Spanish Table!

Are you interested in improving your Spanish?

¿Te interesa hablar en español?

Tómate un café en “La mesa de español”
Have a coffee at the “Spanish Table”

For all levels, every Tuesday in October and November
From 3:30 to 4:00 at Eder 211

Topics of conversation include Deportes, Política, Música, Literatura, Viajes, Economía.

Banned Books Reading

The twelfth annual Reading of Challenged and Banned Books in recognition of the American Library Association’s Banned Book Week will begin at 7 p.m. on Oct. 1 in the Blum Student Union, room 218 and 219 on the campus of Missouri Western State University.Western students and faculty along with members of the St. Joseph community will hold a reading of books that have been either banned or challenged in U.S. schools in recent years.

This event is free and open to the public and refreshments will be served.The reading is sponsored by the department of English, foreign languages, and journalism; the Department of Education; the Missouri Western State University Library; Prairie Lands Writing Project; and the student affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English.For more information contact Dr. Michael Cadden at 816-271-4576 or cadden@missouriwestern.edu

Foreign Film Series

Come and take in a foreign film, free of charge. Refreshments will be served, so it's a good, cheap date. What else do you need to know?

All sessions start at 6:30 p.m.
Location: Kemper Recital Hall (Leah Spratt - 1st Floor) / Hearnes 102 (Hearnes Center, lower floor)

Friday September 19th
Cinema Paradiso (Italy, 1990) Dir.: Giuseppe Tornatore
Presented by Dana Andrews (EFLJ)
Room: Kemper Recital Hall

Wednesday September 24th
Libertarias(Spain,1996)
Dir: Vicente Aranda
Presented by Dr. Eduardo Castilla-Ortíz (EFLJ)
Room: Hearnes 102

Wednesday October 8th
Moliere (France, 2007)
Dir: Laurent Tirard
Presented by Dr. Susan Hennessy (EFLJ) Room: Spratt 203

Wednesday October 22rd
Time (Korea, 2006)
Dir.: Kim Ki-Duk
Presented by Dr. Pi-Ming Yeh (Department of Nursing) Room: Hearnes 102

Friday October 31st
The Namesake (India, 2007)
Dir.: Mira Nair
Presented by Dr. Durai Sundaramoorthi
(Steven Craig School of Business)
Room: Kemper Recital Hall

Friday November 4th
Bolivia (Argentina, 2001)
Dir.: Adrián Caetano
Presented by Dr. Jason Youngkeit (EFLJ)
Room: Kemper Recital Hall

Thursday November 20th
Persepolis (France/USA, 2007)
Dir.: Marjane Satrapi
Presented by Nadege Saint-Maxent (EFLJ)
Room: Hearnes 102

Developmental Writing Program Wins National Award

Missouri Western’s ENG 100 Developmental Writing Program won the Conference on Basic Writing’s Award for Innovation for 2008. This award recognizes writing programs that improve educational processes for developmental writers through creative approaches. The award criteria are originality, portability and results and benefits. The review group praised Western’s ENG 100 program for its publication, Discovering the Student, Discovering the Self, unique curriculum and effective and engaging instruction it offers to the students through the Writer’s Workshops and specialized Learning Communities. In April 2008, Dawn Terrick, the Director of Developmental Writing, and English 100 Instructors Bill Church, Corla Dawson and Meredith Katchen attended the award ceremony at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in New Orleans.

Announcing a Reading

To celebrate creative writing and this year’s literary journals produced by Missouri Western State University, the staffs and contributors of The Mochila Review, Canvas, and Tau Mu “The Writer’s Circle,” will sponsor a reading on Friday, October 3, 2008 in Kemper Recital Hall in Spratt at 7:00 p.m. After contributors have read their own work, an open mic time will be available for anyone who wants to read. This event offers literary voices within our community a place to gather and read.

The Mochila Review is published annually by Missouri Western State University's English, Foreign Languages, and Journalism Department. The journal is staffed by undergraduate students and edited by Dr. Bill Church. The journal contains over 20 pieces from artists all over the country. The Mochila Review is now accepting submissions both electronically and in print, for the next edition.

Canvas is made available through Missouri Western State University's Foundation Funding. As an applied learning experience, Western students are on staff from the beginning stages of the journal’s publication to its completion. They read and discuss submissions, respond to the artists, and help with typesetting and design. All students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Missouri Western State University are encouraged to submit to Canvas. This year’s Canvas is a compilation of over 20 students from Missouri Western. Canvas is now accepting electronic and print submissions for the 2009, 6th edition.

