Winter 2009
Upcoming DEV, English, Language, Philosophy, and Speech Courses

Here's an early look (subject to change) at the courses the Kirtland Communication & World Languages division will be offering in the winter 2009 semester:

Winter 2009
DEV-08601 Basic Reading Skills
DEV 08807 Writing Mechanics
DEV 09000 Fundamentals of English
DEV-09601 College Reading Skills
ENG-10000 Writing Lab
ENG-10000-60, 61 Writing Lab (Online)
ENG-10303 Eng Comp I w/Comp
ENG-10303-60, 61 Eng Comp I (Online)
ENG-10403 Eng Comp II w/Comp
ENG-10403-60, 61 Eng Comp II (Online)
ENG-10602 Technical Writing
ENG-12000 Journalism I
ENG-12100 Journalism II
ENG-12500 Journalism Practicum
ENG-21500 Creative Writing
ENG-23100 American Literature After 1865
ENG-251XX-60 Contemporary American Poetry (Online)
ENG-29100-00 Poetry Workshop I
ENG-29200-00 Fiction Workshop I
ENG-29300-00 Poetry Workshop II
ENG-29400-00 Fiction Workshop II
FRE-11000-00 French I
PHL-21000 Introduction to Ethics
SGN 10200 Fingerspelling
SGN 11000 American Sign Language I
SGN 12000 American Sign Language II
SPE-10500 Fundamentals of Speech
SPE-11400 Introduction to Interpersonal and Public Communication

Consult the Kirtland Class Schedule for days, times, and instructors.

Curious to know which book was the top seller in America in 1927?

Publishers Weekly has compiled a list of the top-selling books of the Twentieth Century. The list spans the years from 1900-1998.

The top-selling book of 1927? Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis.

A group which calls itself The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG) has declared March 4, 2008 National Grammar Day, setting off a lively debate about the contexts and limits of language correctness.

The day is the brainchild of Martha Brockenbrough, who writes a column called "Grumpy Martha's Guide to Grammar and Usage" for Microsoft's Encarta Web site. Brockenbrough urges Americans, "Speak well! Write well! And on March 4, march forth and spread the word. If you see a sign with a catastrophic apostrophe, send a kind note to the storekeeper. If your local newscaster says "Between you and I," set him straight with a friendly e-mail."

Brockenbrough asserts, "If we don't respect and honor the rules of English, we lose our ability to communicate clearly and well. In short, we invite mayhem, misery, madness, and inevitably even more bad things that start with letters other than M."

Such grammar activism has provoked contrary opinions. "I can't join the witch hunt," writes Nathan Bierma in a Chicago Tribune column "Don't get carried away on National Grammar Day". Grammar corrections of the type urged by Brockenbrough, he declares, "are seldom friendly, welcome or necessary. They are usually self-righteous, irritating and misinformed." Bierma takes Brockenbrough to task for worrying about, among other things, pop song lyrics such as Bryan Adams' "If she ever found out about you and I" and Elvis Presley's "I'm all shook up."

"Just when you think the soi-disant grammar sourpusses can't get much dopier, there they go again," adds Geoffrey K. Pullum in a column on the Language Log blog. On the same site, Arnold Zwicky analyzes SPOGG's faulty assumptions in "National (omigod) Grammar Day".

Join the debate!

Kudos Given for Controlled Burn Young Writers Seminar!

The Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers, held in July at the Ralph MacMullen Center, marked the tenth anniversary of what has become one of Kirtland's signature academic events (see event announcement below). Controlled Burn editor and Kirtland English faculty member Carol Finke acknowledges those who contributed to the seminar's success:

Many thanks to all who helped make the 10th annual Controlled Burn Young Writers Seminar a success and to all who attended some of the events and readings, including Kirtland's new president, Dr. Thomas Quinn; trustee Richard Silverman; dean of instruction Kathy Marsh; and associate deans Karen Brown and Jerry Boerema.

This is the tenth year of the Controlled Burn Seminar - we should thank Kirtland for its support and Gerry LaFemina for all his hard work and imagination, both for creating the seminar and for sustaining it.

In addition, I'd like to be sure to thank the following folks whose contributions are not always noticed:

Jerry Boerema made contributions of time and of snacks, both of which were greatly appreciated - and he also gave the faculty members a much-needed after-dinner break on Wednesday.

Shawn Kaniewski made sure that forms for the teachers and presenters were handled quickly and correctly.

Karen Sessions handled so much paperwork for us all, making sure that student applications and foundation donations were sorted and delivered. (And we hope to see Karen's son as a student at the seminar next summer!)

Kathy Graham, Luann Beilfuss, TonyaOuillette and Kim Ruddy and their colleagues in registration, admissions and accounting were, as usual, tolerant of the kind of last-minuteness that is so characteristic of young students who are also "artistic types."

Wini Sharpe and her e-services cohorts set up a computer lab (and it held up to almost 24-hour-a-day usage by the students, who are nothing if not dedicated), then whisked it all away again at the end.

Mark Allen and the folks at the bookstore ordered the textbooks and the authors' books to be sold at the readings.

Susie Allen provided wonderful Kirtland "goodies" as prizes for the poetry slam.

Kathy Koch kept track of the foundation donations.

Last but not least, Marj Esch kept the seminar web site updated, and Terry Fasbender and the folks in the Kirtland print shop made sure all our materials looked great.

