Eureka College has their fair share of doctors who love writing. Two faculty members in particular are thrilled to announce their works are being published. The Routledge Companion to John Wesley is a co-edited book by Eureka College’s, Dr. Joe Cunningham. Seasons of the Self, Dr. Emily Eaton’s first book-length translations project, and was written in collaboration with her brother and best friend, Christopher Eaton.
Dr. Joseph Cunningham is an assistant professor of religion, and he has taught at Eureka for 6 years. Cunningham was a first-generation college student that attended Greenville College. Graduating in 2003, he went on to receive his master’s degree from the Aquinas Institute of Theology (St. Louis University) in 2006.
He lived in England for 3 years while working toward his PhD in theology at the University of Manchester. In the years 2011-2013, he was a visiting professor at Eureka College, and he then became a pastor of a small church in Michigan, where he grew up. He returned to Eureka as an assistant professor in 2018 and was awarded the Helen Cleaver Distinguished Teacher award in 2021. This award recognizes creativity, innovation, and excellence in teaching.
While in high school or college, Dr. Cunningham remembers using language to express his ideas and submitting an opinion piece to his campus newspaper on a current event. Not thinking he was good enough for his works to be published, he was rewarded with the empowering experience of seeing his words in print. Later, after a publisher read his doctoral thesis, he was invited to turn it into a book, his first book. This helped him refine his process of writing. In order to find time for his intellectual work, he had to block off times to get into the writing headspace instead of “filling in the cracks of my schedule with it.”
The process of publishing his most recent piece took approximately three years from start to finish. The Routledge Companion to John Wesley is an edited volume of 40 chapters. Each chapter is an essay written by fellow scholars in his field. The first step was proposing the volume to the publisher, next was researching the planned chapters, then setting deadlines with authors, and collecting their drafts. After years of hard work, it has been officially published and is available for purchase on the Routledge website.
Dr. Emily Eaton is Chair of Humanities and Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Eureka College. She earned a PhD in Romance Studies (Spanish literature) from Cornell University. She is currently a volunteer translator for a nonprofit organization named The Immigration Project, which “provides legal services to immigrants in central and southern Illinois.”
Her first published translation of poetry was initially written by Cristina Piña. Her first time reading Spanish literature, in her senior year AP Spanish class, was an experience where she learned that words have power.
“There’s this amazing thing that I feel very passionate about, and it doesn’t just exist in one language, but in other languages. That was very empowering for me. It wasn’t until later in life, college, and early grad school where I started to think about language as something that carried social power, social capital, prestige, and something that can affect power dynamics between different groups of people. Language was never a barrier for me the way it is for people in our country who have limited English,” Dr. Eaton said.
Seasons of the Self is unlike anything she has ever written before. The publications that she has done up until now have been written in prose: a combination of critical and scholarly articles in literature, translations of short stories, and her new piece is a translation of poetry. It is a different kind of writing for her, and it is also her first time collaborating with someone else on a published piece.
For a project like this, it is crucial to know how to write poetry as well as have the knowledge of the two languages being worked with. With Christopher Eaton as a teacher in creative writing and Dr. Eaton as a Spanish teacher; they were able to come together to create a brilliant piece.
“We’re both in higher ed but we’re in different fields. We have never actually collaborated together from a scholarly perspective. It’s amazing to see what we can produce together,” Dr. Eaton said.
For current and future writers in need of some inspiration, let these two professors be encouraging. Both professors had something to say for aspiring writers.
“There’s no rush and do not be discouraged if it doesn’t happen immediately,” Dr. Eaton said.
“Writing is a deeply creative act, and, as a creative act, it requires time, space, and patience to take shape. Be generous and patient with yourself,” Dr. Cunningham said.
