Newsletter

1 Winter/Spring 2010SCROLL, SCRIBE & SCREEN

Catch up with David KirbyPage 3

Debra Brock retiresPage 7

Have surfboard, will travelPage 12

For the English department, this statement describes the philosophy behind its newest undergraduate de-gree track: the editing, writing, and media (EWM)

major. Launched in the fall of 2009, the EWM major “re-conceives the English major for the 21st century.”

With an increasing number of college students interested in editing and publishing careers, English department facul-

ty recognized a need to prepare students for the new challenges in writing careers brought on by the rise of digital tech-nologies and the web. The EWM major is proving to be a successful response

to this need. In its first semester, 100 students picked the editing, writing, and media track as their major, and the de-partment expects that number to increase to around 300 by the end of 2010. To put those numbers in perspective, the English department as a whole had 1,604 undergraduate majors in the fall of 2009.

A few words from the Department of English at The Florida State UniversityWritten and produced by students in the department

Scroll, Scribe & ScreenWinter/Spring 2010

Undergrads flockto new English track

ByAllisonHelms

By Alexandra Delgado

In Room 438 of the Williams Building, past the English advising offices and through a serious maze of turns, you can find Eric Walker in his bookshelf-lined, paper-scattered office. He will be sitting at his desk, computer to his left, documents spread out before him, that is, if he’s not teaching or attending a meeting for one of the many campus organizations he is a part of. Walker has been at Florida State University for 25 years and is currently

teaching a senior seminar as well as fulfilling his countless duties as president of the Faculty Senate at Florida State.

Walker specializes in 18th and 19th century British literature and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published countless articles in the best journals in English studies, including PMLA (journal of the Modern Language Association of America). His current works include his

Eric Walker takes helm of Faculty Senate

Eric Walker

See EWM, page 28

See WALKER, page 25

“It’s a signature FSU program: as far as we

know, no one else in the country offers anything like

it, and we think that it will showcase the talents of our

students in new ways.”–Kathleen Yancey

It’s not just a degree;it’s ‘a vision of the future of texts’

EWMEditing MediaWriting

Photo by Katie Brown

Students collaborate on an image analysis assignment in Michael Neal’s Visual Rhetoric class, which is part of the new EWM track. The class is taught in one of the English department’s computer writing classrooms.


Letterfrom the chair

Welcome to our first online department newsletter, created by our very own students. I’ve just finished reading it: what a treat it is to see all that’s going on ― for alumni, for faculty, and for our current students.

In reading this first issue of Scroll, Scribe, and Screen ― and what an elegant synopsis this title is! ― I was doubly impressed, first, by how wide-ranging our interests and expertises are; and second, by how well our department is doing despite all the economic bad news. As the news here attests, we’re still reading good literature, and these days, we’re reading all texts with a much smarter sense of context, more aware of how a given text was influenced by issues of gender and race, for example, as well as of how the text was literally shaped by technology. We’re writing more than ever and in more spaces, particularly the students in our new editing, writing and media track.

The fact that we were able to introduce a new major in the midst of the biggest financial crisis the university has faced—and that students would accept our invitation—also speaks to the strength of our department, which by the way, at 1,622 majors, is thriving. Not least, faculty are winning awards as never before, both in teaching and in scholarship. In fact, no fewer than 10 of our faculty across all three programs ― literature, creative writing, and rhetoric and composition ― were just nominated for teaching awards.

But at some level, you’re at the heart of our strength. We see this in the two profiles here, and in the frequent notes, Facebook communications, and e-mails that remind us how fortunate we are to have you as our grads.

I hope you enjoy the good work of our students—both the students who carry on your tradition and the ones who created this first newsletter. And if you have a chance, please do e-mail and let us know how you are doing. We’d love to hear from you.

kathleen blake yancey/[email protected] Hunt Professor of EnglishInterim Chair, Department of English

1 Major explosion Editing, writing, and media track

surprises faculty and students with its instant popularity.by allison HelMs

1 leading tHe senate

Longtime prof rules the school.by alexandra delgado

3 looking back Read what longtime Professor

David Kirby has to say abouttoday’s students.by allison HelMs

4 Hott off tHe press New prof brings expertise

from the digital world.by cara borucH-dolan

5 new beginnings Prof warms up to her new home

at Florida State.by alissa bridges

6 expert advice Get exclusive info on the

department’s advisors and their goals for students.by alexandra delgado

7 gone but not forgotten Debra Brock ends her 26-year

career at FSU.by williaM clark

8 treasure trove Medieval scholar Elaine Treharne

hits the jackpot in Strozier Library’s Special Collections.by cara borucH-dolan

9 anotHer prograM takes off Find out why this program isn’t

just HoTT, it’s smokin’.by williaM clark

10 write on Digital Studio: the department’s

response to new writing technologies.by leigH gruwell

11 reiMagining researcH Freshman composition class

goes beyond the boring research paper and (gasp!) has fun, too.by jennifer o’Malley

12 risky business This man will travel the world

for a great story.by joe purdy

13 a glaMorous life Delve into the celebrity-studded

life of an FSU English grad ― yes, English grad.by asHley williaMs

14 Honorable Mention What it takes for an undergrad to

write a thesis: talent, ambition, and a lot of hard work.by aMy parker

15 certifiably sMart Get an extra edge with

department’s certificate program.by aMy parker

16 wHat’s next? You’ve hung your tassel and

thrown your cap; now what? by saraH gwin

17 look at Me Using one easy tool, learn how to

stand out to employers.by jennifer dale

18 green ligHt Students and profs go the extra

mile to conserve.by saraH cleeland

19 real world writing Undergrads take the plunge and

design a digital magazine from scratch.by leigH gruwell

26 paving tHe way for excellence Discover changes, improvements

being made to campus buildings.by katHerine bell

table of contents

27 about tHe contributors Learn a little bit about the

students who created this newsletter.

Winter/Spring 2010 3SCROLL, SCRIBE & SCREEN

How has the mission of the English department changed in the years you’ve been here?

I don’t know that the mission has changed at all. It’s always had two broad functions, the general one being to enhance literacy and communications skills and promote cultural awareness, and the more specific one being that we want to prepare our students for advanced literary work in the fields of teaching, research, and publishing. So that’s still the same. What has changed radically is the students we teach and the world they’re preparing to enter.

How has student writing changed over the years?

Let me count the ways! When I began teaching at FSU, roughly 20% of high school students went on to college. Now I’m told it’s more like 70%. Our country undervalues education so much that the majority of people coming out of high school have minimal writing skills. One of our jobs is to deal with that: to show people how to punctuate effectively, how to use exactly the right word instead of one that’s merely close, to vary their syntax instead of just writing subject-verb-object sentences. We’re the guardians of the language of the tribe, and the tribe’s a lot bigger and hairier than it was when I started out. That said, most of these kids are marvelously fluent and creative in a way that I wasn’t when I was their age. I love them to pieces, even as I wish they knew how to use a semi-colon. Too, I’d like to see us recruit more honors students. Intellectually, those guys will run right over me if I’m not careful. We’ve built success on a shoestring, and as a result, we’ve got a department of rich and varied and hardworking people who are making something out of almost nothing. Ours is a first-class department, and

our honors students in particular make it an even better one.

In what ways do you think the current economic situation will affect the quality of a college education?

Everybody knows we’re in terrible shape. What appalls me is that the current Florida Legislature gives every indication that it not

only distrusts education but actively despises it. In the ’80s, a pro-education Legislature really built up the university system and put it at the brink of national prominence. Legislators today have not only let the system slide back but also seem to be blind to the fact that stellar universities bring industry and smart people of all kinds to the state. Even when we’re broke, creative thinkers can always find a way to enhance quality. If our state leaders don’t have the attitude and willpower to protect the quality of education now, will they do any better if and when the economy turns around?

What do you love the most about teaching?

It’s one of the many creative things that make up my day. Whether I’m planning a

class or working on a poem or a book or writing a speech I have to give, I usually start with six or eight packets of information. I always know which I’m going to start with and which one I’ll use at the end, and then I work in the others more or less instinctively as well as deal with the information that comes out of left field. So it’s kind of a juggling act with a lot of planning but a lot of surprises, too, and when you can see it having the effect you want on the audience, well, that’s paradise.

Have you been able to stay in touch with any of your former students? Do you know of any who have become successful poets or writers?

I was staying in pretty fair touch back in the low-tech days, and then Facebook came along. So, yes, I hear from them daily. Plenty have become prize-winning poets

and teachers, just as others have entered every profession under the sun: law, medicine, what have you. I’m always hearing from somebody who remembers something I said twenty years ago ― bingo! Paradise again.

Lastly, what advice would you give to students who aspire to become poets/writers?

Get a writer’s mind first and foremost. Learn to value everything you see. Never avert your gaze from anything. Don’t censor yourself; everything is useful. Take notes. Check your references. Make sure the door’s always open, because you never know what’s going to come through. I tell my students that art is the deliberate transformed by the accidental, so plan your work and work your plan, but make sure you stay open to all the accidents that are coming your way, to the startling and dismaying and galvanizing opportunities that are available to you if you’re capable of seeing them.

Prior to his graduation from college, David Kirby never really thought about where he would work. He opted to go to graduate

school so that he could read and discuss books with intelligent people. A few months before receiving his Ph.D. from John Hopkins University, Kirby realized that he should look for a job. After receiving five job offers, he chose Tallahassee and Florida State University; he never looked back.

In his 40 years at Florida State, Kirby, poet and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English, has received numerous honors including the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003.

He is also the author or co-author of 29 books and a recipient of the FSU Distinguished Teacher Award (2008) as well as the Brittingham Prize in Poetry (1987).

In addition, Kirby writes for The New York Times Book Review, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Chicago Tribune and often teaches at Florida State’s international campuses in Florence, London, Paris, and Valencia.

Kirby recently paused to reflect on the changes he has seen in the department and the university over the last 40 years and to describe how teaching, for him, is paradise. Q & A

with David Kirby

Professor and poet museson Department of Englishchanges over 40 years

By Allison Helms

“We’re the guardians of the language of the tribe, and the tribe’s a lot bigger and hairier than it was when I started out.”

– Professor David Kirby


By Cara Boruch-Dolan

A warning for any lackadaisical students who rely on Sparknotes to make it through a difficult English

class: One of Florida State’s newest assistant professors, Paul Fyfe, is a former employee of the company. Although he just moved to Tallahassee in the summer of 2009 with his family from Virginia, Fyfe has already found his niche here at Florida State as both a professor in the Department of English and in the History of Text Technologies (HoTT) program. A soft-spoken young man with a ponytail, Fyfe has experimented with new aspects of English that will make him not just a professor, but a mentor for students

looking to use their degrees in innovative ways.

Before his move to Tallahassee, Fyfe lived in Charlottesville, Virginia for seven years while earning his Ph.D. in English at the University of Virginia. Fyfe received his bachelor’s degree in English from Wake Forest University in 1998. He has received academic awards such as the Rosemary VanArsdel Prize, the NAVSA (North American Victorian Studies Association) Graduate Award, and national honors for papers he wrote as a student.

No small town boyPrior to becoming a professor, Fyfe held a

range of jobs. Besides his job at Sparknotes, Fyfe was an employee of the online website About.com. He also lived in Manhattan for four years, working at W.W. Norton as an editorial assistant to book production. Fyfe admits he wanted to work in publishing so that he could learn more specifically about how text is created; as a result, he ended up with a greater knowledge of the various paths an English degree opens up for student.

“Working in different media did offer

various perspectives on that, from W.W. Norton where some compositors were still cutting and pasting with scissors and glue to About.com where being an “editor” meant constantly negotiating between content management programmers and freelance writers–not always a pleasant task,” says Fyfe. “I learned how to get things done efficiently with lots of different technologies and human constituencies, and I returned to graduate school thinking of it as a career, rather than the path of least resistance.”

At Florida State, Fyfe specializes in 19th century British literature. In his classes, he likes to focus on the revolution created by the steam press, a non-manpowered printing press that allowed the mass production of text, which led to the further explosion of journalism and periodicals. He draws attention to not only how text at that time was created but how it was circulated in different forms as well.

Fyfe taught two classes during the Fall 2009 semester: honors contemporary British literature and Victorian British literature. He is teaching two more classes in Spring 2010, one of which is a graduate class in Victorian telecommunication that “will be using a variety of the telecommunications tools of digital humanities,” such as the railway and telephone, to help form the class discussion. According to the university website, this course aims to analyze telecommunication as a material context and metaphor for investigating important transformations within Victorian culture. Outside of his classes, Fyfe is working on revising an article for publication on the history of description and its accidents as an effect of chance.

Bringing the heatto FSU’s newest program

Additionally, Fyfe is involved in one of the newest additions to Florida State: the History of Text Technologies (HOTT) program. The purpose of HOTT is to help tie English into the other departments at Florida State and to explore how the various forms of text have affected culture throughout history. According to the HoTT website, the technologies used to create text share a common theme of producing an artificial memory system for the human mind. “Those technologically preserved and transmitted memories are the foundation of all human culture.”

