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English Education Majors: Take Note

They await you.

For any English Education majors planning to student-teach in Fall 2011, please read the following notice.

For all other English Education majors, please make a mental note of this process, which happens every semester and will apply to you some day.

“Student teaching applications are due April 1, 2011. Since the last day of class is April 29th, we will be in a crunch to complete student teaching applications and make placements before the end of the semester. Please advise your students to turn in their completed applications on time."

Go Global: April 11

 ECU’s Global Education Committee invites you to attend the second annual Go Global program on April 11 at 10:00 a.m. in the Estep Center.


The program will provide information about the university’s study abroad opportunities, including testimonials by previous and current participants.

Get your STD fix today at 2

The photo above was taken at our last meeting.

ECU's chapter of Sigma Tau Delta,the International English Honor Society meets today, Friday, March 25th, at 2 pm.in the Tower Room (University Center, 2nd floor). We welcome first-timers and long-time-no-seers!  Club sponsors--Drs. Grasso and Benton--and whoever else comes will read and discuss a number of short works published by some of the writers who will be appearing at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival next week (that’s the current plan, anyway).  We will also talk about the Page One Literary Art Gallery and the Scissortail Wrap Party, which STD will be hosting on Friday, April 1^st (from 7:45 to 9:30-ish).  If you can carve out any time in your schedule on Thursday and Friday to help prepare for and host that event, your rewards in heaven will be great (especially if you have an arts and crafts bent and are something of a perfectionist).

See you at 2?

Writing Awards Deadline: April 8

Be Advised: March 29th at 3:30

Paul Hughes Memorial Writing Award Deadline: April 4

The Department of English and Languages announces the 2011 Paul Hughes Memorial Writing Award, an annual creative writing competition open to all East Central University students. Any form of creative writing, including poetry, fiction, drama, and creative nonfiction, is eligible for consideration. Submissions will be accepted in the English department, Horace Mann 301 or Horace Mann 317, until Monday, April 4, at midnight. Students may also email entries to mwalling@ecok.edu. This deadline will be strictly enforced. Students may submit a total of five individual works. Individual prose submissions may not exceed 10,000 words. Cash prizes will be awarded for first, second and third place. Last year, the awards were $200, $100, and $50.

Paul Hughes

This photo of Paul Hughes is from the 1971 ECU Journal.

Born in Roff, Paul Hughes attended Ada High School and earned his B.A. with honors from East Central in 1936. At ECU, Hughes served as president of the senior class, editor of the campus newspaper, and captain of the debate team. At age 27, Hughes published his first novel, Retreat From Rostov, with Random House. He went on to publish 15 other books, including Challenge at Changsa (Macmillan), Jeff (John Day), and The Salsbury Story (Univ. of Arizona Press), and numerous short stories in magazines such as Collier's, Seventeen, Woman's Home Companion, Vogue, and Liberty. After a brief term as night editor of the Ada Evening News, Hughes began a long career with KTAR Radio and Television, becoming one of the most recognizable air personalities in Arizona. In 1971, he gave the ECU commencement address and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award.

Submissions

Submitted manuscripts for the award should be neatly typed. Prose should be double-spaced. Poetry should be single-spaced except to separate stanzas. Each work should have a cover page listing the author's name, title of the work, classification (senior. . .), major, address, telephone number, and email address. Notification will be delivered to the email address. The author's name should not appear on the manuscript. Entries will not be returned.

ECU's Russian Tea Room: Open Today from 6:30 to 8:30

This kind of samovar.

In the Regents Room.

Presented by:  The Global Education Committee and the Russian Studies Program 

Featuring:

Russian tea from samovars
Russian and Ukrainian candies and cookies
Slavic style pancakes
Russian and Ukrainian music and dance

Welcome to Ukraine- presentation by Olga, Masha and Natasha, exchange students from the University of Linguistics in Kiev, Ukraine

Not this kind.

Still Not Featuring:
Russian caviar
Russian vodka
Russian roulette
Russian mafia

If you have any items from Russia or Ukraine that you would like to share with those who value Slavic Cultures, please bring those items with you.

If you have any questions regarding Eastern European art or Slavic mysterious soul, we will try to answer them.

