Alumni Home Page - Department of English Auburn University

Alumni Activities and News

English Department Advisory Council

On October 13, 2006, George Crandell, Professor and Head of the English Department, hosted a lunch, followed by a three-hour business meeting, for five members of the English Department's Alumni Advisory Council. Along with those pictured below, Jim Ryan and Margaret Kouidis participated in the afternoon discussion of development opportunities and goals. Several members of the Council, along with Professors Crandell, Ryan, and Kouidis, met again via teleconference on April 20, 2007, to make plans for a fund-raising campaign for an English Department Alumni Scholarship Fund.

Contribute to the newly-established English Department Alumni Scholarship Fund.

Russ Connell and Kim Snyder Manganelli	Stacy Smith and Paul Hotchkiss
Nicki Graves	Stacy Smith

Current members of the Advisory Council are:
View contact details

Alumni Professors

Isabelle Thompson, Professor and Coordinator of the English Center, has been awarded an Alumni Professorship, 2005-10.

Thompson was among five professors this year who were awarded the five-year Alumni Professorships sponsored by the Auburn Alumni Association, with funds endowed from Auburn Annual Giving. The awards are presented on the basis of research, publishing, and teaching.

In addition to the Alumni Professorship, the Alumni Association also honors professors with a Teaching Excellence Award. Nominations for the 2006 award are currently being accepted. For more information, visit the Alumni Association web site.

Judy Troy, Professor and Alumni Writer-in-Residence, received her MA in creative writing from Indiana University. She specializes in fiction and was the recipient of a 1996 Whiting Writers' Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, as well as in literary journals and anthologies.

She's the author of Mourning Doves, a collection of stories published by Scribner's in l993; and West of Venus, a novel published by Random House in l997. Her second novel, From the Black Hills, was published by Random House in 1999. She is currently working on a third novel.

Transitions

Five assistant professors joined the Auburn English Department in 2008-2009:

Acevedo CHANTEL ACEVEDO, Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing, holds an MFA from the University of Miami. She is the author of Love and Ghost Letters (St. Martin's, 2005), winner of the Latino International Book Award and a finalist for the Connecticut Book of the Year. Her short stories have appeared in The Chattahoochee Review and Prairie Schooner, among others. Acevedo has received two Fulbright awards for secondary education and has recently completed a second novel, Looking for Bethlehem.

PETER CAMPION, Assistant Professor of Poetry Writing, received his BA from Dartmouth College and his MA from Boston University. He is the author of two collections of poems, Other People (U of Chicago P, 2005) and The Lions (U of Chicago P, 2009.) He has also published a monograph on the painter Mitchell Johnson (Terrence Rogers Fine Arts, 2004.) Peter's interests include contemporary poetry, prosody, and relations between poetry and the visual arts. He has held a George Starbuck Lectureship at Boston University as well as a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship at Stanford University. His poems and prose have appeared in Art News, The Boston Globe, Modern Painters, The New Republic, Poetry, Raritan, Slate, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He recently won a Pushcart Prize.

JO MACKIEWICZ, Assistant Professor of Technical and Professional Communication, received a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University. Her research uses discourse analysis to examine the balance of politeness and clarity in technical editing and tutoring interactions and in laypeople's online reviews of technical products, such as digital cameras. She has also written articles about document design. She has recently published articles in Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Technical Communication, and Journal of Business and Technical Communication. She is coauthor of the forthcoming book Visual Composing. It provides research-driven advice for effectively integrating visual and verbal elements in professional documents. In 2008, she became editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

Representative Publications

Visual Composing. Under contract with Prentice Hall. (Second author, with Kathryn Riley) "Assertions of Expertise in Online Reviews." For Journal of Business and Technical Communication. (In review).
"The Ethos, Logos, and Pathos of Online Consumer Reviews." In preparation for Technical Communication Quarterly.
"Reviewers' Assertions of Expertise in Online Reviews." In review at Journal of Business and Technical Communication.
"Discourse Analysis of Workplace Instant Messages: Challenges and Promise." Forthcoming in Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. (First author, with Christopher Lam).
"Color: The Newest Tool for Technical Communicators-Redux." Forthcoming in Technical Communication.
"Comparing PowerPoint Experts' and University Students' Opinions about PowerPoint Presentations." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 38(2008):149-165.
"Audience Perceptions of Fonts in Projected PowerPoint Text Slides." Technical Communication 54(2007): 295-307.
"Perceptions of Clarity and Attractiveness in PowerPoint Graph Slides." Technical Communication 54(2007): 145-156.
"Compliments and Criticisms in Book Reviews about Business Communication." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 21 (2007): 188-215.

