Volume 12 Issue 1 Fall 2008 NEWSLETTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AT ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY NEW GROWTH for MESA WRITING PROJECT National Writing Project Grant Expands Mentoring Program iloted in summer 2007, the annual Th e program showed much promise, but Early recently received a National Writing Mesa Writing Project (MWP) few could have predicted how deeply and Project grant to be matched by ASU Pbrings together ASU English faculty successfully it would engage ASU faculty resources, thanks to College of Liberal and Mesa Public Schools K-12 writing and administrators. Participation by the Arts and Sciences Humanities Dean teachers in a train-the-trainer-style Department of English took many forms: Deborah Losse, and Department of workshop; it is premised on the assump- English Chair Neal Lester. Conversations tion that educators who see themselves as are also underway across the four ASU apprentice writers will be more adept at To teach is to learn twice. campuses and their Writing Programs to teaching writing. MWP co-director and —Joseph Joubert collaborate on teaching writing in second- ASU doctoral student Laura Walsh says ary schools. that when teachers are empowered to Th e most recent project in the Beta “form writing communities, and develop • Principal Lecturer Sarah Duerden gave Partnership, a K-12 Native American as writers themselves,” they gain a deeper presentations to eighty Mesa writing curriculum, is being developed by ASU appreciation of the challenges their teachers on the nature of college writing; English poet and professor of Indigenous students face. Walsh reports that the • Professors Don and Alleen Nilsen literature Simon Ortiz. Noting the participating Mesa teachers have “ex- provided resources for teaching K-12 substantial Native American population pressed incredible enthusiasm about source-based vocabulary; in the Mesa School District as well as the returning to their classrooms each fall to • ASU English students developed more Phoenix valley as a whole, Ortiz observes incorporate what they had learned” than fi fty webquests on young adult that currently the literature of Indigenous during the summer. In addition, project novels; peoples is only sporadically referenced in co-director Professor James Blasingame • Over 25 English department faculty K-12 classrooms. Ortiz and others will be affi rms that “our fi ve assessment measures supplied expertise in an “Ask the Expert” instrumental in creating this new curricu- showed statistically signifi cant changes in website section; lum. Blasingame is enthusiastic: “Meet- the knowledge, attitudes, and skill sets of • Assistant Professor Jessica Early and her ings have now begun on a regular basis, a the Mesa teachers who participated.” doctoral students gave workshops on cadre of stakeholders is being assembled, Th e MWP is only one component of the writing college admissions essays for high and in the not-too-distant future, you’ll much larger Beta Partnership sponsored school students who will be fi rst-genera- see an amazing curriculum, one we believe by Dr. Eugene Garcia and the ASU Offi ce tion college students. will be a model for the world.” Th e of the Vice President for Education Many of the above resources are also dedicated collaboration between ASU and Partnerships. Th e Beta Partnership aspires available on the MWP website— Mesa faculty and administrators is what to share ASU resources with K-12 teach- asu.edu/clas/english/beta. makes this ambitious undertaking a ers and schools in the Mesa district, the To expand their eff orts valley-wide, ASU reality. largest school district in Arizona. English Education faculty Blasingame and —SALLY WOELFEL Page 2 Th e Chair’s Corner New Books by Faculty eventeen new tenure-track Sfaculty members have joined us since 2006, and another eleven searches are currently underway. Colleagues around the Bhira (Balbir) Backhaus. Bert Bender. Catching the Deborah Clarke. Driving Under the Lemon Trees. Ebb: Drift-Fishing for a Life Women: Fiction and Automobile country are buzzing Th omas Dunne/St. in Cook Inlet. Oregon State Culture in Twentieth-Century about our growth, Martin’s, 2009. Univ. Press, 2008. America. Johns Hopkins Univ. and we are happy to Press, 2007. be building the ranks that further strength- Neal A. Lester en our programs and broaden the impact of our individual and collective excellence in teaching, research, and service. As outstanding faculty attract top-quality students, we are now able to lower the teaching Paul Cook. Th e Engines of Paul Cook, ed. Th e Phoenix Paul Cook. Fortress on the Sun. Dawn. Reissue. Phoenix Pick Anthology of Classic Sci- Reissue. Phoenix Pick/Arc loads of our graduate Teaching Assistants, ef- Pick/Arc Manor, 2008. ence Fiction Stories. Phoenix Manor, 2008. fective 2009/ 2010—one of the changes that is Pick/Arc Manor, 2008. fundamental to our ongoing eff orts to remain competitive with our peer institutions and to facilitate the most direct