JSCC professors enhance effectiveness through personal research

Nov 1st, 2019

Scholarly works written by Dr. Liz Mayo and Professor James Mayo, both of whom serve as associate professors of English at Jackson State Community College, are receiving recognition.

Dr. Mayo's essay, "'Some Unheard-Of Thing:' Performing Xenophobia and Gender Conformity in the play The Member of the Wedding," was recognized by the Carson McCullers Society as the "Outstanding Conference Paper" for 2018. Her essay was presented at the Carson McCullers in the World: A Centenary Conference" in Rome, Italy.

Both Dr. Mayo and Prof. Mayo presented papers at the conference, and both of their essays were chosen to be included in an anthology of conference proceedings to be published this winter by Negative Capability Press.

A separate scholarly essay by Dr. Mayo will be included as a chapter in a forthcoming book on the short fiction of Carson McCullers published by Mercer University Press; she will present this chapter at the American Literature Association Conference in San Diego next May. Also, her scholarly work on South Korean writer Han Kang's The Vegetarian will appear as part of an anthology to be published by Routledge in 2020. She continues to write both academic articles and creative nonfiction essays focused on teaching including publications appearing in The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed.

In addition to his September conference paper presentation on Wallace Stegner at the Western Literature Association Conference in Estes Park, Colorado, Prof. Mayo has recently finished a scholarly essay on Norman Maclean's novella, A River Runs Through It, which will be published in the journal Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature. Beyond academic writing pursuits, Prof. Mayo also published his poem "Revisionism" in the August-November issue of Our Jackson Home, and he was a featured columnist in the most recent Carson McCullers Society Newsletter.

Both professors say that working on their personal research enhances their effectiveness as writing instructors.



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