LJWL Faculty will be presenting at the 2019 Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) on November 14-17, 2019 in San Diego, California.
Nine LJWL faculty plus Vice Provost Karen Lee will be presenting at other panels throughout the four-day conference, and senior Literature~English Education major Carmen Flores-Lopez will be reading an original poem at a poetry panel.
Dr. Carol Blessing will lead a round table discussion entitled, "Act One - No Laughing Matter: Teaching at Small Colleges in the Current Academic Climate."
She will be joined by Dr. James Wicks, presenting '“But what you teach is all relative”: Responding to Student and Faculty Perceptions of Literature,' Professor Breeann Kyte Kirby, presenting "'This Has Nothing to Do With My Major': Facilitating Synthesis of GE Subjects with Student Career Goals," and Professor Charlene Pate, presenting "The Show Must Go On." (Abstracts included below).
Dr. Bettina Tate Pedersen will present her paper, "Clowns in Hiding: Uncovering Feminism in a General Education Women Writers Course," as part of the session entitled "Act One - Women in Literature I."
There is also an option for PAMLA attendees to tour the PLNU campus with Dr. Rick Kennedy to learn about its historical connection with the Theosophical Society.
LJWL students have been invited to volunteer at the event and are encouraged to take advantage of FREE admission, a free tshirt, and free lunch! (To volunteer, please contact Carol Blessing).
For more information about PAMLA click here
ROUND TABLE ABSTRACTS:
Breeann Kyte Kirby, 'This Has Nothing to Do With My Major': Facilitating Synthesis of GE Subjects with Student Career Goals
As students are led to specialize toward a career path, they have lost the ability to see how broader knowledge of literature and writing techniques can positively contribute to their goals. They have not learned that everything is connected. Rather than attempt to sell the students on the value of GE courses, a better approach may be to develop course curriculum that purposefully intersects with a wide variety of STEM questions—questions that are usually universal across disciplines.
James Wicks, “But what you teach is all relative”: Responding to Student and Faculty Perceptions of Literature
My presentation is twofold: 1) to describe the way students in general education courses occasionally perceive the study of Literature as “useless” because it is relative rather than an exact science, and 2) describe my concurrent experience supporting our department as a possible location to house an Environmental Studies Program on a campus that at times perceives Literature as the focused study of “classics” rather than a department that studies narrative in all of its diversity including issues surrounding gender, ethnicity, class, technology, and the environment.
Charlene Pate, "The Show Must Go On"
As with the theater, finding funding to open a writing center and financially sustaining it is often a challenge, especially in smaller colleges and universities. It is possible, however, to set the stage, prepare the actors, gather the audience, and put on a meaningful and life changing show as it is being done in the Writers' Studio at Point Loma Nazarene University's Writers' Studio.
Bettina Tate Pedersen, "Clowns in Hiding: Uncovering Feminism in a General Education Women Writers Course"
My paper discusses pedagogy that shapes my GE Women Writers course, selection of texts that connect contemporary students with feminist narratives and theory, and ways in which reading only the writing of women across multiple centuries and locations helps students begin to develop consciousness of women’s oppression and the ongoing need for feminism.