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Celebrating 70 Years of English Department History
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Do you remember listening to Isaac Johnson riff on the poets of the Harlem Renaissance? Does hearing Shakespeare bring back memories of Barbara Youngblood or Monique Pittman? |
Do you remember listening to Isaac Johnson riff on the poets of the Harlem Renaissance? Does hearing Shakespeare bring back memories of Barbara Youngblood or Monique Pittman? Did Marilyn Glaim open your mind to the mysteries of Toni Morrison? Did Norman Wendth teach you to love W.B. Yeats? Did Linda Gill blow your mind in Victorian lit?
Join us for a special English department reunion at PUC's Homecoming this year where you can share these memories and many more with fellow English majors. We are building the occasion around the 70-year anniversary of Paul Stauffer joining the English department faculty in the 1942-43 academic year. We plan to celebrate 70 years of excellence in the English department by honoring faculty and alumni who form a continuous tradition of learning and leadership reaching from 1942 to the present. We also want to honor two faculty members who died while teaching at PUC, Isaac Johnson and Judy Vance.
You each have played an important role in this history, so your presence is important to the success of this project. We would love to see you at Stauffer Hall from 2-5 on Sabbath afternoon, April 20 for conversation, celebration, commemoration, and a special performance in the newly remodeled (and air-conditioned!) Alice Holst Theater of Thorvald Aagaard's critically acclaimed solo show about John Milton, Middle Flight.
Saturday evening the conversation can continue at an informal reception at the home of Marilyn and Lorne Glaim.
Photo from 1957 Yearbook: Left = J. Paul Stauffer; Right = Joseph M. Peterson
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Thorvald Aagaard discusses his approach to theater
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It's an exciting time to be involved in theater at Pacific Union College. The new AS in Film & Theater Studies has attracted 21 majors in just its second year, providing a strong academic platform on which to build a program that offers both training and performance opportunities to a wide range of students. |
By: Christiana Robbins and Timothy Herber
It’s an exciting time to be involved in theater at Pacific Union College. The new AS in Film & Theater Studies has attracted 21 majors in just its second year, providing a strong academic platform on which to build a program that offers both training and performance opportunities to a wide range of students.
Thorvald Aagaard, teacher and director, brings a three-pronged approach to teaching theater. “First, I want to provide my students with real opportunities to make connections with the professional world. Second, I want to produce truly ambitious performances. Third, I want to establish an organized training program to further develop students’ writing, directing and performing skills.”
The lineup of shows since he began teaching speaks to his second goal and the multiple workshops and classes coming up this year help students accomplish the first and third. He is particularly excited about a week long workshop during spring break which is expected to attract professional performers from all over the west coast. It will be led by Anna Helena-MacLean and Anirudh Nair- world-renown performing-arts professionals- and is open to all PUC students.
Last year DAS produced The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The play is a dramatization of the events surrounding the Salem Witch Trials and addresses issues of faith and community that are very relevant to our small college. The play was a huge success, effectively selling out every night of its 9-show run. It was attended by PUC faculty and administration as well as local community members and school groups. The script was challenging and, because of the absence of air-conditioning, the theater was stifling, but all of the actors put on dynamic and skillful performances. Thor says, “The show focused on the development of the actors’ and crew’s talents. That’s what theater should be… we are in the education business!” Happily, the dream of air-conditioning the theater finally became a reality this summer, so future productions will enjoy a climate-controlled environment.
For the 2012-2013 season DAS has a fantastic line-up of old and new works to perform. The season opened with PUC’s 5th annual 24-Hour Play Festival: an intense creative workshop where new plays are planned, written, practiced and performed all in a single day. The One-Acts Festival arrives in February with a performance of brief, classic plays. The culmination of the season is Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which will be performed in late May in the Amphitheater. Auditions for The Tempest will be held in Winter Quarter.
To get involved in the Dramatic Arts Society, stop by Thor’s office in Stauffer Hall or send an email to das@puc.edu.
