What's New in the English Department?
In brief: Faculty and Graduate Student Professional Activities
Alumni & Other Friends: Update
What's New in the English Department?
Our New Chair: Phil Page, who took over from Sandra Kamusikiri as Acting Chair of the department last year, has now been confirmed as the department's choice to continue in the position. Page joined the department in 1989. A specialist in American literature, he received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1973. He has won acclaim for his books on African-American literature: Dangerous Freedom: Fusion and Fragmentation in Toni Morrison's Novels (Mississippi UP, 1995) was awarded the 1996 Eudora Welty Prize and the 1996 Toni Morrison Society Book Prize, and Reclaiming Community in Contemporary African-American Fiction (Mississippi UP, 1999) was named by Choice Magazine as one of the best academic books of 1999. See Phil's thoughts on his new position below.
Literature track for the M.A. Program: We're excited about our new graduate track in literature. Our M.A. program in English Composition has now added a literature track, complementing our existing concentrations in English Composition and TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language). The Literature Option links the Composition Option's emphasis on rhetoric and language with advanced study in literature. It's appropriate for current and future English teachers, those anticipating doctoral studies in literature or related fields, and those who simply wish to continue their study of literature beyond the baccalaureate degree. If you're interested in any of our graduate degrees, please contact Prof. Ron Chen, our Graduate Coordinator, for further information. He can be reached by telephone at (909) 537-5887, or by e-mail: rchen@csusb.edu. You can also contact Phil Page at (909) 537-5824, or by e-mail: ppage@csusb.edu.
Award Winner: The College of Arts & Letters Outstanding Graduate Student for 2000 is our own Kristine Potter. She'll be honored for her achievement and awarded her M.A. in English Composition at the commencement ceremony on June 18. Kris plans to pursue a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where she's been awarded a full fellowship and teaching assistantship. The title of her M.A. thesis is " Writing, Computers, and Rhetorical Situations: A Composition Odyssey."
English Club Events: The English Club has remained busy this year under the enthusiastic joint direction of Jenny Andersen and Sunny Hyon. Club events this year have included a book sale, several film screenings accompanied by lectures (Doane on Frankenstein, Page and Atkinson on Beloved, and Abrams on Death of a Salesman), a Subject Matter Assessment Workshop led by Mayo, and co-sponsorship of "Cup of Culture II," a coffee house event at the Student Union.
The Judy Killgore Staff Scholarship honors Judy Killgore, spectacular longtime secretary to the English Department, who died February 4, 1995. The scholarship is now endowed: it has a principal amount of $5000, and the recipient receives the interest income each year. The scholarship was funded primarily by a faculty member in the English department, by generous gifts from the Killgore family, and by donations from the English department and members of the university community. A recipient must be a permanent or temporary member of the CSUSB staff working 20 or more hours a week, must be seeking her or his first undergraduate degree, must be enrolled in four or more units, and must maintain a 3.0 grade average.
The scholarship has now been given twice, last year to Judy Powell, and this year to Diana Butler and Elaine Sanchez as co-recipients. The selection committee has three members from Financial Aid as well as English faculty member Margaret Doane and Arts and Letters representative Dottie Cartwright.
The Writing Center co-sponsored the Pacific Coast Writing Centers Association Conference on campus November 5-6, 1999. The conference title was "Language Matters: Creating Campus and Community Dialogues," and the keynote speaker was Jacqueline Jones Royster of Ohio State University. Participants included PCWCAC members, as well as many undergraduate and graduate students and alumni.
News from our Department Office Staff: Our Administrative Support Supervisor, Dottie Cartwright, graduated in March with a B.A. in Business Administration and Management. In addition to keeping the office running smoothly (no small task) and finishing her degree, Dottie has also been kept busy by her beautiful little girl, Yvette, born November 17, 1997. Jeff Hupp, our Administrative Support Assistant and all-round great guy, graduates this June with a B.A. in Communications. Jeff will be celebrating by spending part of the summer on his first trip to Europe. Congratulations to them both! And Rebecca Gomez, who worked as an assistant in the office while earning her B.A., has accepted a position teaching English in the Jurupa school district.
Greetings to our alumni! Last summer, when Sandra Kamusikiri was promoted to Associate Vice President and Dean of Graduate Studies, I was suddenly catapulted into the role of Acting Chair of the department. And quite an act it is. It's very strange to sit in that chair, to view the department from a quasi-administrative role, from a position of being in the department but also, oddly, outside it. Since then, I'm no longer "acting," but it still feels strange and very "quasi."
