DOCSLIB.ORG

Redefining the Sublime and Repositioning Appalachian Literature: A

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Redefining the Sublime and Repositioning Appalachian Literature: A REDEFINING THE SUBLIME AND REPOSITIONING APPALACHIAN LITERATURE: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE POETRY OF WEST VIRGINIA’S MURIEL MILLER DRESSLER AND IRENE MCKINNEY By JULIE A. HAINES A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate Studies Division of Ohio Dominican University Columbus, Ohio MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH FEBRUARY 2016 ii iii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………iv INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 1…………………………………………………………………………………….5 CHAPTER 2…………………………………………………………………………………...16 CHAPTER 3…………………………………………………………………………………...38 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………..44 WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………………………….46 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My sincere thanks first go to Dr. Kelsey Squire for her assistance and guidance in this work. Your thorough planning and detailed comments and suggestions truly helped direct my thoughts and ideas into something so much more. Thanks are also owed to Dr. Martin Brick for his comments and suggestions to this work as well as providing my first introduction to graduate literary study. While these two were integral to this thesis, each English faculty member at Ohio Dominican University that I have encountered has pushed me to academic work beyond what I once thought possible. I am so lucky to work for Bloom Vernon Local Schools, a district that provided me the support necessary to complete this program. The administration team of Rick Carrington, Marc Kreischer, and Brett Roberts saw the value in credentialing high school teachers to do what is “best for kids.” I would also like to thank Darcee Claxon for our collaborative work in earlier courses and Judy Ellsesser for being a sounding board and patient listener and reader. Finally, I must thank my husband, Thad, for his patience and support through this whole process. Whether I was worried I would miss a deadline or so distracted that I left the remote in the refrigerator, you stayed positive and encouraged me to push forward. 1 INTRODUCTION My first taste of canonical literature that said “Ohio” was Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919). I found myself connected to the people of Anderson’s fictional Winesburg. Though years separated and set at the other end of the state from my small-town Ohio upbringing, the connection intrigued me. This introduction set me on a path to discover more literature from or about my home state. As a lifelong resident of southeastern Ohio, however, I found little literature of or about my specific home of Gallia County, but in college I became familiar with an author from the neighboring county of Jackson, Kermit Daugherty. The librarian at the school where I did my student teaching was a relative of his, and I read his novel Out of the Red Brush (1954). In the opening pages he discusses the volatility of the land and how after the hard working of that land of the Appalachian foothills, it was likely that “the good top dirt” would “wash down the hillside to feed up some bottom land in the valley” and “the brush’d grow no matter how thin the ground got” (10). Despite the often harshness of life on this terrain, Daugherty’s novel ends with a more positive view of this land than what opens the story: “The big moon was a […] dapplin everything with its soft light […] the little crick run like silver […] Way back in the Red Brush faint an clear come the music of hounds chasin a fox. The night was sweet, an beautiful, an whisperin love” (251). The ending mirrors the beginning, but that same place that causes heartbreak to those who live off of it has a power to fill the heart with something greater. This dichotomy of the Appalachian experience continues to intrigue me. The area of Ohio where I live stands closer to the cities of Huntington, West Virginia, and Ashland, Kentucky than Ohio’s own Columbus, Cleveland, or Cincinnati. As I continued to study and read of the Ohio experience, I found myself also seeking out the literature of West Virginia and Kentucky. The section of Ohio where I have resided my entire life comprises part 2 of Appalachia, “the 205,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi” (Appalachian Regional Commission). West Virginia and Kentucky are also part of Appalachia, and in the stories and poems of Kentucky and West Virginia authors, I found more of a bond, more of a personal connection to experience, but I stopped pursuing such authors as I began my own teaching career and focused on reading and teaching from the canon. My attention was brought back to the literature of my own backyard when I was lucky enough to attend several Ohio Appalachian Center for Higher Education (OACHE) conferences as part of my current teaching position. These conferences exposed me to the work of the Jesse Stuart Foundation in Ashland, Kentucky, including