Professional Activities

Mark C. Long, professor of English, attended the annual convention of the Modern Language Association convention in Seattle January 6-9. Mark presented a paper at the session he organized for the MLA’s Office of Research, “Academically Adrift? Language, Literature, and Learning in the Small College English Department.” The session, a response to Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift? Limited Learning on College Campuses, also featured presentations by Suzanne Parker Keen, from Washington and Lee University, and Paul Hanstedt, from Roanoke College. Mark also served as a Job Counselor for the MLA during the convention.

Kirsti Sandy, Associate Professor of English, had two creative nonfiction pieces published: “Unnecessary Lessons” in the online literary journal BioStories, and “Voodoo Economics,” forthcoming in The Boiler Journal.

Miguel Rivera-Taupier, Modern Languages, had an article published in the journal Hispamérica. The paper studies the unmappability of the Latin American megalopolis in a short story by Argentinean writer Alan Pauls. Pauls, one of the most important contemporary Latin American writers, has been translated to several languages. His novel El pasado won Herralde Prize and was adapted as a movie in 2007.