To Celebrate our 2010 Inductees?

This morning the Alpha Epsilon Alpha chapter of Sigma Tau Delta inducted our new members for 2010. We were honored by a welcome by the Dean of TCNJ's School of Culture and Society, Dr. Benjamin Rifkin, and an address by the chairman of the Department of English, Dr. David Blake. Dean Rifkin highlighted the close match between the goals of Sigma Tau Delta and the mission of the School of Culture and Society. Professor Blake explicated the quote we chose to illustrate the importance of "Truth" to members of Sigma Tau Delta: "God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, -- you can never have both"--Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We were also honored at the end of the ceremony by a visit from our college's president, Dr. Barbara Gitenstein. We want to thank all three of them for taking time out to celebrate our new members and the accomplishments of our chapter.

To Plan the 2010-2011 School Year?

Here are minutes from our first general body meeting of the semester.
1. Introductions!
2. Google Calendar: Check for Event Dates
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=usgeke5njj38gc997hehfr47ag%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York
3. Inductions: October 2, 11 am in the Library Auditorium. (Coffee with the Dean 10 am.)
4. Membership: Only Full, National Members may apply for scholarships, awards, or to attend the national conference. Social members are encouraged to attend all chapter (TCNJ) events.
5. Dues must be turned in by September 15th in order to be inducted this year.
6. Terhune Fundraiser: Contact Todd (petty4@tcnj.edu) if you would like to sign up! Shifts are 9-6 on any available day (see Todd for dates) and Terhune will donate $90 dollars to the organization per volunteer. (Also, there are delicious donuts and a great employee discount for any day you work!)
7. Book Club: Our first book will discuss Black Ice, the STD Common Reader for this year, and we will meet next Wednesday (9/15) at 4:30 in Bliss 228.
8. Convention (Pittsburgh): March 23-26 2011
a. For those who would like to submit: send Professor Steinberg (dsteinbe@tcnj.edu) what you plan to submit by October 22.
b. All Scholarship and Award applications go through Professor Steinberg.
c. Members may apply for anything for which they fit the award description.
d. If you would like to be added to the Pittsburgh Module inside SOCS and did not sign up at the meeting, please email Professor Steinberg.
9. Blog/Website: If you have something you would like to write, email an E-Board member and it will be posted to the Blog! Also, remember to comment on posts!
10. Also, additional fundraising information not mentioned at the meeting: The Student Finance Board is sponsoring live music and an outdoor grill every Friday before Fall Break and is offering $150 dollars in fundraising money to any organization that volunteers to grill for one of the events. If anyone is interested in looking further into organizing our participation, please let us know!
Other Important Links, also listed in the SOCS homepage:
Our award-winning chapter webpage is http://enghonor.intrasun.tcnj.edu
Our award-winning chapter blog is http://enghonor.blogspot.com/
Our national organization's website is at
http://www.english.org/sigmatd/index.shtml. Please bookmark this site and check it for information about internships, conference opportunities, scholarships, and publishing opportunities.

Take care,
Rebecca

To Stop Burning Books?

Today's discouraging news is that Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center is planning to go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Koran to commemorate the September 11 attacks on the US. American officials, including Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, and US military commander David Petraeus have all condemned the planned book burning and have pleaded with Pastor Jones, noting that his actions will make our troops -- indeed all Americans -- less safe.

Pastor Jones is within his constitutional rights to burn books that he himself owns -- book burning is protected as an act of free speech. It is, however, at the very least, an unkind gesture to burn anyone's Holy Book. Pastor Jones claims that his actions are directed only to radical Islam, but, of course, the Koran is a sacred text to all Muslims, not merely to the radical fringe. If Pastor Jones wishes to send a message only to radical Islamists, perhaps he should search for written texts advocating radical Islam, and burn those, leaving the Koran, with its messges of charity and peace, intact. Pastor Jones claims to have prayed over his decision; I respectfully urge him to pray again.

Much American anger has been directed against Muslims planning to build an Islamic cultural center in a renovated building in lower Manhattan. This Islamic cultural center will contain a prayer room, and will be within a few blocks of the site of the World Trade Center destroyed on September 11, 2001, but it will not be visible from "ground zero." The same Bill of Rights that allows Terry Jones to burn books also allows Muslims to follow Islam and to build prayer rooms, cultural centers, and even mosques on land which they themselves own. Many Americans are asking Muslims to respond with sensitivity to the feelings of those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001, and to cancel plans to build an Islamic cultural center within a few blocks of "ground zero." Are those same Americans calling on Pastor Jones to be sensitive to the feelings of Muslims worldwide whose Holy Book is being burned?

