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 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.
The next faculty member under the Spotlight is Dr. Michael Boatright, a professor and Director of English Education in the Department of English. He has been teaching for a total of about 20 years. Of that time, he has spent the last eight years here at WCU, where he has served as Director of English Education for the last six years.
In this interview, you'll hear about his favorite food and grocery store, favorite films and who his Star Wars personality twin is, favorite books, the story behind his Beatles poster, advice for teaching online, and more.
His requested use of his time in the spotlight: boasting about his students and a reminder to VOTE!
Below the cut is a shortened version of his answers to student questions and other information:
What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Chocolate peanut butter swirl
What's your favorite grocery store to shop at?
Earthfare. Happy that it’s open again
If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? (What’s your favorite food?)
Anything from Plant, vegan restaurant in Asheville
If you could eat dinner with any three people from history, who would you choose?
Nina Simone, John Lennon, R.W. Emerson
If you could travel to any time period in history, what would you choose?
1960s London
If you could have any superpower, what would you choose?
Telekinesis
What's your favorite Star Wars film?
The Empire Strikes Back
What's your favorite non-Star Wars film?
2001: A Space Odyssey
Which Star Wars character does your personality most closely align with?
Chewbacca
What are you going to be for Halloween this year?
COVID-safe
What is your favorite animal?
Cats
What's your favorite hiking trail in the area?
Rainbow Falls
What's your favorite place you have visited?
St. Martins
What are your top three favorite books?
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler (Italo Calvino), The Wind-up Bird Chronicles (Haruki Murakami), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
What’s your favorite YA novel and why?
This changes often. Right now it’s The Hate U Give (Angela Thomas)
What is your favorite thing to do in your spare time?
Read, run, spend time with my wife & cats, spin vinyl
What is your Enneagram type?
I’d need to look into that.
Do you believe in Bigfoot?
Yes
Tell us about your Beatles poster on your office door!
A gift from a dear friend who’s a musician in Asheville
What was the name of the band you used to be in?
Secret of 42
Why did you decide to become a teacher?
It runs in the family. My mother was a teacher, my grandfather was a professor, and my niece is a teacher now.
How are you navigating online classes? Have any tips? (for student teachers as well as students)
I enjoy it. Be intentional while still being flexible. Take breaks often—students feel screen fatigue as much as we do. Be protective of your time.
Any advice for future graduate students?
Figure out when you can read a book and when you can read “at” a book in order to get the information you need. Somethings need to be read in-depth, but not everything. There’s not enough time.
What advice do you have for students?
Take care of yourself and find time, even if just a few minutes, to do something that brings joy to your life.
Anything else you would like to share for your time in the spotlight?
My students are some of the most amazing people that I work with, and their generation has the potential to enact real change in the world. I’m hopeful. Vote!
The next faculty member under the Spotlight is Dr. Jonathan Bradshaw, a professor in the Department of English. He has been teaching for a total of about 14 years. Of that time, he has spent the last five years here at WCU, where he has served as director of the WRCS (Writing, Rhetoric, and Critical Studies) Program for the last two years.
In this interview, you'll hear about some of his favorites, what he likes about WCU, his journey into rhetoric studies, an important lesson he's learned over the years, and more.
His requested use of his time in the spotlight: showing off homegrown produce.
Below the cut is a shortened version of his answers to student questions and other information:
What's your favorite movie? (What's your favorite movie and why should it be Star Wars?)
I’m not actually sure that I have one. I mean, I like movies and all, but I guess I would much rather be mixing my compost or reading a seed catalog than watching a movie. I was actually an actor in a movie about Appalachian migration and music traditions, called The Mountain Minor. To further evade your question, I’m not sure why it should be Star Wars. I do consume a lot of TikTok, if that counts.
Why is Spider-Man your favorite superhero?
Excellent question! I think it is because he has traditionally been written as the relatable hero. He was kind of a revolutionary concept when first created because most comics focused on the near-perfect hero. Peter Parker was someone who had everyday issues on top of stopping an evil villain with four mechanical arms.
What's your favorite food?
Now we’re talking! I would have to say fried chicken. I don’t mean just any fried chicken. Well, actually, I do mean pretty much any fried chicken. But I especially mean my mother’s fried chicken. She’s taught me her approach to making it, and I can approximate it, but I can’t quite make it or find it anywhere other than her house.
