do have some ideas from a variety of sources.

Can you describe your studies and your findings?

My studies about letter writing in the Renaissance have found that literate people used letters for a wide range of purposes: to conduct business, retain family relations, ask for favors, express ideas in place of formal publication, and especially for entertainment. On this final point, I’ve investigated model letters in Renaissance how-to manuals as a genre of fiction, which later matured into more extended epistolary forms such as the novel.

What conclusions have you made from your research?

I think current correspondence patterns are well worth studying in light of digital platforms that now provide more opportunity to connect via writing.  Scholars have found that young people now do much more writing than they did a generation ago (in blogs, email, texts/tweets, etc.), and questions worth asking include: How does this writing become part of peoples’ lives? What function does it carry out?  How does correspondence-type writing relate to other, more formal genres people produce? What is the perception of digital communication in the general population–what are its positives and negatives? What would young people value in future writing tools? What do they value in traditional forms of writing?

To see more from Newbold on this subject, don’t forget to check out his article here.

To read a full write up about Professor Lovelace’s recent award on BSU’s website, click here.

“Should the graphic novel be regarded as literature?”

“Are graphic novels anything more than overly long comic-books?”

“What literary merit (if any) do graphic novels contain?”

“Should graphic novels and graphic novel authors be treated with the same literary reverence we treat great contemporary authors today?”

The graphic novel has been a consistently growing literary medium that dates back to the 1920s. For those unfamiliar with what a graphic novel consists of, it is a narrative that uses art and uncommon story structure (usually implementing stylistic traits similar to the usual comic book format) to accompany text.  Similar to the function of the picture in children’s picture books, the art in the graphic novel plays an integral role with the text in telling the story.  For many years, literary critics and book-consumers alike turned away from the graphic novel, thinking it to be a lesser form of literary writing best suited for adolescent males only. Over the past two decades, the “graphic novel” has been able to distinguish itself while simultaneously assimilating into the coveted realm of respected literature.

The term “graphic novel” is broad and for good reason. Any genre can be applied to the graphic novel design. Author Will Eisner (arguably) kick-started the graphic novel movement in 1978 with his work A Contract with God: And Other Tenement Stories.  The structure, artwork, and thematic material of the novel didn’t resemble its comic-book counterparts of the time. Contract presented a short set of stories that addressed the hardscrabble realities associated with tenement living in the Bronx, circa the 1930s. The novel was praised by most mainstream critics and the graphic novel had one of its first successes. Since the late 1970s, the graphic novel medium has given us authors and artists such as Alan Moore (From Hell, Watchmen), Frank Miller (The Spirit, 300), Art Spiegelman (Maus), Marjarine Satrapi (Persepolis), Harvey Pekar (American Splendor), Lynda Barry (One!Hundred!Demons!), and Alison Bechdel (Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic) to name a few. On October 4, 2011, contemporary graphic novelist and comic book author Mark Waid visited Dr. Lyn Jones’ English 414 class to discuss the state of the graphic novel in today’s marketplace.

Mark Waid has been a prominent fixture on the comic book circuit for the past twenty years. He has written for many widely popular superhero franchises such as Spiderman, Superman, and Justice League, and his graphic novel, Kingdom Come, is one of the most successful comic collections to date. Waid visited our class to accompany a presentation over the many elements associated with graphic novel writing. Waid’s enthusiasm for his profession showed as he enlightened our class on the various means a writer or fan or artist can read/publish their work via today’s online technology/marketplace.  Basically, the art-form is readily adapting to today’s marketplace where beautiful, drawn-out novels become expensive to produce.

Waid fielded questions from students, many of whom weren’t entirely familiar with the many different categories of books found in graphic novels. After showcasing several graphic novels to the class, we began to see how it wasn’t all Superman and The Avengers.  I knew of a handful of popular graphic novels but did not understand how this form of prose spanned across the entire spectrum of literary genres. After doing a bit more graphic novel based research, I found that over the past ten years the graphic novel has grown in immense popularity and tackled various issues not commonly found in “comic-books.”  Author Alison Bechdel’s 2007 graphic novel/memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic tackled the subtle (but emotionally complex) issues dealing with elements of family dysfunction. The Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O’Malley has been ever growing in popularity since its 2004 publication, mostly due to its unique combination of angst and alternative flavor with Manga inspired illustrations.  There is also 2007’s Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol which deals with a lonely girl struggling with life who finds the friend she needs—who happens to be a 100 year-old ghost. These books (and more like them) have helped the graphic novel reach a whole new audience that 20 years ago wouldn’t have given a graphic novel a second glance.

