Arnie and Debby Johnston Invite you to.....

All Ears Theatre Live Performance of Hansel and Gretel
Saturday, May 3
6 p.m.
First Baptist Church
315 W. Michigan Avenue


When two children become lost in the woods, they're delighted to discover a life-sized gingerbread house to tempt their tummies. But what will happen when the old woman who lives there finds them? Is she really as nice as she leads the children to believe?

Adapted by radio by Arnie and Deborah Johnston from the classic German fairy tale and directed by Michael Ray Helms.

Narrator - Mickey Sykes
Anders, the woodsman - Richard Philpot
Astrid, his wife - Glynis Fenn
Morgan/Witsch - Karen Blaisure
Gretel - Hannah Hominck
Hansel - Robert Davidson
Villagers - Gary and Donna Willoughby, Meghan Hughey, and Tom Paauwe

Airs on WMUK October 25 at 1 p.m.

Teaching English in China

The Graduate School, USDA and F&S International seek U.S. college students, recent graduates and teachers with strong English skills to teach English in China. If you would like to teach English in China with a team of proven professionals for 4 months (or 10 months), the China ESL Teaching Program would like provide a position for you in China. The Program requires college students/graduates/teachers with excellent English language skills to work at elementary/junior and senior high schools and some universities in Dalian, Hangzhou, Beijing and other cities in China. The Program provides competitive basic salary, free housing in modern facilities with Western conveniences, free Chinese lessons and an international travel bonus. China ESL Teaching Application Deadline - May 15, 2008. For more specific information about the China program and the application please visit the OTHER OPPORTUNITIES page of the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program website: http://www.fulbrightexchanges.org/View/ViewOtherOpps.asp. Please feel free to pass this along! Thanks!

International Institute
Graduate School, USDA
600 Maryland Ave., SW Suite 320
Washington DC 20024
202.314.3500 phone
202.479.6806 fax
intlinst@grad.usda.gov
www.grad.usda.gov 

Roy Seeger's good news

Roy Seeger recently accepted a full professor position at the University of South Carolina Aiken. Also, his poetry manuscript The Boy Whose Hands were Birds was selected as the winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Contest, and will be available in the late fall of 2008.

Laureate reading today!

So, it's a bit last minute but the Laureate reading/reception is today (25 April) at 2 PM at the Honors College. There will be copious amounts of snackies and good people reading good pieces. Please come celebrate the final product with some of Western's best writers. You know, if you have the time.

-Theresa

Steve Feffer Article in Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History

Steve Feffer's article “'Judas the Maccabeas:' Samuel B. H. Judah and the Staging of Jewish Identity in Early American Melodrama" appears in the current issue (27: 3) of PROOFTEXTS: A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY.

Feffer's article considers Samuel B. H. Judah, the least well-known and most critically reviled of the early Jewish-American playwrights, and how in Judah’s plays, his subaltern status as a Jew in early America contributes to an important artistic separation with Judah’s Jewish playwriting contemporary and renowned patriot, sheriff and journalist, Mordecai Manuel Noah’s more popular melodramas. Judah’s neglected melodramas of the early 1820s, such as THE MOUNTAIN TORRENT and THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON, become a fecund site to consider the representation of Jews by Jewish playwrights in early nineteenth century American popular theatrical entertainments. Furthermore, Judah’s LEXINGTON should be seen as a landmark work of Jewish-American literature because it introduces, in a manner, the first contemporary Jewish characters written by a Jewish playwright for the American stage.

news from Joe Haughey

Joe Haughey (PhD candidate) has an article coming out in a book called Postmodern Essays on Love, Sex, and Marriage in Shakespeare, published by Viva Books. He has been accepted into the NEH institute in Virginia this summer.

Local Playwrights

The Play N Well Players Present a One-Act Festival at the Plainwell Community Center, 798 E. Bridge St. (M-89):
The Future Ain't What it Used to Be, by Dwayne Yancey
The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating Underwear, by Kevin Drzakowski
Love is Strange, By Deborah Ann Percy and Arnold Johnston
That Light Through That Window, by Beth Danesco
Cell Shock, by Steve Koppman
The Book, the Bench, and the Trashcan, by Tim Chapman
Friday, April 18 & 19 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, April 20 at 3 p.m.

Good news from Michael Davis

Michael Davis (PhD candidate) is happy to report that he just won the '08 George Garrett Fiction Prize. The story is called, "Gravity," and will be appearing in Willow Springs issue 62. "Please check it out when you have a chance." http://willowsprings.ewu.edu/index.html

Frostic Reading 4/17

Please join us next Thursday, April 17, for the final Frostic reading of the year featuring two alumni: novelist Paula Nangle and poet John Rybicki.

