Dr. Karen Babine’s latest book is called The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo. Here is how the book came to be:
In 2014, Dr. Karen Babine hitched her thirteen-foot Scamp camper to a Jeep and set off by herself (with two cats) from Minnesota for Nova Scotia, the ancestral landing place of the Babines, who were among the first French-Acadians to Nova Scotia in the 1620s. Said Babine, “There are many stories in
BABINE ON CAMPING AND WRITING New
our culture for why a woman might travel by herself: maybe she’s grieving, maybe she’s lonely, maybe she’s set out to find herself, or maybe her plan for a marriage and a family— all women want marriage and a family, after all—didn’t pan out.”
This trip was none of those things; she knew who she was before she left. But her grounding principle was “We know who we are by where we are.” She wanted to take the family history she’d spent (see page 5)
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
ADMINISTRATION
2024–2025
Head, Department of English
Senior Associate Department Head
Associate Department Head
Director of English Graduate Studies
Director of Composition
Director of General Education
Director of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
English Internships Coordinator
Classroom Technologies & Website Coordinator
Administrative Assistant, Composition Program
Executive Secretary
Dr. Andrew McCarthy
Dr. Bryan Hampton
Prof. Sybil Baker
Dr. Heather Palmer
Dr. Jenn Stewart
Dr. Lauren Ingraham
Dr. Marcia Noe
Kristine Whorton
Tiffany Mitchell
Yvonne Artis
Heather Grothe
LETTER FROM THE HEAD, ANDREW MCCARTHY
It is my pleasure to welcome you once again to the UTC English Department’s annual alumni newsletter. It is hard to believe this is our fifth issue and so I hope you’ll join me in thanking Russell Helms for all the hard work he pours into this project. This undertaking really is a vital service and each year I look forward to Russell’s email with a draft copy; it is exciting to be reminded of the incredible things we’ve accomplished and learn more about what current and former students are doing with their degrees in English.
We started this newsletter with the simple goal of keeping in touch with our wonderful alumni, to share the many things we do over the course of an academic year and remind our graduates (not to mention ourselves) of the important community to which we all belong. But now more than ever it is imperative we document our work and tell our story. If you’re like me, you’ve grown tired of reading yet another click-bait headline in the press about the death of the Humanities or the futility of the English degree. Because when I flip through these pages I see a vibrant department full of engaging people, bound by a common interest but representing a diversity of thought and approaches. If anything, I see growth
and the potential for even more development and evolution.
For instance, Dr. Sarah Einstein has launched a new minor in narrative design, creating a pathway for our students to work in the most lucrative sector of the entertainment industry: video games. We welcomed Jared Sullivan (Class of 2013) back to campus to celebrate the publication of his excellent Valley So Low, a critically acclaimed work of instigative journalism about one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history. The English Club hosted a series of hugely popular salons to discuss a range of current topics and a group of undergraduates established a new literary criticism journal called The Quill Collection.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In the pages that follow you’ll learn of the many ways faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the UTC English Department shape their communities and the world. I hope you enjoy learning more about what we’re up to and please get in touch if you’d like to be featured in a future issue or simply wish to say hello. I always enjoy hearing from members—both past and present—of our department.
Sincerely yours,
Andrew
BABINE ON CAMPING AND WRITING
(from page 1) a lifetime gathering and place it, feel with her own two feet how it all connected to its physical roots.
She packed up her tiny camper and headed out on the road to Nova Scotia alone to explore the places her Acadian ancestors last walked three hundred years ago, before they were deported by the British in 1755 in Le Grand Derangement (which is how the Cajuns got to Louisiana). With each mile, she unraveled the threads of history and ancestral trauma, weaving together a rich tapestry of stories and memories that stretched into her grandparents’ generation and the suicide of her great-grandfather in 1943 when he received his draft notice for WWII and the 1976 murders of her great-uncle and great-grandmother a month before her parents’ wedding.
The book examines the role of storytelling in both natural history and family history, delving into the ways in which narratives can shape our understanding of the world around us and wonders, “What does home look like in a solo woman’s life?” The book explores the relationships between ancestry, place/travel (environment), and the nature of storytelling.
The Minnesota Babines created who they were as a family who camped together—that kind of family wouldn’t be constructed by accident and it set a precedent for not only who they were together, but who they were as individuals, and offered a foundation for how Babine approached her work as the family historian and also who she was as an aunt.
Travel became an important part of how the family constructed relationships and this book emphasizes creation, construction, and other
active verbs of being, to drive home that family doesn’t happen by accident, history doesn’t just occur. People make choices. Ultimately, the road is the line from one woman going Scamping to the larger considerations of cultural history, movement, and place. Her family’s history is a lens through which to examine the larger themes of environmental change, human migration, and the complex relationships between humans and the natural world. She is deeply interested in the non-linear nature of history, how it can function as an accordion, and how stories function over time. For Babine, she loves that the road is always in present tense. The forward motion of the narrative, then, plays with this multifaceted question of where we are and who we are, and how we carry the stories of the past in our bones, how the planet carries the stories of its past in its bones, and how natural history and family history are inextricable from each other.
MCCARTHY GIVES POP-UP LECTURE
To promote and celebrate the production of Twelfth Night on campus, Dr. Andrew McCarthy gave a pop-up lecture on October 22 in the Library. McCarthy’s message centered on appreciating the play as pop culture as would have been the case during Shakespeare’s life. Twelfth Night narrates the close of the Christmas season in a riotous manner with a bawdy mix of mistaken identity, disguises, and love triangles. Actors From The London Stage (AFTLS), one of the oldest touring Shakespeare theatre companies in the world, gave two well-attended performances using a minimalist approach without stage scenery.
ROSES AND WHINE
The Sixth Annual Roses and Whine Poetry Jam drew some fifty students and a dozen faculty. Creative Writing Club President, Ditsy Werner, emceed the event, which was organized by Tracye Poole. To start the evening, four faculty members read love poems. Dr. Bryan Hampton recited A.E. Housman’s, “When I was One-and-Twenty.”
