The Literary Way

a newsletter for Xavier University of Louisiana's English majors, minors, and honors students
November 2009

The Mellon Mays Program: An Opportunity

Zakiya Farris, Senior Programs Coordinator, UNCF/Mellon Programs (XU English graduate '02)

XU English Alumna Zakiya Farris visited campus recently to spread the word about an exciting opportunity for students who are interested in pursuing the doctoral degree. Sophomores with good grades and a sincere interest in earning a Ph.D. and becoming an English professor (or a professor in other designated fields of study) should seriously consider applying to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program. This program will match students with faculty mentors and sharpen their research, writing and presentation skills via a summer program, paid in full. Stipends will be provided to assist with costs related to research and graduate school preparation. Students who are accepted to the program and enter graduate school are also eligible for up to $10,000 toward their undergraduate loans.

One English major from Xavier has already benefited from this program: Trimiko Melancon. After she graduated in 1999 she went on to earn her Ph.D. Now, she an Assitant Professor of English teaching at Auburn University. This fellowship program paved the way for Trimiko, but in recent years Xavier students haven't been applying for it. Zakiya would like to change that. She would love to see more students from Xavier apply, earn their doctorates, and help fill the ranks of the next generation of professors. The application deadline is Janury 31st. For more information, contact Dr. Dorris at extention 5154 or Dr. Lanoue at extention 7477.

The above article catches us up with two Xavier English alumni—Zakiya Farris and Trimiko Melancon.
To find out what other graduates are up to, see "Where Are They Now?"

Modernism: A Lonely Step Forward

by Corneisha McCorkle, English Minor and English Honors Student

Homo sapiens, more commonly known as humans, are a very social species. Just like their fellow primates, humans congregate and form tight-knit circles for the sake of their own survival. Humans rely on one another for not only physical needs, but spiritual and emotional support as well. Humans have one of the longest gestation periods, with an average of about nine months, along with an extremely lengthy nurturing period that is legally set at eighteen years. Despite the pull of human nature, it seems that in recent years humans have become more and more introverted. Natsume Soseki's Kokoro and Jean-Paul Daoust's "The Objet d'Art" are both contemporary works that showcase humanity's newfound alienation from their fellow man. Upon examination of Kokoro and "The Objet d'Art," one can see the different types of isolation in each work, the affects of alienation on those closest to the main characters, and the consequences of such self-inflicted solitude. Despite their stylistic differences, both works highlight the increasing egocentric nature of humanity. read more...

Corneishia's essay is just the latest example of fine student writing showcased in The Literary Way. Take a peek at past essays and poems.

Our Productive English Faculty

The best reason for majoring or minoring in English at Xavier University of Louisiana is its faculty. Unlike many large institutions, where basic courses are taught by teaching assistants and where beginning students hardly ever get the chance to meet senior faculty, at Xavier University all faculty, including the most senior faculty, teach first-year students. This allows students to meet and form bonds with mentors early in their academic careers. An impressive 77% of Xavier English faculty hold a so-called "terminal" degree: 12 have doctorates and 5 are Masters of Fine Arts. Xavier English professors are active researchers and writers who are willing and eager to share their knowledge with students. To give an idea of what the English faculty members have accomplished in their respective areas of expertise, here's a (partial) list of their scholarly accomplishments in the calendar year of 2009.

• Mr. Ralph Adamo has edited a book, I Hope It's Not Over, and Goodbye – poems of the late Everette Maddox (a New Orleans resident from 1976-89 and a former visiting writer at XU), published by the University of New Orleans Press. He has published a poem and an essay in the San Francisco magazine, Big Bridge, and has poems forthcoming in The Maple Leaf Rag 4. He read his poems and spoke on a panel at the first annual Frank Stanford Festival in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and delivered a paper on the new paradigm in post-Katrina public eduication in New Orleans at the recent South Central Modern Language Association meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.