the publishing of many books from Appalachian authors. My library of Appalachian novels, memoirs, and histories expanded greatly based on the selection offered in the conference store and presented to me through keynote addresses from the likes of Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, and Jeff Biggers, author of The United States of Appalachia. At one of these conferences, I picked up a copy of Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia; however, that book rested unopened on a shelf until a colleague loaned me her copy when I mentioned Appalachian literature while she was helping me brainstorm thesis topics. If two like-minded educators selected the same book, there had to be worth in it. I then spent a summer week devouring the excerpts, poems, and remembrances in that collection. The quilts, the voices, the family dynamics, and the music within those pages are the relics of my own story, and the places of that collection, the “in Appalachia” of the title, stood paramount over all those other commonalities. Two contemporary authors in the collection, Muriel Miller Dressler and Irene McKinney, resonated with me. The fact that these two are from 3 West Virginia, the only state fully in the Appalachian region and a location with which I had felt a connection earlier, was not surprising. In the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Henry Shapiro argues that seeing Appalachia as a region has created “a culture of place rather than the culture of people” (1100); however, a closer look at these two “people” addressing their “place” displays both parts as vital, dynamic, and inherently tied to the region. This intensity of place makes the region an ideal situation for examination. The Appalachian region has been isolated and disconnected from the rest of America until recently, with an economy that, while improving, was still at seventeen percent unemployment in 2013, and “Appalachia still does not enjoy the same economic vitality as the rest of the nation” (Appalachian Regional Commission). In light of this isolation and economic struggle, poets such as Dressler and McKinney provide not a nostalgic portrait of place, but one where realism permeates the regionalism. This amplification also serves as a vehicle for exploration of greater American issues, much like literature of the inner-city has in recent years. One task I have pursued as an English language arts educator involves gathering resources to build a curriculum that engages students. If I felt such a connection to what I was reading, I began to wonder if my own students would as well: would it spur deeper reading due to that connection? If so, could I justify teaching such literature along with the canon and within the legislated standards? In the startling sense of place running through their work, the dichotomy I earlier recognized in Daugherty’s novel, these works began to find their own place in the canon for me. This was also another possible avenue for engaging my students, for in them, I also observe this dichotomy. They desire to “escape” the region but seem to stay tied to it no matter where they go. 4 In Chapter One, I review the evolution of place in Appalachian literature, from its early role in the fiction of the region to the renaissance of poetry in the region in the late twentieth century. Part of this review also addresses the transition of authors and characters in the literature, moving from outsiders writing about the region and its inhabitants with a stereotyped hand to one-time insiders writing about the inhabitants when outside of the region and finally to insiders writing authentically about life in the region. The second chapter focuses on Dressler and McKinney, looking at several poems for each author and how they combine place and the sublime, particularly in their poems dealing with outsiders and the destruction of the mountains through coal mining. This dichotomy of place and its ties to nature hearkens to the sublime and a redefining of this literary term of antiquity. In the final chapter, an examination of the potential for using Appalachian literature in the classroom occurs. 5 CHAPTER 1 A BRIEF SURVEY OF APPALACHIAN LITERATURE: FROM PROSE TO POETRY, BUT IN ALL, PLACE Place is, as Eudora Welty points out in “Place in Fiction,” “one of the lesser angels that watch over the racing hand of fiction,” but “as soon as we step down from the general view to the close and particular […] and consider what good writing may be, place can be seen, in her own way, to have a great deal to do with that goodness, if not to be responsible for it” (116). This undercurrent of the “hand of fiction” does not station itself as “lesser” in Appalachian literature. While some place Appalachian literature under the heading of Southern literature, as evident in the anthology entitled The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume III, Contemporary Appalachia, others, such as Danny Miller in A Handbook to Appalachia, point out that Southern writers are “more Gothic and more concerned with North-South conflicts” while “Appalachian literature […] is sometimes distinguished from other literatures by its strong emphasis on setting, or ‘place’” (199).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • William Faulkner and George Washington Harris: Frontier Humor in the Snopes Trilogy
