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University of South Florida
Polytechnic
3433 Winter Lake Road
Lakeland, FL 33803
(863) 667-7077
Fax (863) 667-7097
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Contact:
Tom Hagerty
(863)
667-7077
Assistant Professor of Engllish,
Cynthia Patterson, Ph.D.
LAKELAND,
FL (July 26, 2007) - When USF Lakeland English professor Cynthia Patterson, Ph.D., traveled to the State Library of Pennsylvania this summer to conduct research, she thought she had the luxury of time. But time was running out when she arrived in Harrisburg, Pa., just before the July 4 holiday.
While Florida officials dealt with their own budget woes, a state budget crisis to the north threatened to lock Patterson out of the library. A partisan deadlock had held up a state government spending plan for the new fiscal year. Unless lawmakers could resolve the impasse, state government – including the state library -- would shut down on Monday, July 9.
“That meant I might have only three days -- July 5 through 7 -- to do my research,” she said, “and I had no idea how long the shutdown might last.
“So it forced me to do massive re-planning of my research time. I had to completely change my strategy. Instead of leisurely perusing articles from the library’s archives, I frantically scanned publications and identified articles that I could later borrow on microfilm through inter-library loan.”
On July 9, Dr. Patterson awoke to learn Pennsylvania state government had suspended operations, sending 24,000 state workers home without pay. Although lawmakers resolved the situation the following day, she still felt the negative effects of the state’s budget crisis. With Florida’s state agencies also facing budget cuts, some observers warn of similar reductions in service at the state’s research universities.
At the state library, Dr Patterson found herself competing with the public for limited resources. State budget issues had delayed the opening of a new area of the library devoted exclusively to scholars.
“I got far less done than I thought I would,” she said. “I had no sense in advance of the physical and mechanical restrictions of using microfilm to conduct research. What I do is painstaking and time consuming. Most of material I need is not yet on the Web. Instead I have to spend hours and hours and hours in archives.”
In Pennsylvania she researched the development of sensationalistic crime reporting and plans to publish an article titled "The Curious Case of Charlotte Myers Griswold: 19th Century Discourses on Female Hermaphroditism, Sexual Anomaly and Gender Deviance."
Despite the setbacks she had to overcome, Dr. Patterson says her trip was successful. With her passion for scholarship, she refuses to let anything, even a shutdown of state government, knock her off course.
“To me it’s like a disease,” she said of her research. “I can’t not do it. It’s my addiction.”
That enthusiasm and dedication pays off in the classroom, notes student Amanda Robinson. “I really enjoyed the fact that Dr. Patterson was so educated in what she was teaching her students. I also like the fact she is so passionate about what she teaches. I learned more from her than I ever could have imagined.”
Dr. Patterson joined the USF Lakeland faculty in 2005 after completing her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at George Mason University. Her research and teaching interests include 19th Century American literature, American periodicals, and advanced composition. She is active in the Research Society for American Periodicals, an interdisciplinary organization of scholars interested in American magazines and newspapers. Dr. Patterson is the author of a forthcoming book, "Exclusively from Original Designs: The Philly Pictorials and the Graphic Arts.”
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