Our monthly Faculty Spotlight highlights the exciting work and notable accomplishments of Cleveland State University professors.
Maksim Isakin is an assistant professor in Cleveland State University’s Department of Economics, teaching and conducting research in the areas of financial economics, macroeconomics and structured debt. He is currently developing models to analyze the impact of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) on the banking system and the economy as a whole.
Investment banks use these financial instruments to pool a large number of economic assets and create securities with allegedly very low risk. The market for CDOs demonstrated spectacular growth during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but this was followed by massive downgrades and defaults of highly rated securities, which many experts believed led directly to the 2008 Great Recession.
Isakin is investigating the role that imprecise credit ratings for these securities played in the financial meltdown by developing theoretical models and evaluating the models using historical market data. The ultimate goal is to develop a better understanding of how the CDO market impacts the overall system which will help prevent future crises.
Isakin received his Ph.D. in economics and finance in 2016 from the University of Calgary. Prior to his doctoral studies, he served as the director of the Centre for Applied Economics at the Higher School of Economics in Perm, Russia.
"Like jumping off a cliff": Matthew Lepinski on Apr. 26 and beyond
Associate Professor of Computer Science Matthew Lepinski first came to New College in 2015, as Computer Science was in the process of transitioning into a full-fledged Area of Concentration (AOC). After working to build this AOC alongside the Applied Data Science Graduate Program and bringing courses on Python programming, cryptography and computer security to students, Lepinski was elected Chair…
The next faculty member under the Spotlight is Dr. Catherine Carter, a professor in the Department of English. She has been teaching for a total of about 31 years. Of that time, she has spent 22 of them here at WCU.
In this interview, you'll hear about being a recipient of the 2021 Awards for Excellence in Teaching, a few favorites of hers, how long she's been writing, what inspired her to teach, her current projects, advice she has for beginner poets and students, and more.
Her requested use of her time in the spotlight: a big thank you to teachers and proto-teachers!
Below the cut are her answers to student questions and other information:
How does it feel to be one of the recipients of the 2021 Awards for Excellence in Teaching?
I was very, very pleased. It felt like some kind of external validation of the work I do, and that’s generally a wonderful feeling. However, it’s worth noting that there are relatively few teaching awards for the thousand-plus faculty at WCU, and that we have an awful lot of very, very good teachers…which means that there also has to be a certain element of luck in receiving an award like this, which so many deserve. So I’m really grateful to have been lucky, or, if you prefer, to be privileged to receive the award, but that absolutely doesn’t mean I’m the only one who deserved it, or even, perhaps, the most deserving of it.
What’s your favorite movie?
I don’t have one, but the best one I’ve seen in the past year or two was probably Fast Color or maybe Fences.
Are you a dog or a cat person?
I’ve had both; I love them differently. Cats are a lot easier, but dogs provide a lot more interaction. Right now my spouse and I have two cats, but I think we’re about to foster an older dog for some friends who are having to move into an apartment for awhile.
How long have you been writing?
As long as I can remember being able to write—say, from early elementary school. My mother was an English teacher and my father a biologist, and they were and are both avid readers. My mother began reading children’s books and poetry to my brother and me from the moment she brought us home from the hospital, and both were the kind of parents who get up from the dinner table to check a word origin or a reference, so my brother and I had a really solid foundation for being interested in words.
Who are your top three favorite poets?
I don’t think I could pick just three, but three I like a lot are Lucille Clifton, Marge Piercy, and Jane Kenyon.
If you could choose only one memory to sum up your college experience, what would it be?
You keep asking all these questions where I can’t choose! Maybe staying up all night talking and arguing with my friend Sonda, questioning the whole world and trying to envision a better one.
What inspired you to become a teacher?
