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Alumni Profile:
Amy Bradshaw ‘95
Erik Davis
Amy Bradshaw graduated magna cum laude with a BA in English and
Psychology
from Monmouth College in 1995. Bradshaw was very interested in creative writing and recalls
spending many exhausting hours revising poems and short stories with
Craig Watson (who taught creative writing then). Prof. Watson was
considered by everyone to be a very difficult professor who demanded
perfection from his pupils. Some things never
change. Bradshaw recalls that many of the students did not appreciate
being pushed so hard. It was this sort of pushing, however, that
Bradshaw came to look on as key to her success both academically and
professionally. Watson’s high standards made her into an
articulate and precise writer.
Bradshaw loved creative writing; this
love of creative writing was what led her to major in English. She
did not always love having to read overwhelming amounts of
literature. She recalls times when she thought that she would never
be able to get everything done on time. The surveys were especially
tough. She even admits that there were even times when she did
not finish all her reading on time.
She found solace from the
mountains of reading homework in student
publications and other extra curricular activities. She spent many
hours working on “The Oracle,” the student newspaper at the time.
She loved working on it, although to be fair, the writing may not
have been the only draw. It was there that she and her future
husband, Mark Childs, got to know each other. Mark was also
majoring in English. Besides working on the paper, she also enjoyed
hanging out at Mellinger Learning Center. MLC was of course at the time the ATO house.
It is safe to say that not all of Amy’s time at MC was spent
studying.
Bradshaw was also enrolled in the
Honor’s program here at Monmouth. She garnered many valuable
experiences from the program. Her most valuable lesson from the Honors
program is learning and thinking about many different cultures,
philosophies, and ideas that she never thought she would or could
learn about. She learned how to break down and analyze a problem
that was seemingly unsolvable. This skill has aided her
tremendously in her career. The English major and the Honors
program really taught her to “learn to learn,” as she puts it. She
learned how to take an idea that she knew nothing about, analyze it,
and come away with a firm understanding of it. The values she
formed at Monmouth College are still present in her life.
She values education, and
particularly a Liberal Arts education, very much, and she hopes that
her children choose too attend a small liberal arts college like
Monmouth. She feels that students have many more opportunities here
than at a large school. She said that she really appreciated having
teachers who were interested and invested in teaching as opposed to
research. This is something that she feels that is often absent at
big state colleges and universities. During her experiences in
graduate school at both the University of Illinois and the
University of Wisconsin she recalls that many faculty there were
more devoted to research than to their students.
Because of her
experiences at Monmouth College and in the English Department she
was able to distinguish herself both in her further academic
pursuits and in her career
 through writing.
Bradshaw went on to law
school at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), where she graduated
cum laude. She has worked as a consultant in the world of
business, and also started an online editing service with a good
friend of hers. She now works as a lawyer who specializes in health
law in Milwaukee. She has won many honors and accolades, such as
the “Highest Achievement Award in Health Law,” and her background in
English has helped her to be disciplined enough to wade through
piles of reading, analyze the law,
write for a particular audience, and given her the confidence to
conquer new tasks. “Writing is becoming the dominant discourse in
the cooperate world because of email,” Bradshaw observed. Because of
this change in the business world, her writing skills have proved
invaluable.
A Radical Sabbatical
Anne Stone
As English
majors, we all know that Mark Willhardt is a
“rockin’ dude,” so it is fitting that his
sabbatical project revolves around music.
His project on authenticity in rock and roll
and what society means by rock and roll as a
genre has taken a few turns since he
began, but now he has narrowed his topic.
Dr. Willhardt’s book will include a chapter
on Elvis Costello, as well as sections about
various other artists.
This has proved a difficult topic to
research since Costello has been in the
business for so long and has made several
albums. While his music collection has
vastly expanded, a lot of time must be spent
listening to each song and reflecting, and
it did not register until he began that this
would be such a time-consuming aspect of the
project. There is also a lot of
criticism on Costello and his work, and reading
and sorting through it has proved a tough
task. In Dr. Willhardt’s opinion, Costello
is one of the most authentic musicians, so
he is a perfect candidate to exemplify in his
argument. Willhardt hopes to have the
introduction and first chapter of the book
completed by the conclusion of his
sabbatical, but he comments that the
toughest parts of being on sabbatical are
“switching gears” and “actually sitting down
in the chair to write.”
Dr.
Willhardt confided that it’s hard to go back
to a student-like role after playing the
part of professor for so long. “Teaching is
a structured life, and now I have to
re-learn the things I used to do. It’s a
free-form, and a lot of joy and
frustration.” Some of the joys of being on
sabbatical for Dr. Willhardt are having
relaxation and free-time. After having an
overload of courses for the last three
semesters, he admitted that he needed a
break, and it took him some time to unwind
before he could start working. “I needed
the chance to focus and re-focus out of the
day to day routine,” he explained in our
interview. While he also finds joy in
writing, he also finds frustration: “Writing
is always painful. Thinking something
through is the cool part, but writing it is
hard. It’s like my dissertation all over
again.” It helps that he’s interested in
the subject, which is a sentiment with which
all English majors can probably relate. “It
would probably help a little more to have a
publisher and a deadline,” he adds, “but it
would also drive me crazy.