    WILLIAM FAULKNER AND GEORGE WASHINGTON HARRIS: FRONTIER HUMOR IN THE SNOPES TRILOGY by Hugh M. Stilley B.A., University of Southern California, 196l A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Engli sh We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA October, I964 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that per• mission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives,, It is understood that copying or publi• cation of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of English The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada Date September 3. 1965. ABSTRACT The influence of the pre-Civil War Southwestern humorists on the work of William Faulkner has long been hypothesized. But it has received scant critical attention, much of it erroneous or so general as to be almost meaningless. While Faulkner's total vision is more than merely humorous, humor is a significant part of that vision. And the importance of frontier humor to Faulkner's art is further substantiated by the fact that many of his grotesque passages derive from ele• ments of this humor. Frontier humor flourished from I83O to I860, and while a large group of men then flooded American newspapers with contributions, it now survives in anthologies and the book- length collections of its most prominent writers — Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Joseph Glover Baldwin, Johnson Jones Hooper, William Tappan Thompson, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, and George Washington Harris.
    [Show full text]
  • A History of Appalachia
    University of Kentucky UKnowledge Appalachian Studies Arts and Humanities 2-28-2001 A History of Appalachia Richard B. Drake Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Drake, Richard B., "A History of Appalachia" (2001). Appalachian Studies. 23. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_appalachian_studies/23 R IC H ARD B . D RA K E A History of Appalachia A of History Appalachia RICHARD B. DRAKE THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by grants from the E.O. Robinson Mountain Fund and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2001 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2003 Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kenhlcky Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com 12 11 10 09 08 8 7 6 5 4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Drake, Richard B., 1925- A history of Appalachia / Richard B.
    [Show full text]
  • The Prism of Laughter: Antebellum Humorists in Regional Perspective
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1997 The rP ism of Laughter: Antebellum Humorists in Regional Perspective. Henry O. Robertson Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Robertson, Henry O. Jr, "The rP ism of Laughter: Antebellum Humorists in Regional Perspective." (1997). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 6443. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/6443 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter free, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely afreet reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps.
    [Show full text]
  • Contemporary Appalachian Poetry: Sources and Directions George Ella Lyon Appalachian Poetry Project
    The Kentucky Review Volume 2 | Number 2 Article 2 1981 Contemporary Appalachian Poetry: Sources and Directions George Ella Lyon Appalachian Poetry Project Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review Part of the Appalachian Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Poetry Commons Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Lyon, George Ella (1981) "Contemporary Appalachian Poetry: Sources and Directions," The Kentucky Review: Vol. 2 : No. 2 , Article 2. Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review/vol2/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Kentucky Libraries at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Kentucky Review by an authorized editor of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Contemporary Appalachian Poetry: Sources and Directions George Ella Lyon At the beginning of 1960, you could have counted the important Appalachian poets on both hands. Since then, over seventy collections of Appalachian poetry have appeared; anthologies and little magazines have featured it, and scholars have written essays about it. This sudden flowering is impressive, and, because some of the earlier poets are out of print, may seem miraculous. But it has its roots in work that came before, in individual voices, and in what they expressed for the region as a whole. Ballad of the Bones, Hounds on the Mountain, Song in the Meadow-the titles of these books of Appalachian poetry from the thirties and forties reveal its origin in closeness to the earth and love of song.