Fyfe explains that HoTT has two main pathways: one involves textual studies and

TheLIFEofFYFE

TheLIFEofFYFE

New professor Paul Fyfe brings a scientific eye to literature classes

See FYFE, page 24

Phot

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Car

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By Alissa Bridges

Palm trees. For people who have lived in Florida for years, palm trees no longer hold any special meaning; they

are viewed as just another tree. For Rhea Estelle Lathan, a new assistant professor in the English department who moved to Tallahassee in the summer of 2009, palm trees represent more than paradise; they are symbols of new beginnings. Lathan grew up in Wisconsin and received her bachelor’s degree in English and African American studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. While she did not go to graduate school immediately after receiving her bachelor’s degree, she was quickly inspired to return to school.

“I saw a need,” Lathan explains. “I did my undergrad in English and African American studies. My Nana said anyone getting a degree in those areas needed to get a graduate degree. [After graduation], I did a little bit of academic advising but decided that I really wanted to do research and wanted to teach, so that’s why I went back to get my graduate degree.”

Lathan received both her master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After graduating in 2006, Lathan went on to teach at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich. During her three years at Michigan State, she taught Rhetoric(s) of American Cultures; Cultural Literacy; Composition Workshop; and Evolution of American Thought. As an English and African American literacy professor, Lathan says, “Through my teaching I seek the wisdom and knowledge to bring students in contact with rhetorical, literate, historical, and popular perspectives as well as research methodologies.”

From the Midwest to the SouthWhile at Michigan State, Lathan learned of

an opportunity that ultimately inspired her to pack up and move to the South after spending her whole life in the Upper Midwest: Florida State’s Rhetoric and Composition Program. The appeal of the program itself was key to Lathan’s moving south.

However, the Rhetoric and Composition Program is not all that Lathan enjoys about

Florida State so far. She believes that the university is very progressive, and she sees it as a good fit for her scholarship in rhetorical studies and literacy studies.

Aside from being involved with the Rhetoric and Composition Program, Lathan taught two courses in Fall 2009: Writing and Editing in Print and Online as well as Advanced Article and Essay.

Stephanie Hamilton, a student in Lathan’s Advanced Article and Essay course, says, “You can tell that she really loves her students. She enjoys getting to know each of us, and she tries her hardest to help whenever and however she can. She is definitely an approachable teacher, and she enjoys laughing and making class fun; but, she also

knows when she needs to buckle down and be serious.”

In Spring 2010, Lathan is teaching a graduate class in African American literacies, which she is very excited about, as she calls African American literacy studies her “area.” Her hope over time is to develop other courses addressing African American literacies.

“I think the interdisciplinary nature of African American [literacies] includes and could also draw students interested in pedagogy,” says Lathan.

Theoretical frame of mindLathan’s research largely focuses on the

influences of freedom writing. “Freedom writing reflects a cluster of related fields: African American cultural theory; literacy and rhetorical studies; the intellectual traditions of African American women; and African American pedagogy,” Lathan explains. In her forthcoming book, Freedom Writing: A Case of African American Literacy Activism, Lathan suggests that African American literacy is “intellectually worthy and represents specific, culturally influenced ways of being in the world.”

Lathan’s work uses grounded theory and critical historical analysis to theorize the practices, meanings, and values of a specific African American literacy practice that took place during the civil rights era.

“In this work, I draw on oral histories, personal interviews, and archival data to explore African American literacy activities while examining the symbiotic relationship between literacy and a social political campaign,” Lathan says.

Freedom Writing identifies local participants who contributed to the success of citizenship education as well as illuminates how African American women use both critical and creative rhetorical strategies to aid in the struggle for basic human rights.

Instead of studying well-known people, Lathan chooses to examine lesser-known activists. She looks at everyday teachers and students such as Mabel Williams and Ethel Azalea Johnson, independent entrepreneurs, co-editors, and business managers for the Crusader—a local newsletter published in

While Lathan will miss custard ice cream and the first fall snow, palm trees have provided a good trade-off.

Department welcomes Rhea Estelle Lathan

Rhea Estelle Lathan

“Through my teaching I seek the wisdom and knowledge to bring students in contact with rhetorical, literate, historical, and popular perspectives as well as research methodologies.”

– Rhea Estelle Lathan

See LATHAN, page 21


By Alexandra Delgado

The rush comes a few times a year. Stu-dents pour out of the elevator and cram into the fourth floor of the Williams Building. Some sit squished together on benches, play-ing on their cell phones, feet tapping impa-tiently. Others peer into open doors, eaves-dropping on appointments. They eyeball the chatty girl sitting there, going on and on about the minor she’s thinking of doing or the language she might like to learn, and they wonder if she is ever going to be done. Oth-ers just give up and leave after 10 minutes of awkward eye contact and silence amongst anxious classmates. Of the many qualities these students have in common, only one truly unites them in this situation: they all re-gret waiting until the last minute.

This is the scene outside of the English advising offices at Florida State when it is time to register for classes, drop them, or graduate. During these peak times, our advi-sors, Brandy Haddock, Stephanie Cameron

Kennedy, and Molly Schulte are always there for us. They ease our anxiety by presenting solutions to our problems’ problems.

Cara Boruch-Dolan, a creative writing ma-jor, says, “I know this time of year all too well. I’ve always looked at Molly and Stepha-nie as inadvertent psychologists for me at the end of the semester.”

Of course, during the off-season, advising appointments are just as productive. While we know their names and office room num-bers by heart, our advisors actually know a lot more about us than we do about them. Now it is time to learn a little bit about the lives and responsibilities of our lovely go-to people, in no particular order.

Brandy Haddock is a new English advisor for Fall 2009. A fellow Seminole, Haddock

graduated from Florida State in 2007 with a degree in humanities. Before becoming an advisor, she worked in the Office of Un-dergraduate Studies for two years. Definitely passionate about her new position, Haddock understands the confusion and stress that many students face on a daily basis.

“The whole college experience can just be so overwhelming sometimes, and I feel

like now I can give back to students to help take a lot of that anxiety out of it,” Haddock says. For example, she considers herself to be the first line

of information for students, whether they are trying to drop a class or are struggling with a potential learning disability. She de-termines the best resources and options for each student.

Haddock recommends that students seek their advisor’s help even if they do not think they need it. The reasoning is simple: “we know all the shortcuts.” Haddock has plenty of information for students on classes, the new EWM (editing, writing, and media) ma-jor, and beyond. In fact, she strives to help students with anything they need, whether the issue is school related or not.

“I help facilitate students’ experience here and making the most out of what they can do,” says Haddock. She also advises English students to check out the Southeast Review,

which is published by Florida State’s own Creative Writing Program. “Students need to be aware of what it takes and what level you need to be writing at in order to be pub-lished,” she remarks.

Stephanie Cameron Kennedy has been advising/rescuing Florida State’s English majors for five years. If you are a student and have not met her, her name might sound familiar from your e-mail’s inbox. She keeps English majors updated with off-campus events, such as readings at the Warehouse (there is a guest reader every Tuesday ― if you have not been, it is a must!). An art his-tory graduate, she is currently working on completing her thesis and graduating with a master’s degree in social work here at Flor-ida State.

Kennedy is the go-to person for graduat-ing seniors, as she signs off on major require-ments for graduation. As an academic pro-gram specialist, though, she has a plethora of responsibilities outside of meeting with stu-dents. Building the course schedule, config-uring new student orientation, and handling department paperwork are just a few of the numerous tasks her job entails. Interested in the advanced writing workshops? The ap-plication system and registration is managed by Kennedy. Ever wonder who gets the te-dious task of dropping students that don’t show up on the first day of classes? Kennedy is responsible for adjusting the roster for all

An insidelook at thedepartment’sadvisors

See ADVISORS, page 23

“I like that I get to help people every day, whether I am advising them on remaining requirements or referring them to the counseling center.”

– Molly Schulte

Photo by Alexandra Delgado

Advisor Brandy Haddock, who is working with sophomore EWM major Hyuna Kim, says, “I help facilitate students’ experience here.”


By William Clark

“The English department is the best thing that ever happened to me,” Debra Brock says in a joyful voice.

For 35 years, Brock was a beloved member of the office staff at FSU until her retirement on September 30, 2009. Brock began working in the psychology department when she was just 21 years old and did so for 26 years before moving to the English department, where she worked tirelessly and with pride for the last nine years.

While being the office manager for the Department of English is certainly not an easy job, Brock managed to efficiently handle all of the responsibilities and problems that come with the position and still have a smile for anyone who walked into the office. As English Professor David Kirby fondly recalls, “Forget everything you know about Debra solving all the department’s problems and making sure we stayed on course while the rest of us tried our best to get lost, run around, and capsize. The absolutely best thing about Debra is her laugh. She has the loudest, cheeriest laugh on record; you’d be slouching down the hall feeling sorry for yourself when suddenly you’d hear this machine-gun laughter bouncing off the walls, and you’d stand up straight and start giggling yourself. It was as though somebody had flipped a switch, and suddenly the whole world turned Technicolor.”

Brock’s duties officially included handling the department’s payroll and operating budget, supervising the office staff, preparing reports, and assisting the chair. Unofficially however, she was responsible for building and maintaining an impressive network of several hundred FSU contacts, decoding OMNI (the employee self-service computer system) rules for faculty and staff, and for generally handling any difficult problem. In fact, each of Brock’s coworkers specifically commented on her unwavering dedication to her work and to her colleagues.

According to Professor of English and University Distinguished Teacher John Fen-

stermaker, who was the English department chair from 1982-1994, “Debra Brock self-lessly serves 22 days a month, plus the night-time and weekend calls about problems that can’t wait. She is not, however, undervalued among those she serves so variously.”

So dedicated is Brock to her work that she

was usually the first one in the building and often times the last one to leave.

Her friend and colleague of 12 years, Carolyn Hector Hall (assistant to the chair and the HoTT program director) remembers an instance where Brock was particularly focused. “As my coworker and I were coming back from lunch, we heard this strange noise in the parking lot, like a car was still running. We realized that it was Debra’s car still running, but no Debra inside. Not only had she left the car running, she also left the doors unlocked. Of course we turned the car off and brought her keys to her and found her in the office busying herself with work. She was strictly business minded.”

In a career full of fond memories, Brock says that her proudest moment was when she was nominated for Employee of the

Year by her coworkers and peers in the English department … and won. “It was such an honor to be nominated by the whole department,” she said. “The fact that they pushed that hard for me was just . . . it really meant a lot to me.”

When asked how she felt about her coworkers, Brock had nothing but praise for all of the office staff. “The people that I was fortunate enough to work with are kind, appreciative, hard-working, and conscientious. Such an excellent staff makes for a very productive department. It’s truly a great place to work.”

The faculty and staff are not the only ones to benefit from Brock’s influence. Over the years she has formed bonds with a large number of students, many of whom she still keeps in touch with to this day. Brock has mentored many an overwhelmed undergraduate on his first day of work/study.

She has influenced many graduate students to apply for positions to which they did not believe they were qualified for. “Please apply,” she would say. “Let them decide whether you are qualified or not.”

Several students who took her advice went on to become professors here at the university and have since credited Brock as a reason for their success. She also made it a

Photo by Kathi Yancey

Debra Brock, front left, talks with friends and colleagues at her September 30, 2009 goodbye party. Brock worked at FSU for 35 years, and spent the last nine years in the English department.

Heart of gold

“[Y]ou’d be slouching down the hall feeling sorry for yourself when suddenly you’d hear this machine-gun laughter bouncing off the walls, and you’d stand up straight and start giggling yourself.”

– Professor David Kirby

Beloved officemanager DebraBrock retires

See BROCK, page 22


By Cara Boruch-Dolan

In Spring 2007, Professor Elaine Treharne was a little homesick after her recent move

from Wales, so she searched for something at FSU to remind her of home. Specializing in the study of ancient manuscripts, she wandered into the Special Collections room in Strozier Library to browse through its large assortment of medieval texts. Little did she realize how serendipitous that stroll would be in terms of her future research.

Situated on the first floor in the far northwest corner of Strozier, the small Special Collections Reading Room looks unassuming at first, but in actuality serves as the gateway to the university’s extensive collection of historical and rare documents.

Treharne introduced herself to Lucy Patrick, head of Special Collections at Strozier, who asked Treharne if she would like to look at a couple of books containing recycled parchment stuffed inside the bindings. Her interest piqued, Treharne agreed and opened a large 15th century book of Latin sermons. This massive book from Germany was used for religious services and personal prayer and is a rare possession of Florida State, with only two or three similar copies of it in North America.

Most of these ancient manuscripts were written on vellum or parchment (animal skin) and bound inside leather or wood, making them not only very rare, but extremely expensive to commission. Peeking inside the thick oak panels on the cover, Treharne was surprised to find text from an earlier time on the parchment used to make the bookbinding. In other words, on her first day in Special Collections, Treharne had identified something no one else on campus had previously recognized: evidence of 12th century grammar written on parchment and glued inside the cover of a 15th century text.

While Strozier’s librarians had suspected

that the recycled parchment inside the cover might be important and originate from an earlier time, they needed the trained eye of a medieval scholar to properly identify the writing on the parchment and the parchment itself. Fortunately, Treharne fit the bill.

