religious turn conference

The Religious Turn in Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, February 6-7, 2009

Sponsored by the Departments of English, History, Romance Languages & Literatures, and the Program in Medieval & Early Modern Studies. Keynote Speakers: Arthur Marotti (Wayne State University); Sarah Beckwith (Duke University)
A full conference schedule is available at http://www.umich.edu/~earlymod/events.htm . For more information, contact Andrew Bozio (bozio@umich.edu), Kathryn Will (willkath@umich.edu), or Rebecca Wiseman (rwiseman@umich.edu).

Updike Dies at 76

Author John Updike, regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific writers in modern American letters, has died, his publicist said. He was 76.

He passed away Tuesday morning after battling lung cancer.

Third Coast Reading this Friday, Jan. 30

There's a Third Coast Reading this Friday, Jan. 30 at 6:45 pm, at Dino's Coffee Lounge, 773 W Michigan Ave (otherwise known as the corner of Stadium and Academy, parking on Academy). Fiction by Michele Coash, fiction by Melinda Moustakis, and poetry by Michelle Bonczek with musical accompaniment by Rob Evory. So come, drink some coffee.... Invite your neighbors and students. :)

Bush, Thralls, Vocke, Webb get ASTRAs

Jonathan Bush, Charie Thralls, Karen Vocke, and Allen Webb have all been awarded ASTRAs for their research projects.

Bush Recognized by Dean

Jonathan Bush is the recipient of the Dean's Staff and Faculty Appreciation Award. The award recognizes "the great work done over the past year by exemplary staff and faculty" who have "performed well beyond the call of duty."
The picture shows how we imagine Jonathan might react when he finds out....

Sanders Recognized by Dean

Bethlynn Sanders is the recipient of the Dean's Staff and Faculty Appreciation Award. The award recognizes "the great work done over the past year by exemplary staff and faculty" who have "performed well beyond the call of duty."
The picture shows Bethlynn with Michelle Hruska and Richard Utz seconds after she received the good news.

"The Jolly Good Fellows" Head to New York

THE JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS, a new play by Steve Feffer, playwriting professor at Western Michigan University and the Whole Art Theater’s resident playwright, and Tucker Rafferty, artistic director of the Whole Art Theater, will be produced in New York City, Friday, May 29th through Monday, June 1st at the Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas being produced by New York’s Untitled Theatre Company #61 (http://www.untitledtheater.com/). THE JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS will perform at the 99 seat Mint Theatre, located at 43rd Street and 8th Avenue, in the heart of the city’s theatre district. Under the direction of Western Michigan University theatre professor Mark Liermann, who will direct the New York production, THE JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS was recently read as part of the Whole Art Theater’s second annual New Play Festival.

THE JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS is a fifty-minute play set in the 1890s that tells the story of David Green and Michael Harrigan, two actors that make their living performing a stereotypical “Jew” and “Irishman” in the grotesque ethnic performances that were popular in the concert saloons and variety theatres of the day.

A darkly comedic tale, THE JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS is based loosely on a pair of actors from the time, exploring how these two very different American immigrants enter into a contract of convenience to keep up with the changing times, and then later, the cost that such performances inflicts upon them personally and socially. The play also includes songs and sketches from the period.

Poetry in the Fishbowl of Empire

Graduate College Lecture Series

Poetry in the Fishbowl of Empire: The Satires of Rome Today
Kirk Freudenburg, Yale University

Thursday, January 29, 5:00 p.m., Fetzer 1010

Reception to follow. Event co-sponsored by the Departments of English, Spanish, Foreign Languages, and the Medieval Institute.

national undergraduate conference

The 24th Annual National Undergraduate Conference will take place at Weber State University from April 2-4. For submission guidelines (the conference focuses on American Literature, British Literature, World Literature, and Creative Works (including works in Spanish) and all other information, go to weber.edu/nulc.

Sigma Tau Delta receives national recognition

Our very own Alpha Nu Pi Chapter of Sigma Tau Delta at Western Michigan University has once again been identified as one of the most active, vital chapters in the country and been invited a special exhibit at this year's International Convention in Minneapolis, MN, March 25-28, 2009. Please congratulate our students and their faculty advisor, Lisa Minnick, on this wonderful national recognition.

