November 23, 2024

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Blevins Publishes Article on Augmented Reality

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Brenta Blevins, Assistant Professor of English, has had her article “Teaching Digital Literacy Composing Concepts: Focusing on the Layers of Augmented Reality in an Era of Changing Technology” published in the December 2018 Computers and Composition journal. In an issue focusing on wearable technologies, ubiquitous computing, and immersive experiences, Blevins’s article addresses the challenges that instructors face in teaching composing using current digital tools, while also supporting students’ future digital literacy acquisition in technologies that do not yet exist.

To address these pedagogical concerns, Blevins’s article explores educational composing in Augmented Reality (AR), a medium in which a digital “layer” is combined with the user’s surroundings. She elaborates the benefits and challenges of a scaffolded, analysis-oriented pedagogy focused on the layer for preparing students to compose in AR for classwork and other purposes. Blevins contends that the concept of the layer extends beyond the visual layers of AR to a composing strategy applicable across media. This approach thus supports composers developing critical media awareness and adaptability for multiple media in current and future contexts. Given our rapidly changing software and hardware technologies, teaching theoretical composing concepts, such as the “layer,” prepares students to become communicators capable of composing in multiple media, those present and those yet to emerge.

Mathur Presents at Shakespeare Association of America Conference

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Maya Mathur, Associate Professor of English, presented the paper “‘And woe is me that any man should want’: Playing the Good Host(ess) in Arden of Faversham“on April 10 at the annual conference of the Shakespeare Association of America in St. Louis, Mo. She also attended the conference “Shakespeare and the Problem of Biography” at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. April 3-5.

Whalen Appointed to MLA Information Technology Committee

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Zach Whalen

Zach Whalen

Zach Whalen, Assistant Professor of English, has been appointed to a three-year term on the Modern Language Association’s Information Technology Committee charged with advising on various technological initiatives and projects within the MLA. The Modern Language Association is the preeminent professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature and includes some 30,000 members.

Dasgupta Presents at Asian Studies, Literary Conferences

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Shumona Dasgupta, Assistant Professor of English, presented “Staging Resistance in ‘Crisis Fiction’: Women Writing the Indian Partition” on March 29, 2014, at the Association of Asian Studies annual conference in Philadelphia, Pa. She also presented “Violence and the Everyday: Reading the Representational Ethics of Gendered Violence in Partition Texts” on April 5, 2014, at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NEMLA) annual convention in Harrisburg, Pa.

Pineda Inks Contract on Third Poetry Collection

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Jon Pineda, Assistant Professor of English, has placed his third poetry collection, Little Anodynes, for publication. Nikky Finney, winner of the National Book Award, selected the collection for the Palmetto Poetry Series, and the book will be published in March of 2015 by the University of South Carolina Press.

This March Pineda was a featured panelist at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Seattle, Wash., and a featured reader at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville. In May, he will be a panelist and guest novelist at the South Carolina Book Festival in Columbia, S.C., and at the end of the month, he will join the creative writing faculty for the 2014 Tinker Mountain Writers’ Workshop at Hollins University.

Rafferty Publishes Essay, Moderates Panel

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Colin Rafferty, Assistant Professor of English, recently published an essay “This Day in History,” which appears in the newest issue of the literary journal Sou’wester.

He also moderated the panel “Organizing the Truth: Building the Nonfiction Canon” on Friday, February 28, 2014, at the annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in Seattle, Washington. The largest literary conference in North America, AWP celebrates the authors, teachers, students, writing programs, literary centers, and publishers of that region and saw more than 13,000 writers and readers in attendance this year.

Barrenechea Contributes to Decennial “State of the Discipline” Report

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Antonio Barrenechea

Antonio Barrenechea

Antonio Barrenechea, Associate Professor of English, recently published a peer-reviewed entry that forms part of the decennial “state of the discipline” report of the Comparative American Literature Association. His contribution on “American Literature” as a hemispheric (rather than nation-centered) object of study is part of the online section on the “Ideas of the Decade”: http://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/american-literature.

Richards Presents at Southern Literary Festival, Conference

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Gary Richards, Associate Professor of English, was the scholar facilitator of the Breakfast Book Club’s discussion of The Glass Menagerie at the 28th Annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival held in New Orleans March 19-23. He also presented the paper “It’s Gonna Cost You More than Supper: Mapping Gay Desire in Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carre” at “Other Souths: Approaches, Allainces, Antagonisms,” the Society for the Study of Southern Literature biennial conference held in Arlington March 27-29.

Barrenechea Selected for Jessie Ball duPont Summer Seminar

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Antonio Barrenechea, Associate Professor of English, has been selected to participate in one of the two 2014 Jessie Ball duPont Summer Seminars sponsored by the National Humanities Center. That seminar, “Globalization and the Varieties of Modern Capitalism,” will meet June 1 to 20 in Research Triangle Park, N.C. His application was approved in conjunction with a new project on the poetics and politics of excess in the cinema of the Americas.