Faculty News

August 2006

Cupps travels to Ghana on Fulbright Scholarship

Sarah "Bird" Cupps spent a month in Ghana during the 2006 summer as part of a Fulbright Project.

Cupps was one of 12 community college educators who were selected to be a part of this project that was designed to increase awareness of current issues in Ghana. The English and creative writing instructor met with Ghana writers to learn more about their roles in this country, and she listened to "excellent lectures by notable Ghanaian academics and leaders." Cupps also visited several major towns in the Akan region.

"The Akan empire is an old African kingdom," she said, "the sort of culture that refutes the idea of Africa not having had complex political structures before colonization.

Cupps added, "I also traveled to the Muslim north on my own and visited some small rural communities where organic agriculture is a long-standing practice. I also visited carpenters, woodworkers, and mechanics who invited me to see how they practice their trades. And I saw the very unique, highly stylized coffins that have been the focus of museum exhibits."

Prior to teaching at MATC, Cupps worked in Kenya as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

McMahon and Grosse give presentation at CCCC

Adjunct English faculty Nancy McMahon and Joan Grosse discussed survival strategies for adjunct English teachers at the 57 th annual convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication held in March 2006 in Chicago.

McMahon and Grosse, who together have more than four decades of MATC teaching experience, gave presentations titled “Fighting Chronic Adjunct Fatigue Syndrome” and “Fighting Chronic Adjunct Wasting Disease.” The two English instructor examined time issues and resource challenges that adjunct faculty face. They also discussed MATC’s AQIP process, particularly AQIP Initiative #4, which focuses on increasing institutional support for adjunct faculty at MATC.

McMahon said, “The CCCC is increasingly aware of continent faculty issues, especially since writing classes are so labor intensive. Our session was very well attended and well received.”

Ivanova earns doctorate

Rossitza Ivanova received her Ph.D. from Warwick University in Great Britain this year. Her dissertation focused on the need for more cultural and political awareness in Native American literary studies.

Ivanova explained, “The dissertation examines the established and beneficial yet also strenuous and limiting positioning of Native American studies in relation to ‘conventional’ postcolonial and multiculturalist theories of hybridity. Those theories, I argue, could (and should) change and expand to address more clearly the specific sovereignty issues and cultural-political interests of American Indian tribes in the U.S.”

Ivanova, an adjunct MATC English instructor, was born and raised in Bulgaria. Prior to setting in the U.S., she studied in Hungary, Germany, and Great Britain.

Galligan’s mystery novel wins award

Crimespree Magazine named John Galligan’s Blood Knot, published in 2006, as its “Favorite Book of the Year.”

Blood Knot, which is Galligan’s third novel, is about a murder in the Amish country of western Wisconsin.

Galligan, the English Department’s lead teacher, is currently working on his fourth novel.

Guenette publishes chapbook

Matthew Guenette, hired this year as a full-time instructor, has published his first chapbook, titled A Hush of Something Endless, through Ropewalk Press.

A Hush of Something Endless, said Guenette, “negotiates desire and loss with a sense of humor.” He added, “The poems look and sound autobiographical, even personal, which is typical of a first collection of narrative poems.”

Thorvaldsen becomes short fiction judge

Guy Thorvaldsen is one of four judges for the Madison Magazine Short Fiction Contest.

In the summer of 2006, about 75 entries were submitted by local writers. Thorvaldsen will read and critique all the entries, along with the other judges: Dean Bakopoulos, author of Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon and director of the Wisconsin Humanities Council; Rosemary Zurlo-Cuva, a fiction writer and poet who writes about the local arts scene for Madison Magazine; and Lisa Ruffolo, whose fiction has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, and Shenandoah.

Thorvaldsen, who has had his own short fiction published in the Wisconsin Academy Review and in other publications, placed third in the contest a few years ago.

Thorvaldsen became a permanent full-time English instructor at MATC in 2006.