OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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Marcos Norris grew up in Southern Oregon near Medford and Ashland. His adolescent self would have never guessed that he would one day be teaching writing courses in the School of Writing, Literature and Film. “I had no academic interest whatsoever,” he joked, “like none at all.” He admitted that the first book he ever read was during his first year at Multnomah University. He started by reading The Karamazov Brothers by Fyodor Dostoevsky and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud. He said that the experience of reading the two simultaneously was “world altering… a conversion.”
From there, he dove deep into the feminist theory of Judith Butler which opened the doors to critical theory and contemporary continental thought. This, Norris said, “is the stuff that I study and I’m really passionate about.” In his mid-twenties he fell in love with Rod Sterling’s The Twilight Zone and taught a class on how to write film and television reviews using the show as an example. “It’s a thrilling experience because I’m a total fanboy. I think that so many of the Twilight Zone episodes are true works of art.” His research includes various peer-reviewed articles, a number of book reviews, and his own edited collection, Agamben and the Existentialists, which he collaborated on alongside Colby Dickinson, and was published by Edinburgh University Press this past fall.
Here at OSU, he has felt successful every day that he is able to stand at the front of a classroom full of engaged students. “When I’m out there, you know, ‘on stage,’ I feel like I’m performing at my highest level. Just knowing that I’m doing my best.” He loves being able to facilitate discussions in his Introduction to fiction and composition courses about topics that are personally significant to his students. “Stretching them to think in new ways,” Norris says. “That’s the bread and butter.”
He’s wasted no time settling in, decorating his office with colorful original paintings. When asked about them, he chuckled. The canvases—painted by his partner and two friends—are portraits of him. The cool blues and vibrant oranges in the compositions brighten the room and add an element of fun to the space. Norris was grateful for their attempt to capture his likeness on canvas, which is in alignment with his life philosophy. “When you feel like you don’t deserve anything, none of this is owed to you… every day is just this amazing gift.”
Instructor Lucia Stone has traveled all over the world, from Italy to Greece, but she’s not shy about admitting that she is “head over heels in love” with the Willamette Valley. Even though she’s put down roots here now, she spent the early days of her childhood constantly on the move, travel spurred on by her father’s love for adventure. Eventually, her mother said “no more,” and the family settled in Long Island, New York.
After attending New York University Tisch School of the Arts as a filmmaker, acquiring graduate degrees in Literature and the Teaching of Writing at Colorado State University and the University of Oregon, and earning an MFA in Poetry, Stone decided that she never wanted to leave school. “What better way to never leave the college campus than teaching?” she said with a smile. She teaches courses in composition and technical writing.
There is nothing that gives her more satisfaction in her career than when a previous student reaches out to express appreciation for the class and to give her an update on their life. Stone strives for those connections with her students and is enthusiastic about exploring different modes of learning so that every student can engage in class. She is stimulated by the classroom environment, and feels like she learns as much from her students as she hopes they are learning from her.
To shake up the traditional profile questions, I asked what time period she would visit if she ever had the chance to go back in time. While she declared that time travel sounded “absolutely dreadful” (fair enough), she came up with a workaround: instead of going herself, she’d send a hologram instead. In that case, she chose 14th century Cornwall, England to see Robert Louis Stephenson writing The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, because she loves the Victorian science horror genre and thinks it would be thrilling to enter the world of the book and take in “the dark London streets and this weird scientist doing experiments—but only as a hologram!”
She’s much more comfortable here in Oregon, and can often be found hiking in the woods around her house in Eugene with her husband, Jason, and their chocolate lab, Ruby.
Miriam Coskey is a senior studying English with a studio art minor. She hopes to integrate her fields of study to write and illustrate children’s books, the first of which is in the creation process now. She is involved in the Catholic ministry on campus, the Newman Center, and plans to serve as a missionary at American University in Washington D.C. next year. Her favorite authors include Toni Morrison and Michael O’Brian.