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Summer Study Tour to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
| Join Theater Director Thor Aagaard this summer for the Shakespeare in Performance study tour to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon scheduled for June 18-20, 2013. |
Join Theater Director Thor Aagaard this summer for the Shakespeare in Performance study tour to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon scheduled for June 18-20, 2013. This year's line-up includes a Shakespeare comedy (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Romance (Cymbeline) and tragedy (King Lear). In addition, the class will be seeing two 20th century American plays: A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and Fences by August Wilson.
The class can be taken either for 2 or 3 credits – or join us just for fun. See www.puc.edu/academics/summer-classes#ashland for more information.
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English Department Co-Sponsors Pre-Law Forum
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The English department has joined with the departments of business, communication and history to sponsor Pre-Law Forum events. The first took place on April 27, 2012 featuring PUC Alum Justin Kim (2001) and former PUC Religion professor Julius Nam. |
The English department has joined with the departments of business, communication and history to sponsor Pre-Law Forum events. The first took place on April 27, 2012 featuring PUC Alum Justin Kim (2001) and former PUC Religion professor Julius Nam.
Justin Kim, a graduate of Yale Law School (2004) and Julius Nam, a graduate of UCLA School of Law (2012), joined with students and faculty in Stauffer Hall to answer questions from their personal experiences about how to prepare, apply and succeed in law school.
This school year opened with a second Pre-Law Forum featuring Bruce Cameron, a law professor, and Alan Reinach, executive director of the Church-State Council, the religious liberty ministry of the Pacific Union Conference. Over 20 students crowded into the library penthouse classroom to enjoy pizza and hear a discussion of questions ranging from the role of religion in the legal profession to the state of the market for the legal profession. Students also had the opportunity to ask a law professor how to prepare themselves for law school.
One piece of advice reinforced by all of these guests is that the best preparation for law school is a strong preparation in writing. The English Department has shown its commitment to preparing students for law school by adding an Advanced Expository Writing class back into the curriculum.
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Sara Kakazu Completes Ph.D.
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The PUC English Department congratulates Sara Kakazu on achieving her doctoral degree in American Literature. Dr. Kakazu's 200+ page dissertation is titled, "Incidental Americans: Encounter and Self-Construction in Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Travel Narratives." |
By: Christiana Robbins and Tim Herber
The PUC English Department congratulates Sara Kakazu on achieving her doctoral degree in American Literature. Dr. Kakazu’s 200+ page dissertation is titled, “Incidental Americans: Encounter and Self-Construction in Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Travel Narratives.” In the pursuit of her dissertation, Dr. Kakazu studied four different American travel writers: Mark Twain, Catherine Maria Sedwick, John Lloyd Stephens, and David Dorr.
Dr. Kakazu says, “What made my dissertation fascinating was studying the unique voices of the authors.” Twain felt an obligation to be funny; Stephens an obligation to be adventurous. Sedwick (the only woman author) manipulated the hearth-angel ideal by making “home” everywhere she traveled. That way, as Dr. Kakazu says, “It’s all domestic.” Kakazu finds David Dorr’s voice the most fascinating of all. As a black slave travelling through Europe, Dorr effectively sidelined the master he accompanied by claiming the role of cultured young gentleman abroad, using that role's assumed whiteness to create authorial power.
Dr. Kakazu obtained her doctoral degree at SUNY in Buffalo, NY over the course of four and a half years. She presented her dissertation at various conferences and plans to publish select chapters. Her previous education includes an MA in literature from Western Washington University; she has been teaching American Literature classes at PUC since 2008.
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Other Faculty Updates
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Thorvald Aagaard returned to England this past summer to participate in an Actor-Chorus-Text workshop led by leading international practitioner Anna Helena-Mclean. |
Thorvald Aagaard returned to England this past summer to participate in an Actor-Chorus-Text workshop led by leading international practitioner Anna Helena-Mclean.
Janet Borisevich is teaching a special ESL language and culture seminar for administrators from the Euro-Asia Division during winter quarter. She is also preparing the curriculum for a special summer language and culture program for students from Brazil for summer 2013.
Linda Gill has a chapter on the sermon in Victorian literature forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of the British Sermon: 1688-1901. She also made good use of a Seltman Sabbatical last spring by completing an article entitled “Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey: Narrative, Empowerment, Gender and Religion.” She presented her work at the Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language and Media in March, 2012. She is currently researching “The Making and Unmaking of the Englishman in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall.’”
