faculty spotlight

Faculty Spotlight: Tiffany Beechy

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 21:56:02 +0000

Faculty Spotlight: Tiffany Beechy Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/22/2020 - 15:56

Kat Lewis

A well-known paragon of the English Department is the mentorship faculty provide to students over the course of their studies at �� Boulder. Whether you are a first time undergraduate learning the foundations of writing or an experienced PhD candidate about to be named an expert in your field, English faculty are beside students every step of the way to teach, train, and advise on the many disciplines of rhetoric, literature, and creative writing.

One faculty member stands out as Faculty Program Coordinator for the PhD Consortium in Literatures and Cultures: Dr. Tiffany Beechy, Associate Professor.

Beechy, originally from Oregon, was hired at �� Boulder in 2011 after completing her undergraduate degree at Harvard, her MFA at Columbia, and her PhD in medieval literature at the University of Oregon. She was named the Faculty Program Coordinator for the Consortium in 2019.

The Consortium in Literatures and Cultures, a student opportunity started by the Center for the Humanities and the Arts at �� Boulder, is a group for PhD candidates “to maximize the benefits of intellectual and administrative collaboration while granting participating programs autonomy in their pursuit of excellence.” The Consortium has offered funding and mentoring to doctoral students that “allows them to complete their degree in five years without sacrificing intellectual depth and methodological diversity.” A highlight of this program is that PhD candidates who are interested have full access to faculty in other departments, promoting interdisciplinary research and mentorship across campus.

When asked to define the purpose of the Consortium herself, Beechy herself highlighted how important this program is in preparing PhD candidates for the rest of their academic careers: “Consortium has brought very good funding to its recruits, allowed students to know one another across departments, and, potentially, will provide very good support for students at the advanced stage, as they prepare first publications, write their dissertations, and prepare for “the profession,” whether inside or outside academia.”

When it comes down to it, it is apparent that Beechy sees academic mentorship as a two-way street where student and professor each gain a resource in working with one another on a subject both are passionate about. “Mentoring students keeps me from despair. These past several years have been very difficult for medieval studies, amid and on top of an ongoing disaster in the humanities. All of that is painful and takes a toll on your motivation (like, when you’re trying to finish your book on the finer points of early medieval Incarnational theology and its representations in art).” She continues: “But working with students and seeing that they, too, can find meaning and worth in the ideas you care about, and seeing as well that you can be of real help to them in drawing out, developing, and contextualizing their own ideas, that is motivating and rejuvenating.”

“Leading students into deep engagement with language is what I love to do—it is a lot like teaching poetry of any period. Students have to confront opacity, and confusion, and then catch a glimpse of clarity. From there, learning happens.”

In addition to her work with the Consortium, Beechy enjoys teaching Old English, “in part because the grammar and history of English come as such a revelation to many students.” She sites Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as the most fun text to teach, any time, any day. Her current personal research includes working on press revisions for her second book, Flesh of the Word: Materiality, Aesthetics, and the Incarnation in Early Medieval Britain, as well as working on a collaboration with colleagues in Ireland and the US to publish a digital edition of a strange manuscript from the eleventh century, related to her book.

When asked what makes her the most proud of her work at �� Boulder, her answer is a perfect summation of why and how she teaches: “Medieval studies is a deeply traditional field, and I believe that in my writing, in my professional engagement, and in my mentorship I have worked to make the field more open.” She continued: “I am very proud of my PhD student, Tarren Andrews (whose accomplishments are entirely her own). I will feel satisfaction that I have helped clear a way for her to develop her ideas and shape her voice. I guess personally, I am proud of having raised a child to age five (so far) who is both secure and kind and knows how to respond to “Live long, and prosper” (answer: “Peace, and long life”).”

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Faculty Spotlight: Lori Emerson

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 20:59:59 +0000

Faculty Spotlight: Lori Emerson Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/22/2020 - 14:59

Kat Lewis

One particular highlight of the English Department at �� Boulder can be found in the varied cross-disciplinary research of its faculty members. From American and British literature to creative writing to popular culture, film, and digital media, faculty specialties provide a hybrid of traditional and experimental instruction that allows students to explore many pathways during their degrees.

Dr. Lori Emerson, Associate Chair for Graduate Studies for the College of Media, Communication and Information, Professor of English, and founding director of the Media Archaeology Lab, is one of those who tightly intertwines her research with classroom instruction.

Emerson, originally from Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island, Canada, was hired at �� Boulder in 2008. In 2009, she founded the Media Archaeology Lab (MAL) on campus.