STEWART WHITTEMORE, Assistant Professor of Technical and Professional Communication, earned his PhD at Michigan State University. Before pursuing a career in higher education, he worked for 10 years in the Atlanta area as a technical writer and trainer. His current research interests include rhetorical theory, information management, and methodologies for studying workplace practices. Stewart’s publications include:

"Metadata and memory: Lessons from the canon of memoria for the design of content management systems." Technical Communication Quarterly, 17.1 (2008): 77-98.
“Designing user assistance for internet marketplace applications using server-side online help.” Technical Communication, 50.1 (2003): 17-23.

SUSAN YOUNGBLOOD, Assistant Professor of Technical and Professional Communication, received her PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University and her BA in Environmental Science from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Her background also includes graduate studies in anthropology. Her work as an environmental consultant and regulator helped inspire her research in risk communication. Currently, she is studying how Local Emergency Planning Committees communicate about risk with the public. She is also interested in the rhetoric of science, environmental rhetoric, and communication via the Web, particularly as each relates to risk communication.

With Mona Florea and Lillian Rafeldt, Susan has published "Using an Information Literacy Program to Prepare Nursing Students to Practice in a Virtual Workplace." Handbook of Research on Virtual Workplaces and the New Nature of Business Practices. Ed. Pavel Zemliansky and Kirk St. Amant. Information Science Reference, April 2008.

Retirements

Alexander Dunlop (May 2007) read more >>

Dr. Alexander Dunlop (May 2007), Associate Professor and Coordinator of World Literature, has been with the English Department since September 1972. His teaching and research interests include Early Modern literature, especially poetry, literary theory, and World Literature. While here at Auburn, he has seen many changes at the university and in the profession. “Everything is better,” he says, “I think the profession and attitudes toward interpreting literature are broader and more constructive than 35 years ago.” He has seen Auburn University become a broader, more diverse, and more sophisticated place. He believes the students are better, and he has positive feelings about the developments that have happened at the university and within the profession. Dr. Dunlop takes pleasure in preparing for his classes, and has always looked forward to reading and thinking about the material the night before class. This is exciting and fun for him because he likes interacting with the students.

Dr. Dunlop has truly enjoyed working with his colleagues and working toward and developing common goals. “This has been a great place to have a career,” he says, “I have no regrets and have enjoyed the 35 years.” When he retires this May, he will do everything he did before except teach.

Patrick Morrow (May 2007) read more >>

Dr. Patrick Morrow, Professor, has been a part of the English Department since September 1975. During his time here, he has seen the student body change. He says, “The students are a lot better and a lot sharper.” He has enjoyed seeing the students get better every year. Dr. Morrow has certainly enjoyed his career here at Auburn . “This is odd,” he says, “Considering I came from Los Angeles.” The Fulbright Scholar has written books and feels it is easier to write books rather than articles. His favorite book he has written is Katherine Mansfield's Fiction which was published by the Wisconsin Press. He learned much about Katherine Mansfield while in New Zealand and Australia.

This May Dr. Morrow will retire, and he plans on finishing a book, Literature (Mostly Fiction) and Anthropology, that he received incentive for after teaching this subject to students in a seminar. He will remain in the Auburn area with his wife, Joyce Rothschild.

Harry M. Solomon (May 2007) read more >>

Harry M. Solomon, Hollifield Professor of Literature, received his PhD from Duke University. He specializes in eighteenth-century British literature and philosophy and recent literary and cultural criticism. He has written biographies and critical studies of Sir Richard Blackmore, Alexander Pope, and Robert Dodsley.

He has served as elected chair of the Auburn University faculty and in 1989 was awarded the Auburn Faculty Achievement Award in the Humanities. He is currently working on a reinterpretation and vindication of British Enlightenment ideology. His publications include Sir Richard Blackmore. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1981; The Rape of the Text: Reading and Misreading Pope's "Essay on Man." Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1993; The Rise of Robert Dodsley: Creating the New Age of Print. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.

Stephen Gresham (May 2008) read more >>

Professor Stephen Gresham has taught at Auburn University since 1975. He has taught such literature courses as the World Literature surveys and Gothic Fiction, and writing courses ranging from technical writing and freshman composition to workshops in fiction and creative nonfiction. I had the privilege of being a student in several of Professor Gresham’s classes, two of them directed readings courses in which he fostered my intense love of writing. His teaching has had a positive impact not only on me, but on every student he has taught because he guides students through the struggles and joys of writing in a way that encourages them to discover things about their characters and, ultimately, themselves. In retirement, after more than 30 years of teaching, Professor Gresham looks forward to tapping into the extra time and energy he normally devotes to teaching. However, he writes, "I will miss the rare students it's been my privilege to encounter, those who desire to discover how things truly exist--they have enriched my life, and I will never forget them."

