What's New in the English Department
Greetings from the Chair
Faculty Features
Departures and Arrivals
Worth Reading
Year-end Notes
In brief: Faculty & Graduate Student Professional Activities
Alumni & Other Friends
Write to us
Acknowledgments
What's New in the English Department
Our own Sunny Hyon, shown here with President Karnig, was awarded the Golden Apple Award for 2006/2007, the university's highest honor for outstanding teaching. She received news of the award in a classroom "ambush" by President Karnig, past award winners, and other well-wishers. A favorite with both colleagues and students, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1995, and her B.A from UC San Diego in 1989. She joined the department's faculty in 1994, and among other distinctions, serves as Associate Graduate Coordinator for our M.A. in English Composition, with responsibility for the TESL concentration, and is our resident department expert in all matters curricular. Sunny was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2006.
And this year's College of Arts and Letters award for Outstanding Teaching went to Jackie Rhodes for more reasons than we can count, including her work supervising thesis students in the M.A. program, her instrumental contributions to the Gateway program, and of course her excellent teaching. She also received a 2006 Diversity Award from the University Committee on Diversity, given to those who make "significant contributions to further the cause of diversity and multiculturalism at CSUSB."
The College of Arts and Letter's Outstanding Graduate Student was once again selected from our M.A. program. A first-generation college graduate, Angela Asbell earned her B.A. from our department, and wrote her thesis, "Cultivating Dissent: Queer Zines and the Active Subject," under the direction of Ellen Gil-Gómez and Jackie Rhodes, completing her M.A. in Fall 2006. Particularly impressive is Angela's record of community and university involvement, including working for two years as the coordinator for the newly-opened Santos Manuel Student Union Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Center, where she facilitated the Safe Zone Allies Program, and co-founding a local chapter of Food Not Bombs, an activist peace group serving the homeless. And we count ourselves lucky now to have Angela as a colleague, teaching courses in the department as a part-time faculty member.
The Kellie Rayburn Memorial Award for the outstanding master's thesis went to Amy Clark. Amy received her B.A. from Colorado State University and wrote her thesis, "Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl Novels: Contemporary Subversive Tales," under the direction of Holly Henry and Gabrielle Halko. Another student with a perfect 4.0 gpa, she received her M.A. in Fall 2006 and is now enthusiastically teaching children's literature at Riverside Community College. And two "Honorable Mention" Rayburn Awards were made this year to two 
more outstanding thesis writers: Angela Asbell, whose achievements are noted above, and Brian Bailie. Brian is another alumnus of our undergraduate program who opted for our master's program. Pursuing a dual concentration in Composition and Literature, Brian wrote his thesis, "EverQuest, Reality, and Postmodern Theories of Community" under the direction of Jackie Rhodes and Ellen Gil-Gómez. He has accepted a spot (with a teaching assistantship and tuition waiver included) in the Ph.D. program in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse. The highly competitive program only accepts a total of five applicants each year, so we're very proud of Brian.
Congratulations are also in order for last year's Rayburn Award winner, Davina Padgett Warden. Now a doctoral student at Claremont Graduate University and part-time instructor in our department, Davina was accepted into the CSU Chancellor's Doctoral Incentive Program. This program provides forgivable loans for doctoral students interested in faculty positions in the CSU upon completion of their degrees.
And let's not forget about our undergrads: student Kenneth David Hanour was the recipient of a $2,000 Award of Excellence by The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi for the 2007-2008 academic year. Kenny will use the award to pursue a master of arts degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing at Western Washington University.
In other accomplishments, Kim Costino's concept paper on the Gateway Program was the CSUSB submission for the systemwide "Initiative on Transforming Course Design." Gateway is CSUSB's innovative freshman year program which features enhanced sections of required first-year G.E. courses, block-scheduling of student cohorts, ongoing contact between cohorts and teaching teams throughout the academic year, and resources online for Gateway students.The CSU system awarded a $25,000 grant to support Gateway based upon Kim's application, and the Evaluation Panel rated the proposal as one of the top projects submitted in terms of potential impact on our campus and on the CSU as a whole. In addition to directing the Gateway Program, Kim was also elected by the CSU English Council as the Composition Coordinator for the CSU (the statewide system). Kudos to Kim on these achievements.
