Fall 2020 English Student Accomplishments, Part II: Senior Capstone and Honors Projects

Katie Cowger presenting her Honors Thesis 

First off, a hearty congratulations to all the students who recently completed their senior capstone projects and presented them on Flipgrid! If you didn't get the chance to watch them yet, you can still join Flipgrid and watch (and comment) here: https://flipgrid.com/peters1300

The Senior Capstone presentations include:

Preston Manning's "Corrupted Blood" (an excerpt from his novel)

Mitchell Potts', "The Abject Objects in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying"

Cody Baggerly's "Lust, Pride, and Jealousy: A Discourse in Shakespeare's Love"

Kara Hodo's "Uncovering the Cause of Creepy" 

Bryce Clark's "The Stomach of Saturn" (short story)

Nikki Hatton's "Black Voices in the HS Classroom"

Amanda Daniel's "Miltimodal Systems in Education"

Megan Green's "Inside the Language of Orange is the New Black"

Teresa White's "Politics of Performance in Esme Weijun Wang's "High Functioning""

Kristen Mendoza-Keenom's "How to Build a Monster: The Frankenstein Effect in Romantic Literature and Modern Society"

Katie Cowger's "If the Savage One is Me: Disney's Dangerous Single Story of Indigeneity" 

Gloria Evans' "The Duality of a Dream or Destiny Deferred: Songs of Sympathy Across the Spectrum of Suffering"

Austin Ward's "V for Victim

Hanna Barnhart's "Confronting White American Identity: The Underexamined Black American Identity"

Jackson Embry's "Teaching AAVE and Black Culture in the English Arts Classroom"

Dani Woolly's "Mistaken Identity" (an excerpt from a novel)

Fall 2020 University Honors Showcase:

Six English majors also presented their scholarship at the Fall 2020 University Honors Showcase on Thursday, December 3rd. Kara Hodo presented two projects (one of which is represented in her Capstone project above), and Katie Cowger presented her Honors Thesis project, which is the culmination of all her Honors research! Congratulations on these great achievements! 

The presentations included: 

Katelen Cowger, English and Native American Studies, Thesis (Dr. Sarah Peters)

 

Kara Hodo, English, Project (Dr. Sarah Peters) & Kara Hodo, English, Project (Dr. Rebecca Nicholson-Weir)

Teresa White, English, Project (Dr. Rebecca Nicholson-Weir)

Megan Green, English, Project (Dr. Joshua Grasso)

Bryce Clark, English, Project (Dr. Joshua Grasso)

Click here for photos from the Honors Showcase like the one above: https://www.ecok.edu/honors-showcase-0

Fall 2020 English Department Student Accomplishments (part 1)!

Despite COVID and the very strange semester, the English Department continues to do what it does best:  teach students to think critically and examine their world. This is the first in a series of posts that will highlight some of our student accomplishments this semester! 

For our first post, Dr. Donelson has shared the research of two students from her English 1213: Composition II course. Check out their eye-catching, cutting-edge research below!

Vivian Tapia, "How Music Affects Our Brain" 

Razia Riaz "Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy"  

More to come in Part 2! And if you have great news or accomplishments, please share them with me at jgrasso@ecok.edu. 

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival 2021

From Dr. Ken Hada, director of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival:

We will not host an on-campus Scissortail Festival, April 2021. Instead we will produce 7 sessions of live streaming (with re-postings) of Six excellent authors with various styles and personalities, along with a session dedicated to ECU Student readers, April 1-3, 2021. 

Special Thanks to Professor Mike Maxwell, Chair of Mass Comm, and Mark Bratcher, Assistant Director of Communications, for their help with the 2021 festival!

The 17th Annual Darryl Fisher High School Contest is in progress, in conjunction with the Scissortail Festival.

Bios of the 2021 authors and other information is available at: ecuscissortail.blogspot.com

Thanks to everyone who helps with this!! More details will be coming later.

THE SCHEDULE 

Scissortail Creative Writing Festival: April 1, 2 & 3, 2021

Schedule of Live-Stream Readings (all times are Central Time Zone) 

Thursday, April 1

4:00pm - Welcome to Scissortail 2021 with Moderator / Kai Coggin

6:00pm – Andrew Geyer

Friday, April 2

4:00pm - Tiffany Midge

6:00pm - Quraysh Ali Lansana

Saturday, April 3

2:00pm – ECU Students

4:00pm – Barbara Crooker

6:00pm - Author 6 / Closing out Scissortail 2021 with Moderator / Octavio Quintanilla

Fright Fest 2020 screenings and contest!