As the presentation concluded, Mark Waid left the class with the sentiment that we shouldn’t look at a “graphic novel” as anything but a novel. This is simply a medium of story-telling that shouldn’t be constrained by pre-conceived notions of what we (the readers) expect out of a novel. The graphic novel’s future in the literary world seems, fortunately, to be firmly intact.

Mark Waid’s website can be found HERE

For a list of must-read Graphic Novels, click HERE

The translator is a youngish Israeli poet named Oded Carmeli. He’d seen some poems from the book in the online journal Jacket and asked if he could translate a few; before long he’d translated the whole book and found a publisher. It all happened very quickly.

Soon after the release party, a number of Israeli reviews started coming in. And this is where it gets interesting: some were very critical of the book because they didn’t think that the book was actually poetry! They thought it might be something else entirely, but certainly not Poetry.

My father-in-law is a dentist and knows nothing about poetry. He read Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! and said he liked it. He told me, “I think I get it, but I’m not sure.” I said, “Then you get it. That’s good enough.” I told him about the Hebrew translation and the charge that I wasn’t writing poetry. He said, “Well, they can’t prove that.”

Before I knew it, I was in the middle of a small, Israeli literary controversy. I did some interviews via Skype and telephone with Israeli journalists. It felt really terrific. I mean, as a poet, I’m accustomed to getting very little feedback. I’m used to being almost completely ignored. It turns out that causing controversy in Israel is every bit as fun as being a nonfactor in the United States—if not more so!

The book was even on one of those cultural maps (I’m not sure what to call them, but large magazines make them) which highlight the ups and downs of pop culture.

You can see Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! in the upper right hand corner. The caption to the book reads something like, “Irony is the funnest ton.” What’s great about this graph, for me, is that the book is in the good corner, up there with the Turkish elections and Gabriel Giffords. It’s far, far away from Lebron James and Tracy Morgan, who, in the bottom left corner, can’t feel too great about themselves. I don’t know why Russell Crowe was in the bottom left corner too, but I’m sure they were justified in putting him there.)

I sort of saw the criticism coming but didn’t recognize it at the time. Before the release party, Oded and the publisher created a Facebook page for the event. Oded then began periodically posting some of his translations from the book. And, then (as God said), there were Facebook comments.  And you know how that goes.

Of course, all of this was in Hebrew. So for me to know which poem Oded posted, or what the commenter wrote, I had to copy and paste the text to Google translator and hope for the best. Sometimes I didn’t know what the argument was, or who was on which side. So, in a way, I still know very little about the reception of the book in Israel. Just weird little bits and pieces.

So, when Dr. Beach asked me to write about my experience for this blog, I asked Oded if he’d write a paragraph or two about the reception the book got in Israel. This is what he wrote:

For reasons both local and universal, not many outside poets make it to the Israeli reader. Before PPP! came out, the last American poet to be translated into Hebrew was Mark Strand in 2007, and that was highly unusual. I think it’s fair to say that Beat poetry is still considered to be “contemporary American poetry” here in Tel Aviv. And when a poet does get translated – after his death or shortly before that – the translation is usually his or her collected work. If I’m not mistaken, PPP! is the first single volume of “American poetry” that was translated in real time into Hebrew.

So I can understand the outcry some critics cried after reading the Hebrew PPP!. Here was this unknown poet of about their age whose second collection of poems got published in the biggest publishing house in Israel just one year after its original publication. To be blunt, some Israeli poets/critics were simply jealous at the “respect” Peter Davis got. I bet that if PPP! was an original Hebrew work, the same group of people would have been the first to praise it.

At the same time, PPP! was very well received within certain poetry circles. Many experimental poets were thrilled to read the work of their newly-found American colleague. As one poet put it: “reading PPP! was like reading Orwell’s Animal Farm for the first time. You think to yourself: why didn’t I think of that before? And it was only last year!”

So that’s the word from Israel. I like what Oded says because it makes me seem like the unfairly prosecuted victim, as opposed to the fairly prosecuted perpetrator. And I am really happy to see Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! favorably compared with Animal Farm because, well, how could I not like that?