The bulk of the evening involved a writing contest for poems in five categories. Students had to incorporate random words into a poem within twenty minutes. Those who read their poems were included in the contest. A highlight was the laughter following along with a poem about Yoda and love by Noah McCourry. Professor Matthew Evans provided live music, plucking his banjo. The winners of the contest were:
Best Love Poem: Lily Phillips
Best Anti-Love Poem: Rue Plummer
Lustiest Poem: Aliyah Waggoner
Funniest Poem: Noah McCourry
Most Heartbroken Poem: Sarah Alarcon
Rue Plummer
NEW ENGLISH MINOR LAUNCHED
Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Sarah Einstein, the English Department now has a new minor, narrative design. Narrative design revolves around video games and writing the stories experienced by gamers. Currently, English majors will be able to take the minor, but the minor will draw in new students as well, adding to enrollment.
Careers in narrative design include video game writer, level designer, narrative designer, and corporate training video designer. Einstein says that AI is poised “to shake up the video game industry,” necessitating the inclusion of AI prompt design into the minor.
Einstein is also an active gamer and leads a series called Game Jams that is based in the English Department but open to all students.
UNDERGRADUATE SPOTLIGHT: COLBY LANGLEY
Colby Langley was raised to put all his effort into what he is passionate about. He grew up with a very athletic family, “being dragged from swim meet to soccer game either for myself or my two older brothers.” He’s always been very competitive and needs an outlet for his creativity. “Currently those passions that drive me are writing and running.”
Langley is in his junior year as a creative writing major. He chose English as his major because he is fascinated by words and language, both the way we are taught to see and read and hear them. He enjoys the way a word he speaks rolls off his tongue entirely different from how the same word “might roll off of another’s tongue due to regional or cultural differences that shape how we interact with language.”
He has been especially interested in political fiction as of recently. He recently read Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, which was one of the most “imaginative and unique reconstructions of an established fiction” that he has ever read. He is a lover of nature and the outdoors, and because of that his reading and research interests often align with the outdoors, “like my fascination with cicadas after watching the birds in my yard hunt them all summer.”
After graduation he plans to stay in Chattanooga and take a gap year before pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing.
AN ENGLISH HALLOWEEN
The annual English Department Halloween event occurred on October 29 at Chamberlain Field Pavilion. Students participated in costume contests and a micro-fiction contest. Professor Matthew Evans provided live music.
TIFFANY HERRON PREVIEWS KLAN
FILM
During fall semester, Tiffany Herron, a UTC alumnus who earned a bachelor’s (2018) and master’s (2020) in English, visited the UTC campus in conjunction with a film showing of How to Sue the Klan. She is the co-producer for the Ben Crump film, directed by award winning producer John Beder. Attorney Ben Crump attended as a screening co-host.
JARED SULLIVAN DISCUSSES CAREER OPTIONS
UTC English alumnus
Jared Sullivan visited the UTC campus on October 23, discussing his career as an editor at Men’s Journal and Field & Stream and as a writer for The New Yorker, Time, Garden & Gun, and USA Today, among other publications.
In addition, at Arts Build, Sullivan read from and discussed his newly released book Valley So Low, “a riveting courtroom drama about the victims of one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history— and the country lawyer determined to challenge the notion that, in America, justice can be bought.”
SHAHEEN LEADS DOS PASSOS CONFERENCE IN ITALY.
During the summer of 2024, Dr. Aaron Shaheen planned and led the Fourth Biennial John Dos Passos Conference, “receiving plenty of support from the Dos Passos Society’s president Fredrik Tydal and vice president Rosa Bautista-Cordero.”
The conference was held in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. Bassano is a medieval town of about 50,000 on the Venetian Plain at the foot of the Alps, Monte Grappa specifically. The conference took place at the fifteenth-century Villa Ca’ Erizzo Luca, where from January–June 1918 Dos Passos served as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in World War I. The gala dinner was held in the room dubbed “Poets’ Corner,” where Dos Passos and his fellow drivers would socialize, drink grappa on the offtimes, and read their poetry and fiction to one another.
There was no particular theme for the conference as long as the papers somehow addressed the life, writings, or professional associations of John Dos Passos. Given the historical setting for the conference, many papers, including his own, dealt with Dos Passos’ time in World War I.
The conference included about twenty-five participants, about half of whom were not American. Said Shaheen, “Dos Passos has a decent readership outside the United States. I think this was our most international conference to date, with panelists from eleven different countries, including Japan, Brazil, the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, Slovenia, Italy,
Romania, and the US. About half consisted of Dos Passos Society regulars, while the other half was made up of first-time comers, one of whom was Alexis Armour, who very recently graduated with her MA from UTC.”
The next Dos Passos conference is in the early stages of planning for Ponta Do Sol, Madeira, Portugal. Dos Passos’s grandfather Manoel was from this Portuguese island several hundred miles off the coast of Africa. The conference site is the John Dos Passos Cultural Center, which is situated next to the Dos Passos ancestral home. The conference is planned for late spring or early summer of 2026.
Aaron Shaheen (middle)
John Dos Passos
AWAKE AND ENGAGED RETURNS TO CAMPUS
“Awake and Engaged,” founded by Dr. Mike Jaynes and Justin Lewis in 2008, brought students together to view and discuss documentaries focused on social and ecologic justice and stories about interesting people living differently. After reviewing over forty films and a four-year hiatus, Jaynes has brought the event back to campus, although with a change. Rather than watch full-length documentaries, participants watch shorter YouTube pieces ahead of time and then gather to discuss and explore the content. Jaynes credits the revival of the series to his journey with secular Buddhism, which posits awareness of our surroundings and life. During the summer of 2024, Jaynes embarked on a mindfulness journey, exploring intensive meditation and reading to assist in changing what he calls “negative thought patterns.” This deep immersion in mindfulness he credits with changing his life. He said, “The meaning of life is just to be alive. You don’t have to be something but rather just be.”