    [Show full text]
  • Rickels, Milton Henry (1920-1997) and Patricia Kennedy (1927-2009)
    1 Collection 307 Rickels, Milton Henry (1920-1997) and Patricia Kennedy (1927-2009). Papers, 1950-2007, n.d. 32 feet Milton Henry Rickels was born in 1920, in Terra Bella, California, the son of Henry H. Rickels and the former Elsie Inez Land. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Fresno State College, his master’s degree from Claremont University College, and in 1953 received a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. In 1957, Dr. Rickels joined the faculty at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) as associate professor of English. He was a dedicated scholar and teacher. Dr. Milton taught classes in world literature, American humor, American realism, Mark Twain, comparative literature and American poetry. He retired in 1986 and died in 1997. Patricia Kennedy Rickels was born in 1927 in Kemmerer, Wyoming, and grew up in Montana, Alaska, and the Panama Canal Zone. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington in 1948 and received her master’s and doctoral degrees from LSU in 1951 and 1961 respectively. She taught in the military program in the Panama Canal Zone from 1949 to 1952, and did post-doctoral work on Negro literature and culture at Southern University during the summers of 1968 and 1969. Dr. Rickels came to SLI in 1957 as instructor of English. She was a faculty member and administrator for 50 years, and was the director of the Honors Program for 28 years. Her academic interests included American folklore and African American literature. She retired in 2007 and died in 2009.
    [Show full text]
  • Course Bulletin Fall 2017 and Summer 2017
    English Department Course Bulletin Fall 2017 and Summer 2017 Note to Majors: We are delighted by your interest in our upper level classes, and we look forward to studying and working together. One word of advice: Upper level classes are challenging, with strong reading and writing requirements. Please ask yourself how many upper level classes you can really take well in one semester, without throwing the course reading overboard or writing hastily and regrettably. The department, in general, recommends no more than two upper level English courses in a given semester. Also, we have observed in past semesters the custom of students registering for a number of upper level classes, only to drop them at some point “later” in the process. This practice can clog up registration and create enrollment headaches for your peers and our waitlists. As Hamlet counsels, “Pray you, avoid it.” In any event, we wish you the best on your intellectual growth, and we look forward to sharing our love of great literature with you. Students interested in a great humanities elective are welcome as well. Note to Future Majors: We are happy that you are interested in the English major, and we welcome you to join our community of teachers, thinkers, and writers. If you choose to major in English, please be sure to declare your major with the Registrar and transition to a major advisor in the English department. If you have any questions about the English major, feel free to make an appointment with the department chair. For those starting out on the English major, the best course of action is to make your way through the 300s (the core of our major) to the 400s (our seminars), with good and deliberate order and planning.
    [Show full text]
  • In the Wake of the Sun: Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac Mccarthy © 2009 by Christopher J
    In the Wake of the Sun Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac McCarthy Christopher J. Walsh In the Wake of the Sun In the Wake of the Sun Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac McCarthy Christopher J. Walsh Newfound Press THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE LIBRARIES, KNOXVILLE In the Wake of the Sun: Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac McCarthy © 2009 by Christopher J. Walsh Digital version at www.newfoundpress.utk.edu/pubs/walsh Newfound Press is a digital imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries. Its publications are available for non-commercial and educational uses, such as research, teaching and private study. The author has licensed the work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/>. For all other uses, contact: Newfound Press University of Tennessee Libraries 1015 Volunteer Boulevard Knoxville, TN 37996-1000 www.newfoundpress.utk.edu ISBN-13: 978-0-9797292-7-0 ISBN-10: 0-9797292-7-0 Walsh, Christopher J., 1968- In the wake of the sun : navigating the southern works of Cormac McCarthy / by Christopher J. Walsh. Knoxville, Tenn. : Newfound Press, University of Tennessee Libraries, c2009. xxiii, 376 p. : digital, PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. [357]-376). 1. McCarthy, Cormac, 1933- -- Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PS3563.C337 Z943 2009 Book and cover design by Jayne Rogers Cover image by Andi Pantz I dedicate this book to my mother, Maureen Lillian Walsh, and to the memory of my father, Peter Anthony Walsh (1934-2000), as their hard work and innumerable sacrifices made all of this possible.