I didn’t really plan to become a teacher; I went to graduate school because there wasn’t a lot of active career or post-grad advising of students in those days (1989), and I didn’t really know what else to do. I thought I was good at being a student, so I went to graduate student to go on doing that. And when you go to graduate school, you generally teach. I didn’t like it all that much at first, but it grew on me; the penalties for doing poor work in teaching are immediate, humiliating, and painful (and sometimes that happens even when you’re doing good work.) So over the years I worked at it, trying to get better, and I did get better. But I didn’t get REALLY better until I began working toward teacher certification in 2002; it turned out those folks in CEAP know a lot about actual pedagogy, asking questions that no one really talked about too much in my graduate program. What makes you think such-and-such an approach will help students learn better? How do you know if it did? How do you know your assessments are reliable and valid? What premises underpin the choices you make as a teacher? I learned an awful lot in those two years, and it was a huge help.
What's it like to work in the same department as your spouse?
Mostly pretty wonderful.
Why did you write the poem about the anus?
I wrote it at a point when I was just getting interested in odes—in fact, you were in that graduate poetry seminar last spring where we read Sharon Olds’ book Odes, which was right around that time, I think. A key aspect of the ode, for me, is celebrating what we don’t always think to celebrate, so you can’t get much better (or go much lower) in that line than celebrating the anus. And that subject lends itself to the kind of kindergarten humor which often appeals to me, as well as to readers—poetry ought to be fun and funny sometimes. But I also like poetry that’s simultaneously lighthearted and deep-down serious, and this subject allowed me to raise some serious questions: why do most cultures think food and eating are holy, but excretion is profane? Why is “shit” a curse word? Why don’t we think to be grateful for the miracles of our digestive system, start to finish? How DO we decide what’s sacred and what’s the opposite of sacred, and is anything other than cruelty and waste really the opposite of sacred? That’s why I have all that stuff about monasteries in the poem—that, and to give the shout-out to Buson’s famous haiku about the old abbot fertilizing the withered fields with his droppings.
What are you working on right now? (What are you publishing next?)
I have three projects on hand right now.
The first is that my spouse, Brian Gastle, and I are putting together a translation of the 33,000 line Middle English poem, John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, or The Lover’s Confession. We’re about 30% of the way through our second draft; we have a contract to publish it with Medieval Institute Publications at Western Michigan University.
The second is my fourth full-length collection of poetry, which doesn’t yet have a working title; I think I’m about halfway through. It uses metaphors of witches and magic to consider how we decide what’s sacred, how, societally, we think about women ageing, and global climate change. The thread between those themes is often fire—the burning of woman as witches, the hot flashes of menopause (which can be really fierce), and the warming planet. It’s also concerned, like most of my work, with how we interact with nonhuman life; I have some animist tendencies which often come out in the poetry
The third is a pedagogy book project I’ll be undertaking in earnest next spring, when I have scholarly development leave. It’s meant to be a book for secondary English teachers about teaching poetry, mostly comprised of lesson plans for teaching poetry. There’s a long tradition of teaching poetry as some kind of literary sudoku—find a few literary devices—as if the point of poetry were a successful symbol hunt. Teachers aren’t to blame for that; it’s how they were taught, and it’s one reason why so many English teachers, even, don’t really like poetry. They’re afraid of it, and no wonder, given how we handle it. But I think having some lesson plans teachers could open right up and use to address Common Core State Standards might be really helpful to a whole lot of teachers—and I’m hoping to also draw on the work of the many amazing teachers in the region who do teach poetry by soliciting some plans and/or short essays from those teachers for the book. I expect I’ll be writing a lot of it, but it’ll also have some qualities of an edited collection, if the teachers are willing.
What is the most important thing for someone who is interested in poetry but not very good at it?
Come talk to me, and I’ll show you some non-threatening poetry? Seriously, though, read some, and keep reading, and write as much as you can, and then keep writing. Some poets may be basically born great, but the vast majority of us aren’t. If you don’t like a particular author, go read someone else. If you don’t like ten particular authors, don’t feel ashamed and inadequate—there are thousands of other ones, and you can go read some of those. If you find a poem you do like, maybe read more by that poet. If you really love a poet and that poet’s teaching a class, maybe try to go take it, if you can. You could also see if you could gather a small group of writing friends and share your work—it’s always easier to see the weak points in someone else’s work than in our own.