This spring, one discussion was based on a solo round-the-globe sailor. Jaynes guided a discussion about how lives unfold and how ours may form unique paths, relative to a desire to live unconventionally.
UNDERGRADUATE SPOTLIGHT: JENNY ETHERIDGE
Jenny Etheridge is from Ooltewah, Tennessee. She is a junior studying English (Literary Studies) as well as Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). She works in the Center for Women and Gender Equity as the Gender-Based Violence chair as well as working in the WGSS office with Dr. Marcia Noe. Her interests include all things M*A*S*H, religious poetry, and YA literature.
Etheridge was home-schooled, but she attended classes at a small co-op,
having the same English teacher all throughout high school. This teacher instilled a love for literature in Etheridge. “Literature was by far always my best subject as well as my favorite because I think she supplied me with the tools to actually cultivate a love for the subject and not just repeat back plot summaries.” When she applied for college, Etheridge chose literary studies because of her positive high-school experience in English.
Etheridge plans to attend graduate school (preferably at UTC) to continue her studies in literature. “I’ve been recently so fascinated by children’s as well as adolescent literature, in large part due to a class with Dr. Abbie Ventura, so maybe that would be my area of study?” After graduate school, she has no concrete plans, but she wants to work with people.
With her WGSS concentration, Etheridge has been drawn into reading queer and feminist theory that has “definitely bled into my personal interest of theology.”
She said that anything by Kate DiCamillo remains on her bookshelf, even into adulthood. Children’s literature “has always had a special place in my heart.” She took a popular literature class from Professor Stephanie Todd in spring 2024, and that class gave her the same kind of respect and reverence for popular books that she has always given to the classics. As a “Southern person,” she admires writers such as Flannery O’Connor and Margaret Mitchell, “though very problematic in many ways.”
Said Etheridge, “I am truly so thankful to the English Department and WGSS program for the ways in which my world has been expanded. I don’t think that my high-school self could’ve anticipated the ways in which my own understanding of self has evolved just by reading literature.”
JESSICA MILLER PUBLISHES NEW
NOVEL
Jessica Miller, a UTC English alumnus, released her latest novel, Eyes on the Sky, this past fall (Simon & Schuster/Atheneum). Using her pen name J. Kasper Kramer, Eyes on the Sky is middle-grade historical fiction and is about the 1947 Roswell incident.
Miller is an adjunct in the English department and is a graduate of the UTC Creative Writing graduate program. Her first novel with Simon & Schuster, The Story That Cannot Be Told, was her graduate thesis. Her second novel, The List of Unspeakable Fears, won the 2024 Georgia Children’s Book Award. You can learn more about Eyes on the Sky here.
UNDERGRADUATE SPOTLIGHT: KELLER TIPTON
Keller Tipton was born in Chattanooga. He is a sophomore on track to graduate fall of 2026. He loves art and media, spending most of his free time playing video games, watching movies, listening to music, and reading. He is a huge video game nerd, as it brings him joy to immerse himself into a foreign world. Tipton also loves going to the theatre. “It’s like my church, striking me somewhere spiritual.”
Tipton is an English literature major with a minor in philosophy. He started college as a psychology major, but while taking an intro to psy-
chology class he realized it wasn’t for him. He says that for most of his life he disliked reading and only started reading his senior year of high school due to an excellent English teacher and a friend who encouraged him to read, which caused him to fall in love with literature.
“I knew I always wanted to have a job where I could help people on a personal level, which is why I chose psychology at first to maybe go into the therapy field, but around my senior year the idea of being an English teacher floated in the back of my mind.”
He decided to make the change when, during his first semester, while he was taking that intro to psychology class, he was also taking a class about mental illness in American literature taught by Dr. Christopher Stuart.
It was this class that confirmed for him that he wanted to spend his life with books and teaching them. “I love the gratification I get when I am able to articulate the ways in which a novel or poem speaks to me. With literature I am forced to really critically engage with the material. It doesn’t come as natural to me as with other subjects, which makes the struggle to finally finding the words so satisfying.”
Tipton is going to pursue a master’s degree and has recently been considering a doctorate. “I think I would love to be a college professor and would find a lot of joy in both the teaching and the writing sides of the job.”
He tries to read a “decent variety of different kinds of literature.” His favorite author is Cormac McCarthy, and his favorite book is Blood Meridian. He loves westerns as a genre in any medium, especially film, which really opened his eyes to the possibilities of literature especially after he first read McCarthy’s The Road during his senior year. Some of his other favorite books include The Bluest Eye, Dune, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Old Man and the Sea, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
UNDERGRADUATE SPOTLIGHT: JZ’HANI DEJKUNCHORN
Jz’Hani Dejkunchorn (Jay-ah-nee Day-kun-shorn) is a creative writing major from Knoxville. Outside of her major she adores fashion, film, music, and books. She likes to consider herself experimental in the way she writes. In her adolescence, she always dreamed of helping others. Said Dejkunchorn, “I have found that words are a powerful tool and can be used to reach people in a multitude of ways. Creative works like songs, poems, sonnets, and books hold the ability to heal many in an artistic way, validating their emotions, providing them an escape, and giving them clarity. The realization that I could help people with my experiences and art satisfied the want to help others and fulfilled my artistic desires. This revelation is the reason I chose to pursue creative writing.” She would like to surround herself with other creatives,
drafting lyrics for singing artists both nationally and internationally. “It would be a dream to unite so many people globally with the power of words.” While she works toward that dream, she is also studying investigative journalism. “My goal with journalism is to uncover the truth of racial bias in the law and if deemed necessary bring proper justice to all who are involved.”
Currently, Dejkunchorn studies American literature. Her research interests involve styles of rhetoric, “which aids in betterment of my own work.” Works she has recently read include those of Edna Vincent Millay and The Damnation of Theron Ware by Frederick Douglass. She is also studying the musical works of modern musicians such as Olivia Rodrigo and Frank Ocean.
