Category Archives: Community Engagement

Community Engagement, Taylor Swift

ENWL Reputation and Lover Eras

The department of English and World Languages has shifted from into its Reputation and Lover eras in continuation with the countdown to Taylor Swift’s newest album The Tortured Poets Department.

Reputation (2017) is Swift’s first album with an edgy and rock and roll sound that sends off the message of confidence within herself that is powerful enough to gain revenge against her enemies. Other themes off of this album include identity, transformation, growth, resilience, and commentary on media criticism. Some key songs from Reputation include “Look What You Made Me Do,” “Getaway Car,” “Delicate,” and “Don’t Blame Me.”

Lover (2019) takes on a completely opposite tone, as it pulls from her personal life by focusing on romantic, long-term love, as well as facing adult issues such as change and loneliness. The album is a bubble gum pop collection of experiences that make listeners reflect on life as a whole, as it tells us that our past does not define our future. Key songs from this album include “Lover,” “Cruel Summer,” “The Man,” “The Archer,” and “False God.”

You may be in your Reputation era too if you:

  • Are Not afraid to take a risk
  • Love making multimodal media projects
  • Have an unbroken streak on Wordle
  • Know the power of peer-review
  • Always grabs the latest issue of The Snapper

You may be in your Lover era too if you:

  • Speaks your ideas into existence
  • Like to reenact scenes in Shakespeare class
  • Are a hopeless romantic (but expects a little tragedy)
  • Practice self love
  • Are a member of GSA

Faculty and Staff in their Reputation and 1989 Eras:

Dr. Craven is in her Reputation era because she loves to challenge students to make bold decisions – so that no matter what her students do they’ll be “ready for it.”

GA Heather is in her Lover era because she has loved every moment being a GA for the ENWL department! Working with Dr. P and Becca everyday has been a “golden” and sparkling experience.

Reputation is filled with unexpected literary connections. Some included are:

  • The song “Delicate” can be connected to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel This Side of Paradise with the quote of “we’re all delicate here, you know.”
  • “So It Goes” connects to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five, as the phrase is used 106 times in the novel, as it is associated with death and mortality
  • Fan favorite “Getaway Car” references Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities with the first line of “it was the best of times the worst of crimes.”

Although not a direct connection, fans have associated the song “I Think He Knows” to Anne and Gilbert’s relationship from the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, which has been adapted into a tv series on Netflix. 

Literary Events

Highlights from Reading and Conversation Event with Julia Fiedorczuk

This week, Millersville welcomed renowned Polish writer, poet, translator, and researcher Julia Fiedorczuk on the last stop of her North American tour. She read from her latest collection of poetry, Psalms, which was awarded the prestigious Wisława Szymborska Prize in Poland in 2018 as well as selections from her unreleased novel, The House of Orion, providing context and insight on her process and conceptual and physical groundings.

She sat facing us, a mixed crowd of approximately 40 community members, faculty, and students, in a red armchair in the Ford Atrium. Beside her, Dr. Katarzyna Jakubiak acted as moderator and co-presenter as each poem presented was read twice, first in Polish by Fiedorczuk and then in English by Dr. Jakubiak. Fiedorczuk remarked that she prefers to not read her poems aloud in English stating “I can’t read them not because I dislike them, they’re beautiful, but because Polish is so connected to me,” expressing a gratefulness to Bill Johnston, the translator for both Psalms and an earlier work Oxygen. The depth of her connection was evident, even to non-Polish listeners. She spoke in a soft breathy voice with conviction and pressing flow, transporting the audience in gentle percussive insistence into her work that interweaves narratives of human trauma and resilience with environmental beauty and catastrophe.

In simultaneously engaging two often juxtaposed topics, she masterfully shapes a dialogue that addresses both the ongoing climate crisis and human crises (most notably the great migration crisis in Europe that begin around 2013) challenging divisions of science and humanities, noting that these are the same struggle. The ongoing loss of biodiversity is inextricable from the loss of human life and language and vice versa. As such, Fiedorczuk powerfully argues for “science to be informed by poetry” stating that “literature needs to be precise and science needs to be imaginative.” Poetry specifically offers the ability to tap into human imagination that she describes saying, “imagination is a wonderful thing and imagination is a wild thing,” noting that human imagination is collective and often “more than” human. This ability to place ourselves in collective imaginings is key to understanding Psalms that explores the complicated interplay of two primary emotions: despair and joy.

