notesetc.umr.edu

Recently, two English and Technical Communication faculty members accompanied students to events in St Louis. Dr. Kathryn Northcut took students to a regional meeting of the Society for Technical Communication; Dr. Kristine Swenson took a group of students to attend a play. These events enrich the students on-campus education.

Six MS students and Dr. Kathy Northcut attended the St. Louis regional chapter meeting of the Society for Technical Communication. The topic was "Cool tools for Technical Communicators <$100." The speaker, Nicky Bleiel, demonstrated dozens of tools which are either free or available for a nominal fee. Examples include voice-to-text applications, the GIMP, and icon-building design software.

A brief side trip to Global Foods International Market rounded out the evening.

The GIMP is the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, a tool that I use myself, on both Windows and Linux. It is a freeware parallel to PhotoShop.

Dr. Kris Swenson took a group of students to see Alan Bennett's award-winning play, The History Boys (2004) at the St Louis Repertory Theatre on September 29. The play is set in a boys' school in England in the 1980s. A group of history students preparing for Oxbridge entrance exams is being pulled in contrary directions by the teaching styles and goals of different faculty members. It's really a play about the ends of education and something of an indictment of the current emphasis on testing versus life-learning. I set up the trip especially for students in my Contemporary British Literature class, though all were welcome. The trip was partially supported by Sigma Tau Delta, the English honorary society.

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UMR's homecoming ends today, October 21. The weather has been cool, clear, and windy. Nearly perfect, depending on what one thinks of the wind.

My experience of the wind and of homecoming came on Friday afternoon at the departmental open house. Among the homecoming events were the departmental open house on the patio outside the Havener Center. Under a green and white tent, at the curve of University Drive, a beer and soda garden offered burgers, brats, barbecue, beers, soda — all the necessities for such a pleasant afternoon.

With the green grass of the Havener lawn, the crowds moving from place to place, the scene reminded me of William Langland's "fair field full of folk": an apt description of the scene Friday afternoon.

Not having anticipated a blog entry on this event, I didn't take my camera or notes, so I'm reaching back a day and a half. My primary impression is wind and sun and glimpses of a woman with a blue violin.

Dr. Ed Malone and I carted the department's display over to the patio along the front of the Havener Center. The departmental displays vary some, but basically, it is a panel about 3' x 6' that folds so there's a large central panel with two smaller panels on each side. The side panels fold to provide stability and depth to the display. The main ingredient in the departmental open houses was the wind. The displays would not stay on the tables provided; some departments put theirs on the ground in front of the tables; some, like us, packed up their display. We did have some books authored by faculty members, copies of last spring's departmental newsletter, and some brochures. These didn't blow away (mostly).

A bluegrass band played around the curve of the Havener from us. I couldn't see them well because of the pillars, but I did see a woman playing a blue violin.

The best part for me was a long conversation with one of our English alumna. She and her husband stopped at the table, and we caught up on a lot of things, mostly what's happening with the department and with some of the older and retired faculty. Another alumnus, a friend of the couple I was speaking with, walked up. He got his B.S. here in 1967, the year I arrived. He and I have to be among the few people who remember John Brewer, who taught speech and who, we agreed, was the last gentleman.

There really wasn't a lot of traffic at the department displays, but my time was well-spent. Despite my somewhat peripheral relation to homecoming, spending Friday afternoon in the wind and sun, talking with a former student, was good.

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Question: When was the first Master's degree in literature awarded at the University of Missouri Rolla (UMR)?

Question: What was the topic of the thesis?

Answer(s): First, revise the first question to " When was the first Master's degree in literature awarded at the Missouri School of Mines (MSM)?" As you may know, this campus was known as the Missouri School of Mines from its founding in 1870 until it became the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1964. As part of the University of Missouri system, this campus has a long, proud history of educating engineers, scientists, and, in the last 40+ years, humanists and social scientists.

Second, notice that I didn't specify whether the degree was a Master of Science or a Master of Arts. (One would expect the latter with a literary topic.)

Third, the answers to both questions from Elizabeth Cummins:

In 1927, the Master of Science degree was awarded to Nadine Matlock Sease. Her thesis (which is in the UMR library) was "The Origin and Development of the Arthurian Story in English Literature in the Nineteenth Century." I believe it was the first M.S. degree awarded to a woman (maybe even to anybody!) in the humanities/social sciences. I think she was from St. James and may have taught English at MSM.

The thesis is in the Curtis Laws Wilson Library at UMR.

My thanks to Elizabeth Cummins, professor emeritus of English and Technical Communication, for bringing this piece of history to our attention. I don't know anything more about Ms. Sease; however, I do hope to learn more. If you know more about this bit of UMR history, please share it with me. I will post it here and give credit to the source.

Posted by Gene Doty at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many people write diaries, journals, logs, and so on. Most write for their own purposes — keeping records, expressing emotions, exploring ideas, and exploring writing are all done by journal keepers. To read someone else's journal is to enter in some way into the writer's experience, especially if the writer did not intend her journals to be read. The diary or journal becomes a kind of mirror for the writer's self, and, unlike a literal mirror, the diary retains an impression of what it reflects.

On September 7 and 8 of this year, Dr. Anne Cotterill, Associate Professor of English and Technical Communication, attended a conference at Princeton that explored this topic. The conference focused on Elizabeth Isham, a 17th century diarist.

Dr. Cotterill presented a paper on Saturday, September 8, along with a young man named Isaac Stephens, a graduate student in history whose almost-completed dissertation concerns this memoir and this woman and her family. They are the two scholars who've been working the longest on Elizabeth Isham and her text. Dr. Cotterill's paper was taken from a longer piece she's written on Elizabeth's memoir, entitled, "Fitting Words at the 'pitts brinke': The Achievement of Elizabeth Isham." Dr. Cotterill plans to send the longer article to The Huntingdon Library Quarterly.

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