Towards the
end of our interview, a few other English
majors came up to chat, and when asked if he
missed the students, Dr. Willhardt responded
simply “yes and no,” but then added
humorously, “I’ve found I have to work the
crowd a lot harder than I used to, and I do
miss my colleagues.” For the most part, he
is just enjoying his time away from
obligations and grading, but he will be back
next semester amazing students with his
teaching and advising abilities.
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Course Selections
With registration just around the corner, here's a
sneak peak at the English courses being offered for next year.
Fall
2007
English
210: Creative Writing:
Practice in the writing
and critical analysis of imaginative literary forms, especially
poetry and fiction. (Bruce)
English
220: British Survey I
Beginning with the canonical alliterative epic Beowulf and
continuing through the works of Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth
century, students in this course, taught by Professor Belschner,
survey roughly ten centuries of British literature. The goals in
this course are twofold (at least): to provide a chronology of
(mostly) canonical British literature and to develop a sense of
literary historicity as well as to think deeply about literature
rooted in cultures simultaneously comparable to and disparate from
our own. (Belschner)
English 224:
American Survey 1: One of two introductory surveys in
American literature emphasizing literary movements, and cultural and
historical developments in the literature of the United States.
(Bruce)
English 310:
Advanced Creative Writing: Students write intensely in
poetry or fiction, individually selecting their subject matter
throughout the course. Students sharpen their critical skills
by evaluating one another's work and investigating contemporary
writing and publishing. (Bruce)
English 349:
Contemporary American Fiction: This course will focus on the
studty of short stories and novels from roughly 1950 to the present.
(Watson)
English 350:
Chaucer:
Yeah, he been dead over 600 years. Yeah, he wrote in an “English”
which seems like Serbo-Croat to most of you. Yeah, he’s
hard. The truth is,
though, that Chaucer is seen as the start of real
English literature
because he managed to accomplish what hadn’t been done before:
create a skilled, informed, beautiful, engaging, meaningful and,
very often, funny literature read not only by the English but by
Continentals as well. This course itself will be a double one for
you. First of all, we’ll work a little of the linguistic end,
talking about where “English” was in 1350 and how it was
distinctively placed to burst onto an international scene, in
Chaucer’s hands, at least. We’ll figure out how to read it,
building up a vocabulary along the way. Then we’ll dive into the
works themselves, spending most of the semester reading
The Canterbury Tales,
Chaucer’s unfinished masterwork. We will see how he manages to
encapsulate the religious, secular, gender, and sexual politics of
his day – all the while making the most raucous moving party ever
written. (Willhardt)
English 350:
Victorian Culture. This course will explore a variety of issues
relevant to the Victorian period including industrialization,
science, religion, "the woman question," sexuality, medievalism,
politics, and empire by examining a number of literary and cultural
"texts" including classic
literature, popular literature, children’s literature, paintings,
music, theatre, magazines, and food (yes,
food). Authors/artists
may include Tennyson, Browning, Eliot, Doyle, Hunt, Kipling, Bronte,
Braddon, Dickens, Rossetti, Doyle, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Meredith
(among others). Tu/Th 2-3:15. (Hale)
TEDP371/English 430—Secondary English Teaching Methods:
2pm, M, W, F. TEDP371/English 430 is a course in teacher
preparation, studying the basic approaches to the teaching of
literature, composition, grammar, vocabulary, and speech.
Students will gain knowledge regarding planning lessons, grading,
and understanding the needs of the secondary English Teacher.
Students will also explore issues and concerns regarding any
teaching area, such as classroom design, discipline, etc. (Roberts)
Spring, 2008:
English 180: An
Introduction to Literature, a general literature course
for non-majors. It is tentatively titled “My Family Is Driving Me
Crazy (But I Love Them Anyway): Families in Contemporary Fiction and
Poetry.” Our readings will consist of short story collections,
novels, and poetry written within the last fifteen years and will
likely include Michael Chabon’s
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Nick Hornby’s
How to Be Good,
Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the
City, Amy Tan’s The
Kitchen God’s Wife, Sandra Cisneros’s
Caramelo, and selected
poems by Sharon Olds and Marie Howe. (Solberg)
English 200: Introduction to English Studies: This is the
gateway course into both the major and the field of English. As
such, it concentrates on beginning to develop those fundamental
reading and writing skills which are the lifeblood to English
majors. Concentrating especially on developing close and careful
reading skills, and showing how those link to the generation of
ideas and arguments about literature, the course offers students the
chance to practice and perfect the various elements which they will
be called on to build upon in subsequent courses. Attention will
also be given to the history of English as a discipline, as well as
to possible vocational paths for English majors, outside of
teaching. (Willhardt)
English 210: Creative
Writing: Practice in the writing and critical analysis of
imaginative literary forms, especially poetry and fiction. (Bruce)
English 301: Advanced Composition: As it has been taught
over the past five years, this course’s title is really a misnomer.
Rather than being an extension of the argumentative essays of
English 110, as “Advanced Composition” would indicate, it is instead
a course in literary non-fiction. We will simultaneous come to
understand this genre as we work within its very flexible
boundaries. More creative writing course than anything, emphasis
will be given to the craft of writing, developing “true” essays
which utilize all those literary elements which our various
literature courses have emphasized throughout your major. Students
will be responsible for a portfolio of writings during the semester,
ending with four complete non-fiction essays. Based in workshop and
discussion, as well as lots of outside writing, the course is an
opportunity for anyone who is serious about writing to hone their
chops. (Willhardt)
English 347: Modern
American Poetry: This course will focus on the study of
20th century poetry. (Watson)
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