We're still very much the vibrant, energetic, hardworking bunch that (I presume) we were in your day. People teach a lot and well, people do heroic amounts of committee work and other service (and as Chair I appreciate their efforts even more than I used to), and they manage to remain very active professionally. I hope that we imparted to you that combination of dedication and expertise, the sense of commitment to one's vocation.
Depending on when you graduated, some or most of us are still here. Of the longest serving faculty members, Ed White is officially retired but still teaching one course per quarter. Larry Kramer (and his laugh) survived a bout with cancer, and after 2000-01 he will retire to the one course per quarter level. Loralee MacPike is retired but teaches two or three courses each Fall quarter and luxuriates in Hawaii the rest of the year. Peter Schroeder, Clark Mayo and Bruce Golden show no signs of slowing down. Many of our illustrious band have moved on (up?) to administrative or, again that word "quasi," partial administrative jobs. Besides Sandra, Milton Clark is now Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Susan Meisenhelder is serving a term or two as president of the California Faculty Association, Ted Ruml is now half-time Chair of the Faculty Senate of CSUSB, and Juan Delgado just accepted a job as special assistant to the provost. We feel that the English Department is taking over the world.
And of course we have new faculty members, both full-time and part-time. We're growing, along with the campus. We now have a literature track in the MA program, a linguistics track in the undergraduate major, a peer advising center, a Departmental Honors program, a newly required one-unit Senior Project for all majors. Just a host of good things. Never a dull moment, especially for the Chair.
We'd like very much to keep in touch with you. Let us know how you're doing. Drop a card or send a post to your favorite professor--really (you can find their e-mail addresses on our home page). Our phone number is (909) 537-5824 and the address is Department of English, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino 92407-2397.
Phil Page
Department Faculty recently promoted and/or awarded tenure: Promoted to Professor: 1998, Phil Page; 1999, Renée Pigeon; 2000, Ted Ruml, Salaam Yousif, and Ron Chen. Awarded Tenure: 1999, Carol Haviland; 2000, Sunny Hyon. Promoted to Associate Professor: 1998, Carol Haviland; 1999, Sunny Hyon.
Jennifer Andersen was awarded a W. M. Keck Foundation Fellowship for Young Scholars by the Huntington Library in 1999. Located in San Marino, the Huntington is a world-renowned independent research center with holdings in British and American history, literature, art history, the history of science, and medicine. The Library collections range chronologically from the ninth to the twentieth centuries and include 600,000 photographs, a half-million rare books, 5 million manuscripts, and a large ephemera collection, supported by a half-million reference works. Jenny also participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., "Redefining the Sacred in Early Modern England," in 1998.
Milton Clark, after a year spent as Acting Dean of Undergraduate Studies, has been selected to fill the position. In his role as Dean, Milton is responsible for many important functions, including the overall development and effective conduct of the undergraduate and educational equity programs of the University. The Dean oversees both the general education program and support services such as the Educational Opportunity Program, Learning Center, Academic Services/Advising, SAIL, PAD, and the Writing Center and acts as liaison between Academic Affairs and the Student Affairs division. Our congratulations to Milton on his new post!
Juan Delgado has been awarded the Whittenberger fellowship and will be a resident writer for the 2000 Student Writing Project in Idaho, working with student writers on the campus of Albertson College this summer.
Kudos to Margaret Doane on her remarkable feat of completing the 583 mile AIDS Ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles in June, 1999. Margaret, who has long enjoyed fitness biking, prepared for the rigorous event by riding two hundred miles a week in the final months before the trip. While on the Ride, Margaret says that she "developed endurance and stamina, and surprisingly did so day by day. Mountains I had walked up at the beginning of the week I went over with comparative ease at the end." The greatest effect of the Ride for her, though, was "a tremendous deepening of my empathy for AIDS victims . . . the disease now wears a human face."
Jeff Galin, who joined the department in 1996, has accepted a new post as Assistant Professor of English at Florida Atlantic State University. The department features an M.A. and will soon offer a Ph.D. program in Multicultural Literatures and Literacies, Galin's specialty. Jeff reports that there are four new computer classrooms opening in the Fall, and the department includes about 20 full-time faculty, another 20 full-time lecturers and a few part-timers. And more excitement is in store for the Galin household, since Jeff and his wife Karen are expecting a baby boy, due September 25. Jeff writes " I would like to thank the department for providing me so many opportunities to contribute. I have enjoyed my work and will miss the daily interactions with the colleagues I have here. The department is in the early stages of important change. I look forward to hearing how things emerge within the next five years."