route to graduate degree completion. Th anks to the generous support from Hu- manities Dean Deborah Losse and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Department of English co-sponsored with the University Paul Cook. Karma Elenore Long. Community Mark Lussier & Bruce Matsu- of New Mexico an excellent Association of Kommandos. Phoenix Pick/ Literacy and the Rhetoric of naga, eds. Engaged Romanti- Arc Manor, 2008. Local Publics. Parlor, 2008. cism: Romanticism as Praxis. Departments of English (ADE) Summer Cambridge Scholars, 2008. Seminar in the West, in Santa Fe. Joining me in representing English at ASU were Alberto Ríos, Elizabeth Horan, Robert Sturges, and Elizabeth Archuleta (ASU Women and Gender Studies). Attendees from across the country raved about the many positive developments at ASU and in this department. With such projects as the undergradu- T.M. McNally. Keçi Köprüsü. T.M. McNally. Low Flying Jewell Parker Rhodes. ate Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Turkish translation of Th e Aircraft. Paperback. Univ. of Yellow Moon. Atria, 2008. Goat Bridge. Odtü Yayincilik, Georgia Press, 2008. vehicle being designed, with progress being 2008. made toward online English degree options for non-traditional students and distance learn- ers, with a new coordinator of our Indigenous rhetoric fi rst-year courses, with our usual array of faculty lectures and social events, the Department of English sustains its vibrancy on this campus and in the profession. Our many successes underscore our eff orts as a team. For Duane Roen, Gregory Glau, Judith Sensibar. Faulkner Peter Turchi. Maps of the these many fi ne eff orts, I am grateful and most & Barry Maid. McGraw-Hill and Love: Th e Women Who Imagination: Th e Writer as appreciative. Onward! Guide: Writing for College, Writ- Shaped His Art. Yale Univ. Cartographer. Trinity Univ. Press, 2008. Press, 2007. —NEAL A. LESTER ing for Life. McGraw-Hill, 2008. [Eng-lish] (n.) Defi ne Yourself. FALL 2008 Page 3 Mentors and Mentoring MENTORING, IN A WORD entorship is meaningful, even vital. We all know leg, for example, but something bigger and more than “hand” it and we all do what we can, some directly, some in this time of increasing hyperbole and infl ation. We could Min ways that off er good models, some by chance. go esoteric and talk about a “Philip Glass ceiling”—creating But the language we use—mentor, mentorship—has a tired cracks everywhere and music resulting rather than the sky ring in a 200 mph twenty-fi rst-century context, where texting falling. and rapping have fi rm footholds previously occupied by letter Whatever we do, what we can’t do is forget the power of writing and barbershop quartets. helping somebody else, of knowing that we are exactly in a Th is is not a statement of despair, certainly not with regard position to do just that, and that helping will matter—the to barbershop quartets, but it is a challenge. Mentoring mat- same way it has mattered to us, each one. Mentoring—it’s old ters. What we model may morph into something we ourselves and it’s new, every time and right now. —ALBERTO RÍOS NEBOOKAZ 2009 will feature ASU Regents’ Professor of Gladly would he learn and gladly teach. English Alberto Ríos’s Capirotada as its adult selection, while —Geoff rey Chaucer ORoni Capin Rivera-Ashford’s Hip, Hip Hooray, It’s Monsoon Day! is the children’s selection and the fi rst bilingual ONEBOOKAZ title. Both books were chosen by Arizonans through an online vote do not recognize in our students, but good work begets good in September 2008, and both winning titles feature Arizona people, work, regardless of what it looks or sounds like. We know this, places, and culture, fulfi lling the newest goal of the ONEBOOKAZ program: to help Arizonans read their way to the upcoming State even as we complain about what is happening to the world. Centennial in 2012. ONEBOOKAZ 2009 kicks About the word “mentoring”—does it need to be one word? off on April 12, 2009 at the Tempe Center for the Is the idea better served now as a phrase? Th ere’s the wonder- Arts with a literary evening and authors’ awards ful “fellow traveler,” though politics may have ruined the ceremony. To read excerpts from the books, to learn idiom. We could be playful, with something like “inspirators,” more about the authors, to read about the other a portmanteau word combining “inspire” and “conspire.” We nominees, and to fi nd out about ONEBOOKAZ events happening around the state, visit www. could extend the tired extant language and perhaps freshen onebookaz.org. it: “extend a helping arm,” or a helping arm, back, and one —ONEBOOKAZ press release, 10 October 2008 ROEN NAMED OUTSTANDING GRADUATE MENTOR o English graduate students active in the Graduate Roen and psychology professor Douglas Kenrick became the Scholars of English Association (GSEA) and ASU’s Pre- twenty-fi fth and twenty-sixth ASU faculty members to receive Tparing Future Faculty program, it comes as no surprise this honor since it was established in 1987.