What advice do you have for students?
This advice is mostly for so-called traditional students: the ones who come to college at 18 and who can manage to live on or near campus and find a congenial group. It’s different for older students—not worse, necessarily, but different. But, to get to the advice: enjoy the time you have. If you need an extra year to graduate, and you can afford it, take it, rather than carrying 18 or 20 hours every semester to get through “on time.” People will tell you college constitutes the best years of your life, and I don’t think that’s so—and it’s a good thing it’s not. Imagine how sad it would be if the best days of your life were over by the time you were 22! But they are unique years, and even though they’re stressful and anxious sometimes, it’s a different kind of stress and anxiety than we know later on. So try to enjoy them. If someone says, “Let’s go do this thing [raft a river, listen to a reading, watch a film you’ve never heard of, join this student group, stay up all night talking with someone you don’t know well], consider saying, “Hell, yes!” instead of “I don’t have time.” There’ll never be enough time, but it’s also true that you’ll never have MORE time than you have right now, only less. Try to make the most of it.
Anything else you would like to share for your time in the spotlight?
As you know, I work mostly with teacher education candidates—proto-English teachers. And those students, by and large, are just amazing. They have a work ethic and a drive and purpose that I couldn’t’ve imagined when I was their age, and it has been such a privilege to work with and support them, as well as with their host teachers in our public schools. Teachers and proto-teachers, they are by and large amazing. Thanks, teachers!
The next faculty member under the Spotlight is Pamela Duncan, an associate professor in the Department of English. She has been teaching for a total of about 13 years, all of which have been here at WCU.
In this interview, you'll hear about how she got started in creative writing, what inspires her, how Ron Rash is connected to her joining the WCU family, what she loves about Western Carolina University, and advice she has for first-time authors and her students in general.
Her requested use of her time in the spotlight: a mantra she repeats when times are tough!
Below the cut are her answers to student questions and other information:
How has the past year been? Was it difficult to transition to online classes?
Most of my course materials were already on Blackboard, so the main challenge for me was getting used to Zoom. There are pros and cons to teaching online. I really missed meeting with students and colleagues in person. However, I appreciated being able to meet with students in smaller groups online and having more one-on-one interaction.
At what age did you begin writing?
I began writing fiction in my late 20s. I had written a few things here and there before that, but it was only after my grandmother died that I began to get serious about writing. She was the story keeper and storyteller in our family and, with her gone, I didn’t have anybody to tell me stories anymore. I had to learn to tell them myself. I took my first writing workshop at a community college and kept going from there.
What attracted you to creative writing?
I’ve always loved reading, and I’m an introvert, so it seems natural that my preferred way to express myself and communicate with others is through writing. Whether I’m reading or writing, I love the communion with words, images, imaginary people and worlds.
What inspires your creative writing?
I usually begin with some question I’m dealing with in my own life. For example, my novel The Big Beautiful grew out of my own midlife crisis, wondering what came next in my life. I explored the options through my characters. I’m also inspired by my homeplace, Western North Carolina and Appalachia, and by working class mountain people like my family.
What is your first memory of WCU?
My first memory of WCU is arriving on campus for my job interview in January 2008. I was both terrified and excited. The folks in the English Department were so kind and welcoming, though, and I knew this would be a good place for me. Also, I was excited to come home to the mountains after being in Chapel Hill for so long.
What is your favorite thing about WCU?
The people. This campus is a real community where people care about each other.
What is your biggest success, in your opinion?
My biggest success in life, I think, has been not letting fear make my decisions for me. I was terrified to quit my job and go to grad school to study creative writing, but I did it anyway and wrote my first novel, Moon Women, there. I was terrified when that novel got published and I had to go on book tour and speak in front of people, but I did it anyway and met wonderful friends along the way. I was terrified to move across the state and start a new career as a college professor, but I did it anyway and it’s been a wonderful experience.