Placing these two emotions in confluence creates a needed perspective that shares moments of the “absolute unconditional acceptance of life” and the “possibility of having real authentic joy” in the face of the complex fears of global climate and humanitarian issues. This is partly accomplished by centering the physical experience of language drawing from its oral beginnings and exploring how “little portions of sound” can create meaning. Describing this work as a “somatic translation,” that is partially a translation and interpretation of the Biblical poems of the same name, Fiedorczuk studied Hebrew and even memorized some of the verses so she could sing them and embody the experience of language. Despite the religious nature of the original material, she emphasized that her poems are not religious at all. They are “prayers” but only in the sense that they address someone who can potentially respond – like a crying child, who uses sound before they can construct meaning, is still calling someone, addressing someone. In this way, her Psalms are meant to invite or invoke another presence.

Humble and honest, Fiedorczuk also shared her struggle to find relevance as a writer in the face of such extreme human and natural suffering. After visiting the Białowieża Forest in 2021, a place for her that is rooted in mystical reverence as it is one of the oldest forests in Europe, she found herself questioning her value as a writer while witnessing the struggles of migrants who were displaced in the forest, sold on a false dream that it would offer an easy way to enter Europe. Her doubts about whether or not it was meaningful for her to write anymore had overtaken her until a friend reminded her “but that’s what you do, just do your job.” This experience is reflected in her poem “Cold” that states “Even when bombs are falling you ought to write” that also uses part of a phone call from someone who became trapped in the forest as part of Poland’s response to the migration crisis. She recognizes that her approach to these circumstances is not necessarily a solution, stating that while writing is “not going to solve problems, I’m a writer and that’s my contribution.” She also stated that even in the face of the global epidemic of hopelessness and numbness, “something can always be done” and that there is “always a way to help someone. Always a way to deeply care for someone or something.”

For many of us in the discipline of English and World Languages studies, that way is writing. Fiedorczuk suggests that when we feel hopelessness creep into our own lives to practice “place writing” that centers noticing and knowing what is immediately around you, leaving preconceived ideas behind; “start where you are, start with small things, start with noticing what’s around you.” In so doing, writing can allow us to build new ways of knowing and practice resiliency and recognize that “this life is extremely valuable, and we cannot wait for all these crises to be over because that may never happen. The art is to live in the present.”

 

We are very grateful to Julia Fiedorczuk for visiting and sharing her work (despite a twisted ankle!) and to Dr. Jakubiak and the Department of English and World Languages for hosting the event. Read selected poems from her latest book Psalms here: https://www.harvardreview.org/content/psalms/?fbclid=IwAR3mIzvhCxFtylEXd948anhK5FyyH-wpdsjrbKPsxyZBTaOHC8uwD_tz-rs

 

 

Community Engagement

English and World Languages Faculty Focus: Research Talk

This past Wednesday, the department of English and World Languages hosted their first Faculty Focus Research Talk, a new event that will take place regularly throughout the semester. This event allows professors within the department to highlight either their current or past research projects, an opportunity to show a different side of their academic selves outside of the content they teach within their classroom. As a student conducting and participating in their own research, it is easy to forget that professors are engaging in those writing and researching processes themselves. This new event series provides a unique opportunity for students to connect with professors not only about the topic of their research, but also to ask them questions about it, which could help them to change or modify their own research and writing methods for the better.

For the first faculty focus research talk, Dr. Baldys and Dr. Rea presented their past research to a group of both students and faculty. Dr. Rea discussed rhetorical violence within a local Florida community titled “Striking Out in Ybor City: Baseball, Housing, and Rhetorical Violence.” This wonderful presentation prompted discussion that may not be found in a classroom, such as what is rhetorical violence, how can it appear in different conversations and modalities, why Dr. Rea chose to focus his research on this specific set of affordable housing in Florida, and why it matters to research this topic. Dr. Baldys shifted the conversation from a rhetorical to a literary perspective with her presentation titled “Disability and Victorian Feminism: Narratives of Resistance in the Novels of Mona Caird.” Mona Caird, a Scottish essayist and novelist, is not as well known in the literary world as she should be. Dr. Baldys’ research presented a different side of Victorian literature that may be overlooked in comparison to other texts that have been centralized in conversation in the classroom, such as more popular books and writers. In both presentations, Dr. Baldys and Dr. Rea showcased different fields, methodologies, and methods of research that show students not only how they could apply these to their own research, but also provide a space to ask questions and learn about new fields and writers they would not have encountered in the classroom.

