Contact: Maridith Geuder
STARKVILLE, Miss.--An English department faculty member at Mississippi State who retired last year is the new leader of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association.
Nancy D. Hargrove, now a William L. Giles Distinguished Professor Emerita at the university, recently was elected president of the professional organization with members from throughout the Southeast, nation and world.
SAMLA represents teachers, researchers and graduate students dedicated to the advancement of teaching and literary and linguistic scholarship in the modern languages.
Additionally, Hargrove also has been invited to serve on the summer faculty of the T.S. Eliot International Summer School in London, England. A nationally recognized Eliot scholar, the University of South Carolina doctoral graduate will teach five seminar sessions during July.
While in London, she will give a special presentation titled "T.S. Eliot and Popular Music in America, France and England." Collaborating with husband Guy, a retired MSU voice professor, and music department piano instructor Karen Murphy, her program will feature popular songs that inspired many of the experimental aspects of Eliot's work.
"Guy took fragments of actual lyrics that appear in both Eliot's poems and plays," Hargrove said, adding that Guy will sing, while Karen Murphy provides accompaniment.
Nancy Hargrove is the author of "Landscape as Symbol in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot" (1978) and a 2009 release, "T.S. Eliot's Parisian Year" (University Press of Florida).
She has been an SAMLA member since beginning her teaching career nearly four decades ago. From 1998-2001, she served on its executive committee and, in 2007, received the best essay award of South Atlantic Review, the organization's scholarly journal.
For more information, telephone Hargrove at 662-323-6941.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.