NEW ENGLISH DEPARTMENT JOURNAL FOSTERS NEW WRITERS
The English department has a new online journal ContiguosLyt, replacing Signal Mountain Review. The new journal is designed to distinguish UTC in the crowded market of university-supported online literary journals. The journal is committed to fostering new(er) writers, both at the graduate and undergraduate level.
Each issue is broken into two parts. The first part features work by an accomplished author, a video interview with that offering, and a writing prompt from the author’s work. The journal is then open for ten weeks to submissions written to the prompt (in any genre), and the second part of the issue are the six to eight submissions that judges decide make the most interesting craft conversation around that prompt. The first part of the first issue, featuring speculative fiction by Sandra Lambert, is up. You can access the journal here.
NAJBERG PUBLISHES NEW HORROR
NOVELS
Andrew Najberg has had a banner year publishing his works of horror, and has two forthcoming novels: Eat the Light, Wicked House Publishing (2026) and Extinction Dream, Wicked House Publishing (2025). Try Not to Die in the Shadowlands is his latest published novel (Vincere Press, 2024). Meanwhile, Najberg stays busy publicizing his works, participating in book signings, podcasts, and readings. Najberg is a senior lecturer in English. He is the author of The Mobius Door (2023) as well as the short story collection In Those Fading Stars (2024).
NEW LITERARY CRITICISM JOURNAL
LAUNCHED
A new literary criticism journal, The Quill Collection, showcases the talents of students not only in the English Department but across the university, creating a community of writers and readers interested in literary analysis. Focusing solely on literary criticism, the journal emphasizes the academic elements of literature, rhetoric, and professional writing, providing examples of critical thinking and analysis of the literary discipline.
YALE YOUNGER POET VISITS
CLASSROOM DURING
FALL MEACHAM
As part of the Meacham Writers Workshop, visiting writers often attend classes for guest lectures. During the fall 2024 event, poet Tony Crunk visited the creative writing class of Dr. Alex Quinlan. Crunk spoke about the critical role of imagery in writing. His book Living in the Resurrection, published in 1995, won that year’s Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition.
JOIN US ON UTC ENGLISH DEPARTMENT SOCIAL MEDIA
The English Department is being well represented in social media spaces thanks to Andrew Najberg who manages accounts with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Make sure you take advantage of this publicity outlet by emailing your achievements to Andrew at Andrew-Najberg@ utc.edu.
In Andrew’s own words here is what he needs:
“We are looking for anything that lets the department, the University, and our alumni community know what you’ve been up to. Send us announcements about publications, interviews, and events. Send us information about your courses, current and future. If it involves your relationship to English or the University community, it is fair game. As you do send material, there are ways to help out: send your photo, an image you find relevant to your announcement, the cover of the publication, or a URL. If you have exact text you’d like included let me know, but it should be minimal. If you have instructions about when to post, let me know that as well. If you’re sending a class announcement, send the covers of the books you’re teaching or a pertinent image.”
CONTACT ANDREW HERE
UNDERGRADUATE SPOTLIGHT: MIA SPELLER
“Like most English majors,” Mia Speller, a double major in English (literary studies) and criminal justice, loves reading and writing and spending time with her friends and family. Her sister is also an English major at UTC, which is especially exciting for her because she loves hearing her sister’s perspectives on the things that they collectively learn. Speller and her best friends and roommates study together and stay interested in their collective work. She loves thrifting and “walking around and all of that.”
Her freshman humanities course surveyed literature ranging from classics like The Odyssey to contemporary works like Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones. Said Speller, “This course and the simultaneously wide areas of textual study and depth of inquiry into any text quickly showed me that analyzing texts and writing about them and writing generally are what I love to do. People often write to understand, creatively or academically, historically or contemporarily, and I think it is so important to take the time to listen to what they have to say. Curiosity is important, understanding is important, and I love all of it!”
Speller will be taking a gap year following graduation this spring, and she hopes to take the time to reflect on her experience as an undergraduate and prepare herself to pursue graduate school. She plans to travel, while also preparing application materials to apply to graduate programs in English literature “to continue living my English major dreams and, hopefully one day, teach about the work that I love.”
She is currently interested in creative nonfiction (CNF), mostly because her thesis focuses on Joan Didion’s nonfiction work and her use of ecolog-
ical language to characterize places and people as social commentary. She also loves CNF because writing is how she comes to understand things. “I learn as I write, both personally and academically, so I really enjoy taking time to write about what’s on my mind to understand what it is that’s on my mind. If we’re getting categorical about my reading interests, then post-45 American literature is where I find myself most engaged and most interested in conducting research. However, I love it all and particularly enjoy my past research on Jane Austen’s work.”
Speller says that the Writing and Communication Center (WCC), her experience as a double major with criminal justice, time spent in rhetoric and creative writing classes, and taking seminar courses through the Honors College are invaluable to her experience as an English major at UTC.
“If we write to understand, or to express our understandings, then it is so important to engage with various perspectives that might better inform our understandings. Working at the WCC was symbiotic because, while I might have been helping a writer with their work, I was learning equally as much about my writing in that process. Double majoring grounds me and gives me the connection to contemporary social issues that are crucial when trying to understand the literature of the past and the present. Rhetoric and creative writing classes are so important to take in the literature track because they are the wheels that allow literature to turn!”
She is very glad that she developed her English experience with rhetoric and creative writing alongside literary studies. The Honors College’s work with professors across campus provide engaging, genre/topic specific seminars that teach her how to dedicate herself to research a specific topic and the immense value that comes with doing so.
“As students, we engage in conversations beyond our specific disciplines and particular areas of study, and it is so magical to apply our learning beyond specific disciplines and into our lives outside of academia. English! Learning! Curiosity! I’m so grateful to have spent the past four years learning about all of it.”