What piece of advice would you say has proven most helpful when publishing a first novel?
Focus on making the novel the best it can be before worrying about looking for an agent or a publisher. Enjoy that time as an apprentice when you don’t have to please anyone but yourself. Also, go to writers’ conferences, literary festivals, workshops, places you can meet other beginning writers as well as published authors, agents, and editors.
What advice do you have for students?
My advice for students is to enjoy learning. Put your heart into it. Explore things that interest you. Follow your passions. I didn’t do that as an undergrad, but in graduate school I did and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
Anything else you would like to share for your time in the spotlight?
Maybe I can share something that helps me get through tough times. I repeat like a prayer or a mantra:
The next faculty member under the Spotlight is Dr. Beth Huber, a professor in the Department of English. She has been teaching for a total of about 26 years. Of that time, she has spent the last 16 years here at WCU.
In this interview, you'll hear about what inspired her to become a professor, her favorite rhetorical theory to teach, how she uses discussion questions to guide a class, her love of English and rhetoric, advice for becoming more engaged in politics, advice for students and future professors, and how she found her new kitten.
Her requested use of her time in the spotlight: highlighting her colleagues in the department!
Below the cut are her answers to student questions and other information:
Why did you get into teaching? (What inspired you to become a professor?)
I applied for a TA position as many of our graduate students do because I couldn’t afford a Master’s degree. So, I was teaching in an urban university with a very diverse group of students. De-Anndrea was a student in my first class as a TA and the first one to ask for an office visit. She was homeless and was trying to figure out how to navigate college work without resources. I become devoted to figuring out how to help her, and then I never wanted to stop.
What is your favorite rhetorical theory to teach?
If you ask my former students, they’ll all tell you: I get super excited on Nietzsche Night. I love Nietzsche because his theories of reality, truth, and illusion are the tipping point (for me) between classical and modern rhetoric. And Nietzsche Night is always the night where you get the most “Ah-Ha” moments for students. It’s the night where “The Chair” ceases to be “The Chair.” If you know, you know.
How do you decide what discussion questions to lead and guide a class with and through?
I’m a “big questions” kind of person. I call them “Umbrella questions” – questions with larger socio-political implications. I don’t stay in the texts, but rather I use the texts as a jumping off point into the world outside the text. In my opinion, the greatest gift given by any text (be it literature or poetry or the New York Times) is that unique vision of the human condition.
What inspired your love of English and Rhetoric?
Language is power. Language can shift realities – for the better or for the worse. This is where I’ll show my age, but I started my Master’s and later my Doctoral work with the following umbrella question: How did the United States get into the Vietnam War and why did it take so long to get out? As I started digging into that question, I realized that it was all about how the language choices from the early Cold War made Vietnam inevitable. Given those kinds of stakes, I felt that language must be the single most important field of study.
When would you say you really got into politics? What do you recommend for students who want to be more active/engaged in what’s happening?
When I truly want people to understand who I am, I say the following: My daddy was a preacher and my mom worked in politics. And, yes, I see religion as a political activity as well. My mother worked in or around politics most of my life, so I don’t actually remember a time when I wasn’t into politics. To be active and engaged in this day and age, with so much awful going on, you must have a strategy behind it. Nobody can do everything. I have a good friend who advises “Pick your top three!” You engage, on varying levels, with your top three (or two or one) concerns and trust that other people are picking up the slack on other issues. My top three currently are LGBTQ+ rights; animal rescue; and equitable voting rights.
What’s it like to work with your son?
He’s a better writer than I am, so it’s a pain in the ass. No, really, I’m super proud that he’s such a great teacher and great human being. I’m his biggest fan.
What’s one (piece of) advice you would give for future professors?
As a teacher, put your ego aside and learn from your students. They will teach you what you need to know to reach them if you just listen. Always communicate with kindness and compassion because you can’t possibly know everything they’re going through. Keep your standards high and then act as a cheerleader to get your students to hit that bar. As a scholar, follow your passion. Don’t let anyone tell you “that’s not what REAL scholars do.”
