To Find a Source of Inspiration?

I was doomed to be an English major (read: book nerd) since before I could read. I remember insisting that my mother read me at least three books before I could sleep. I always loved reading and being read to but writing was always something that I wouldn't be sure about. I loved to dabble in short stories and it seemed to me that writers were born, not made. There was absolutely no way in which I saw the people who made books as writers, they were authors. That idea persisted until I was twelve and my school ran a Scholastic Book Drive. That's when I met the author that would inspire me to be an active writer.

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes published her first book when she was just thirteen. It was called In the Forests of the Night and featured the William Blake poem "The Tiger" as an introduction. It follows a vampire named Risika. Let it be said and repeated: Twilight was not the first vampire book to captivate teenage girls and Atwater-Rhodes can take Stephenie Meyer down any day (in my opinion, at least).

Atwater-Rhodes has published about a book a year since her first book even when she was in college and even now that she has graduated, is teaching, and is getting married (what a woman!)

The best part is, she is only a year older than I am. She proved to me that you can be a writer at any age. You don't just magically become an author when you graduate from some esteemed school with a PhD in Creative Writing. My little short stories and poems suddenly had weight and meaning. They had value. They could be important, they could be published.

My writing wasn't silly, it wasn't some hobby that I had to put off and hide away and pretend I didn't do.

In this season for being thankful, for being appreciative, I must say that I am most thankful for this wonderful author and her books. She made writing a world that I could be part of even as a teenager, and even now as an emerging adult.

Thank you, Amelia.

To everyone out there, I encourage you to find a writer like this who has meaning to you, who can open up the world of writing and make it accessible to you. Above all, I encourage you to write :)

To Take A Study Break?

I hope that everyone is having fun this week in the library! :-) I hope to be seeing some people at Mama Flora's tonight for some delicious off-campus food and fundraising goodness!

Our Applebees Flapjack fundraiser can now be found on Facebook! Link to the event is here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=187824979435&ref=mf

Other fun things:
I am personally a master of procrastination during these reading days. I came across this page while I was hypothetically considering maybe doing work at some point, and thought that I would share it with everyone!

Grammar Challenge

I thought I’d provide a little morsel from a nonfiction workshop I took in college taught by someone who, among other accomplishments, was the most obsessively precise user of English I have ever and will ever encounter. I have, or, well, had, David Foster Wallace to thank for my own peevishness about mistakes in what he called S.W.E., or Standard Written English. So what follows is the complete text of a worksheet from his class.

It is a pretty short quiz, but still challenging! I got 8/10 correct, try and see if you can beat me :D

To Spread Season's Greetings with Suggested Readings?

With the holiday season quickly approaching, what better gift to ask for as English majors than more books? Students and professors alike will finally have time over the winter recess to delve into the fresh pages of new novels, and I personally could not think of a better way to spend my free time this winter. Whether it is furthering the educational reads we have grown to love this semester (I plan on reading as many Shakespearean plays as I can get my hands on) or picking up all of the 2009 New York Times Bestsellers, you can bet thousands of pages will be read during this ‘most wonderful time of the year.’

As lovers of literature, a few things I would like to see our organization participate more in are book exchanges, suggestions and passes. I am sure many of you avid readers out there have already started a shopping list of novels for this year, I know I certainly have. That being said, why not share our suggestions for this winter’s ‘hot reads?’ There is no better literary resource than a society of English majors for finding the latest and greatest books, or for being reminded of some of the all-time classics. It might even be fun to see which authors our peers and professors have been grappling with! Plus, you never know what sort of inspiring work of art you might come across in hearing other suggestions.

I’ll go out on a limb and start us off with some of the novels I plan to read in the upcoming months. I will also include some of my favorite reads from this past semester. After all, what better way to spread the holiday cheer than to give others the opportunity to escape into a fantastic novel?

This semester I read (and would like to suggest):

Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan- A young adult novel that begins on September 11, 2001, and follows the lives of three teens- Claire, Jasper and Peter as they cope with the horrific events of that day. Despite the heavy topic, the novel is primarily about finding hope and love in a world far removed from these emotions.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare- You can never ever go wrong with Shakespeare. I have also recently encountered a number of Shakespearean plays turned graphic novels, which may be very interesting reads as well!

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver- A multivoiced narrative chronicling three interwoven stories of humans and their relationship to the natural world (specifically Zebulon Valley in Southern Appalachia). If you are at all interested in the notions of ecocriticism, this is a must-read for you.

