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Washington  State  University  English  Department  Newsletter  

Volume  1,  Number  1,    Fall  2008  

Welcome Dear Alumni and Friends, I’m thrilled to be writing for the first time from “The Chair’s Corner” in trying to help keep us all up-to-date on the many activities, challenges, and successes of the WSU English Department. As many of you know from other opportunities to chat about what’s been going on, the last couple of years have seen the full implementation of our new English major. The major has been pared down from the six options to only four: Literary Studies, Creative Writing, English/Teaching, and Rhetoric and Professional Writing. The English Department has also become the academic and administrative home for a new interdisciplinary degree

program, Digital Technology and Culture (DTC), which had its beginnings at our regional campus in Vancouver and has since spread east to Pullman and our other campus in Tri-Cities.

We are very happy to say that the state of English studies, as formed by these various interests and concentrations, is strong and healthy. In Pullman alone, we continue to have more than 200 English majors and more than 60 DTC majors; combined with our majors in Vancouver and Tri-Cities, we are approaching record numbers of more than 310 English majors and some 200 DTC majors. No doubt about it—this is good, even remarkable, growth and development.

Our graduate program also remains strong and stable. Our students continue to present papers at regional and national professional meetings (averaging between 10 and 15 a year), several of which result in publications, and to secure good jobs at places like California State University—Sacramento, the College of Charleston, North Carolina State University, Illinois State University, and Iowa State University.

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One thing can be said for sure about this growth is that we’ve been happily forced to keep ahead of the hiring curve and have been able to appoint numerous highly capable, energetic scholars and teachers in various areas of our program. You can catch up with them in the “What’s New with Faculty” segment that includes nicely informative biographical sketches of the new folks—and some of us oldsters as well. But for now, the areas we have been able to hire in range from 19th-Century British and Anglophone literatures, to African-American and 20th century American literature, to applied linguistics/ESL/TESOL, to rhetoric/composition/technology, and finally to Digital Technology and Culture.

Along with the new folks, we have been cheering on those who’ve been in the ranks for some time as they’ve been successful in their own scholarship and teaching. Drop in on “What’s New with Faculty” to check out the many new achievements of our faculty ranging from publications in many different venues to Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships. You’ll agree with me that this is a remarkably interesting and productive group of people to work with and learn from.

I can say with some confidence that we are holding our own in this often trying world of competition for limited resources, and I’m convinced that we as a department continue to create a much better place to work together to effect the kinds of changes we want to determine, and not those that could be determined for us. But we can continue to do this only with your generous support; please keep in touch and we will do the same.

Best to all of you,

George E. Kennedy

Features

Donna Campbell: Survival and Scholarship Donna Campbell is an Associate Professor of English specializing in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature. Donna won the the Lewis E. and Stella G. Buchanan Distinguished Professorship in 2007.

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Can you talk about your current research project?

DC: My research interests lie in turn-of-the-century American literature, or literature from roughly 1880-1920, especially writers of regional fiction and naturalist authors. I’m currently working on a book on American women writers, including Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, and Ellen Glasgow, and their connections with American naturalism. I also have some articles under contract, including an essay on naturalism for the Cambridge History of American Literature. A more long-term project is a digitization project of putting literature and resources from this era online.

You do research into naturalism in nineteenth-century American literature. What is it about your scholarship that is prescient and relevant to today's culture? What attracts you about naturalism, and what can naturalism teach us today?

DC: Imagine a time in U. S. history when the rich are getting much richer and the poor are getting poorer, when people are worried about economic hard times, when the heads of large corporations seemingly are above the law and escape punishment but ordinary citizens can be jailed for arbitrary reasons, when debates are occurring over whether heredity or environment shapes human behavior, when people fear violent crime on the streets of large cities, and when the newspapers are filled with concerns over immigration, terrorism, homelessness, and the contamination of the food supply.

This description may fit the events of 2008, but it also applies to the period from about 1890 through 1910 when writers of naturalism like Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Jack London were addressing the same problems in their culture. Naturalist authors believed that novelists should write about the parts of their culture that no one was talking about—violence, racism, poverty, prostitution, drug addiction, and social injustice—so that a more complete and truthful picture of life in the U. S. could be told. They thought that understanding what was happening, especially by applying scientific principles of observation, could help to explain why it was happening and thus implicitly to make a better world in the future, although they did not have an explicit reform agenda.