Twenty-seven poems from Salaam Yousif's translation of Iraqi poet Jamal Jumar's A Handshake in the Dark were set to music by British composer Michael Nyman. The poems are part of an anti-war sequence written during the first Gulf war when Juma's brother, a conscript in the Iraqi army, had been captured and was being held prisoner. The choral work was commissioned by the BBC and premiered by the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra on March 8, 2007 at the Barbican Hall, London, with John Storgards as conductor. Nyman is noted for his film scores, particularly for the films of Peter Greenaway and for Jane Campion's The Piano.
In news from our department office, Dorothea "Dottie" Cartwright, our stellar Administrative Support Coordinator, won the President's Special Achievement Award for her stellar work on our 40th anniversary celebration. The award was presented during the Fall 2006 convocation by President Karnig. Dottie is a CSUSB alumna who earned her B.A. and her M.P.A. on our campus. And Dottie isn't the only one in her household with something to brag about: daughter Yvette received her yellow belt in Tae Kwan Do in January.
From the Chair 
In my capacity as the proud Chair of the English Department, I should first thank Dr. Renée Pigeon, our webmaster and English News editor, for years of exemplary work putting together our much-read newsletters. These online publications have become an important means of keeping all of us—students, alumni, faculty (both past and current)—connected. If I should have expressed the department’s appreciation but haven’t, it is because her work has become so much a part of the department, its indispensability so much entrenched in my mind, that I have taken it for granted.
Year 2006-2007 was another stellar year for the English Department at CSUSB. The most notable of all our accomplishments has to be the hiring of six tenure-track faculty members: Parastou Feiz, a linguist, comes to us with a Ph.D. from Penn State University; Brenda Glascott, a composition studies specialist, obtained her doctorate from University of Pittsburgh; David Marshall, a medieval literature specialist, defended his doctoral dissertation at Indiana University and moved westward immediately after. Kevin Moffett, a fiction writer, holds an MFA degree from Iowa Writers Workshop and has been teaching at Gettysburg College for two years. Both Helen Pilinovsky and Joe Sanders are children’s literature specialists. Dr. Pilinovsky is a Columbia University graduate and Dr. Sanders got his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2005 and has been teaching at Missouri Southern State University. It is rare for a department to attempt to recruit six tenure professors in one year—and in so many areas! It is rarer to actually fill all six positions—and with colleagues from top-tier candidate pools!
Thus, the year that has just left us is one that will prove to be important. With new faculty come fresh ideas, more energy, and—undoubtedly—change. Those of us who are reluctantly labeled “senior faculty” are thrilled to see these new faces, exuding radiance and confidence, eager to get to work with our students.
But there were "losses," to steal a term from Professor Peter Schroeder's by-now famous Forty Years of English. Professor Yvonne Atkinson was wooed away by Mt. San Jacinto College. Professor Alexandria LaFaye decided to devote herself to her beloved audience—children and young adults—full time, hence "retiring" from CSUSB ridiculously early. Professor Maureen Newlin also retired, after teaching with us for nineteen years. We look forward to more books from Alexandria and we are proud of being part of Professors Atkinson and Newlin's successful careers.
The department and I—particularly I—owe a huge thank-you to Professor Ted Ruml, who graciously agreed to serve as acting chair of the department during my sabbatical in the Spring quarter of 2007. He stepped into the position without much orientation but acted every bit like a real chair, working with colleagues to accomplish more than the chair he was replacing would ever have in one quarter. We thank him and wish him well in the 2007-2008 year when he is on a research leave.
While I am omitting a lot of achievements by the English Department Faculty, I cannot neglect Professor Sunny Hyon’s winning of the 2007 CSUSB Golden Apple Award, the highest honor that CSUSB bestows on its faculty in the area of instruction. Sunny’s colleagues and students were ecstatic about the news, but none was surprised—except Sunny, that is. On the day of President Al Karnig’s trademark ambush, the ambushed was indeed ambushed: she was wearing jeans and a casual sweater, without make-up of any sort. If you have seen the picture of her with President Karnig in local papers and other media, you saw no lipstick—at least on her always "sunny" face!