Harry Hellenbrand, who served as Department Chair from 1990-94, returned to California and the CSU system in August 1998. Harry left his post at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, to become Dean of Arts and Letters at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Sunny Hyon put on her student hat in a three-week French immersion program last summer in Chicoutimi, Quebec. She had a great time living with a host family and working on her French vocabulary, grammar, and Quebeçois accent. C'etait "fun," as they say in Quebec.
1999 saw the appointment of Sandra Kamusikiri to an exciting new role as Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Vice President. A member of the department since 1986, she received her Ph.D. from UC Riverside. In addition to co-editing Assessment in Writing: Politics, Policies, Practices, she has published articles on topics such as the African heritage of the slave narrative, and is also a published poet. In recent years, she has participated extensively in a National Endowment for the Humanities program, "Democracy in America: Traveling Chautauqua." Sandra has served the university in numerous roles, including terms as a faculty senator, membership on the University Outcomes Assessment Committee, and most recently as English Department Chair from 1997-99.
Loralee MacPike is happily enjoying her retirement in Hilo, Hawaii, where she reports that she teaches part time at the University of Hawaii and otherwise can be found "sitting under a coconut palm watching the waves break over the coral reef and eating papayas." She returns each Fall to teach as part of "FERP," the Faculty Early Retirement Program. In Fall 2000, she'll be offering a course on Feminist Literary Theory (English 322).
Congratulations to Maureen Newlin, who completed her Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Riverside in June, 1999.
Originally from Western Montana, Jacqueline Rhodes joined the Department of English this year as an Assistant Professor. Jackie received her Ph.D. in English with a specialization in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1999. Her areas of interest include feminist theory/rhetoric/activism, critical and liberatory writing pedagogies, histories of print/techno-culture, and professional writing and editing.
Jackie recently taught first-year and advanced composition classes, as well as graduate courses in professional writing and feminist approaches to composition studies. During fall quarter, she also taught (with Diana Roloff) a section of 306 piloted and funded by a CSUSB Community-University Partnerships office grant that incorporates a service-learning component. This year, in addition to 101 and 306, she'll teach graduate courses in contemporary approaches to literature, contemporary composition theory, professional writing, as well as English 542: Literary Publication, in which students will produce the Gold Coast Review and the Pacific Review. The multi-talented Jackie has worked as a graphic designer, typesetter, and editor, played keyboards and bass guitar in country-western and rock bands and received several years of formal vocal training. Jackie adds that "for most of my teen years I wanted to be a fabulously tempestuous diva at the Met. Alas, academia sang its siren song. My last public performance--an 'Amazing Grace' duet with Eddie, a street musician--was in the New Orleans French Quarter last April."
Wendy Smith has been in Jerusalem on and off since 1997 doing an ethnographic study of the role of storytelling and the Sephardic culture, which is known for also for its storytelling in music. Storytelling is both honored and pervasive in the culture, and is used to construct and reinforce cultural norms and values. Wendy has videotaped the spontaneous talk in several story-tellling groups, the members of which are elderly female Ladino speakers (Ladino is a dying language; therefore, the majority of native speakers are fifty and above), as well as taken the oral histories of six married couples and various family members. The majority of the Ladino speakers have been living in Israel for thirty or more years, having emigrated from Turkey and Greece. From these data, she is able to analyze the role story-telling and narrative in general play in a dying society.
Ed White shared these thoughts about his recent retirement: "The great advantage of being retired is that you can do just what you want. I discovered that what I want to do is teach and write, just what I've been doing all my life. So I've been teaching regularly at Cal State part time and teaching a course in writing assessment for advanced Ph.D. students at the University of Arizona in Tucson. My appointment at the University of Arizona calls me a "distinguished visiting scholar," which makes me feel pretty special. I realize now more than ever how lucky I've been, to have spend my career doing just what I enjoy most doing."
In Brief: Recent Professional Activities of Faculty & Graduate Students
Faculty & Graduate Student Publications:
Rise Axelrod reports publication of A Writer's Guide. Co-authored with Charles R. Cooper, Rise's latest work provides students "with the most practical and useful information about writing college essays," using examples drawn from actual student writing.
