Tag Archives: English Faculty

Taylor Swift

ENWL in our Midnights Era

Taylor’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, has officially dropped and we are in our Midnights era because we stayed up till midnight to get our first listen.

In Midnights (2022) Taylor returns to her pop roots featuring upbeat songs with sharp, honest lyrics. You and your friends can party all night long with the top songs from this album including “Bejeweled,” “Lavender Haze,” and “Karma.” This album captures sleepless nights and the wish to just have some fun.

You may be in your Midnights ENWL era to if you:

  • Are a bit of an insomniac
  • Are a dedicated journal-keeper who loves keeping track of the little things
  • Gets tested but always bounces back
  • Will “go to sleep” but posts on socials until 2 AM
  • Are a member of Her Campus
  • Are looking forward to taking ENGL 221 – Intro to Linguistics next semester

 

Faculty and staff in their Midnights era:

Graduate Assistant Becca Betty is in their Midnights era because they “laid the groundwork and then just like clockwork” all the amazing ENWL events came to be! Becca is a “mastermind” at organizing at creating events and content for all to enjoy, and we celebrate them for all of their hard work.

Dr. Kim McCollum-Clark is in her Midnights era because you best believe she is still “bejeweled!” Her knowledge in various fields and disciplines shines through all of her work, making the department “shimmer” with various potential pathways for ENWL majors.

ENWL Connections in Midnights

One of the biggest connections Taylor makes is to Jane Eyre in her song “Dear Reader.” Jane Eyre is a novel by English author and poet Charlotte Brontë. It is a work of fiction that follows the childhood and early adulthood of the namesake of the novel, Jane Eyre.

The full line in the novel that Taylor references is “Dear reader, I married him.” This sentence breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the audience, drawing them into the protagonist’s decision to marry the man at the center of Jane’s whirlwind romance. Swift’s use of the phrase has a similar effect as she encourages her audience to be cautious in risk-taking but to take a chance anyways at one point saying, “Dear reader// When you aim at the devil make sure you don’t miss.”

Thank you for joining us on our Taylor Swift journey—we will have one more week of bonus content because we can’t resist talking about the new album:)

Research Corner: Time Invested vs Goal Payoff

One of the important aspects to consider when setting up a research project is finding the delicate balance of time invested versus goal payoff. Setting achievable goals for content creation that will have the best expected payoffs, whether it’s a certain level of interaction on a post or connecting students with valuable information, can be difficult. One way to mitigate these challenges is to have a discussion at the outset of the project to be reasonable about what your team can achieve and what will meet the needs of your intended audience to the best of your ability. It is also helpful to have a voice of reason who will help reign in wild ideas that may not have the payoff the project needs (Dr. Pfannenstiel is very good at this:) ). Finally, acknowledging that your project will need to be adaptable to meet the unexpected needs that come up in either the logistics of carrying out a project or the ever-shifting goals of your target audience is key to success.

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Faculty Profile: Dr. Greg Bowen

Hello, my name is Dr. Greg Bowen, and I’m joining the English department faculty this year, teaching linguistics. If I were to describe myself in three words, they’d be whelming, chalant, and corrigible. Occasionally I’m even shevelled and kempt.

I’ve always had a love of language. In elementary school, classmates sometimes asked me whether I read the dictionary. I decided I’d better give it a try, and brought one along to read on the bus ride to school. I discovered something that day. I learned that reading the dictionary is really boring.

A brief glance through the margins of my high school and college notebooks would reveal my love of castles and medieval arms and armor. It was no great surprise to my parents when I chose to pursue a bachelor’s degree in history. I still rubbed shoulders with English majors, though, working as a tutor in the Westminster College Writing Center. There my black sense of humor, combined with an outwardly mild-mannered demeanor, earned me an award for “most upstandingly perverse.”

With some spare credits, I took a course my senior year on the history and structure of the English language. It was the most fun I’d ever had in a classroom, and I knew then what I’d be doing with the rest of my life.

Greg Bowen and FamilyI studied linguistics at Indiana’s Purdue University, combining my passions for history and language by specializing in historical linguistics. I explored the intricacies of address pronoun selection in Arthurian tales from the 15th century, and the lingering influence of the King James Bible on religious writing styles in 19th century America. I also had a blast teaching introductory linguistics classes, hoping to give others a first exposure to the field as exciting as mine had been.

When I’m not working, I enjoy playing video games, hiking, watching Netflix, and singing, preferably in small ensembles. As a tenor in the Westminster College Chamber Singers, I had the opportunity to sing in Carnegie Hall (under the direction of John Rutter), in cathedrals across France and Spain, and in Beijing’s Forbidden City. I also met a lovely young alto and somehow convinced her to marry me. My wife Anna and I now have two little boys: David, age 6 (who loves dominoes), and Tristan, age 3 (who loves cats).

My family and I are excited to be starting our new life in Pennsylvania, and I’m looking forward to sharing my love of language, and all its exquisite weirdness, with the excellent students of Millersville University.