To all of you - thank you for your contributions to what has proved to be a positive and life-changing week for many of the seminar's students over the years.

Carol Finke

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Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers
July 8 - 15, 2007

Kirtland's own Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers will once again be held at the Ralph MacMullan Center at Higgins Lake in the summer of 2007. The week-long seminar provides intensive, small workshops and one-on-one instruction in the art of poetry and fiction writing for writers aged 16-20.

Seminar coordinator Gerry LaFemina describes the seminar's benefits for the young writers who attend: "Students leave with confidence for their work, with writing skills beyond their experience, and with friends for life. Seminar students have gone on to publish their work, to attend Masters of Fine Arts Writing Programs, and to be active members of writing communities across the country."

One of the event's highlights is the schedule of free readings by faculty and students held in the Great Room at the MacMullan Center and open to the public:

Sunday July 8 @ 7pm	Opening Night Discussion: Gerry LaFemina
@ 7:30 pm	Reading: Anneliese Finke and Carol Finke
Monday July 9 @ 7pm	Fiction reading: George Guida
Tuesday July 10 @ 7pm	Poetry reading: Mary Ann Samyn
Wednesday July 11 @ 7pm	Fiction reading: Marisa Labozzetta
Thursday July 12 @ 7pm	Poetry and Prose Slam
Friday July 13 @ 7pm	Poetry reading: Laura Kasischke
Saturday July 14 @ 7pm	Fiction reading: Jack Driscoll
Click here for further details.

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Appalling Opening Wins Annual Bad Writing Contest

The winner of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for horrible writing has been announced. It's Garrison Spik, a communications director from Washington, D.C. The contest judges at San Jose State University decided that Spik's entry--one of thousands received --committed a "syntactic atrocity."

Spik's winning sentence was: Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

The judges also named winners in specific genres. The winner in Detective Fiction:

Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who'd bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy's trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears.

The annual contest, which seeks the worst opening to an imaginary novel, is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the British novelist whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with the cliché, "It was a dark and stormy night ..."

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ARTICLE: Why Johnny Won't Read

A National Endowment for the Arts survey, Reading at Risk: a Survey of Literary Reading in America, shows "a serious decline in both literary reading and book reading in general by adults of all ages, races, incomes, education levels and regions," but especially among boys and young men.

Excerpts: ...for the gap to have grown so much in so short a time suggests that what was formerly a moderate difference is fast becoming a decided marker of gender identity: Girls read; boys don't...

Although one might expect the schools to be trying hard to make reading appealing to boys, the K-12 literature curriculum may in fact be contributing to the problem...Unfortunately, the textbooks and literature assigned in the elementary grades do not reflect the dispositions of male students. Few strong and active male role models can be found as lead characters. Gone are the inspiring biographies of the most important American presidents, inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. No military valor, no high adventure. On the other hand, stories about adventurous and brave women abound. Publishers seem to be more interested in avoiding "masculine" perspectives or "stereotypes" than in getting boys to like what they are assigned to read.

At the middle school level, the kind of quality literature that might appeal to boys has been replaced by Young Adult Literature, that is, easy-to-read, short novels about teenagers and problems such as drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorced parents and bullying. Older literary fare has also been replaced by something called "culturally relevant" literature...

There is no evidence whatsoever that either of these types of reading fare has turned boys into lifelong readers or learners. On the contrary, the evidence is accumulating that by the time they go on to high school, boys have lost their interest in reading...

Read the whole article at Washingtonpost.com =>

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Beware of Phony Writing Contests

"There are hundreds of literary contests, online and off. Most are real; some are even prestigious. But many are fake. And of the legitimate ones, few are important enough to provide a meaningful addition to your writing resume."

So warns the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.on their Web page Warnings and Cautions for Writers - Writing Contests and Vanity Anthologies

"Fake contests come in many different guises, but they all have a common goal--to take your money," according to the site. To avoid the fakery, the SFFWA offers some questions to ask when evaluating a writing contest. Among them are:

• Who's conducting the contest?
  
• Is there an entry fee?
  
• How frequently does the organization conduct contests?
  
• Are the contest guidelines clearly stated?
  
• Who'll be doing the judging?

The site offers a list of links to other useful sites for the prospective contest entrant.

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Kirtland Student Center

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Contest Winner Named!

The last Can You Name the Author? contest brought a single winning entry:

Carol Finke of Kirtland's own Department of English.

Congratulations to Carol, who correctly identified the mystery author as John Millington Synge!

And now for a new Can You Name the Author? contest:

He originally hoped for a career as a painter of portraits and historical scenes but couldn't afford the necessary classical training. Disappointed, he attended college for two years and then, at the urging of friends, moved to the hinterlands in hope of obtaining some portrait commissions. Having achieved a modest living as a painter, he began to write character sketches and humorous tales about his adopted region for newspapers, on the basis of whose popularity he launched a second career as a journalist which grew into the editorship of several newspapers, as well as modest national fame. Although he was to write on a wide range of subjects, his lasting literary achievement remained his boisterous comic tales of rural life. His characteristic story was framed by a gentlemanly narrator who reported the vernacular diction and comic exaggeration of decidely unrefined rural characters.

Send your answer.
Answer and names of the winners will be posted here.