A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea
Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea presented “Moby-Dick as Summa Americana” at the 12th International Melville Society Conference, held in New York City on June 17-20, 2019.
Professor of English Warren Rochelle
Professor of English Warren Rochelle was interviewed by Meaww.com for an article titled “Book adaptations are taking over the small screen, including ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, ‘His Dark Materials’, ‘Good Omens’ and more.” Rochelle delved into the differences between the movie and television series “His Dark Materials,” which will be released by BBC and HBO later this year. “That there is a series being released, and not another movie, is a good start for learning from the mistakes in the 2007 film,” Rochelle said. “Pullman’s world is complex and layered and dense and a series allows for this to be really explored.”
Professor of English Warren Rochelle
Professor of English Warren Rochelle was interviewed on Andrew Q. Gordon’s “The Land of Make Believe,” a blog that focuses on fantasy literature featuring LGBTQ+ characters. Rochelle discussed his writing process, building worlds that intersect the magical and mundane, fantasy writers who inspire him, how real-world places in Virginia and North Carolina are featured in his work and more. Read more.
Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon
Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon presented a paper, “A Survey of Reduplication Types in Blin” at the 2019 Georgetown University Round Table in Washington, DC, on March 31, 2019. This paper examined the various types of word formation involving the copying of all or part of a word root in both nouns and verbs in the Blin language of Eritrea.
Associate Professor of English, Linguistics, and Communications Zach Whalen
Zach Whalen, Associate Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communications, recently had his article “Teaching with Objects: Individuating Media Archaeology in Digital Studies” published in The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy: https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/teaching-with-objects-individuating-media-archaeology-in-digital-studies/.
Abstract: “Media archaeology presents a framework for understanding the foundations of digital culture in the social histories of technological media. This essay argues that a pedagogy focused on individual, physical artifacts of technological media involves students in constructing a constellation of insights around technology’s mineral, global, and human history as well as its ecological future. By describing and reflecting on a series of assignments and exercises developed for my “Introduction to Digital Studies” class, I show how the intimacy of specific devices can connect to the exigencies of technological media through the lens of media archaeology. The core of this experience is a group project where students take apart an artifact like an old smartphone or game console, attempt to locate the origins of each component in that artifact, and present those origins in a map and timeline. The risks and rewards of this assignment sequence actively engage students in designing their own learning and encourage them to think critically and ethically about the media they consume, the devices that provide the foundation for that consumption, and the global economy of human labor that makes it all possible. In a step-by-step consideration, I consider how the practical and logistical challenges of this assignment sequence support the learning goals I identify as crucial to Digital Studies.”
Professor of English Antonio Barrenechea
Antonio Barrenechea, Professor of English, took his students on a trip to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia. The excursion was funded by a competitive UMW grant, and was part of the spring 2019 course, “The Groovy Gothic.” The course explores the intersection of sensational 19th century gothic fiction (Shelley, Stoker, and Poe) and the shock aesthetics of the 1960s counterculture (cinema, music, fashion, painting, and drug culture).
Ben LaBreche, Associate Professor of English
Ben LaBreche, Associate Professor of English, along with Ryan Netzley of Southern Illinois University, recently coedited a special issue of Marvell Studies, which publishes the leading edge of research on Andrew Marvell, his texts and readers, words and worlds. This most recent issue is on theoretical approaches to Marvell’s poetry and contains essays by John Garrison (on object-oriented erotics in Marvell’s verse), Jason Kerr (on vulnerability as an ontological feature of humans), and Brendan Prawdzik (on the limits of eco-criticism for Marvell studies and the concept of ‘greenwashing’). In addition, this issue contains reviews of Brendan Prawdzik’s Theatrical Milton: Politics and Poetics of the Staged Body and Alex Garganigo’s Samson’s Cords: Imposing Oaths in Milton, Marvell, and Butler.
Gary Richards, Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication
Gary Richards, Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication, recently facilitated the discussion of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces at the Books and Beignets program of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival held March 27-31 in New Orleans, LA. This program has become a tradition at the festival, and Richards has been leading it now for over a decade, since 2007.
Associate Professor of Liguistics Paul D. Fallon
Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul Fallon was mentioned in The Free Lance-Star in an article about the regional spelling bee. To view the article, visit “‘Meritocracy’ for the win: Fauquier’s Evan Hunter is champ of Fredericksburg Regional Spelling Bee.”
Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Laura Bylenok
Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Laura Bylenok will be featured in an upcoming segment of With Good Reason on public radio stations across the country. An award-winning poet who stitches together her love of science with her passion for the written word, Bylenok will read from her recent collection on WGR’s Poetry That Heals, airing March 16 to 22.
“In college, [Bylenok] was fascinated with genetic engineering. Now, she manipulates language, not DNA,” says the show’s description. “Her recent book turns familiar forms into poetic laboratory experiments.”
Sharing selections from her book Warp, winner of the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize, Bylenok describes her fascination with molecular biology and genetics, explaining her use of the words and concepts they conjure to put the human condition into prose. An inspiration for her poem Genome, she tells WGR host Sarah McConnell, before reading the piece on air, is a haunting image left by a past professor, an endocrinologist who sewed together pairs of living rats.
With Good Reason airs Sundays at 2 p.m. in Fredericksburg on Radio IQ 88.3 Digital. A complete list of broadcast times and audio files of the full programs (posted the week of the show) can be found online at www.withgoodreasonradio.org. Produced by Virginia Humanities for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium, With Good Reason airs on 100 stations in 33 states. Read more.