The MAL, different than other digital media labs that use the most up-to-date technology and tools available, is a center for “cross-disciplinary experimental research and teaching using still functioning media from the past.” With 35 portables/laptops, 73 desktop computers, 22 handheld devices, 8 other computing devices, and 10 gaming consoles, the MAL offers a wide special glimpse into history.

“The MAL is propelled equally by the need to both preserve and maintain access to historically important media of all kinds—from magic lanterns, projectors, and typewriters to personal computers from the 1970s through the 1990s, as well as early works of digital literature/art which were created on the hardware/software housed in the lab.”

Emerson had the support of John Bennett, the past director of the Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society, from the time she began her �� career. He offered her a small startup grant to build a lab that Atlas and English Department students could both use. “The relative obscurity of the lab in those early years meant that we had little to no oversight, no one to report to, no metrics or outcomes to adhere to, and so on which meant we were free to be as wild as we wanted.”

Eleven years later, the MAL and �� Boulder are deeply connected. So much so that Emerson admits her teaching and research have always been tightly intertwined with the MAL “to the point where I can't imagine how I would do either if for some reason the MAL closed!”

“I regularly bring my students to the lab to try out, for example, outdated word processing programs to help defamiliarize the ubiquitous Microsoft Word; or I show my students alternative networks to the internet such as mesh networks, etc. In terms of my graduate classes, I regularly teach a class called "The Theory and Practice of Doing" that students from across campus take to learn the long history of hands-on work in a lab setting as well as a sophisticated theoretical basis by which to understand the 21st century proliferation of labs and the related celebration of making, doing, and tinkering in an arts/humanities context.”

While the MAL is open to all members of the general public, it remains a staple to the �� Boulder community. Many of the volunteers available during open house hours are graduate students from many departments on campus, English included. These students help develop class assignments, activities, workshops, and lab tours for around 18 different classes on campus. The MAL has an average visitation of 200 students during the peak weeks of the school year!

Emerson’s latest project, THE LAB BOOK: Situated Practices in Media Studies, is a collaborative book project with Jussi Parikka and Darren Wershler that is in its final stages for publication with the University of Minnesota Press. The project details the history of labs that spans 600 years and a nearly unlimited range of subjects. “But somehow, we persevered, and I am so thrilled (and relieved) this book should be out in the world in spring 2021.”

When asked about what makes her proudest about the MAL, Emerson provides beautiful insight on the sense of community that �� Boulder prides itself on: “Seven or eight years ago, I would have said that I'm proud of how large the MAL collection is or about how proud I am of how it's a thoroughly experimental and playful entity that has managed to thrive over so many years. But now what I'm most proud of is the community that's grown up around the MAL - somehow, with the help and energy of so many students and volunteers, the lab has become a profoundly welcoming and even safe space to anyone and everyone with even a slight interest in media.”

“The lab would be nothing without its collection but really, at the end of the day what makes it valuable and cherished are the people and the way the collection facilitates relationships between and among people.”

For more information about the Media Archaeology Lab, please visit their website.

*Since this article was written, the MAL recieved a $100,000 donation from local tech author and entrepeneur Brad Feld.

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Faculy Profile: Jeff Cox

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 22:43:50 +0000

Faculy Profile: Jeff Cox Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/30/2020 - 15:43

Kat Lewis

“A good class can save a bad day.”

So said by Dr. Jeff Cox, full professor of English, who has recently returned to teaching full-time after 21 combined years of service in administrative positions at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Cox, a Seattle native who grew up outside of Washington D.C., was hired at �� in 1998 as the Director for the Center for Humanities and the Arts. After eight years in this position, he became the Associate Vice Chancellor and then Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, a position he held until 2019.

When asked about his particular affinity for administrative roles in the university, Cox answered: “Administrative positions enable one to make it possible for the faculty to do their amazing work. This might have been clearest when I ran CHA which sought funding for faculty and worked to build an intellectual community at ��.”

It is undeniable that Cox made impressive strides in his time in Faculty Affairs, where he had responsibility for the entire faculty of the campus. He handled a variety of matters from personnel processes from hiring to retirement to being in charge of the academic program review. He oversaw several faculty development programs. He was even involved in a number of major initiatives across campus, including creating CMCI – the first new college at �� in 50 years – and Academic Futures.

As of the start of the spring 2020 semester, Jeff transitioned to teaching full-time within the English Department.