Naturalism and regional fiction both interest me because they are windows into American history and culture of the time. Instead of denying social change by choosing to write about an ideal world, these writers chronicled the life they saw around them, and in so doing, they give the reader flashes of insight about what life was like in the past: slang like “out of sight” (used by Stephen Crane in Maggie, A Girl of the Streets), the price of steak, popular songs, and the kind of unceasing hard work that it took to survive at the turn of the last century. They also are interested in technology and the technologies of narration, such as early silent films, another window into the past and another of my research interests.

What advice would you give to graduate students who are in the process of developing their research topics and their scholarly voices/personas?

DC: The advice I’d give is this:

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1. Learn as much as you can about all the fields that you can, but work on what really interests you. You may feel that you ought to write about Topic Y, but if you find that you can’t stop thinking about Topic X, follow that instinct and see where it leads. Chances are that you’ll find yourself coming back to certain ideas or themes even if you’re working on them in different eras of literary history. Think about your topic this way: would you want to work on it even if you didn’t have to do so for a course? The answer should tell you something about your commitment to the topic.

2. Think of yourself as part of a broader scholarly conversation in the discipline. This means not only trying to read what you can about your topic but going to conferences and thinking about places to publish your work. Where does your own work fit into what you’re hearing and reading, and how might you position it within this larger conversation?

3. Remember that there’s a person behind those printed pages that you’re reading and that those who read your work should be able to discern an individual voice behind your words, too. You don’t have to be informal in your use of language, but your voice and your argument should come through to your audience.

4. As a final and more practical piece of advice, I would recommend that grad students (and everyone else, for that matter) practice their conference presentations before giving them and write them with an eye toward oral performance. Make sure that the argument makes sense to someone listening to it as well as to someone reading it and that it doesn’t go over the time limits set for papers on a panel.

Your scholarly publication vita is so impressive. Can you talk a bit about the steps you go through to publish, from how you settle on a topic, to how you go about revision and select your publication venues? You might also talk about how you manage your time, since you obviously accomplish so much!

DC: My research processes are probably much like those of anyone else working in the field. I settle on a topic when something sparks my interest and I see, by researching it, that it hasn’t been addressed before, or when I’ve been asked to contribute an article to a collection. The feedback from editors is helpful in the revision process, but I’ve also been helped enormously by being part of a small informal research group of American literature scholars here in the WSU English Department. I select publication venues based on what I know of scholarship in the field: Where were articles on this author or topic published before? What kinds of articles does this journal publish? Although the MLA Directory of Periodicals has brief listings for journals, the best way to get a sense of where to publish something is to read issues of the journal. Also, a journal may have a call for papers for a special issue. Talking to journal editors, or to publishers at MLA, is also helpful.

Managing time is always a problem, since it’s not possible to predict—for me at least—how much writing can be accomplished in a day. I guess I would have to say that, like Melville’s Ishmael in Moby-Dick, “I try all things; I achieve what I can.”

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You were formerly at Gonzaga University. Can you talk about what about the English Department at WSU attracted you?

DC: Teaching at Gonzaga University was a great experience, but I was attracted to the English Department at WSU because it provided me with the opportunity to work with graduate students, something I wasn’t able to do at Gonzaga. Teaching, mentoring, and working with the graduate students here has been very fulfilling because it’s exciting to work with scholars who are just entering the discipline. Their thinking and writing about the subjects I teach—regionalism, early 20th-century American fiction, and naturalism—has enriched the ways in which I think about those subjects, too.

Buddy Levy: Writing Extremes Buddy Levy is an Associate Clinical Professor of English, a successful writer of popular history and literary memoir, and an extremely popular teacher.

You were a Warren Miller stunt skier? How has that affected your reporting and writing for outdoor magazines?

