The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the National English Honor Society, held the Second Annual Graduate and Undergraduate Student Conference on Literature, Composition, and Rhetoric on October 16 and 17.  Two Lee University students, Emily Carlisle and Mallory Leonard, were accepted to present their papers at the convention.

Carlisle presented her paper “The Eternal Poet” in a panel on Studies of American Literature.  Her paper, which she wrote for 20^th Century American Drama, focuses on Tennessee William’s play Suddenly Last Summer, and she subverts the protagonist’s perceived death.  The reading slot for her was 7:30 a.m., and she says, “If you have to read your paper before the sun also rises, it is always a good idea to discuss Tennessee Williams’ religious hauntings in order to get the synapses firing.”

In her paper, “Struggle Against Water: A Deeper Look at Queen Gertrude in Hamlet,” Leonard uses feminist literary criticism to claim that Gertrude’s character serves as a warning to women who may give into patriarchy and deny their own femininity.  She claims that Ophelia and Gertrude are opposites: Ophelia embraces her feminine nature and escapes the patriarchal structures around her through suicide, but Gertrude fears to follow and remains trapped in the world of men which destroys her.

This is the first conference at which either has presented, and both found the reading useful.  Leonard says, “Overall, the experience was beneficial.  This was my first experience reading one of my papers in front of anyone else, and I’m very glad I did it.  I look forward to participating in more conferences in the near future.”

This year, new faculty joins the College of Arts and Sciences.  Professor Jeff Ringer, Dr. Wendy Steinberg, and Professor Alan Wheeler are new additions in the English, Psychology, and Anthropology discipline respectively.  

Professor Ringer, pictured middle, at his wedding

Professor Jeff Ringer is a Lee alum finishing his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition through the University of New Hampshire while teaching here at Lee.  His dissertation is on Evangelical Identity and Academic Writing, which he says is an important reason he is here.  “Part of the reason that attracted me to coming back here was teaching students who were the subject of my dissertation.  I hope to continue researching and help design courses and programs that involve students and writing majors with research.”

Dr. Steinberg teaching her Statistics class

Dr. Wendy Steinberg, who taught previously at Eastern University, feels her charge is to teach Statistics and Research Methods effectively.  The class is her passion, and as many students are afraid of statistics, her goal is “to help them find it enjoyable, fun, and useful.”  To her, that is the definition of success, and she believes it’s possible. She is the author of Statistics Alive, an introductory text on the subject.

Professor Wheeler with Byamba

If he were to accomplish anything while here at Lee, professor Alan Wheeler says, it would be to give students a broader perspective of the world while encouraging them to draw closer to Jesus.  He always felt called to be a missionary, but God had other plans.  He became an anthropologist because he has a “natural love for the exotic, the distant, the unusual.”  Here, he is pictured with Byamba in one of Mongolia’s remotest regions, only accessible traveling by moose trails for over 100 miles.  The only contact this tribe had prior to Wheeler’s visit was Hungarian scientist 40 years ago. Wheeler is working on a doctorate from the University of Cambridge.

Students at the salt mines in Germany

This past summer, thirteen trips from various departments inside the College of Arts and Sciences participated in a cross-cultural experience.  Dr. Jeffrey Sargent co-led the third annual Psychology trip to Europe with Dr. Heather Quagliana.  Twenty-nine students visited Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, and were able to see the salt mines of Germany, visit Freud’s office, and attend a lecture at the Carl Jung Institute.  The Italy trip, led by Dr. Matthew Sims and Professor John Simmons, took twenty-two students to Rome, Orvieto, Florence, Venice, and Milan to study Renaissance art, Baroque Italy, and Ancient Rome.

Dr. Donna Summerlin led nine students on the American Ethnic Studies trip which focused on the ethnic diversity of the South, including African American history and the Civil Rights movement.  The Modern Europe trip, led by Dr. Steve Swindle and Dr. Jeff Golden, took twenty-four students to Brussels, Paris, Munich, Salzburg, and Budapest to study Humanities and Political Science; while there they were able to see NATO, the Eagle’s Nest, Dachau, and many museums.

Students at a grill in Hiroshima

Dr. Trevor Milliron and Dr. Robert Fisher led another psychology trip to Japan; twenty-five students traveled for eleven days to Tokyo, Osaka, and Hiroshima, along with some trips into the countryside.  Twenty-five students participated in the Argentina Spanish Institute trip led by Dr. Alexander Steffanell and Professor Carmen Guerrero to Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires.  There, they visited museums and held a language café at the Universidad de la Empresa.

On these trips, students are able to experience life outside of Lee University, as well as become more acquainted with their professors.  Beth Thompson, Director of the Global Perspectives program says, “What better academic pursuit is there than having a student learn hands-on the meaning of their own Christian values and how those relate to another cultural perspective.  As faith based educators we have an ethical responsibility to teach our students there are other ways of knowing and thinking.”

Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society, inducted fourteen new students this semester on September 18.  The festivities were held in the Centenary Room for the so-called “neophytes”.  Many of the new members are sophomores.

Newest members of Sigma Tau Delta

Kevin Brown, Sigma Tau Delta’s faculty sponsor, mentioned that this is one of the larger groups that has been inducted in recent years.  There are about fifty members of Sigma Tau Delta, while the English major has around one hundred and thirty members.  In order to be eligible for participation in the Honor Society, a student has to have a B average at least in one upper division English course.