MARK L. BROOKS PUBLISHES NEW
NOVEL
Mark L. Brooks, who earned his BA and MA in English at UTC, has published a novel, Laying Autumn’s Dust (Co-Pilot Publishing, 2024). A fivestar review on Goodreads describes the novel: “Laying Autumn’s Dust is a captivating dive into the depths of family connections and personal development, marking a brilliant debut for Brooks in the literary world. Brooks’ talent for sculpting characters, depicting vivid events, and crafting memorable quotations makes this book nearly impossible to set aside.” You can find the book by clicking here.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT:
MADDIE SALVADOR
Maddie Salvador was born in Michigan. While Michigan will always be a meaningful part of her past, Tennessee is where she has put down roots and where she feels most connected today.
At UTC, she majored in political science with a concentration in public law and minored in English literature. Studying literature deepened her ability to analyze complex texts, think critically, and communicate more effectively. It sharpened her writing skills and helped her approach problems “with a nuanced perspective.” She learned to appreciate the power of language and storytelling, and these skills have been invaluable to her career, especially in areas like communication, analysis, and problem solving.
After graduating from UTC, she works as a project coordinator for the creative services team at a print shop in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her role involves project management—organizing and overseeing the workflow of various print and design projects from start to finish. She communicates with clients to understand their needs, ensuring that projects stay on track and that the jobs meet the highest standard.
What makes her job even more interesting is that she uses her background in English literature. In addition to managing projects, she is often called upon to offer copywriting services for clients who need help articulating their ideas for marketing. She also proofreads copy to ensure the final product is polished and error-free. “Every day presents new challenges, whether solving a problem or finding a creative solution to a client’s needs, so the work never feels monotonous.” The opportunity to learn new skills
and constantly grow in her role is one of the most fulfilling aspects of her job.
English has always been a subject that she enjoyed and excelled in. Even before officially pursuing it as a minor, she gravitated toward English courses because she genuinely loved reading and analyzing literature. “I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of dissecting complex texts and exploring deeper meanings beyond what’s written on the surface.” Writing papers, in particular, was something she found both challenging and rewarding. She appreciated how English encouraged her to think critically, express her ideas clearly, and develop a broader appreciation of human experiences. The more she immersed herself in literature, the more she realized how these skills would be applicable and valuable in almost any field.
One of her favorite classes at UTC was English 4970 with Dr. Aaron Shaheen. She says it was one of the most intellectually stimulating and challenging classes she took at UTC. Shaheen pushed her to reconsider how she analyzed texts and encouraged her to approach literature from new angles. The discussions were always thought-provoking, and she felt intellectually stimulated whenever she walked out of class.
She thinks that her English minor prepared her for her career in ways she hadn’t anticipated. While she initially thought of English
as a way to enhance her writing skills, she now sees how deeply it has influenced every aspect of her professional life. “Writing and critical thinking are not just academic skills—they’re fundamental to almost any career.”
Approaching texts critically allows her to help clients refine their messages and communicate more effectively. Whether rewriting a press release or proofing a brochure, her English background has given her the tools to provide value in ways she didn’t initially foresee. “I’ve learned that thinking critically and expressing ideas clearly are just as valuable as technical skills in today’s workplace, making me a more confident and capable professional.”
If she could offer advice to someone considering a degree in English, it would be this: “While English can be a challenging field of study, it provides invaluable skills that will serve you throughout your entire career, no matter what path you choose.”
She also advises seeking help when struggling. She wishes she had spent more time meeting with professors and taking advantage of office hours as a student. “The best professors are the ones who challenge you, but they’re also there to support and guide you when you need it. If you ever find yourself lost or frustrated, take the time to reach out—they are an incredible resource and can make a world of difference.”
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: HANNAH RIALS
Hannah Rials earned a BA in creative writing with a minor in communications in 2018 and is the author of The Cheyenne Lane Trilogy.
She knew always that she wanted to study English. Both of her grandmothers loved books, and her paternal grandmother is a locally famous children’s librarian and storyteller who always inspired her to read. Her parents always encouraged reading as well, visiting book events and festivals. As a result, she started writing her first “proper book” when she was twelve and published it with an indie publisher when she was 20. “So there was just no other possibility for me.”
Rials lives in Chippenham, England, just outside of Bath. She has lived in Bath since 2018, when she came to do her master’s degree in writing for young people. She was set up on a blind date with her now husband the first day of lectures, “and that’s why I’m still here.”
She manages the children’s section of one of the top independent bookshops in the country—Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. This involves organizing events in the shop, but a majority of her work is managing partnerships with local schools to provide them with free author events, themed book lists for their library or curriculum topics, and classroom visits and story times in the shop. The shop has “a pretty magical” children’s section called the Wood Between the Words.
Regarding her life in England, she notes that “it is different but also very similar, so I’ve never felt out of place except for the beginning when I
kept telling people I liked their pants, which obviously means something very different over here!”
Rials has always been a workaholic, and she absolutely loves her job. Beyond regular hours, she often works overtime for the author events hosted in the evenings. She says there is a very different culture around bookshops in England, with more respect as a business. She thinks a similar possibility of being a bookseller in the US would be difficult.
She says that her job and the master’s program that she completed also opened up the door to so many connections with children’s authors she admires. She participates in writing groups with local children’s authors, “who’ve been invaluable to me.”
She has learned to enjoy walking because “you have to walk everywhere here. And now that my husband and I have a puppy, those walks are even better.” She has learned to accept that her train commute to Bath will never be on time. “England is a beautiful country with lots of lovely folks, especially the ones who’ve welcomed me wholeheartedly.”
She has not published since her trilogy, but she still writes in her free time and workshops with her author friends who continue to inspire and encourage her. She continues to build her life with her husband and says that she is not quite ready “to give up my English adventure working in my quirky English bookshop.”
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: SARAH JOYNER
Sarah Joyner completed her master’s degree in rhetoric and professional writing in 2016 and earned her BA in English literature in 2014, both at UTC. She has worked at Chattanooga Tourism Co. for three years as the digital marketing manager, serving as the webmaster for VisitChattanooga. com, where she oversees all content updates and strategy for the website. She is also responsible for email marketing with their Visit Chatt consumer audience and Chattanooga Tourism Co. partners. She created and manages their marketing internship program, writes content for and helps edit the annual Chattanooga Travel Inspiration Magazine, and assists with other digital marketing content including content for social media channels (Instagram and TikTok). Through all these avenues, Joyner uses digital channels to entice people to visit Chattanooga and provide resources for them to have the best experience here.