The event is free to the public. Donations will be appreciated. For more information contact Mara Sukholutskaya at 436-5293   

Calling all Non-Traditional ECU women students

Rita Farr: A Non-Traditional Student

The ECU Women's Club scholarship, for non-traditional women students, has extended its deadline until March 22nd.

The application can be found on their website.

The Philosophy of the Western

Drs. Ken Hada, Robin Murphy, Jennifer McMahon and Steve Csaki.

On Wednesday, March 8th, ECU celebrated the publication of The Philosophy of Western (U of Kentucky, 2010), edited by ECU's own Drs. Jennifer McMahon and  B. Steve Csaki.  The collection includes essays by each of the editors as well as Drs. Ken Hada and Robin Murphy, all four faculty of ECU's English and Languages department.

Csaki's essay, "Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Pragmatists," argues that John Wayne, "the quintessential western hero, "achieved his iconic status as a western hero in large part because he embodied the ideals of American pragmatism" articulated by William James (1842-1910) and John Dewey (1859-1952) (4).

In "The Cost of the Code: Ethical Consequences in High Noon and The Ox-Bow Incident," Hada "challenges the moral absolutism that is characteristic of many westerns" and specifically questions the "unflinching ethics" embraced by the characters in both film (6).

Murphy's essay, "Go West, Young Woman! Hegel's Dialectic and Women's Identities in Western Films," which she co-authored with Gary Heba, uses a Hegelian dialectic to examine the ways the classic westerns established "typically restrictive standards for women" (8).

McMahon's essay, "Beating a Live Horse: The Elevation and Degradation of Horses in Westerns," argues that Westerns show us how "humans see traits in horses that they themselves possess but dislike" and, as such, in westerns, horses "become convenient objects upon which to transfer our own self-loathing and exact a psychologically satisfying dynamic of control" (330).

Congrats authors!

Walling and McMahon and The Philosophy of David Lynch

Just out from the University of Kentucky Press:  The Philosophy of David Lynch, featuring essays by ECU's own  Dr. Mark Walling ("All Roads Lead to the Self:  Zen Buddhism and David Lynch's Lost Highway") and Dr. Jennifer McMahon ("City of Dreams:  Bad Faith in Mulholland Drive").  Congratulations!

The role of NASA in our daily lives?

Dr. Rothrock sent us this heads up:

"NASA is not just for scientists anymore!

"Dr. Mark Micozzi invites all majors to apply for this unique opportunity for stipends and scholarships from NASA.  Though the application forms themselves will answer your questions more fully, as will Dr. Micozzi, this is a summary of what I learned when I talked with him:

• Eligibility: any undergraduate student (usually juniors and seniors) who has a “research project established” and is “working with a faculty member” 
• $800 scholarships are based upon academic achievement and financial need, requires a “social responsibility portion,” usually in the form of 3 hours per week of “volunteer duties in their field of anywhere they want to explore” 
• $2000 research stipends cover 10 hours a week of work on a research project 
• This is to promote NASA’s mission—“the science and art of discovery”
• Winners may use the money awards for anything they want; it is intended to help college students so they don’t have to work outside of school so much; “NASA wants a timely and educated workforce.”
• This fellowship program is not the same thing as NASA internships, but Dr. Micozzi says that this program can lead to the other one. 
• The essay does not have a length or style requirement, but it should relate “a student’s future to some part of NASA’s role in our daily lives. What are the student’s personal goals? How important is a student’s current discipline and person goals related to NASA’s role in our society? This is open ended. A student’s personality drives it.” 

The applications are available in ADM 102.

Instead of asking “why should I?”, consider asking “why not?”

Hada wins Western Heritage Award for Poetry!

Please join us in congratulating, ECU's very own Dr. Ken Hada, whose Spare Parts has been named the winner of the 2011 Western Heritage Award for Poetry by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Earlier this year, Spare Parts was named a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Awards and last fall, four poems from the collection were featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac.

What follows is the official press release from the Museum:

 March 1, 2010--America’s premier Western museum, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, is excited to celebrate its golden anniversary with the announcement of its Western Heritage Award winners. The awards honor works in literature, music, film, and television reflecting the significant stories of the American West. The 50th Anniversary of the Western Heritage Awards will be celebrated at a black-tie banquet April 16, 2011.

Each honoree receives a Wrangler, an impressive bronze sculpture of a cowboy on horseback. Awards presented in 2011 are for works completed in 2010. Qualified professionals outside the Museum staff judge all categories.