Treharne was recruited by Florida State University to join its new History of Text Technologies (HoTT) program, which specializes in these ancient manuscripts. Fueled by the excitement of her discovery of this parchment, Treharne did further research, proving that this 12th century writing was from a late-Classical writer named Priscian. He was famous in medieval Europe, and today his work is considered very rare. The text discovered by Treharne was used specifically for teaching people about Latin and Greek grammar.

This book of sermons is one of Treharne’s

favorites because, as she says, “it’s one of the most useful manuscripts for showing textual production between 1100-1450, for showing the period’s major text technology, and asking the question: how did we get this? With all its history, we don’t know how we got this manuscript here at FSU.” Treharne made the research in this book her immediate priority. Since then, not only has she been searching to find how Priscian’s work became part of a book binding but also how this book became part of Strozier’s Special Collections.

She later realized that other texts in the collection had similar evidence of chopped-up ancient manuscripts (literally) used inside the covers. Because these manuscripts were often manmade by monks and had a strong, durable nature, Treharne realized that people were using pages from older manuscripts to fortify the strength of books made in later centuries.

Another discovery she made was inside an 18th century manuscript found within FSU’s large Napoleonic collection of texts, one of the strongest collections found in the United States. Inside

this cheaply produced book of French emigrés, or emigrants who fled during the French Revolution, was parchment dateable to around 1050. This was evidence of another written sermon; however this one was the sermon on the Epiphany

by Maximus of Turin. Once a famous bishop in Italy, Maximus is hailed as a saint for his religious writings; this specific text tells of a religious vision he received. Treharne says that this is the only fragment of this sermon in existence in North America. “[This] is also the earliest manuscript [on parchment] to be found at FSU, and probably all of Florida.”

After her discovery, Treharne was more thrilled and excited about the work she now had ahead of her. Florida State’s own Indiana Jones, she had found hidden treasure deep within the Special Collections corner of Strozier. This immediately became one of her favorite spots on campus, and she began taking her smaller classes there for research as many times as she could and encouraging their own exploration through

The case of the hidden manuscripts

Photo courtesy of Elaine Treharne

Elaine Treharne holds one of the books that contained the hidden manuscripts.

Elaine Treharnefinds manuscripts pasted inside books’ bindings

See TREHARNE, page 20


By William Clark

What is “text technology” and why is it important? Text technology is the term used to denote the entire process of production, reproduction, circulation, and reception of texts. However, in this instance, the term “texts” is not limited only to books. As noted on the History of Text Technologies (HoTT) website, texts can take the form of “cave paintings, tattoos, stone tablets, clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, manuscript books, musical scores, maps, printed books, engravings, newspapers, photographs, films, DVDs, and computers.”

The preserved word is so important because it is the foundation of our culture as human beings and the way in which we preserve our culture for future generations. Picture elder tribesmen in Sudan singing educational songs of history, culture, and laws to children. Think of a television documentary about the beginnings of World War II. If documenting human achievement is so incredibly important, then why should the history of our means of documentation be any less so? To this end, the HoTT program will educate students on how cultures have communicated across time, how the technologies of writing and art have affected humanity, and what the impact of current technological developments might be in the decades to come.

“It’s always important to recognize the material and cultural circumstances in which texts were produced and circulated,” says Assistant Professor Paul Fyfe. “Starting with these contexts—which HoTT groups into categories of production, transmission, and reception—can open up our thinking about texts and media in exciting ways.”

In Fall 2007, the HoTT program was started at FSU. The first and only one of its kind in the United States, the program addresses the history of texts as a discipline.

It exists to bring together specialist scholars in English, religion, and history. Together they work on texts and textual production from the manuscripts and inscriptions of the medieval period to contemporary digital technologies that promise to alter the ways in which text is manufactured, transmitted, and received.

Funded by the Pathways of Excellence cluster initiative at FSU, the HoTT program was the arts and humanities area cluster hire. “This program has superb, active scholars who are also great teachers,” says Associate Professor Anne Coldiron. “Each one brings a different specialty to the program, with the result that students who focus on the History of Text Technologies will encounter a range of approaches, of historical periods, of media, of subject matter, and of theoretical issues.” In addition to the existing faculty—which consists of American and European scholars from several diverse disciplines including art, art history, English, history, humanities, modern language, and information science—the program has generated eight new hires to date to form the core of the team.

In the words of graduate student Meg Brown, “You can find one or two professors at other universities, but not as many amazing professors as are here, and not such a comprehensive program.”

The HoTT program at FSU is an interdisciplinary doctoral program that has already established an exciting set of courses, together with a significant series of colloquia and seminars all aimed at facilitating the highest quality research. As of October

2008, conceptually related lectures are held in Strozier Library from time to time for the benefit of graduates, scholars, and interested amateurs alike. The program currently focuses on the study of the times surrounding the technological evolution from manuscript to print in Western Europe and on the related

works and cultures of England, France, and Italy. It offers a range of graduate and undergraduate courses that extend from the history of print to the relationship between text and image. In addition to this very distinctive curriculum, the program also contributes to the Department of English’s new and innovative undergraduate degree track in editing, writing, and media.

HoTT producing bookhistory series

It is understood that the emergence of technology must force a growth or manipulation of the understanding of text. As technology advances, we must adapt. And as the HoTT website says, “Our new technologies are crucial tools for studying all older technologies.” And what study of text could be complete without a text of its own? To this end, the HoTT program has collaborated with the global academic publisher Palgrave to release a book history series. The series is set to launch in late 2009 or early 2010 with the first of three new volumes. These books will all be edited by Gary Taylor, the George Matthew Edgar Professor of English and the founding director of the History of Text Technologies program at FSU.

Taylor founded the HoTT program as a way of combining fieldwork with theory as it relates to cultural studies, science studies, translation studies, critical race studies, gender studies, cosmopolitanism, and neo-

Programs to watch:History of Text Technologies

See HoTT, page 18

“We are as a group working hard to build relationships with faculty in many departments, to expand and better utilize the ‘Special Collections’ area of the university, and—our first priority—to find ways to get better financial support for our graduate students who represent the future of our profession.”

– Gary Taylor, founding director of HoTT


By Leigh Gruwell

In a small room on the second floor of the Williams Building, deep in the heart of the

English department, something remarkable is happening: a group of graduate students are collaborating on a group presentation; a first-year composition student is perfecting his digital portfolio; a tutor is guiding a student through the basics of web design. Writing no longer means the sole genius laboring alone over a typewriter. This is the Digital Studio, and this is where writing is changing.

Increasingly, students and instructors are moving online, and many classes now require students to compose in new, often digital, spaces. To keep up with new kinds of assignments and modes of communicating (both within academia and beyond), FSU’s English department opened the Digital Studio in Fall 2008. An offshoot of the Reading/Writing Center, the Digital Studio offers individual and group tutoring specifically geared toward digital compositions.

Students who are working on different genres of compositions such as websites, PowerPoint presentations, blogs, digital portfolios (digital collections of student work and reflection), visual essays, or a variety of other projects can visit the Digital Studio to work alone or with a tutor to learn both the technological and rhetorical skills of digital composition. The studio is staffed by graduate students who are trained in teaching composition and technology, and the studio houses an array of powerful tools for digital composing.

Rory Lee is co-director of the Reading/Writing Center and is also a first-year Ph.D. student in the Rhetoric and Composition Program. He oversees daily operations as well as special events in the Digital Studio. Lee is passionate about the role digital technologies play in composition on all levels: “I firmly believe that the types of assignments and projects students work on in the Digital Studio are the future of composition.”

Instead of merely being a jazzed-up computer lab, the Digital Studio offers tutoring and assistance for students while they learn to compose in new, and increasingly prevalent, ways. “With the emergence of new technologies, students are writing in a variety of different digital spaces—within different rhetorical situations and for different audiences,” Lee says. “We are moving away from print being the sole medium for making and disseminating meaning, and as such, our literacy practices are changing.”

Students who visit the Digital Studio are free to explore such diverse modes of composing through use of the five PC dual-monitor workstations (which include a suite of advanced design and composition software such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop, InDesign, MovieMaker, Dreamweaver, Nvu, Audacity, Gimp, Vue, and more), as well as a state-of-the art SmartBoard, a large whiteboard-like computer interface that allows for collaborative and interactive digital composing practices, which Lee describes as “an impressive technology.”

FSU’s opening of the Digital Studio allows for students and faculty to have access to the newest and most powerful technology, as well as the support from trained tutors to use such technologies.

The biggest challenge facing the Digital Studio today is that its purpose is either

misunderstood or unknown. According to Rory Lee, many people (often within the English department itself) question the value of digital composition. But, he says, “digital composing isn’t a fad that will eventually fall out of fashion; rather, digital composition—just technologies in general—are changing the very way knowledge is made and understood.”

Tutor Aimee Wilson says students come in seeking help with a variety of projects, and while they have “decent computer knowledge,” they have “little knowledge of visual rhetoric.” Her job is to bridge the gap between

using technology and creating meaning. The studio is a space for students to explore the changing nature of composition.

Lee argues that understanding this change is essential: “If we do not start to acknowledge this change, if we fail to recognize how our composing practices and thus literacies are evolving, then aren’t we doing our students a disservice?” He then adds, “change is clearly afoot, as evidenced by the studio itself. But it’s only a start.”

So far, however, student response to the Digital Studio has been overwhelmingly positive, and as word spreads, more and more students are stopping by to work on projects, or just to visit. Lee notes that “our numbers have definitely increased since the studio opened” more than a year ago, as students learn about the studio and its services. These students aren’t just English majors: visitors include both graduate and undergraduate students from a wide variety of majors and programs.

“We get a pretty big range of students from different majors and years,” says Wilson, but it’s clear that there are many more students who are missing out on the benefits offered by the Digital Studio.

“It picks up later in the semester, but right now it’s kind of slow,” says Wilson. “The best thing students can do is pop in, and play around. This is a space where you can come and experiment.”

Keeping pace with the changing nature of communication

Photo by Leigh Gruwell

Writing no longer means the sole genius laboring alone over a typewriter.

To learn more about the Digital Studio, including hours, visit the website: http://english.fsu.edu/rhetcomp/digital.html


Researchas a

ByJennifer O’Malley See CLASS, page 21

process

There is a classroom quietly nestled on the outside breezeway that connects the Williams Building to next-door

neighbor Diffenbaugh. The unassuming classroom door reflects the battered strains

of Florida’s smothering waves of humidity. Splinters and cracks retell the stories of hurricanes past. The rusty hinges scrape against the frame

as the door slowly opens to reveal Laci Mat-tison’s freshman article and essay class in mid discussion. Although the classroom setup is

somewhat dreary—window-less pale yellow walls seeming-ly suffocate the circle of pea green colored desk chairs—

Mattison’s students seem unaffected, almost unaware. They offer thoughtful commentary in response to her provoking inquiries.

“How can there be more than one version of the truth?” a student asks.

“If two people see something, they will tell it differently,” another one replies. “It’s perception.”

“Yeah, ok … perspective,” the first one slowly realizes.

“So, how can we be truthful with our in-terviews?” Mattison asks.

Mattison, a first year Ph.D. student in the literature track and a teaching assistant in the First-Year Composition Program, challenges her students to think critically about the re-search process of writing. She created this ENC1144 freshman article and essay class in order to invite her students to engage in composition. The title of her class, “Re-membering Memory, Re-visioning Truth, and Re-valuing Risk,” embodies the theme of taking risks—as a thinker, as a writer, as a composer.

“I’m drawn to nonfiction as a genre and the questions of memory and truth, the gray areas in life,” Mattison explains. “Cre-

Not your parents’ freshman comp class

The title of her class,“Re-membering Memory, Re-visioning Truth, andRe-valuing Risk,” embodies the theme of taking risks—as a thinker, as a writer,as a composer.

Laci Mattison is a first year Ph.D.

student in the literature track and a teaching

assistant in the First-Year Composition

Program.Photo by Eileen Perez


When Bucky McMahon walked through the doors of the Bor-ders on Apalachee Parkway,

he had no idea who he was looking for or what to expect, but he seemed to drift right to me. We met and shook hands. As an undergraduate, I was a bit intimidated to interview someone so seasoned and respected in the literary world. McMa-hon has been featured in such magazines as GQ, Men’s Journal, Esquire, and Skin Diver. He has twice been anthologized in the Best American series for his work in sports and travel writing and wrote a sen-tence featured on Esquire’s Greatest 70 Sentences list right alongside the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

I bought him some coffee and we spoke a bit, his eyes focused and bright. He was passionate about life, about really living it. McMahon was clearly no conventional pen pusher. A self-proclaimed “run of the mill liberal” he certainly dressed the part: boat shoes, a loose Hawaiian shirt, shorts suitable for anything short of a job inter-view, his hair free flowing with streaks of gray and sun-dyed blonde. A real sandy look. You could tell he was a free spirit, a real laid back dude.

“So how did you get in to adventure journalism?”

“I just sort of drifted into it,” he said.As a youngster, he found himself drift-

ing along the shores of Neptune Beach just outside of Jacksonville. His family migrated there because his father was a corporate man, having to follow his work. “A real frontier land,” McMahon says of Neptune Beach. “It was the ’60s and the town hadn’t been devel-oped yet.” But the beach was there. He spent most of his time in the water on his Han-son Superlite surfboard avoiding school. “I was a dedicated surfer,” he explained. “You couldn’t keep me out of the water. All day, all conditions.”