Literary Events

The ENWL Student Lounge is now open!

The Department of English and World Languages is pleased to announce the opening of our student lounge! This new space transforms an old office into a place for English and World Languages students to work, study, or hang-out. Located on the first floor in McComsey 248, the student lounge will be open to all students on weekdays from 8AM to 9PM.  

Students and faculty gathered on Friday to celebrate at our ribbon cutting ceremony with cupcakes and coffee. Dr. Emily Baldys shared the poem “In the Library” by Charles Simic with those gathered to commemorate this event and envision a future for the space. You can read it here https://poets.org/poem/library  

The student lounge is curated by students, for students with members of the Student Leadership Council contributing ideas and design to create a functional area to gather with like-minded peers. At the opening celebration today, a few SLC members commented on what it was like to be involved in this process and what they hope this space will mean for the ENWL community. 

The student lounge features comfy chairs, a mini-fridge, microwave, coffee maker, and charging station as well as fun literature decor from the department’s archives and information about student organizations and upcoming department events.

Shout out to our Student Leadership Committee lead by Assistant Department Chair, Dr. Emily Baldys, for helping us coordinate this project and the Department of English and World Languages for funding. 

Check out the map below for more info on how to get there. Feel free to drop-by to eat or study. Clubs can reserve the room for meetings or events by contacting Dena McEwan: Dena.McEwan@millersville.edu

Community Engagement

Taking Advantage of Academic Opportunities- Mary Miller

One of the aspects of higher education that I was underprepared for was the opportunity to apply myself outside of the classroom. As an undergraduate speech communications major, I joined a few clubs and worked hard in class, but I wasn’t too concerned about how my time in college could cultivate my professional experience.

Now, as a student in the English master’s program, my peers and professors have been so supportive in making sure I’m not only aware of all the opportunities I can have to showcase my research and my academic work, but that I’m comfortable and prepared to do so. I recently was able to travel to Philadelphia for the 2023 Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association conference, and through the process of working with my fellow students and Dr. Pfannenstiel on our roundtable discussion presentation, it let me practice a lot of important skills that I don’t always get to work on.

Weekly meetings to prepare for the conference helped us put together a cohesive presentation, and talking out loud really helped me put my thoughts into words. In undergrad, I preferred to work alone and didn’t go out of my way for peer feedback, but over the course of this semester, my peers in the English department have been so inviting and supportive that it has allowed me to be more comfortable with collaboration as a necessary and constructive activity. Hearing their feedback made me feel more confident in what I was going to share at MAPACA, and hearing what they had researched gave me some ideas of my own.

These meetings and working together also gave me a structure each week, one built on making connections and spending time with others. Graduate school can be lonely – it can feel like it should be a solitary effort and like there aren’t a lot of moments to spend quality time with others outside of the classroom. I’m so glad to be a part of the English program at Millersville, because it’s been clear that while I’m here, everyone who’s a part of the department wants to see me succeed and wants to help me along the way. It can also be a little nerve-wracking (or, for me, downright terrifying) to present your own work in front of strangers, but working with such understanding classmates has helped me overcome that fear bit by bit.

Apart from the opportunity to travel to MAPACA as a way to learn more about what other academics in English studies are working on and willing to share, this whole experience has been an incredible way to build on my public speaking and research skills. Additionally, it helped solidify the fact that English is such a diverse field of study, one that has room for everyone and everyone’s unique interests. I feel very lucky to be a part of a department that understands this and allows room for us to pursue our interests, and a department that encourages me to attend events like MAPACA, even if initially I believed them to be outside of my comfort zone.

Literary Events

Seth Ring Interview: Moving Towards Hope

Full-time fantasy author Seth Ring was able to join us this past week for a Q&A session to meet with students and answer questions about being a writer, building community, and to share insider knowledge about traditional and indie publishing methods. Seth has been publishing since 2018 and in 2021, he became a full-time writer. Now, with 25 books published and more on the way, Seth reflects on what he has learned, the communities he’s helped to build, and the sense of hope that is central to his works.