The Misfits by James Howe- This is the ultimate must read for future teachers of young adult literature. It follows the life of four middle school outcasts and they struggle to fit in- something I’m sure we can all remember doing not too long ago... I created a ‘book trailer’ (similar to a movie trailer, but for books!) that will soon be available via youtube, if you’re interested.

Over break I hope to read:

Twelfth Night-William Shakespeare

Boy Meets Boy- David Levithan

Blankets-Craig Thompson (A Graphic Novel)

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell- Tucker Max (I’d like to see for myself what all the controversy on campus is about Tucker Max)

How to Read Literature Like a Professor- Thomas C. Foster (Times Bestseller)

Columbine- Dave Cullen

I Shudder: And Other Reactions to Life, Death and New Jersey- Paul Rudnick

There are just a few of my suggestions and intended reads. I am hoping for a large number of contributions from you, fellow members of Sigma Tau Delta. Happy Readings and Season's Greetings!

- Matt Persico

To Attend the 2009 NCTE Convention?

This past weekend I attended the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) 99th Annual Convention in Philadelphia, PA. The conference ran from Thursday, 11/19 through Monday, 11/23. Four other English Secondary Education Majors and I went to Philly bright and early on Saturday morning, unaware of the majestic wonders we would find when we got off the train. I had such an intellectually stimulating time that I decided to go back by myself the following day.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the NCTE convention, the convention is basically like one giant "How-To-Teach" seminar, similar to the ones that Dr. Meixner organizes at TCNJ. There are at least twenty to thirty different presentations going on at once, given by teachers and professors from around the country. There is also a giant convention center, in which different publishers bring free materials to give to teachers, but more on the convention center later.

When the five of us first arrived, we picked up the convention program. The convention program was massive in size (it was like carrying around a 5-subject spiral notebook) and contained about 200 pages of information about the conference and its various events and presentations (see picture of program above). Our first plan of action was to decide which presentations we wanted to attend first. We decided to divide-and-conquer that way we could attend different presentations and compare notes and materials later. Each presentation ran for approximately an hour an fifteen minutes.

The first presentation I attended was about critical thinking. The speakers discussed Bloom's Taxonomy, which relates to the different levels of questioning. For example, higher-level questions on Bloom's Taxonomy involve tasks that ask students to "Evaluate" and "Create," rather than simply recall information.

At the second presentation I attended, all three of the presenters were high school teachers from the same school in Texas. They explained that they have a mandated British curriculum, which their students find difficult to relate to. They provided us with a variety of strategies to connect the students' own lives and values with writing assignments related to the various British texts.

Lastly, the third presentation I attended was about teaching graphic novels in the classroom. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I've never actually read a graphic novel, so this presentation was an excellent way of introducing me to a variety of different texts in the genre, as well as provide me with different methods for teaching these novels. For example, one 7th grade English teacher explained that his students were struggling with Yang's American Born Chinese. He discovered that the reason for this was that his students were unfamiliar with comics and graphic novels, and were therefore unable to follow the different panels and speech bubbles.

Now that I've told you about the professional development aspect of the conference, I can move onto my experiences in the convention center. Upon first walking into the convention center I was overwhelmed--seven long rows with table after table of books, textbooks, and other materials. Where to begin? Like a deer in headlights, I started moving up and down the aisles. I saw other teachers carrying bags full of books, but I had no idea where they found all these free materials.

One of the other TCNJ students and I started approaching the exhibitors from the various publishing companies, and we struck up conversations with them. They gave us advanced copies of books that aren't even set to be published until Spring 2010. I knew that my bookshelves at home were filled with Young Adult (YA) literature that was geared toward girls, but my collection was severely lacking in YA literature for boys. I knew that one of my goals needed to be to expose myself to YA texts that would appeal to boys. By the end of the first day, I had collected 22 free books and had met or seen a variety of authors, including Jerry Spinelli, Laurie Halse Anderson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Carol Lynch Williams, Elizabeth Scott, Kenneth C. David, Jeff Kinney, and David Lubar. I even got a few of these authors to autograph the free copies of their books that I picked up. Many of the publishing companies were even distributing teacher guides to help teach these books, and I gladly picked up these to store away with all my future teaching supplies. One of the free poetry resources that I received from a company called Poetry Out Loud, I used with my students at Trenton Central yesterday. (The above picture is of all the free materials I received that first day.)