    [Show full text]
  • See Syllabus Here
    1 Phyllis Wilson Moore For Dr. Judy P. Byers, 2009 ROOTED IN SOLID GROUND: JOURNEYS INTO APPALACHIAN LITERATURE Syllabus topics and a bibliography for teaching West Virginia literature using the literary map, the Internet, and Traditions: A Journal of West Virginia Folkculture and Educational Awareness Potential audiences: Post-secondary classroom teachers, school and public librarians, students in preparation for careers as teachers: English, reading, drama, or speech; students pursuing a degree in Library Science; students, workshop participants or others with a specific interest in West Virginia literature GOALS • Reinforce the position of West Virginia literature as a branch of Appalachian and American Literature; • Familiarize participants with the roots and variety of West Virginia’s multicultural literary heritage as well as its universality and “teach-ability”; • Create or increase interest in reading, teaching, and discussing West Virginia literature; • Provide participants with tools to identify and teach West Virginia literature appropriate to various age groups; topical interests; and levels of interest; • Create or increase participants’ understanding of the importance of recognizing and nourishing the literature of specific locales. INTRODUCTION Many of the seventeenth and eighteenth settlers of West Virginia came from Scotland, Ireland, England, Germany, among other European locales, to ports on the eastern coast of North America. They moved on to (what was then) the mountain wilderness west of the colonies.. These settlers and others brought their history and heritage, memories and stories, as well as the drive to be independent land owners. They were not here first or here alone, however. They massacred, uprooted, or in the best cases merged with Native Americans.
    [Show full text]
  • The Southern Literary Influences of Cormac Mccarthy and How They
    Brandeis University Waltham Massachusetts Department of English Myth, Legend, Dust: The Southern Literary Influences of Cormac McCarthy and How They Portend the Evening Redness in the West Benjamin Rui-Lin Fong Advisor: John Burt A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brandeis University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English May 2018 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor and mentor, the bardic John Burt, who was my first English professor at Brandeis and whose intellectual guidance and comments have helped shape every part of this thesis. Professor Burt’s Southern Literature course led to my first encounter with Blood Meridian. His lecture on Milton’s Satan and Judge Holden inspired this three-year obsession with Cormac McCarthy. I would like to thank Jerome Tharaud who has been a particularly inspirational professor and mentor whose guidance, enthusiasm, and instruction sparked my love for American literature. He has been particularly helpful in his advice on balancing thesis work and my applications to graduate school. I would like to thank Kurt Cavender who encouraged a UWS student to take more English classes (and who spent his own time to nominate me for an award). I would like to thank Pu Wang whose lectures on tragedy and modernity inspired me to pursue the Knoxville portions of this thesis. Lastly, I would like to thank Emma Smith. Our talks about Shakespeare have stayed in my mind, and Shakespeare’s language, stories, and characters come to mind every day. Finally, I would like to thank my family, whose love and support have spanned continents.
    [Show full text]
  • Mountain Stage Guest Artist List
    MOUNTAIN STAGE GUEST ARTIST LIST 1981 March Bob Thompson Jazz Trio, Putnam County Pickers 1983 December Larry Parson’s Chorale, Bob Thompson Jazz Trio, John Pierson 1984 January Currence Brothers, Ethel Caffie-Austin Singers, Terry Wimmer February Rhino Moon, Moloney, O’Connell & Keane, Alan Klein, Robert Shafer March Trapezoid, Charleston String Quartet, Bonnie Collins, April Stark Raven, Joe Dobbs/Friends, Alan Freeman, Joe McHugh May Hot Rize, Red Knuckles & Trailblazers, Karen McKay, Alan/Jeremy Klein June Norman Blake/Rising Fawn Ensemble, Appalachian String Quartet, Elmer Bird, Jeff and Angela Scott July Still Portrait, Everett Lilly/Appalachian Mountain, Sweet Adelines August Bill Danoff, Ann Baker/Bob Thompson Trio, Bob Shank, Alice Rice