Dear all,
Welcome to the Fall 2024 semester! I hope everyone had a good summer. Please be sure to share any ideas you have about programming or events for the upcoming year. Also, let me know if you have any achievements to share!
Reminders
Submitting syllabi and office hours
If you haven’t already, please do send your syllabi and office hours to Vanessa Mendoza.
English Department Canvas Majors and Minors Page
Please encourage your students to join the English Department’s Canvas English Majors and Minors Page, in which they can self-enroll by following this link. Please also consider joining yourself to receive the updates and information that our students receive.
Confidentiality in the Classroom
Please remember to log out of your classroom computer before you leave your classroom. When faculty leave computers on and open to Canvas pages, this may/can infringe on FERPA regulations for students. This also delays the next faculty member from logging into their course materials and preparing for their upcoming class. The quickest keystrokes to access the sign out menu is ctrl + alt + delete, but there are other methods as well.
Achievements
We have had a busy summer!
On May 21st, Professor Irene Clark gave a virtual presentation titled “Imitation, Diversity, and Academic Integrity” at Academic Writing and Integrity in the Age of Diverse Higher Education, a conference held at the University of Quebec. She has also learned that she has been awarded a Faculty Affiliates grant for a book project titled, Literacy Narratives: Evolving Perspectives. The grant involves 100 hours of work at $16 per hour, and Irene would like to hire 8 assistants—4 pairs of students working together to help with the project. Please contact Irene at irene.clark@csun.edu if you are interested. Irene will make her decision next week.
Professor DeAnn Jordan recently earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas at Monticello in spring 2024. Congratulations!
Professor Kelan Koning’s chapter, “Mad Lyrics: Toward an Embodied, Community Responsive Pedagogy of Care,” will appear in the upcoming book Mad Scholars: Reclaiming and Reimagining the Neurodiverse Academy (edited by Melanie Jones and Shayda Kafai), set for release in September.
In addition, Professor Kelan Koning was selected to represent the CSU at the California Community Colleges’ Common Course Numbering (CCN) Faculty Convening this summer for College Composition. A small group of community college writing faculty, along with one UC faculty member, and Professor Koning worked together to finalize the Common Course Numbering course template for California community college composition courses.
The President’s Commission on Diversity & Inclusion and the President’s Cabinet accepted the proposal “Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED) at CSUN: Developing Tools for Anti-Racism and Intersectionality” that Dr. Marcy DeVeaux, Rachelle Yousuf, Gretchen Macciarella, Dr. Carrie Saetermoe, and Kelan Koning, with the support of Tim Black, submitted for the 2024-2025 Diversity & Equity Innovation Grant Program.
Professor Linda Rader Overman recently spent time in France to honor the World War Two behind-the-scenes work of her father,
OSS photographer, Bill Rader who was in the John Ford Field Photo Branch (the OSS is now the CIA). Prior to the Normandy invasion, there were other OSS units dropped behind enemy lines to specifically support the Resistance to help them sabotage enemy supply lines. This was accomplished by blowing up bridges and rail lines. During August 1944, Bill Rader’s OSS team worked directly with the local resistance in the Jura region of France by recruiting civilians who would provide information regarding the Nazi order of battle. Overman was tasked by the OSS Society President to award the
OSS Congressional Gold Medal of Honor to the town of
Lons-le Saunier (they gave Overman the key to the city and made her an honorary citizen), to the
Museum of Resistance and Deportation of Besançon, and to the Association for the Children of the Resistance (PEDR) in La Motte commemorating her father’s photographic work at the time. Overman even made the French newspapers in the region.
Professor Jutta Schamp presented “Our Sexual Other Within? The Representation of Transgressive Sexuality in Monique Roffey’s The Tryst” at the conference Psychology & The Other at Northeastern University, London, U.K., July 13-14, 2024.
Professor Colleen Tripp‘s article, “’If I ain’t a man anymore, how’s that different from just being dead?’ The Feminist Gothic in Lovecraft Country,” was accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal, Humanities, for their special issue of “The Legacy of the Gothic Tradition in Horror Fiction.”
