Students in  English Studies Professor Kisha Tracy's Storytelling and Oral Tradition class have spent the last few weeks recording their podcasts for Perseverantia: Fitchburg State University Podcast Network. The network features the voices, experiences, and educational and extra-curricular life of the university community. Learn about the network here, listen here.

Discovery & Access Strategic Projects Manager, Lamont Library,
Harvard University Kai Fay visited English Studies Professor Kisha Tracy's Storytelling and Oral Tradition class last week, "Humans are terrible at remembering facts, what we are good at is remembering stories," was how the oral tradition was explained. 

Local Artist and Alum Amber Haney was a spoke to students in  English Studies Professor Kisha Tracy's Writing II class. Amber talked about Art Therapy, Art in the Public Space, and challenged students to affect their environment through their art. 

English Studies Professor Kisha Tracy welcomed Local Storyteller, Teacher, and Alum Todd Goodwin to her Storytelling and Oral Tradition class yesterday morning. After regaling the class with some harmonica playing, a song, and lighting the imaginary campfire, Mr. Goodwin told the story of "The Rich Man's Smells."

Students in English Studies Professor Kisha Tracy's Writing II class workshop their next assignment. Writing II expands upon the argumentative and analytical emphases of Writing I, it foster research-based composition. In Writing II, students demonstrate in prose their knowledge of rhetoric, employ a variety of research methods, and become familiar with latest information technologies. 

Recently, Provost Patricia Marshall welcomed those gathered in the Presidents' Hall for English Studies Professor Elise Takehana who presented her Harrod Lecture "Database and Algorithm as Literary Infrastructure", after an introduction by Acting English Studies Department Chair Lisa Gim.

In the lecture, Dr. Takehana discussed the conflicts and overlaps between storytelling and data analysis by exploring examples in experimental literature, interactive fiction, portraiture, and quantitative approaches to studying language and literature. The talk offered several reflections on the nature of human expression in the age of big data and how that might color what we think of as "human."