Jim Brown is currently developing his novel Lucky Town as a screenplay for Andrew Bendel of Blue Horizon Productions (Metroland) and director Alan Taylor (The Sopranos, Sex in the City ). He's also been busy with book reviewing: he reviewed Michael Chabon's last collection of short stories for The Riverside Press Enterprise, Gary Soto's recent novel "Nickel and Dime" for the San Francisco Chronicle, which was also reprinted in the Press Enterprise, and is currently working on another review for the San Francisco Chronicle of a novel called The Lost Legends of New Jersey. The Los Angeles Times Magazine will be running an excerpt from Brown's book-in-progress, an autobiography, on June 18, and will feature another selection from the same book later this year.
Juan Delgado's poems have been selected for inclusion in anthologies: "Chuparosa," "Con Los Pajaros," "Dandelion" and "I-5 Incident" will appear in American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press) and "When You Leave" in Grain of Poetry (HarperCollins). Poems by Delgado have also appeared or are slated to appear in the Colorado Review, Luna: A Journal of Poetry and Translation, and El Andar.
Margaret Doane had two papers accepted for publication in the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter, "The Non-Interpretation of Dreams: Cather's Unfurnished Use of a Detail in Characterization," and "Life is but a Dream: Reality Romanticized in 'A Lost Lady.'"
Renée Pigeon edited Theophania, or Several Modern Histories Represented by Way of Romance, and Politickly Discours'd Upon, published by Ottawa's Dovehouse Editions as part of their Barnabe Riche series in Early English Prose Fiction. The book, originally published in 1655, is a roman à clef about the English Civil War.
Jackie Rhodes' most recent publication was a review of Sharon Crowley's Composition in the University which appeared in January's issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly. She also reports that she's currently revising her dissertation, "From Manifesto to Modem: Feminism, Composition, and the Subject of Writing" for publication in book form.
Ed White had articles accepted for publication in the Journal of Basic Writing, Spring 2000; the Chronicle of Higher Education, Summer 2000; and College English, Fall 2000. He has also completed chapters for books celebrating old friends Peter Elbow and Gary Tate, as well as a crossword puzzle filled with wretched puns to be published Fall 2000 in Rhetoric Review. In 1999, two autobiographical chapters appeared in collections and he is looking for time to turn them into a book. His next book, however, will be Composition Studies in the Twenty-First Century, to be published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2003.
Faculty & Graduate Student Conference Presentations & Other Professional Activities:
Jenny Andersen presented "Andrew Marvell's 'Upon Appleton House' and Civil War Print Culture" to the Renaissance Literature Seminar at the Huntington Library in 1999.
Suzanne Arakawa presented papers and a media project at the American Studies Association Convention in Seattle and the American Literature Association Conference in San Diego in 1998. Last year, she presented a paper at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association Convention in Portland and this past March, gave a paper along with a media presentation at the Society for Cinema Studies Conference in Chicago.
Juan Delgado was the guest artist for the Idaho State Department of Education Migrant Program, and presented at their Migrant Student Leadership Institute in Boise, Idaho. He also presented several workshops on creative writing to hundreds of high school students attending the second annual Hispanic Arts Festival in South Padre Island, Texas.
Margaret Doane presented three papers on Willa Cather (on violence, on dreams, and on overcoming social oppression) at a variety of conferences, and one on Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping at the Western Literature Conference. She also chaired a panel on Marilynne Robinson at the Sigma Tau Delta International Conference.
Bruce Golden presented "Irony in Stephen Jay Gould and Woody Allen" at the CCCC in Atlanta in 1999, and with Kristine Potter presented a session on online mentoring at the 2000 Computer and Writing Conference (C&W2K) in Fort Worth.
Carol Haviland, Kristine Potter, Carmen Fye and Richard Colby presented "Students Write Themselves as Theorists and Reimagine Theory" at the 2000 CCCC in Minneapolis. Students Becky Rudd, Maggie Cecil, Aaron Race, and Kent Rogers joined Haviland to present "Learning from Conflicts: Our Own," also at the 2000 CCCC.
Maureen Newlin presented two papers, "Sexual Politics and Edith Wharton's Smoking Scenes" at the 2000 American Literature Association Conference in Long Beach, and "Lily Bart and the Fin-de-Siecle Female Masquerade" at the 2000 Edith Wharton at Newport Conference in Rhode Island.
Renée Pigeon presented "'No Man's Elizabeth': The Virgin Queen in Recent Films" at the 2000 Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association Convention in New Mexico, and chaired the panel on "Shakespeare & Related Topics" at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association Meeting in Portland, Oregon in 1999.
