English Empire Takes on APA

Over the weekend of October 13-15th the English department traveled with three faculty members, one lecturer, four graduate students, and one undergraduate student to Heber Springs, Arkansas to attend and present at the 43rd Annual Arkansas Philological Conference: Philology in the 21st Century. We would all like to thank Dr. Bill McHenry, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research for funding our graduate students, Celeste McNeil and Michael Stephenson for funding our undergraduate student, and Dr. Del Doughty for funding our lecturer. They made an incredibly valuable trip for our students possible by covering their travel, lodging, and conference fees. Without their recognition of the need to support undergraduate and graduate student research, many, if not all, would have been unable to m

ake the trip.

All of the students found themselves on panels that included seasoned and established professors, not graduate students. To my understanding, Allison Johnson was the only undergraduate at the conference presenting her work. We often advertise that Texas A&M University-Texarkana offers a "Degree of Distinction." The trip and the presentations made over the weekend offer yet another example of the truth in this statement.

In the first session on Friday morning, Casey Purifoy, graduate student pursuing an MA in English, read a selection of his fictional work titled "The Menaced Assassin" in the "(Creative) Fiction: Criminal Tendencies Panel"

Jason Price, a graduate student pursuing an MA in Counseling and a prior graduate of the English MA program, presented "When There's No One Left to Understand" in the second session titled "Just What Do You Mean by 'Mean?'" Also presenting in the session: Dr. Kevin Els with a paper titled "Epideitic Everywhere! Etymology to Education" and Dr. Doug Julien reading a paper titled "What is the 'Object' of Philology?"

Allison Johnson, an undergraduate double major in English and History, presented her work in the final Friday session,"Blinding Me with Science," her work "That Dragon, Cancer: Traces of Loss Life and Language." Allison will be presenting a version of this work at an Honors Colloquium on the campus of Texas A&M University-Texarkana on November 7th from 6:00-7:30.

The Saturday sessions began with two presenters from A&M-Texarkana in the "Analyze This" session: Daniel T. Jones and Carter Jones. Daniel is a prior graduate of the English department with an MA and is teaching for several departments as a lecturer at the university with plans to pursue his Ph.D. in Fall 2017. He presented his paper titled "Madness and Sanity and the Desire of the Idiot: Fragmentation and Gazing at the Other in Sakaguchi Ango's 'The Idiot.'" Carter is continuing in the MA program in English after having already earned the new Master Teacher of Writing Certificate from the graduate program. His paper was titled "Lexical Diversity & Grading Microtrends."

Unfortunately, in the final sessions of the day, we had two folks presenting in different sessions. Dr. Joy Goldstein presented in the "Reinventing Languages: Making It Up as We GO Along" session a paper titled "Cultural History and the De/encumbering of the Word 'Race' in the 12st Century." Allison Stanley, a graduate student pursuing an MA in English, presented her work "The Cake is a Lie" in the "Musical Translations--Lost and Found" session.

This was the second year the English department has been able to take students to the Arkansas Philological Association annual conference. Thanks to the support we received, we were able to take more students this year than last, Trips such as these bind students to each other, the faculty, and the program. These trips professionalize students in innumerable ways and contribute to their future plans post-graduation from A&M-Texarkana.