English Graduate Gazette

A Publication of the English Graduate Office and GradSEA
Issue Two

ENGLISH GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS

The English Department's reputation for outstanding graduate student teaching continues with eleven certificates awarded this Fall by the Excellence in Teaching Committee for the 1999-2000 year. The award winners were Alison A. Baker, Robert G. Davidson, Patricia M. Friedrich, James R. Gilligan, Amy C. Kimme Hea, Henry J. Hughes, K. Matthew Kelly, Neal E. Migan, James M. Palmer, Mardy Philippian, Jr., and Meredith A. Weisberg. K. Matthew Kelly was recently honored as a Teaching Associate in the Purdue University Teaching Academy.

English student Stephany Spaulding is the Graduate winner of the African American Studies and Research Center's W.E.B. DuBois essay contest. She presented her award-winning paper on October 31, 2000 in the Stewart Center.

Several Purdue graduate students in English traveled to Cincinnati to give papers at the 2000 Midwest Conference on British Studies, October 27-28, 2000. They were Mardy Philippian, Jr., "George Etherege's Dorimant: The Rake Figure and the Carnivalesque"; Tamara Agnew, "'Such as we are made of, such we be': Courtship Ritual and Gender in Twelfth Night"; and Neal Migan, "Content, Form, and Gender in As You Like It."

On November 14, the Thirty-First Annual Interdisciplinary CAES Conference at Ball State University hosted papers by Purdue graduate students. They were Mary Maxine Browne, "The Morality Play and Medieval Christian Mysticism"; Laura Beadling, "From Vilification to Vindication: Guinevere's Changing Reputation in Children's Literature"; Angela M. Laflen, "Panopticism, Participation, and Power: Malory's Feminine Spectator as Critic"; Adam Oldaker, "Prophecy, Free Will, and Malory"; Paul Streufert, "The Best of the Persians."

Congratulations to Baotong Gu, Carol Sebastian-Curiel, and Suzanne Buffamanti, who successfully defended their Ph.D. dissertations in the Department of English earlier this month.

Purdue now has access to Early English Books online. Kate Jashari from Bell and Howell will be on campus on December 5 to present this database from 8:30-10:00 A.M. in Stewart 314. Those of you who are interested are invited to come.

ALUMNI NEWS

Bill Covey, who received his Ph.D. from Purdue in 1996, is Assistant Professor at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. He is in his fourth year there teaching literature, composition, and film. Among his recent publications are "Girl Power: Female-Centered Neo-Noir," anthologized in Alain Silver and James Ursini's edited collection, Film Noir: Reader 2 (NY: Limelight Editions, 1999), and book reviews for Film Criticism, Film Quarterly, and Journal of Film and Video.

Joya Uraizee (Ph.D. in English in 1994) is currently Associate Professor of English and International Studies at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO. Her new book, This is No Place for a Woman: Nadine Gordimer, Nayantara Sahgal, Buchi Emecheta and the Politics of Gender, is largely based on her Purdue dissertation and was published by Africa World Press earlier this year. Her various other publications include an article on Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, which appeared in Clio last year, and one on Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra, published in JMMLA. At Saint Louis University she teaches courses at all levels, from 100 to 600, on postcolonial literature, world literature, women's writing, cultural studies, black voices, world drama, world fiction, film and literature etc. Right now she is working on a project studying how women experience genocide in African and Asian film and fiction.

Batong GU, who defended his Ph.D. Dissertation in Rhetoric and Composition earlier this month, is Assistant Professor of English and Co-Director of Technical Communications at Eastern Washington University. He started at EWU in August 1999. His dissertation was titled "From the oracle bones to the computer: A rhetorical Perspective on writing technology development in China."

This is the second issue of the English Graduate Gazette, which publishes news and information about Purdue English Department graduate students and alumni. It is particularly designed to announce graduate student publications, conference presentations, fellowships and other awards and achievements, along with academic appointments and promotions. Please e-mail your news items to the Director of Graduate Studies or the GradSEA Officers.