Peter Schroeder spoke on "Saying But Little: Malory and the Suggestion of Emotion" at the 2000 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A version of his talk will be published in a volume of "Arthuriana" devoted to Malory.
Wendy Smith organized a panel entitled, "Sephardi and Mizrahi issues in the Middle East," and also gave a paper at the University of California Santa Barbara's Middle East 2000 Conference, entitled "The role of narrative in Ladino ballads: the singing of Berta Aguado;" she hopes to give a paper at the Fourth Annual Hispanic Linguistics Symposium in Indiana in November: "Collaborative completion and reconstructed dialogue in spontaneous Judeo-Español." In May, she gave a paper at the Conference on Language Interaction and Culture sponsored by UCLA. Her paper was entitled, "'Nishpax dam: (blood is shed)': Going first and going second: the structure of argument moves in an Palestinian/Israeli university group discussion." She is working on a series of studies from these data with a colleague at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Zvi Bekerman.
Alumni & Other Friends: Update
Because English News hasn't been published for a while, we're a bit short on alumni news, but here are a few updates. Please share your news with us!
Wedding Bells: Our best wishes go to: Greg Gilbert and Candace Olsen (December 29, 1997), Melissa Bakeman and Adam Hartmann (June 19, 1998), and Diana Roloff and Steve Wright (November 27, 1999).
New Arrivals: Our newest honorary English Department members include Luisa Rosa Notarangelo, born to Joe and Maria on July 1, 1999 (7lb, 11 oz) and Indurian Charles Amir Williams, born to Charles and Lisa on March 13, 2000 (6 lb, 9 oz). Congratulations to the parents!
Other News: We're happy to report the good news that Sherry Green has celebrated her one year anniversary as a breast cancer survivor. Sherry writes that "It's been a rough year, but I am now in full remission and am finally my 'old,' as in former, self. BTW, I turned 50 this year so "old" applies in other ways. Also, I am a grandmother, two times! Our son and daughter-in-law in Florida gave us our first grandchild, Jordan Marie Green, on February 27th. Our daughter and son-in-law, who live locally, followed with Alexandria Hailey Culp on March 25th. Professionally, I continued to teach on a limited part-time basis at Chaffey during my illness. However, I realize in hindsight that probably was not the best idea. I'm looking forward to the end of this term so I can devote my summer to writing and finishing my blasted thesis. I'm scheduled to teach at Chaffey this coming fall, but I also hope to return to CSUSB in the near future. Regards to all." And we all wish Sherry continued good health!
Lara Andersen teaches English and Creative Writing in Los Angeles. She recently published a poetry and photography book entitled An Echo from a Cliff. Bill and Robin Archibald are heading to Millersville College in Pennsylvania where Bill has a tenure-track job in a good composition program; Bill will finish his Ph.D. at the University of North Dakota during the summer. Kerry Branch graduated from UC Davis School of Law in 1998, and is currently an associate in the corporate department at the Los Angeles office of Morrison and Forester. Ellen Cushman, now an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, presented a paper entitled "Consuming Ethnographies: Profiting from Distinctive Stories" at the 2000 CCCC in Minneapolis, where she also chaired a session, "Negotiating the Tensions of Community Outreach: The Contradictory Calls of Service, Activism, and Inquiry," which featured Linda Flower, Danielle Zawoodny Wetzel, and Clyde Moneyhun. Jeanne Denice Haley earned a Master's in Secondary English at Virginia Commonwealth University and taught British and American Literature for two years at Clover Hill High School in Midlothian, Virginia. She was asked to head the English Department for the 1997-98 school year, one year before being tenured. Richard M. Leeson received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Oregon in 1982. His second book, Lorraine Hansberry: A Research and Production Sourcebook, has been published by Greenwood Press. He is Professor of English and Director of Teacher Education in English at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas. Lynn Rudloff, currently at the University of Texas, Austin, defended her dissertation on Larry McMurtry on June 20.
Future Plans: Ryan Bartlett has been accepted into the M.F.A. program at Mills College. Kent Rogers has been accepted for a summer fellowship at the Julia and David White Artists' Colony in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica. Becky Rudd has been hired at a Colton Middle School, and Kris Spears has been hired in Rialto.
Write the editors! We love to hear from our alumni. Send an e-mail with your news to rpigeon@csusb.edu, or by mail to : Prof. 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.
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English News editors:
Liz Langenfeld & Renée Pigeon
© 2000 CSUSB Department of English
Last updated 6/15/00