A Great New Film Venue!

For those of you who haven't discovered it, there is a beautifully restored theater within about 30 min. of Kazoo (Three Rivers) where you can find a variety of programs ranging from live performance to classic film screenings (sometimes with the two combined) for only a few bucks. They also have a bar with reasonable drinks to boot! Right now they're doing a Kubrick series as well as one on classic Westerns, and screening a couple new films. Check out the link here for more info. This is a gem, and one that isn't likely to survive in the current economy without more patronage.

The Jolly Good Fellows by Steve Feffer and Tucker Rafferty, Reading Saturday, January 17th, 7 PM

The Whole Art Theatre New Play Series will present a reading of the The Jolly Good Fellows by Steve Feffer and Tucker Rafferty at the Whole Art's Epic Theatre Center space (359 South Kalamazoo Mall) at 7 PM on Saturday, January 17th. The reading is free and will be followed by a talk-back with the playwrights and a reception.

The Jolly Good Fellows is a two character fifty minute play set in the 1890s that tells the story of David Green and Michael Harrigan, two actors that make their living performing a stereotypical “Jew” and “Irishman” in the grotesque ethnic performances that were popular in the concert saloons and variety theatres of the day. This darkly comedic tale, based loosely on two actors from the time and their "Jolly Good Fellow" sketches, explores how these two very different American immigrants enter into a contract of convenience to keep up with the changing times, and then later, the cost that such performances inflicts upon them personally and socially. The play also includes songs and sketches from the period. The Jolly Good Fellows has been entered into the Jewish Fringe Festival to be held in New York City in Spring 2009.

For information or reservations please contact the Whole Art Theatre at 269-345-7529 or www.wholeart.org.

"Poets in Print" at the KBAC

The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center announces a next installment in their “Poets in Print” reading series, featuring poets Tara Bray, Aaron McCollough, and Jennifer K. Sweeney.

A broadside created by artist Katie Platte featuring works by the poets will be available for sale at the event.

The event will be held on Saturday, January 17th, in Suite 103 A of the Park Trades Center at 326 W. Kalamazoo Ave in downtown Kalamazoo. Doors open at 6:30 and the reading starts at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Upcoming Frostic Readings for Spring 2009

Greetings,

Please save the following dates for the Frostic readings this semester. All readings will be at 8PM in the Little Theater--except Francine Prose's reading, which will be at 8PM in the Kalamazoo Public Library.

January 22 - Debra Marquart

February 19 – Khaled Mattawa

March 12 - Francine Prose (reading at the public library downtown)

March 24 – Arnie Johnston

April 2 - Jericho Brown & Patty Seyburn

Aprill 9 – Darrin Doyle & Michael Davis

Chad Sweeney, Ph.D. candidate, publishes book of poems

Arranging the Blaze, by Chad Sweeney has just been published by Anhinga press.
"The poetry of Chad Sweeney is exuberant, imagistic, and prophetic. It locates a 'critical moment' of the ineffable that would be inexpressible, had it not been so beautifully expressed: 'the last hawk in the net of his eye.' Prophetic means of the world -- 'the median burns with oleander from Miami to LA' and 'the beer tastes of uranium' -- but also touched by the marvelous ('the fire is folded inside its wood'). This is a poetry of awakening, of coming into knowledge. We are near the beginning and the end, but in a curiously real place where you can hear the white teeth of a bull pull at the grass." -- Paul Hoover
ISBN: 978-1-934695-09-8
Anhinga Press
P. O. Box 10595, Tallahassee, FL 32302
Phone: (850) 442-1408
Fax: (850) 442-6323
Inquiries? E-mail us.Copyright © 1997-2004, Anhinga PressURL: http://www.anhinga.org/
also available from Amazon.com

