Read about Dr. Baldys’ Victorian and Edwardian Literature class and their trip to see “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” starring Jeremy Kendall at the Ware Center on October 26th.

The story of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is about Mr. Utterson and his friend Dr. Jekyll living in Victorian England. Various crimes and murders occur in London, all connected by a strange man named Edward Hyde. Utterson eventually finds out that Hyde is associated with Jekyll, as Jekyll states in his will that his establishment in the case of his disappearance or death should go to Hyde. When Utterson sees Jekyll, he notices that he has been getting frail and sickly, due to his addiction to a particular drug. This drug is connected to Hyde, as Jekyll takes the drug to transform into Hyde. More and more, Jekyll grows addicted to the drug, and his transformation into Hyde becomes increasingly difficult. Eventually, Hyde is accused of these various crimes, and by the end of the novella he disappears. This novella demonstrates late Victorian anxieties about science and class in the post-Darwinian era; it also reflects emerging theories about the structure of the human psyche while addressing the age-old question of how to balance the “duality” of good and evil within ourselves.

Our class read the novella a few days before the performance by Jeremy Kendall. We have also been discussing how science and religion was viewed in the Victorian period and how these concepts impacted cultural discourse and literature. Jeremy also visited with the class to discuss his choices in adapting the work and his work as an actor. Jeremy’s adaptation was interesting because it was a one-man show. He played sixteen different characters and had to vary his acting to demonstrate sixteen different voices and used pre-recorded audio tracks to represent offstage crowds. The original novella doesn’t portray any strong women characters, but he added a female character, Louisa, to his performance.

The simplistic set including the door frame on wheels really forced the audience to focus on the characters and their actions. Jeremy was able to accurately capture the essence of sixteen different people in the course of 75 minutes. Seeing the performance enhanced my understanding of the text and allowed me to visualize each character in a new way. This show sparked discussion of adaptive choices with the class.

-Maria Rovito

Resources

Internship Profile–Kaylee Herndon

November 16, 2018 Rachel Hicks

Read about Kaylee Herndon’s Internship with the Reading Royals hockey team! For more information about the internship process, check out the MU Internships webpage.

I am currently in the middle of spending the hockey season with the Reading Royals hockey team in Reading, PA. As one of their media interns for the season I am getting to use my Journalism and English experience in a career path that many people do not regularly consider when getting their degree.

Photo by Kaylee Herndon

Working in media relations for a sports team is extremely similar to working in a newsroom, except that you know what your writing will focus on each day that you go into work. There are daily deadlines, social media updates, live tweeting, and other aspects that go into promoting a team and covering their games.

I have been using social media, Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere in addition to traditional writing at this internship (see the above graphic made using Photoshop). Premiere is something that I thought I would never need to learn, but it turns out the journalism professors are right: you need to be able to take and edit your own photos and videos to make it out there.

Another skill I was surprised that I needed to use is my phone photography. It is the easiest and fastest way to get photos up on social media, i.e. an Instagram story. I found out that there are settings within the camera that makes capturing quick movement, like skaters or pucks, easier, but it is still a skill to be learned.

The most interesting concept of the job for me is that I went from being an athlete to covering the athlete. Having been on the opposite side of the job definitely provides me a different perspective. It creates some barriers when it comes to what I expect to be true and what reality is. This includes willingness of participation of athletes in team promotion activities and fan engagement and the accommodation (or non-accommodation) of the coaching staff. It also has helped me create some unique ideas, such as a player blog where a player gets to discuss their experiences in the local area and on the team. It was a large adjustment in terms of expectations when I found out that the media for a team does not regularly interact with its player-members of the team that they promote. While from the athletic view it makes sense, at least while in college, it would produce more interesting and engaging content if players were more actively involved with the media being put out about them.

Overall, this internship has been an incredible experience so far in terms of preparing me for my future career whether I go into sports or traditional journalism. Without the real-life experience, I feel like I would be under prepared for the fast-paced world of sports journalism.

-Kaylee Herndon

Newsletter Articles, Resources

Reading Our World: Masculinity

November 16, 2018 Rachel Hicks

ENGL 242: Reading Our World is one of the core classes of the English major that is almost comparable to an advanced book club. Each section of Reading Our World focuses on a different theme explored through a section of texts on that theme. Critical lenses are applied across the field of English Studies to explore different perspectives by learning methods for critiquing texts.

Of the many sections of ENGL 242 offered next semester, one of the newest to look out for is Reading Our World: Masculinity.

