Tag Archives: Kent State University

Teaching Vietnam Vets

I was a naïve girl of 24 teaching English 101 in the spring of 1975 at Kent State University. I had already taught freshman composition for a semester, and I had been a student teacher at McKinley High School in Canton, … Continue reading

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Required Reading

I haven’t read many books recently because I’ve been reading Bleak House, Charles Dickens’s 800-page novel of 1853. It was supposed to be my winter break project, but I started it late, after New Years, and it’s seeped into the … Continue reading

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KSU and the English Language

In his 1950 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote that the English language was in a bad way, hastening to clarify that he wasn’t talking about bad grammar. Instead, he was talking about verbosity, empty metaphors, and, … Continue reading

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Moby and Me

Howard Vincent, author of two books about Herman Melville, The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick (1949) and The Tailoring of Melville’s White Jacket (1970), was my favorite professor at Kent State University. He had, in my memory, an elfin appearance: white of hair, bushy of … Continue reading

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