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Category: school daze

Catching figs

Published by elizabethdonald_7o83t2 on April 27, 2022

As my semester draws to a close, one of our projects has been an online anthology of work centered on “Imagining Madness,” a semester-long examination of madness in fiction. Not to be confused with actual mental illness, it centered on people perceiving the world differently or whose ideas or behaviors violated the normatives of their society. 

My contribution to the anthology was “Catching Figs,” an essay examining Esther of The Bell Jar and what it reflects of second-wave feminism. I was also selected to present this paper at the SIUE Graduate Student Symposium this semester, and my poster slide from that is included below.

If this kind of literary analysis interests you, you can read my revised essay here. Then click around the other offerings and see what people have written. There are poems and character studies and much more. It’s really been a delight and a fascinating discussion all semester, and I’m going to miss it.

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Job No. 5!

Published by elizabethdonald_7o83t2 on November 29, 2021

Now that all the paperwork is being filed, I am free to announce that beginning in the spring, I will be an adjunct instructor at St. Louis University.

I’m delighted at the opportunity to teach news editing at SLU’s communications department, and very grateful for the recommendation from my former-and-sometimes-current boss at SIUE. I’ve had several productive conversations with my new department chair, and spent a lot of time in the past several weeks planning out a syllabus and evaluating possible textbooks. It’s not a class I’ve taught before, but editing is a significant part of the newswriting class I taught for two years at SIUE and certainly I have enough professional experience in the topic. 

Never fear, I am continuing in my work as a teaching assistant at SIUE. I’ll be teaching English composition again in the spring, working in the Writing Center, assisting the editors of the Alestle, taking a full course load in my progress through the MFA, and continuing to write for my freelance clients, including the Highland News-Leader. The Patreon continues, as does the Literary Underworld and the ongoing tour/travel schedule (plus or minus pandemic cancellations). I am hammering away at the thesis for the first masters (more like driving a stake through the heart of a vampire, there…) I am still president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists, running the Literary Underworld and the Eville Writers, and captain of a Relay for Life team. And somewhere in there I probably should write another book.

So if you’re wondering why I haven’t emailed you back, take note of the above paragraph and gently remind me to pull my head out of the books once in a while. Who needs sleep?

Silliness aside, it’s a terrific opportunity and I’m really looking forward to the challenge. 

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