Toxic masculinity is a buzzword in 2018, but the concept certainly isn’t new. In academic circles, the preferred term is hegemonic masculinity. Simply put, this term refers to any practice that attempts to justify male dominance over women and “weaker” types of men. We see this not only in the male/female binary, but also in the straight/gay and alpha/beta binaries. These biases are deeply ingrained, even in our language. Honorific language is used to describe highly “masculine” traits, whereas pejoratives are used for most characteristics deemed “feminine,” especially when referring to less “masculine” men.

This course will examine Western literature through the lens of various masculinities in an effort to unveil the toxic ideology that contributes to social ills, including domestic violence, rape culture, gay-bashing, and the abuse of power, among others. Ultimately, students will leave this course able to recognize the ideology of hegemonic masculinity when they encounter it in music, film, television, and literature so that they can begin to dismantle it.

Details:

Wednesday from 6-9pm at the Ware Center
Counts as a G1 and a W
If you have already taken ENGL 242, you can take it again for elective credit

Special Activities

Kevin Willmott, Screenwriter of Blackkklansman, Visits MU

November 8, 2018 Jill Craven

Thursday, Kevin Willmott, screenwriter of Blackkklansman, shared his expertise with Millersville University Students. Willmott visited classes, lunched with students, dined with faculty and students, and participated in a panel discussion with Dr. Tracey Weis, Mr. Barry Kornhauser, and Dr. Theresa Russell-Loretz.

Professor Willmott gave students great advice about writing for the screen, including how to establish a controlling idea for a narrative. In the discussion, Willmott and the MU students discussed the concept of “twoness,” the controlling idea which grounds Blackkklansman. For example, characters in the film identify as African American and a policeman, as Jewish and a policeman, as African American and American, etc. As many people live with such double identities, the film reaches out to diverse audience members through its central concept.

The discussion also explored how this narrative set in the 1970s connected to the white supremacist actions in Charlottesville and elsewhere. When Willmott was questioned about the suggestions the film made for addressing racism, Film and American Society student Aliya Brown suggested that the final scene offered answers: to work together to expose racist acts for what they are.

Willmott generously discussed narrative ideas with film students like Ismael Miranda, pictured above to the right of Willmott, Dr. Craven (to left of Willmott) and Dr. Theresa Russell-Loretz (on right). Willmott encouraged students to set aside some time each day for writing, even just half an hour. He noted in his own writing he often tried to make his hero’s life as difficult as possible. To write realistic dialogue, Willmott advised students to always identify the point of a scene; then characters should be talking about that point. Students who attended were grateful for the practical writing advice so generously offered by Willmott, who was written such films as C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America and Chi-Raq.

Conferences, Special Activities

EAPSU Fall 2018 at Shippensburg University

November 8, 2018 Rachel Hicks

The Fall 2018 English Association of Pennsylvania State Universities Conference was held at Shippensburg University on October 4-6. EAPSU prides itself as an inclusive organization dedicated to excellence in English Studies. The conference showcases the best in many disciplines within English Studies: creative writing, literature, film, composition, technical/scientific writing, and pedagogy. Members of the organization come from faculty and students from the 14 English Departments in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. The overarching theme of the event was “Creativity in Times of Crisis”.

The keynote speaker was Patricia Smith, an award-winning author of eight critically acclaimed books of poetry. She is the winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the NAACP Image Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for her poetry collection Incendiary Art (Triquarterly Press/Northwestern University Press, 2017).

Dr. Corkery and two groups of MU students presented at the conference. On Friday, the first panel, Hip Hop & Lyrics to Move the World, explored what can be learned about creativity through the emergence of Hip Hop, especially related to marginalized Blacks and Latinos in the Bronx, New York during the 1970s and ’80s. Panelists discussed the crises surrounding key players in hip hop who produced innovative lyrics aimed at addressing their circumstances. Nelian Cruz, Claribel Rodriquez de la Rosa, Barseh Gbor, and Dante McLeod were the students involved.

Later that day, a second group of students discussed the implications of Alice Walker’s piece “Search for Our Mother’s Gardens” in a panel titled Creativity and Oppression: Innovations of African American Female Authors. Walker and her ideas call attention to creativity where it is seemingly absent, encouraging Black women to create despite historical abuse and neglect. Students highlighted the creativity of different African American female writers, recognizing their unique challenges and creative products. Tatyanna Campbell, Naima Winder, Apsara Uprety, and Imani Anderson were involved in the panel.