On the second day of the conference when I went back to the convention center, I was able to purchase many of the books that weren't given away the previous day at a reduced price of $1-$3 for paperback copies. Again, I received many free advanced copies of books as well, and walked away the second day with another 22 books in my bag (see above picture).

The last even I attended before returning home on Sunday was Kylene Beers's "Presidential Address." For those of you who aren't familiar with Beers, she's the author of When Kids Can't Read, which is basically an English teacher's guide for different teaching methods. On my way into the Grand Ballroom where the address was to be given, I was five feet away from Beers. I desperately wanted to go over and talk to her, but she was involved in a conversation with another teacher.

Beer's presentation was entitled, "Sailing over the Edge: Navigating the Uncharted Waters of a World Gone Flat." She discussed technology and its role in schools, and she clearly challenged NCLB, which everyone applauded. At the end of the event, she passed the NCTE presidential "torch" to President-Elect, Carol Jago. (In the picture, Beers is wearing blue and Jago is wearing red.)

Next year's conference is going to be held in Orlando, Floria, so I recommend saving up now. For students, the registration fee for the convention only costs $90, instead of the $250+ registration fee for teachers. It is a great experience for professional development, and even if you aren't an Education Major you can still pick up free books with which to stock your home library.

~Kristen Casabona

To Come to an Awesome Lecture on Reading Lolita?

Just wanted to post a friendly reminder about the Professor Harriet Hustis' Faculty Research Talk: On Reading Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita! December 3rd, 11:30-12:20, Business Building Basement. Delicious sandwiches from Ray's Sub's will be served, and it is sure to be an amazing talk, so please try to come! :-)

A link to the facebook event is here: FRT: Professor Hustis on LOLITA.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Lolita, it's all kinds of beautiful, disturbing, horrifying, heart-moving, revolting literary goodness, about a man who is attracted to young girls.. I've posted the opening passage below; however, no familiarity with the novel is necessary for the talk on Thursday!

Hope to see you all there :)

Becky McGowan

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns."

To spend $25,000 responsibly?

The College Union Board (CUB) at The College of New Jersey has put in a bid to bring Tucker Max to campus to lecture. And they plan to pay him $25,000. Now, I'm not going to enumerate all the reasons why I think it's a bad idea to bring this guy to campus. But I do think that English honor students might want to think about all the other things that CUB could do with $25,000 to make our campus more fun. What could $25,000 buy the campus?

• Another speaker: some of the speakers in the $25,000 (or less) range include athletes (Ahmad Rashad, Donovan McNab, Kristi Yamaguchi), scientists (Michio Kaku, Robert Ballard), comedians (Capitol Steps, Dame Edna, Ricky Gervais, Second City Comedy, Theo Von), or someone from another speakers' bureau.
• 100 Kindles
• 1000 iTunes gift cards
• a Wii and five games for every dormitory lounge
• 100 new films to screen
• fully catered dance open to all students

These are just some of the things that I can think of. Or maybe, hey, here's a radical idea: student activities money can fund student-run events!

Felicia Steele

To Support an Arts Community on Campus?

Yesterday I learned the sad news that someone had seen fit to attack (yes, that is the verb I want) the public art in the new quadrangle between the Art and Music buildings. Worse yet, I learned that some students support the destruction and defacement of public property as a form of artistic expression.

Most of us in English are familiar with the history in our discipline of banned and even burned books. Although Adolf Hitler's name is tossed about often by those seeking to label their opponents as Hitleresque, it is not at all a stretch to associate history's worst mass murderer with book banning, book burning, and the destruction and defacement of art. Congratulations, art destroyers! You really have joined the fascists.

For a few moments, let's examine the possible motives behind defacing art works. Perhaps the vandals were merely expressing their free-speech-protected rights to speak out against art they disliked. I support free speech, but painted frat symbols are not a form of speech, and those who did the speaking by spray paint are not willing to speak publicly. Free speech requires a speaker -- dear speaker, please come forward and acknowledge your words/paint.

Perhaps the vandals were unhappy with the appearance of campus. Ours is a rather pretty suburban campus with lots of red brick, walking paths, and green spaces. A student could, however, prefer an urban campus with no public spaces at all, preferably one surrounded by symbols grafittied onto all available surfaces. I would suggest however, that in choosing to attend TCNJ, the student selected for himself a campus in which public drawing had been traditionally confined to chalk on sidewalks. Please honor our traditions, dear spray-painter.