Though he lacked such dedication in the classroom, his teachers saw potential in his writing.

He wasn’t exactly sure about his future,

but with some encouragement he decided on college to pursue an English degree. He came to Florida State but after a year was

disinterested and decided to leave. For the next couple years he bounced around a few other schools before deciding that college just wasn’t for him. “I should have gone to the Marines,” he says with a smile, “woulda’ gave me some direction.”

For the next seven years, he worked odd jobs, restaurants and what not, to pay the rent, but mostly he partied and got into

trouble. It was a dark time for him, he ex-plained, “I regret some things. Back then I resisted few temptations.” He says he was lonely, surrounded by many people not like him. “I was in a one-man Bohemia,” McMahon remarked.

He spent most of that seven years read-ing and reflecting, trying to find inspira-tion. “If you want to write, you have to read.” So he read and decided to go back to school to find his muse. He earned his B.A. close to home in Jacksonville at the University of North Florida in ’86, and then came to Florida State as a graduate student in the Creative Writing Program, where he also earned his Ph.D. in ’92.

McMahon found peace in Tallahas-see, the place he now calls home. He loved the atmosphere of the English department. It was like a family to him, “a village of dreams,” he called it. As a graduate student, he taught undergrad classes and also wrote a weekly humor column for the Tallahassee Democrat called “Barmadillo” about bars and local drink-ing spots, something he greatly enjoyed. “They didn’t pay me much but they let me write what I wanted.”

His fondest memory of Florida State is his cold, white, modest apartment behind the Williams Building. “It was the student ghetto,” he says, “where everything came together for me.”

He kept busy and stayed focused, and upon graduation with the recommendation of a professor, landed himself a job at Outside magazine.

In no pursuit of a ca-reer, he published his first article for Outside magazine and thus be-gan receiving offers from other publications to do travel writing pieces. The

work just came to him. “I just sort of drifted into travel writing.” That drift has led him all across the world from surfing in Nicaragua to ice-wall climbing in Colorado and even to South America, where he took indigenous hallucinogens with Amazonian shamans.

Now in his 50s he still continues to “drift

In the final terror, with your gauges ticking and your gas running low, as dead end leads to dead end and the last corridor stretches out beyond time, does the mind impose its own order, seizing the confusion of busted pipes and jagged edges and forcing them into a logical

grid, which you can then follow down to the bottom of the wreck and out—in a gust of light and love—through the wound in her side?— Bucky McMahon, “Everest at the Bottom of the Sea” (2000)

Photo courtesy of Bucky McMahon/Tom Bennett

Bucky McMahon travels the world and writes about his experiences for several magazines and publications.

Bucky McMahon, ‘Adventure Man’

One of Esquire’s 70 Best Sentences of All Time

By Joe Purdy

See McMAHON, page 22


The glamorous life ofLauren Bradshaw

Lauren Bradshaw walked across the Civic Center stage in winter 2004 graduating with degrees in creative

writing and theater. Yet, she did not have a firm idea of what she wanted to do post graduation. She always dreamed of being an actress but had doubts about making acting her career.

Bradshaw, a former resident of Roswell, Georgia, realized during her junior year of college that she wanted to pursue a degree in writing because she “always loved writing, and English was [her] best subject in school.” So as an experiment, she took an article and essay workshop class the summer before her junior year. She loved it and added creative writing as a major while also pursuing a degree in theater. However, the class that had the most impact on Bradshaw was her fiction workshop with Associate Professor Julianna Baggott. She says Baggott “was a great person to talk to, a mentor of sorts,” and the one who suggested that she go into magazine publishing.

While attending Florida State, Bradshaw led the “typical” college lifestyle. Her favorite hangout spot and bar was Bullwinkle’s, and she worked as the manager at TCBY on Tennessee Street. But after graduating from Florida State, Bradshaw was not where she expected to be. Instead, she was living with her parents in an Atlanta suburb and working at an area mall.

Breaking into the industryAs Bradshaw recalls, breaking into the

entertainment industry, or even the writing industry, took a lot of hard work and what she calls, desperation. She began by sending her resume and some “clips,” which were basically writing samples from classes, to a few publications she wanted to pursue: The Paris Review, Seventeen magazine, and Marie Claire. She heard back from The Paris Review a few weeks later and was offered an interview. Bradshaw flew to New York City, but at her interview with The Paris Review, she decided that the job might not be for her. So she literally went to the front doors of major magazines such as Seventeen, Marie Claire and CosmoGIRL!

She got past security to enter the offices of Marie Claire, but they were not looking for an intern. However, the internship coordinator

stated that CosmoGIRL! had recently posted an opportunity on ED2010.com, a website dedicated to magazine internships and jobs. Right away, Bradshaw rushed to Office Depot to use the Internet, but unfortunately, that was the “one day in history that the website was down.” So in an act of desperation, she “went straight to [their] office instead.” She met with the internship coordinator, and about a week later, while “stocking shelves at [her] retail job in Roswell,” CosmoGIRL! offered her an internship.

Her start at GlamourBradshaw was an intern for five months

and had “about twelve interviews, five freelance assignments, and one bad gig as a host at a theme restaurant.” Then through networking and a few good connections, Bradshaw became the post-grad intern at

Glamour magazine. She stayed there for a semester and, by luck of the draw, an editorial assistant left Glamour to go to Cosmopolitan; the vacant position created an opportunity for Bradshaw. She decided to interview for the job and was lucky enough to get a permanent position at Glamour. She became the editorial assistant under Entertainment Director Alison Ward Frank and two of the deputy editors.

Under the entertainment director, Bradshaw wrote “captions under paparazzi photos, reviewed new movies and albums, covered red carpet events, read a ton of tabloids, pitched actresses for fashion stories, and even interviewed celebrities for features in the magazines.” These celebrities included Vanessa Hudgens, Vanessa Williams, Jada Pinkett Smith, Hayden Panettiere, Ivanka Trump, Rachel Ray, Olivia Wilde, and lots more. She also began to work on cover shoots, such as the shoot for the October 2007 cover with America Ferrera, and to attend the Sundance Film Festival as well as the Tribeca Film Festival. In addition, Bradshaw had the opportunity to attend New York Fashion Week and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), where she interviewed people such as supermodel Heidi Klum, rapper Diddy, and actresses Christina Ricci, Diane Kruger,

and Kerry Washington. For the deputy editors at Glamour,

Bradshaw wrote captions for the fashion features and helped with the Glamour Women of the Year Awards. For this event, she served as the contact for the advisory board members, organized votes, and helped to coordinate almost everything leading up to the big annual event. Flipping through the pages of any Glamour magazine throughout the past few years, you can see Bradshaw’s name sprinkled throughout entertainment and fashion stories.

Bradshaw describes a few moments of her career at Glamour as being “surreal,” such as working the red carpet at the Met Gala and helping coordinate Glamour’s table for the White House Correspondents Dinner.

By Ashley Williams

See BRADSHAW, page 22

Recently, Bradshaw was able to do an interview on the red carpet with Clive Owen, star of the movie Duplicity.

Photo courtesy of Lauren Bradshaw


The Honors in the Major Program allows undergraduates to further develop their skills by working with professors on a project of their choosing.

Photo by Amy Parker

The thesis of Kathleen DeGuzman (far left) is literature-based. Sitting beside DeGuzman (from left) are Casey Miskowski, Ryan Clary, and Andrew Trostle, all of whose theses consist primarily of short stories they have written.

By Amy Parker

While studying abroad in London, undergraduate Kathleen DeGuzman made a discovery in her Modern British Literature class. In Sam Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners, a 10-page stream of consciousness passage caught DeGuzman’s eye—“It’s a technique you’re used to seeing in authors such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce,” she explains. “This prompted me to look at parallels between modernism, which is usually regarded as a ‘high’ aesthetic, and Caribbean literature. I read Moses Ascending, Sam Selvon’s sequel to The Lonely Londoners for a short comparative paper I had to write and found that it, too, handles language in a very ‘modernist’ way: there are tons of allusions that made me think of T.S. Eliot.” And so, a thesis idea was born.

DeGuzman is using her passion for a work of literature to fuel her thesis as part of the Honors in the Major Program. Specifically, her thesis focuses on “how Selvon fashions his own literary form, one informed by modernism yet also uniquely Caribbean.” The Honors in the Major Program, which is administered by the Honors Office, allows undergraduates to further develop their skills by working with professors on a project of their choosing. For students in English, this project entails researching an area of literature (as DeGuzman did) or writing an original work.

It is important to note that the Honors Program is not the same as the Honors in the Major Program, even though both programs are administered by the Honors Office and even though some students participate in both programs. Students in the Honors Program are invited to join that program either when they apply to Florida State as freshmen or during their first semester on campus; they do not have to write a thesis.

Meanwhile, for English majors, the Honors in the Major Program is by invitation only during (generally) the junior year. What happens is that English majors who have completed at least 60 credit hours and who have a cumulative GPA of 3.75 will be invited by the English department to

participate. In turn, these students must write a thesis and fulfill certain other requirements. Interestingly, while about 150-175 English majors were invited to participate in Fall 2009, only about 15 students decided to

join the department’s Honors in the Majors Program.

Clearly, the thesis option does not appeal to most students, but it does afford certain benefits. By writing a thesis as an undergraduate, a student can submit the work as a writing sample for master’s programs. For undergraduates, the thesis process lets them explore their passions and prepare for graduate school.

Creative thesesFor creative writing majors, Honors in

the Major students can write a collection of short stories or poems for a thesis. Under the direction of Associate Professor Julianna Baggott, senior Casey Miskowski is working on a collection of short stories that

concentrate on voice and explore the topic of magic realism. Miskowski conducted research by reading about Greek mythology to develop a character based on the god Apollo.

Like Miskowski, senior Andrew Trostle is composing a collection of short stories for his thesis; all of Trostle’s stories are set in Birmingham, Alabama, a city with which he is infatuated.

“I’m drawn to Birmingham because of how the old city - its history included - stands out against

the new skyline . . . . It’s an industrial city and has that grungy romance of trains, rust and plastered brick,” says Trostle.

“Through the guidance of my director and fiction workshop professor, [Burroway Professor of English, Mark] Winegardner, I’ve been doing an intense study of 46 short stories in order to learn the techniques of writing,” explains Trostle. “I also went and visited my friend in Birmingham, who took me around the city and gave me a tour. I had been there a couple times in the past, but this time around I took notes and two rolls of film.”

Even creative works like Trostle’s need to be researched. The photos that he took

Honors in the Major ProgramIt takes passion and persistence to write an undergraduate thesis

See HONORS, page 23


By Amy Parker

Imagine yourself among the bustle of New York like Betty Suarez from the TV show Ugly Betty or gazing out at the rainy streets of London while editing manuscripts. Sound interesting? What about being a re-nowned scholar who teaches at a world-class research institution and who has the ability to draw upon multiple disciplines? These are all possibilities for people pursuing either the Certificate in Publishing and Editing or the Certificate in Critical Theory, both of which are offered by the Department of English.

The Certificate in Publishingand Editing

The Certificate in Publishing and Edit-ing is aimed at providing basic editing skills to students. According to the Certificate in Publishing and Editing’s di-rector and Robert O. Law-ton Distinguished Professor of English, S.E. Gontarski, a wide range of students pursue this certificate. He categorized them into three groups: 1) state workers who seek credentials, 2) English majors who value their writ-ing and want to edit their own work, and 3) people who want to pursue editing or pub-lishing and want entry-level credentials. Stu-dents can be seniors, graduate students, or people from the community who enroll as special students.

Specifically, what is learned in editing classes? Certificate in Publishing and Editing student Allison Helms said she has learned

a great deal from her editing cours-es: “The certifi-cate courses have helped me im-prove my editing skills, provided me with practical, hands-on editing experience, and taught me about the book and pub-lishing industries.” In particular, Pro-fessor Bruce Bick-ley’s Line Editing class was helpful,

because it “reacquainted me with a lot of the intricacies of grammar and taught me how to write queries in a tactful way,” Helms said. By discussing the editing techniques of her classmates, Helms learned from them and the process “enabled me to become a more careful and attentive reader/editor.” Helms plans to edit for a magazine or newspaper in the future.

While internships and practicums in edit-ing are not required for the certificate, they are encouraged. In these, students do hands-on editing projects on an ad hoc basis. The English department can help students ar-range internships, but ultimately, students can edit wherever they can obtain an intern-ship and handle the expenses, whether it’s in New York, Oxford, or even Tallahassee. For practicums, students work on a professor’s project with their supervision. Practicums and internships give students hands-on ex-perience with companies, professors, and publications.

The Certificate in Critical TheoryThe second certificate program offered

by the department, the Certificate in Criti-cal Theory, was established in 1989. Director and Associate Professor Barry J. Faulk said students who pursue this certificate are “in-terested in finding fresh approaches, that is, fresh ways of thinking, about their subject area.” Faulk continues to describe the diver-sity of subject areas from “Virginia Woolf to postmodern fiction to poetry and gender

theory to media studies.” Ultimately, many critical theory students want to teach at re-search universities, and the certificate is tai-lored to meet this goal.