She started her career in marketing as a copywriter—writing blogs, press releases, email content, web content, picking up technical skills along the way. “Having that strong foundation as a writer, thanks to my English degrees, was crucial. Additional skills that have been a huge help to my work as a marketer include my ability to relate to an audience and anticipate their wants and needs, as well as my ability to pick up patterns to enhance our marketing strategies. These skills were nurtured and honed in my literature and rhetoric classes.”
Experiences from her time in UTC’s English department include two internships she had as an undergraduate that opened her eyes to the value of an English major in so many fields. She values the real-world experience she gained during those internships and the professional assistantship she worked in UTC’s Communications and Marketing Office during her graduate studies. Classes like Creative Nonfiction, Writing Beyond the Academy, Writing Essays for Publication, and her work on the Sequoyah Review and Catalpa taught her valuable skills and prepared her for the work she does today.
“All the professors who let me re-write essays to improve my grades prepared me for a world where continual improvement is crucial and constructive feedback is a given (so handle it with grace). Rhetoric and marketing go hand in hand. Having a strong foundation plus passion for rhetoric has given me a leg up in this field.”
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: OLIVIA HASLETT
Olivia Haslett is from Nashville, Tennessee. She works for a financial software company in marketing, creating proposals, digital fliers, PowerPoint slides, and also manages projects. She supports her sales team when they have an interested company who wants to learn more about them, from simple proposals to big Request For X (RFx) projects with hundreds of questions.
Haslett earned her bachelor’s degree in 2021 and her master’s degree in 2023, both from UTC. She chose UTC because “it felt the most cost effective for my goals.” She wanted to go to a state school that was sufficiently far enough away from home that “had a lot of options.” Her
two best friends also went to UTC. After hearing about their experiences, she decided to enroll. She obtained her master’s degree at UTC “because I had a close connection with the professors and had a great support system of faculty that wanted to help me achieve my academic and professional goals.”
Haslett’s undergraduate degree is in secondary education with an English focus. She loves how “unique perspectives can affect how someone reads a text. Depending on the person and their background, they may make connections that I would not have thought of due to our differences in world view and prior experience.” She appreciates how English can teach us about different content areas and how to navigate them, even when we are out of our depth.
Similarly for her master’s degree,
she “dug deep into the perspective aspect of English and pursued rhetoric.” She is fascinated by the intricacies of a text or artifact based on rhetoric, when it was created, the medium of creation, and ultimately who perceives it. “I believe my studies help me be critical and analytic in my day-to-day life.”
The study of English prepared her for her current career, working with words and images on a daily basis. She thinks her degrees give her a sense of skepticism and the ability to remove herself from her own frame of reference in order to understand how audience impacts her marketing creations. Her job requires the assimilation of team feedback and flexibility. “And lastly, due to how much we had to write and speak in our courses, I am often told I communicate very clearly.”
MEACHAM WRITERS’ WORKSHOP CELEBRATES FORTY YEARS
This spring, the Meacham Writers Workshop celebrated forty years of readings and literary discussion. Founded by Dr. Rick Jackson, the event attracts national and regional writers who come to UTC to share their works. This year’s events included readings and receptions, featuring past Meacham favorites such as William Pitt Root and Pam Ushuk. In addition, UTC English faculty read from their works, including Kris Whorton, Earl Braggs, and Sybil Baker. Jackson also read at the event, having retired from the English department in 2023.
“The 40th anniversary of Meacham is a major milestone, celebrating decades of literary excellence and fostering a vibrant community of writers,” said UC Foundation Professor Sybil Baker who organizes the event
Other highlights of the four-day event (March 19–22) included student readings from the latest issue of the Sequoyah Review. On March 22, a collection of works from students who took classes with Jackson was unveiled and celebrated. The title of the book is Objects in This Mirror: An Anthology of Legacy.
Said Jackson, “I always felt that if I was learning something from my students, then possibly they were learning something from me—and this anthology surpasses those hopes....I am humbled, excited and amazed by what they have done.”
Rick Jackson
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: DANIELLE HANSEN
Danielle Hanson lived in Chattanooga from fifth grade through undergraduate. She currently splits her time between Atlanta, Georgia, and Irvine, California. She earned a BA from UTC in 1994 with a double major in humanities (concentrating on poetry/creative writing) and mathematics. She attended graduate school at Arizona State University, where she earned an MA in applied mathematics and an MFA in creative writing (poetry), both in 1998.
Hanson teaches poetry at the University of California, Irvine, and volunteers with Sundress Publications, a small non-profit press based in Knoxville. With Sundress, she serves as their marketing director, helping to get their books into readers’ hands. She manages their imprint Doubleback Books, which re-publishes books that have gone out of print due to press closure, and works with their Craft Chapbook series.
Hanson recently was named Poet Laureate of Costa Mesa, California. In that role, she will create initiatives to insert poetry into civic life through events and materials distributed in parks, schools, and organizations.
Economics fueled Hanson’s decision to attend UTC. She applied to four universities (Emory, Vanderbilt, UNC Chapel Hill, and UTC). At UTC, she was a Brock Scholar in the Honors College, which gave her a full scholarship, room and board, books, and even tickets to arts events. “I think I went to every symphony concert during my years at UTC. It was a great choice.” In her MFA program, she studied with graduates from Yale, Vassar, Stanford, and other elite schools. She says that she had read and thought about the same materials at the same level as they had, but felt that she had a much richer experience with travel, editing, translation, arts management, and personal connections with major poets in the US and world.
Her progress toward a major in English was steady. She took the freshman Honors Humanities class with Richard Jackson and he convinced her
to take a writing workshop with him. She “really liked” the workshop and writing and kept taking classes. By the time she had to choose a major in her junior year, she was equally close to a major in humanities/English and mathematics.