Literary Awards

There are seven categories in the literary competition. They include Western novel, nonfiction book, art book, photography book, juvenile book, magazine article and poetry book.

The Outstanding Western Novel is Impatient with Desire by Gabrielle Burton and published by Hyperion Books. A novel based on the Donner Party—a group of more than 80 pioneers who were snowbound in 1846 in the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, during which some of them resorted to cannibalism—is narrated through the hauntingly imagined journal entries and letters of Tamsen Donner. Donner, her husband, George, their five daughters, along with the other pioneers headed to California on the California-Oregon Trail in eager anticipation of new lives out West. Everything that could go wrong did, and an American legend was born.

Will Bagley takes the Wrangler for Outstanding Nonfiction Book So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trail to Oregon and California 1812-1848 published by University of Oklahoma Press. Bagley crafts a sweeping narrative of a classic journey involving America’s westward migration. Over the course of three decades, almost a million eager fortune-hunters, pioneers, and visionaries transformed the face of a continent—and displaced its previous inhabitants. The people who made the long and perilous journey over the Oregon and California trails drove this swift and astonishing change. In this volume, Bagley tells why and how this massive emigration began. Illustrated with photographs and historical maps, So Rugged and Mountainous is the first of a projected four-volume history, Overland West: The Story of the Oregon and California Trails.

Robert Lougheed: Follow the Sun lands the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Art Book. Written by Don Hedgpeth and published by Diamond Trail Press the book focuses on the man behind Mobil Oil Company's legendary flying Pegasus and the creator of numerous magazine covers familiar to a generation of readers. Follow the Sun is the first book to showcase the full breadth of Robert Lougheed's artistic legacy. More than 400 full-color reproductions trace his trajectory from early Canadian studies of working horses to commercial work to Western scenes and timeless plein-air oils of European subjects. Hedgpeth makes clear why “contemporary Western art owes a major debt of gratitude to Bob Lougheed.” This book takes a long stride toward repaying that debt and introduces a remarkable artist to any who have not yet had the pleasure.

Kristina L. Southwell and John R. Lovett reveal the remarkable work of a pioneering woman photographer earning them the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Photography Book. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press, Life at the Kiowa, Comanche, and Wichita Agency captures the essence of a budding photographer in 1890 when Annette Ross Hume arrived home to her frontier village in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Southwell and Lovett provide an illuminating biography of Hume, focusing on her life in Anadarko and the development of her photographic skills. Hume’s portraits of everyday life are unforgettable — images of Indian mothers with babies in cradleboards, tribal elders conducting council meetings, families receiving their issue of beef from the government agent, and men and women engaging in the popular pastime of gambling. The Annette Ross Hume collection has been a favorite of researchers for many years. Now this elegant volume makes Hume’s photographs more widely accessible, allowing a unique glimpse into a truly diverse American West.

Off Like the Wind! The First Ride of the Pony Express by Michael P. Spradlin is the Outstanding Juvenile Book. The novel, published by Walker & Company, a Division of Bloombury Publishing Inc., tells the story ofthe first Pony Express rider who set out on a trail from Missouri to California in 1860. With him, he carried a special delivery — the first mail ever carried by hand to the West. Over the next 11 days, he and many other riders would endure harsh weather, dangerous animals and more, but nothing would diminish their unflagging determination and courage. Meticulously researched and gorgeously illustrated, Michael P. Spradlin and Layne Johnson's Off Like the Wind! brings to life an adventurous journey, full of suspense and excitement, that celebrates America's can-do attitude and pioneering spirit.

Writer Frederick J. Chiaventone takes top honors for Outstanding Magazine Article with “Taking Stock of the Pony Express,” published in Wild West Magazine/Weider History Group. Chiaventone is a former Army officer and author of the Wrangler-winning novel “Moon of Bitter Creek.” His Wild West article on “Taking Stock of the Pony Express” was written to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the short-lived but legendary Pony Express horseback mail service.

The Outstanding Poetry book winner is Spare Parts by Ken Hada and published by Mongrel Empire Press. This book of poems, acting as spare parts in themselves, is touted as the making of one smooth-running, powerful engine of ingenuity. Hada is a fourth-generation Oklahoman and professor at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, where he teaches American literature and courses in the humanities.