BL: I grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho. A good friend of mine was working as the promotions manager for Warren Miller and I was an undergraduate at University of Idaho. Warren Miller gave us a camera and we made comic ski movies, and he used them and then later hired me. From 1997 through 2005, I worked as a outdoor adventure journalist covering extreme endurance competitions around the world, where I got experience with world-class athletes and people who were doing things that were "extreme." I worked with Mark Burnett of Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Contender. He was doing the Eco-challenge and I got myself onboard with that. I went to Morocco, Argentina, Borneo, the Philippines, Greenland, and Switzerland covering extreme adventure sports and writing about them for national print magazines and the company websites that put on the events.

What are the nuts and bolts of selling a story? How long did it take you to get to a point where you had a foundation of freelance clients that provided something of a living?

BL: The pitch or query is everything. It's really important to know the magazines that you're approaching, know what they've done for the past year or two so that you don't hit them with ideas they've just published. Research the markets in depth. Have a really tight, focused idea with a lead-in paragraph or two that illustrates a thesis, so you're not just saying "I want to write about traveling in Chile" [or] "New writers that are making the Chilean market hot." It's

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important to have a niche. I started out with a niche--with adventure racing, and it morphed into outdoor adventure. I had a column in a national magazine called "Hooked on the Outdoors" and turned that into a website, so I was able to develop more and more clips was able to have a steady gig.

You end up writing the same subject for a while, and you have these deadlines and you know you have a steady series of stories. Looking at tried subject matter in new ways—that's really helped me branch out. I'm writing a story for a major New York magazine, which is a huge breakthrough for me. It's a subject that isn't my freelance forte, but I came at it from an angle that I was uniquely qualified to write. All my previous work made me credible and saleable—in order to get the job, I had to show five previous profiles on people I'd done. So my writing was the ultimate test of whether I got the assignment.

Tell us about your book projects, such as the David Crocket project and the current project. How did one grow out of another?

BL: On Crockett—this is all connected to process. Through my adventure writing, I was introduced to the agent for the survivor books, and I pitched him with a novel I was writing. He asked to see my writing--he wasn't interested in the nove but he liked my writing. He said, "let's conspire on a nonfiction project. You write well about hunting." He was interested in a historical figure who had hunted. So there was Daniel Boone and David Crockett. I looked at what had been done on Crockett and saw there was a gap. After some months of going back and forth on what to write about, the agent guided me through the nonfiction book proposal process. It went to auction in New York and he sold it to Putman Penguin.

As a result of working with him on the nonfiction project, we conspired to write a proposal on the Andalusian horses. That didn't sell, but as a result of doing the research on the horse, I got interested in the conquistadors and the clash of empires between Cortez and Montezuma, and there was also a gap in the contemporary biography. So I wrote a book proposal, and that [sold to] Bantam-Dell Random House.

Right now I'm working with my editor on the next project, but it's possible that we're going to be taking a breather from history. I've been working on a memoir on a life of adrenaline-based sports, which is a take-off on an essay, "Leaps of Faith" just nominated for Pushcart, published originally in River Teeth. I'm going to write a book about people who put themselves in harm's way for adrenaline; my father was Nordic ski racer and jumper in 1956 in Cortina Italy, so he and I might have the same genetic disposition. I'm also still looking at the historical figures.

Why do historical subjects sell?

BL: You take someone like Crockett, a household word; people are interested in knowing who that person is beyond the mythology. People are interested in "who was the real figure? and what did he/she do?” We don't know much about a lot of historical figures, especially if TV has got a hold of them. For example, most people don't know that Crockett almost ran for president and he was a congressman. That said, Lewis and Clark: do we need any more books?

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You get great student evaluations, and your students rave about you. There's also a rumor that you have your own beer stein over at the Coug, is that true?

BL: Let's put it this way, yes it's true—there was this thing called the mug club, in the early to mid 90s, I think I'm the only faculty member to have a [mug in the] mug club. (He laughs.) If you have any questions [about evaluations go] to ratemyprofessor.com.

Obviously, as a freelancer and writing teacher, you could take your skills anywhere. Why do you stay here? What about the area is attractive to you, or helpful to your work?

