Ohio Northern University’s Megan Wood, Ph.D., assistant professor of communications studies, was one of 20 scholars nationally who were chosen for the prestigious National Humanities Center Writing Institute that took place this summer in North Carolina.
The nine-day residency gave her “the gift of focused time to write,” she says, and provided her with valuable writing tools and strategies that she plans to share with her ONU students and colleagues.
This is only the second year that the Center has offered the Writing Institute, and Wood is the first ONU scholar chosen for the program. ONU is a member of the National Humanities Center, which is an independently-funded institute dedicated exclusively to advanced study in the humanities.
Wood was selected from a very competitive pool of scholars, including only a handful from undergraduate institutions, according to Dr. Stacey Lowery Bretz, dean of the Getty College of Arts & Sciences.
In addition to focused writing time, the scholars worked with writing coaches, took part in workshops with other writers from a variety of academic areas, and met with editors to learn more about book publishing.
After the institute, Wood returned to the classroom with renewed energy, she said. “The experience completely refreshed my relationship with writing, why we do it, how to do it, how to embrace the process in a way that feels worthwhile and meaningful.”
In particular, Betya Rubinstein’s workshops on writing prompts, giving and receiving feedback, and other exercises are among the tools that she believes will be valuable to share with her students working on research papers, she said.
For the summer institute, the 20 selected scholars each brought a project that they wanted to work on. Wood focused on a book she is writing, tentatively titled “Encountering Apocalypse.” The book grew out of research she did for her dissertation, and explores how apocalypse has become a dominant framework for American cultural feelings and experiences. Through the publishing workshops, Wood made several contacts that will be helpful when her book is ready, she added
“Part of the application (for the institute) is you have to detail a project in progress and the elements that you’re going to be working on specifically and what your goals and struggles are,” Wood said. The participants were in all different stages of writing—ranging from starting a project to almost-finished pieces.
Working with other scholars was a bonus, she added. “The NHC pulled together an absolute rock star group of scholars in all the different humanities disciplines. I could not have asked for a more interesting, supportive, generous, and all-around lovely group of people to spend time with.”
In her research and teaching, Wood focuses on mass and popular cultural forms like reality television, social media, celebrity, genre fiction, and advertising. She explores how these types of communication organize political attention and feeling, and how popular feelings are made political.
She earned her bachelor's degree from Christopher Newport University in Virginia, her master’s degree from the University of South Florida, and her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is starting her fifth year at ONU.