This October, you can be part of a new ECU tradition: the 1^st Annual ECU Fright Test! This Virtual Film Festival offers 31 movies for the 31 days of October, everything from Hellraiser to Halloween! The Virtual Film Festival offers a list of all 31 films, some of which are available to rent at the Linscheid Library. Even better, three films (The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the 2019 Halloween) will be screened at the Ada Cinemark 8! To find out how to watch all the films, check out www.justwatch.com.

After you get a few films under your belt, the Virtual Film Fest challenges you to write about your near-death experiences! Write an analytical essay (you know, the kind you normally write in English and Humanities courses) about one of the films on the list and submit it to ecuenglishandlanguages@ecok.edu OR e-mail or turn in a hard copy to any English professor you see on the third floor. The Virtual Film Fest will award prizes to the top three entries. For more information about the contest or any questions, please e-mail the English department at the address above.

OHC's Podcast Brain Box, S3 Ep11, "New Ways of Seeing the World: The Value of Fantasy Literature"

The Oklahoma Humanities Council (which we've posted about before) has its own podcast, Brain Box, which interviews scholars, writers, and other artists on a range of cultural and literary topics. Their most recent episode interviews ECU professor, Dr. Joshua Grasso, on the importance of fantasy literature, and its focus on the role of the exile. The interview comes from his recent article published in OHC's journal, Oklahoma Humanities, which you can also find on their website.

Listen here if you need something to do between classes! https://www.okhumanities.org/page/brainbox-s3-ep11

Read Megan Thompson's (former ECU English prof!) essay, "That Is Who You Are" in Mutha Magazine

A handful of years ago, Megan Thompson was one of the small band of English professors on the Third Floor of Horace Mann, teaching Comp I and II as well as Creative Writing courses. Despite her short tenure, she made a big mark on the department, and I know many recent graduates still remember her courses fondly. For those of you who don't know her, this essay should give you a sense of what you missed. "That is Who You Are," without giving too much away, is about the struggle to define yourself apart from the job you loved and felt you had been groomed to follow. We always talk about finding your dream job and your 'calling,' but what happens if you get fired (or quit)? Or get lost? Have you betrayed yourself? The American Dream? Your family? This is a poor summary of a very profound and moving essay which uses the particular to express the universal. In other words, you don't have be an English professor to understand exactly what she's talking about. Oh, and she talks about some of her ECU experiences as well...

Here's the link: http://www.muthamagazine.com/2020/07/that-is-who-you-are/?fbclid=IwAR0Wsi7DIhD0LGYzh5Jhh-CFlg7yXup2edwOHX27xTJTtoiq_Yewdj1rBig

And here's an excerpt: "In my years of teaching, I had heard innumerable stories that shredded my heart, but I never broke down. I taught at regional universities in rural areas of the country, my students often first-generation college students, working multiple jobs, raising their own kids. They brought their books to class in plastic bags. I held their babies for them on the days when they gave their presentations and couldn’t find a sitter. I read their essays alone in my office, my hand over my mouth. I bolted down the hall to my department chair after one email from a student saying she felt like she was trudging through sludge and I didn’t think she could do it anymore. I listened to their stories about testicular cancer, relationships gone to hell, rape. I attended sessions on how to make my office a safe place, and put a sticker on my door saying that it was. I got wrapped up in their lives because I saw no way around it. Universities obsess over retention rates, so it was our duty to make sure students came to class. I knew them, and I loved them. And I was able to hold it all together until that day in the nearly empty building, 2:30 in the afternoon on the last day of class before summer, when I couldn’t anymore."

Download the Spring/Summer Issue of Oklahoma Humanities!

A great resource for teachers in our state is Oklahoma Humanities Magazine, which combines viewpoints from scholars around the state and often far beyond, including some of the bigger names in history, literature, and art. Each issue centers around a theme, and the contributors highlight the various ways to understand and complicate this idea. Previous issues have included pieces by ECU professors past and present, poets (including Dr. Ken Hada), and even a few alumni. 

For the most recent issue, the theme was Home, and the articles range from food, immigration, Dorothea Lange's famous Depression/Dust Bowl photographs, Woody Guthrie, and fantasy literature. The English Department's Dr. Joshua Grasso has an article on fantasy literature entitled, "Roads Go Ever Ever On," discussing primarily Tolkien's concept of home in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. You can download the issue for free below, or sign up for a free subscription and have it mailed to you. Enjoy! 

Link to the issue: https://www.okhumanities.org/doccenter/d66870df8ad249eb8b9ca560123d1db4

Subscribe here (it's free!): https://www.okhumanities.org/page/subscribe-to-oklahoma-humanities-magazine