BL: You know, I think the most practical reason is that I have [a child] in jr. high and one in high school, and I don't want to uproot them. But I also think that-for example, a lot of people live in New York, I think there's a bit of appeal about the west from those in the east, and an interest in a western American perspective. Certain areas of the west like Missoula, and Moscow (which is becoming the next Missoula) are especially appealing. A lot of writers are stationing themselves here.

The area has other things. A lot of things I like to do like alpine and backcountry skiing, hiking, backpacking, hunting, fly fishing, mountain biking--all of those those things are available to me as personal passions and hobbies and as subjects of my writing. I work at a unique plac; WSU employs me. There are two universities in this area [WSU and University of Idaho], and that adds to the quality of life. I grew up in a resort town, and you don't have the same level of educated populace you do in college towns. That gives the Palouse some cultural events that are viable as a result.

Susan Mings: Real World/Virtual World Susan Mings is the head of a User Experience Group at Microsoft. She received her MA in

English from WSU

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, your degrees, and why you chose English as a degree?

SM: I grew up in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and did my undergraduate work at Carroll College in Montana. I chose English as a freshman undergrad because the writing literature classes I took that year were my favorites. I loved English literature all four years of my undergraduate degree, so applied to continue graduate study at WSU.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you do at Microsoft?

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SM: User experience research is getting user input on Microsoft products. I work for the Office Design group, which means I work closely with designers to develop user interactions and designs for both released products and products in development. I also work closely with program managers who spec products and keep us on schedule, and with development and testing on product teams. I coordinate with marketing, who are in charge of positioning and messaging the product. Finally, I work with User Input Text and User Assistance (doc) people on wording in user interface and also help with content.

Some of my work is big picture – what in general do users want to do with software? Where does software meet their needs or fail to? Some is more specific, for example, is a particular feature working well or poorly for the users?

What is it about your English degree at WSU that helped you most in your career?

SM: Examining a problem from several angles. Considering all the possibilities. Listening to different viewpoints. Targeting my audience for my communications. Writing and speaking skills.

What kind of writing, and how much, do you do on the job? Is writing a major part of your job? What about the other aspects of the English degree (i.e. communication, critical thinking) do you use on the job?

SM: I probably write 50% of the time, if you count writing emails (which probably accounts for about 20% of the time). Other writing is reports of study findings and presentations of findings to various groups, sometime internal, sometimes external, which would be more about methods than specific Microsoft information, sometimes fairly high up in company (VP level). Yes, critical thinking is part of the job!

Do you think, from your perspective as a director for the world's largest software company, an English degree is still relevant?

SM: Absolutely. Though for my specific job, some other skills must be added. For me, specifically social science research skills are necessary. For some of the writing jobs here, technical skills are necessary. For design, you need design skills. So there are specific skills that are helpful or required for specific disciplines, but an English degree is a good foundation for all.

What advice would you give to English Majors to help them use their skills with language out there in the world?

SM: If this is a question about how being an English Major helps to prepare students for life and a job after WSU, I’d say be sure to pursue and be open to all possibilities. Especially internships if you are interested in joining an industry workforce.

What do you think the future is for English as a major? Whether students are studying Rhetoric and Composition, Technical Writing, Creative Writing, Literature, or Digital

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Technology and Culture, how do you see the future of the major as it is applicable to the world at large?

SM: I think I would have to give this more thought to give a meaningful answer. But it starts from the assumption I list above, that English is a great foundation for any of several career choices.

Do you think the major will become more about technical communication, or can we think about it more broadly?

SM: We should think about it more broadly. Just thinking about people I know here and/or have known in the past since graduating from WSU, I have met many successful people who majored in English as undergrads. (I'm using “successful” in a limited and specific sense = they are working at jobs that they love or enjoy and at which they can support themselves as they’d like.) Some examples of careers are: Project Manager, Lawyer, UI Design (this is both interaction & interface design), Journalist, Schoolteacher (elementary & 2ndary ed), College Professor, Technical Writer, Programmer Writer, UI Text Writer, User Experience Researcher (me! J and others), freelance writer, Executive Admin, Info Architect, Audience Analyst, Pilot, Product Planner, Instructional Designer, Pilot Instructor, Web Producer, and managers in many of these groups.

