How I spent my summer vacation: English faculty travel the globe
By Lauren Karch
It has been said that literature is exploration. Over the summer of 2009, some of Miami’s most literate faculty did actual exploring across the world.
Distinguished Professor of English Susan Morgan spent five weeks in Thailand conducting research for a revision of her book Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess. The book is a biography of Anna Leonowens, the British educator whose experiences in Siam were fictionalized in Margaret Landon’s 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam and in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1951 hit musical The King and I. Morgan’s book was first published in 2008, and the revised version is due for release in 2010 from Silkworm Books, one of two major publishers in Southeast Asia.
“There is some research that you really must leave the country to perform. Some information you really have to be there to gather,” said Morgan, who spent her trip researching 19th century Siam with the help of various Thai history scholars. She has been traveling to Bangkok for over 20 years, and says she has enjoyed every trip.
Three Miami professors traveled to London to teach 22 Miami students enrolled in the Literary London program, a study abroad program in its fifth year. Students have the opportunity to see Shakespearian and modern drama in its homeland, travelling to shows at the Globe Theatre and other venues. All three faculty say that the six-week set of courses and travel were a learning experience for both students and faculty.
Creative Writing Professor David Schloss taught a course on British Modernism at the University of London, his first with the Literary London program.
“In the English department, the program has a built-in clientele of people who want to learn about English where it was made,” he said. “The trip was a pleasurable opportunity for all involved.”
Dr. Catherine Wagner led a visual poetry course, and Dr. Kaara Peterson was the instructor for “Shakespeare on Stage,” the most popular course offering. Both have been coordinators of the program since its inception, and say that the abundant opportunities to interact with British literature put their courses outside the traditional classroom. Each trip has taken the two professors and their students to different parts of London and to different performances.
“We were almost never in the classroom; there were so many activities to take the students to do,” said Wagner. “Every time we’re there we do something different.”
Peterson notes that there are plans of expanding the program into two trips next summer. More information will become available in late fall.
Dr. Kay Sloan also taught a Miami workshop course, this one in Paris. Along with American Studies professor Gene Metcalf, she took twenty students on an immersion tour of Paris. Her course introduced the cultural influences between Americans and the French. The group lived in apartments on the Right Bank of the city, and experienced such exquisite sites as Monet’s gardens in the village of Giverney and the grand Versailles palace south of Paris.
“Living in the heart of Paris, the City of Lights, was an exciting educational opportunity for all of us,” Sloan said. “I even managed to get a little work done on a novel I’m writing, taking my papers down to the Luxembourg Gardens, a few blocks from my apartment.” Sloan says that she and Metcalf look forward to running the workshop again in the summer of 2010.
Not all of those who traveled left the continent. Creative Writing Visiting Assistant Professor Steve Lanksy spent the summer on the shore of St. Joseph Island, Ontario. At a lakeshore cottage, he gave an interactive poetry reading from his recently published chapbook, Eleven Word Title for Confessional Political Poetry Originally Composed for Radio. Lansky read to an audience of twenty-three people, ranging in age from six to eighty-one and including “an attorney, an artist and therapist, a middle school administrator, physician and his wife, a neurosurgeon, an architect, a musician, a South African writer, and a number of children.”
Lansky also participated in the Third Annual Quarry Point Invitational Inuk Shuk Building Contest on the south shore of Lake Huron’s north channel. Participants were given an hour to build an inuk shuk, a stone landmark traditional to peoples of the Arctic region of North America. Lansky’s structure added a surprising element to the competition.
Lansky took minimal tools to the competition and finished his structure within ten minutes. About half an hour later, however, while examining another participant’s structure, Lansky heard a commotion and exclamations from onlookers.
“Someone said, ‘Steve, your Inuk Shuk is gone!’ The structure slid off the rock, all in a whoosh, leaving no trace. One of the judge’s assistants said it was performance art.”