Tusculum’s faculty are a rare and unique breed, as working with students in three-hour blocks calls for talent, creativity and a constant desire to learn some innovative technique or interesting method to engage the students. This is certainly true with Heather Patterson, assistant professor of English and chair of the English Department.
Patterson has recently received a fellowship to attend the Salzburg Global Seminar where she hopes to bring back new ideas to motivate her student writers.
The Seminar’s mission is to challenge current and future leaders to solve issues of global concern. The seminar Patterson will be attending is “Defining America: New Writing, New Voices, New Directions,” and will focus on changing patterns in the American identity through literature. It will include a look at the disappearance of bookstores and the voices of new and established writers in an attempt to find out what direction American is heading.
“We have only exceptional writers amongst our faculty in Arts and Sciences,” said Wayne Thomas, interim dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. “Heather being selected for a Salzburg Seminar evidences that she’s amongst the best. Heather’s selection is quite an honor to her and to the institution that is Tusculum College.”
Patterson explained that the Salzburg Global Seminar, “will tender an important dialog that I can bring back to my institution to enhance the work we’ve very undergone to revamp our literature concentration. Since Tusculum College has made a commitment to exposing students to works often excluded by older models of literary canons, I’d like to return from this Salzburg Seminar with new ideas and approaches to introducing our students to ‘voices, writing, directions’ that have not only been neglected in the past, but that are also now emerging around us due to demographic changes, new connections made available through expanding technologies, changes in political climates.”
She hopes to explore the city during her time in Salzburg. Some of the places she hopes to see include Mozart’s birthplace and museum, the Hellbrunner Monatsschlösschen (a folklore museum), several art museums and galleries, and the Salzburg Cathedral.
“My participation in this seminar will certainly aid me in my mission to process the ways in which American writing is changing, the reasons for these changes and how I might open our literary journal and classrooms to the consideration of these transformations.”
She added, “I’m proud to represent Tusculum College in Salzburg. This is a global seminar, so I will be able — and so will those who are afforded the opportunity after me — to enter into a conversation that isn’t restricted by geographic boundaries, an important conversation that centers on imagination, sustainability and justice, the themes of the seminar that hold keys to human progress.”
Patterson has a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from Washington University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Georgia College and State University.