Visiting Position in 18th-/19th-Century British

The English Department at Ohio University invites applications for a visiting assistant professor of 18th and 19th Century British Literature for 2009-2010. Please send cover letter, vita, and three letters of application (at least one should be from a person who has observed the candidate's teaching). Review of materials will begin July 15, 2009, and will continue until position is filled.

You are required to apply online. Follow this link:

www.ohiouniversityjobs.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=55566

Women and other minorities are encouraged to apply. Ohio University is an EEO/AA employer. Further information about Ohio University can be found at the University's web site: http://www.ohio.edu.

Edith Wharton, Reconsidered

According to a New Yorker article by Rebecca Mead, among the info to be learned from letters Edith Wharton (née Edith Newbold Jones) wrote to her governess, Anna Bahlmann, is this little gem: Wharton referred to herself as “the naughty girl, Miss Pussy.”

Naturally, Mead cannot resist and thus goes on to write, when discussing Wharton’s critical view of her own upbringing, “… but the deprivations of Pussy Jones were cultural rather than economic…”

Edith Wharton, the original Bond Girl? Hmmm….

Sort of makes you want to re-read The Age of Innocence, doesn’t it?

Adjunct Teaching Opportunity

West Liberty University has just opened a new off campus site near I-70, just north of Wheeling, and will be expanding the number of courses they offer starting this fall (2009). They would like to increase their pool of available adjuncts to teach any additional courses they may offer (mostly English composition courses). If you're interested, send your resume to Robert Gall, the Director of the Humanities Department:

Robert S. Gall, Interim Chair
Department of Humanities, CSC 130
West Liberty University
PO Box 295
West Liberty, WV 26074
rgall@westliberty.edu

CFP: International Conference on Sport and Society

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SPORT AND SOCIETY
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada
8-10 March 2010
http://www.SportConference.com/

The International Conference on Sport and Society and its companion International Journal of Sport and Society provide a forum for wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination of sport, including: the history, sociology and psychology of sport; sports medicine and health; physical and health education; and sports administration and management. The discussions at the conference and in the journal range from broad conceptualisations of the fundamental logics of sport, to highly specific readings of sporting practices in particular times and places. The conference and journal focus on four logics of sport: Game Logic; Body Logic; Aesthetic Logic; and Organisational Logic.

As well as impressive line-up of international plenary speakers, the Conference will also include numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. We would particularly like to invite you to respond to the Conference Call-for-Papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the International Journal of Sport and Society. If you are unable to attend the Conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in this fully refereed academic Journal.

Whether you are a virtual or in-person presenter at this Conference, we also encourage you to present on the Conference YouTube Channel. Please select the Online Sessions link on the Conference website for further details.

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 9 July 2009. Future deadlines will be announced on the Conference website after this date. Proposals are reviewed within three weeks of submission. Full details of the Conference, including an online proposal submission form, are to be found at the Conference website - http://www.SportConference.com/.

New Feature: Search the Blog

Since TCH is now crammed with archived information about everything from job openings to award recipients to bowling, we've added a search feature (at the top of the first page, just above the picture). Go ahead and type in your name--you know you want to.

Final Alice Munro post...

As promised, here, now, is the third and final post featuring excerpts from the work Alice Munro.

This time, a passage from a story entitled “Runaway” from the 2004 collection of the same name. The scene seems at first mystical and then maybe comical but is, as you’ll discover when you read the whole story, anything but.

Not far from the house was a wide shallow patch of land that often filled up the night fog this time of year. The fog was there tonight, had been there all this while. But now at one point there was a change. The fog had thickened, taken on a separate shape, transformed itself into something spiky and radiant. First a live dandelion ball, tumbling forward, then condensing itself into an unearthly sort of animal, pure white, hell-bent, something like a giant unicorn, rushing at them.

“Jesus Christ,” Clark said softly and devoutly. And grabbed hold of Sylvia’s shoulder. This touch did not alarm her at all---she accepted it with the knowledge that he did it either to protect her or to reassure himself.

Then the vision exploded. Out of the fog, and of the magnifying light---now seen to be that of a car travelling along this back road, probably in search of a place to park---out of this appeared a white goat. A little dancing white goat, hardly bigger than a sheepdog.