Posted by Amber Mear

Kevin Brown has one freshman Composition class that has given him a difficult time for not having a cell phone.  While this detail is greeted with resigned bemusement in Brown’s upper division courses, the freshmen seemed unable to grasp the idea of a professor not having a cell phone.  With this in mind, Brown submitted an article to Inside Higher Ed which focused on cell phone usage in the classroom. Brown cites modeling positive behavior as one of his principal reasons for his intentional technological lack.  Other reasons include fostering independence in students, not to mention reducing the general annoyance of cell phones going off in class.  

Dr. Brown’s arguments were not left unchallenged.  In fact, he was criticized in some comments for being behind the times. Brown enjoyed the commentary, saying that he had hoped to create discussion.

See the Dialog page for a link to the article itself.

Posted by Amber Mear

Lee University English professor Chad Prevost recently published two full-length collections of poetry, Snapshots of the Perishing World and A Walking Cliché Coins a Phrase.
In the fall of 2006, Word Tech Press’s Cherry Grove Collections published Prevost’s first full-length collection of poetry, Snapshots of the Perishing World. Before writing Snapshots, Prevost explored literary techniques combining lyricism and prose and developed a growing fascination with mythology.

This served as the inspiration for Prevost’s work, as his interests soon culminated into a series of prose poetry illustrating the “modern myth.” For well over a decade now the whole power of myth has captivated my imagination as a way to tap into the power of language itself,” said the professor in an interview for Abbeywood Press.

Thematically, Prevost uses Snapshots to express his disgust at superficial social interaction and needless consumerism in the US. He expresses these lamentations in “snapshots” of locales across the country. In protest to such cultural sins, Prevost’s character burns his own home.

In Literare Biographia, Reviewer Grace E. Sheriff says this represents a “radical…rebirth,” and the reader of Snapshots will realize that Americans, “are part of a truly mythic reality which is rooted in the human imagination and expressed in the parables of the poet-storyteller.”

This year, Plain View Press will publish Prevost’s latest work, A Walking Cliche Coins a Phrase. According to the Board of Directors in East Coast Review , this collection marks a transitional stage for Prevost.

The piece features a markedly different style from Snapshots . It represents an abrupt transition to “a radically absurd, comic-narrative voice,“ said Board representative Sczerat Bilmonti. “Perhaps Cliché is best viewed as a pause for recapitulation and evaluation, transitional in Prevost’s development as a writer,” he notes.

According to Carla DeCarma-Fe in Southern Utopian Review, the collection doesn’t stray far from Prevost’s usual thematic focus. “Like all of Prevost’s earlier works, Cliché retains a strong sense of its specifically mythic North American origins, a sociopolitical subtext that runs along just below the surface of the narrative.”

A central idea to the work is the theme of identity and struggling to express that identity, through such characters as the they experience age and muteness. Prevost even allows his own character to suffer the struggle.

And while analyzing all these identities and search for an identity, the speaker feels no more able to expressing their identity, or story, than he is his own. The “cliché” is the representation of their stories. Says DeCarma-Fee, “The Cliché is the otherwise silent voice of millions who seek originality but whose very pursuit circumvents any such reality.”

Prevost imagines doing something productive and hopefully profitable in the future, taking note of the coming of age of literature as it enters digital media. “I do dream of a day when I might begin something new, be it a literary press or a periodical or who knows what,” Prevost explains in the interview.

“It’s tough to start up something new and worthwhile—even if you one doesn’t want to make money. And I would.” Inspired by another literary entrepreneur, Prevost currently envisions possibilities in the audio book market.

Lee University English professor Dr. Kevin brown has recently published several articles exploring perhaps commonly misunderstood stories in the Bible.

“I started with the question of Mary Magdalene,” said Brown, “and why authors, and filmmakers, always present her as a prostitute when there’s nothing in the Bible that even hints at her being one.”

Brown then broadened that idea to question why authors portray any biblical personages the way they do when they write novels based on the gospels. Brown did as much reading in biblical studies as he did in literary studies.

The theologian looked at more than ten contemporary novels that attempt to re-tell the gospel story, but focused on five of the better known: Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ, Nino Ricci’s Testament, Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son, Jose Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and Anthony Burgess’ Man of Nazareth.

He found out a good deal of historical background, in addition to legends and myths about the major characters from the gospels.

He discovered that Iscariot could come from the Greek and Latin words for “dagger-bearer,” which also relates to a group of zealots in first-century Israel (they were called the sicarii); thus, many of the writers he examined portray Judas as a zealot in some form.

Along the same lines, he found that Iscariot could also relate to Judas’ being from Kerioth, which would make him the only disciple from Judea, which would reinforce the idea of Judas as an outcast. Not surprisingly, according to Brown, many authors pick up on this idea and use it to strengthen their presentation of him as someone who never fit in.

As for Mary Magdalene, Brown found that Pope Gregory preached a sermon on September 21, 591, in which he combined Mary Magdalene, Lazarus’ sister Mary of Bethany, and the woman who washed Jesus’ feet, who is always assumed to be a prostitute. Thus, Mary Magdalene became a prostitute and was officially viewed as one until the middle of the 20th century.

“Even now, I can ask a group of students at Lee about Mary Magdalene, and most of them have been taught at some point in their lives that she was a prostitute,” said Brown.

Both articles come from a longer book-length project, They Love to Tell the Story: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Kennesaw State University Press will publish the project later this year.

As for future writing, Brown recently focused on creative nonfiction and moved away from scholarly writing. However, as he teaches Contemporary Literature this semester, he hopes to work on Douglas Coupland in the near future. Coupland is best known for writing Generation X, which popularized and helped define the term.