What advice do you have for students?
Be kind to yourself and just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Wake up and say “What’s next?” and don’t worry about future stuff until it’s next.
Can you tell us about your new kitten?
My husband pulled him out of my daughter’s engine block when he was just a couple of weeks old and he became instant family. Now, Georgie is 5 pounds tops and is in a house with two 75 lb. dogs. So, of course, he’s the baby and he knows it. We’re grateful he found our engine block.
Anything else you would like to share for your time in the spotlight?
Yeah – the English department at Western truly is the best (and I’m not just blowing smoke here). Your professors are collegial and caring; socially and politically aware and fair; some of the smartest people on the planet. I’m so fortunate to work with these people.
The next faculty member under the Spotlight is Dr. Laura Wright, the new Graduate Program Director in the Department of English. She has been teaching for a total of about 29 years. Of that time, she has spent the last 16 years here at WCU.
In this interview, you’ll hear about why she chose WCU, how she made her way into the field, what books/authors have inspired her love of literature, advice she has for students, and more.
Her requested use of her time in the spotlight: a big thank you and reminder that you can always talk to her!
Below the cut are her answers to student questions and other information:
Why WCU?
My family is from western North Carolina since the 1700s. My family is from Buncombe, Haywood, and Henderson counties. So, my people are all over this region, and my father went to Western Carolina and graduated in 1960 with a business degree. I grew up in Greensboro, and we always came to the mountains because my entire extended family was up here. So I pretty much was here when I wasn’t there. I went to school at Appalachian; I always wanted to live in the mountains. When I was living in New York, my sister lived in Asheville, and I desperately wanted to be in Asheville. I hated living in New York, and I really wanted to be back in the mountains. The job opened up, and I was just like “I’m getting that job.” It’s actually really hard to get a job in this field, and I just made up my mind that I will do whatever and I am going to get that job. I was very determined to get this specific job, and, I mean, I feel like I’m really, really lucky that I got it because that doesn’t work out that way for many people.
How did you find your way in the field?
I started out at Appalachian State, and I was going to major in psychology, and then I decided I didn’t want to do that. Then I was going to major in biology, and then I decided I didn’t want to do that. I don’t know. I really liked literature, I always liked to read, I felt like I was really good at it, and it made sense to me. I just felt like it was the thing that I liked to do more than anything and made sense, and I was good at it. I also feel like that’s a really privileged position to be in because most people go to college, and they’re not necessarily thinking about do I have the luxury to do the thing that I really love to do—I'm going to do the thing that’s going to get me the job that’s going to make me money. And I just kind of decided I was going to do the thing that I really loved, and then I would figure out how to do something with it when I got out. I liked the English major because it had less structure. I felt like it was less authoritarian. I felt like I could make my own rules in it, which is kind of how I’ve always been. I think that’s a big part of it; it felt like a lot more freedom to do something in this field than to do those other things that I thought I was interested in.
What made you fall in love with literature?
I’m the older of two children in my family, and the age gap between my sister and me is like five years, so in a lot of ways I’m psychologically an only child. I’m very used to having a lot of time by myself. I think, as a result, I have a really active imagination and a very complicated inner life, very introverted. I liked books because I could get lost in them and because they showed me things I couldn’t see, just taught me about the world in ways that made sense to me. I’ve always thought that fiction has been a better teacher, for me, about the world and about people than other ways of knowing things like history or science because I think literature is good at activating the empathetic imagination, it’s good at creating empathy. There's actually been studies that say that reading literary fiction helps people become more empathetic. As an empathetic person anyway, I really sucked all that in, and it gave me fuel. It’s hard to even explain at this point what about literature pulled me in because it’s like breathing; it’s been a part of my life for so long.
Was there a certain story or work that made you acknowledge your love for literature? Has it been reflected in your work?
