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September 9		English Department Picnic, Chewacla State Park, 3:00 p.m. until dusk
October 12		Mid-Semester
November 22-24		Thanksgiving Holiday
December 7		Classes End
December 8		Dead Day
December 9, 11-14		Final Exams for Semester
December 16		Graduation

Faculty Development Seminar Concludes

Before fall semester, the Great Books Program held its annual faculty development seminar. This year, instead of focusing exclusively on providing new faculty with background information, we emphasized a range of pedagogical issues, including text selection, syllabus construction, including non-Western texts in Great Books courses, paper assignment design, use of computers, and grading.
Thanks are due to George Crandell, who organized the seminar, and to the following members of the Great Books faculty who came and shared their expertise with the seminar participants: Craig Bertolet, Lou Caton, Tristanne Connolly, Jeremy Downes, Tim Dykstal, Delia Fisher, Jacqueline Foertsch, James Goldstein, Wylene Rholetter, Angel Rodgers-Webb, Betsy Smith, Dwight St. John, and Hilary Wyss.
Thanks also to Frank Walters and Kathy McClelland for orienting both new faculty and graduate students to the composition program.

Annual Picnic at Chewacla State Park

Everyone should make plans now to attend the annual English Department picnic on Saturday, September 9th from 3:00 p.m. until dusk at the Upper Picnic Area in Chewacla State Park. (See map)
Friends of the English Department have reserved the pavilion and will provide a meat dish, beverages, ice, and paper & plastic goods. Guests are asked to bring a salad, a vegetable, or a dessert to share.
Arrive at any time, but plan to eat around 5:00 p.m. Picnic tables are available under the pavilion and scattered throughout the park.
There is a $1 entrance fee for adults, fifty cents for children ages 6-11. Kids under six years of age are admitted free.
In case of fire, we'll roast marshmallows; in case of rain, we'll huddle under the pavalion. Whatever happens, please plan to come.

Summer Arrivals

Welcome New Faculty Members

	Corrie Claiborne: I am originally from Columbia, S.C., but I have also lived in many places along the east coast. I have a B.A. from Syracuse University, an M.A. from the University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. My dissertation focused on black intellectual women, specifically bell hooks and Patricia Williams. My primary research interests are "race writing" and popular culture.
	Kelly Gerald: A native Mississippian, my Bachelor's degree in English and Master's degree in Philosophy and Religion are from the University of Southern Mississippi. I earned a second Master's degree in English from the University of South Alabama. At present, I'm completing my Ph.D. in English at Auburn under the direction of Bert Hitchcock. My dissertation is a study in visual hermeneutics which addresses Flannery O'Connor's work in the visual arts and the work of other artists inspired by O'Connor's fiction. Research over the past two years has been mainly invested in the completion of a comprehensive archive catalogue of Flannery O'Connor's marginal drawings, sketches, cartoons, paintings, and other artworks contained in the Flannery O'Connor Collection of Georgia College and State University in Milledegeville, Georgia.
	Penny Ingram: Penny joins us from Australia, where she completed her Ph.D. She has spent several years in the United States, completing her bachelor's degree at Smith College and her Master's at Yale University. Her fields of specialization include feminist theory and postcolonial studies. She is the author of several articles.
	Wiebke Kuhn: I recently received my Ph.D. from Auburn University. I am interested in medieval hagiography, with an emphasis on motherhood. I also experiment in the computer classroom both with composition and literature classes in order to discover how composition is changed by web publishing and what we need to consider when we teach with the web.
	Joy Leighton: Joy received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is from St. Paul, Minnesota. Joy specializes in nineteenth-century American literature, ethnic minority literature, Asian-American literature and history, and ethics. Her dissertation examines forms of exile in three American writers: Herman Melville, Pauline Hopkins, and Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far.
	Kay Marsh: I received my Ph.D. from Texas Tech University, and my areas of special interest include Old and Middle English literature, Renaissance literature, folklore, and gender studies. My dissertation is a critical study of rhetorical style, animal imagery, and gender in the Middle English Ancrene Riwle. Before I came to academe, I worked in the fields of public health, journalism, and public relations. I also worked two years as director/instructor of an intensive ESL program at a very small college in Texas (it took me awhile to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up). I am originally from Tyler, Texas, but have also lived in Germany (as a military dependent) and in England (as an exchange student). I am currently revising articles on Elene and on the Ancrene Riwle.
	Caroline Miles: I received my B.A. degree in English and American Studies from the University of Swansea, Wales. I am currently in the Ph.D. program at the University of Southern Mississippi, the institution from which I obtained my M.A. degree. I am writing my dissertation on constructions of Southern manhood in nineteenth-century American literature and am in the process of revising articles on Harriet Beecher Stowe and John W. De Forest. So far, I have published on Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. In addition to nineteenth-century American literature and Southern literature, I am also especially interested in African-American literature and gender studies. I am originally from Kent, England, and have resided as a resident alien (as immigration so nicely puts it!) in the United States for the last six years.
	Mary Ann Buddenberg Miller: I just finished my Ph.D. in May 2000 at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where I have been teaching composition, genre, and British survey courses for the past several years. My dissertation linked Robert Browning to Victorian "New" Philology and, more specifically, to the question of the origin and growth of language. I am looking forward to teaching Great Books I because I will have the opportunity to draw from my M.A. studies at the University of Dallas which were focused more on classical, medieval, and Renaissance works. I am originally from Little Rock, Arkansas.
	Harry Newburn: I am originally from Terre Haute, Indiana, where I received a B.S. in Marketing (1993) and an M.A. in English (1995) from Indiana State University. For the last five years I have worked toward my doctoral degree in 20th-century American literature at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. And I am happy to say that I just received my Ph.D. this August. In addition to my primary area of interest, my secondary interests include the poetry of the major Romantics and the British/Irish literature of the Modern period. My dissertation examines the form of the short story sequence and how this form relates to the thematic tension between individual and communal identity found in some major works of the genre. In the upcoming year, I plan to revise a few sections of my dissertation for article publication, and I will also devote time to developing two or three ideas for courses in 20th-century American literature that I may hopefully implement later in my teaching career.
	Marvyn Petrucci: Marvyn is a poet who earned his Ph.D. at the Center for Writers, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, where he studied with Angela Ball and David Berry. Originally from Boston's north shore, he has gone to school in England, lived in Ireland, and traveled in Europe and North Africa. He is a specialist in 20th-Century American, English, and Commonwealth poetry. His article on the relationship between Robert Frost and Amy Lowell is forthcoming in The Robert Frost Review. His other interests include James Joyce and early 20th-Century Irish prose, the advent of English modernism, the American crimino-centric novel.
	Jim Ryan: Jim Ryan grew up among the mountains and coal fields of Western Pennsylvania, before attending the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English, History, and urban life. Since then he has worked and lived his American Studies research in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, New Hampshire, Woods Hole, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. More recently, he completed a Ph.D. in American Literature/American Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Currently, he is at work on a book-length project concerning the rhetoric of Catholicism in 19th-century America, while pondering new directions in Melville studies, the architecture of transcendentalism, disability studies, and the literary history of the automobile. In Spring 2001, he will teach the graduate survey in early American literature.
	Michelle Sidler: Michelle Sidler obtained her Ph.D. in English, with a specialization in Rhetoric and Composition, from Purdue University in 1998. Her interests include composition, rhetorical theory, cultural studies, and computer mediated communication. She is currently working on several articles about the impact of web technology on composition pedagogy, including a forthcoming work in Computers and Composition. At Auburn, Michelle will teach courses in computers and writing as well as composition. She is also looking forward to warmer weather and great Southern cuisine!
	Jim Smith: Born and raised in New Orleans, I received my Ph.D. from the University of Southwestern Louisiana after completing my dissertation on Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. Since completing my work at USL, I have taught at Arkansas State University and Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. I have published pieces on John Milton, Henry Fielding, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, and Henry James. Primarily my interests currently involve the close rhetorical analysis of narrative texts and theories of the comic.
	Kathryn Smith: I received by B.A. and my M.A. from Louisiana State University. My Ph.D. with a specialty in Victorian literature is from the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Before coming to Auburn, I taught at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Proofs for my contributions to an encyclopedia devoted to Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle should be arriving by the end of this year.
	Isabella Wai: Isabella Wai, who holds an M.A. in English (Texas Woman's) and an M.F.A. in creative writing (Wichita State), earned her Ph.D. in twentieth-century American literature at McMaster University in Ontario. Her work has appeared in Heavenly Bread (Hong Kong), Daedalian Quarterly (Texas), Brushfire (Nevada), Cumberlands (Kentucky), Wind Literary Journal (Kentucky), Origins (Ontario), Asiaweek (Hong Kong), World Press Review (New York), New Directions: An International Anthology of Poetry and Prose (New York), and The Explicator (Washington, DC). She has taught short fiction writing at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John) and Contemporary East Asian Literature in English at York University (Toronto).