• Dr. Thomas Bonner, Jr. (Emeritus) served as a judge for the Oxford American magazine's Great Southern Literature Poll. He also was appointed to the website committee of the Kate Chopin International Society. He co-presented the paper, "Kate Chopin and Visual Art," at the Kate Chopin International Society session of the American Literature Association Conference in Boston MA—and he wrote four reviews of Southern literary studies for Choice. Beyond all this, he somehow found the time to serve as a consultant to the Mississippi Quarterly and to give the keynote address, "New Orleans and Its Writers' Burdens of Place," at the 2009 Mississippi Philological Association Conference.



• Dr. Violet Bryan, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Professor in Humanities, presented the paper, "Jamaican Folk Culture, Religion, and Language as Healing in the Works of Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard," at the Fifth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) in Accra, Ghana. She also toured the W. E. B. DuBois Research Center, where DuBois was buried, the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, the Ashanti region of Kumasi, and the slave port at Cape Coast, Ghana. In aqddition, she presented the paper, "Fish's Waking Dreams and Father-Son Relations in Richard Wright's A Long Dream," at the South Central Modern Language Association in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.



• Dr. Ronald Dorris, Alumni Class of '58 Professor in Liberal Arts, African American Studies and English; had a paper, "Race as a Social Construct: The Impact on Education," published in the Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table. He also had a short story, "Moustique," published in Langston Hughes Colloquy (Vol. 10).



• Dr. Donna Marie Gould, SBS directed and chaired the South Central Conference on Christianity and Literature, "Human Experience as the Mask of God: The Hero's Journey as the Quest for the Sacred in Literature and the Arts." She also presented two papers: "Computer generated narratives: A second orality" at the American Folklore Society conference in Louisville, Kentucky; and “A Structuralist Approach to Ancient Greek literature" at the South Central Modern Language Association conference in San Antonio, Texas.



• Dr. Nicole P. Greene, English Dept. Chair and Kellogg Professor of English, was a contributor to a special report on health care in America and Britain in The Tablet, the international Catholic weekly journal. She also was selected to participate in the National Endowment for Humanities seminar, "Anglo-Irish Identities," held at the University of Notre Dame. In addition, she presented a paper, "Basic Writing, Access, and Equal Opportunity in SW Louisiana," at the Conference on College Composition and Communication. She chaired the Irish Literature panel at the South Central Modern Language Association conference in Baton Rouge, and she moderated the panel, "Trends in Composition," at the Louisiana Conference of College Composition in Monroe, Louisiana. Finally, she served as the editor of the spring volume of Xavier Review.



• Dr. Oliver Hennessey wrote an article, "Shakespeare's Grief and Mardi Gras, 2006," for the spring edition of Borrowers and Lenders: A Journal of Shakespeare Appropriation. He also reviewed three books on early modern popular culture for the Journal of British Studies.



• Ms. Katheryn Krotzer Laborde, New Voices advisor, had a flash literary nonfiction piece, "Drive," published in You are Here: the Journal of Creative Geography. She's finished her book, Do Not Open: The Discarded Refrigerators of Post-Katrina New Orleans; McFarland will publish it in 2010. She made a presentation, "On Better Paths: Life Changes in the Early Days of Katrina Recovery," at the South Central Modern Language Association meeting in October in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and she was featured in a reading at the Latter Library in November. In addition, she has an essay of creative nonfiction as well as a photo essay coming out in Crossroads: A Southern Culture Annual.



• Dr. David Lanoue, RosaMary Professor of English, had an essay, "The Haiku Mind: Issa and Pure Land Buddhism," published in The Eastern Buddhist, a Japanese journal of Buddhist studies. He also published his third novel, Haiku Wars (Red Moon Press, 2009). In India he published a bilingual English-Hindi book, The Distant Mountain:The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa. In Ottawa, Canada, he presented a paper, "Reading the New Haiku," at the Haiku North America conference. He published an essay, "America’s First Haiku Masters: Jack Kerouac and Richard Wright," in Philosophical Alternatives (Bulgaria). He visited Japan to launch the publication of the Japanese translation of his first novel, Haiku Guy.



• Dr. Bonnie Noonan, our Director of Composition, presented a paper, "To Be a Sci-Fi Human," at the 2009 Joint Conference of the National Popular Culture and American Culture Associations. She also chaired a panel, "Science Fiction & Fantasy: What It Means to Be Human." In addition, she chaired the Science Fiction & Fantasy panel at the 2009 South Central Modern Language Association conference in Baton Rouge.