Joan Burbick: Speaking of Nationalisms Joan Burbick is a Professor specializing in culture and politics of the United States. She is currently on a Fulbright at the University of Warsaw in Poland.

Can you talk about the project you'll be pursuing/work you'll be doing with the Fulbright?

JB: I’ll be working on several projects. First, I’m working with the faculty at the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw on a conference about comparative nationalisms. I’ve already been reading proposals with the conference committee. These papers are from scholars across the European Union, the United States, and Africa. I’ll be presenting the keynote at this conference in mid-May. If

you are interested in more details, you can check the American Studies Center website through the University of Warsaw.

Next, I’ll be teaching two courses to MA level students at the American Studies Center. These are: Women Writers in the American West and Theories of Visual Culture. I’m also working on a presentation about the uses of US Visual Culture in the global marketplace, especially through

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Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the most commercially successful R-rated movie in the global marketplace.

I intend also to work on several essays for the Snake River project, and, if possible, work with Polish faculty on some comparative essays on nationalisms.

I'm wondering about your Polish upbringing, how you came to speak Polish, and to what extent that cultural/linguistic background affects your way of life here in Washington.

JB: First, my Polish is baby Polish. I have heard Polish spoken for my entire life from my father whose first language was Polish and grandmother, not to mention, family friends, cousins, etc. I’m studying Polish and will have a tutor in Warsaw. I lived for my first seven years in the area of Chicago called Buck Town, an old Polish neighborhood, specifically St. Hedwig’s parish. Then my family moved to Skokie, a Jewish community. But the “old neighborhood” was always very close for me and my older sister. That was not the case for my younger siblings. Since I have gone back to Chicago consistently, I don’t see my life as severed from these places.

How have you preserved your ability to speak the language throughout your life?

JB: Again, I’m learning and will always be learning Polish. Hopefully, I’ll be a better speaker after the Fulbright and can continue to work with Polish speakers in Washington.

You switched tracks in your career from straight scholarship to a literary nonfiction/cultural criticism with a first person narrator. Can you talk a little bit about how that happened? Was it a big risk for you to make that switch personally, professionally?

JB: I guess I don’t think of it as “switching tracks.” There are many people in American Studies who work like I do. I’ll probably be on a panel next October for the American Studies Association Conference that is discussing for the third year in a row what is called “scholarly reporting.” Andrew Ross who writes for The New Yorker is a good example of this approach. So are people like Carlo Rotella from Boston College and Michael A. Elliott from Emory University. You might want to look at their work for the overall academic direction. I have been influenced by many women scholars working on feminist ethnography and philosophers of everyday life. If anything, my intent is to engage in what I call public writing, a more socially responsible practice of scholarship.

What advice would you give to graduate students who are in the process of developing their research topics and their scholarly voices/personas?

JB: I think as always they need to work on what they believe is important and necessary research. The voice will be there if they are not merely going through the motions of what someone else wants them to do.

Could you talk about your recent projects, give a synopsis of each one. What is the connecting thread between Rodeo Queens, Guns in America, and Sites of Trauma on the Snake River?

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JB: All of my writings have been about nationalism and how the everyday lives of Americans living in the West have been shaped, even organized, around beliefs in national identities. I’m particularly interested in “white” nationalism that anchors beliefs in origins and settlement on racially assumed values. The rodeo and gun culture promote and advocate white nationalism. These beliefs are also linked to attitudes towards violence, especially violence toward humans, animals, and the land. The Snake River project will continue to look at this link between social violence and nationalism with a stronger emphasis on the destruction of the land, going back to early nineteenth century documents written by fur trappers along the Snake River. I’m finding a deep-seated anxiety about place in these writings that I want to follow.

All of these are fascinating subjects, and require in-depth research and field work. Are these some of the criteria you use to conceptualize your research/writing topics?

JB: I do an immense amount of historical research as I go through the process of interviews and travel. I also work with newspaper archives and visual materials to help with the collection of details about place and people. In the end, it’s only the writing that is left. I see this work as a practice of language.

Special Tribute to Paul Brians

Lifetime Achievements Paul Brians spent the last thirty-nine years as a professor in the WSU English Department. He will be greatly missed by his students and fellow colleagues.