There’s been a lot of them, but the one I always come back to is Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. I remember at the point when I read it, thinking I will never be able to write like this and that Margaret Atwood is saying all the things that I feel and think about the society I live in in a way that I could never express. It was this really profound moment for me because she was writing about a very specific period in American history, but she was doing it in the context of this dystopia where women’s rights were completely stripped from them and this really horrific fascist regime was in place. And I actually could see this happening around me, and I could make sense of it in this intellectual way, but she was doing something through art that activated something else. That was a moment when I realized I could never write novels because I would never be able to do what she did, and she was already doing all the things I would want to do. I’ve been really shaped in my scholarly work by women’s literature. I wrote my master’s thesis on women’s literature—African women’s literature, in particular—so I feel like the works that I’ve read by women have really shaped my feminist ethos in the world and has definitely shaped the way I think about my place in the world.
What got you involved with the eco-feminism movement?
This is a really complicated question for me. I don’t even know how to disaggregate me being a vegan—I feel like veganism is a huge environmental stake, and it's this thing that one does to try and avoid cruelty on a large scale that’s also really environmentally positive. The book that I read that really shaped my thinking with regard to eco-feminism is a book by a woman named Carol Adams, and it’s called The Sexual Politics of Meat, and it’s about the linkages between animals and women and nature and the way that all of these oppressions are interconnected. We have the word intersectional now, which I think is really useful. When she wrote that book, it was in the early 1990s, and intersectionality was not a thing. She’s doing a lot of work talking about how oppressions are linked and intersecting, and if we address just one of them, then we’re missing the larger, structural issues that are allowing for us to oppress nature and animals and women and colonized people. I feel like my whole life has been this exercise in trying to as little harm as possible to as many beings as possible.
Would you recommend entering into a doctoral program?
I have lots of ways of answering this. When I entered my doctoral program or, actually, when I entered the MA program, the United States was in a really serious recession, and I had graduated and didn’t know what I was going to do with a BA in English, and I was like well I’ll just go to grad school. Then when I was applying to PhD programs, everyone said to me “you will never get a job when you get out.” I mean, literally everyone, including all my professors. I graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 2004, and I almost didn’t get a job. I got lots of interviews, and then I got a temporary job before I got the permanent job that I have now, and it was really, really hard. Things are weird right now. I feel like we’re in this period of time where our entire society’s kind of been remade by this pandemic, and I think it’s going to impact higher education—I think it’s going to impact everything in ways that we can’t foresee right now. I taught the ENGL 618 class in the fall, and we talked a lot about this because I felt like we were all going through this together. What does this mean? Are there going to be jobs? Does it make sense to do a PhD? And I would say that I don’t think it makes any less sense now than it ever has. I would advise people who are interested in getting a PhD to definitely not do one unless you can get a full ride and an assistantship to help you with it because the last thing you want to do is incur a bunch of debt. I mean, you’re going to incur debt anyway if you get a PhD. I think if it’s the thing you love and the thing you want to do, and you feel like you have the resources to do it, then you should do it. I would never tell someone not to do something that they felt passionately about because you can’t predict where the world is going to be five years from now.
What advice do you have for students?
The pandemic is a good thing to talk about because, in teaching through it—I've taught hybrid, so I’ve had a lot of face-to-face classes—I've seen the toll it’s taken on everybody, on the faculty, the students, everybody’s families. I feel this way generally, but I think the thing I would say right now is to just be kind. Be kind, be forgiving, air on the side of grace. If you’re struggling, talk to people who might be able to help you. So being able to communicate, and it’s really hard in the age of Zoom to want to communicate. You can’t just drop by people’s offices or people’s houses or whatever. Be as forgiving and kind to yourself and to others as possible. We’re also living in these really polarized times, where we’re just, as a society, at real odds with each other, and to try and look past that and see the humanity in each other and be as caring as we can during times that are unprecedented because none of us have ever lived through anything like this. I don’t think anyone on the planet has lived through anything like this.