Why is it important to have a Certificate in Critical Theory? Faulk said, “Basic theory literacy has long been a distinguishing feature of graduate study in English. Theory literacy also enables interdisciplinary projects, and all

the most important develop-ments in humanistic study in the past century have been multi-disciplinary in nature.” He added, “Studying theory encourages you to think about the bigger picture, about the various social, po-litical, and ethical contexts of scholarship.”

For example, poet Kara Candito is pur-suing the Certificate in Critical Theory as a Ph.D. student. As an undergraduate, Candito majored in creative writing and philosophy and now hopes she can add to her back-ground by pursuing critical theory. As for her future career path, she said, “Right now, I’m in the process [of] applying to tenure track and visiting professor positions in creative writing, so I hope to be in academia. Regard-less of the outcome of my job search, I’m confident that studying critical theory has definitely made me a smarter and more dis-criminating writer and citizen.”

In short, both of these new certificates provide further credentials to students pur-suing an array of careers. Though similar cer-tificates and degrees are available elsewhere, FSU provides the opportunity for students to expand their professional and academic repertoires. So if you’re looking to break into the publishing business, want to have a well-rounded approach to your area of study, or just want to become a better writer, the cer-tificates in publishing and editing and critical theory might appeal to you.

Certificate programs boost job possibilities

“The certificate courses have helped me improve my editing skills, provided me with practical, hands-on editing experience, and taught me about the book and publishing industries.”

– Allison Helms

“Studying theory encourages you to think about the bigger picture, about the various social, political, and ethical contexts of scholarship.”

– Barry Faulk,director, Certificate in Critical Theory

S.E. Gontarski is the director of the Certificate in Publishing and Editing.


An English degree canopen the door to manydifferent opportunities By Sarah Gwin

If you are an English major, then you have probably been asked, “What are you going to do with an English degree?” The obvious answer will probably be a teacher, but many graduates choose other careers. An English degree can be a valuable asset in many fields because an employee who is well read and has excellent writing skills is valued in the workforce.

Why English is a good choiceEnglish majors learn basic skills that are

important in the business world. The director of the Florida State University Career Center, Jeff W. Garis, Ph.D., says, “English is a very good major because of your ability to communicate both in writing and verbally. It is one of those core skills in the business market.” An English degree tells employers that a job candidate can read, write, analyze material, and speak effectively.

Many English graduates also possess creative, flexible minds that can offer fresh ideas that many companies need. Jennifer Stan Diaz, a Florida State English graduate of 2002, agrees that “a degree in English

makes you a versatile candidate for many careers. Companies and organizations want someone they can mold, especially in young professionals, and an English degree gives you that solid foundation. My writing and literature classes taught me to think creatively while effectively communicating a point or message.” Diaz currently holds a job as the special projects manager in the Governor’s Office of Adoption and Child Protection, where she writes policy and coordinates media and state events.

Advertising and public relationsEnglish majors are terrific choices for

positions in public relations and advertising because these fields need quick and creative

thinkers who can also write well. “I currently am part of the Big Wild Communications & MediAdvocacy team in Middleton, Wisconsin,” says Shauna Breneman, a 2009 English

major from Florida State. Although Breneman also majored in public relations, her English degree is a

big part of her career in advertizing and

public relations for her company. “With national

clients and a fast-paced environment, I am honored

to have taken a direct role in many creative aspects of developing advertising

campaigns and materials.” Through her English education, she learned that editing is one of the best

skills any professional can acquire. “I use my creative writing-garnered editing skills every day of my professional career; I appreciate creative deadlines and an open mind, and I gladly accept and contribute feedback.”

Technical writing and editingMany non-publishing companies need

someone with the ability to check over the company’s written work or to write about technical products and services in a way that makes sense to non-technical users and clients. One English major, Dannielle Rodriguez, graduated from Florida State in 2008 and found a job working for a military training company as an in-house editor. “I edit technical manuals for anything that is

on board a Navy ship, from engines to ice cream makers. I edit the manuals by checking the content for jargon, inconsistencies, misspellings, grammar, etc. My degree helps because I’m able to review at a pace that most people here cannot. I am able to understand how to create structured sentences and think beyond the box. Being an English major was the reason I got the callback to work here.”

Think outside the boxYou can become something like a

journalist with an English degree, but you can also think outside of the box and look into becoming something like a reservation specialist. Nicole Remele graduated from Florida State with an English degree in 2008 and became the senior reservation specialist for Dolphin Cruises, Inc., a company that operates a dolphin excursion and tour boat.

“My job basically consists of making reservations and secretarial tasks,” Remele says. “What I do at work doesn’t have much to do with poetry, essays, or anything that I studied in my classes. My English degree does help quite a bit, though. We get e-mail inquiries pretty frequently, and it always helps to be able to give customers a thorough, well-worded response that will not only answer their question, but also further interest them in taking our cruise. Recently, we have started responding to reviews of guest experiences on TripAdvisor.com, which, appropriately, has been included in my job description. Whenever a letter needs to be written or proofread, I am the go-to girl because of my English degree. When I started this job, I honestly had no idea how helpful my degree would be.”

Freelance workIf all else fails, you can always put your

English degree to use by looking into freelance writing. While the work may not be steady, it is nice to set your own hours and work at home. Katie Dozier, who graduated from Florida State as an English major in 2007,

You have an English degree: now what?

See JOBS, page 24

An English degree tells em-ployers that a job candidate can read, write, analyze material, and speak effectively.

Photo by Sarah Gwin


By Jennifer Dale

If you are a current Florida State student or alumnus who is looking for a way to showcase your career strengths to employers or graduate schools, you will be interested in an innovative digital tool offered by the FSU Career Center. Using this tool, called the online Career Portfolio, you can store your resume or curriculum vitae; display your transcript (if you want to); list your references; highlight your experiences and skills; and upload digital samples of your work. In a nutshell, the Career Portfolio offers one-stop-shopping for potential employers or graduate schools.

For English majors, the online portfolio offers an easy way to highlight digital versions of your compositions. For example, if you are particularly proud of a paper or short story you have written, a PowerPoint presentation you have given, or a video or podcast you have created, you can upload it or link it to a special section of your Career Portfolio. That way, a prospective employer or graduate school can get a more extensive

look at your strengths and skills to see what sets you apart from others. Since the April 2002 launch of the Career Portfolio, more than 64,000 Florida State students and alumni have created a portfolio.

According to Grace Chi, an alumna of Florida State University, “The Career Portfolio is one of the best investments you can make with your time. It not only helps you to organize your entire college career into neat categories, it challenges you to think deeply about your experiences and skills. I look at my Career Portfolio as a powerful tool for interviews as well as personal growth and skill development.”

All of the information is managed directly by the user and can be updated as often as necessary. Users can not only choose who can view their portfolio, but whether the person can view it in its entirety or only be granted permission to view specific sections. Users can also create more than one portfolio and customize each portfolio to their respective goals.

Users can name their portfolio depending on their specific situation, for example “My Career Portfolio” for those seeking employment or “Graduate School Portfolio” for those seeking to apply to graduate school. Users are able to rank each section so that they can be viewed in a certain order.

According to Katy Keene, an alumna of Florida State University, “Accumulating all of your projects and experiences in a single space can be difficult, but the online Career Portfolio allows me to simply update my information when I choose and as my work grows. With the Career Portfolio, I am easily able to send my resume and show my skills and experiences to any potential employer

I choose to share it with. It has been a great success for me and it has been a very impressive tool when applying for jobs.”

Granting others access to view your portfolio requires an access key or password. According to the Career Center, “You can

create as many access keys as you wish for each portfolio. You many want to create different access keys for each person to whom you will be providing access.” This will come in handy because the service allows you to track each time an access code has been used to view your portfolio.

For example, by giving out your individual passwords to each prospective employer or each admissions committee, you will be able to view the date, time and number of uses of each code. This knowledge will provide helpful insight as to where you might stand during your application period.

According to the Career Center, “To provide access to someone, you will need to provide them with your e-mail address and the access key. You can also send an e-mail directly from the portfolio with access instructions.”

Creating the portfolio is the first step. Although students and alumni may use this

The portfolio is separatedinto six categories

Profile. The first area viewers will see is your profile, where, according to a Career Center pamphlet, “[y]ou can highlight items such as your background and goals, or even write a cover letter directed at an individual viewer.”

Resume. The second area in the portfolio is the resume/curriculum vitae section, where you can post multiple versions of either document.

Skills. The skills matrix consists of a list of 10 different categories of career and life skills such as communication, teamwork, and leadership. Like the rest of the portfolio, this section can be customized, as you can add other skills that relate more to your major or career path. Through this section, you can explain how you have learned and excelled in these important attributes.

Transcript. This section allows you to upload your transcript from the university and post it directly to this screen.

Artifacts. A pamphlet describing the Career Portfolio says, “This section will allow you to show off actual pieces of your work on the Web, including class projects, research papers, course assignments, etc. Whether you upload photographs you’ve taken or a PowerPoint presentation you’ve created, your artifacts and examples will help you stand out from other candidates.”

References. The final category gives you a place to organize both your professional and academic reference contact information.

What do employers thinkof the Career Portfolio?

According to a Career Center poll, 86% of the employers who judged the portfolio contest said they would use the online portfolio in assessing candidates.

When the same employers were asked to rank the usefulness of the various components of the portfolio system, they gave the following answers:

1. Resume (most useful)2. Artifacts section3. Profile4. Transcript 5. References

Showcase yourself digitally

“I look at my Career Portfolio as a powerful tool for interviews as well as personal growth and skill development.”

– Grace Chi, FSU alumna

See PORTFOLIO, page 20


By Sarah Cleeland

The concept of going green is more than turning off the faucet in the bathroom or recycling notebooks at the end of the semester. The Department of English as well as the rest of the Florida State community is making a campus-wide effort to conserve, conserve, conserve.

As early as Fall 2007, the department began cutting back on paper use by rationing the number of photocopies per instructor to 4,000 per year and issuing each instructor three reams of paper (1,500 sheets) per semester. Instead of using paper handouts for assignments and readings, instructors are encouraged to post these items online to a secure course system known as Blackboard.

Additionally, students can communicate with instructors and classmates through Blackboard course tools.

Meanwhile, some professors have not only accepted the paper restrictions but have taken further steps of their own. “This is a topic

close to my heart,” says writer-in-residence and poetry instructor Barbara Hamby. “My husband David Kirby and I try to recycle as much as possible.

“[My husband and I] also use paper on both sides, which makes for some weirdness and confusion, but it’s worth it,” says Hamby.

Printing on both sides of a page has become increasingly popular amongst students as well. Robbie Dantzler, a recent English graduate, adds that “a few teachers

even gave us the option of printing on both sides of the paper, reducing the margins on rough drafts, and even occasionally told us we could turn in hand-written assignments on the reverse side of previously graded assignments.”

Possibly the easiest and most significant way to conserve paper is to not use paper at all. And no, this doesn’t mean to stop turning in assignments.

“In most of my classes we can e-mail assignments instead of printing out hard copies,” says current English and art double-

major Amanda Kimble. “They are small and simple things but if everyone tries, then it will make a big impact.”

Dantzler agrees. “Quite a few of my teachers gave us the option of turning in all of our assignments online,” he says. “They still allowed us to

print them up and bring them, but most took advantage of turning them in online. It saves time, money, trees, and space.”

While saving paper may be the easiest way to go green, the university offers a fun way to get involved as well. Anyone who is a sports fan within the department or the Florida State community can get excited about Florida State’s Garnet and Gold Goes Green Program. Large recycling bins, clearly marked with plastic, glass, and metal sections, can be found all over campus thanks to this initiative. Also known as G4, the program is a partnership with Tri-Eagle Sales, Inc as well as FSU Athletics. The program is completely volunteer-driven and will count toward volunteer hours. For each home football and baseball game, approximately 20 to 40 volunteers are needed to arrive two and a half hours before kickoff or the first pitch. Nearly anything that can be purchased at these games can be recycled on Florida State’s campus.

If you are interested in volunteering with the G4 program, you can email your name and availability to [email protected]

A green education: department conserves

[Recycling] is a topic close to my heart”

– writer-in-residence Barbara Hamby

formalism. “We aren’t just trying to reproduce the way literature was taught in the past or the way English departments used to look,” says Taylor. “We are trying instead to develop the potential of new ways of looking at the history of culture.” The HoTT program currently uses a variety of methodologies to build on the existing excellence in text technologies at FSU and to make major contributions to the scholarly advancement of text technologies in general.

And what is the engine that drives this educational train? Research. One of the core HoTT faculty members, Professor

Elaine Treharne, says that all of her teaching is research-led. “Because of the innovative ways in which HoTT encourages students and scholars to look at texts—transnationally, across language borders, and transchronologically through periods—I personally find it a very stimulating subject to teach.”

Moving forward, Taylor says, “We are

as a group working hard to build relationships with faculty in many departments, to expand and better utilize the ‘Special Collections’ area of the university, and—our first priority—to find ways to get better financial support for our graduate students who represent the future of our

profession. A graduate program is only as good as the students it can recruit, support, and nourish.”