• Dr. Biljana Obradovic gave a poetry reading and participated in a panel on "Poetry, Poets, and the Collapsing Economy: Are They Related?" at the Annual Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers’ Conference in Fairhope, Alabama. Other poetry readings this year included one at the Ezra Pound Center in Brunnenburg Castle, Dorf Tirol, Italy; and at the Niš Cultural Center in Niš, Serbia. She had her translations published in magazines and anthologies, including Bratislav Milanovic', "Mother’s Passing," "Aged Scribe Near Tamiš," and "Where Are the Addresses, Phone Books, Telephones..." in Ekleksographia, edited by Annie Ballardini. She also served as chair of several panels: "State Building in Yugoslavia," at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Boston, Massachusetts; "Slavic and Eastern European Languages and Literatures," in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and "Translations by/and Pound," at the 23rd Ezra Pound International Conference in Rome, Italy.



• Ms. Robbi Pounds read selections from her creative nonfiction at the Annual Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers' Conference in Fairhope, Alabama. She also read from and discussed her novel-in-progress, The Grass Widow, at the 2009 Mississippi Philological Association Conference.



• Dr. Leslie Richardson traveled to Botswana, where she participated in the Council on International Educational Exchange conference (C.I.E.E.). She also presented a paper, "Faculty Morale, Rentention and Social Events," at the Improving University Teaching's 34th Annual Conference in Vancouver, Canada.



• Mr. James Shade chaired an interdisciplinary studies panel, "Recovery and Renewal: Post-Katrina New Orleans," at the South Central Modern Language Association conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He also presented a paper, "Easing on Down the (Sidney Lumet) Road: A 30th Anniversay Critical Analysis of The Wiz," at the Southern Conference of African American Scholars, held in Charlotte, North Carolina. Recently, at an English Department Faculty Colloquium, he orchestrated a reading of his play-in-progress, Creole Love Call.



• Dr. Jason Todd, our Writing Center Director, won second place in the 1st Annual Southern California Review Fiction Prize for his short story, "This Is Where," which was published in the spring ‘09 edition of the magazine. He also gave the paper, "'Hit's what paw says': Language, Balance, and Authority in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying,"at the 2009 Mississippi Philological Association Conference. His short story, "The Man Who Shot Henry McCarty," appeared on the Fiction Weekly website. His story, "We Have a Safe?" will appear in the next issue of the Journal of College Writing. Finally (whew!) he has written two entries for the new Greenwood Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels, in the final editing stage.



• Mr. Jeremy Tuman read selections from his creative nonfiction at the Annual Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers’ Conference in Fairhope, Alabama.



• Dr. Robin Vander presented a paper, "The Tides that Bind: New Orleans, Pan-Africanism, and the African Diaspora," at the Fifth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora in Ghana. She gave the Plenary Presentation, "Reflections of the Divine in African American Women's Writing," at the South Central Conference on Christianity and Literature. She also presented a paper titled "'The Big Four' and the Debate Over Public Housing in Post-Katrina New Orleans" at the Oxford Round Table on Social Justice: Poverty, Food and Race at Pembroke College, Oxford. This paper has been accepted for publication in a collection of essays on social justice. On top of all this, she presented a paper, "The Postmortem Narrative: Life, Death, and Ethnography in Caribbean and Latin American Fiction," at the Fourth Biennial Caribbean Unbound Conference at Franklin College in Lugano, Switzerland.



• Dr. Daniel Webre co-chaired the South Central Conference on Christianity and Literature, "Human Experience as the Mask of God: The Hero's Journey as the Quest for the Sacred in Literature and the Arts."



• Mr. Mark Whitaker has been busy with a new baby, Penelope Jane, this year. Congratulations, Mark!

