Recent Professional 
Activities / Accomplishments
of the English Faculty

The English Department faculty and staff are active in their 
disciplines outside of the department as well as in. 
Some recent activities/accomplishments are listed below.

Grants & Awards

David Sprunger was awarded the  Ole and Lucy Flaat Distinguished Teaching Award on August 23, 2007.  

David Sprunger was invested with the Walther G. Prausnitz Endowed Chair of English on March 22, 2007.  

Our beloved department secretary Sandy Johnson has been awarded the Ole and Lucy Flaat Distinguished Service Award for 2005!  This award is in recognition of 31 years of wonderful practical and academic support of faculty and students.  Congratulations, Sandy!

Catherine McMullen has been appointed to serve on the journalism education committee of the Minnesota Newspaper Association. 

Jim Coomber will be taking on the position of Division Chair for the Division of Languages and Literatures.  This half-time position means he will be reducing his teaching time for the department.

Jim Coomber has been awarded a Centennial Research Grant.  He will be studying vocabulary acquisition in an English as a Second Language (ESL) setting.  

Patrick Springer won a first place award from the Inland Press Association.  Springer's series, "Dying Tongues," placed first in the explanatory writing category.  This series discussed the efforts being made to save the dying languages of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara at the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.

Scott Olsen was given the opportunity to fly on board one of the planes that fly into the eye of a hurricane.  He is doing some writing based on that experience.

Catherine McMullen was elected president of the board of Family HealthCare Center, which provides affordable primary health care to low-income and uninsured people.

Bill Snyder was awarded a 2004 North Dakota Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship for literature.

Barbara Olive was presented the Reuel and Alma Wije Distinguished Professorship at the annual Fall Banquet on August 21, 2003.  She also holds the Walther G. Prausnitz Endowed Chair of English.  

Joan Buckley was granted a Sabbatical Award for 2003-2004. She is analyzing the stories of Martha Ostenso. Ostenso was a Norwegian-American writer who lived in Minnesota and Canada, whose work was well-known in past years. Dr. Buckley has already been invited to present the findings of this project in Norway. 

Joan Kopperud was granted a Sabbatical Award for 2003-2004. She took the opportunity to expand and refine the Centennial Scholars research project she recently completed on the Lac Qui Parle County poor farm, as well as studying Norwegian immigration literature for a future 380 course in English.

KVLY TV aired a story during a December 16 newscast about a collaboration Joan Kopperud arranged with Moorhead Junior High, Nokomis Child Care Center, and her reading methods course. 

George S. Larson was awarded the Ole and Lucy Flaat Distinguished Teaching Award for his outstanding service to Concordia and its students. Each year, one member of the Concordia Faculty is awarded The Flaat Teaching Award; recipients are chosen based on recommendations of students, staff, and faculty. This event was featured in the September 6th issue of the Concordian.

Gordon Lell was recently recognized in The Forum with a feature article about his Communiversity class "Shakespeare Writes a Play." 

Catherine McMullen was recently awarded the 2002 Media Award from the North Dakota Mental Health Association for her writing about mental health issues.

W. Scott Olsen recently received a grant from the Lake Region Arts Council to support a travel essay about northern roads in winter.

Bill Snyder's chapbook, "My Mother Liked Leno Best," won The Kinloch Rivers Chapbook Competition for 2002.

Publications

James Postema presented a paper titled "A Slough Runs Through It: Colonization, Despair, Garrison Keillor, and the Prairie Home Cemetery" in October 2007 at a conference focused on "Iconic Places and Characters in 20th Century American Culture."

David Sprunger has completed a brief article on J.A. Holvik for the American National Biography project, published by Oxford University Press. Holvik was Concordia professor of Norwegian and Band from 1923-52. He is remembered particularly for his contributions to the scholarly debate over authenticity of the Kensington Runestone, which claims that medieval Vikings explored central Minnesota. Lisa Sjoberg (Archives) provided key research for the article.

James Postema received word recently that "North Dakota Quarterly" will publish his article on "First (Double) Crossings: Vikings, Christianity, and the Skraelings of North America." The article will likely appear late in 2008.