Paula Nangle was raised by missionaries in the U.S. and southern Africa and now lives in Benton Harbor, Michigan where she is a psychiatric nurse. Her first novel, The Leper Compound, was published by Bellevue Literary Press earlier this year. She has published fiction in Michigan Quarterly Review, Blue Mesa Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Glimmer Train, among others.

John Rybicki currently teaches creative writing to inner-city children in his hometown of Detroit and serves as a guest lecturer at schools across the country. His poems and stories have appeared in North American Review, Field, Bomb, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ohio Review, Poetry East, and The Quarterly, as well as in numerous anthologies. His first book of poems, Traveling at High Speeds (New Issues Poetry Press), appeared in 1996, followed by Fire Psalm and Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider (March Street Press, 2002). His newest collection, We Bed Down Into Water, was published by Northwestern University Press earlier this year.

As always the reading will begin at 8pm at the Little Theatre. All are invited. Please help spread the word by inviting your students.

Annual Awards Ceremony & Reception, April 17

The faculty and staff of the Western Michigan University Department of English cordially invite you to our Annual Awards Ceremony and Reception, honoring our undergraduate and graduate students:

April 17, 2008, 3:00-6:30 p.m. - Richmond Center for Visual Arts

Keynote Speaker: Francine (Zeidman) Rossi, 2007-2008 Department of English Distinguished Alumna: "Peregrinations of a Former English Major."

MFA Festival April 11 & 18

Please join us on Friday, April 11 and Friday, April 18 to celebrate and honor the work of this year's graduating MFA students. The reading will begin at 7pm both nights. Of course, good writing, good eating, and good cheer will abound. Here are the locations and line-ups:

4/11 @ Walwood Hall

Maggie Andersen (non-fiction)
Matt Browning (poetry)
Louis Khor (fiction)
Benny Bennet (poetry)
Adeena Reitberger (fiction)


4/18 @ Lee Honors College

Cindy St. John (poetry)
Mike Monje (playwrighting)
Natalie Giarratano (poetry)
Michael Levan (poetry)
Mark Turcotte (poetry)

Please come show your support, invite your students, and help spread the word!

The Role of Language in Learning Science

The WMU Physics Department and Mallinson Institute for Science Education are hosting a colloquium presentation on Monday, April 7, titled "The Role of Language in Learning Science". Its focus is the teaching and learning of science, specifically physics, and the role played by language in this process.

"The Role of Language in Learning Science", April 7, 2008, 4 p.m. in 1110 Rood Hall, by Dr. David Brookes, a Postdoctoral Research Associate, Illinois Physics Education Research Group, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ellis Considers Witches in Los Angeles

Last weekend Tony Ellis presented the paper "'È brutto il bello': Some Italian Incarnations of Macbeth's Witches" at the Comparative Drama Conference in Los Angeles. In this presentation, he compared the witches in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera (1847) with those in the contemporary adaptation written by Laura Curino, which opened at the Cooperativa Laboratorio Teatro Settimo in Turin in 2001 and which told the story of Shakespeare’s play from the perspective of the witches.

Klekar & Nagle onstage at ASECS

Colleagues Cynthia Klekar and Christopher Nagle recently returned from the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, held this year in Portland, OR.

Cynthia chaired a panel, “Reconsidering the English Stage 1660-1730,” and served as a conference mentor to a graduate student from Rutgers. Chris participated in a roundtable session on “Judith Butler in the Long 18th Century”—discussing the relevance of Butler’s recent work on ethics and alterity for current critical debate in the field—and joined both the Gay and Lesbian Caucus and Irish Studies Caucus in planning for next year’s conference sessions in Richmond.

Tarbox Gives Women's History Month Lecture

Gwen Tarbox gave the Women's History Month Lecture at Miami University in Ohio on March 28th. Her topic, "Practicing Citizenship/Agitating for Suffrage: Mock Presidential Elections at US Women's Colleges," led to a very active post-talk discussion regarding the current Presidential election.

Empire, Ethics, and the Calling of History

The English Department is co-sponsoring the Anthropology Department's lecture and visit of Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Professor, U of Chicago. He will speak on "Empire, Ethics, and the Calling of History" on Friday, April 4, 3508 Knauss Hall, at 2pm.

English Graduate Students Receive Recognition

The WMU Graduate College, the Graduate Studies Council, and the Graduate Student Advisory Committee recently announced the 2007-2008 recipients of the following awards:

Gregory Laing: All University Graduate Student Award for Teaching Effectiveness

Stephen Grandchamp: English Department Graduate Student Award for Teaching Effectiveness

Ilse Schweitzer: English Department Graduate Research and Creative Scholar Award

Mark Turcotte: English Department Graduate Research and Creative Scholar Award

Congrats to all four!