CREATIVE WRITING NEWS

Thursday evening, October 1, 2009, Louisiana Poet Laureate, Darrell Bourque, read at Xavier. Darrell Bourque is Professor Emeritus of English and Interdisciplinary Humanities at University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the author of Plainsongs (Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick NY, 1994), The Doors Between Us (Louisiana Literature Press, Hammond LA, 1999), Burnt Water Suite (Wings Press, Austin TX, 1999), The Blue Boat (Center for Louisiana Studies, UL-Lafayette, Lafayette LA, 2004), and Call and Response: Conversations in Verse, with Jack B. Bedell (Texas Review Press, Huntsville TX, 2009). University of Louisiana Press will publish In Ordinary Light: New and Selected Poems in 2011 and Chicory Bloom Press has commissioned a special edition chapbook, Holding the Notes, which will be published in 2012. Bourque lives in rural St. Landry Parish and he is currently the Louisiana Poet Laureate. His reading was sponsored by the Xavier Endowment for the Humanities and the English Department—organized by Dr. Bilajana Obradovic.

Tuesday evening, November 10, 2009, San Diego poet Jericho Brown gave a reading, sponsored by Poets & Writers, Inc, the Xavier Endowment for the Humanities and the English Department. The reading, organized by Dr. Biljana Obradovic, continued Xavier's excellent track record for bringing top creative writers to our campus. Jericho Brown "worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Dillard University. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, the Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of San Diego. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, jubilat, New England Review, Oxford American, and several other journals and anthologies. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the 2009 American Book Award" (information taken from jericho.brown.com).

Red Plastic Cups

by Troy Baham Jr., English major

I take a sip from my red, plastic cup
savoring the rich flavors caressing my
taste buds like a well practiced masseuse.
Lowering the cup, I gaze at its contents—
the dark brown liquid and the clear cubes
swimming in the calm waters before they
eventually become a part of the substance
responsible for bringing about their demise.

Raising my eyes, the dimly lit room greets
me with a glance and I allow my vision to
focus on its occupants: the boisterous young
men and the women dangling on their arms
wearing carefree smiles and releasing childish
laughter from between their pearly-white prisons.
Not even the thirty-two bars could restrain such
a light-hearted jail break. I take another sip

from my red, plastic cup and after receiving
pounds and hugs from the other exuberant
party goers, I am able to amble into the kitchen
to catch a couple kissing. How I wish they would
get a room. I notice men standing with the fridge
ajar, praying to Dionysus that it was a bar. They
mourn the depletion of their beer supply. Oh for
shame! The host can usually be found at the kitchen

counter, mixing drinks for the ladies as they lure
him with their feminine wiles. He is all smiles as
he mixes gin, juice, and seduction into those red,
plastic cups. He offers me another drink and I tell
him my cup is full. That is all the answer he needs.
His attention returns to the ladies and mine follows
my footsteps into a room filled with couches, slurred

speech laced with the taint of cheap vodka, and the
constant clatter of tasteless rap music. I muse about
writing an ode to sobriety while swirling the contents
of my cup but am interrupted by an argument that seems
to be on the verge of evolving into a brawl. Two alpha
males are practically at each other's throats with the
rest of the pack watching, baying for blood. I put down
my red, plastic cup and dive into the hostile waters

and part the Red Sea to keep the would-be combatants
separate. Others come to help keep the warriors apart
and I am able to slip away and retrieve my red, plastic
cup off the mantle and proceed to the outdoor patio.
On the way to the gathering outside, I walk past the
bathroom and see a woman offering the contents of
her stomach as some sick form of sacrifice to that
porcelain idol that is said to reside in the privy. I call

them heathens in my mind, chuckling at the hypocrisy
of that statement. The warm night air hugs me loosely
as I step outside and the social butterfly buried deep
inside forces me to sit near a group of friends playing
a drinking game. My boy, Jacob, always wins at beer
pong. He looks up from the game and asks me what
I'm drinking. I just can't help but smile knowlingly as
I enjoy the taste of iced tea in my red, plastic cup.

*First published in New Voices 16 (2009): 135-36. The editor of the student literary magazine New Voices and recipient of the Truman Capote scholarship for creative writing students, Troy also has had a poem accepted for the Maple Leaf Rag Anthology.

English Dept. home page

The Literary Way is edited by Dr. David G. Lanoue of the Xavier University English Department. Contact: dlanoue@xula.edu