From tablet to digitization and everything in between, the HoTT program is on the cutting edge of both the investigation and the interpretation of all known text technologies. For more information, go to the HoTT website at http://hott.fsu.edu.

“Because of the innovative ways in which HoTT encourages students and scholars to look at texts—transnationally, across language borders, and transchronologically through periods—I personally find it a very stimulating subject to teach.”

– Elaine Treharne

HoTT from page 9


By Leigh Gruwell

It’s your first day of college: you walk in to your ENC1101 class with no idea what to ex-pect. Your instructor seems nice enough, but wait—you have to write at least 3,000 words in just one semester? You have to write and edit multiple drafts of three papers? What exactly is this first-year composition class about, anyway?

Enter Writing ’Noles, a digital guide to navigating first-year writing courses, collab-oratively written and designed by upperclass-men of the new editing, writing, and media track. Students in Associate Professor Kris-tie Fleckenstein’s Summer 2009 Writing and Editing in Print and Online course created the e-journal in order to provide additional support for first-year writing students, help-ing them learn the ropes and become suc-cessful writers at FSU. The stakes are high: student success in first-year composition classes is linked closely to retention and eventual graduation.

Contributors to Writing ’Noles provide first-hand advice and guidance specifically for first-year writers, with more than 20 ar-ticles addressing topics such as “A Writing Community” and “FYC Fears.” While Writ-ing ’Noles offers information specifically for freshmen writing students, it also serves as a guide for navigating the often difficult tran-sition to college life.

“While FSU has several useful resources for incoming freshmen, Writing ’Noles shows first-year composition students where they can find these resources and how to use them for their benefit in a way that, hopefully, the students find engaging,” Elaine Burghardt,

the journal’s editor, says. “We think it’s im-portant that freshmen feel they are moving to a home away from home.”

Production of Writing ’Noles began when Fleckenstein’s student writers submitted letters of application for editorial, design, and writing positions. Together, the class conceptualized, designed, and wrote the e-

journal from scratch. Their efforts paid off. “The students loved doing it and take a great deal of pride ― as well they should ― in the final product,” Fleckenstein says.

Writing ’Noles acts as a resource for incom-ing students, but its production also provided a hands-on learning experience for the stu-dent staff of designers and writers. Students worked to research, write, and edit their ar-ticles. The class then decided together on a

design plan, which the class design team executed.

Burghardt describes how the class had to ne-gotiate and evaluate their own composing processes: “Our staff looked at sever-al rhetorical e-journals and websites to analyze factors

we liked and disliked about the design and why. We wanted our e-journal to be easily ac-cessible and aesthetically pleasing.”

Fleckenstein believes the value of Writing ’Noles lies beyond the practical advice it of-fers first-year writing students: “First, it is an example of writing in action, written by un-derclassmen for underclassmen. Second, it

has information useful for the first-year composition student. Third, it allays fears that the first-year student has about succeed-ing in college.”

The response has been promising. Fleck-enstein’s class hosted an open house to in-troduce the e-journal to English department faculty, staff, and students, where they re-ceived valuable feedback and positive reac-tions. Six students then participated in an internship to revise and finalize the current issue of Writing ’Noles.

Instructors are now sharing the e-journal with their first-year composition students, and the site is available on the English de-partment’s first-year composition website.Check it out for yourself at http://english3.fsu.edu/~kfleckenstein/summer_2009/In-dex.html

Upper-division students create digital guide for frosh

Writing ’Noles acts as a resource for incoming students, but its production also provided a hands-on learning experience for the student staff of designers and writers.

“The students loved doing it and take a great deal of pride —as well they should—in the final product.”

– Kristie Fleckenstein


Treharne from page 8

these texts. So far in her personal research at FSU, she has worked on about 12 important manuscripts, some of which include religious texts from nuns of 14th century Germany that contain 13th century music manuscripts inside the binding.

Prolific professorHer move to the United States has

brought Treharne no lull in the amount of work and activities she has taken on. Besides being a mother of two, a professor, and an editor for a bevy of publications, she is also a fruitful author. In 2008 she published 80,000 words in print; this past year was even more productive, considering she will have edited or authored five books published in 2009 alone. She has recently had two books that have gone to press. After finishing her research within Strozier, Treharne hopes to compile her discoveries of these unknown texts into a new book.

Being a professor has also had a major impact not only on the development of her fieldwork, but on her thought process as well. Treharne says that, along with her teaching, these three years at FSU have had a great deal of influence on her research and the direction it is now taking. Treharne encourages students to think of books as artifacts as opposed to only appreciating the texts they contain, admitting, “it can be

difficult to teach English students to think of books as anything but just text.”

She is trying to emphasize the physicality attributed to texts that often go overlooked; a viewpoint she is actively trying to incorporate in a book tentatively called The Sensual Book. In it she will discuss how people working with high-resolution pictures of text cannot get an accurate feeling of the book as a whole. Treharne argues that to truly understand a text completely involves “using all of your senses to access the information the book contains. This is not suggesting simply that everyone touch the book, but that we can only get nuanced information from the book by using all of our senses.”

Recognized her callingat an early age

Why did manuscripts become her passion? “Maybe it’s because I’m really nosey,” she jokes. Treharne admits to falling in love with any history that has a human story behind it that she can imagine. It also certainly helped that she grew up in Wales, spent many years living around Cambridge (England) with its rich history, and that her own mother

was a historian. “By the age of 12 I knew that I wanted to be a medievalist,” Treharne says. “I remember going into medieval cathedrals and touching the walls—the walls I knew hundreds and hundreds of years ago people had touched in the same spot. This seemed so interesting to me.”

Treharne’s intense passion for these books is something she tries to instill in students as well. She encourages students to see how much effort was put into these manuscripts and forces them to think: Why were these made? “Human beings created these manuscripts, and they weren’t very different from us,” Treharne says. “Although we like to think our culture has come so far by means of technology, it has not changed us in the way we think. We are not that different.”

The thrill of reading and studying these manuscripts to her “is like being let loose in someone’s letter drawer.” Treharne is ecstatic over her discoveries but asserts that there may be similar treasures still hidden in Special Collections. After she finishes researching her first finds in more depth, she promises she will keep digging.

service to maintain records for their own use, it is more likely that most users will create their online portfolio in order to showcase their work to others.

According to Florida State University alumna Alice Brown, “The portfolio has been so useful in helping me realize what skills I’ve learned through the experiences I’ve had and classes I’ve taken. The portfolio really has proven to be a powerful tool that forced me, for the first time, to consider what I’ve done with my college career. I’ve been able to use my portfolio to write more

effective personal statements for internships and create a descriptive, impressive resume. It brings a whole new way of thinking about classes; instead of just evaluating success through test scores and completed requirements, I’m seeing what valuable skills

I’ve gained that will help me in the future.”

For those students who do take advantage of this service, the Career Center holds a university-wide contest, which began back in 2003. According to the Career Center’s Career Portfolio Programs Evaluation

Report, the contest was implemented for two reasons. “First, there was a lack of information regarding the quality and content of career portfolios being created by FSU students. Second, there was a need to increase awareness among employers about the CPP [Career Portfolio Program] and to learn more about their inclination to use it in the evaluation of candidates.”

This contest yields yet another benefit for creating a portfolio. According to the Career Center, “Cash scholarships in the amount of $500, $300, and $100 were awarded to the first, second, and third place winners.”

Myrna P. Hoover, the program director of Employer Relations & Recruitment Services, says, “In any type of economy—but especially a recession—using all of the resources a Career Center has to offer will help students find internships and full-time jobs faster than searching on their own. The Career Portfolio provides students with a tool to be prepared for even the toughest interview questions by helping students to analyze their skills, where they developed them, and how they can put them to use in a career. The Career Center provides comprehensive career services to meet the needs of FSU students.”

In addition to the digital portfolio, the Career Center, which is located in the Dunlap Success Center on Woodward Avenue, offers many other services to students and alumni. For more information, contact the center at (850) 644.6431 or visit their website at www.career.fsu.edu

Portfolio from page 17

Treharne encourages stu-dents to think of books as artifacts as opposed to only appreciating the texts they contain, admit-ting, “it can be difficult to teach English students to think of books as anything but just text.”

“In any type of economy—but especially a recession—using all of the resources a Career Center has to offer will help students find internships and full-time jobs faster than searching on their own.”

– Myrna P. Hoover,program director of Employer Relations

& Recruitment Services


ative nonfiction is interested in ideas, in the thought process, in the way the mind works. I think this genre challenges students to question and complicate easy answers.”

Although this class is offered as an alterna-tive to ENC1102, a research-oriented class for first-year students that follows ENC1101, it resolutely reinforces the fundamental goal of FSU’s First-Year Composition Program: to teach writing as a recursive and frequently collaborative process of invention, drafting, and revising.

“This class enables students to push past the personal essay that they are familiar with in ENC1101,” Mattison says. “Throughout the course of the semester, students will become familiar with different genres: the memoir, the nature essay, the travel essay, and new journalism.”

Relying on Robert Root, Jr. and Michael Steinberg’s The Fourth Genre as the class’s con-necting thread, Mattison helps students ex-plore the “gray area” that is the fourth genre of creative nonfiction, also referred to as literary or narrative nonfiction. The aim of creative nonfiction is to include extensive re-

search that results in factually accurate infor-mation in addition to demonstrating literary style and technique.

According to Root and Steinberg, their text is “both literary and writerly, focusing on the form and acknowledging the literary impulse in nonfiction as a fourth genre equivalent in scope to the three genres of poetry, fiction, and drama.” As Mattison’s students tackle this emerging genre, she supports them as they confront questions of truth during the writing and revising process.

“They revise toward truth and play with the malleable element of memory,” Mattison says.

One of the primary objectives of this composition course is to not only introduce students to the research process, but also demonstrate how to conduct research ethi-cally, accurately, and efficiently.

Mattison explains, “I want my students to find that research itself is a creative process.”

For the class’s research paper, Mattison invites students to take a risk and write cre-ative nonfiction. They have the opportunity to experiment with the nature essay, literary journalism, the travel narrative, or the his-torical/personal essay. The parameters for the assignment allow for

the students to write about their obsessions, curiosities, concerns, and paranoia.

“I expect students to craft their essays in order to establish a clear theme, the thesis of creative nonfiction,” Mattison says. “Part of writing creative nonfiction is not just an ex-amination of the self but also of the world,

so the research paper challenges students to move outside of what they know, to explore what they don’t know. Research is part of this discovery of the self and the world.”

In order to prepare her students for their research paper venture, Mattison instructed them to read an excerpt from Steve Al-mond’s Candyfreak, a personal memoir that reveals the author’s obsessive sugar addition. Before beginning the class discussion, Mat-tison reaches into her red, leather-textured bag and exposes a colossal bag of mini-chocolate bars.

“Last night’s reading made me so hungry,” she confesses.

Mattison hurls the bag to a nearby stu-dent, and overcome with craving, the student gnaws teeth-first into the corner of the bag. Before Mattison can even pose a question about Almond’s freakish fixation with candy, an adjacent student abruptly interjects her opinion about the writing style of the piece. This unexpected outburst prompts other students to eagerly join the conversation. Ex-cited exchanges bounce from one student to the next across the circle of students. Quietly taking a place among the students, careful not to disrupt the lively discussion, Mattison subtly nibbles on her Snickers. She watches contently as her students begin thinking and speaking critically about writing.

“This course encourages students to be courageous in their writing and confident in what they create on the page,” Mattison says.

Although all of this is taking place in a classroom quietly nestled on the outside breezeway that connects the Williams Build-ing to next-door neighbor Diffenbaugh, the unassuming classroom door, once opened, reveals the lively excitement of emerging writers.

Union, N.C. Lathan also studies “Bernice Robinson, a Charleston, South Carolina beautician who created the original South Carolina Sea Island Citizenship School curriculum, and Esau Jenkins, a self-employed community activist who initiated and assisted in organizing the early Highlander sponsored Citizenship School project involving adult literacy and social activism.”

Beyond the classroomWhile Lathan loves teaching and doing

research, she admits that when she goes

home she likes to relax and turn “off the scholar switch.” One of the activities she likes to do at home is watch reality TV.

“I have been able to figure out on VH1 and all those other shows who’s going to get a TV show. I knew Ms. New York was gonna get one and Daisy from ‘Rock of Love’ was gonna get one. It’s hilarious to me—they’re all so animated.” Not only does Lathan use reality TV as a way to relax after a long day,

but she also thinks it helps her relate to her students.

Though Lathan has only been in Tallahassee a few months, she looks forward to the years to come at Florida State. While she will miss custard ice cream and the first snowfall, palm trees have provided a good trade-off.

“I love it. I look out my office window, and I see palm trees. That’s a good thing.”

Lathan from page 5While Lathan loves teaching and doing research, she admits that when she goes home she likes to relax and turn ‘off the scholar switch.’ One of the activities she likes to do at home is watch reality TV.

Class from page 11

“Part of writing creative nonfiction is not just an examination of the self but also of the world, so the research paper challenges students to move outside of what they know, to explore what they don’t know. Research is part of this discovery of the self and the world.”