Also gaining fame is Dottie Cartwright, our Administrative Support Coordinator, who won the President's Special Achievement Award for her exemplary work on the department’s 40th anniversary celebration. The award is one of the two most important and visible awards by the university (the other being the Outstanding Service Award). The 40th anniversary celebration party, a massive undertaking, was a “blast,” as I was told by several alumni. But I know I wouldn’t have dreamed of the idea without Dottie as my administrative right-hand (and often the left-hand, too). The President was kinder towards staff awardees: no ambush.
Last and the most important are accomplishments of our students and alumni, who are our perpetual source of pride. From citing those accomplishments, however, I shall refrain, for the able newsletter editor has presented them eloquently in the newsletter proper. So, read on and enjoy! —Ron Chen
Faculty Features
Our very best faculty news first: Mary Boland (shown here between Sunny Hyon and Jenny Andersen) will return this Fall, after a year's medical leave. She is doing well and happy to be back, and looking forward to working with this year's TAs. We are delighted indeed to have her back with us.
Congratulations to Julie Paegle, whose poem "Clock & Echo" was selected for inclusion in the anthology Best New Poets 2007 on the nomination of Cream City Review, and to Nancy Best, named the Leo Love Merit Scholar for Fiction for the Taos Summer Writers Conference. And Julie, along with Juan Delgado, organized readings by three poets in Spring—Ray Gonzales, Christopher Buckley and
Sandy Solomon—who gave readings open to the campus in the Santos Manuel Student Union, and visited creative writing classes.
A double helping of congratulations to Lee Bessette, on the birth of baby Cassie and on receiving her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta. Lee defended her dissertation, "Found in
Translation: The Journey of Anne Hébert's Poetry (in)to English" on July 6.
Our department is well-represented in the new literary anthology Inlandia: A Literary Journey Through California's Inland Empire (Heyday Books, 2006), which features two poems by Juan Delgado ("Ofelia" and "Flavio's New Home") as well as selections from the late Larry Kramer and alumna Ruth Nolan. Juan reports that he is at work on his fourth volume of poetry, as well as other book projects, and continues to do readings in California and elsewhere.
Changes are in store for the M.A. in English Composition program as Jackie Rhodes takes over from Renée Pigeon as Graduate Coordinator. In her new post, Jackie will remain responsible for the Composition concentration, while Dave Carlson will join the grad coordinating team in Winter 2008 as an associate coordinator (after a much-anticipated sabbatical in Fall 2007) and advise the Literature concentration. Sunny Hyon will carry on as associate graduate coordinator, advising the TESL concentration students. Stepping down after four years, Renée was honored by the Graduate Committee during the year's final meeting in June, a happy event that included unexpected surprises for Renée from her thoughtful committee-mates, the presentation of the Rayburn Awards, and even some thesis proposal reading (after the cake).
Margaret Doane spent August 2007 in Kenner, Louisiana helping to re-build homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. And last summer, after attending a June conference in honor of her Ph.D. advisor John Swales, Sunny Hyon stayed in Ann Arbor, Michigan for the summer teaching an academic reading and writing class for international graduate students. She enjoyed being back in her old stomping grounds and teaching the wonderful students in the class.
Dave Carlson was an invited speaker at the Michigan State University, School of Law Indigenous Law and Policy Center, on the topic of “Autobiographical Engagements with U.S. Indian Law” in March 2007. He's been invited to return and be a featured presenter at their 4th Annual Indigenous Law Conference (Theme: Indian Law and Literature) on Oct 19-20, 2007. And Dave's book, Sovereign Selves: American Indian Autobiography and the Law (University of Illinois Press, 2005) was nominated for the 2006 SHEAR (Society for Historians of the Early American Republic) prize—quite an honor.
Carol Haviland reports that the CSUSB Writing Center staff hosted the SoCal Writing Centers Association Conference, in February at CSUSB, which was attended by 125 writing center directors and tutors from SoCal and featured fourteen sessions on topics ranging from tutor identities to academic integrity to genre knowledge, to gender and tutoring.