Klekar Coedits Collection on the Culture of the Gift

The Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England, a collection of original essays co-edited by Cynthia Klekar and Linda Zionkowski (Ohio University), has been published by Palgrave. Klekar's essay "Obligation, Coercion, and Economy: The Deed of Trust in Congreve's The Way of the World" appears in the collection. Offering a variety of disciplinary perspectives, The Culture of the Gift in Eighteenth-Century England analyzes the long-overlooked role of gift exchange in literary texts, cultural documents, and economic relations in the period from 1660-1800. Contributors argue that the gift was instrumental to the workings of eighteenth-century society: it supported the phenomenal rise of charities, explained the increasingly complicated trade relations, enforced conventions of obligation and social hierarchies, and both strengthened and challenged the emergence of a market economy. Building upon the works of recent theorists, these essays provide innovative readings of how gift transactions shaped the institutions and practices that gave this era its distinctive identity. Information about the collection can be found on the Palgrave website at: http://us.macmillan.com/thecultureofthegiftineighteenthcenturyengland

Salisbury on the Summoner at MLA

Eve Salisbury gave a paper at the MLA Conference in San Francisco entitled “Marriage Undone in the Summoner’s Tale,” in a special session on “Undoing Heterosexuality: Rethinking Marriage in the Canterbury Tales.” Organized by Glenn D. Burger of Queens College, CUNY, the panel also included Tison Pugh of the University of Central Florida and Holly Crocker of the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

January 5th, 8 PM Play Readings to Benefit WMU Kennedy Center/ACTF Playwrights

This Monday, January 5th at 8 PM, at the Whole Art Theatre Studio Space at 246 North Kalamazoo Mall, there will be a benefit play reading for the four graduate students from the Creative Writing Program that have been selected by the National Playwriting Program of the Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival to have their plays presented at the KC/ACTFs prestigious regional festival, being held this year in Saginaw, Michigan January 6 - 11. The plays were four of the thirteen total that were selected from over one hundred and fifty entries that were submitted in three categories: ten minutes, one acts and full lengths.

This will be a benefit for the playwrights to raise money in support of their trip to the festival. There will be a reading of each of the short plays and scenes from the full length, as well as Dionysian revelry. Admission to the event is free. A hat will be passed. Refreshments will be for sale. There may be a silent auction. The hat may be auctioned.

The plays and playwrights are:

MFA playwright Kris Peterson's play "Gun Metal Blue Bar" is one of the region's six ten minute plays. Additionally, Kris's play has been selected for a reading at the Mid-American Theatre Conference that will be held in March in Chicago. In Kris's play, Ricky's looking to get paid for a few weeks of hard work around Henry's racing pigeon lofts. However, one final gruesome act is separating Ricky from the money he needs to rescue his late father's cuff links from the pawn shop.

MFA playwright Karen Wurl's "Now and At the Hour Of" and MFA playwright Jason Lenz's "The Switch Room" are two of the six one act plays. Karen's play was originally presented at WMU as part of FUSE ONE.

In Wurl's "Hour," a middle-aged woman revisits 1977, a motel room, and a lost love, in an attempt to recover a lost self.

In Jason's play, Gus and Sam have an important job to do: flip the large switch in the switch room, at the second specified to them by the government, with no knowledge of what is being set in motion by the ambiguous lever. The problem is that today Gus and Sam are beginning to question what the switch actually does once activated.

Recent Ph.D creative writing program graduate Christine Iaderosa's play The Sins of Kalamazoo is the sole full length play to be presented. Christine's play will be presented in a full production later this year at the Whole Art Theatre. The Sins of Kalamazoo is a loose adaptation of the Carl Sandburg poem with reminiscence of the lost past of Americana and the failed promise of yesteryear.

The plays will be presented at the festival and then responded to by a panel of theatre professionals that this year includes Aaron Carter from Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre and Roger Hall, the Kennedy Center's National Playwriting Program Chair.

The Kennedy Center's American College Theatre Festival provides opportunities for over 18,000 theatre students and faculty throughout the country. English Department Professor Steve Feffer serves as the Vice Chair for the KCACTF III National Playwriting Program.

For more information please contact Dr. Steve Feffer at steve.feffer@wmich.edu.

Teaching MLK @ WMU

Teaching about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement

Thursday, Jan. 22 from 4:30 to 6:00 in 2304 Sangren

This workshop led by faculty from various departments is dedicated to helping future teachers at all grade levels and in all content areas continue the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by addressing civil rights, inequality, racism, poverty and world peace in their curriculum. See our website: www.teachmlk.com. Questions contact: allen.webb@wmich.edu.