Spring Course Registration

Spring courses are available and listed on the Registrar’s website.  Students should visit with their advisers (listed on their DARS report in MAX) to obtain a TAP number to be able to register at their allotted appointment times (also available on the Registrar’s website).

This spring, Dr. Pfannenstiel will be offering a new course, Web Writing (ENGL 318), which is now an option to fulfill English majors’ Advanced Writing requirement (instead of ENGL 311 or a thesis).

Our thematic core course, Reading Our World (ENGL 242), will feature these themes:

  • Hip Hop Culture
  • American Identity
  • The Bible as Literature
  • Social Justice
  • Storybuilding (requires clearances for secondary school visits)

Students can retake ENGL 242 when the themes differ, so it’s great for an elective too!

Dr. Ording will be teaching a new Comparative Literature seminar on Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf.  If you are interested in these masters of the novel, be sure to check out this course.

Dr. Corkery will be teaching ENGL 347: Studies of Ethnicity in Film which will focus on African Americans in film throughout the Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries.  This course is offered bi-annually, so take it now if you minor in film or are interested in African American cultural studies.  Dr. Corkery can let you in if you don’t meet the prerequisites (ENGL 311).

Students on the Writing Studies track should take note of The Craft of Writing (ENGL 274), Web Writing (ENGL 318), Science Writing (ENGL 319), and Reading and Writing for Civic Change (ENGL 342).

Journalism students should consider taking ENGL 315: Advanced Reporting and  ENGL 330: Computer Assisted Journalism if they have taken ENGL 313 already.

Students who have ESL concentrations should take ENGL 460: Teaching ESL: Speaking and Listening this semester.

Please note that English BSE students who are preparing to register for Sophomore Bloc must have their clearances to register.

EAPSU Conference 2017 at Kutztown University

This fall’s English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities (EAPSU) Conference was held at Kutztown University from October 5-7th.  Professors and students from all 14 PASSHE universities attended the conference, including outstanding English majors selected from these institutions.

Literary Journalist Ted Conover
Literary Journalist Ted Conover

The keynote speaker was Ted Conover, a literary journalist who had done immersion journalism in challenging venues like Sing Sing (see his book Newjack or article “Guarding Sing Sing“), slaughterhouses (“The Way of All Flesh“), the East African AIDS belt (“Trucking through the AIDS Belt“), and freight cars.  While he treated the audience to excerpts from Newjack, his insights focused on the techniques of immersive journalism, which are covered in his new book Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep.  

Sessions in the conference covered topics ranging from the future of English Studies to ways to teach students how not to plagiarize.  English Chair Dr. Jill Craven participated in the Chairs’ Roundtable on Saturday morning with Dr. Andy Vogel, English Chair of Kutztown, where the two led discussion with English faculty and students about strategies to address the challenges facing English Departments.

Outstanding English Major Mariah Miller
Outstanding English Major Mariah Miller

Outstanding English Major Mariah Miller presented her paper entitled “The Human Condition: Exploring Misconfigured Realities in Donnie Darko and Fight Club,” which she had completed for English 237: Literary Research and Analysis, at a panel on Friday afternoon.  Along with the other Outstanding English Majors, Miller received her Outstanding English Major award and an anthology of Shakespeare in a lunch ceremony earlier in the day.

The next EAPSU spring conference for undergraduates will be held at Lock Haven in spring 2018. The next fall conference, for faculty, is at Shippensburg in the fall of 2018.  Undergraduates who wish to attend the conference should apply for Noonan grants in spring.  Faculty and students should consider forming panels for the conference from class projects.

~ Jill Craven

 

Environmental Writing on the Susquehanna River

For many, the Susquehanna River is just that expanse they cross on their way along the Pennsylvania Turnpike or a troublemaker for the Chesapeake Bay, but for students from ENGL 466: Environmental Advocacy Writing the river is a source of inspiration. These students have been tasked with telling stories of the river, focusing on the people, plants, animals, and places that make the Susquehanna a valuable connection to our area. What better way to start that process than by getting into the river itself?

Susky Fishing CreekLed by Dr. Justin Mando and guided by Shank’s Mare Outfitters, the class floated the river to gain a sense of place that will drive the writing they do on behalf of this magnificent, threatened, and often overlooked American waterway. Their goal is to capture in writing both the aesthetic and cultural value of the Susquehanna along with the threats that face it. Many organizations from the Susquehanna’s headwaters to its mouth in the Chesapeake Bay are excited to hear what flows from our student advocates. River Stewards, a Susquehanna-focused organization, funded the excursion in its entirety. This surely demonstrates the value of the work our students do!

English Students ready for Field Research
English Students ready for Field Research

The trip was attended by Lindsey Campbell, Kaitlyn Cicchino, Maddy Giardina, Rylan Harvey, Karen Layman, Dylan Marciano, Amanda Mooney, Julia Snyder, and Caitlyn Tynes.

The students set off on a calm evening in early October, taking double kayaks from south of Wrightsville down to Fishing Creek and back in the section of the Susquehanna known as Lake Clarke. Because it is between two dams, this part of the river is much more like a lake than what normally comes to mind when we think of rivers. This lake-like stretch has caused the students to think of how differently they may have to communicate environmental issues to citizens located along the banks of Lake Clarke among lighthouses, seagulls and jetskis than they would in the river’s northern reaches of grass islands, exposed rocks and riffles.

These kinds of rhetorical issues regarding context and audience really come to life when you’re out there in the middle of the river. You can’t help but imagine the native Susquehannock settlements of the distant past and their dugout sycamore canoes juxtaposed with the brightly-colored kayaks we floated. You look to the top of Turkey Hill where a landfill, a processing plant and windmills now have the high ground and then your eyes focus on the mottled white of a swooping osprey. You come ashore and the ground feels different; it’s not just your soggy shoes, it’s the sense of being part of the sweeping flows of time and place that we as individuals can passively float or choose to paddle against.

–Justin Mando

Photo credit: Dylan Marciano for panorama of Susquehanna

Susky - Lake Clarke