Dawn Duncan and Joan Kopperud have recently (2007) published "The Service-Learning Companion," the first interdisciplinary text for use with college students. This new Houghton Mifflin text allows professors in any discipline to focus on their own content while using the text to help students understand and practice service-learning to achieve course objectives. It is a text that fits well with helping students become responsibly engaged in the world.

David Sprunger has several articles included in the new Facts on File Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature (2007). Sprunger was one of twelve contributing scholars to the volume.

James Postema's article "Unavoidable Failure: Oscar Elmer's Frontier Mission Work in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, 1869-1871," was published in the Summer 2004 issue of the Journal of Presbyterian History.  This article was the first product of a project to edit and research the 20-year diary of one of the most important early clergy in the upper Midwest.

Jonathan Steinwand's essay "How a Local Work Can Make Core Questions Hit Home: Winona LaDuke's 'Last Standing Woman'" was published in "'The Wider World of Core Texts and Courses: Selected Papers from the Association for Core Texts and Courses' Seventh Annual Conference."

James Coomber's article, "Vegetables Bring New Crop Possibilities for North Dakota," was published in the North Dakota Horizons magazine.

James Postema's paper "First (Double) Crossings: Vikings, Christianity, and the Skraelings" was accepted for presentation at the American Studies Association annual conference in November 2004; the paper was subsequently published online as well.

Dawn Duncan's book on Irish drama, which is titled Language, Identity, and Postcolonial Playwriting, is now available, published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2003.

David Sprunger wrote a review of Keeper of Hearts by Diane Christener, which was published in Mennonite Life.

Dawn Duncan published a chapter titled "A Flexible Foundation: Constructing a Postcolonial Dialogue" in the book on Postcolonial Theory, Relocating Postcolonial. The book was published by Blackwell in 2002.

Barb Olive and David Sprunger edited the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature. Tamara Weets was also a contributor in this publication.

One of Scott Olsen's essays appears in River Teeth. Other essays are forthcoming from North Dakota Quarterly, Tampa Review, and Del Sol Review. 

Scott Olsen's new book, Gravity -- The Allure of Distance -- Essays on the Act of Travel, appeared from the University of Utah Press in the fall of 2003. 

David Sprunger and Timothy S. Jones edited a book titled, Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations. Published here is his essay, "Depicting the Insane: A Thirteenth Century Case Study."

David Sprunger wrote "Postcards from Bethel," an article for Mennonite Life, with Keith Spunger (March 2002). 

Bill Snyder's recent poem "What Happens to Kurt Cobain" was published in Bryant Literary Review. His poem "A Train Into Morning" was published in Chaffin Journal, as was "Desire" in Ship of Fools. His poem, "Rain and the Smell of Time" came out in The Louisville Review, and "I Make a Poem While Steaming Pots" was published in English Journal.

Professional Presentations

David Sprunger attended the 42nd Annual Congress on Medieval Studies, held May 9-13, 2007, at Western Michigan University, where he made a presentation on "Wiki Travel Sites in the Chaucer Classroom."  He was also elected councilor of the Medieval Association of the Midwest.

Dawn Duncan and Joan Kopperud presented a session titled "From Contemplation to Commitment: Framing the First-Year Service-Learning Experience" at the national FYE conference in Dallas. The response to their presentation resulted in an invitation to publish their work in the forthcoming monograph on "Civic Engagement in the First Year of College" from the National Resources Center.

Dawn Duncan recently attended the US premier of Irish playwright Sebastian Barry's "Prayers of Sherkin" at Villanova University. Duncan was extended a special invitation to join Barry at the performance, followed by a discussion session, because of her outstanding essay on the play, which was used for dramaturgy purposes. In addition to his playwrighting, Barry is a novelist whose latest book, "A Long Long Way," was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Gordon Lell and David Sprunger attended the Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature in April 2005, hosted this year by the University of Minnesota-Morris.  Dr. Lell made a presentation titled "Quizzes for the Shakespeare Class? ... YES!"  Dr. Sprunger presented a paper on "Edward Henry Corbould and New Direction in Chaucer Portraiture."  Dr. Sprunger also chaired a session on "Chaucer's Shorter Poems."

