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Meet The New Faculty
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Chris Arigo
Home Town: Wherever I am.
Places (you’ve lived before coming here): Northern Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Colorado, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas.
Favorite Food: I don't have a favorite, but I do miss good pizza, Chinese and Indian food...
Favorite Books: I don't really have a favorite...but right now I'm reading a couple of great poetry collections: Sarah Vap's "American Spikenard", Alessandra Lynch's "It was a terrible cloud at twilight," I'm also reading a lot of Robinson Jeffers as well. As far as prose goes, I'm reading: How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos, Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlins, and The Savage Mind by Claude Levi-Strauss.
Favorite Band/Music: Again, I don't really have a favorite. I generally listen to an utterly chaotic selection of blues, jazz, indy, old school punk, hip-hop and/or whatever I randomly select from my collection. Right now, as I type this, I'm listening to New Model Army's 1989 album, Thunder and Consolation---they're a great British punk/post-punk band with some nice Gaelic flourishes.
Biggest Surprise (about living in the Palouse/Pullman or Moscow): The number of times that 1) I hear the word "Coug(s)" each day 2) I see WSU Cougar residential mailboxes, and 3) I see either a life-size cougar statue or large concrete WSU logo incorporated into yard landscaping.
Most interesting or memorable teaching moment: I was teaching a survey literature course and we were reading Lawrence Weschler's "Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder," a nonfiction book about The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA. The museum is a challenging blend of truth and fiction and cultural ephemera which challenges the reader (and those who visit the museum) about what is real and what is fictional. Anyway, my students were required to make their own museum display. One of the groups suspended a papier-mache' bladder in lemon jello in a big pickle jar as part of a narrative about a botched catheter experiment or something. Well, because the student didn't feel like lugging it around all day (it was heavy and kinda gross looking), she dropped it off in our classroom, which just happened to be in the Military Science building, which prompted some gung-ho cadet to call the cops and the bomb squad. They nabbed my student when she returned to get her project and thus the situation escalated into further comedy---the school paper headline read: "Bladder bust baffles bomb squad."
Classes of interest : Various levels of poetry workshops. I'm scheduled to teach a class I'm calling "Poetry as a form of Resistance" in the spring. Next year I'll be teaching more poetry writing classes, as well as a Beat Generation Literature class and hopefully an Ecocriticism graduate seminar.
Current Research interests/projects: I just finished my third collection of poetry, Myths and miscellany. It's out in the world being considered for publication right now. I'm also working on a hybrid scholarly/nonfiction project tentatively titled "Gone feral" that explores the intersections of poetry, ecopoetics, ethnopoetics, language extinction, the destruction of indigenous cultures, hunter-gatherer societies, and whatever else works its way in there...
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Crag Allen Hill
Home Town: I’ve lived in Pullman or Moscow since 1994, so Moscow seems like a hometown to me as much as any place. A more distant hometown: I went to high school in Manitowoc, Wisconsin back when Richard Nixon was King.
Places (you’ve lived before coming here): Half-dozen towns in Wisconsin, including Madison, then San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Mill Valley, CA.
Favorite Food: Just one? Pasta in just about any sauce.
Favorite Books: Nearly impossible to come up with but one book, even one book in each genre. I’ll go with Ron Silliman’s book-length prose poem Tjanting.
Favorite Band/Music: Weaned on The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, I would now line up for new work from The Decemberists or The Shins. (These favorite things are killing me: I’ve been in love with food my entire life, been reading widely since John F. Kennedy’s presidency, and I’ve been listening avidly to rock music for over forty years. How do I choose from what seems like infinity?)
Biggest Surprise (about living in the Palouse/Pullman or Moscow): Coming from the Bay Area, the biggest surprise was how big the stars were. Another surprise was how much I loved the smell in the air following the summer wheat harvest.
Most interesting or memorable teaching moment: Hmm, I’ve been teaching for almost twenty years; memorable moments are legion. Students from years ago keep reminding me of the time when I stood on my head to recite B. P. Nichol’s “Pome Poem.” You could ask Anne Ritter about pink dresses, too.