September Clan Erdverkle, Ron Sowell, Tracy Markusic, Shirley Fisher October Critton Hollow String Band, Tom Church, Marc & Cheryl Harshman November Turley Richards, Night Sky, Mountain Stage Regulars December (1 hr. Christmas special) West Virginia Brass, Bob Thompson, Devon McNamara 1985 January Turley Richards, West Virginia Brass, Bonnie Collins February Whetstone Run, Lucky Jazz Band, Alice Rice March Alex de Grassi, Nat Reese, Maggie Anderson April Guy Clark, Trapezoid, Marc Harshman May Bob Thompson, Ann Baker, Paul Skyland, Devon McNamara June 1 (Spoleto-Chas, SC) Hot Rize, Red Knuckles, John Roberts/Tony Barrand, Moving Star Singers June John McEuen, Mountain Thyme, John Rosenbohm, Bonnie Collins July Bill Danoff, Steadfast, Faith Holsaert August Buster Coles, Bing Brothers, Bob Baber
    [Show full text]
  • Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Winter 2014 Course Catalog
    Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Winter 2014 Course Catalog Who We Are The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at West Virginia University, known as OLLI at WVU, provides programming and educational opportunities designed for adults, 50 and older, who wish to stay mentally alert and active through mental and cultural stimulation, and social interaction. OLLI at WVU is a membership organization, housed within the School of Public Health at West Virginia University, that recognizes the unique experiences, capabilities and wisdom of mature members of the community. OLLI at WVU emphasizes the sharing of ideas through peer learning, member participation and collaborative leadership. During four terms each year, OLLI at WVU offers day and evening courses, lectures, seminars, and field trips with course selections in music, literature, art, sciences, politics, nature, history, health, medicine, economics and many more. Live drama, movies, and special interest groups add to the choices. Courses are developed and taught by volunteers from the community who are passionate about their topics, avocations, and interests and love to share their skills. Most courses are taught in the OLLI classrooms at the Mountaineer Mall. Others are held at off-campus locations, such as the Morgantown Dance Studio, the Village at Heritage Point and the Morgantown Art Association and Gallery. Come and renew your enthusiasm for learning in a relaxed environment that is supportive and filled with humor, wisdom, diversity and insight. Offerings are entirely free of the pressures of grades and exams and you may choose as many as you like. WWW.OLLIATWVU.ORG 2 A Message from Our Director Greetings OLLI Members and Friends, We don’t need any reminders that winter is near, just look outside.
    [Show full text]
  • Student Guidelines Handbook LOW-RESIDENCY MASTER OF
    LOW-RESIDENCY MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING Student Guidelines Handbook (revised 2017) 59 College Avenue West Virginia Wesleyan College Buckhannon, WV 26201 www.wvwc.edu/MFA LOW RESIDENCY MFA STUDENT GUIDELINES HANDBOOK The light on this page is not bright, but the light in my mind is. I felt for a scrap... I grasped the pen as hard as I could and wrote four lines.... I put it in a packet with the others: the Chocalat Meunier wrapper, the mildewed subscription blank, the soiled brown paper bags smoothed out, and tucked them all in a little drawer where I can stretch out my hand and touch them any time I want to. --Irene McKinney, from “Her Fascicles” Wesleyan’s MFA Program Founding Director, Irene McKinney, was the State Poet Laureate of West Virginia from 1992 until her death in February 2012. Her seven books include Six O’Clock Mine Re- port, Vivid Companion, Unthinkable: Selected Poems 1976-2004, and her posthumous collection Have You Had Enough Darkness Yet? published by WV Wesleyan Press. The MFA faculty is commit- ted to carrying on Irene’s vision now and for the future. LOW RESIDENCY MFA STUDENT GUIDELINES HANDBOOK West Virginia Wesleyan College Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Student Guidelines Handbook This handbook is intended to be used in tandem with the WV Wesleyan Graduate Catalog which sets forth the policies of all graduate programs. This handbook is subject to changes and is issued as a guide, not as a binding contract; its primary use is for operation and functionality of the MFA program.
    [Show full text]