Nancy Henaku, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the RTC program, has received one of three inaugural Feminist Research Grants awarded by the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition. This will support her travel to archives for her dissertation research on the rhetoric of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, the first female candidate for president of Ghana. The review committee “expressed great enthusiasm for [her] dissertation project, which is poised to bring important perspective from the global South and specifically from Ghana to ongoing research in transnational feminist rhetoric.”
Brilliant Books in Traverse City, recently interviewed Rhetoric, Theory and Culture PhD student, writer and poet Edzordzi Agbozo about his writing. Two of Agbozo’s poems appear in the spring 2018 issue of Northern Michigan’s premier literary journal, Dunes Review. See the full interview online.
RTC PhD student Sarah Potter received a top paper award and presented the paper on the panel, Top Papers in the Communication Ethics, Activism, and Social Justice Interest Group at the Central States Communication Association Conference. The paper title is “Different Rights (in)Different Times: Rendering the Invisible Visible in a Comparative Iconographic Analysis of the Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913 and the 2017 Women’s March on Washington.” She was also a panel member for the graduate student discussion session, “When the Experts Don’t Agree: Navigating Differences in Faculty Advice.” The conference was held April 5-8, 2018 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
This year’s Armistice Day, November 11, 2018, marks the centenary end of World War I. As part of the commemoration, Armistice and Aftermath: A World War One Symposium will take place September 28-29, 2018. The Symposium is open to faculty, students, staff, local residents, high school teachers, and academics from other universities. The Symposium offers an opportunity to explore the conditions and impacts of the “Great War,” as experienced during and afterwards, with a special focus on the American Heartland. The war had tremendous human and economic repercussions. It also motivated technological, medical, and cultural advances, and it paved the way for transformative social change, from Prohibition to women’s suffrage.
Two keynote speakers will highlight relations of race, class, and gender during and after WWI. Dr. John H. Morrow, Jr., will speak on Friday evening, September 28. He is Franklin Professor of History at the University of Georgia. His research examines the experiences of the African-American men in the 369th Regiment who fought in Europe and their subsequent fates. Dr. Lynn Dumenil will speakSaturday, September 29. She is the Robert Glass Cleland Professor Emerita of American History at Occidental College and is well known for her research into the roles of American women both on the homefront and the battlefront. Their keynote lectures will be free and open to the public.
There will be no fees for attending or presenting at the conference. Those interested in presenting are asked to submit a 350-500 word abstract by May 1, 2018 and a brief biographical statement to:ww1cc.mtu.edu/cfp Direct questions to Dr. Patty Sotirin, Humanities; Dr. Steve Walton, Social Sciences, or Dr. Sue Collins, Humanities.
Along with the Symposium, the War and its aftermath will be commemorated in a series of free public exhibits, installations, lectures, and films. Dr. Sue Collins, Humanities, is coordinating this extended commemoration. The events will take place during the months of June through November at various locations on the Michigan Tech campus, the Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw, Finlandia University, and the Orpheum Theater. Among these events:
- Europe, America, and the World: An Outdoor Concert. Featuring the music of James Reese Europe performed by MTU Superior Wind Symphony
- An Evening of Silent Film. Featuring Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918) with live musical accompaniment, Rozsa Theater
- A WWI Trench. With battle soundscape, readings from soldiers’ memoirs, and war poetry, on the grounds of Michigan Tech
- American and French Propaganda Posters and the Great War. Rozsa Gallery, courtesy of Marquette Regional History Center
- Shell-shocked: Footage and Sounds of the Front. Film with sound installation, Rozsa Gallery
- Philosophy, Technology, & Warfare. A multimedia screens exhibit, Immersive Visualization Studio, MTU
- Soldier Stories: The U.P. in World War I. Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw, courtesy of Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center
- World War I & the Copper Country Home Front. Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw
- Copper Country Voices of Dissent in the Great War. Finnish American Heritage Center, Finlandia University
The Symposium and the ongoing commemorative events are supported in part by a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Visiting Women and Minority Lecturer Series; as well as through donations from Institutional Equity and Inclusion at Michigan Tech; the departments of Humanities, Visual and Performing Arts, Social Sciences, Air Force ROTC, Army ROTC; Finlandia University; and the Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw.
The Humanities department will be hosting Professor Nicholas Mirzoeff (NYU). He’ll be giving a public lecture entitled “Ungovernable Aesthetics” in the MUB Ballroom on Friday, April 13, 5-6.30 p.m.He will also lead a seminar Saturday morning, April 14, in the Cherry Room of Wadsworth Hall, beginning at 9.30am. If anyone would like to join us for this seminar (faculty and graduate students) and would like to do the reading, please contact Dana Van Kooy (drvankoo@mtu.edu).