James Postema participated in a panel discussion in "Creating Anti-Racist Campuses: A Collaborative Model" at the NASPA-West conference of the National Association of student Personnel Administrators, which took place in Fargo October 2004.  As faculty co-chair of Concordia's TOCAR Anti-Racism team, Postema joined representatives from each institution involved in the Tri-college TOCAR Collaborative, discussing the approach and experiences of their multi-institutional efforts.

Jonathan Steinwand presented a paper entitled "Relocated Global Encounters: Indigenous Epistemology, 'The Mango's Kiss,' and the Role of Historical Fiction in the Pacific" at the American Comparative Literature Association conference on Global and Ethnic Networks--Old and New at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor April 15-18.  He also presented a paper, "Aloha Asian/Pacific Islanders: The Contest for Authentic Decolonialization of Hawaiian Culture" at the Red River Conference on World Literature at NDSU, April 23-25, 2005.

David Sprunger presented a paper, "Late Renaissance Political and Religious Propaganda in Chaucer's Name," at the 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan State University.

David Sprunger presented a paper on "The Counting Board in Chaucer's Shipman's Tale" and chaired a session on medieval and renaissance romance at the Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literatures in Sioux Falls, SD.

Gordon Lell presented a paper, "Shakespeare's Battle of Agincourt: Two Film Versions of 'Henry V'" at a workshop at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America in New Orleans April 9. 

Bill Snyder read from his chapbook at the Poetry Society of South Carolina in Charleston on September 12, 2003.  The chapbook, My Mother Liked Leno Best, won the society's 2002 Kinloch Rivers Chapbook Competition.

Dawn Duncan recently delivered a paper, "Compassionate Contact: When Irish Playwrights Reach Out For Others," in Debrecen, Hungary, at the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature.  She also served as the U.S. representative to the Executive Council.  At the end of the weeklong annual conference, participants elected Duncan secretary of the international organization for a three-year term.  (Summer, 2003).

Jim Coomber, along with Sheldon Green of the Office of Communications and Marketing and Tom Riley, dean of NDSU Arts and Humanities, wrote a paper titled "Factions, Fictions, and Prospects for Farming and Ranching in the Upper Great Plains," which was recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans.  

Dawn Duncan presented the year's first Centennial Lecture, "Global Literature - Human Quest, The Journey to Create an Anthology." She described the project, conducted with Sophia Tareen '02 and Karis Thompson '02, of creating a balanced anthology of global literature, which is to be marketed by publishers Heinle & Heinle. Through this project, Duncan served as the first Dorothy R. Johnson Classroom Research Scholar (October 3, 2002).

Dawn Duncan presented at a conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil, for the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature (July 2002).

Dawn Duncan presented at the American Conference for Irish Studies, in Milwaukee (May 2002). 

Dawn Duncan presented at a conference in Montreal for the Association of Core Texts and Courses (April 2002).

Joan Kopperud and Dr. Harvey Stalwick presented the Centennial Scholars Lecture, "Strangers at Our Gate: A Social History of Hospitality at a County Poor Farm."  This lecture presented an in-depth look at the Lac qui Parle County poor farm from 1930-1951. (November 19,2002).

Joan Kopperud attended the annual conference of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education, Oct. 10-13, in Atlanta.

Gordon Lell attended the 31st annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America in Victoria, British Columbia (April 10-12, 2003). 

Scott Olsen spoke at the annual conference of the Associated Writing Programs, the University of Eastern Washington, and the Glacier/Waterton Writers Conference.   

David Sprunger presented "Malory and Grief" at the 37th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University (May 2002).

Michelle Stevier helped present a session entitled "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education" at the 2002 Communication and Theatre Association of Minnesota Convention, on Sept. 21 in Stillwater, MN. 

Michelle Stevier and Gary Totten, along with Elna Solvang of the Religion department, gave a presentation titled, "Coming to College: Changing Perspectives on Race in the First Year" at the Prizing Diversity Conference, which was held in Bloomington, MN and was sponsored by the Collaboration for Advancement of College Teaching and Learning (November 2002).

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