“I don’t really believe that administrators should stay in a single position longer than 8 years or so. For a variety of reasons, I stayed on (in Faculty Affairs) for 14, but I had always planned on returning to full-time teaching.” He continued: “I taught throughout my time in Faculty Affairs but only at the graduate level. I wanted to return to one of the core activities of being a professor, professing, in my case, literature to our undergraduates. I’m not sure how much longer I will continue to work, and I wanted to make sure I ended my career pursuing the core mission of the faculty—teaching and scholarship.”

Cox attributes much of his excitement for this semester to teaching undergraduates Modern Drama for the first time, especially because he has only taught graduate students in his time at �� Boulder, despite having taught thousands of undergraduates when he worked at Texas A & M before taking the position as Director of the CHA in Boulder.

While the return to teaching means a shift in duties and responsibilities, Jeff was not hesitant to point out the similarities between administrative roles and teaching. “In both, you need to listen to people. You need to know how to synthesize what other people are saying and help them to say it better. I have run hundreds and hundreds of meetings, and a good meeting is basically like a good class—it’s headed in a clear direction but is open to the ideas and opinions of everyone in the room.”

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Faculty Profile: William Kuskin

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 15:44:17 +0000

Faculty Profile: William Kuskin Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/30/2020 - 08:44

Kat Lewis

It is no secret that many of the English Department’s faculty juggle a myriad of roles – teaching being the obvious – but also developing and improving curriculum, mentoring student organizations, serving on student thesis committees, and working on cross-disciplinary programs to bridge divides in the humanities, just to name a few. Our professors also have a real knack for success in administrative roles at the university, including Dr. William Kuskin who has recently returned to teaching in addition to his administrative work.

Kuskin, full professor of English, the Faculty Director for Online Innovation in CEAS, and the Faculty Associate for the Office of Global Engagement in the Provost’s Office, began his career at �� Boulder in 2006. Since then, he has served as Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies and as Chair of the English Department. Prior to accepting his current position at ��, he was tenure-track faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he served as Chair of their English Department when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Kuskin’s journey from regular faculty to Chair of the department at �� Boulder caught the Provost’s eye and William was personally invited to work on new academic initiatives. “When I began at the Provost’s Office, the Provost had not begun the process of change he has embarked upon now—academic futures and financial futures, specifically. He pulled me in to initiate change in a very ad hoc fashion. I embarked upon a number of startup projects and engaged in great discussions with the Provost and Chancellor directly.” He worked his way through a few different administrative positions before ultimately landing at Vice Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Innovation. “Great leadership, like great teaching, is fundamentally inclusive: it respects all voices and allows each individual to contribute according to his, hers, or their unique gifts,” he ruminated.

The decision to return to teaching, he says, was one made to “get back in touch with the basics of teaching and writing, to recharge my creativity for the next generation of change.”

“Ultimately, the university is about changing the world for the better, and that’s as true of administration as teaching. Great leadership leads the way, and it does this through creating empowering relationships that allow people to be creative. So, the best administrators, in my view, bring the energy of the classroom to the meeting room.”

Kuskin’s areas of specialties include literary theory, medieval literature, popular culture and digital media, and renaissance literature. He is well known on campus for his courses taught on comics for English majors and nonmajors. He is looking to develop the Comics course in a number of ways—a study guide, an online version, a massive online version, and eventually a certificate. His proudest professional accomplishment, he noted, is his 2013 Massive Open Online Course, Comic Books and Graphic Novels. “That course served somewhere around 78k students, and changed my thinking about my own role as a teacher.”

When asked about the challenges he expects to face returning to the classroom, William was candidly truthful about the modern classroom: “Holy Corrosion, Batman, I’m rusty! Honestly, for the past five years the only thing I’ve read is email and the longest thing I’ve written is a memo! My jokes are going to be really stale, and the students are going to know more about comics and graphic novels than I do. The one thing that comforts me is that I’ve always believed teaching is a tremendously organic process. It takes shape in the room. It is forgiving of mistakes and generative of ideas. So, although I am sure I will botch things up wholesale, I am hopeful that my students will help me get on course and we will roll along.” Onward!

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Faculty Profile: Adam Bradley

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 16:57:43 +0000

Faculty Profile: Adam Bradley Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2019 - 10:57

Kat Lewis

One particular focus of the English Department at the University of Colorado Boulder that has become essential to literature and creative writing programs is popular culture. Many undergraduate and graduate students alike concentrate on pop culture in their studies in English, constantly creating fresh connections and pushing academic boundaries. One of the most vital foundations of this intersectionality is Dr. Adam Bradley, Director of the Race and Popular Culture Laboratory (RAP Lab) and full Professor of English.