And where in the world was Ron Chen? Our peripatetic chair reports that he spent part of his Spring Quarter sabbatical in Korea and China, in the latter of which he delivered a keynote speech at a Pragmatics and Cognition conference, claiming again that his audience did a marvelous job pretending to be eager and his talk was not entirely gibberish. After a few weeks back at home base, he fled to Kraków, Poland to present a paper, this time on the omnipotent existential construction (e.g. There was a unicorn in the garden) at the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference. He did not come back immediately after the conference, though. He vanished from Kraków and ventured into Prague, claiming to be recruiting associate editors for the Cognitive Linguistics Bibliography, of which he is a chief editor. But rumor had it that he actually was attracted to Charles University, where many a prince and princess was trained, Franz Kafka learned his life’s lessons, and Roman Jakobson founded the Prague School (in linguistics), whose presence is still felt half a century later.
DeShéa Rushing wears many hats in her specialty of assessment. She's the campus’s English Department Representative for the CSU system-wide Early Assessment Program (EAP) and she also serves as the English representative on the leadership team for the Reading Institute for Academic Preparation (RIAP) Program. This 80-hour training institute for all area content high-school teachers is designed to teach and implement standards-based approaches to improve academic literacy, monitor student improvement in critical reading and writing skills, and expand teaching strategies to match the academic learning strengths and needs of college-eligible students. DeShéa also served as the Chief Reader to plan, develop, and implement the first CSUSB College Preparatory Writing Exam for the schools of our GEARUP program. This exam brought together experts from around the country to evaluate 7,000 essays (or do 14,000 reads) and to develop a response report of their suggestions to the participating schools and their faculty.
The new faculty featured in Chair Chen's report above are already making news: Kevin Moffett made the list of nominees for the 2006 Frank O'Connor Short Fiction Award (following a tradition set by previous nominee, gone-but-not-forgotten Bret Johnston) and Rebekah Marshall, spouse of new medieval lit professor David Marshall, has been named executive director of the San Bernardino Symphony. Welcome, one and all.
Departures & Arrivals
Once again this year we said farewell to some of our number. We wish them all the best as they start new life-chapters: Alexandria LaFaye (whose latest book, Upriver, appeared in serialized format in newspapers nationwide), now living in Arkansas; Yvonne Atkinson, now on the English faculty at Mt. San Antonio College; Tim Melnarik, (a frequent contributor to English News' "Worth Reading" section), who accepted a post at Pasadena City College (congratulations, Tim!). And Maureen Newlin joined the ranks of the retired after 37 years (in one role or another) at CSUSB. Maureen told English News:
I am looking forward to retirement because I will have more time to spend with my family and friends, as well as to travel, read, and do some volunteer work. But I will certainly miss the CSUSB students and the English department faculty who have helped make my teaching career a fulfilling one. As both a former student and a teacher, I am grateful to have been a part of this fine institution. Since my undergraduate years, beginning in 1970, I have especially enjoyed watching the campus grow in size and in service to our students.
We also welcomed quite a happy throng of new arrivals this year. Check out our our "cute baby" contingent:
Worth Reading
Sunny Hyon: I read (and recommend) Elizabeth Edwards' Saving Graces. The book is a gracefully written memoir describing joys and struggles in Edwards' life, including her grief over her son's death.
Renée Pigeon: I enjoyed Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, an NPR contributor and American history buff. Vowell explores the first three assassinations of American presidents by visiting spots associated with them, dragging sometimes unwilling friends and family along with her. Read it to find out about President Garfield the bookworm, why she calls Robert Todd Lincoln "Jinxy McDeath," and why she refers to the current resident of the White House as "the current president."
Peter Schroeder: As for my reading, it's been heavy on Charles Darwin--the "four great books" (Voyage of the Beagle, Origin of Species, Descent of Man, Expression of Emotions in Humans and Animals) recently assembled by Edward O. Wilson under the general rubric From So Simple a Beginning, plus the Autobiography. Darwin has it all. Here he is on the writing process: "Formerly I used to think about my sentences before I wrote them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have written deliberately."