Calls on Muslims not to build anything close to ground zero fill me with suspicion. Where exactly ought Muslims to build their mosques and cultural centers? Five blocks from "ground zero"? in midtown Manhattan? in New Jersey? no where in the Western hemisphere? Could stopping a cultural center be a wedge that eventually allows anyone anywhere in the US to have her or his feelings hurt by someone who wishes to build a non-Christian worship space, and so to halt construction of that mosque, synagogue, or temple?

It's important that those of us who read books take a stance in favor if keeping them unburned by those who prefer to use them as symbols of hatred.

To Start A Book Club?

As busy English majors, it can be overwhelming to think of the exhaustive list of literary classics that we feel we must read. And each year, new books are released that capture the attention of the literary world and seem to only make that list even longer. When selecting books to read outside of class, where do we begin? And without the guidance of literary experts (our professors), will we be doing it wrong?

To alleviate these problems, our chapter has decided to start a book club. As a group, students can read a selected book, then discuss it in a book club meeting. After a vote, STD members chose a diverse group of eight books to read together during the 2010-2011 school year, including classics such as Lolita, Wuthering Heights, and Pride and Prejudice, contemporary favorites such as The Kite Runner and The Alchemist, the poetry collection The Stranger Manual, and one young adult novel, Shiver.


The first book club selection is this year's Sigma Tau Delta Common Reader, Lorene Carey's Black Ice.

A tentative schedule of the reading order and due dates:

1. Black Ice by Lorene Cary - Sept. 8th
2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - October 13th
3. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - November 12th
4. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - December 3rd
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - February 9th
6. The Stranger Manual by Catie Rosemurgy - March 16th*
7. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - April 15th
8. Shiver by - April 29th*
*date has been changed

To Manage 125 Teachers?

This summer, I have had the ultimate lesson in classroom management--managing 125 teachers at my internship with the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Each week, for five weeks, 25 new teachers have joined me and the seminar leaders at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey for a six-day residential program, in which they earn 45 professional development hours. One of the greatest aspects of the internship is meeting all of these Humanities teachers from throughout the state of New Jersey and asking them questions about teaching, texts they use in their classrooms, and methods of teaching. I am a sponge. Since I will be student teaching this semester, I have been using the opportunity to learn as much as I can.

The five seminar topics are as follows:

1. Race in American History and Culture: New Perspectives
2. Poverty, Affluence, and the American Dream
3. America and the Politics of the World's Religions
4. Narratives of Immigration: Latino/a Lives
5. Adolescent and Young Adult Literature

Needless to say, as a future English teacher, I am looking forward to the final seminar the most. However, all of the seminars have been eye-opening experiences, which have allowed me to learn how to connec these topics back to the classroom. If anyone is interested in professional development, I would highly recommend these seminars.

The above picture is from a field trip the Week 4 group took to the Seabrook Educational-Cultural Center to learn about New Jersey's role in immigration.

~Kristen C.

To Have Sense or Sensibility?

photo by Cara Mac Neil :)

Seeing as this blog needed a little updating I thought I would come back to it even as a graduate :) Over the summer Sigma Tau Delta-ers and Non-Sigma Tau Delta-ers alike have joined forces in agreeing to read and discuss Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. My friend Katie and I were the driving force behind this because we both realized that while we loved the ever-popular Pride and Prejudice we hadn't touched some of the other books.

A lot of people who consider themselves Jane Austen fans came out of the woodwork to say "I too haven't really read much besides P&P " or "I've read everything except Sense and Sensibility" and I'm wondering why exactly that seems to be the case. Surely Jane Austen is not a One Hit Wonder among female Victorian writers so it seems strange to me that she is known primarily for one novel. People assume that if they like P&P that they will love the rest of her books because she has developed a reputation for being formulaic: a Happy Endings type of writer.

I wonder if this is true, if this is false or if it is simply her genius.

Being about halfway through the book I cannot wait to have someone to talk about it with and am so excited that the society of English Majors seems to be a bond that lasts even after the college years become officially behind me.

Sometime in August (date TBA) we are all meeting to discuss this book and professors are even getting in on the deal! It really is amazing to feel like part of a literary community and it makes the reading experience sweeter knowing that I will absolutely get to dissect the nature of Mrs Jennings and other strange but loveables in this book.

It seems to me that we English Majors are full of sense..... and a bit of sensibility :)


-- Cara

To Change Our Blog Design?

Do you notice anything different about our blog? Why! The design has been changed of course! The scarlet red color fits in well with our national Sigma Tau Delta colors.

Be sure to read our blog on Tuesday, June 15th for the 2010 Book Club selections that you voted for!