You say that you’ve spent much of quarantine drinking. I’m curious to know what your drink of choice is. Is it different at home than at a bar?
First of all, I knew about this question, and I was joking when I said I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time drinking, but, you know, occasionally drinking has helped me through this. I’m kind of a white wine drinker, which I think makes me the whitest white girl ever. I’m sort of a fan of gin and tonics. If I go out to a bar, I will try to drink something with bourbon in it, just a bourbon on the rocks or something like that, because I’m trying to look like the stud that I’m not. Or I’ll try something more exotic because if I’m at home, I don’t really care, but if I’m out somewhere and there’s some fancy thing that I want to get, I’ll do that, but I haven’t been out to a bar in I don’t know how long.
What is your least favorite book you’ve ever read, and why?
That’s a really tough question. I mean, I’ve read a lot of bad books. Okay, so I can think of one that I taught that I really hated. It’s a novel by a British author named Ian McEwan, and it’s called Solar, and it is a work of climate change fiction. I taught a whole class on climate change fiction some years back. His novel came out in the 2010s, and he’s a hugely famous British writer and has written a lot of things for which he’s received a lot of praise. This was a piece that was supposed to be satire, but it didn’t really work. I hated it, and the students hated it, and it was just an unqualified disaster to have on the syllabus.
Anything else you would like to share for your time in the spotlight?
Thank you so much for asking me to do this. I am always here to answer questions and would be happy to talk to anybody about anything.
This week, we're shining the spotlight on WCU's LGBTQ+ Archive, hosted by the Hunter Library. This interview features two of the three founders of the project, Dr. Travis Rountree and Dr. Erin Callahan. Missing is Sarah Steiner from the library, who already started by gathering oral histories from local drag performers in 2018.
Check out this interview to hear about how the project got started, what projects they’re working on, future events, and more.
You can find the Digital Collection here and Blue Ridge Pride here.
They are still looking for people to help contribute to the project! If you are part of the LGBTQ+ community or even just an ally, reach out by email ([email protected]) to share your story or any artifacts/letters/memorabilia you might have in a “shoe box” and would like to donate.
The next faculty member under the Spotlight is Ron Rash, a distinguished professor in the Department of English. He has been teaching for a total of about 41 years. Of that time, he has spent the last 17 years here at WCU.
In this interview, you’ll hear about his patronus, what fish he would be, some of his favorites, how he would spend $1 million, the picture on his office door, who his hero is, advice he has for students and aspiring authors, and more.
His requested use of his time in the spotlight: bragging about this semester’s class!
Below the cut is a shortened version of his answers to student questions and other information:
What do you usually get at Subway?
The largest cup of tea that they serve.
Do you believe in Bigfoot? Have you ever seen Bigfoot?
Not sober
What is your "patronus” or kindred spirit?
Speckled trout. It’s the native fish of Appalachia.
Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?
Sunsets
Would you rather drink coffee or tea?
Coffee in the morning; tea in the afternoon.
If you were a fish, what kind of fish would you be?
Speckled trout
If your personality was an ice cream flavor, what would it be?
Probable vanilla
What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Pistachio
What is your favorite place to eat in Sylva?
That’s tough. Mad Batter, certainly; Guadalupe Cafe; Lulu’s. I’d have to narrow it to those three.
What's your favorite movie?
Oh wow, that’s such a tough one. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of my favorites; Cool Hand Luke is one; and The Tree of Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick.
What is your favorite Star Wars movie?
Unfortunately, I do not have one. Not a big Star Wars fan.
What is your favorite time period in history?
The period of the French Revolution because I think so much of what happened since then is tied into what happened in that revolution, both the good and the bad.
What is your favorite month of the year and why?
September, particularly late September
If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would you choose?
Does it have to be healthy? Fried okra.
If you could eat dinner with any 3 people you wanted, who would you choose and why?
Samuel Johnson, William Shakespeare... I would say William Faulkner, but he wouldn’t talk. Who would be a third one? There’s a writer named Jean Giono, from France, and he’s always been very interesting to me, so maybe those three.
