Faculty ProfileName: Dr. Sam Overstreet Title: Professor of English and the Ralph S. Collins Professor in the Humanities Courses Taught: Chaucer in Middle English, Shakespeare, History of the English Language, Advanced Rhetoric and Grammar, British Literature I, the Early Western Literary Tradition, Advanced Composition and Speech, Freshman Seminar 140, English Composition Education: B.A., Yale University; Ph.D., Cornell University At Maryville College since: 1990  As a Ph.D. student at Cornell in the early 1980s, Sam Overstreet was being groomed for “high-powered research” in Medieval Literature. But this Louisville, Ky., native wasn’t sure that reviewing and analyzing aged texts was how he wanted to spend his professional life. Completing his dissertation on William Langland’s Piers Plowman and graduating in 1985, he signed on for short-term international service work the next year, agreeing to teach English at Shanxi University. Something clicked. “I realized then that one could devote a life to teaching that wasn’t devoted to research, and one could really enjoy it,” he says of his time in China. At Maryville, Overstreet teaches a variety of courses and finds different rewards in each. “Teaching literature is what I most enjoy because it allows us to step into someone else’s shoes and gain a perspective that has the potential to make us wise,” he says. “I enjoy teaching writing because good writing is empowering for students. It enables them to succeed.” He considers studying Shakespeare “ a privilege,” and with a group of intelligent students, he describes the time discussing the Bard “just fun.” Still an active scholar, Overstreet is involved in the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, a large project sponsored by the Society of Early English and Norse Electronic Texts. For his English 331 students, he created audio files of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales read in Middle English so that they could learn the correct pronunciation of words like “felawshipe” and “sonne.” He’s currently in the process of getting the files onto CDs. From the Prologue From the Knight’s Tale From Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (P) 2004 Samuel A. Overstreet. Based on THE RIVERSIDE CHAUCER, 3d ed. Copyright © 1987 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Used with special permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All Rights Reserved. Overstreet admits that not all students finish his courses as passionate about literature as he, but he takes great satisfaction in knowing that hundreds of his students have developed a greater appreciation for it. “One of my Chinese students said of my class, ‘It takes the top of my head off with new ideas.’ That’s one of the best compliments I’ve gotten.” Experiential Learning Opportunities:Internships and practica with local and national news organizations and magazines, government agencies, public relations firms, non-profits, radio and television broadcasters are available. Maryville College’s campus newspaper, The Highland Echo, is student-run and student-produced and offers numerous opportunities to “be published!” Students who join the staff of Impressions, the student literary magazine, not only get to write and critique other students’ creative works (poetry, prose, visual arts) for inclusion in the magazine, they plan really interesting events that showcase students’ work. “Words and the Land: Creating Literature From Nature” is a January Term course that gets students writing about their surroundings. Studying abroad is recommended to students studying a foreign language, and MC makes it possible! January Term travel courses led by faculty members in the Languages & Literature Division have taken student groups to Brazil, China and France.  In March 2011, the Spanish faculty organized a vocational dinner for Spanish majors. Discussing with students, in Spanish, the opportunities for life-changing use of their abilities were guest speakers Luis Velázquez, founder and executive director of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of East Tennessee, and his wife Loida Velázquez, a retired professor from the University of Tennessee. |
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