On novels: "I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily--against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if it be a pretty woman all the better."
You want violations of Grice's Cooperative Principle? "Upon asking at a house whether robbers were numerous, I was answered, 'The thistles are not up yet'--the meaning of which reply was not at first very obvious."
How about skewering the Duke of Argyll, one of his hostile creationist critics? "It would even appear that mere novelty, or change for the sake of change, has sometimes acted like a charm on female birds, in the same manner as changes of fashion with us. The Duke of Argyll says—and I am glad to have the unusual satisfaction of following for even a short distance in his footsteps—'I am more and more convinced that variety, mere variety, must be admitted to be an object and an aim in Nature.' I wish the Duke had explained what he here means by Nature. Is it meant that the Creator of the universe ordained diversified results for his own satisfaction, or for that of man? The former notion seems to me as lacking in due reverence as the latter in probability. Capriciousness of taste in birds seems a more fitting explanation."
Or, finally, "False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path toward error is closed, and the road to truth is often at the same time opened." Since I tend to spew forth false views, I find this very heartening.
Year-end Notes
On June 10, the department gathered at the home of Acting Chair Ted Ruml to mark the end of another academic year. Sunny Hyon served as photographer for the day.
Ted & Jamie Ruml
Juan & Jean Delgado
Dan Provost, Mary Boland, Jenny Andersen
The Chens
Tim Melnarik & Wendy Smith
Dave Carlson & Clare
Caroline Vickers & Ben
In Brief: Faculty and Graduate Student Professional Activities
Suzanne Arakawa published an article on Dale Furutani and his novel Death in Little Tokyo in the Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature (Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Literature), edited by Seiwoong Oh (Facts on File, 2007).
Jean Arnold presented "The Child as Father: A Child's Epistemology as a Source for Adult Ecological Identity" at the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics Convention, October 2006 in San Francisco and chaired a panel entitled "Reading British Literature as Cultural Criticism" at PAMLA in November 2006, at UC Riverside. October 2007 will find her in Victoria, British Columbia, to present "The Gift of the Diamond: a Colonial Object as Exchange in British Domestic Culture" at the North American Victorian Studies Association, University of Victoria.
Mary Boland's article "The Stakes of Not Staking Our Claim: Academic Freedom and the Subject of Composition" appears in the September 2007 issue of College English.
Jim Brown's essay on coaching wrestling, "Dirty Moves," originally published in The Los Angeles Times Magazine, was selected for inclusion in The Best American Sports Writing 2006 (Houghton Mifflin), and "How Some of Us Become Drunks and Junkies" appeared in Redivider: A Journal of Art and Literature 4.1 (2006). Jim also contributed book reviews of Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of America's Heartland and the novel Pound for Pound to The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, and is working on a new novel.
Dave Carlson's "Lord Dunsany and the Great War: Don Rodriguez and the Rebirth of Romance” was published in Mythlore 25.1-2 (Fall 2005).
Kim Costino and Mary Boland presented “The Bottom Line: Counting Students or making Students Count in the CSU” at MLA in Philadelphia, PA, and Kim's article (co-authored with Sunny Hyon) “'A Class for Students Like Me': Student Perceptions of Identity and Mainstream and Multilingual Basic Writing," is forthcoming in the Journal of Second Language Writing.
Margaret Doane continued her Cather-ing, presenting "'Bridled by Caution': Community-Enforced Conformity in Cather's Nebraska Novels" at the Western Literature Association, in Boise, Idaho in October; "''Alone in a Hard World': Victimized Survivors of Violence in Cather's Short Stories" at the Pacific Northwest American Studies Association in Portland, Oregon in April; and "Fear of the Parish, Freedom of the World: Community Opinion in Shadows on the Rock and Sapphira and the Slave Girl" at the International Cather Conference in Avignon, France in June.
