The Fifth Floor Spring/Summer 2016

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Scholarly Pursuits: Marianne Novy Looks Back on Her Career

“Do you not know that I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.”

— William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Light streams in through the windows of Marianne Novy’s fifth-floor office. Bookshelves line the walls, packed with hardback texts wrapped in faded jackets. Her desk, positioned directly in the warm rays of the mid-winter sun, is covered in strewn-about papers and notebooks, some handwritten, some typed, some students’ work, some personal notes. Novy herself sits behind the desk, reflecting on her past 45 years at the University of Pittsburgh. More>

Words like Tattoos: Mary Brignano’s Corporate Corpus

It’s like when someone is tattooed with a small, meaningful image. No one knows the importance until they ask. In lowercase, yellow letters, Brignano has tattooed “words” between brackets on her business card, disregarding a graphic designer’s warnings. If people don’t understand, they ask for clarification. When they ask for clarification, Brignano explains what it is that she does with words. More>

Nonfiction Meets Neuroscience

The year is 1997. “Iron Mike” Webster, the former Pittsburgh Steelers center, stands at a podium, giving a speech at his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction.

“Being out there,” he says, reminiscing about preseason football drills, “in the heat of summer, bangin’ heads. ... It’s not a natural thing.”

It was precisely this unnatural thing, this banging of heads, that eventually led to the mental decline of Webster. Living in a pickup truck. Supergluing his teeth. Shocking himself into unconsciousness with a Taser just to get some sleep. This decline led to a chance autopsy by neuropathologist Bennet Omalu, at the time a fellow at the University of Pittsburgh who was also working in the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. The autopsy led to research. The research led to a diagnosis. The diagnosis led to an NFL controversy. This controversy, eventually, led to our own Jeanne Marie Laskas’ latest book, Concussion (Random House, 2015). More>

Poetry as Smooth as Butter

On a cold January night, The Fifth Floor decided to trek out to a cozy and packed East End Book Exchange, on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield, for a night of poetry. There, joined by other Pitt Writing alumni—Kristofer Collins and Angele Ellis, who are both based in Pittsburgh—Jonathan Moody returned to the city of his alma mater to read from his newest poetry book: Olympic Butter Gold (Northwestern University Press, 2015). More>

The Gospel According to Elizabeth Drescher

While Elizabeth Drescher’s writing is rooted in her years as an undergraduate and graduate student in English at Pitt, she is now an adjunct associate professor of Religion and Pastoral Ministry at Santa Clara University. She has published three books, including Tweet If You ♥ Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation (Morehouse Publishing, 2011) and, with co-author Keith Anderson, Click2Save: The Digital Ministry Bible (Morehouse Publishing, 2012), as well as multiple articles for Salon, The Washington Post, and Religion Dispatches about relevant, and often controversial, religious issues. She also co-founded The Narthex, an online religion magazine, among other accomplishments. More>