Spring Semester Open Mic Nights

Literature Course Features Read-Through of Play at Professor's Home

By Hilary Donatini

Last semester, I decided to include George Etherege's Restoration comedy The Man of Mode (1676) on my syllabus for English 406: Seventeenth-Century English Literature. Unlike teaching Shakespeare, where film versions of even the less popular plays exist in abundance, preparing lessons for The Man of Mode did not turn up any full-length, quality film productions. In many of my previous literature courses, I have involved students in short performances of scenes, whether or not we were watching video clips of plays as well. This time around, I wanted to try a read-through of an entire play. 

About half of the class, in addition to my colleague Dr. Russell Weaver, congregated at my house on December 1. Fueling ourselves with pizza and pop, we were then ready to transport ourselves to Restoration London and enjoy Etherege's glittering and mordant take on the fashionable world. For me, the experience exceeded my expectations in terms of how fun and instructive it would be, and I hope to hold such an event again. Below you will find reactions from some of the participants. Thanks to all involved for their commitment to the event!

Corinne Spisz:  
Reading the play out loud helped me to understand the relationship between the characters that I was not getting by reading it by myself. I was also more aware of the humor when we read it as a group. It was fun to hear everyone's different "voices" of the characters.

Jakob Demers:
The most useful and enjoyable part of the situation for me was the experience of the dialogue. It’s witty and fast-paced, which I think can be somewhat ignored in a nonperformance experience of the play. Ultimately I think my takeaway is just how cynical the play seems to be. Affectation paired with wit is celebrated, affection and honesty is shunned, and love seems to have no true power at all. It also seems like it would be a logistically difficult play to perform purely for the size of the cast and the blocking of the scenes. 

Sabrina Maristela:
To read through a play in your head is one thing, but I think the reader misses an essential part of any play when they don’t get to hear the words spoken out loud as they were intended to be presented. We were very fortunate to have some great readers bring the characters of Man of Mode to life, and hearing the words definitely helped me notice and understand things like the timing of certain scenes and the relationships between characters that I never would have considered related.

Dr. Russell Weaver:
This was my first time to do something like this. I have come to understand more and more as I teach that hearing and pronouncing the words of a text are the most fruitful ways of engaging it, and although The Man of Mode is a work I have never read or seen, after participating in this joint reading, I came away with a significant first step towards grasping what it is about. It was also exciting to hear students and other faculty giving themselves over to the parts they were reading. Even though I confess that there were some nerve-wracking moments in preparing for this reading, I am eager to try it again should the opportunity present itself.

Dr. Grady Will Introduce Screening of The Shawshank Redemption

Dr. Maura Grady, director of the Composition Program and University Writing Center, will give the introduction to the Stephen King film series at the Renaissance Theater in Mansfield on Jan. 18 at 7:00 p.m.

The event is a screening of The Shawshank Redemption (first in a 12-film series) and will kick off the beautifully restored Renaissance Theater's 90th Anniversary Celebration.

Grady is the author of The Shawshank Experience: Tracking the History of the World's Favorite Movie (Palgrave, 2016).

Details:
http://mansfieldtickets.com/90th-anniversary/eventdetail/422/-/film-screening-the-shawshank-redemption

Director of Composition and Writing Center Earns M.Ed.

Dr. Maura Grady, Director of the Composition program in the English Department and Director of the University Writing Center, earned an additional degree at Ashland University's December commencement ceremony. I interviewed her about her work for the M.Ed.

Dr. Grady with Emily Wirtz (Creative Writing major) and Kiara Woods (English major and Writing Assistant in the Writing Center)

HD: First of all, congratulations! What is the full title of the degree (the focus of the M.Ed.)?
​
​MKG: The degree is Master's of Education in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on "Teaching in the 21st Century"​

Dr. Grady with Carli Diturno (Dietetics major and Writing Assistant in the Writing Center)

HD: You already have a Ph.D. in English. How did the M.Ed. enhance your knowledge base or open you up to new ideas and perspectives?

MKG: In 2015, I knew that I might be changing from my former position of an assistant professor with a focus on Film Studies, Literature, and Writing to a position more focused on Writing Program Administration. The scholarly writing associated with that kind of job is quite different from what I had been doing, and I felt that the M.Ed. would give me the opportunity to learn more about undergraduate pedagogy and philosophies of educational administrative leadership. So, in Fall 2015, I enrolled in the M.Ed. program at Ashland University. It was helpful that I already knew a number of faculty in the College of Education, including my eventual thesis advisor, Dr. Howard Walters, and Dr. Judy Alston who kindly allowed me in to one of her Doctoral Leadership seminars. I learned so much from all of the faculty and students I was able to work with in the program. 

Dr. Grady with Jacob Poiner (Music Education major)

Having completed a Ph.D. in English (UC Davis) and subsequently devoted my professional life to scholarly research and teaching certainly meant that the act of learning knew things was something I was very comfortable with! Researching and writing very detailed papers about new subjects always takes time and hard work but I found the process more enjoyable than I might have the first time around, as it were, when I was working on seminar papers and my dissertation in my English Ph.D. program. I've learned so much about how to learn, how to manage longer writing projects, and how to maintain focus since then. I have to thank the AURWC (Ashland University Research and Writing Community), founded by Dr. Sharleen Mondal, and my AURWC small group for much of that focus and structure since becoming a faculty member at AU.

HD: As the Director of the Writing Center and the Composition Program, how will your M.Ed. work determine your teaching, scholarship, or administrative work in the future? 

MKG: ​The work I did while completing the M.Ed. has already been very useful to me in my current position-- I was able to work on several projects involving the Composition program (developing an assessment procedure for our ENG 100 course) and the Writing Center (writing a mission statement and outcomes) and using best practices to design​ an assessment focused on those outcomes. The Writing Center intern, Bethany Meadows (English/Creative Writing/ILA major) has worked extensively with me on a study focused on student understanding of the writing process and we will be presenting the results of our research as the East Central Writing Center Association annual conference in March.  ​

One​ wonderful part of the experience of graduating from the College of Education was the chance to graduate with some of my favorite undergraduate students! As the Director of the Writing Center, I have the privilege to work with so many brilliant undergraduates and its always bittersweet to watch them graduate-- I wish they could stay forever at the same time I'm happy to see them go on to do great things! I was also happy to have my family there on the day of graduation, since my children were tiny when I received my doctorate (too little to attend a long graduation ceremony). They had to put up with a lot while I was doing my coursework and writing the thesis (as well as working full time) so I was really happy they could see the "end" of the process!

December 2017 Graduates Start Down Varied Paths

Four majors from the English Department received their degrees at the December 2017 commencement ceremony. 

Emily Wirtz, a triple major in Creative Writing, Religion, and Psychology, will be working at the Rape Crisis Shelter in Ashland.

Emily Wirtz and Kiara Woods at commencement

English major Kiara Woods will start a position with Westfield Insurance in January. 

Kouri Weber in Jerusalem

Kouri Weber, an Integrated Language Arts major, will be working on campus in Student Affairs and applying for teaching jobs.

Ariel McCleary in Spain

Integrated Language Arts major Ariel McCleary will be pursuing a music career, with over 64,000 followers on her YouTube music channel at the time of this blog post. 

Congratulations, graduates!