Classes of interest you have taught or are scheduled to teach next year: Young Adult Literature, Approaches to Teaching English, Rhetoric and Composition for Teaching, Applied Grammar for Teachers
Current Research interests/projects
- Males & multiliteracies
- Videogames and learning
- Young adult literature through a post-structuralist lens
- Classroom discourse
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Jacqueline Lyons
Hometown: Maribel, Wisconsin
Places I’ve lived: Boston MA, Eau Claire WI, Lesotho (Southern Africa), Portland OR, Missoula MT, Fort Collins CO, Salt Lake City UT, Las Vegas NV
Favorite Food: Eggplant Parm, Pie
Favorite Books: Leaves of Grass (Whitman), Walden (Thoreau), In the Skin of Lion (Ondaatje), Mating (Norman Rush), Tender Buttons (Stein), and the poems of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore.
Favorite Bands/Music: Blues, African music, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Nick Drake, Lucinda Williams
Biggest Surprise about living in the Palouse: No waiting at Vehicle Registration!
Memorable Teaching Moment: I was teaching from Ngugi wa Thiong’o ‘s The
Language of African Literature in a world lit class, and talking about how
language is inextricable from culture, when students who had barely spoken
all semester began to tell their stories about moving from a first language
to other languages, and their experiences with language in their early
education. Though Ngugi was not on the department syllabus, I had added him
to my syllabus because I believe his arguments are vital to understanding
culture and resisting all sorts of isms. The students really felt the truth
of Ngugi’s writing, and it reminded me that one of the best things I can do
as a teacher is to introduce students to writing that is vital to their
lives.
Classes of interest you have taught or are scheduled to teach next year: creative writing workshops, mythology, history of the personal essay, African literature
Current projects: Poems on everyday urban experiences of the natural world; essays on yoga and the desert.
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Kirk McAuley
Hometown: Binghamton, New York (I went to the same high school as Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone, which says a lot about Binghamton &/or my upbringing!).
Places I’ve lived before: San Francisco, CA, Buffalo, NY, Norman, OK, and Sarasota, FL.
Favorite Food: Haggis!? Or maybe Persian kabobs & French pastries.
Favorite Books: You’re kidding, right? This is an impossible question, but, in the 18th-century, it would have to be either Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly or Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition Humphry Clinker . . . or, rather, at this precise moment it might be either the The Journals of Captain James Cook or The Journals of Lewis & Clark. However, for ‘fun’ (as though reading Clinker isn’t fun) I often read works like Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire or, right now, Gary Krist’s The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America’s Deadliest Avalanche!
Favorite Band: The Silver Jews or The Eels or Yo La Tengo . . . or maybe standalone album, I’d say Nebraska, by Bruce Springsteen. But right now I’m rather enjoying The National, The Fleet Foxes & Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 8, in addition to Ethiopiques (Ethiopian jazz featured in Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers”).
Biggest Surprise (about living in the Palouse/Pullman or Moscow): The eerie silences at night.
Most interesting or memorable teaching moment: Working with those wacky, yet bright, innovative students at New College of Florida was certainly a treat. I particularly enjoyed the fact that students tended not to wear any shoes to class (despite the poisonous snakes & fire ants)?! And, teaching in the Ringling’s mansion on Sarasota bay undoubtedly contributed a certain, undeniably attractive weirdness (or surreal-ity), to this memorable experience. But, overall, the most memorable moment would have to be when a student at the University of Oklahoma described the victims of Hurricane Katrina as “morons” for not evacuating the city of New Orleans. Clearly he missed the point of Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke,” and I was completely flabbergasted. But, rather than take this student to task for a horribly unfounded (& verging on racist) assertion, I chose to remain silent &/or let other students rise to the occasion. In other words, to my great delight, the overwhelming majority of students were quick to draw upon the evidence in Lee’s film to contest this student’s view. We had a fabulous debate that was entirely student-centered, as they say. So, I enjoyed playing a more passive role (stage designer) in this exchange; it was a real pleasure to see so many first-year students speak passionately on the subject of Katrina as “unnatural disaster.”
Classes of interest you have taught or are scheduled to teach next year: “Empire Writing,” a course that examines literature’s role in mapping identities (Indians, Cannibals, Colonists, Creoles, and Post-colonials), and/or investigates the significance of the Americas, Africa, South Pacific, etc. in British consciousness; “Licentious Entertainment,” a course that examines the debate about reading promulgated by what William Warner calls a “new species of media culture entertainment,” the novel of so-called ‘Amorous Intrigue,’ a literature that supposedly “boldly validates the attractions of erotic freedom”; and “What is an American?,” a multicultural study of early American literature, from Columbus to Hope Leslie.