From Left to Right: Dr. Pfannenstiel, Jay Barnica, Andie Petrillo, Jason Hertz

A group of graduate students along with Dr. Pfannenstiel presented on Creatively Solving Data Dilemmas in Digital Humanities Student Projects. Each member of the panel presented their paper: Nicole Pfannenstiel, “Data Fluency in Assignments: Assigning and mentoring through data dilemmas”; Andie Petrillo, “Missing Data is not “Emma Approved”: How to make meaning with poorly archived data”; Jay Barnica, “Call, Raise, or Fold?: The ethics of evesdropping on an online poker forum”; Jason Hertz, “Control+s Your Data: A lesson learned with NeoGAF gafe made NeoGAF into Neo-NeoGaf.”

Hi everyone! I was honored last fall to be asked by Dr. Pfannenstiel to be a part of a panel discussion for this year’s EAPSU conference at Shippensburg University. After months of preparation, the day finally arrived for us to present. We left Millersville at an alarmingly early 6:30 am. We then arrived at Shippensburg University around 8:30 and wandered over to sign in and receive our “swag bags” and headed to our assigned room. We waited for what seemed like an hour, but was actually only about 15 minutes for our designated chair person and for any attendees to wander in. Even though our presentation wasn’t well attended (it was at 9 a.m. so I can’t blame students for not coming), I still had a great time presenting with my panel and answering English Librarian, Michele Santamaria’s many questions. Relieved to have successfully presented at my first conference, we headed to other sessions led by MU faculty and students. My favorite part of the day aside from presenting was having lunch with Dr. Pfannenstiel, Dr. Mando, Michele Santamaria, and Jay Barnica (fellow grad student and presenter). It was a great way for us all to get to know each other outside of the classroom! After a long day of presenting and learning from other presenters, we left the conference exhausted but inspired. I’m so glad that I got the chance to experience academic conferences!

-Andie Petrillo, second-year graduate student

Dr. Mando’s “Tiny Ecology Project: A Place-Based Writing Pedagogy”

A few faculty members participated in a panel presentation titled Observation, Invention, and Information in Times of Crisis. Justin Mando, assistant professor of English and Science Writing, presented “Tiny Ecology Project: A Place-Based Writing Pedagogy.” Joyce Anderson, instructor of English, presented “Curbing Writer’s Block: A Quick Workshop.” Last but not least, Michelle Santamaria, English and Foreign Language Subject Librarian, presented “Challenging Confirmation Bias: Creating & Playing an Information Literacy Game.”

Thanks to all MU students and faculty for their hard work!

Newsletter Articles

Reading Our World: Story Building

November 8, 2018 Rachel Hicks

It’s the most wonderful time of the semester again… Registration! If you are an English Education major or a student looking for a class to improve your storytelling skills, look no further than ENGL 242 Reading Our World: Storybuilding.

This course teaches you how to use storytelling, drama, writing projects, and word games to build critical literacy skills. Storybuilding engages students physically in their learning, shifting classroom paradigms:

Traditional memorization is replaced with strategies for conflict resolution.
Passive in-class listening is replaced with innovations in community building.
Independent research is replaced with multi-cultural identity exploration.

This class is taught by a theatre professional trained in the established pedagogy. Neighborhood Bridges is a curriculum-based literacy and creative drama program developed by the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis. The program is nationally recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a model for arts education, and has received Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination (AEMDD) grants.

More than 94% of classroom teachers who participated in Bridges in 2007-2008 indicated that students’ acting, storytelling, oral communication skills, attitude towards writing, and use of imagination and descriptive details in writing improved during the course of the program.

Millersville students who have taken this class in the past rave about it! Many claim it was one of their favorite classes offered at Millersville.

Details:

Meets Mondays from 6-9pm
Counts for a G1 and W
If you have already taken ENGL 242, you can take it again for elective credit
Includes a local school placement during the second half of the semester, practicing skills with a partner from the class
Requires a weekend workshop training in January
Requires clearances for the school placement

Contact Caleb Corkery for more information.

Newsletter Articles

Dr. Steven Max Miller

November 8, 2018 Rachel Hicks

Dr. Miller passed away last week.

Dr. Steven Max Miller (Steve) was a warm, passionate, and (his favorite friends and students will tell you) sometimes cranky professor in the English Department at Millersville from 1985 to 2016 and Director of the Honors College 1999-2006. For his entire time at Millersville, he also was also the parent of a succession of cats who had, perhaps, the strongest, most individualistic personalities on the planet. It has been said that Maury, his huge orange tabby, only chose not to become president of the U.S. because he believed the position beneath him. Steve was also a passionate gardener. People strolling by his house kept enquiring whether his climbing roses were trees, the huge plants grew with such enthusiasm.