What’s your favorite restaurant to go to in Sylva?
I don’t hitch up my cart and wagon to leave my small farm in Cullowhee much these days. As much as possible, I try to grow what I eat (though I don’t nearly reach that goal and am a hypocrite for even saying it). I don’t go there often, but I do like the Coffee Shop. I love little diners.
What’s your favorite type of coffee?
Coffee! I’m not picky, but I generally like a light or medium roast best. But I will drink weak, scalded gas station coffee without hesitation.
What’s your favorite thing to do in your spare time?
Work in my garden. Since the pandemic started, I have probably read the equivalent of an MA degree in organic gardening and soil health. If you run into me on campus, there’s as good a chance I am, at that moment, strategizing how to get more brown material into my compost as I am to be thinking about rhetoric.
What’s your favorite thing about being at WCU?
I love that it is an institution that is serious about teaching. All institutions use rhetoric about higher education, student learning, etc. But, at WCU, I see faculty and an institution with real commitments to student learning.
What inspired you to go into the field of rhetoric?
What I love about rhetoric is that it has the potential to empower people to participate in the conversations that matter the most to them. I describe rhetoric to my students as thinking artfully and ethically about our communication with others. By “artful,” I mean that we can be intentional about the language that we use. Even in writing a memo or advocating for change in your community, you are not bound to the first thought that comes to your mind. You can develop a repertoire of strategies that helps you invent better engagement. By “ethical,” I mean that we should always recognize our language has consequences for others. Rhetoric gets a bad reputation as “manipulative,” and yeah, it can be. But there is nothing inherently manipulative about being intentional with your language use. It’s the ethical side that matters. If you are using rhetoric to get what you want, well, let’s start re-thinking your approach. What I love most about rhetoric is not the esoteric Athenian and Roman terms; it’s that it is always about audience. Rhetoric, at its best, practices an ethic of audience care. There is no not-caring about how your words are received. If you are using rhetoric, you care deeply about how your audience receives your words and so you fold them into your decision-making as a writer.
As far as how I got into rhetoric? Well, I have two degrees in literary studies. I majored in English as an undergrad when my advisor told me I was at the point where I had to pick a major or there was no reason for me to be there. English was the area where I knew I would do the most writing, so that was where my interests went. I tacked on an “English Ed” side to the major as an afterthought, but then just really fell in love with teaching and planned to be a High School teacher. As an MA student, I thought I was on the track to become a literature professor, but I fell in love with teaching writing as soon as I taught my first writing class. After a couple years of teaching writing, I was just all in. And I also realized that I needed more specific ways to think about what I was doing and what writers do, which led me to the study of rhetoric. I had gotten my degrees in programs that focused solely on literary study, so I had no opportunity to study rhetoric. Once I began studying rhetoric theory on my own, a light went off. I had really struggled in writing my MA thesis and I realized why: I was grasping about for the language of rhetoric, but I didn’t have it at the time. So in a lot of ways, I arrived at rhetoric through the back door because I was always open to discovering new things rather than having a single-track mind about my education.
Are there other careers you would like to pursue outside of teaching?
Sure, but don’t tell the Department Head or tenure review committee that :)
My dissertation research studied communication strategies of Appalachian community advocacy organizations. I really fell in love with the two organizations I worked with there—Appalshop in eastern KY, and the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition in Cincinnati, OH—and seriously considered doing communications work after getting my PhD. In the end, I decided to give the academic track a good go before making that turn. It was a long-range plan of mine to end up back in the mountains of WNC, so I jumped at the opportunity when I got the offer at WCU.
What has been the most important lesson you've learned?
Well, I try to keep learning them, so there are a lot! However, one that has stuck with me throughout my life is understanding. I don’t mean understanding in terms of “comprehension.” I mean more understanding that everyone has experiences that are not the same as yours, and we need to always extend understanding to people around us. I can’t always know what you’re going through, or what your experience has been like, but I can extend understanding to you. In a sense, I came to understand “understanding” to mean something in between (or perhaps cross-pollinated) empathy and extending grace to others.
What advice do you have for students?
Stay in communication! Let that mean for you what it does. Stay in communication with your professors, peers, family, friends, co-workers. It is never the students who email me or visit my office that I worry about—even when they are really going through something. It’s the people I never hear from.
Anything else you would like to share for your time in the spotlight?