--Tawnysha Lynch Greene, Auburn BA 2007 and current MA student

Jim Hammersmith (May 2008) read more >>

I first met Jim Hammersmith when I was an undergraduate at Auburn in the early 1990s. I was a secondary education major then and was admittedly (ashamedly so) only in Professor Hammersmith’s Later Shakespeare class because it was a requirement for my major. However, a few weeks into the course, I realized I had lucked out. He was a great teacher. He made Shakespeare interesting and full of life; he kept us on our toes with his skull coffee mug, the stopwatch dangling around his neck, and his wry sense of humor. I enjoyed the class so much that I made sure I signed up for Early Shakespeare with Professor Hammersmith the very next semester. No other professor of Shakespeare would do for me. I was hooked, and at some point during that second semester, I realized I wanted to teach at the university level rather than in a high school. Now, nearly twenty years later, I am on the verge of doing just that. I will soon begin my own career as a university professor, and in some small way, I owe it to the realization I had in Jim Hammersmith’s rockin’ Shakespeare class. Although I am not an Early Modernist or even a scholar of Shakespeare (I am an early Americanist all the way!), I will always consider myself to be a student of Professor Hammersmith’s. Now, I also consider myself to be his friend.

--Cathy Rex will receive her PhD from Auburn in August 2008

Bert Hitchcock (May 2008) read more >>

When Professor Bert Hitchcock remembered a research interest of mine and sent me a call for papers he had received, I discovered that two professors in the Southeast had not only heard of the obscure antebellum humorist I was writing about, but would be joining me for a conference panel devoted entirely to the humorist. Professor Hitchcock was the first person I told about these connections, confident that he would understand my delight. His approach to teaching and mentoring is one of sharing, not just his considerable knowledge but also his enthusiasm for scholarship and collegial encouragement. He says, “One of the pleasures of teaching is helping students find research projects and then seeing those projects in print and cited by other scholars.” After he retires, he will continue his scholarly activities with commitments to several humanities programs around the state in the coming years. Professor Hitchcock says this contact with colleagues here and elsewhere is one of the pleasures of academic life. “Through programs and annual and biannual conferences, acquaintances are made, acquaintances which become friendships.” He adds, “It is enjoyable to keep up with those friends and their work through the years.” What else does he have planned for retirement? “More fishing,” he replies, smiling. “I am going to the woods more.”

--Pamela Horn, Auburn PhD candidate

Dennis Rygiel (May 2008) read more >>

Professor Dennis Rygiel will retire in May after teaching at Auburn University for 36 years. He received his PhD from Cornell University in Old and Middle English, and the first job he got after completing his degree was at Auburn. Professor Rygiel has had what he calls an “unusual career” teaching a variety of courses, including linguistics, stylistics, history of the English language, Old English, freshman composition, composition theory, rhetoric, and many different literature courses. In addition, he has had 23 years in administration: 12 as Associate Director of Freshman Composition (1978-90) and 11 as Department Head (1990-2001). His favorite courses have been stylistics, Survey of British Literature, and World Literature I. One significant aspect of Auburn that Professor Rygiel has enjoyed compared to other schools is how “much more engagement [there is] between faculty members and students at Auburn.” After retirement, he plans to catch up on some reading and study Italian and Italian art. I had Professor Rygiel for the undergraduate course British Literature I, and I learned an incredible amount about literature and writing, but also how to be an effective educator. I know he will be deeply missed by the Department.

Caroline Wilkinson, Auburn BA 2007 and current MA student

Dwight St. John (May 2008) read more >>

Professor Dwight St. John has taught at Auburn since 1977 and he says the students are still mostly the same. Sure, like the rest of the world, the trend in the student population tends to be more liberal than fundamental, and the physical contour of the campus has changed, but the overall atmosphere is the same. Thirty years in one place is a long time, but Professor St. John still loves university life because he makes a living reading books and talking about them, a passion among students and scholars of literature alike. He has been a unique presence in the Auburn English Department, most notably because of his interest in Asian literature and language studies. He has been a visiting teacher and scholar in China eight times, and at Auburn he teaches a World Literature in English class on Indian literatures. He says that there are “a lot of bright people in developing countries…[and] they have a lot to offer us.” In his classes and in recounting his personal experiences, Professor St. John has definitely introduced his Auburn students to the treasures that abound in Asian countries and in their literature. He has given me and a multitude of other students, at Auburn and abroad, a unique knowledge about being a scholar of English Literature and about being a member of a community of people who love books, one that stretches the world over. Professor St. John, you will be missed!