“The Writer’s Circle” is a group of poets, fiction writers, and screen writers who meet weekly to critique their works with MWSU faculty: Megan Thompson and Dana Andrews.

For more information about either journal or upcoming events please visit the websites.
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/mochila/
http://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/canvas/

Fall English Dinner

EFLJ faculty, MWSU administrators, St. Joseph School District administrators, EFLJ alumni, and other area language arts teachers gathered in Blum Student Union to share conversation, a good meal, and to listen to Dr. Sharon Hoge, Director of Curriculum and Literacy Services at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Her talk, "Unintended Consequences: What We Have Learned," outlined the different curricular implications for state-wide testing in Missouri public schools. Thanks to Jane Frick and Tom Pankiewicz for again arranging this annual gathering.

Alumnus a New Professor

Dr. Joe Sommers, a graduate from Western with a BSE in English, defended his dissertation in May of 2007 at the University of Kansas and began work this fall as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. His article "Are You There, Reader? It's Me, Margaret: A Reconsideration of Judy Blume's Prose as Sororal Dialogism," appeared in Children's Literature Association Quarterly (33.3) this past month. Joe can be reached at this e-mail address: JSommers@uca.eduJSommers@uca.edu
Congratulations, Joe!

Recent Faculty Accomplishments

Elizabeth Latosi-Sawin presented a paper at the national meeting of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (an affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English) at Mount Madonna, California. Her presentation for this conference on the Wisdom Tradition in Higher Education was entitled “Growing Deep Like the River.” Dr. Sawin also represented MWSU at the American Democracy Project seminar on Civic Engagement in Action: The Stewardship of Public Lands (Politics and the Yellowstone System) in Yellowstone National Park. This seminar was sponsored by the Yellowstone Association Institute and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Ann Thorne was elected Newsletter Editor/Secretary of the History Division of the American Educators of Journalism and Mass Communication at the national convention in Chicago, IL. AEJMC is an organization of approximately 3,600 journalism and mass communication faculty. The History Division has about 400 members.

Meg Thompson’s poem “Window in the Basement” appeared in the spring issue of The Louisville Review, vol. 63.

Robert Bergland presented "The Need to Recruit Minority Students for the Student Newspaper/Publication Workshop Course" at the Association of Educators of Mass Communication and Journalism in Chicago.

MWSU English faculty members and Prairie Lands Writing Project (PLWP) Teacher Consultants Jane Frick and Kathy Miller conducted a day-long Holistic Scoring session at Excelsior Springs Middle School to establish students' beginning-of-school-year writing proficiencies for the 624 students enrolled this fall. The session was part of PLWP's three-year commitment to provide literacy-related professional development programs to the teachers at Excelsior Springs Middle School, a project is funded by the National Writing Project (NWP) as a part of its National Evaluation study of the effectiveness of NWP professional development offerings throughout the country.

Three New Faculty Arrive in EFLJ

We have three new colleagues in EFLJ this fall.

Dr. Karina Vazquez, Assistant Professor of Spanish, received her PhD in Latin American Literature, specifically in Argentinean narrative and its relation with the cultural and social perceptions of work. Her professional and personal goals are the same, she says, "to make social justice something possible, no matter the community, the country or the place where we are." She looks forward to exploring how language, literature, and culture can work across the curriculum in activities that involve study abroad, service learning, and work.

Dr. Kay Siebler, Associate Professor of English and our first Director of Composition, recently moved to St. Joe from Storm Lake, IA where she was a tenured English department faculty, women's studies coordinator, and director of writing at Buena Vista University. Her book, Composing Feminisms, published this year by Hampton Press, gives a historical overview of how feminist pedagogy has shaped the field of composition. Kay is looking forward to creating connections between composition instructors here at MWSU and working with graduate students in the new Masters of Applied Arts in Written Communication program.

Tulsa, OK native Dr. Michael Charlton, Assistant Professor of English, received his BA, MA, and PhD from the University of Oklahoma. His MA thesis focused on depictions of family in the films of Orson Welles, though he changed his emphasis to composition and rhetoric for his doctoral work at OU, where his dissertation focused on the history, theoretical influences, and future of visual rhetoric. He is very pleased to start teaching here at Missouri Western and is adjusting to life out in Savannah, where he lives with his six year old retriever mix, George (named after George Orson Welles). His major research interests include technical and professional writing, visual rhetoric and film, writing across the curriculum, and horror fiction.

Welcome to EFLJ!