Carol Haviland (with co-authors Melissa Ianetta, Linda Bergman, Lauren Fitzgerald, Lisa Lebduska, and Mary Wislocki) published “Polylog: Are Writing Center Directors Writing Program Administrators?” in the Spring 2006 issue of Composition Studies. With Linda Bergmann, she presented “Building Community out of Conflict and Chaos: Starting with Ourselves” at the European Writing Centers Association Conference. Boazici University, Istanbul in June 2006, and “Enacting Reciprocity: Writing-Centered Habits of Mind” with
Linda Bergmann, Melissa Ianetta, and Lisa Lebduska at the International Writing Centers Association Conference in Houston, Texas in April.
Sunny Hyon (the Golden Apple!) presented "In their Own Words: L2 Composition Students' Perceptions of Identity Labels and Preferences for Mainstream or Multilingual Basic Writing" at the American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference in Montréal in June 2006 with Kim Costino, and "Convention and Invention in an Institutional Genre: the Case of Retention-Promotion-Tenure Reports" at the Conference in Honor of John Swales, Ann Arbor, Michigan in June 2006.
Tara McDonald Johnson presented “The Peripatetic Aesthete’s Search for Novelty: Rebecca Sharp in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair" at PAMLA in Riverside in November 2006.
Julie Paegle’s poems have appeared in journals including The Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, Bellingham Review, Barrow Street and Cream City Review.
Renée Pigeon discussed "The BBC's Shakespeare Re-told" at the annual CSU Shakespeare Symposium, November 2006, at CSU Long Beach.
Paula Priamos-Brown's essay "Prison Without Walls" appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, while "Late Bloomers" was published in The Washington Post. She also contributed two book reviews to the San Francisco Chronicle, on I Love You, Let's Meet by Virginia Vitzthum and The Descendants, by Kaui Hart Hemmings.
Congratulations to Luz Elena Ramirez, whose book British Representations of Latin America has been published by the University of Florida Press.
Jackie Rhodes was another busy conference-goer, presenting “Technologies of the Self: Toward a Post-Cyborgian Methodology of Understanding / Writing the Human" at the Computers & Writing 2007 conference in Detroit, Michigan, in May, “Authorizing the Humanities: An Agenda for the Technological Human Body" at The International Symposium on New Directions in the Humanities, Columbia University, in February with co-presenter Ellen Gil-Gómez, and presenting at CCCC (more about that conference below).
Treadwell Ruml's "The Boundaries of Bishop Burnet's History and Henry Fielding's Fiction," is included in Historical Boundaries, Narrative Forms: Essays on British Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century in Honor of Everett Zimmerman (University of Delaware Press).
Caroline Vickers published two articles, "Grammatical Accuracy and Learner Autonomy in Advanced Writing," English Language Teaching Journal 60.2 (2006), and "Multiple Empirical Paths to a Complex Analysis of Discourse" in Methods in Cognitive Linguistics. (John Benjamins, 2007) with co-authors Linda Waugh, Bonnie Fonseca-Greber, and Betil Eroz. She presented two conference papers, "Turning the Tables: Who is Socializing Whom?" at the Second Language Research Forum, Seattle, Washington, in October 2006 and "The Local Construction of Dominant-Subordinate in Teamwork among Engineers" at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in April, 2007, and also organized a panel for that conference entitled "Exploring Local, Micro-Interactional Processes in Face-to-Face Interactions that Contribute to Constructions of Power and Identity."
CCCC: The Conference on College Composition and Communication
Sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English, CCCC is the premier convention in the field of rhetoric and composition. The 2007 convention was held March 21-25 in New York City, and drew almost 4000 registrants from around the world. Our tradition of significant participation in this conference continued this year with the following contributions:
Presentations by CSUSB graduate students:
Brian Bailie, dual emphasis in composition and literature, presented "Dystopia Online: The (Re)Productive Rhetoric of EverQuest."
Aldo Lewis, composition concentration, presented "A Bracero Rhetoric: The Devaluation of Manual Labor in the Technological World."