Perhaps the vandals were unhappy with the taxpayer-borne costs of the artwork. I sympathize with the difficulties of paying taxes in New Jersey. I myself pay taxes in New Jersey, but I express my opinions about my taxes at the ballot, and not with spray paint. Dear vandal, may I suggest that a can of spray paint never affected anyone's tax bill, except to increase it as the costs of repair to defaced public structures are considerable?

Perhaps the vandals were dismayed to learn that decisions at TCNJ are sometimes made by figures at the top. A suggestion has been put forward that campus-wide expenditures ought to be put to a campus-wide vote of some sort. I'm sorry, but only student government candidates are put to a campus-wide vote. A college president and a college board of trustees are not democratic institutions. The USA is a democracy, but America's schools, universities, corporations, armed forces, churches, and many more of its social institutions do not ask students, employees, soldiers, or believers to vote on grades, salaries, combat orders, or doctrine. All important decsions at TCNJ are voted on by the Board of Trustees, but not by whichever cohort of future alumnae/alumni happen to be on campus together.

Perhaps the spray painter was dismayed by his tuition bill, and believed that TCNJ could not both afford public art and keep tuition costs down. I sympathize with anyone dismayed by tuition bills, as I myself pay two tuition bills. Tuition costs, however, include a great many expenses that do not benefit every student. Nonetheless, all tuition payers bear the costs because each is receiving some of the benefit. One student may enjoy the college's recreational facilities, another its support of All-College-Theatre, and a third be thankful that the School of Science labs were updated. All TCNJ students do not benefit equally from all of its expenditures. If all of TCNJ's expenditures had either to be enjoyed by a majority of the student body or be eliminated, we would have a campus with one sports team on which all athletes competed, with one club to which all students belonged, and with a library that owned one book.

I am forced to conclude that it is impossible for anyone to have defaced our public spaces for a good reason. Anyone accepting his acceptance to TCNJ has joined a community. I call upon all members of that community to respect one another, and to disagree respectfully. Spray painting artwork with fraternity symbols is not respectful disagreement with the purchasing decision. It was a cowardly, ignorant, and deeply anti-social act, one which its perpetrator should be ashamed to own. Come to think of it, he IS ashamed to own it. His shameful silence is the only sign I can see of his eventual repentance for his egregious sin.

Diane Vanner Steinberg

To Scare Themselves?

The approach of Halloween has made me think about books, movies, etc that just plain give me the chills. Reading "the Tell-Tale Heart," watching Psycho -- definitely the all time scariest film I've ever seen, or reading In cold Blood makes children dressed as princesses or Star Wars characters not-at-all scary by comparison.

What is the scary film of this generation? The Scary novel? Any nominees?

To Play Trivial Pursuit?

Had a super time last night playing Trivial Pursuit against some really smart English majors. We played the "book lovers" edition, but I thought it should be retitled the "trashy book lovers" edition because it was heavy on Danielle Steele and light on William Shakespeare. Our next intellectual game night should be "Taboo" -- my favorite word game of all time!

To Volunteer at the Trenton Public Library?

Faculty, staff, and students (in alphabetic order, rather than order of importance) face unprecedented challenges because of the economic crisis in the United States and around the world. Over the last year, tuitions have risen, salaries have fallen, and institutions have struggled to manage enrollments and endowments.

In late summer, faculty at The College of New Jersey learned that they would have to take seven furlough days in the 2009-2010 year, reducing their pay by 10%. The response was a mixture of anger, resentment, shock, disbelief, and resignation. But a number of faculty members took the opportunity, with Prof. David Blake's leadership, to use that furlough time productively and in a way that demonstrated the commitment of higher education professionals to their larger communities.

Sigma Tau Delta members (and moderators) have continued this volunteer effort, sorting hundreds of books for the Trenton Public Library book sale.

from Prof. Felicia Steele, moderator: When I went to the library the first time, I was struck by all the activity going on there, even though huge parts of the library were closed to the general public. Every computer was being used, teenagers were in the stacks reading books, and patrons of all ages were coming in and out. The library definitely seemed to be a happy hub in this community. It seemed like a perfect match between Sigma Tau Delta and a community service site.