Folio Supercuts 2018

Before we log-off for the summer, we wanted to share one last post to thank our interns for their work this year and to do a little summing up of the year.

It’s been a bang-up year for the English Department: lots of innovation in teaching and scholarship as evidenced by our recent post. It’s also been a year of experimentation as the English Department has tried to find new ways of representing ourselves publicly. To do this, we needed a little help, so we created an internship position in the department.

We were lucky to have two great interns this academic year: in the fall, Sig Johannes, and in the spring, Summer Standiford.

Thanks very much to Sig and Summer for their work in helping us better imagine what topics should be covered in Folio, the tone that department news should take to better appeal to our students and alumni, and how it should be shared with our community both on- and beyond-campus.

With Sig’s and Summer’s help, we identified and tried to meet two goals: to provide a more complete representation of our students and alumni and to provide a more complete representation of the social and intellectual opportunities that the department offers. By and large: mission accomplished.

So what follows is kind of a best-of, a super cut of our most interesting stories.

Student Profiles: #findyourvoice

We were lucky to feature five students on Folio this year through our newly minted #findyourvoice series.

• Mara McCloy, a creative writing concentrator who aspires to work in editing, publishing, and technical writing
• McKayla Conahan, an astrophysics major and creative writing minor on her way to beginning to work on her MFA
• Emily Anderson, an English and Psychology double major who published an academic article on Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon in The Explicator
• Scott Poole, an EDEN student who received a research fellowship to study South Carolinian authors and how they are taught–if at all–in South Carolina’s public schools
• Daniel Colella, a Film Studies minor who jump started the CofC’s Film Club, resulting in the production of a short film, The Shelving, as well as the resurrection of the Student Film Festival 

Alumni Profiles: #sequel

We were also lucky to feature alumni stories this year on Folio, each speaking–differently–to how their experience in the major prepared them for their work lives.

• Kaleb Eisele describes how his time as an English major prepared him for his job at Gregory Pest Solutions and continues to fuel his passion for storytelling, leading to his photojournalism project, Humans of Adventism
• Paula Koetter, a technical writer at a software firm, describes how the technical writing course she took at CofC, ENGL 334, introduced her to and prepared her for her profession
• Evan Berke, a creative writing alumna, describes how his time in the English Department fueled his interest in storytelling, eventually becoming a contributor to TMZ
• Erin McPherson, describes how she leveraged her internship with Virginia Living into a Digital Editor position at the magazine

Events

The English Department also hosted a range of events this year, including the inaugural series of Research and Writing Colloquia, a Faculty Publications event, English Day, and a joint-hosted special celebration with MUSC commemorating the 200 year anniversary of Frankenstein.

Happy summer!