NEWS FROM THE 1999-2000 SPRING HONORS LUNCHEON

WELCOME to the 1999-2000 Spring Honors Luncheon of the AUM Department of English and Philosophy. This event is the latest in a long tradition of festive get-togethers in which we celebrate our departmental graduates, prize-winners, and other students of distinction. This year, in particular, we have many such students to honor, and we also have many departmental achievements in which to take pride.

Before mentioning those students and achievements, however, please allow us to ask you to join us in honoring the memory of Judy Sims, a wonderful student who graduated from our department a number of years ago and who was honored many times at these luncheons. Judy passed away last fall, and she is enormously missed by all who remember her vibrant laugh, her splendid curiosity, and her sheer love of learning and writing. This university meant so much to Judy (who was a “returning” student) that when she died her family asked her friends, instead of buying flowers, to remember her with contributions to AUM. An inscribed brick in her honor has been donated by the English Club.

Please also join us in paying sincere and hearty tribute to the adjunct faculty who are so crucial to the success of our department. Their dedication to their students and subjects is both remarkable and inspiring, and we are very lucky to have them as members of our community. Adjunct faculty for 1999-2000 included Martha Abernathy, Susan Barganier, Bart Barton, Cliff Browning, James H. Conely, Janice Conerly, Debbie Cotton, Jacques Grant, Jonathan Griffin, Tammy Hearn, James Henderson, Lorna Ivey, Gail Klucking, Dianne McWilliams, Marion Michael, Dana Nichols, Karren Pell, Karen Pirnie, Terri Richburg, Jennifer Salter, Melissa Simms, Daphne Simpkins, Claire Skowronski, Sylvia Whitley, and Sonya Womack. Thanks very much to all of you for everything you do!


Claire Skowronski, an advanced student in the MLA Program, a former tutor at the Learning Center, and an adjunct instructor in English, has recently added still another role to her ever-growing list of responsibilities: Editor-in-Chief of a new international magazine, Cancer & Me, which has experienced phenomenal success after only three issues.

Last year we honored Karen Fuchs and Tammy Hearn for contributing essays to a forthcoming book on the poetry on Denise Levertov. Since this volume, edited is due to appear any day now, we’d like to extend congrats once again to Karen and Tammy.

We are delighted to provide an update about Joe Csicsila, a former student in the MLA program at AUM and a former adjunct instructor in English. From our program Joe went on to complete a Ph.D. in English atthe University of Nevada, Las Vegas, finishing it in record time. (He expanded his MLA thesis into a doctoral dissertation that was honored as the Outstanding Dissertation of the year at UNLV.) Joe recently notified us that he has accepted a tenure track assistant professorship at Eastern Michigan University. He wants to thank everyone for the excellentinstruction he received at AUM. He is truly one of our major success stories. Meanwhile, Jonathan Wright, another graduate of the MLA Program and winner of the prestigious Hudson Strode Fellowship at the University of Alabama, is ready to begin work on his own dissertation at UA. Jon will also be teaching as an adjunct faculty member here at AUM beginning next quarter. Welcome home, Jon! Jon thus joins Karen Pirnie as an alum of both the MLA Program and the UA Strode Program, and as a valuable addition to the adjunct faculty at AUM.

Two years ago a group of AUM students and faculty presented papers on Flannery O’Connor and Gothic Literature at the Third International Symposium on Language, Literature, and Culture in Gadsden, AL. We’re pleased to report that these papers have now been published as part of the conference proceedings, entitled Southern Gothic: Distortions of Reality. Permission has also been given to post these essays on the Internet so that they will be even more widely accessible. Student essayists whose work is included in the new publication are Bebe Barefoot, Curtis Bowden, Nataliya Bowden, Paul Duke, Jonathan Wright, and Carolyn Young.