PhD Candidate Tawnya Ravy Selected for NEH Summer Institute

GW English PhD candidate
Tawnya Ravy

GW English congratulates PhD candidate Tawnya Ravy, who has been selected to attend a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities.  Tawnya, who has also been teaching as a member of the faculty at Northern Virginia Community College as she finishes her degree, was chosen from a national applicant pool to attend one of only five Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Summer Institutes and the only one designed specifically for community college faculty.  The NEH is a federal agency that, each summer, supports enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities, and cultural institutions, so that faculty can work collaboratively and study with experts in humanities disciplines. Digital methods, tools and practices for humanities teaching and scholarship have brought new relevance to humanities disciplines and this institute will develop a national community of practice among community college faculty in history, English and writing, classics, and other humanities disciplines.

                  Dr. Anne B. McGrail, English faculty member at Lane Community College, will direct the institute, which will take place at that institution in Eugene, Oregon July 13-17, 2015. Seven distinguished digital humanities scholars, including Matthew K. Gold, Jesse Stommel, Roopika Risam, Marta Effinger-Crichlow, Sandy Brown Jensen and Jake Agatucci will lead the 28 teachers selected to participate in the program.  Participants receive a stipend of $1225 to cover their travel, study, and living expenses. 

This institute for community college digital humanists joins a group of five other NEH Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities: “Advanced Challenges in Theory and Practice in 3D Modeling of Cultural Heritage Sites,” co-hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst and UCLA; “Early Modern Digital Agendas: Advanced Topics,” hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC;  “Institute on Digital Archaeology Method & Practice” at Michigan State University; “Scholarship in Sound and Image: A Workshop on Videographic Criticism” at Middlebury College in Vermont; and “Building an Accessible Future for the Humanities” to be held at Northeastern University, University of Texas, Austin, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Emory University.

For more information visit the institute website here or contact the Institute Director Anne B. McGrail at mcgraila@lanecc.edu

Leigha McReynolds Wins Phillip J. Amsterdam Graduate Teaching Award

GW English PhD Candidate Leigha McReynolds
Recipient of the 2015 Phillip J. Amsterdam
Graduate Teaching Award

GW English PhD Candidate Leigha McReynolds has won this year's prestigious Phillip J. Amsterdam Graduate Teaching Award.  

The Amsterdam Teaching Award "was created to honor individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to GW teaching and to recognize the important contribution our graduate students make to the educational process.  President Stephen J. Trachtenberg and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Donald R. Lehman established the Philip J. Amsterdam Graduate Teaching Assistants Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2003."  Each year, the winner is selected by a committee and receives $500 for professional development.

Leigha officially receives her award from GW's Academy of Distinguished Teachers at a ceremony on April 8, 2015, the University Faculty Honors Celebration.  At that time, she will also be inducted as a full member of GW's Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

Leigha has taught a number of courses over the years, particularly in the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) program.  Her courses include "Analysis of Business Issues (Business Writing)" and "Introduction to British Literature 1800 to the present."  She has assisted in both "Children's Literature" and  "19th Century British Novel and Empire."  She has visited honors classes, as well, to spotlight her expertise in science fiction.   

We asked Leigha to give us some of her thoughts on successful teaching and she was happy to respond:

"Successful teaching requires providing students with the tools they need to master the material or disciplinary writing technique for themselves. I believe this is best achieved by empowering students to make good choices about their writing. Rather than telling students what they need to do, I prefer to emphasize the choices they have to make and, through feedback, guide them to make the best choices for the given assignment. Thus, in learning how to work effectively in the specific context of my class they are also developing an awareness that will transfer into other classrooms and beyond their undergraduate career."

Leigha's dissertation, “Mesmerism, Narrative, and Knowledge in The Other Victorian Novel,” argues that the appearance of heterodox scientific practices, specifically mesmerism, in Victorian genre fiction fostered a proliferation of fantastic narratives in Britain in the late nineteenth century. These narratives offered an alternative to the developing scientific establishment as well as the dominant literary establishment, creating a venue for types of knowledge and modes of representation which offered alternate epistemologies in the face of a reification of knowledge categories.

Congratulations Leigha!