RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS IN ENGLISH
News of Student, Faculty, and Staff Professional Activity
Issue 2010 No. 4

PATRICK CONNER presented two papers from his research on the work of early medieval guilds this summer: “A Collection of Anglo-Saxon Additions to a Gospel Book from England:Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS. 671,” was presented to the International Association of University Professors of English at its triennial meeting in Valetto, Malta on July 20, 2010.

Conner also presented “Fifteenth-century Abingdon’s Richard Forman, Ironmonger and Poet,” to the International Association of University Professors of English Pre-Conference Medieval Symposium in Sliema, Malta on July 16, 2010.

A family emergency kept Pat from attending the Medieval Association of the Midwest, Iowa City, IA, on September 15-17, 2010, to present "Abingdon‘s Bridge Poem, A Fifteenth-Century Monument to Labor"; it was nevertheless read there, and a report of its very positive reception was shared with him.

On October 27, 2010, Pat was invited to present "Clues in the Exeter Book: A Case History in Manuscript Study" at the University of Massachusetts and Amherst College in the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College.

Conner will present "Abingdon's Guild of the Holy Cross, Celebrating the Subjugation of Nature" to the Southeastern Medieval Association on November 20, 2010, in Roanoke VA. This year's conference is sponsored by Virginia Tech and Roanoke College.

Pat is moreover humbled by a rare honor. The Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research at Western Michigan University has issued a call for papers to sponsor two sessions for the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI in May, 2011. The sessions will be titled “ Rethinking Anglo- Saxon Manuscripts: Papers in Honor of Patrick W. Conner” and “Anglo-Saxon Exeter and Its Afterlife: Papers in Honor of Patrick W. Conner.” Furthermore, the international project known as “Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture” is also sponsoring a session titled “Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Digital Age: A Session in Honor of Pat Conner.”
A full call for papers can be accessed at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/sessions.html

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MARY ANN SAMYN published five poems- “The Moon Through a Skylight,”
“Octoberish,” “Speaking of Ferocity at Sunset,” “You Can Thank Me
Later,” and “You Got Your Wish; I Got Mine"-in POOL. A review of her
most recent book, Beauty Breaks In, appeared in Mid-American Review.

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JIM HARMS read with Sharon Olds as part of theConcord Literary Festival to benefit the New Hampshire Writers Project (October16, 2010). He has five poems inthe current issue of Hamilton StoneReview: “What Leonardo Knew,” “Wetback(1967),” “Understanding Opera,” “Thom Gunn,” and “The Sunday Birds.” His poems “Condition Blue” and “TheBuilding” are in the current issue of TheLouisville Review. Finally, Animals in Distress & Pluto, a limitededition book of two stories, will be published by Wallflower Press (New York)in March 2011.

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KIRK HAZEN published a chapter entitled "Labov: Language Variation and Change" in The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics. The chapter is an argument for William Labov's place as a linguist, rather than a sociolinguist, in modern language study. SAGE (who uses the full capitalization as bumper nuts in the publishing world) was able to shrink down the 10,000 word article to 15 pages with double columns and 9 point font.

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JOHN SHUMATE's short story "Garfield Park" will appear in this fall's themed ("nourishment") issue of 5X5 Literary Review.

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RUDY ALMASY's essay "The Elizabethan Church as Restoration: Notes on Richard Hooker's Rhetorical Strategy" has just appeared in Renaissance and Reformation, Volume 32, Fall 2009.

Rudy also participated in two sessions sponsored by the Richard Hooker Society at the recent Sixteenth Century Society Conference held in October in Montreal. He was one of three individuals on the Richard Hooker Roundtable: The Future of Hookerian Studies, and he presented "The Redeemed and Unredeemed Mind at Work: Hooker's Rhetorical Strategy in Two Sermons." He also continued on the Executive Council for the Society for Reformation Research, and was elected to a term on the nominating committee for the Sixteenth Century Society.

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IRINA RODIMTSEVA’s article “On the Hollywood Chain Gang: The Screen Version of Robert E. Burns’s I am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! and Penal Reform of the 1930s-1940s” came out in the Fall 2010 issue of Arizona Quarterly.

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VLADIMIRA DUKA recently presented a paper titled "Cultural and Linguistic Pluralism in the Writing Classroom" at the Watson Conference, in Louisville, KY on Oct 15 2010.

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DONALD E. HALL gave a paper titled "Is There a Transnational Queer Studies?" at a workshop on transnational issues in American Studies sponsored by the University of Graz at the City College of New York.