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ASU English > The Department and GlobalizationWitnessing Worlds Within and Beyond . . . Every aspect of what we do—our teaching, our research, and our service—underscores a growing participation in and efforts to facilitate conversations and experiences that impact and transform lives here and afar. This department has an established record of vibrant engagement with international communities through our teaching mission. Our master’s and doctoral student population boasts connections with well over thirty different countries, among them Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, Canada, Kuwait, and Japan. Our teachers and students also carry our teaching mission into other parts of the world. MFA students, recently under the tutelage of creative writer Melissa Pritchard, have established an important partnership with the Daywalka Foundation in Calcutta, India.
Melissa Pritchard (center) in India They have created a writing project that involves adolescents from marginalized areas of Calcutta, mainly brothel districts and railway stations, actively writing poetry, giving readings at local bookstores, tea stalls and other venues, and publishing their first literary magazine. “Because of the confidence and writing skills engendered by these writers,” offers Melissa, “[these] young writers are committed to continuing their educations, to writing poetry and fiction, to teaching and going back to their communities in a grassroots effort to bring the power of poetry and of writing itself, to thousands of other young people living in difficult, disempowering conditions.” Graduate student Johanna Wagner is at work completing the doctorate degree in this department as she is simultaneously enrolled in the doctorate program at the University of Ghent (Belgium). Cynthia Hogue’s 2006 visit to the Terezín concentration camp, while leading an intensive poetry workshop in Prague, Czech Republic, inspired her poem “An Hour from Town,” which appears in Counterpath, an online special issue on borders and restraints. Other activities that engage our faculty instruction include directing Summer Study Abroad Programs in Cambridge, England and in Florence, Italy. Professor Emerita Thelma Richard, a former Fulbright scholar in Grenada, Spain and in South Africa and recently a Fulbright Senior Specialist, maintains active intellectual and pedagogical ties with the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.
Thelma Richards and Sam Raditlhalo Presenting via Laptop in South Africa Thelma’s online course “Postcolonial Mirrors,” a course she team-taught with a literature colleague at the University of Stellenbosch, has led an undergraduate student to conduct her honors project on female voices and presentations of women in Zimbabwean literature. Our distinguished faculty continue to raise our department’s national and international profile through invited lectureships and keynotes. Not only have we co-hosted with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing two Canadian Fulbright scholars, but Elly van Gelderen has taught historical linguistics in Oslo, Norway and will teach Chomskian linguistics in Naples, Italy in May 2007.
Elly van Gelderen Bob Bjork has delivered major keynote addresses for international conferences in London and at the University of Nottingham. Neal Lester and Maureen Goggin shared with students at Moscow (Russia) State Linguistics University their scholarly expertise respectively on the race and gender politics of hair and on the rhetoric of needlepoint. Mark Lussier will lecture and teach in Australia this spring semester, both at the University of Melbourne and Monash University. Neal Lester and applied linguist Mark James will present three-week lectureships in China this summer at Sichuan University.
Neal A. Lester in China The importance and rewards of international collaboration conjoin with the research and creative mission of this department. Not only have the two major international conferences of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism been hosted by this department (2000 and 2006), but the conference brought to ASU, according to conference convener Mark Lussier, scholars of Romanticism from four continents and thirteen countries. The 2006 conference looked at the intersection of Romantic literary and philosophical practices with pedagogical practices. Importantly, Joe Lockard’s Antislavery Literature Project, a highly successful research and pedagogical tool, receives visits from over 100 countries, mostly from China, the United Kingdom, South Africa, France, Singapore, Canada, the Russian Federation, and Germany. The presence of Jay Boyer’s creative activities on the international stage and in international publications further signals global vision and impact. Jay’s plays and short fiction appear in venues in the United Kingdom, Canada, Turkey, Algeria, Australia, and Iran. Jay’s plays have been produced in Canada and England. Susan Scarberry-Garcia’s research collaboration with a professor at Moscow State University considers comparative research about indigenous peoples of North America and Siberia, Russia. Susan’s photo essay will be part of the expanded The Way of Kinship, the first anthology of Native Siberian literature. In addition to attending and presenting at conferences across the globe, faculty serve on international boards, underscoring the national and international visibility of our faculty’s excellent research and creative activities and their highly visible professional service. Alleen and Don Nilsen serve on the Executive Board of the International Society of Humor Studies, Bob Bjork as Guest Editor for the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages with about 700 international contributors, and Rosalynn Voaden as Co-Editor of the Yale Companion to Medieval Holy Women, a volume with contributions from scholars in England, Holland, Germany, Canada, and the United States. That our students participate in international outreach is also important as is the case of Dawn Penich-Thacker, a doctoral student in rhetoric and composition, who serves as a volunteer working to develop English language curriculum for the Center for Outreach and Advocacy for Refugees (COAR). Dawn also teaches English to Somali Bantu refugees, as a volunteer, for the International Rescue Committee, the leading refugee aid organization in the world. Instructor and department alumna Heather Hoyt provides excellent cyber mentoring of graduate students and professors from Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Iran, and Kuwait seeking her advice and feedback on their research and teaching of Arab American literature and contemporary Arab literature in English. Since Heather first offered this original special topics class, “Arab Women Writers” in spring 2004, she has received a steady stream of cyber inquires about this relatively new but timely area of scholarly and pedagogical inquiry. According to Heather, “There aren’t too many of us teaching and researching these texts, so my website with the course link and background information has been a useful resource for fellow scholars.” With regard to the new wave of interest in her important work in establishing and participating in this global community, Heather admits, “One of the most rewarding aspects of my cyber mentoring, research, and teaching has been the interaction with students and colleagues. My network continues to grow, as do my friendships with the amazing writers, scholars, and students interested in Arab and Arab American literatures.” Finally, Heather Maring, a new assistant professor, is a member of the editorial team at the Intangible Heritage Section of UNESCO, Paris. Last summer, Heather worked in Paris, compiling A Manual on Oral Traditions and Expressions, in line with the stipulations of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage. The purpose of the Manual is to educate a diverse group of readers (community members, government officials, researchers, and members of NGOs) on how to identify, inventory, and go about safeguarding the viability of living oral traditions. In addition, while in Paris, Heather became a temporary member of the UNESCO Secretariat while assisting at the first session of the General Assembly of the States Parties to the 2003 Convention. Neal A. Lester, Professor and Chair
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