She thinks that the English degree prepared her well for her career. “The ability to communicate clearly is helpful in most work.” Before returning to academia, she worked at BellSouth/AT&T for fifteen years, ending her tenure there as Director of Strategic Pricing. She was often promoted based on her ability to communicate complicated data and results, which she developed discussing literature. “In fact, I was told that my final promotion (to executive) was due to my interview skills, i.e., my ability to communicate effectively.” In her final role at AT&T, she was given the task of creating most of the officer-level presentations from her team. “Poetry and PowerPoint have a lot in common—they both strive to communicate complicated data/ ideas in very little space. Every word matters.”
She says that the connection between her English courses and her current role as a professor of creative writing “is much more obvious.” She connects with undergraduate students and passes on a love and passion for the written word, just as her professors at UTC did for her.
“I very much want to tell you about a project I’ve been working on
the past couple years. My roommate at UTC and fellow poetry student Julia Beach and I have edited an anthology named Objects in This Mirror: An Anthology of Legacy. It will launch in March at the fortieth anniversary of the UTC Meacham Writers Conference (spring 2025). The anthology features fifty-seven former UTC students who attended Richard Jackson’s groundbreaking undergraduate writing workshops over the span of four decades and contemplates the question: how do our peers shape our vision as writers and citizens in the world? This is the most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on, and I’m so happy to send it into the world. It will be available soon at Press 53, any bookseller, and at Meacham.”
Danielle Hanson is author of The Night Is What It Eats (forthcoming, Elixir Press Prize), Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize), and Ambushing Water (Finalist, Georgia Author of the Year), and editor of Objects in This Mirror (Press 53) and a book of literary criticism. Her poetry was the basis for a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta. Previously, she has been poet-in-residence at Arts Beacon in Atlanta, where she curated a poet/ artist collaboration show Alloy. She has also served as writer-in-residence for Georgia Writers, poetry editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, and taught poetry workshops at high schools and public libraries.
NEW BOOK HIGHLIGHTS POETRY STUDENTS OF RICHARD JACKSON
Edited by former UTC students Danielle Hanson and Julia Beach, Press 53’s Objects in This Mirror: An Anthology of Legacy features over fifty former students who graduated from UTC and participated in one or more of Dr. Richard (Rick) Jackson’s writing workshops during their time at the university, most of whom went on to receive advanced degrees in writing and build multi-faceted careers in academic and creative fields. Jackson retired from UTC after forty years of service to the English Department. Jackson’s students have gone on to study at top MFA programs, and then to publish, edit, and teach. They include two Guggenheim Award winners, a MacArthur Fellow, a Whiting Award winner, an Academy of American Poets University Prize winner, a long list for the National Book Award, a Theodore Geisel Award winner, a Wallace Stegner Fellow, and other honors.
Mark Cox, Creative Writing Department Chair at UNC Wilmington and author of Knowing, says, “I am not easily inspired in my old age. It is rare anymore that reading a book makes me want to put it down and write something of my own. This anthology, however, was a different experience. It made me proud that I have devoted my life to writing and teaching.”
ENGLISH CLUB EXPLORES CENSORSHIP
The English Club, led by Dr. Joseph Jordan and Dr. Christopher Stuart, has started a salon series to discuss issues important to English majors and minors. On February 26, students packed the student lounge to explore the idea of censorship.
Jordan said, “American public universities have long been championed as free-speech zones—places where faculty and students alike can explore and debate ideas without being censored. The very idea of a liberal education, in this view, is predicated on the idea of free speech. ‘Liberal’ comes from a Latin word meaning ‘free.’”
A lively discussion ensued that canvassed perceived censorship of works by professors, but primarily students and attending faculty expressed concern over censorship of ideas and works by outside forces.
The event was co-sponsored by The Quill Collection, the English department’s undergraduate-run journal of literary criticism whose next issue will focus on banned books.
DEPARTMENT HEAD’S ANNUAL
FACULTY
AWARDS
Outstanding Tenure Track Award
Dr. Sarah Einstein
Outstanding Lecturer Award
Professor Matthew Evans
Outstanding Lecturer Award
Dr. Oren Whightsel
Outstanding Adjunct Award
Professor Gwendolyn Alegre
GRADUATE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: SAVANNAH PRICE
Savannah Price is a first-generation college student from northwest Georgia. She has always loved to write and read and knew she wanted to pursue a form of creative education before deciding on English. She also enjoys working out, sewing, being outside, embroidery, plants, and photography. Her academic interests include young adult literature, dystopian literature, American literature, and feminist and Marxist criticism. She earned her bachelor of arts in English from Dalton State College in Spring 2023 and is pursuing a master of arts in English from UTC with a focus on literary studies.
Her thesis project dives into Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (2008) and uncovers class structures, commodification, incarceration, and gender performativity present in the pre- and post-Games aspects of the novel. Her thesis aims to cover much theoretical ground, citing the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Laura Mulvey. The paper is titled, “Female Commodification and Spectacle in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games.” Her thesis committee chair is Dr. Aaron Shaheen.
As a dual-enrolled high school student, she took a creative writing class that inspired her to switch her major from graphic design to English. The course inspired a love of English that continued throughout her undergraduate education and ultimately led her to pursue a master’s degree.
As she writes and “hopefully ultimately” moves toward publishing, she plans to work full-time at Rooted Summerville, a locally-owned house plant store in northwest Georgia. While working full-time, she also looks
forward to finally working through her never-ending TBR list.
Said Price, “Thanks to the amazing professors and lecturers at UTC, I feel so much better prepared to move into my career and pursue the goals and dreams I have been working toward and, at one time, never thought possible.”
