in this issue

Writing Awards/Black Mountain College/Faculty Notes/What I Did for My Spring Semester/ Frederica Ward Memorial Scholarship/Alumni News

Writing Faculty and Student Awards Announced

The annual Writing Program Awards honor excellence in the teaching of writing. Our award ceremony, like all of our spring semester celebrations, has unfortunately been canceled, but our honorees are worthy of acknowledgment nonetheless. This year, each faculty recipient has shared in their own words an aspect of their philosophy or practice for fostering their students’ development as writers.

The Jessica Melton Perry Award for Distinguished Teaching in Disciplinary & Professional Writing recognizes outstanding instruction in writing in professional fields and/or disciplines other than English.

This year’s recipient, Sharona Hoffman, Edgar A. Hahn Professor of Jurisprudence in the CWRU School of Law, is lauded for providing extraordinary mentorship to law students in the area of legal scholarly writing, fostering students in their course work, and supporting their efforts to publish.

When asked to describe her approach to writing instruction, Hoffman wrote, “I love teaching my year-long paper seminar at the law school.  It is very gratifying to help students progress from struggling to find a topic to having a paper that is often of publishable quality at the end of the year. I think the best advice I give students is to pick a topic about which they are passionate.  Papers are always strongest when they are personally meaningful and when you are emotionally invested in your work.
Throughout the process, I emphasize the importance of editing and re-editing your work, focusing on wording and language, organizing your thoughts, honing your arguments, supporting your arguments, and convincing the reader that you offer a good approach to solving a problem.  One of the most helpful exercises we do is a 30-minute presentation by each writer before the final draft is due.  It includes a PowerPoint presentation and 10 minutes of Q & A.  Students always benefit greatly from explaining their arguments and recommendations to their classmates and creating a slide deck.  It helps them organize and clarify their own thoughts, and they get great input from their colleagues’ questions and comments!”

The SAGES Excellence in Writing Instruction Award recognizes outstanding commitment to and success in teaching academic writing to CWRU undergraduates in SAGES.

This year’s winner is Gabrielle Parkin, Lecturer in English, SAGES Teaching Fellow, and the now Interim Director of the Writing Resource Center. Nominated by students and colleagues, Dr. Parkin is described as being a supportive mentor and writing teacher. One student wrote, “I have seen her take pride in writing and SAGES in particular. Parkin has met with students outside the classroom and office hours. Everyone knows who Dr. Parkin is in the writing center. When students have a hard time comprehending a topic or formats, Parkin is always there to help.”

In response to receiving this recognition, Parkin reflected, “The more I’ve taught, the more I’ve come to see the composition process as an opportunity for play. Intellectual play in the writing process isn’t just about coming up with ambitious claims or fun turns of phrase; it is also mucking about with the things we built.

“Students often want to write a paper, turn it in, and move on to the next assignment. But when we play with that paper afterwards—through revision of both the arguments and the language—and when we invite others to join us in that process, we turn writing and argumentation into a communal process. The essay becomes a space where we can play with each other’s ideas and work towards not only a better essay, but also a deeper understanding of how the topic can affect an audience outside of the classroom.”

The WRC Excellence in Consulting Award recognizes outstanding writing instruction for students of the University and exemplary service to the Writing Resource Center during the academic year. This year, two consultants stood out both in their quantity of nominations as well as in the high quality of the consulting work their nominators described: Cara Byrne, Lecturer in English and SAGES Teaching Fellow, and Andrea Milne, Lecturer in History and SAGES Teaching Fellow.

Byrne wrote this about her theory of writing consultation:

“Through my work at the WRC, I’ve learned that writing is a communal act and learning about oneself as a writer is a never-ending task. Writing can also be a vulnerable and overwhelming act, so honoring where the writer is in their writing process—which involves listening to them as well as offering guidance—can make for some powerful interactions. If I can help someone feel like they leave our 30- or 60-minute session with both an improved paper and with a better understanding of themselves as a writer, it’s been a successful session. Consulting students, staff, and faculty at the WRC over the last 11 years has been a privilege and one of my favorite aspects of working at CWRU. “

While Byrne emphasizes the communal nature of consulting, Milne describes her writing consultation work as personal:

“I believe every person who crosses the threshold of Bellflower does so motivated by a desire to be understood.  My job, then, is as much about personal engagement with my clients as it is about teaching the mechanics of academic English. My sessions are full of tangential conversations, questions, and—usually—laughter.