Can you provide us with 2 or 3 highlights of your teaching career here?

PB: It’s hard to choose 2 or 3 highlights in a career of 39 years, but I’ll throw out some ideas and you can choose your favorites. I assume you don’t mean teaching alone, but professional career.

My favorite class has been Humanities 303: Reason, Romanticism, and Revolution, introducing generations of students to challenging authors such as Voltaire, Goethe, Zola, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Marx. It was especially rewarding to discuss this material with older students online via Distance Degree Programs for several years.

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I’m proud of my work with the WSU library over the years, helping build collections in science fiction research, Anglophone literature, feature film on DVD, and classical music composed by women and African-Americans. I received the Faculty Library Award, but the best thing to come out of my connection with the libraries is my marriage with Paula Elliot, music librarian extraordinaire.

I had a lot of fun creating presentations for my science fiction film class (2005), including especially a multimedia extravaganza demonstrating the ways in which George Lucas transformed themes from the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials in his initial Star Wars films.

In 1987 I was invited to speak in Moscow at the Seventh World Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War on the research that led to my book Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction 1895-1984 (Kent State University Press), which led to a long series of collaborations with Russians on various projects.

In 1992 I was given the Burlington Northern Award for excellence in teaching for my work in helping to create the World Civilizations courses at WSU. I acted as editor-in-chief for three editions of the world civics reader, Reading About the World, which involved the creation of translations for classic texts which are widely reprinted and the Web-based copies of which are used by students and teachers all over the world.

In 1997 the American Information Service sent me to Germany to speak about American science fiction in Bonn and other cities.

My “Common Errors in English” Web site has attracted over nine million visitors over the past ten years and led to the publication of a book (Common Errors in English Usage published by William, James Co., with 40,000 copies sold so far), four popular annual boxed calendars, and a license to NBC News to use my material on their forthcoming high school educational site, iCue.

The book I am proudest of having written is Modern South Asian Literature in English (Greenwood Press, 2003) in which I tried to make accessible to a wide audience works by authors from Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka.

Over my career I’ve published an op-ed piece in the New York Times (on nuclear imagery in pop culture), been interviewed on Radio Free Europe (about the film remake of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris), on Voice of America (about language usage), and in the Wall Street Journal (about fruitcake), and had my photographs used on the History and National Geographic channels. Most of these and many other opportunities resulted from the visibility and popularity of materials I’ve put on the Web over the past decade.

You have been quite involved in the community art scene here at WSU. Can you talk about how that interest developed and some of the highlights of your involvement over the years?

PB: I imagine you mean arts. I’ve never been terribly involved in the visual arts until I began to do photography in a serious way. An exhibit of my photographs is planned for later this spring in

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Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections at WSU. I maintained a community cultural events calendar on the Web for many years, integrating information about Moscow, UI, Pullman, and WSU concerts, exhibits, and plays.

What has changed, and what has stayed the same, during the thirty years you've been here?

PB: I arrived in 1968 at the age of 26, and was immediately plunged into the counterculture and antiwar movement of the time. After the mid-seventies, I watched student engagement in politics decline drastically, but have been heartened to see it revive somewhat in recent years. In the sixties interest in literary studies reached a peak among undergraduates. In the seventies this sharply declined, and has never really recovered. It has been sad to see literary studies so marginalized within the university, to the extent that most students graduate without ever having read a single significant work of literature during their college careers.

But it has been rewarding in recent years to see a revival of interest in my own field: international studies (my Ph.D. is in Comparative Literature (Indiana University, 1968). I was originally hired at WSU to teach in an international literature program, and it is exciting to see the departments of Foreign Languages and English shaping a new graduate degree in global literature and film.

I was one of the founders of Pullman’s Community Free University, and coordinated for forty years, until the idea of volunteer-based alternative education lost popularity. In a way, the pleasure I took in the free sharing of ideas, skills, and information has been continued by activities on the Web. What is lost in personal contact is somewhat compensated for by the ability to participate a far larger world-wide community.

The eighties were a dismal period in which vocational goals dominated students and interest in the liberal arts plummeted; but there has been a substantial recovery since, and there are many interesting and interested students in our classes these days. The prominence of the Web in their lives has led many of them to become enthusiastic readers, writers, and researchers.