--Victoria Hollis, Auburn BA 2006 and current MA student

Joyce Rothschild, May 2009

Joyce M. Rothschild specialized in the teaching of technical writing and technical and professional editing, and has done work on a theoretical study of the role of editors in corporate America. She has given numerous workshops on professional editing, as well as presentations at national and regional conferences. Dr. Rothschild served as Coordinator of Technical and Professional Communications as well.

Margaret Kouidis, May 2009

Virginia M. Kouidis received her PhD from the University of Iowa. Her general area of study is American literature, specifically American modernism and twentieth-century poetry and poetics. The author of Mina Loy: American Modernist Poet, she has also published articles on women writers in the Emersonian tradition and on the contest to define an American poeticsw among leading male modernist poets. She served as co-editor of the Southern Humanities Review, as editor of The English Channel, and as Assistant Department Head.

Awards and Distinctions

Paula R. Backscheider, Professor of English and Philpott-Stevens Eminent Scholar, was co-winner of the Modern Language Association's thirty-seventh annual James Russell Lowell Prize for her book Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding book--a literary or linguistic study, a critical edition of an important work, or a critical biography--written by a member of the association. The committee's citation for Backscheider's book reads:

"In a pioneering archival and interpretive contribution to literary history, Paula Backscheider recovers a lost world of writing by eighteenth-century women. She situates forty poets and their genres--occasional poems, pastorals, fables, public poems, religious narratives, devout soliloquies, friendship poems--within the important contemporary contexts of modes of literary circulation, the varying shapes of poetic careers, and the status of poetry not only as a lyric form but also as a medium of news, entertainment, and correspondence. Urging us to defamiliarize, rehistoricize, and reenvision the canons that have excised these works, Backscheider shows us how to read and value a counteruniverse of poetic achievement."
Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre is an expansion of Professor Backscheider's essay on eighteenth-century women poets in The Cambridge History of English Literature. Professor Backscheider is currently working on another book about salon fairytales and their influence on the early novel and how fairy tales converge with the eighteenth-century feminist view of the good life. She is also working on an anthology of poems by Restoration and eighteenth-century women to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press and co-edited by Catherine Ingrassia of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Bert Hitchcock, Hargis Professor of American Literature, received the 2006 Humanities Award for his outstanding dedication and contribution to the humanities from the Alabama Humanities Foundation.
The award honors Professor Hitchcock for helping to shape the legacy of American and Southern literature through his contributions as an author, teacher, and scholar. He is the author of Richard Malcolm Johnston in Twayne's United States Authors Series, and his contributions on American writers appear in numerous reference books, including the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Reference Guide to American Literature, and Contemporary Fiction Writers of the South. Professor Hitchcock's deep commitment to bringing the humanities to the people of Alabama is evidenced by his longtime service to many humanities organizations in Alabama such as: The Alabama State Council on the Arts, Alabama Historical Association, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Alabama Center for Literary Arts, The Alabama Writer's Forum, and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association, a regional organization of which he will be president next year. Professor Hitchcock teaches humanities classes at Auburn University, specializing in nineteenth-century literature. He holds degrees from Auburn, the University of Oregon, and Duke University.

Faculty and Students Honored at Department Awards Ceremony

The English Department held its annual Awards Ceremony at the Alumni Center. Undergraduate students were recognized for excellence in the classroom, graduate students for their achievements as scholars and teachers, and instructors for excellence in teaching Awards to students totaled $36,200.

See a list of award winners and honorees

Robert Hughes Mount, Jr., Poetry Prize
Tawnysha Greene

Robert Hughes Mount, Jr., Poetry Prize Honorable Mention
Taylor LeGette - 1st Honorable Mention
Suzanne Samples - 2nd Honorable Mention

