Author Stephen Elliott Visits Bloomsburg University

The following was written by Stasi Golembiewski, a sophomore Psychology major with a minor in Creative Writing. 

Acclaimed author Stephen Elliott recently visited Bloomsburg University. Stephen Elliott is the author of seven books, including the award winning novel Happy Baby and the widely acclaimed memoir The Adderall Diaries. In addition, Elliott is a film director, and he founded and edits the cultural and literary website The Rumpus. He came to campus on March 27 and 28.

Elliott’s visit kicked off with a small screening of his new movie, Cherry, which he directed and co-wrote. The audience, which consisted mainly of students from upper-level creative writing nonfiction and seminar classes, was surprised by the announcement that only about one hundred people in the US have seen the movie so far. The film stars James Franco, Heather Graham, Dev Patel, Lily Taylor, and newcomer Ashley Hinshaw. It debuted at the Berlin Film Festival in Germany last month and will have its US premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival later this month. Elliott told the audience that IFC Films recently picked up the North American distribution rights for the movie.

After the screening Elliott, a few professors and I headed to Marley’s downtown for a late dinner. Elliott’s humanity is startling considering his fame. He was soft spoken and listened intently to what everyone had to say. He jotted down a few thoughts to remember. He twitched every so often. He ordered soda water and ate someone’s left over mozzarella sticks. The only real difference between him and anyone else at the table was his collection of awards and, perhaps, his persistence.

Wednesday’s events began with an afternoon talk held in Kehr Union, focusing on writing in the new media. Around fifty wide-eyed students and professors sat in an intimate setting and listened to Elliott reveal the secrets to his success. His main point was that the current media world is fractured. Having a fractured media was beneficial, he said, because authors now had many different forms to write in and could really own how their words could be delivered. To explain, he told the audience that “where once everyone used to read a book together, now there is a smaller audience, but it's more intimate and more specialized.”

At 7 that evening, Elliott read from The Adderall Diaries in 1303 McCormick. He broke his reading into sections, with short questions and answer sessions between each reading. The audience sat in silence as the soft-spoken Elliott read his memoir, and aspiring writers asked questions about his writing. What made the reading special was the content of his book. The feeling of excitement was palpable among the member of the audience, most never having been this close to someone as acclaimed and involved in big media as Elliott.

There was another dinner following the reading, where eight students and three professors repaired to Rose Marie’s to talk with Elliott in a more intimate setting. He offered advice to a student who was struggling with her writing. The student knew that her experiences in the world would make good content for a memoir, but she was aware of the personal nature of her experiences. Elliott’s advice was to write what she knew would make a good piece, regardless that it was not the most polite of topics. When the evening ended, everyone paid for their meal, the students got their copies of The Adderall Diaries signed, and I watched Stephen Elliott drive away in the back seat of a small, black car.

Special thanks must be given to Professor Jerry Wemple, Dr. Claire Lawrence and the College of Liberal Arts for orchestrating such a memorable event.

Students and Social Workers Attend Advocacy Day

Many Bloomsburg University Social Work students are among those pictured at the Legislative Advocacy Day that took place in Harrisburg on Tuesday, March 27, 2012. Three BU faculty members--Dr. Ronnie Evans, Prof. Sylvia Costa, and Prof. Marietta Scalise-Warnitsky--accompanied 38 BU Social Work students to the day-long event, which is described in detail on the National Association of Social Workers-PA website.

The students who attended had a great time learning about advocacy through a policy lens. Attendees rallied in support of SB 922, which would create practice protection and bachelor-level licensure. 

CoLA Scholarship

The Diplomat, " the premier international current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region," recently published an essay by Dr. Sheng Ding of the department of Political Science about President Obama's China policy. The article, "Don't Worry About the China Bashing," discusses "China bashing" as an election-year phenomenon.