Seth is a Lit-RPG (Literary role playing game) fantasy author, drawing his stylistic and thematic design from conventions of game theory to shape his world-building and plots. He was initially drawn to this genre because he read a bad Lit-RPG novel and realized – “I can do a better job than this.” Seth leverages his base in Lit-RPG fantasy to expand into various other genres including traditional fantasy, horror, and western (as well as upcoming forays into Regency romance and utopian thriller) drawing inspiration from stories he read as a child that helped him learn to both escape and navigate the world. Seth describes his writing and publishing journey as initially “so much harder than he thought it would be” stating that there was a huge learning curve but that having a firm understanding of what you want, determining “where am I actually trying to go?,” is critical to creating an writing identity that is fulfilling. Whether you are mainly focused on commercial sustainability or artistic expression, Seth reassuringly asserts that “there are a million different ways to become an author.” Seth balances his ideals of writing between practical considerations and artistic sincerity, describing the reality of writing as a career occurring along a “sliding scale of money to craft” because there comes a time when a writer realizes “I wish I could eat this manuscript but I can’t.”

There are pros and cons to publishing on either side of the industry, with traditional publishers being outsold by Indie publishers but Indie publishers won’t put you in a bookstore. Seth cites the internet as a cause for the shifting industry which has “radically changed distribution but introduces some risk.” The internet is rife with pirating and AI copy-cats, but Seth isn’t worried about it mostly because even if someone reads stolen or plagiarized content, if they like it, they will most likely find their way to the source (ie Seth). In fact, this is how Seth gained his top three Patrons on his Patreon, so for Seth “Pirating is not necessarily a net loss because I’m going to keep writing better books.” He also encouraged writers to not be discouraged by the difficulties of modern day publishing, only to keep pressing on and continue writing because the “worst thing you can do as a writer is to stop writing.”

Seth also emphasized that establishing a platform for engagement (like Patreon) is a key resource to building your reputation as an author and establishing a community. While Seth admits that there is an element of luck to growing an online community, he’s also found that consistency, time, and content strategy can make a big impact. For Seth, while the internet does pose some risk, the benefits are worth it because the internet offers a unique way for readers to “engage with the people who wrote the books we love.” This engagement is not only key to Seth’s strategy, but also influences to some extent the works he creates. On a practical level, Seth feels responsible for “carrying those stories forward,” creating a consistent experience for his fans by communicating with them about when to expect updates and new releases. However, on an artistic level, Seth says he has a “strong sense of ownership over all of his stories” and that a “story doesn’t have to go the way they want it to go.” In this way, Seth has built a fan-base of recurring readers, even though some may not always like his works—they keep coming back. Seth recognizes this pattern of readerly interest as something that ebbs and flows; “people enjoy something in a season of their life, not all are going to stay forever, but if they are engaging in a constructive way that’s great.” Ultimately, Seth says if something sticks with the reader after picking up one of his works, he considers it a success because “people need connection” and he feels “I can provide something at least” to help foster those connections.

It is the hope and courage drawn from connections—between characters, their worlds, or even the divine—that are at the core of Seth’s work. Some of Seth’s inspiration for writing is drawn from his own experiences with loneliness and isolation in which stories and the characters in them were his “first gateways to connection” and that “stories have tremendous power to reshape the narrative to what we tell ourselves.” For Seth, stories and later writing itelf were a way out of dark places, offering Seth a means to process the world and find hope and courage to continue moving into the future. His books now carry this purpose forward with the intention that “when we start allowing for connection in our perspective, hope naturally follows.”

Want to read Seth’s work? He recommends starting with Battle Mage Farmer: Book 1 Domestication that he describes as a really fun story and a good introduction to his style of storytelling.

You can read his books by purchasing them on his site (https://sethring.com/ ) or from alternate vendors like Amazon, or by borrowing them from the Lancaster Public Library System. You can even become a Patron (https://www.patreon.com/SethRing ) and get fast access to new chapters as they are released. You can interact with Seth and other fans on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/ygz8wfCECR ), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/mrsethring/ ), YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@SethRingWrites ), or even email him directly at seth@sethring.com

Community Engagement, Thesis Defense

Successfully Defended Thesis Annoucement- Kristy Davis

The English and World Languages Department is happy to announce the successful defense of a thesis by graduate student Kristy Davis. She defended her thesis “Edutainment in Podcasting: A content analysis of education and entertainment in the Serial Killers podcast” on March 16th for her MA in English. Her thesis committee members include Dr. A Nicole Pfannenstiel (chair), Dr. Justin Mando, and Dr. Kerri Farkas.

Literary Events

Fiction Reading Event with Millersville Alumni Tyler Barton

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Written by Heather Verani

This Wednesday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Millersville alumni Tyler Barton, a writer who is hosting a fiction reading event of his debut short-story collection Eternal Night at the Nature Museum. This literary event takes place on March 28th at 7pm in McNairy Library at the alumni reading room (room 100).