If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, where would you go?
Well, I’ve been there. France. I really feel a connection to the French, their literary tradition, but I’ve actually been there. I would like to go to Brazil.
If you were given $1 million, how would you spend it?
I don’t know. I’d probably just give a lot of it to a worthy cause, some kind of conservation area. Something to do with parks and buying land up for land conservation.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I’m a very boring person. I like to listen to music, read, walk, fish. Those are the main things.
What are your top 3 favorite books?
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky because that book was the first one that made me want to be a writer, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and either Moby Dick or The Sound and the Fury.
What is your favorite book you have written?
As far as novels, I’d say Serena. As far as short story collections, I’d say Burning Bright.
Tell us about the picture on your office door!
It’s a photograph of logging in Appalachia, actually near Brevard, during the early part of the 20th century. And it’s just a reminder of how huge those trees were, and anyone who sees it recognizes that. One reason I think Serena is the book I feel best about is that people forget that if you had driven through the Smoky Mountains in, say, 1910/1920, you would’ve been surrounded by mountains that had been raised, almost as if they’d been skinned, and I think we tend to forget that. That particular photograph is a good reminder of that particular virgin forest that we lost.
Who is your hero?
Well, I’ve got a number of them. I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who stood up to the Nazis, is certainly a man that I view that way. I admire people who are brave when it really costs them to be. It’s easy to pretend to be brave, but those people such as that show us what we’re capable of as human beings. As far as writing, certainly Shakespeare as far as the excellence that I go back to and can’t imagine writing that way, but it’s just nice to know that a human being can do that.
Why did you decide to teach at WCU?
Well, they invited me. I certainly wanted to teach here, and for several reasons. One, because my family is so deeply rooted here, actually in this very county. I had relatives here in the 1700s. The location, the fact that it was rural. I’ve always been more comfortable in rural areas. I’ve never lived in a city, and I’d never want to. And it gave me an opportunity that I hadn’t had to do more writing.
What's your favorite thing about teaching?
I think it’s connecting with the students. The great thing is it’s allowed me to, at least on some level, believe I’m younger than I am. Just the idea that what I think is important, the aspect of literature, is something I think has a great worth for us as human beings... that I can transfer some of that, maybe some of that appreciation (I hope), to encourage my students to read and write. Teaching literature is an act of communion.
What’s the hardest part about being an author?
It never gets easier. Each time, it’s, for me, like starting over. I mean, all the doubts, all the sense that it looks hopeless, how will this thing ever cohere... going through that. You know, I just feel very fortunate that I’ve been able to do what I’ve wanted to do with my life. I’ve had some success, and I think that even if I hadn’t, I’ve gained so much from writing that I would not have regretted it, even if I never published. I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor just to understand ourselves and understand the world around us by trying to observe it.
What advice do you have for students/aspiring authors?
For any writer, if you want to be a really good writer, you have to read. I mean, you have to study people who are better than you are. I do not know a first-rate writer who is not a veracious reader. One should also read widely. Read the writers from South America, read Márquez, read Borges. Read Achebe from Africa, read Baudelaire from France, read Mo Yan from China. I think that’s really important, but also read writers from the past. Great writing remains great writing. Anyone who’s writing today is going to learn a lot about how to create a minor character from Shakespeare. I think just reading from your time period... you’re not really learning the tradition, and part of what you want to do is to break away from that tradition, to create your own way of perceiving the world, but I think it’s hugely important to learn from the past as well as the present.
Anything else you would like to share for your time in the spotlight?
Well, I’m just grateful to be here. I’ve had great students. Actually, one of the best classes I’ve ever had in my life is this semester, and that’s really nice to know that as long as I’ve been teaching, I can still go into a class and feel like I’m connecting and also being challenged because the group I’ve got this semester, they’re so smart and so talented that they keep me really pushing. I have to bring my A game with them, and that’s good for me, too.