The Department of Humanities is pleased to announce a Rhetoric, Theory and Culture Colloquium to be held on Friday, March 23. RTC student Federico Correa will first present his talk “The Ambivalence of Learning: Between the Feeling of Being at Home and the Challenges of Leaving It” followed by RTC student Laura Vidal Chiesa presenting “Women and Embodiment: Expressing through Our Bodies.” Oren Abeles will be providing commentary to the presenters.
Please join us 5 p.m. Friday, March 23 in Walker 134.
This summer, I had the pleasure of going back to my hometown of Grand Rapids, MI to intern with my hometown soccer team the Grand Rapids Football Club. It all started with a Facebook post by the team. They threw out a post on their facebook page that they were looking for interns, I submitted my resume and before I knew it, I was hired by Matt Roberts, the President of the team.
The actual work of being an intern for GRFC was fairly laid-back, but I still found it to be very worthwhile and relevant to the sort of work I’m hoping to do post-graduation. During game days, I would assist fan relations in a number of ways including putting up on-field advertisements, assisting in a guest hospitality booth, ticket sales, and my personal favorite, halftime promotions. Trust me, throwing tee shirts into crowds is every bit as fun as it looks. Usually at half time, the bulk of our work is done and the interns got to watch the second half of the game before going home.
Throughout the summer, I also did several community outreach events. One in particular that I remember was during a 5k run downtown near the Van Andel Arena area. Before and after the event, I had the opportunity to talk with many runners and community members about the team, show them our schedule, and share some upcoming promotions that the soccer team announced, including a game at Fifth Third Ballpark against Detroit City FC. The interpersonal communication aspect of CCM has always been my favorite, so I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the job.
GRFC has had a men’s team for a few years now competing at the semi-pro level, but this year the club added a women’s team. While the men’s team didn’t see much success, the women’s team only lost one game all season and won the United Women’s Soccer league in their inaugural season! For my time spent with the club, I was able to hold the trophy many times throughout the night.
Being a CCM major, I’m always comforted by how open-ended the degree program was; you can do almost anything you can imagine with it. When I’m not studying, I’m the President of the Michigan Tech hockey student section, Mitch’s Misfits. Being the leader of the Misfits has been the honor of my life, so I figured why not get professionally involved in the sports world?
Michigan Tech’s Communication, Culture, and Media program has prepared me to be a #crazysmart thinker and worker. During my junior year of college I was accepted into Keweenaw Co-op’s Marketing Internship program with one other student. It has been almost a year since I’ve began my life-changing journey at The Co-op, and I am so grateful for the skills and experience I have gained while working there.
The Marketing Department is small, housing a manager and two interns, but does a huge amount of work for the store. From event planning and execution, customer service, in-store branding and promotion, social media marketing and interactivity, to graphic design, video editing, and newsletter production, this marketing internship has given me more key-word skills than could be put into a resume. Speaking of- during my internship class and with the help of my manager, I was able to create an elegantly designed resume from scratch via Adobe InDesign that showcases my most sterling qualities as well as my ability to design.
Beyond the academic and skill-centric aspects of my internship, I have had the pleasure of working with a diverse group of people of different racial, religious, ethnic, and national backgrounds. The intersection of such diversity in one store, combined with the intersection of products and companies with ethical, sustainable goals has changed my world view. Words such as fair-trade, ethical, locally-sourced, and organic have taken on new and heavy meanings. My professional, academic, and personal tool-kit has become richer from this experience.
I think that one of the biggest things about working for the Daily Mining Gazette is that it’s published in such a small town. Most of the time when I went to talk to someone for a story they recognized my last name immediately, even though some of them recognized it from the other Jaehnig working for the paper.
Internships are supposed to be about experience, resume fodder, and networking, and I got all of those writing with the Gazette. I did a lot of journalistic writing and photography experience that I didn’t have from the classroom, I have links to dozens of my articles from the Gazette on my LinkedIn, and I got to meet several local business owners and influential community members. I learned a lot, and like to think that I accomplished a lot, and however long I stay in the area and whether or not I try to get a job with the Gazette after I finish my degree, this was a very valuable experience.
Diane Shoos‘ (HU) book “Domestic Violence in Hollywood Film: Gaslighting” was published by Palgrave Macmillan in December, 2017.