Faculty Notes for March 2022

CHRIS ANSON

In February, Chris Anson gave a campus-wide address at Rochester Institute of Technology on “How Threshold Concepts for Writing Across the Curriculum Can Transform Teaching.”

At the CCCC convention in March, Anson and Nancy Sommers ran a virtual workshop on the creation of tiny teaching stories.

BELLE BOGGS

Belle Boggs, Jill McCorkle, and Robin Davidson published “A Call to Southern Writers: Register People to Vote at Literary Events” in Literary Hub. 

Boggs also published a new essay, “Unreliable Narrators,” in the spring issue of Ecotone Magazine.

Helen Burgess spent the fall working with members of the NCSU Libraries Open Knowledge Center to produce a web-based version of her 2014 book with Jeanne Hamming, Highways of the Mind. This work was ported from Apple iBooks and redeveloped as a test case for future NCSU Libraries publications under the UNC Press imprint. The book is viewable here, under the rename Futurama, Autogeddon.

HELEN BURGESS & MAGGIE SIMON

Intimate Fields, an installation by Helen Burgess and Maggie Simon, is currently on display as part of the Folger “Out of the Archives” seminar and exhibit at NC State, housed in the Innovation Studio (second floor) of D.H. Hill Library.

DERWIN CAMPBELL

On March 11, Derwin Campbell successfully defended his dissertation — “Down Low, Dirty Shame: Sexual Identity, Passing and the Christian Master Narrative in Selected Novels of James Baldwin and E. Lynn Harris” — at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

DAUN DAEMON

Daun Daemon’s poem “By Flowers” was published in the Spring issue of Willawaw Journal.

Black Poppy Review published Daemon’s poems “Reiki” and “After I Slept in Mama and Daddy’s Bed” on March 20.

PAUL FYFE

Paul Fyfe published “How to Cheat on Your Final Paper: Assigning AI for Student Writing” in AI & Society. The article reports on experiments with HON 202 students to write papers with GPT-2. Special thanks to Zach Beare, Chris Anson, David Rieder, Helen Burgess, and Carolyn Miller for research assistance as well as to NC State University Libraries for technical support.

CHRISTA GALA

The Study Abroad program approved Christa Gala’s class “The Struggle of the Free Press: Fake News and Conspiracy Theories” to take place in Summer 2023 in Prague. Gala will visit this summer to plan the class.

MAYA KAPOOR

Harper’s Magazine published Maya Kapoor’s article “The Hothouse: Tracking the Past and Future Spread of Ragweed Allergies” in the April issue. 

JASON MILLER

Jason Miller will serve as a Fellow at the National Humanities Center next year (2022–23) continuing research and writing on the connection between NC singer Nina Simone and poet Langston Hughes.

He gave two poetry readings this month. One was at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC, to promote the book Devotion, and the other was in Kearney, NE, to preempt the fall release of the Don Welch Digital Archive.

MARIA ROUPHAIL

Maria Rouphail was awarded first place in the NCPS Poet Laureate competition for her poem “Two Variations on a Theme of a Tenement” and second place in the NCPS McDill open form competition for her poem “Abuela.”

Rouphail’s poem “What a Friend Said” appears in the Spring issue of Willawaw Poetry Journal.

TIM STINSON

Tim Stinson was part of a contingent from NC State and other universities that represented North Carolina for National Humanities Advocacy Day, an annual event aimed at making a persuasive case for federal funding for the humanities.