welcome to aceta

The Association
of College English Teachers of Alabama

ACETA at Huntingdon College in Montgomery Friday and Saturday, February 20-21, 2009 "Visions of the Historical and the Personal in Time and Space" Link to The Light, our newsletter for all conference information Welcome to ACETA's sixty-first annual conference, hosted this year on Friday and Saturday, February 20th and 21st, at Huntingdon College in Montgomery. Montgomery, Alabama, a city famous, sometimes infamous, conjures up different images for different people. In a September 2008 meeting at Samford University, ACETA's steering committee and several invited guests reflected on Montgomery's rich, varied history and culture as they considered themes for the 2009 conference. When Jackie Trimble, chair of Huntingdon's Department of Language and Literature, spoke about her students using the title of Tim O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried" as a metaphor to center their writing about their own lives, themes emerged, particularly "in this time, in this place" and "intersections of the historical and the personal." To encourage wide participation, the theme the committee agreed on, "Visions of the Historical and the Personal in Time and Space," encompasses Montgomery and the rest of Alabama but also goes past their boundaries. After all, as Emily Dickinson observes, "The Brain is wider than . . . Amherst," or something like that. The schedule of Friday afternoon concurrent sessions (see page 2 of The Light) suggests that place and time are alive and well in the theory and practice of college English in Alabama. The plenary session following these, featuring Kirk Curnutt, award-winning fiction writer and chair of Troy Montgomery's Department of Language, Literature, and Philosophy, will highlight the conference theme as it relates to one of Montgomery's most famous native daughters: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. Curnutt will be presenting in Huntingdon's neo-Gothic Ligon Chapel. Thanks to Dr. Curnutt, who is a member of the board of the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, the Felgar Avenue home where the Fitzgeralds lived in 1931 will be open from 5:00 until 5:45 for conference attendees to visit. ACETA's annual dinner will be served at 7:00 at the Embassy Suites Hotel. For those who desire some libation beyond tea, coffee, and water, a cash bar will be open from 6:30 until 8:30. At Huntingdon on Saturday morning, breakfast will be available before and possibly after the annual business meeting and reading of award-winning papers. Norman McMillan, winner of the 2008 Eugene Current-Garcia Award for Distinction in Literary Scholarship and a former member of ACETA's steering committee, will give the keynote address, titled "Literary Dialect and Allusion in Harriet Hassell's Rachel's Children."  For those who can stay in Montgomery after lunch, a tour of the Rosa Parks Museum will be available from 1:30 until 3:00 for $5.00 a person. Register for the Conference The conference registration form is on page 7 of The Light link above or see the link to the page on this website. Last year ACETA’s 60th Annual Conference Auburn University February 7-8, 2008 Many thanks to ACETA’s institutional members for academic year. Institutional memberships help ACETA to keep individual membership dues low, to fund the annual Calvert and Woodall Awards, and to pay conference expenses that exceed income from individual dues and registration. They also demonstrate support for the work of college English teachers everywhere in Alabama. ACETA's steering committee thanks the following twenty-seven institutional members of the 2007-2008 academic year : Alabama A & M University Alabama Humanities Foundation Alabama State University Auburn University Auburn University Montgomery Calhoun Community College Gadsden State Community College Jacksonville State University Judson College Lurleen B. Wallace Community College Miles College Northeast Alabama Community College Samford University Snead State Community College South University Southern Union State Community College Spring Hill College Troy University Tuskegee University University of Alabama University of Alabama at Birmingham University of Alabama in Huntsville University of Montevallo University of North Alabama University of West Alabama Wallace Community College (Dothan) Wallace State Community College (Hanceville) Comments or questions about The Light? Contact Steve Hubbard, Executive Secretary; ACETA: Lurleen B. Wallace Community College; P.O. Box 1418; Andalusia, AL 36420-1224. E-mail: shubbard@lbwcc.edu. For updates and additional information, please see ACETA’s website: http://www.samford.edu/groups/aceta/. The directory of college and university English departments in Alabama is currently under construction. If you are the chair of an English department, please send your updated faculty list to Mark Baggett at jmbagget@samford.edu. *Our logo was designed by Donna Fitch, web designer at Samford University's Office of Public Relations. To illustrate the lighthouse theme for our newsletter, The Light, Donna used the famous pharos or lighthouse at Alexandria in Egypt, one of the Seven Wonders of the World in a city that was the center of learning and culture. For questions about ACETA's website, contact Mark Baggett at 205-726-2309 or jmbagget@samford.edu

Announcements
High school and middle school teachers of English, Social Studies, and related disciplines are invited to apply for this N.E.H. Institute at Texas A&M University-Commerce, July 13 to August 13, 2009. The focus of the Institute is to explore ways in which The Lord of the Rings may be used to teach students about medieval history, literature, and culture. Successful applicants will be awarded $3,800.00 for travel and living expenses for the five weeks. The Institute counts towards continuing professional development, and there are opportunities for individual participants to earn graduate credit if they wish.

Further information on the Institute and applications may be found here:
http://www.tamu-commerce.edu/litlang/NEdetails.asp?itemnum=25&pagename=nedetails

Completed applications should be postmarked no later than March 2, 2009.

Thank you,
Dr. Judy Ann Ford
Chair, History Department
Texas A&M University-Commerce
Commerce, TX 75429
(903) 886-5255