Clark let go. He said, ‘Where the Christ did you come from?”

“It’s your goat,” said Sylvia, “Isn’t it your goat?”

English Department Alumni Listserv

We have created an English Department Alumni Listserv. If you would like to be added to the listserv, please e-mail marsha.bissett@mail.wvu.edu.

The Bowling Photo You've Been Hoping to See

At long last, here is a photo from the grad poetry workshop's bowling night.

Back row, from left to right: Charity Gingerich, Tori Moore, Mary Ann Samyn, Aaron Rote, Lauren Reed, Christina Rothenbeck.

Front: Kori Frazier and Erin Veith.

Not pictured: Danielle Ryle, our cheerleader.

Photo credit: The Bowling Dude

And More Reading...

My recent beach reading was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, the first novel by Mark Haddon, who has also written poetry and children's books. I really enjoyed it, mostly because of its charismatic narrator and partly because of its appeal to people whose inner child (like mine) is a science nerd, and, yes, I would actually watch a TV program about the spotted newts of Micronesia, the role of dust in outer space, or how ferns reproduce.  But even if you wouldn't, Haddon's book would still be a good read.

It is narrated by a fifteen year-old "Special Needs" boy from Swindon, UK, whose "detective work" leads him to investigate the death of a neighbor's dog and ultimately to navigate the inferno of the London Tube. Christopher Boone creatively interrogates his family members, neighbors, and environment and devises unusual strategies to meet the challenges they pose. Along the way, he has funny and provocative things to say about such varied topics as the role of metaphor in communication, the expanding universe, timetables, the population cycles of frogs, rhetorical questions, and prime numbers. 

Here's a sample:

"Mr. Jeavons, the psychologist at school, once asked me why 4 red cars in a row made it a Good Day, and 3 red cars in a row made it a Quite Good Day, and 5 red cars in a row made it a Super Good Day, and why 4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day I don't speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don't eat my lunch and Take No Risks. He said that I was clearly a very logical person, so he was surprised that I should think like this because it wasn't very logical.

I said that I liked things to be in a nice order. And one way of things being in a nice order was to be logical. Especially if those things were numbers or an argument. But there were other ways of putting things in a nice order. And that was why I had Good Days and Black Days. And I said that some people who worked in an office came out of their house in the morning and saw that the sun was shining and it made them feel happy, or they saw that it was raining and it made them feel sad, but the only difference was the weather and if they worked in an office the weather didn't have anything to do with whether they had a good day or a bad day."

Christopher's habits tend to reveal that everyone else is just as OCD (hooray!), and he refuses to be cowed by authority figures despite his discomfort or fright. I won't give away the ending, but I found it very satisfying.

Keep Reading...

Reading Terry Galloway's Mean Little deaf Queer kind of reminded me of the many long evenings I spent as a child listening to the adults in my extended family joyfully telling and re-telling stories about their shared experiences, experiences that I imagined most families tried their best to forget. As the many positive reviews note, Galloway's memoir is "funny as hell" (Dorothy Allison), "gripping" (Doug Wright), and "joyously weirdo-embracing" (Sarah Bird). And, of course, it's also worth noting that Terry Galloway happens to be the younger sister of our very own (though recently retired) Gail Galloway Adams.

So, what's Mean Little deaf Queer about?

From the Amazon book description: "When Terry Galloway was born on Halloween, no one knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system. After her family moved from Berlin, Germany, to Austin, Texas, hers became a deafening, hallucinatory childhood where everything, including her own body, changed for the worse. But those unwelcome changes awoke in this particular child a dark, defiant humor that fueled her lifelong obsessions with language, duplicity, and performance.

As a ten-year-old self-proclaimed 'child freak,' she acted out her fury at her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater and performance—onstage and off—to defy and transcend her reality. With disarming candor, Terry writes about her mental breakdowns, her queer identity, and her life in a silent, quirky world populated by unforgettable characters. What could have been a bitter litany of complaint is instead an unexpectedly hilarious and affecting take on life."

Alison Bechdel predicts, and I agree, that Terry Galloway's Mean Little deaf Queer "will fascinate, it will hurt, and you will like it."

So...read it. Now.