Georgina Hill met with consultants at the National Collegiate Honors Conference as part of her process of guiding the honors program through its first full review by the Academic Standards and General Education Committee. She has also developed a new Advanced Expository Writing course as part of a PUC-wide effort to enhance the pre-law curriculum.
Maria Rankin-Brown has been awarded Herber Grants for the past three summers to study Japanese literature. She has been awarded a Seltman Sabbatical for this spring during which time she hopes to complete her examination of the works of Koizumi Yakumo. She also plans to research the influence of the Shinto religion on the ideals of Japanese culture during her visit to Japan this summer. Most recently she attended the annual California Association of Teachers of English conference where she did a presentation on engaging and strengthening the skills of developmental student writers, and another in Young Adult 'urban fantasy' and 'paranormal' literature.
Heather Reid is pursuing further research on the fifteenth-century Middle English text, The Storie of Asneth, since completing her dissertation last year, with the goal of reshaping it into a book. She has received positive scholarly reviews for her chapter on Asneth and female initiation rites, published two years ago in the ELS edition, Women and the Divine in Literature Before 1700, and has another chapter forthcoming in an edition being published by Brepols, following her presentation at Queens University, Belfast, in 2010: “Patroness of Orthodoxy: Elizabeth Berkeley, John Walton, and The Storie of Asneth, A West Midlands Devotional Text,” in "Diuerse Imaginaciouns of Cristes Life”: Devotional Culture in England and Beyond, 1300-1560.
Judith Rose, who has served as an adjunct instructor for the English Department since 2010, has had a collection of poems entitled “Walking the Minefield” published by Finishing Line Press. Her story was featured recently in an article in the St. Helena Star.
Cynthia Westerbeck completed a chapter entitled “’Contraries meet in one’: Shakespeare, Donne, and the King James Bible” for The Book That Changed the World: The Story of the King James Bible (exp. Pub January 2013). She also co-presented with Cheri Gregory and Annemarie Gregory at the National Council of Teachers of English meetings in November on a panel entitled “Crossing the ‘Rubric’on: Working together to Prepare High School students for College Level Writing”
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Alumni Updates
| Morgan Chinnock ('07 ) completed her MFA in Creative Writing at University of San Francisco in 2012. In addition to continuing to work on her creative writing projects, she testing out her new knowledge by teaching an ENGL 101 class at PUC this quarter as an adjunct instructor. |
Morgan Chinnock (‘07 ) completed her MFA in Creative Writing at University of San Francisco in 2012. In addition to continuing to work on her creative writing projects, she testing out her new knowledge by teaching an ENGL 101 class at PUC this quarter as an adjunct instructor.
Jeffrey Gleaves (‘09) enrolled in an MFA program at CSU Fresno where he also serves as an editorial assistant for a literary magazine entitled The Normal School. He worked in New York this past summer as an intern at Harper’s Magazine where he got to meet many people in the magazine world while working on projects for Harper’s website. He says he is “indebted to PUC (especially everyone in the English Department),” declaring that “this writing sickness I have is all your fault. I’m very thankful for the education you all gave me.”
David Ranzolin (‘09) & Kristina (Reiber) Ranzolin (’09) have been living in Atlanta, Georgia where David is scheduled to complete Master’s in Theology at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in May, 2013. He combined his interests in literature and theology in the development of a class called “Theology and Story” which being offered as part of a Certificate in Theological Studies at the Lee Arrendale State [women’s] Prison. Kristina has completed her Master’s in Library and Information Science through San Jose State University. She has been working as part of a grant-funded project at the Pitts theology Library helping to catalog 90,000 volumes they received from another seminar library. As much as they have enjoyed their time in Atlanta, they look forward to moving back to the west coast after the completion of their degrees.
Tim Widmer (aka Twid) completed his MA in Theater Pedagogy at Virgina Commonwealth University.
Let us know what's been happening in your life by going to the Newsletter Signup on the PUC English Dept. webpage. There's space there for you to provide an update.
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