What do you plan to do with your time when you retire? Will you continue to be involved in mainstream publishing with your grammar books and interviews?

PB: I don’t do grammar, really; it’s usage.

I plan to continue my Web work, publishing photographs, maintaining my Common Errors site, and adding new projects as I think of them. My wife and I have plans for much more travel, and I want to continue with photography. But mainly I want to enjoy living at our home on Bainbridge Island in easy reach of the rich cultural and culinary resources of Seattle. I hope to continue giving public lectures at libraries, for civic groups, etc. on topics that interest me.

Can you talk a little bit about where you are going after this, and what things about the area (the Palouse) you might miss?

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PB: I will miss the Palouse hills in spring and the many friends we’ve made here, but most of all I will miss watching the spark in students’ eyes when something I’ve introduced them to catches their imagination: French Enlightenment thought, Bach’s Mass in B minor, the art of Mary Cassatt, or the singing of Billie Holiday.

You have played a major part in developing the undergraduate major and in advising students. As the outgoing Undergraduate Studies Director, what direction do you think the undergraduate program should go?

PB: I’ve greatly enjoyed my job as Director of Undergraduate Studies in English for the past four years, helping shape new courses, promoting our outstanding programs to students and parents, and helping solve the problems of advisees and guide them toward interesting courses.

The program has changed a lot in recent years, and I’m pretty happy with the way it’s headed. Enrollments are growing, and we have a wonderful batch of young new professors to carry on. I hope that others will continue and expand the international multimedia, comparative arts approach to intellectual history that has been my prime concern.

Paul Brians's Retirement Party was held in the Library Atrium on April 18, 2008. Paul delivered a moving speech about his work over the last forty years.

Program News

New Directions Digital Technology and Culture (DTC) Digital Technology and Culture (DTC), an interdisciplinary degree program administered by the WSU Department of English, started in 2003 and has grown from a handful of majors to 75 in Spring 2008. That’s a 600% increase in four years! DTC integrates courses in humanities, social sciences, and technology in a critical and creative framework designed to meet individual student interests as well as the needs of contemporary audiences and employers. DTC majors work with at the frontier of today’s technology, while learning the importance of technological history and preparing themselves to live in and understand a culture increasingly influenced by technology. Find more information at the DTC website: http://www.libarts.wsu.edu/dtc/

Collaborations The English department values interdisciplinarity for the opportunities it offers to students and faculty. Our commitment to working with other departments at WSU is evidenced by the wide variety of collaborative learning experiences we’ve recently offered:

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Todd Butler (English) and Trevor Bond (Interim Head, Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Holland Library): "From Manuscript to E-Book: Studies in Print Culture." ENGL 492 (Fall 2007).

Patricia Freitag Ericsson (English) and Preston Andrews (Horticulture and Landscape Architecture): “Rhetorics of Sustainability: Discourse, Science, and Culture.” ENGL 597/HORT 503 (Fall 2006).

John Hegglund (English) and Ayad Rahmani (Architecture): “Living Spaces: Literatures/Architectures/ Cities/Homes.” ENGL 548 (Fall 2006).

Debbie Lee (English), Kevin Haas (Fine Arts), and Geneve Parish (Fine Art): "William Blake: Text and Image." ENGL 493 (Fall 2007).

Debbie Lee (English) and Larry Hufford (Biological Sciences, Director of Marion Owenby Herbarium): "The Literature of Scientific Travel." ENGL 521 (Spring 2008).

Trevor Bond, Interim Head of Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, describes items of the Leonard and Virginia Woolf Collection to graduate student Hillary Roberts.

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Students gather around Larry Hufford, Professor of Biological Sciences, as he describes the relationship between narrative and scientific travel in relation to WSU's historic collection of botanic specimens located in the Marion Owenby Herbarium.

Preston Andrews, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture, discusses sustainability with English faculty member Nancy Bell.

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Students watch as Geneve Parrish of Fine Arts demonstrates historical printmaking techniques of eighteenth-century England. Students created their own prints in their study of William Blake's poetry and images for English 493.