“What the client may perceive as small talk is actually part of the process: it’s building the connection and honest rapport necessary to engage with their writing in a holistic way. The more I know about who my client is, how they’re feeling, how they think, and what they hope to achieve in their time at CWRU, the more likely I am to make a lasting impact on their writing.”

The SAGES First and University Seminar Essay Prizes recognize the best writing that students produce in their First and University Seminars. These essays are chosen from those nominated by SAGES seminar leaders each semester.

The First Seminar Awards are judged in January and recognized at the Celebration of Student Writing & Research in April each year. The winners for 2019 are

Delphine Clatanoff, for an essay titled, “Charlotte Smith’s Suffocating Romanticism”
Written for FSSY185Q: Death Mourning and Immortality (Seminar Leader: John Wiehl)

Patrick Pariseau, for an essay titled, “The Solar Cycle”
Written for FSNA 165: Silicon and its Applications (Seminar Leader: Jim Stephens)

Farha Watley, for an essay titled, “Black Solidarity: Combatting Colorism in the Black Community”
Written for FSCC 110: Foundations of College Writing (Seminar Leader: Martha Schaffer)

The University Seminar Awards are judged in September and recognized at the Celebration of Student Writing & Research in December of each year. The winners for Academic Year 2018-2019 are

Shmuel Berman, for an essay titled, “Religious Coffee Drinkers: Historical Reactions to Coffee by Organized Religions and Their Implications”
Written for USSO 288T: Coffee and Civilization (Seminar Leader: Annie Pecastaings)

Rebecca Kizner, for an essay titled, “The Function of a Name”
Written for USSY 293T: Spaces of the Dead (Seminar Leader: Thomas Mira y Lopez)

Marika Meijer, for an essay titled, “Paris by Artificial Light: How Lighting Systems Ultimately Influenced Parisian Sensibilities”
Written for USSY 287X: Paris in the Arts (Seminar Leader: Annie Pecastaings)

All of these outstanding essays and information about the Essay Prizes are available online at Writing@CWRU.

Radical Education and Black Mountain Poetics

by Joshua Hoeynck

In the 1952 “BMC Prospectus for Spring Semester,” the poet Charles Olson articulated the philosophy of his pedagogy at Black Mountain College, an influential and experimental college that existed in North Carolina from 1933-1956: “There are subtle means of communication that have been lost by humankind, as our nerve ends have been cauterized by schooling. The arts, especially the performing arts, are more and more valuable in such restorations.”

Olson ran Black Mountain College during its final days, from 1951-1956, and both Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan taught there for brief periods. Creeley and Olson also edited seven issues of the Black Mountain Review during that time.  I recently finished writing an environmental study of the correspondences between Olson, Creeley, Duncan, and Denise Levertov, so naturally my next research project will take up Black Mountain College’s influences on these poets and their contemporaries. Since I am deeply invested in the legacies of these poets and in radical education, my emerging research project will outline and explore the rich history and pedagogy of Black Mountain College’s final phase under Olson.

Generally, historians classify the life of Black Mountain College in three phases: the initial phase under John Andrew Rice (1933-1939), a second phase under Josef Albers (1940-1950), and a poetic phase under Charles Olson (1951-1956). Although comprehensive histories exist, they stress visual art while only briefly touching on poetics. Hence, my project will involve detailing how the college’s radical pedagogy and practices (painting, dance, pottery, weaving, music) transformed American poetics. Black Mountain College had no grades, no administrators, total faculty control over all of the college’s affairs, a work program based around farming (which replaced sports), and the college required that students design their own curricula. While the college may have only lasted twenty-three years, it can also boast a long line of distinguished faculty and students: Josef and Anni Albers, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, John Cage, and many more. I am most excited about the scope and direction of this new project and looking forward to extending Olson’s claim that the arts, in all of their diverse manifestations, have the ability to revive human sensations of exterior reality, to open vital minds to autonomous modes of existence, and to free our “nerve ends” from their cauterization by forms of traditional schooling.

Faculty Notes