Eternal Night at the Nature Museum received its interesting title based off of one of Barton’s previous works which is featured in this short-story collection. “It’s a short little one-page story” he describes, “that could also be considered as a prose poem because it’s very lyrical and shifting in a lot of different directions in a single page.” This almost-poetic short story is about a person being in a nature museum when a nuclear disaster strikes, and explores what it would be like to survive if that became your home for such an event. Although the collection of short stories don’t have a connecting thread, such as all the characters living in the same place or time, they do all share a common theme of home. Barton further explains this by stating all the stories deal with home by “either losing it, deciding to leave it, or finding it in a place you didn’t expect.” These stories differ in content, as they follow the lives of a variety of characters in disparate circumstances, such as having their house explode, or being evicted and accidentally joining a cult, but comes together as each character seeks to define what home is to them.

Barton started his writing career when he was a freshman in response to his feelings of disconnection and uncertainty of his community at Millersville. His practice of writing allowed him to connect with other students, like his now best friend Elliot White, whom he would trade stories with to get feedback. With his involvement in with creating creative writing clubs on campus, along with being a part of the creative writer’s guild, Barton left Millersville with an excitement for writing. After he graduated, Barton explains how he got the “bug” for writing and started publishing stories online. This led to him getting his MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato where he wrote all the stories that became the Eternal Night at the Nature Museum. The book was then published in 2021.

At the fiction reading event for Barton’s collection of short stories, students can expect the author to read some pieces from the book. He explains that although some don’t enjoy live literary readings, even some writer’s themselves, he finds they provide a space for readers to “engage with and understand the work better when hearing from the author’s voice.” At the event, Barton will also take questions and talk to students about their own interest in writing.

We are so happy to welcome Tyler back, and hope to see you at the event!

 

Community Engagement, Literary Events

Attending A Book-Talk Event

On Wednesday, October 12th two professors within the English department here at Millersville hosted a book-talk event centered around the graphic novel Everything is an Emergency by Jason Adam Katzenstein. These book-talk events are a series that occur each semester and are based upon the concepts of bibliotherapy, which is an expressive arts modality. Although it is not therapy, it is also not a typical book club, as it draws from the book and incorporates messages and themes in discussions centered around personal, professional, and developmental growth.

Although I’m a graduate student at Millersville, this was my first time going to a book-talk event, and I deeply regret not going to more in my undergrad years. At this particular book-talk, the author of the graphic novel was in attendance, and was so inviting of any and all questions we had about his novel. Katzenstein’s book Everything is an Emergency is centered around his journey with OCD, as he recounts different events and moments in his life that have both positively and negatively impacted his mental health. Both the book’s content and the presence of the author allowed for some interesting questions and discussions, such as “what was it like to write about your mental health” and “how much control did you have over the editing a publishing process.” The most unique and unexpected aspect of the book-talk was the sense of community and understanding that was built within the two-hour zoom call. Everyone who was in attendance, including professors, graduate students, and undergrad students all seemed to connect through the discussions which made for a lively event.

There is one more opportunity to participate in the book-talk event for Everything is an Emergency on November 2nd, from 5-7pm on zoom. For more information, follow the link below to register for the event: https://www.millersville.edu/learninginstitute/book-talk-series.php.

Community Engagement, Literary Events

Calling All Poets!

Does a beautiful day move you to write about the nature that surrounds you? Do you find that writing about your emotions helps to relieve them? Have you ever felt the urge rhyme within a verse or a line? If you said yes to any of these scenarios, you may just be a poet!

The American Academy of Poets is hosting their annual student poetry contest, and both undergraduate and graduate students at Millersville are encouraged to apply. This is a great opportunity to showcase your poetic talents, along with the opportunity to strengthen your work and potentially become published. To enter, you must submit up to three of your own poems to Dr. Farkas. The way to submit your entry is by emailing her at kerrie.farkas@millerville.edu with the subject line Poetry Contest. Remember to include your name, MU number, and email address with the email; however, do not include your name or identifying information in the poems. The deadline for the event is Friday, March 3rd, 2023. The prizes for winning the contest include $100, a year membership in the academy of poets, your poem published on www.poets.org, and listed in the Academy’s annual report. If you have any questions, contact Kerrie Farkas at kerrie.farkas@millersville.edu or 717-871-7399. Best of luck to all those entering!