Alyssa Collins and Deidre Garriott celebrate successes and look ahead.
As they finish up their first semester in the Department of English, Assistant Professor Alyssa Collins and Writing Center Director Deidre Garriott are celebrating successes and looking ahead to spring. Collins (above left), who came to us from the University of Virginia, has a joint appointment in English and African American studies. Her research investigates the intersections of blackness, embodiment, and technology, looking to Afrofuturist texts to help imagine new modes of being. Collins had fun, this fall, getting to know South Carolina students in her American Literature and African American Literature courses; now she’s looking forward to reading Octavia Butler with her Honors class in “Speculative Identities: Race, Gender, and Science Fiction” and AFAM 202 in the spring.
Garriott (above right), who got her PhD in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics from the University of Tennessee, taught at VMI before coming to Columbia. Of her fall efforts to spark engagement at the Writing Center, she was most excited about the (first-ever) two-sentence horror story contest (“a great way to engage writers outside of regular academic genres”0. She looks forward to doing more short-story contests, including, next term, a Valentines for Vets and seniors event. And she will continue to work on creating a community of writers among the writing staff and the rest of the school; she’s looking forward especially to teaching her ENGL 309 course, which will integrate peer tutors into the Writing Center.