Welcoming Returning Faculty!

Our department welcomed several returning faculty members this semester:

• Grace Hall and Julie Barcroft both finished their master’s degrees in May 2010 and taught part-time last year; this year, we’re delighted to have them teaching with us full-time.
• Steve Weathers, who left us last year, has returned to his position, as well, and it feels great to have him back.
• Finally, Suanna Davis is no stranger to ACU, but she has been away for quite a while! We think she ought to have a proper re-introduction for the many who have yet to discover how great she is!

Dr. Davis spent her undergraduate years at ACU, double majoring in history and English and taking enough hours to qualify for a minor in biology. She went on to earn her master’s from ACU. Shortly after finishing her Ph.D. at Purdue, Suanna came back to spend four years teaching writing at ACU before leaving to pursue other adventures for a while—including raising her two sons (now 20 and 18) and teaching at various colleges around Houston.

Now that she’s back, she’s starting out by teaching composition and British Literature. But she was also incredibly productive over the summer. An abridged run-down of her accomplishments:

Mastering target practice at a Project Appleseed weekend.

• Attended the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, where she gave a paper on Beowulf in the 21st Century to a packed room.
• Presented in Houston at the Johnnie Harris Writers’ Conference on “Who Is a Hero and How Do We Know?” She looked at Beowulf and The Aeneid in light of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth presentation in The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
• Wrote a chapter on Beowulf and The Aeneid for The Hero’s Quest from EBSCO. Her section is “Epic Quest II.”
• Wrote a review of Bruce Thomas Boehrer’s Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature for The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.
• Took part in a Project Appleseed weekend, where she learned to shoot her rifle better and discovered that even though she’s a history buff, there’s a lot about the Revolutionary War she didn’t know.
• Moved herself to Abilene and started remodeling the new house she and her husband are making into home.

The amazing kitchen was the biggest selling point of Dr. Davis's new house--if we're very good, can we come over for dinner?