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Dr. M. Safa Saraçoğlu of the department of History has been awarded an academic-year residency fellowship to conduct research on legal reform in the Ottoman Empire at the Institute for Advanced Study at Nantes, France, for 2012-2013. His recently published scholarship includes “Resilient Notables: Looking at the Transformation of the Ottoman Empire from the Local Level” in Contested Spaces of Nobility in Early Modern Europe, edited by Charles Lipp and Matt Romaniello and published by Ashgate (2011). He also published an article titled “Refugees, Biopolitics and Cattle Theft: Operation of Ottoman Governmentality in Nineteenth Century Vidin” in Toplum ve Bilim 121 (2011).

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Dr. Jing Luo of the Department of Languages and Cultures has been been recommended for  Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Full Tester Certification in Chinese by The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Dr. Luo one of a very select group of language professionals who has demonstrated the ability to administer and rate oral proficiency interviews with a high degree of reliability through a rigorous certification process.

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Dr. Mark Decker of the Department of English just published an article titled “(Re)model(ed) Towns and the Remodeling of American Ideology:  The Expansion of Middle-Class Hegemony in Allan Pinkerton’s The Model Town and the Detectives and Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest” in the spring 2012 issue of the journal Clues. The article argues that Hammett and Pinkerton’s novels helped shape the way the American middle class conceptualized itself.  Pinkerton’s nineteenth century text does this by portraying detectives as members of the propertied bourgeoisie while Hammett’s twentieth century text portrays detectives as the kind of trained experts corporations were increasingly dependent on.

Marcellus Shale Programming Continues

A series of programs about the Marcellus Shale gas drilling is taking place on the Bloomsburg University campus this week. Kevin Clark, on assignment to the College of Liberal Arts, provided this report on a recent program: 

Bloomsburg University’s ten-day forum on the Impacts of Drilling for Natural Gas in the Marcellus Shale Region continued on Thursday, March 22, as Matthew Filteau, a specialist in agriculture economics and rural sociology at the Pennsylvania State University, provided details on his research of one drilling company’s employees in a talk entitled “Who Are Those Guys: A Qualitative Analysis of Transient Gas Workers in the Marcellus Shale Region."  

Filteau argued against the stereotypes of “bad guy roughneck and criminal deviant” which are commonly associated with these predominantly male workers.  While allowing that these transients are not “choirboys,” Filteau detailed his time spent among a drilling crew and its management team.  Often when boomtown economics fuel rapid development in the energy field, locals complain that outside workers are “ruining roads, fishing streams, and carousing with women."  However, Filteau says, while some of that “renegade” culture remains, the company he studied emphasizes safety and collective goals over recklessness and disrespect.  

Filteau explained the changing face of masculinity within the oil and natural gas industry and the unique problems caused by the industry’s demands for long hours, time away from family, and life on the road.  Filteau said, “these days, oil industry riggers see their co-workers as brothers” who share similar struggles to be breadwinners far from home.   While the industry does provide road repair for host communities, Filteau admitted that these same gas companies rely on meager county resources to provide social and mental health care for transient workers.  

Bloomsburg University’s Green Campus Initiative (GCI), the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), the College of Science and Technology (COST),  the College of Liberal Arts (COLA), and the Institute for Human Rights and Social Justice are sponsoring the forum which continues on March 28.  For more information visit the Bloomsburg University Green Campus Initiative’s web page for the event.

Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling & The Region's Housing

A series of programs about the Marcellus Shale gas drilling is taking place on the Bloomsburg University campus this week. Kevin Clark, on assignment to the College of Liberal Arts, provided this report on Wednesday's program: 

Bloomsburg University’s week-long forum on the Impacts of the Marcellus Shale Industry on our Region continued today [Wednesday, March 21] with a discussion of the effects the natural gas drilling boom has had on the region’s housing.  Dr. Bonita Kolb investigated the strains on rental housing that Marcellus Shale drilling operations bring with them, noting that rental prices rose and housing shortages added new challenges for the non-working poor, seniors, the disabled, and the working poor.  