Bradley, a Salt Lake City native, entered his second decade in teaching at �� Boulder this fall.

In an educational journey that started when he was homeschooled until high school by grandmother and grandfather, an art history teacher and dean of the College of Business at the University of Utah, respectively, and moved to receiving degrees from Lewis & Clark College and Harvard University, Bradley says that what unites these experiences is the gift of great teaching and mentorship.

As a Professor in the English Department, Bradley has worked on developing a suite of courses that focus on song lyrics – courses like The Poetics of Song Lyrics offered at the undergraduate and graduate level. “It’s a wonderful challenge to get students to take the music they love seriously without being too serious about it. Whether I’m teaching The Beatles’ White Album or Beyoncé’s Lemonade, I’m always encouraging students to bring their passion for the music into their studies and learn to harness that energy in the name of intellectual discovery.”

In addition to teaching, Adam founded the RAP Lab almost seven years ago with the purpose of creating a space to talk about difficult and essential matters while reaching out to the community beyond the campus. This work has taken the shape of K-12 education programs that “harness the power of popular music to help students learn the fundamental concepts of Language Arts education to collaborations with a group of inmates at a Colorado correctional facility.”

Bradley continues: “What unites these and other of the Lab’s efforts is a common belief that art—music, literature, and beyond—can help us speak to one another at times and in places that often push us toward silence.”

One exciting project from the RAP Lab is the partnership with Australian hip-hop artist Nelson Dialect. Through this partnership, they are putting on a series of school assemblies and classroom workshops across the Front Range of Colorado.

When asked what makes working at the institution of �� Boulder so rewarding, Bradley was quick to answer that it was the people that make the job so great. “I’ve forged friendships with colleagues from across the campus—from Physics and Business, Engineering and Ethnic Studies. I’ve worked alongside staff in the admissions office, the alumni office, and the athletics to shine a light on what �� can bring. And I’ve taught a decade’s worth of undergraduate and graduate students, hundreds of them now, who have left enduring impressions on me and helped to shape my thinking.”

Currently, Bradley has a good number of projects he is excited about personally and professionally. “The first is a new digital edition of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which I’m preparing for Ellison’s longtime publisher, Random House. It will help bring the novel into the 21^st century by providing young readers—really, all readers—with the necessary context to understand Ellison’s America and the tools to help us think about our America through the rich world Ellison created.” He is also working on a new edition of The Anthology of Rap. His plans are to bring the anthology up to date with some of the groundbreaking artists who have emerged in the last ten years since the original edition of the anthology was published.

“It’s been an eventful ten years, both personally and professionally. My two daughters were born here. My wife, the law professor Anna Spain Bradley, and I have both built our academic careers here. We’ve made a home for ourselves at 5,328 feet.”

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Emeritus Faculty Profile: Paul Levitt

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 22:01:50 +0000

Emeritus Faculty Profile: Paul Levitt Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/01/2019 - 16:01

Dedication is not a transient lodger. The dedicated person stays for the long term. Professor Paul Levitt retired after 50 years of teaching, service, and publication. He wishes to thank the students who studied with him, the hardworking staff members in the front office, and his colleagues, tenured and un-tenured, who enriched the department with their expertise in theory and history and psychology and, not least, close reading.

Dr. Paul M. Levitt, now emeritus English professor, continues his dedication even after retirement. He funds scholarships and department projects, as well as continues to publish copiously. His novel Yana will be released this fall, and the third book in his Soviet trilogy, Death at the Dacha: Stalin’s Last Movie, will be forthcoming in the new year.

Dr. Levitt was hired as an instructor in September of 1964 to teach a four/four course load for the English Department while finishing his PhD from the University of California Los Angeles. Levitt was very familiar with �� Boulder as he received his BA in philosophy and MA in History from the institution in 1957 and 1961.

In his time working for the English Department, Paul wrote plays for the BBC, authored more than 20 books, including novels, children’s books, young adult pieces, scholarly works, and medical and legal texts, and published nearly 50 articles ranging from the literary to the political to the pedagogical.

When asked what he liked about teaching at �� Boulder, Dr. Levitt replied, “I was free to teach what I wanted, when I wanted.” Some of his favorite courses included Modern Drama, Introduction to Drama, the Gangster Novel, and Expository Writing.