Current Research interests/projects: 18th-century British and early American Literature & Culture (including poetry & non-fiction prose), Transatlantic Studies and/or Empire Writing, Print Culture, Nature Writing / Environmental Literature, Gender Studies, and Religious Discourse. My manuscript, “The ‘Chaos of Publication’,” examines the proliferation of print culture (novels, newspapers, & magazines) in Scotland and America, from the Great Awakening to the publication of Tabitha Tenney’s novel, Female Quixotism, in 1801. However, I am also currently at work on two articles, including an examination of how the ’45 Jacobite insurgency figures in James Grainger’s anticipation of the Haitian Revolution in his West-Indian Georgic, The Sugar Cane.
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Susan Ross
Home Town: I was born in Mt. Kisco, NY, and grew up on the East Coast, living everywhere from Maine to Florida, with extended stints in the greater NY/NJ area and all across North Carolina.
Places (you’ve lived before coming to WSU): I’ve also lived in Wisconsin and Aix-en-Provence, France; Mytilene, Greece, and Famagusta, Cyprus. If a month now and then counts as living some place, then you can also count in Dresden, Germany; Paris; Tel Aviv; and dozens of other places where my anchor has lodged briefly before pulling free.
Favorite Food: I try to be a locavore. Fresh, home grown and home-cooked food is a favorite, especially anything that goes well with a nice aged wine.
Favorite Books: I read literary nonfiction and nature and food writing the way some folks gobble potato chips!
Favorite Band/Music: Hmmmmmm. I really like melodic jazz, but my favorite artist depends on my mood.
Biggest Surprise (about changing departments): Change is always surprising, invigorating, and exciting. Who knows what will happen when I’m out of the dean’s office and spend more time in Avery!
Most interesting or memorable teaching moment: That moment when “it” clicks. The vision sinks inward and the face goes all gentle as each individual holds a new reality inside. Few things are better than being a part of that moment.
Classes of interest you have taught or are scheduled to teach next year: I love all writing classes and courses that force us collectively to grapple with our preconceptions, biases, stereotypes, and personal flaws.
Current Research interests/projects: Several personal non-fiction projects are struggling to find daylight but remain semi-buried beneath the constant flow of research on media stereotypes and constructions that harm individuals, groups, and global peace. I’m also always planning to write regularly in a personal journal. But, then again, procrastination is the great refuge of the perfectionist!
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Linda Russo
Home Town: Yorktown Heights, NY (Westchester Co.)
Places (you’ve lived before coming here): Boston, MA; Salt Lake City, UT; Buffalo, NY; Norman, OK.
Favorite Food: I love food, and go for particular items rather than whole cuisines; I usually seek out local specialties. Right now, I’m keen on fresh gourmet items like fresh caramel corn (I found a great place in Lewiston, believe it or not) and roasted nuts (Pike Place Market).
Favorite Books: Emily Dickinson’s poems; William Carlos’ Williams’ Spring & All; Lorine Niedecker’s T&G; Robert Creeley’s For Love; Hannah Weiner’s Clairvoyant Journal.
Favorite Band/Music: Neil Young, PJ Harvey, Regina Spektor, Cat Power & a mix of genres: soul, funk, swing, gospel, jazz vocals, bluegrass/Americana, 90s indie rock, etc.
Biggest Surprise (about living in the Palouse/Pullman or Moscow): It’s such a short drive to Seattle!
Most interesting or memorable teaching moment: An independent study project with a group of five students interested in performance poetry – their performance at a poetry festival in Oklahoma. It almost inspired a cultural revolution.
Classes of interest you have taught or are scheduled to teach next year: Poetry Lab (an experimental writing workshop); Feminist Poetics.
Current Research interests/projects: I’m planning a road trip to Simon Fraser University (B.C.) and Reed College in May to read correspondence between poets Joanne Kyger, Philip Whalen, and Gary Snyder. I’m interested in Kyger in particular, a Zen-influenced contemporary of the Beats, whose significance is obscured by that very fact, and on whom there is much yet to be written. I’m writing essays on her early work (1958-1970) and its literary, social, and geographical contexts.