Kolb, who conducted the survey in both the northern tier counties of Bradford, Sullivan, and Lycoming counties, as well as in the southwestern Pa. counties of Greene, Washington, and Westmoreland, described the three waves of demand that have affected housing options for both locals and industry out-of-staters.  She described the first wave as industry representatives who clamored to the area to tie up land leases for potential drilling sites.  They needed short-term housing and occupied most of the existing hotel space.  The second wave came when drilling began; these tend to be long-time hires who need apartments and houses.  One consequence of the second wave has been to create more demand for rental units, rendering moderately priced housing a thing of the past in places like Williamsport.  “Gone,” Kolb says, “are the days of $300 to $400 apartments.”  She told the story of one recent graduate who felt lucky to find a new one bedroom apartment for $1,200 a month in Williamsport.  The third wave of industry newcomers are professionals who make good salaries and are demanding new houses where there are few new houses available.  Kolb noted that some of these professionals are commercially licensed drivers, who command 80,000 to 100,000 a year—and who “after purchasing big screen TVs and pickups, want to buy homes.” 

Lost in the din and dust of drilling are the elderly and working poor, who often count on Section 8 government housing vouchers to meet their residential need.  Kolb says this has led to people doubling up with other family members or “couch surfing” as they board with family and friends temporarily.  Tioga County is opening its first-ever homeless shelter, and Kolb found that more rural places like Sullivan County are receiving the displaced poor of neighboring Bradford County as rising rental prices force them out.   

Some bright spots associated with the boom include new incentives for developers to build additional housing.  Kolb pointed to a new Hilton Towers and Conference center slated for Williamsport.  Still, the downside is that those locals who used to be able to afford modest housing are forced to accept substandard housing, while the poor are being forced onto the streets.  A housing summit is slated for April 3 in Harrisburg for state and federal housing officials who will review Kolb’s study and discuss long range solutions to the housing situation in Marcellus Shale communities.

The series is organized by the Green Campus Initiative. 

CoLA Notes

Remember Hannah Karena Jones? The May 2011 graduate just announced on her blog that she has signed her first book deal--with Arcadia Publishing. The book, Byberry State Hospital, will be part of their popular Images of America series. Congratulations, Hannah!

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On March 11, 2012, Dr. Mark Jelinek, professor in the Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance, conducted the Southwest Symphony Orchestra's performance of works by Alexander Borodin and Johannes Brahms in his hometown of Hobbs, New Mexico. Dr. Jelinek has served as artistic director of the Southwest Symphony for seventeen seasons; he also conducts the Bloomsburg University Community Orchestra and the Bloomsburg University Chamber Orchestra.

The orchestra's performance featured violinist Lisa Liu, daughter of our respected former dean, Dr. Hsien-Tung Liu.

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Featured on BU's Internship web page is History and Political Science major Matt Albertson, who recently completed an internship at the National Museum of the United State Navy. The internship was offered under the auspices of the The Washington Center. He writes, "My tasks in the education department at the U.S. Navy Museum showed me how exciting and fulfilling a job at a museum may be."

French Professor Reviews Novels

Dr. Nathalie G. Cornelius of the Department of Languages and Cultures has recently had three book reviews published in The French Review:

In December 2011 appeared her review of Chochana Boukhobza’s novel Le troisième jour, the story of Rachel and her impresario Elisheva, two Jewish cellists who return to Jerusalem after five years to give a concert. Amidst the violence and the beauty of politically charged Israël at the height of the first Intifada in 1990, the area’s history becomes a backdrop for a painful return to their origins.

In February 2012 was published her review of Agnès Michaux’s Les sentiments, a literary reconstruction of the onset and aftermath of the affair between Marilyn Monroe and French actor/singer Yves Montand. The novel distills the experiences to emotional states rather than factual incidents, where perspectives shift from one protagonist to another in an effort to propose an alternate view of the famous events.

In March 2012 appeared her review of Philippe Besson’s Retour parmi les hommes, the second installment in a tale of French society during and just after World War I. The protagonist Vincent de L’Étoile’s past is marked by his close relationships with author Marcel Proust and Arthur Valès, a soldier who loses his life in the war. Vincent’s present revolves around his relationship with eccentric writer Raymond Radiguet. Less of an adventure tale than a fictional journal of displaced identity and exile, the novel recounts the human condition and the memorialization of personal and universal suffering.