In addition to teaching and publishing, Levitt also took on administrative roles in his tenure with the department. “My administrative gigs gave me great pleasure: running the Writers’ Conference, chairing the English department, co-chairing the University Writing Program, and teaching in the experimental teaching program started by Frank Oppenheimer.”

Notwithstanding his academic achievements, Levitt regards his most satisfying accomplishment over fifty to be the restoration of the reputation of Morris Judd, a former �� philosophy instructor, fired in the early 1950s for refusing to answer FBI questions about communist affiliations. “Morris was brought to campus for a lecture, celebrated for his support of constitutional liberties, and honored with a scholarship in his name. I mostly brought about these events.” Paul even went on to write a fictionalized account of the �� investigations in Dark Matters, a novel published in 2004 by the University of New Mexico Press.

Dr. Levitt can still be seen around campus, even five years after retirement. He walks to campus each day from his nearby house. In his office, he continues to read and write, consuming a book every two weeks and continuing work on several manuscripts. By his own admission, he is an inveterate newspaper reader. His favorite spots on campus include the Quad and Varsity Pond. We trust that Dr. Levitt will continue to remain a presence in the Department, someone whom students, staff, and faculty alike cherish.

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Faculty Profile: Marcia Douglas

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 20:46:22 +0000

Faculty Profile: Marcia Douglas Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/16/2019 - 14:46

Kat Lewis

Since the 1970s, the University of Colorado Boulder’s Creative Writing program has consistently provided a center for strong experimental writing in the Rockies. Over the years and through the influx of students entering and exiting the program, an undeniable constant has been the faculty members who dedicate their careers to educating writers, emerging and established.

One said faculty member devoted to student success is Marcia Douglas, full professor in the Creative Writing Program, a National Endowment of the Arts fellow and U.K. Poetry Book Society Recommendation recipient.

Douglas, born in the U.K., grew up in Jamaica and attributes much of her biggest influences and inspirations to be from the people in those Jamaican communities – “everyday Jamaicans who take the little that they are given, molding it and making do.”She came to the States to complete her MFA at Ohio State University and her PhD at Binghamton University in New York. She was then hired at �� Boulder in 2001 and has now spent 18 years of her teaching career in the department. She has found a home at �� Boulder because “among both my colleagues and students, there are so many talented writers and thinkers here – I feel inspired and very fortunate to be in such company.”

Much of being a part of the Creative Writing faculty is being a mentor to students of all ages, skillsets and interests. This mentorship is one of Douglas’ favorite parts of working as a professor at ��: “I value my one-on-one interactions with students and the opportunity to connect on a personal level. Supporting another writer and scholar along their path is meaningful work. Such interactions resonate and remain with us for a long time.”

While having taught many different courses over the span of 18 years, Douglas was quick to answer that undergraduate Intermediate and Advanced Fiction Workshops have always been her favorite courses to teach. “Teaching that cohort is hard work but has the potential to be particularly gratifying; that is, students in those courses are often very much in formation, at a crossroads, wondering what it even means to be a writer, or how to move forward.” Marcia has worked and continues to work with both undergraduate and graduate creative writers in the program.

It is also no secret that Marcia Douglas is a superbly talented writer with publications in fiction and poetry. She is the author of the novels The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: a novel in bass riddim (Peepal Tree Press, 2016), Notes from a Writer’s Book of Cures and Spells (Peepal Tree, Leeds, 2005), and Madam Fate (Women’s Press, London and Soho Press, NY, 1999), as well as the poetry collection, Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom (Peepal Tree Press, 1999), which received the Poetry Book Society Recommendation from the British Arts Council mentioned prior. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies internationally, including Edexcel Anthology for English Language/London Examinations IGCSE, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse/Oxford Press, The Forward Book of Poetry/Faber and Faber, Kingston Noir/Akashic Press, Jubilation: 50 Years of Jamaican Independence/Peepal Tree, Mojo Conjure Stories/Warner, Whispers from Under the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction/Invisible Cities, and The Art of Friction/Univ. of Texas. She also performs a one-woman show, Natural Herstory, adapted from her fiction, and directed by Cecilia Pang.

Currently, Douglas is working on a project that explores various permutations of fugitivity. “Like my last novel, this project engages with a number of historical figures. I am always excited about new projects because it is the territory of the unknown and because I honestly do not know what will turn up on the page from day to day. I like to dwell in that sort of uncharted space.”

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