HAMPTON EXPLORES THE SHAKESPEARE REQUIREMENT
Take Five, the book lecture/discussion series led by Dr. Aaron Shaheen, had a busy spring semester with presentations by Aaron Shaheen (Willa Cather’s My Ántonia), David Pleins (Hilary Leichter’s Temporary: A Novel), Jennifer Beech (David Joy’s When These Mountains Burn), Verbie Prevost (Larry Brown’s Dirty Work), and Bryan Hampton (Julie Schumacher’s The Shakespeare Requirement). Hampton presented on April 8 at the University Center’s Tennessee Room, where a light dinner was served. The Shakespeare Requirement takes a comedic look at a fictional English Department that is in the throes of approving a core curriculum, pivoting around whether or not Shakespeare’s work should be required. The department chair, Fitger, thinks he is fighting for the university’s soul. Hampton elucidated the novel and drew comparisons to his own experiences of advocating for courses in Shakespeare. A general discussion followed the presentation.
Dr. Bryan Hampton
GRADUATE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: M.K. SHEPPARD
M.K. Sheppard loves books, “and there’s almost always an audiobook playing in the background while I’m doing anything else.” Her favorite genre is “recommended” because she genuinely enjoys asking people about their favorite books and reading their suggestions. If she is not nose-deep in a book, you can find her outside. She plays Ultimate Frisbee competitively (Go MoonPi!) and loves hammocking or hiking with her dog, Dutton.
Sheppard received her bachelor of arts in English from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2022. She was a Moc as an undergraduate, and is proud to continue her education at UTC as a graduate student. She is currently pursuing her M.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing.
For her thesis, she is combining a craft paper and a creative project. The craft paper explores interiority in dystopian fiction and how authors use narrators as a lens into what are often harsh, unforgiving settings. The creative portion is the opening of her first novel, Hidden Bruises, which follows a high-school senior on the verge of graduation in a post–World War III world. She started the novel in high school and decided to revisit and revamp it for her thesis. Professor Sybil Baker’s fall novel-writing class offered a perfect workshop space to rework and refine the manuscript. Said Sheppard, “Both she and that class have been absolutely instrumental in helping bring this story to life.”
“I’ve always loved books and storytelling, so choosing English felt like the natural path. Studying literature gives me the chance to spend time with the stories that shaped me, and pursuing the creative-writing track has allowed me to start crafting my own.”
After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in editing or publishing. She is excited to find a role where she can work closely with words and stories, in whatever capacity that might be. It’s a field she is passionate about, and she looks forward to the opportunities ahead.
“I’ve truly loved my time here at UTC. The faculty have pushed me, challenged me, and helped me grow in ways I never expected. They’ve not only shaped my academic journey but also my personal growth. Once a Moc, always a Moc!”
GRADUATE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT:
QUINCY SIMON
Quincy Simon is a Chattanoogan through and through. He writes D&D campaigns for his friends and reads sad Russian literature. His interests include: smarm, irony, malapropisms, sesquipedalian loquaciousness, attending confession for sins he did not commit, wondering if confessing sins he did not commit is itself a sin. He often writes as a distraction to himself.
Simon earned his undergraduate degree in English: rhetoric and professional writing from UTC. He is now pursuing an MA in English: rhetoric and professional writing.
Dr. Heather Palmer advised his scholarly project titled “Deliberation of Terministic Screens: Baldwin vs. Buckley.” He analyzed James Baldwin’s use of invitational storytelling in his 1965 debate with William F. Buckley Jr. and argued that Baldwin recognizes and acknowledges Buckley’s terministic screen as a rhetorical means of deliberating towards a new, shared goal. He suggested that while this method of deliberation requires an emotional understanding of the opponent’s worldview, that such work is necessary if a rhetor wishes to find common ground between two seemingly irreconcilable visions.
When asked why he chose English as a profession, he said, “I think of crying in my high-school English class while reading Iphigenia or in Dr. Shaheen’s class reading T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ Stories deal in implicit knowledge, knowledge that is difficult to articulate. So, here’s a story of why English is important to me.
“In high school, my sister and I used to quarrel quite a bit. Even though
she’s younger than me by two years, Julia would always get the best of me in verbal judo. As my aunt put it, ‘Julia has a double dose of Cajun in her.’ Our verbal sparring got to the point where our mom expressed despair. So, I wrote Julia a letter which detailed how I wanted our fights to stop, how we were upsetting our mom, and how I wanted peace in the house. I slid the letter under her bedroom door. Five minutes later, she came into my room, cussed me out, and threw the letter in my face. As it turned out, I did not write the letter I believed I wrote. Instead of detailing how I wanted the fights to stop, I insisted that she was the instigator. Instead of telling Julia how we upset mom, I told her that she upset mom. Instead of asking her for peace, I demanded an apology. I did not know how I had miscommunicated, but I was certain that I had miscommunicated.
“Tracing exactly when and where I decided to become an English major is tricky; however, I know that Julia is involved. I assume that I started down the path of rhetoric with the hope that if I studied enough good speeches, I could verbally defend myself, maybe even get the upper hand. That seemed a better future than becoming bitter and abandoning our relationship. With some rhetorical training and some age, I saw another option: take
responsibility for de-escalating the rising tension. I love my sister and a future where both of our dignities were respected was the implicitly best choice. After studying rhetoric, I looked back at that letter that I crafted and realized that my message was demonstrative, not deliberative. My intention was to assign blame, not come to consensus. I had attempted to bolster my ego at my sister’s expense.
“I was able, with Julia’s help and plenty of rhetorical practice, to repair our relationship. Julia and I get along quite well now. I can’t think of a single better thing to do than to study communication so that I can help others communicate lovingly with the people they love.”
After graduating with his MA, Simon will submit applications to PhD programs in rhetoric so that he can teach at the college level.
He would like to thank Dr. Heather Palmer for encouraging him to pursue his masters degree in English, for introducing him to the rhetorical canon, and for brilliantly outlining the historical and ideological connections between those texts. He also wants to thank Dr. Jennifer Stewart for teaching him to teach. He said that he is lucky to have such a kind professor as his first model. He also thinks that his peers are the kindest and most giving group of people he has ever met.