– Laci Mattison


habit to push senior graduate students to finish their dissertations. She would often joke when she saw them, “What are you doing here—shouldn’t you be writing?”

Brock was much more than just a trusted advisor to students at the university; she was a friend. As English instructor and former graduate student Dustin Anderson recalls, “Debra made this department feel like more than a place to work. She made it feel like you were part of a family. I mean that literally. Every Thanksgiving she made sure

that anyone without someplace to go for dinner knew that they were welcome at her table. It’s a big difference between someone just inviting you and someone making you feel welcome.”

After 35 years of service to Florida State and a heartfelt sendoff from the department she meant so much to, Brock says that now she’s just taking it one day at a time. She is

excited to be able to spend more time with her grandchildren than she was able to before, due to the demanding work schedule she had for all those years.

Of all the things that Brock will miss about her time at the university, she says that it will be socializing with all of the faculty, staff, and students that she has come to consider as friends.

Brock from page 7

One weekend, she had a chance to shadow an actress who introduced her to a few friends at a Vanity Fair party. “I still have her cell number in my phone, but I refuse to erase it, ’cause it reminds me of that night,” Bradshaw said. Going into the web

In the beginning of 2009, the web editor of Glamour.com asked Bradshaw if she would be interested in writing about celebrity relationships on a daily basis. She knew the workload would be hefty, but the web was something she always wanted to venture into. On Glamour.com, you’ll see Bradshaw’s previous posts under the “Smitten” section in Sex, Love & Life. For her, all of this web experience was “pretty awesome.”

A new beginningAfter a little over three years at Glamour,

in late summer 2009, Bradshaw realized she wanted to venture out of her current position as assistant entertainment editor and try something new. She really loved working on the web and, after hearing about a job opening at Sugar Publishing, Inc. from a friend, she decided to apply for a position as an entertainment blogger. When she read the description of what the job would entail —casting announcements, new TV series

updates, and movie and album reviews—she knew this was her dream job. After applying, participating in a few interviews, and meeting with the founder and editor, Bradshaw was offered the job. She moved from New York City to San Francisco to start working at BuzzSugar, a fun and informative blog of daily entertainment news. Bradshaw describes BuzzSugar as “your in-the-know friend who always has tips on the latest cool bands and watches a ton of TV.”

At BuzzSugar, Bradshaw reads various websites about the day’s entertainment news and comes up with ideas to pitch to the two editors on the site. She writes “between four and five posts, which could be anything from a slideshow of the best dance movies of all time to a review of Matt Damon’s latest film.” She and the BuzzSugar team split up their share of posts each day and write about interesting, unique topics in the entertainment world. Recently, Bradshaw was able to do an interview on the red carpet with Clive Owen, star of the movie Duplicity. She admits she got a little jumbled up talking to him and “had to keep replaying [her] questions in [her] head to stay focused.”

Today, Bradshaw is somewhere she never expected to be. The only way she can describe her life and all that she has experienced is with one word, surreal.

“I didn’t start at FSU with the intention of doing what I’m doing now,” Bradshaw said.

“Keeping an open mind, networking, and keeping my writing skills sharp was key – but most importantly, never giving up.”

Bradshaw from page 13

Photo courtesy of Lauren Bradshaw

Alumna Lauren Bradshaw enjoys her visit to Greece.

“Debra made this department feel like more than a place to work. She made it feel like you were part of a family.”

― Dustin Anderson,English instructor and former graduate student

with a purpose.” “I don’t plan too far ahead. I just let life

come to me. I keep hope for progress and experience—you won’t get rich [doing what I’m doing].” And McMahon is content with that, happy just experiencing life in his bo-hemia. For now he enjoys his time at home reading and writing. And he’s still ventur-ing off all across the world. For a Novem-

ber 2009 piece he wrote for Men’s Journal, he went to Easter Island, 600 miles off the coast of Chile, where he plans to be the first since 1867 to reenact the Birdman Ritual of the extinct Rapa Nui tribe, a race down a volcano followed by a swim across shark-inhabited waters to a neighboring island.

It seems obvious that McMahon is still that Neptune Beach surf bum at heart drift-ing from experience to experience. In 2005 he was awarded an honorary plaque that read “If you haven’t grown up by age 50 you don’t

have to.” When I asked McMahon if that accurately describes who he is, he remarked with a bright smile, “Writing fits a young man’s lifestyle. I like to think I’m still young.”

As our meeting came to an end, I watched McMahon exit Borders through the side door near the coffee shop, opposite the way he came. I couldn’t help but wonder where he was headed.

“See you in the water,” he said. Then he threw his coffee out and drifted

away.

McMahon from page 12


2000-level-and-up English courses. Stephanie Cameron Kennedy is definitely one of the key people who help the undergraduate Eng-lish program at Florida State run smoothly.

While only about 50% of her workday in-volves speaking with students, Kennedy does value that time because she enjoys working one-on-one with students. “I hope to give students a sense of their remaining require-ments and offer a wealth of options for achieving degree and career goals,” she says.

In addition, Kennedy encourages all stu-dents to intern or volunteer. “Get practi-cal and professional skills in your intended career field before graduation,” she urges. “Think about what your ideal career would be; then Google it—find someone in that field, research their credentials, and see if you can intern with them.”

Molly Schulte missed Summer 2009 and part of the following fall on maternity leave. After having her first child, a baby boy named Blake,

Schulte is back at work to save needy students once again. The Montana na-tive graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in applied math. After getting her master’s in biomedical math at Florida State, she is continuing here at FSU to get her Master of Social Work degree. Outside of her advising job, Schulte volunteers in area prisons and loves it. She is passionate about her future goals, which include pursuing a Ph.D. in so-cial work and making positive changes in the prison system.

A former teaching assistant in the math department at Florida State, Schulte has been an advisor for a little over three years and really enjoys it. She encourages students to remember their advisors no matter what kind of issues they are having. “I like that

I get to help people every day, whether I am advising them on remaining re-quirements or re-ferring them to the counseling center,” Schulte says.

Helping students gain a thorough un-derstanding of their requirements and showing them where

they can go to find information are just a few of her goals for each advising appointment. Schulte hopes to give students a sense of di-rection “not only in terms of courses for the next semester, but also in terms of oppor-tunities and their future.” Outside of meet-ing with students, she attends meetings and conferences with her fellow advisors as well as university deans.

Schulte reminds students to always read their e-mail. The advisors often have really valuable information, and the only means of relaying it to their students is through e-mail. She also encourages students to volunteer and intern because she believes the value of the time spent in these activities should not be overlooked.

There is no denying that students are a bit greedy when it comes to academic advising. Our stressful schedules make us demand in-formation and solutions now, and we freak out when we have to wait. Thankfully, we can count on advisors to course-map our fears away.

Advisors from page 6

“captured the grungy, Kerouac romance of Birmingham.” By taking photos of the city and exploring it, Trostle has gotten to know his setting.

Profile of anHonors in the Major student

So, what kind of student writes an Honors in the Major thesis? Clearly, a passionate one. The English department’s honors liaison, Associate Professor Kristie Fleckenstein, describes them as “students who are interested in pursuing focused research or creative production that requires careful planning and execution.” Like DeGuzman, Miskowski, and Trostle, “these students derive pleasure from imagining, working on, and completing a complex project. The range of interests is wide, but all honors students share a fascination with intellectual/creative work,” says Fleckenstein. In addition, English Honors in the Major students must take six thesis hours and six hours of ENG4938,

the honors seminar, in which they engage in discussions about selected texts in a seminar format.

With the advice of a committeeAs part of the creative process of a thesis,

students can also pick their committee. This committee is led by a thesis director and two other professors, one from an outside field. When taking thesis hours, students work with their thesis director and committee. The committee guides the student through research and writing. After students have written their theses, they defend their work in front of this committee.

With the help of her thesis director, Associate Professor Maxine Montgomery, and her committee, DeGuzman is exploring Caribbean culture in London, modernism, and postcolonial theory. Senior William Boyce is working with Professor David Kirby to explore writing Christianity-influenced poetry. Kirby is encouraging him to jot down his thoughts in a “bits journal” where he collects snippets of conversation and ideas. Boyce uses this journal to help him write his own poetry for his thesis.

As students begin to write their theses, the stress often gets to them. Writing helps students learn to discipline themselves and set up a schedule to meet their deadlines. In Fall 2009, senior Ryan Clary was wrapping up work on a collection of short stories, which he was scheduled to defend in front of his committee in November. Clary writes three to four hours every day and claims that figuring out a work schedule and living life as a writer is difficult. Most students wish they had more than two semesters to write their thesis. “There’s never going to be a good time to write,” says Clary. “You have to work.”

When asked what advice he would give to other students working on an honors thesis, William Boyce compared the process to seeing the light at the end of a dark tunnel. “Sometimes you get distracted by looking at the graffiti,” he joked.

But in the end, students feel a sense of accomplishment. “I’ve learned to pace myself,” Clary noted. Students who have written a thesis have prepared themselves for graduate school and beyond.

Where will this process take them? “We’ll see at the end of the show,” says Trostle.

Honors from page 14

“Get practical and professional skills in your intended career field before graduation.” –Stephanie Cameron Kennedy

“We know all the shortcuts.”–Brandy Haddock


makes “a good deal of income writing poker articles and restaurant reviews” as a freelancer. There are many freelance opportunities such as writing for a magazine or website. Craigslist, monster.com, freelancewritinggigs.com, freelancejobopenings.com, and freelancewriting.com are a few websites you can use to search for freelance work.

Four uses Garis explains that an English degree

can be used in four ways. “The first is jobs

related to English degree like teaching. The second is somewhat related like advertising. The third is unrelated, and one out of three English majors will go into one of these jobs. The last way to use your English degree is to go to a graduate school like law school and many other programs.”

Career Center

During your job hunt, consider using the Career Center at Florida State. “The Career Center has many resources to help match your major with a job. We have many books and online resources,” Garis said. Visit www.

career.fsu.edu for more information.With a degree in English, your career

options are wide open. Many jobs require just a college degree, and there is no broader degree than English. The workforce is competitive these days, and companies are looking for well-educated employees to represent them. You may have chosen English simply because you like to read or write, but you can use it to find it a rewarding career. So do not hesitate the next time someone asks, “What are you going to do with an English degree?” Answer proudly, because it can be anything you want.

bibliography while the other examines the history of the book. Currently, HoTT is working on the transition from manuscripts to print in the centuries prior to and after the technological revolution. With his vast knowledge of 19th century British and Victorian culture, Fyfe has become an important part of the department’s study. The HoTT program may be new, but it is definitely growing. Fyfe has his own tactics for growth: “I have started a reading group called ‘Digital Scholars,’ which brings grad students, faculty, and librarians together to discuss how digital technologies are changing research methods, scholarly resources, and aspects of our profession. I am also hoping to explore digitization projects of my own in concert with FSU’s Digital Library Services and other HoTT faculty. I’ll certainly be integrating a variety of instructional technologies into my classes.”

Not all doctors need lab coats Although English has become his area of

passion, Fyfe admits to thinking his intellectual strength was not found in literature in the beginning. “I always got C’s and D’s in middle school English and always received better grades in math,” he remarks. However, when he started out as a pre-med student at Wake Forest, he “realized that [he] was in science classes for the ideas and interesting concepts they bring, but [he] could also do all that in English classes.” He switched to English and learned to apply his inquisitive, scientific nature to the study of literature.

“Dr. Fyfe is definitely innovative,” says Anthony Spano, a student from his fall Victorian British literature class (ENL4251). “He loves Youtube and will play music coinciding with the topic of that day’s discussion. He knows we have short attention spans; since it is an upper-level discussion

class, he’ll always try to make us laugh while challenging us to think of the subject in new ways, so it’s easier for us to pay attention and understand the point he’s making.”

Fyfe has been busy adjusting not only to his new responsibilities with the university

but with becoming a Florida resident as well. Fyfe says he spent some time reading Carl Hiaasen (an author and Florida native who uses our swampy state in most of his settings) as “research” to becoming a Floridian. Tallahassee is not that different from his hometown of Charleston, Sorth

Carolina, but he is still acclimating to the summer heat and rain. Fyfe enjoys exploring all Tallahassee has to offer outside of campus, such as traveling to St. George Island and Wakulla Springs with his wife and young son.

Most recently, Fyfe published a work for the Victorian Periodicals Review and has done work online for the Rossetti Archive, a webpage run by the University of Virginia for the Institute of Advanced Technologies in the Humanities.

Even though he is a basketball fan, Fyfe assures that he has no competitive comments against Florida State as a graduate of our constant ACC competitor Wake Forest. In his precious time off, he also likes to use Facebook and write on his blog to stay connected to his family and close friends back home; he even has an eye for photography.

Fyfe from page 4

Fyfe says he spent some time reading Carl Hiassen as “re-search” for becoming a Flo-ridian.

Jobs from page 16

Photo courtesy of Paul Fyfe

Fyfe on a family vacation in Asheville, NC with his son Camm, age 2.


first book, Marriage, Writing, and Romanticism: Wordsworth and Austen After War. It was published by Stanford University Press in 2009 after a journey that Walker calls “too long.” The book explores how marriage has been instilled in us through culture and society. It also examines the marriage binary that plagues many people today: they either agree with the institution of marriage, or they don’t. The book studies the writings of Jane Austen, who never married but often wrote about it, and William Wordsworth, who never wrote about his own marriage.