Todd Kauppinin Award
Matthew Nelson

English Essay Award
Adam Pittman

James A. Kirkley Award
Micah Brake

Mary Matherly Durant Award
Abby Hogelin

Mortar Board's Mildred Enloe Yates Award
Natalie Crowe

Ruth and Carolyn Faulk Scholarship in English
Allison Brown

Jean Wickstrom Liles Endowment for Scholarship in English
Ali Greene

Senior Award
Lauren Wiygul

Undergraduate Scholarships
Annie Gilbertson
Alyssa Smith

Undergraduate Awards
Katherine Brown
Amy Gordon
Amy Larue
Aaron Thomas

Graduate Student Awards

Betty Travis Naugle Fellowship in Technical Communication
Angela Fletcher

Donald H. Cunningham Technical Communication Scholarship
Emily Maffett

Florence Parker Hargis Fellowships
Mark Henderson
Eunice Mathews-Bradshaw

Department of English MA Fellowship
Tamara Lancaster

Department of English MTPC Fellowship
Kelly Sherrill

Mildred Enloe Yates Award
Nodya C. Boyko

Best Paper - Master's-level
Carey Pilgrim
"Simulacra, Gift, Representation, Self: The Importance of Twain's "The £1,000,000 Bank Note""

Best Paper - PhD-level
Gavin Spence
"Polyphonic Discourse in Tom Stoppard's 'The Coast of Utopia.'"

Dissertation Fellowship
Amy Qualls
Mary Ann Rygiel
Eva Shoop

Teaching Awards

GTA Teaching Award - Master's-level
Lacy Marschalk

GTA Teaching Award - PhD-level
Eva Shoop

Instructor Teaching Awards
Phillip Beard
Emma Bolden
Jim Elston

The following slide show features a few of the awardees and the faculty coordinators of the awards.

Department Readings, Lectures, Presentations

September 11, 2008, Professor Christine Perkell, Associate Professor of Classics at Emory Univeristy, gave the 2008-2009 World Literature lecture. She spoke on "Why Vergil Still Matters in the Twenty-first Century."

Alumni News

Diane Boyd (PhD 2002), Furman University, has had a collection of essays, Everyday Revolutions: Eighteenth-Century Women Transforming the Public and Private (co-editor Marta Kvande), accepted by the University of Delaware Press; Shea Stuart (PhD 2006) has an essay in the collection.

Mary Jane Curry reports that her essay “‘Not a day went by without a solitary walk': Elizabeth's Pastoral World” has been reprinted in Harold Bloom's volume on Pride and Prejudice, from Chelsea House Publishers.

Professor Curry is a 1994 graduate and was Don Wehrs' first doctoral student. From 1994-2000 she was on the English faculty of AUM, where she earned tenure before moving to Georgia. In 2003 she formed a company conducting intercultural and education consulting. Since moving to Birmingham in August 2005, she has been doing much grant writing as intercultural consulting and enjoys it immensely. One of her new clients is Constructores para Cristo (CPC), a nondenominational mission in Mexico with free medical and vet clinics, a preschool, and summer home-building program somewhat like Habitat for Humanity. For CPC she does grant writing and other fundraising as well as intercultural coaching. Her biggest client is the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, for which she does lots of grant writing; in the process, she learns more about all kinds of artists from Joan to the Beaux Arts Trio. Lately she has joined the Japan-America Society of Alabama and is about to join the Alabama-India Partnership and Alabama-Germany Partnership. She finds interacting with people from other cultures endlessly fascinating. She thanks Don for helping to open up some opportunities for work that she enjoys.

Patsy Fowler (PhD 2002) received tenure at Gonzaga University.

Amy Muse (PhD 1999) of the University of St. Thomas will be giving a paper in Bristol in July at the combined BARS/ NASSR Conference and has received an NEH Summer Stipend. She was also granted tenure this year.

PhD candidate Amy Qualls, along with her husband Rodney Sutterfield and son Christopher, would like to announce the birth of Sophie Caitlin Sutterfield-Qualls, born on September 27, 2006. Amy and baby are healthy and happy. Amy has also accepted a faculty position at the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville and is completing her dissertation on illegitimate motherhood in eighteenth-century America, directed by Dr. Hilary Wyss.

Jessica Lyn Van Slooten (PhD 2003) has accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, where she'll teach American literature and composition courses.

Department highlights

Courses Offered

If you haven't looked at our course offerings lately, you might want to look at the undergraduate and graduate course descriptions.

Department Awards

In 2006-2007 the English Department awarded $36,200 to undergraduate and graduate students. Click here to see a list of this year’s recipients. Click here to contribute to the newly established English Department Alumni Scholarship Fund.

English Center

The English Center offers an electronic consultant (interactive online chat) along with onsite tutoring for undergraduate students taking Freshman Composition and World Literature.

Faculty

If you want to learn more about what our faculty are doing, read their bios linked off the Department Directory.

Newsworthy

During the semester, we report on the activities of faculty and students in the English Department in our weekly newsletter, The English Channel. Each week we highlight student and faculty accomplishments. Please view the current English Channel.

Questions about this page

Last updated August 20, 2009