Congratulations to Spring and Summer Quarter Graduates

Spring Quarter

Beverly Findley Gibson earned her Ph.D.
Liza Bhuyan, Nancy Craig Reaves, Sharyn Noelani Pulling, Kimberly Dawn Snyder, and Jennifer Anne Welch completed M.A. degrees.
Graduates with a B.A. degree included the following students: Mary Ellen Bishop, Kristen Rae Branscum, Cary Lloyd Brewton, Lori Anne Castro, Meredith Leigh Coolidge, Amy Suzanne Dalton, (summa cum laude), Patricia Marie Darrah, Dare Patton Evans, Stephen Noble Fitts, III, (cum laude), Laurie Elaine Gibbs, Hugh Catron Gracey, III, Sarah Ellen Hoeb, J. Brandon Kinnett, Anthony Wayne McDaniel, Jeffrey Randolph Murray, Jr., (cum laude), Elizabeth Ingram Peterson, Katharyn Michelle Privett, (magna cum laude), Amanda Paige Rickman, Stephen Dennis Rygiel, Christian Michael Schambach, (cum laude, University Honors Scholar), Jody Lynn Schnurrenberger, (summa cum laude), Ashley Elizabeth Seuell, (summa cum laude), Mike Holland Shanlever, Stacy Slone, (cum laude), Glen Edwards Smith, Phillip Allen Spencer, Cheryl L. Van Mater, (summa cum laude), Jill Renee Weeks, Thomas Allen Wheat, IV, (summa cum laude), John Shane Yancey

Summer Quarter

Wiebke Kuhn earned the Ph.D. degree.
The following students earned the M.A. degree: Karen Dawn Culver, Jason Russell Nix, and Lashea Simmons Stuart.
These students earned B.A. degrees: Kara Elise Bagwell (cum laude), Jill M. Casavant, Kelley L. Franklin (summa cum laude), Katherine Anne Galloway, Raney Michelle Goss, Abby J. Hartman (summa cum laude), Daniel Grey Hedden (summa cum laude), Jennifer Ann Johns, Charles Wilson McDonald, Neill Sharp Myers, Kellie Alicia Pierce, Catherine Elise Shulz, Rachel Dorough Watts, and Shannon Whitlock.

Directory Assistance

Medieval Latin Reading Group Resumes Meetings

Speakers Needed for English Hour Programs

If you would like to include an item in the "Professional Notes" section of The English Channel, please submit your note to George Crandell.

If you would like to include an item in the "Personal Notes" section of The English Channel, please submit your note to George Crandell.