William Galperin of Rutgers University says, “An important and stimulating study, Walker’s Marriage, Writing, and Romanticism is erudite, beautifully written, and the result of a career-long investment in a variety of issues whose uncanny connectedness is perhaps paramount among the study’s many virtues. It is as close to the paradigm of the scholarly book as a study is likely to get.”

With the book done, Walker is now conducting research and attending conferences on the subject of adoption, the topic of the senior seminar he taught in Fall 2009. When asked about his recent research, he shared that July 2009 placed him in Great Britain at a conference focused on Jane Austen. He readily elaborated on the experience, saying he was “with scholars from all over the world giving papers on Jane Austen.” The conference was held near Chawton Cottage, where Austen spent the last years of her life.

For Walker, adoption is a subject that hits close to home. He has two beautiful daughters, braces and all (as shown in the photos in his office), that he and his wife adopted. So, Walker approaches the study of adoption with justified passion. In a conversation about the more specific aspects of adoption that he studies, he explained the current boom in the adoption market and how individuals and couples are traveling all over the nation and the world to adopt.

He even revealed that he and his wife actually traveled to China to adopt their youngest daughter.

As president of the Faculty Senate, Walker is a member of an assortment of organizations across campus. “Being the president of Faculty Senate means that I am also a member of the University Board of Trustees; I go to athletic board meetings, and I’m a trustee of the FSU Foundation–so lots of meetings.”

And that’s not even the half of it. Associate Professor Leigh Edwards, also a member of the Faculty Senate, says, “His work as Faculty Senate president requires him to address many on-going challenges, and he provides calm leadership and a deep reservoir of institutional memory and knowledge in his excellent work in that position.”

While many students may not have the pleasure of meeting or being taught by Walker, he does a lot for them. “I spend a lot of time working on university issues that are pretty invisible to students,” says Walker. For example, he helped implement the newly changed Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Program policies, which began affecting students in the Fall 2009 semester.

Fellow Faculty Senate member Professor Jim O’Rourke commends Walker’s efforts as president from the beginning. “In Eric’s first address as president to the Faculty Senate, he spoke about the university’s response to the current budget crisis and about the regrettable decision to lay off tenured faculty,” says O’Rourke. “When Eric

spoke movingly about the personal plight of those professors and about their continuing dedication to the welfare of their students and to the values of the university, even as they continued to work in the shadow of their impending layoffs, he summoned up the truly communal sense

of a university as an institution that depends upon the willingness of all of its members—faculty, students, and administrators—to devote themselves to the good of the whole.

“The Faculty Senate, for the first time in my memory, broke into spontaneous applause as Eric articulated our sense of common purpose. In a body that usually spends its time dissecting bureaucratic minutiae, it was quite stirring to be reconnected to the values

that brought us into this profession.”Still, a typical day in Walker’s life is not

confined to the conference room. “I teach; I go to committee meetings; I do research, and I do some consulting.” One such consulting job was a project with successful entrepreneur Devoe Moore of Tallahassee’s Antique Car Museum, who asked Walker to “evaluate a new start-up technology company doing some online writing software.” Moore, who was asked to invest in the company, wanted Walker’s advice before making any decisions.

John Fenstermaker, Fred L. Standley Professor of English and University Distinguished Teacher, praises Walker. “Affable and blessed with a wonderful sense of humor assisted by a fine eye for ironic detail, [Walker] is always approachable and helpful.”

With a busy professional schedule and an equally full family life, Walker has responsibilities all over Tallahassee and beyond. Yet, his passion remains in the classroom. He has won multiple teaching awards and is one of a select group of University Distinguished Teaching Professors. Alejandro Thornton, a senior English literature major, was a student in Walker’s senior seminar on adoption. Although it was his first class with Walker, Thornton insists that Walker “definitely knows what he’s talking about.” Thornton calls his teaching style “engaging but dominant because of all of his knowledge.”

Walker hopes that he can keep educating Florida State University’s English majors for years to come. He says, “I look forward to when I can get back into [teaching] full time.”

Walker has had many responsibilities at The Florida State University throughout the years, and is highly esteemed by his colleagues. “I’ve been in the department a long time. I’ve been here for a quarter of a century, and it really is a wonderful place to work. Lots of exciting colleagues; we’re excited about the new major track. We’ve got good leadership and lots of good people, so it really is a dream job. I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly and am happy to be here.”

“His work as Faculty Senate president requires him to address many ongoing challenges, and he provides calm leadership and a deep reservoir of institutional memory and knowledge in his excellent work in that position.”

–Associate Professor Leigh Edwards

“The Faculty Senate, for the first time in my memory, broke into spontaneous applause as Eric articulated our sense of common purpose.”

–Professor Jim O’Rourke

Walker from page 1


Campusconstruction

Article and photographsby Katherine Bell

Construction winds down for the day at Westcott/ Ruby Diamond in mid-October 2009. Equipment lies dormant on the northeast side of the building.

As the needs of students change, so too do the facilities required to support those needs. Several current construction projects are of special interest to alumni of the English department.

The Ruby Diamond Auditorium, originally built in 1911 then rebuilt following a foundation crack in 1954, is getting another facelift in a project set to last until August

2010. The auditorium is attached to Westcott Center on the eastern side of the main campus and was named after “Miss Ruby,” a 1905 graduate who remained a benefactor of the university. Among some of the intended improvements are a renovated lobby and connecting rooms, enhanced acoustics within the theater itself, and a staircase on the north entrance described as “monumental” by Connor Ross of Gilchrist Ross Crowe Architects, the project’s architect. The John S.

and James L. Knight Foundation funded this project, and the lobby will be named for both men, according to the Knight Foundation.

Also under way is a renovation to the William Johnson Building, a residence hall close to Landis and Gilchrist Halls. It is host to the Suwannee Dining Room, a dining hall originally opened in 1913 for Florida State College for Women students. Parts of this renovation include the addition of a student-tutoring floor, expanded student housing, and the restoration of the Suwannee Room’s original Gothic vaulted ceiling. This reconstruction is to be completed by April 2011.

Robert Manning Strozier Library, named after a former FSU president, has several projects that are in progress or nearing completion. Strozier Library was constructed in 1956, and a seven-story section was added in 1967. A roofing project finished in mid-October 2009 after many delays due to frequent rain. Complete renovations to the main floor of the building were to be completed by early-February 2010.

These first floor renovations will create a “Learning Commons,” an undergraduate space designed to meet current student needs and anticipate the needs of future students. Additionally, two elevators in the rear section of the library are being repaired and upgraded.

Senior classics major Daettia Butler says the construction is “somewhat annoying and makes it nearly impossible to get anywhere on time. I’ll be glad when it’s all over and done with.

“In regard to Strozier, right now it’s frustrating, having to wait for elevators when they’re

working and climbing the stairs to get to things that would normally be right on the first floor. Hopefully when it’s finished, the frustration will have been worth it.”

So why are all these projects still in progress during a recession? Construction plans come out of a different budget than salaries and electricity. Funds for construction come from what is called “one-time money,” funds and endowments generally set aside specifically for these projects, while salaries, utilities, and other ongoing expenses come from the university’s recurring budget.

Construction scaffolding covers the William Johnson Building on an afternoon in October 2009.

In October 2009, scaffolding remains in place on the eastern side of Strozier Library along Honors Way for ongoing renovations to the roof and first floor.


Katherine BellKatherine Bell is an FSU staff member at Stro-zier Library. She has published her first novel and is hard at work on her next.

Cara Boruch-DolanCara Boruch-Dolan is a senior creative writ-ing major who will be graduating from FSU in Spring 2010. She hopes to attain a job in the publishing and editing industry.

Alissa Bridges Alissa Bridges is a junior from Tampa, FL, studying editing, writing, and media.

William ClarkWilliam Clark is a third-year editing, writing, and media major from Philadelphia, PA. He minors in biology and plans to attend medical school after graduating from FSU in 2011.

Sarah CleelandSarah Cleeland is an undergraduate majoring in creative writing. She will graduate in spring of 2010 and plans to pursue a career as a college professor.

Jennifer DaleJennifer Dale is an undergraduate majoring in English with minors in mass media commu-nications and psychology. She also works full time for a law firm in Tallahassee and plans to attend law school after she graduates in 2010.

Alexandra DelgadoAlexandra Delgado is a junior majoring in edit-ing, writing, and media.

Leigh GruwellLeigh Gruwell is a second-year M.A. student in rhetoric and composition and is also a teach-ing assistant with the First Year Composition Program.

Sarah Gwin Sarah Gwin graduated in Fall 2009 with a degree in creative writing and a graduate Certificate in Editing and Publishing. She is currently a legal editor at the Municipal Code Corporation.

Allison Helms Allison Helms, a literature major, who also pur-sued the Certificate in Editing and Publishing, graduated in December 2009.

Jennifer O’Malley Jennifer O’Malley is a second-year M.A. stu-dent from Daytona Beach, FL specializing in rhetoric and composition.

Amy Parker Amy Parker is a special student pursuing the Certificate in Publishing and Editing. She has her B.A. in history from FSU.

Eileen PerezEileen Perez is a junior majoring in editing, writing, and media. She is planning on graduat-ing in Fall 2010.

Joe Purdy Joe Purdy is an undergraduate majoring in ed-iting, writing, and media. He will graduate in 2010 and plans to pursue a career as a sports beat writer.

Nathan SpicerNathan Spicer graduated from Flagler College with an English degree and attended FSU for certificates in publishing and editing, and web design. He plans to start an online magazine.

Ashley WilliamsAshley Williams is a senior merchandising major. She met Lauren Bradshaw in Summer 2009 as a fashion/editorial intern for Glamour magazine.

About the newsletter contributors

The purpose of Scroll, Scribe & Screen is to foster a sense of community among alumni, students, fac-ulty, and friends of the Department of English at

The Florida State University. Our goal is to show-case the achievements and events within the de-partment to connect with our Seminole audience.

Scroll, Scribe & Screen mission statement

Advisors: Susan Hellstrom and Jack Clifford


The EWM track is specifically designed for students with career interests in writing, publishing, editing, and electronic media. Unlike a journalism degree and the depart-ment’s graduate Certificate in Editing and Publishing, the new program provides stu-dents with a rhetorical framework that is useful for analysis and creation of text and gives them an overview of the relationships between various technologies and texts. In addition, the EWM major helps students expand their writing repertoire, introduces them to various publishing practices, and gives them an opportunity to gain practical work experience.

Kathleen Yancey, the department chair and director of the graduate program in Rhetoric and Composition, loves the EWM major because “it’s a signature FSU program: as far as we know, no one else in the country offers anything like it, and we think that it will showcase the talents of our students in new ways.”

To complete this major, students must fulfill four components. The first involves taking three core courses that the depart-ment considers to be fundamental in the study of textual fields: Rhetoric; Writing and

Editing in Print and Online; and History of Text Technologies. For the second com-ponent, students have the freedom to pick and choose nine credit hours from a list of advanced courses including History of Illus-trated Texts as well as Editing: Manuscripts, Documents, and Reports. Components three and four consist of an internship in editing and publishing and a senior seminar about the nature of textuality, respectively.

From Fall 2009 to Spring 2010, the Eng-lish department plans to offer 12 courses for the new major, including the internship and senior seminar. After two years, faculty members will meet to assess and re-examine the major with the hope of expanding it even more to better meet the needs of students. The English department would also like to set up a website that showcases the work of EWM students. Ideally, the major will con-tinue to evolve as technology and the impact it has on writing careers keeps changing.

So why should students choose the EWM major over, say, the Creative Writing Pro-gram or even the Certificate in Editing and Publishing? Kristie S. Fleckenstein, an associ-ate professor and director of undergraduate studies for the English department, feels the EWM major is a great option for students because it “provides an excellent foundation for professional careers in writing, publish-ing, and editing and for advanced work at the

graduate level in rhetoric, composition, and/or history of text technologies.”

The EWM major also combines the as-pects of editing, publishing, and writing with-in a humanities framework. This framework, says Fleckenstein, allows students to gain “knowledge of what texts they might com-pose, edit, or design for different audiences and media…as well as the critical and rhetori-cal knowledge to make effective and ethical choices about texts, audiences, and media.”

Alex Delgado, an EWM student, likes the new major because of its relevance to modern culture. “It incorporates many of the programs and practices used in things like magazines and newspapers today,” Alex explains.

Other students such as Joe Purdy picked the EWM major to prepare for the job market. “If you are thinking about major-ing in English and want to pursue a job in a professional sector like editing or technical writing, then EWM is definitely the route to go,” says Purdy.

Students who would like additional infor-mation about the EWM major can contact Fleckenstein or visit the English department website at english.fsu.edu/ewm/index.html.

Any students interested in declaring edit-ing, writing, and media as their major should see Stephanie Cameron Kennedy in the Eng-lish advising office.

EWM from page 1

Visit the English department online and stay up to date with our news.

http://english.fsu.edu/

Scroll, Scribe & ScreenDepartment of EnglishFlorida State University405 Williams BuildingTallahassee, FL 32306-1580