Department News

stack of books

Michael Granado, a Philosophy alumnus who graduated in Spring 2009, will begin graduate study at Emory in the fall of 2010.

Philosophy alumnus John Rodman, Assistant Public Defender for the State of Georgia recently won an important and difficult case: State of Georgia v. Lavon Perry Jr. (2009).

Dr. Tim Whelan was just awarded a substantial NEH grant in support of his project, "Nonconformist Women Writers 1720-1840," to be published by Pickering and Chatto. He is assisted in this projected by Dr. Julia Griffin.

Constance Jackson, who recently completed her M.A. in English from our department, will begin teaching at Herzing University in Atlanta in January 2010. Constance will be an adjunct instructor in English with responsibilty for two courses.

A new edition of the classic 1801 collection of Gothic horror ballads, Tales of Wonder, written by Matthew Gregory "Monk" Lewis and edited by Douglass H. Thomson, was published on November 15 by the Broadview Press.

Philosophy major Corey Briley's paper "Can Compatabilism Reconcile Free Will and Determinism?" has been accepted for presentation at the third annual Southeast Philosophy Conference at Clayton State University on February 12-13, 2010.

Jessica Newberry interviewed Andre Dubus III at his home in Newbury, MA, on August 30, 2009. The focus of her interview was on perception in his novels House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days. She assisted in cataloging the archives of Andre Dubus with her thesis director, Dr. Olivia Carr Edenfield, on August 27 - 29, 2009.

Members of the department were involved in the American Literature Association Symposium on American Fiction 1890 - present in Savannah, GA on October 9-10:

  • Olivia Carr Edenfield was the Conference Director (she has directed the conference for the past two years, and will do so for two more years).
Several graduate students participated in the conference:
  • Jessica Newberry chaired a session and presented a paper: "Becoming an 'Object of Vision': Perception in Andre Dubus III's The Garden of Last Days."
  • Leah DiNatale presented a paper: "Resisting the Feed: The Politics of Thrift in Laurie Halse Anderson's Prom."
  • Laura Hakala presented a paper: "The Mad Child in the Attic: Hysteria and Gender Transitions in The Secret Garden."
  • Taqwaa Saleem chaired a session.

Several faculty members also participated in the conference:
  • David Dudley chaired a session and presented a paper: "White, Black, or Both? - Racial anagnorsis in the works of Charles Chesnutt."
  • Caren Town chaired a session and presented a paper: "Chris Crutcher's Triple Play."
  • Bradley Edwards chaired a session and presented a paper: "Buddhist, Cherokee, and Quaker Paths to Peace in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain."
  • Gautam Kundu presented a paper: 'Film Ambiance of The Beautiful and the Damned."
  • Richard Flynn chaired a session.

News of Recent Graduates:
Dara Gibson has a full-time position teaching at East Georgia College.
Kelly Twilley has a full-time position teaching at Flint River Technical College.
Tyler Sasser entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Southern Mississippi with a graduate assistantship.

"Causation and the Cartesian Reduction of Motion: God's Role in Grinding the Gears," by William Eaton and Robert Higgerson, has been accepted for publication in the forthcoming book Causation: 1500-2000 (Routledge 2010).

Tim Whelan, Professor of English, has had two books published this year: Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794-1808 appeared in March and is published by the National Library of Wales Press; Baptist Autographs from the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 appeared in October and is published by Mercer University Press. Each book is approximately 500 pages. Another book, The Political Pamphlets of William Fox, 1791-94, co-edited with John Barrell of York University, will appear early in 2010. So far this year Dr. Whelan has published an article on William Fox in Eighteenth Century Studies, a review essay on Joseph Cottle in the Coleridge Bulletin; and a chapter on William Fox and Martha Gurney in Pulpit and People: Studies in 18th Century Baptist Life and Thought (Paternoster Press, 2009), ed. John Briggs. In the next few months Dr. Whelan will have an essay on Samuel Taylor Coleridge appear in Wordsworth and Coleridge in the West Country, ed. Nick Roe (Palgrave, 2009), an essay on Martha Gurney in Women, Dissent and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865, ed. Elizabeth J. Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010); an essay on Benjamin Flower in Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society; and an essay on the Baptist minister Robert Hall and the slave trade in The Abolition of Slavery: Debate and Dissension 1787-1840, ed. Susan Trouve (Paris: Armand Colin, 2010).

Dr. Bradley C. Edwards recently published Conversations with Bharati Mukherjee (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), which contains a lengthy interview conducted by Edwards specifically for the book as well as Mukherjee's earliest interview, originally published in the Calcutta journal Desh and appearing here in English for the first time.

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