Faculty Publications and Works in Progress

Hyejoon Yoon

Several English Department faculty have had publications in the past year, and some also have works in progress.

In addition to having her article "Writing with Blackboard" published in the AWP Pedagogy Papers, Dr. Kathy De Grave's short story "Marrying the Veil" was published in the on-line magazine Margin in January 2005. The story is a magical-realist tale about a woman who falls in love with her wedding veil. De Grave is currently rewriting her novel "In Real Life Women Don't Play Jazz." The story focuses on two generations of mothers and daughters who battle the Great Depression, poverty, and schizophrenia, while also trying to fashion their lives in a creative, spiritual way.

Dr. Casie Hermansson is analyzing the appearances of the Bluebeard fairy tale in the English language tradition for her upcoming book, "Bluebeard: A Reader's Companion" (University Press of Mississippi). Hermansson, who has traveled to several major research libraries around the country and in England collecting materials, says, "It is very exciting to be working on something so old it is 'new.'"

Dr. Stephen Meats has published six poems this year in several journals and has published four biographical-critical profiles in The Literary Encyclopedia, an online reference work on whose Board of Editors he also serves. The profiles cover Henry William Herbert, America's first professional writer on sport; Walt Whitman, America's leading poet of the 19th century; William Gilmore Simms, the South's leading man of letters in the antebellum period; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, the South's most prominent Civil War diarist.

Dr. Paul (Skip) Morris is currently co-writing an essay, "What Writing Center Tutors Need to Know about Computers," with Jason McIntosh, a former English department graduate student now at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. The essay will be included in a collection edited by Dr. Mark Waldo of the University of Nevada, Reno.

Dr. Kathleen Nichols is editing an appendix to Native America, the first book in a series called Turning Points in History that is intended to complement standard high school history books. The appendix will consist of 24 Native American origin myths and oral histories that address the issues discussed in the book. She is also writing an introduction to the appendix. Nichols says, "Reading all these myths and tales has been very educational for me, and I hope students will find them fascinating also."

Dr. Celia Patterson's textbook A Technical Writing Manual, was published this year by Fountainhead Press. Patterson is currently engaged in a research project on the graphics used in early American military manuals. Patterson says, "The research has taken me back to ancient Greece and to the Medieval and Renaissance eras to trace the antecedents of those manuals." Patterson is planning to travel to several research institutions in the United States and England to study rare copies of manuals that exist only in special collections.

Ms. Karen Stolz's short story "A Beau for Aunt Sheree," which appeared recently in Good Housekeeping (November 2005), is one of a series that she is writing about a young girl growing up in the 1960s in Kansas City. According to Stolz, "My first novel, World of Pies, began as a series of stories that turned into a novel. This new series may be heading in a similar direction." Stolz's is also co-writing "Arvetta" with a friend. It is a novel based on her co-writer's grandmother, who was pivotal in starting schools for African American children in rural East Texas in the early 1900s.

Ms. Laura Washburn's satirical poem "Parens Patriae" appeared in the online political magazine "THE NOVEMBER 3RD CLUB" (Fall 2005). Washburn says, "What sparked the idea for this poem was a strange sign ('PLEASE DON'T FEED THE SEAGULLS, 24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE'), which is funny but a little sinister, too, that I saw outside a restaurant in Kaikoura, New Zealand." Washburn is working on several poetry book manuscripts, one of which, "Twenty-First Century Poems," is currently being reviewed by her writing group.