Also representing the department at CCCC were our faculty members: Kim Costino (“Racialized Literacies and the Problem of Critical Pedagogy”); Carol Haviland ("Teaching About Intellectual Property: Concepts or Rules?" and ); Sunny Hyon ("English for Academic Purposes Approaches to Genre-Based Teaching"); and Jackie Rhodes (“The Techne of Sexuality: Spectacle, Rhetoric, Desire"). And Carol Haviland served as Co-Chair with Linda Bergmann and Steve Westbrook of the Pedagogy Section, Intellectual Property Caucus.
Other Graduate Student Presentations and Publications
Tiffany Brook's article "The Properties of Knowledge Formation: Identification and Discursive Practice in the Phaedrus," is forthcoming in The Midwest Quarterly.
Virginia de los Reyes' article, “African American English as the Primary Female Descriptive in Morrison's Work,” has been accepted for publication in The Journal of Intercultural Disciplines.
James Ducat contributed "Critical Literacy in the Secondary Classroom: 'Gangsta's Paradise' and 'Amish Paradise,'" to the Winter 2007 issue of Statement: The Journal of the Colorado Language Arts Society.
Jan Hudson had a very full conference schedule, with an impressive five presentations at venues ranging from Hawaii to Georgia, on topics from vampires (the subject of her thesis) to Flannery O'Connor.
Study Abroad
On April 1, grad students Chloe de los Reyes and Robert Cedillo left for appointments in European writing centers. Chloe worked with Professor Gerd Brauer at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Robert with Professor Magnus Gustafsson at Chalmers University in Goteborg, Sweden. They studied European writing center practices as well as carrying out thesis research on second language acquisition. Then, along with their European mentors and Carol Haviland, they presented their findings at the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing June 30-July 2, in Bochum, Germany.
Alumni and Other Friends
Warmest congratulations to Kerry and Scott Chambers, who celebrated the arrival of daughter Hayley Jaye on July 9. Kerry Branch Chambers received a dual B.A. in English and Business in 1994.
Nicole Khoury (M.A. '05) has entered the Ph.D. program in Rhetoric, Composition and Linguistics at Arizona State University. Congratulations to Nicole, our eighth M.A. grad to enter a Ph.D. program in the last two years.
Cherylyn Eller (M.A. '88) tells us "After two years of retirement (from Cal State), I’ve gone back to teaching part-time for the English Department at Metro State College of Denver. It’s a beautiful campus setting right in downtown Denver. It’s diverse student body reminds me of Cal State, so I feel right at home."
Gustavo Flores (M.A. '07) was featured in an article in the online Spanish-language newspaper La Prensa. The article included photos of Gustavo teaching Romeo and Juliet at La Sierra High.
Eric von Mizener (B.A. '06) appeared on national television last September in the "Pitch to America" segment on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was taped during the Maui Writers Conference over the Labor Day weekend. Eric gave a pitch for his next project, entitled Tremulous, which concerns a derelict space ship containing the sole survivors of a planet where the female of the species had ruled.
Diana Ramseyer (M.A. '01) tells us she is now ABD, having passed her doctoral comps at Argosy University, and David Ramsey (M.A. '98), also ABD, continues to teach in Tokyo.
Recent Grads
Diane Changala has been accepted into the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at UCR's Palm Desert campus, and Kenny Hanour, as noted earlier, at Western Washington University's M.A. Program in Creative Writing. Christopher Millan has been accepted into UCR's M.F.A. Program in Palm Desert where he will work on his novel-in-progress about his tour as a U.S. soldier in Iraq. Ryan Mecklenburg, who recently completed his first novel, was accepted to the MFA Program at Bennington and at UC Riverside and chose Bennington. Ravella Curlee was accepted by Loyola University's College of Law with a scholarship. Congratulations and best wishes to all.
Write to us
Thanks for writing--we really do want to hear from you! Send an e-mail with your news & digital photos to rpigeon@csusb.edu, or write to: Professor Renée Pigeon, Dept. of English, CSUSB, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA 92407-2397. And please remember that when you contribute to the University's Annual Fund, you can designate the English Department to receive your contribution.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks for assistance with this issue of English News to Ron Chen, Sunny Hyon, Jackie Rhodes, and Bruce Golden.
English News Editor: Renée Pigeon
©2007 CSUSB Department of English