Steve was perhaps the brightest student ever to come out of tiny Redkey, Indiana (population 1,353 in 2010), receiving a full scholarship to the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He graduated with a Bachelor in English with high honors at the College of William and Mary in 1972, and received a fellowship to Indiana University, where he received a Master of Arts in 1975 and a PhD in English Language and Literature in 1985.

Dr. Miller had a lifetime love affair with books and libraries. While at Indiana University, Steve was a Senior Library Assistant Cataloger in the Rare Books and Special Collections Department, Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana, 1972-1976. Continuing that passion, while at Millersville, Steve was a member of Friends of Ganser Library for virtually his entire career here. So, it is not at all surprising that as Director of the Honors College, Dr. Miller began the reading project for incoming Honors freshmen. Each freshman received a book during Orientation that was written by an author who was scheduled to visit the campus during the academic year. During the first week of classes, the students met for a one-time discussion group with a faculty member or administrator who volunteered to read the book and lead the discussion. Upper level Honors students were also involved in the project and many have returned each year since to help with the reading project.

It was teaching, though, which was central to Dr. Miller’s sense of self, and though he married and had cats and friends and plants, teaching was arguably the love of his life. Indeed, he taught for virtually his entire academic life. He was an Associate Instructor in the English Department at Indiana University, Bloomington from 1975-1984. He joined the English Department at Millersville as an Assistant Professor of English in 1985. He spent a year as Assistant Professor of English, Murray State University in Kentucky, 1989-1990, and then returned to Millersville. In 1994, Dr. Miller was promoted to Associate Professor, English, also at Millersville. He became Director of the Honors College from Fall 1999, serving in that capacity through Spring 2006. In that time, Dr. Miller was instrumental in the process of transforming the erstwhile Honors Program into the Millersville Honors College.

Steve Miller cared fiercely about good writing, and his influence went far beyond his students here at Millersville. A fierce feminist, Steve was a consultant for the Women Writers Project at Brown University in Providence, RI from 1990-1995. Always ready to experiment with new things, Dr. Miller became Cofounder and Executive Editor of ReSoundings, an experimental, juried digital publication with a focus primarily on literary criticism regarding the British medieval and early modern periods. The journal was international in scope, with editors in the U.S., Canada, Britain, and Australia.

Always engaged, Dr. Miller was the faculty sponsor Iota Phi chapter Sigma Tau Delta, Millersville beginning in 1986, serving in that capacity until his retirement. Dr. Miller was a grantee for the National Endowment for Humanities, 1991-92. He was a member of the Modern Language Association, the John Donne Society of American, the Spenser Society, English Association Pennsylvania State Universities (EAPSU), and the Bibliographical Society American, and the Bibliographical Society American.

Literary Events, Newsletter Articles, Student Activities

Literary Festival – Publishing

November 1, 2018 Rachel Hicks

Millersville University is hosting a Literary Festival in the McNairy Library Room 100 on November 2nd from 9am to 5pm with a keynote speaker at 7pm. Guest writers will hold sessions on writing fiction, poetry, memoir, creative essays, and journalism throughout the day. Check out the full event schedule here.

From 2-2:55pm in the McNairy Library, there will be a panel focused on publishing presented by Meghan Phillips and Jamie Beth Cohen. Here is some more information about the presenters:

Meghan Phillips is a writer and editor from Lancaster, PA. Her stories and poems have been nominated for the the Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions Anthology, Best Microfiction anthology, and the Pushcart Prize. She is the fiction editor for the Lancaster-based literary magazine Third Point Press, and an associate editor for SmokeLong Quarterly, one of the oldest literary magazines dedicated to flash fiction. Her chapbook of flash fiction, Abstinence Only, is forthcoming from Barrelhouse Books. To find out more about her writing, visit meghan-phillips.com.

Jamie Beth Cohen writes about difficult things, but her friends think she’s funny. Her writing has appeared in TeenVogue.com, The Washington Post/On Parenting, Salon, and several other outlets. Her debut novel, WASTED PRETTY, will be published in April 2019. It’s a YA book about what happens when a sixteen-year-old girl who usually blends in, starts to stand out. Jamie’s favorite job was scooping ice cream when she was 16 years old. She thinks everything about 16 was wonderful and amazing, except all the stuff that was horrible. Find her tweeting @Jamie_Beth_S

Be sure to check out one or more of the panels tomorrow!

Millersville University Department of English & World Languages

Victorian Literature: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

Internship Profile–Kaylee Herndon

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