Third Coast feature in Poetry Daily

A selection from Third Coast's "Symposium on Writing and the Midwest"--Mark Halliday's "Kenneth Koch of Cincinatti"--is the Poetry Daily prose selection of the week.

WMU celebrates Jaimy Gordon's National Book Award

Yesterday afternoon, at the Richmond Center, President Dunn, Provost Greene, Dean Enyedi and more than 140 colleagues and students gathered to honor Dr. Jaimy Gordon, winner of this year's National Book Award. Gordon was introduced by Bruce McPherson, her publisher, friend and collaborator since her days at Brown University. Before her own reading from the first chapter of Lord of Misrule, three of her former students, all graduates from WMU's Department of English, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Liesel Litzenburger Meijer, and Melinda Moustakis, read from their works and recognized Gordon's essential role in their progress as writers. The event was organized and hosted by Dr. Katherine Joslin, Director of WMU's new Humanities Center.

Poetry students read and present book of poems

Chad Sweeney’s "Advanced Poetry" Class will have its book release and final poetry reading this Wednesday, Dec 15 at 6-8 PM at Kazoo Books II, 2413 Parkview Avenue, Kalamazoo - (269) 553-6506, near Oakland’s Water Street Café.

All guests will receive a free book of poems by these brilliant young poets.

Bookstore website with map: http://www.kazoobooks.com/

Fancy Pants Theater Presents New Plays

National Search: Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and Writing Studies

WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

Assistant Professor of English – Rhetoric and Writing Studies

Western Michigan University invites applications for a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of English (Rhetoric and Writing Studies), starting August 2011, pending budgetary approval.

Major Responsibilities: Teach in support of the Rhetoric and Writing Studies undergraduate program, including the Practical Writing major/minor. Additional opportunities may include course and graduate program development, support of the first-year and developmental writing programs, and participation in appropriate department and university committees. Special consideration will be given to candidates with research and teaching interests in new media, digital literature, and teaching with technologies. 

Qualifications: Required: Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Writing Studies or closely related area (e.g., composition studies, professional communication); a record of research and successful college teaching, including courses in rhetoric and writing studies; experience with digital technologies to support writing instruction. Desirable: Interest in developing curricula; supporting the university’s strategic vision of fostering investigations within areas such as diversity, environment/sustainability, and community writing through the development of pedagogical activities, interdisciplinary collaborative projects and grants, and community outreach; and administering first-year writing and developmental English programs.

The University: Western Michigan University is a dynamic, student-centered research university with an enrollment of 25,000. WMU is focused on delivering high-quality undergraduate instruction, advancing its growing graduate division and fostering significant research activities.  The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching places WMU among the 76 public institutions in the nation designated as research universities with high research activity. U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of American colleges and universities includes WMU as one of the nation’s top-100 public universities.

The Department: The Department of English consists of 40 board-appointed, full-time faculty. It currently educates approximately 600 majors and 250 minors in Practical Writing, Creative Writing, English Education, Language & Literature, and it offers M.A., M.F.A, and Ph.D. degrees and enrolls well over 100 graduate students. For full information please visit: www.wmich.edu/english.

Salary: Competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience, with an excellent benefits package.

Expected Start Date: August 2011

Application Deadline: March 4, 2011

Required Application Documents:

Applicants must visit WMU’s Human Resources site at http://www.wmich.edu/hr/careers-at-wmu.htm to apply and submit through the site a letter of application, curriculum vitae, graduate transcripts, three letters of recommendation and, if available, summary teaching evaluations. Materials that cannot be submitted electronically at the Human Resources site should be sent in hardcopy to: Dr. Richard Utz, Chair, Department of English, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331.

Western Michigan University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer consistent with applicable federal and state law. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply.

Recent Graduates, please respond to survey!

Shehabat wins Travel Award

PhD student Abdullah Shehabat is the recipient of a competitive Graduate College Travel Award for presenting a paper, “Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage: A Different Perspective of Alienation” at Henry Ford Community College, Dearborn, Michigan, in October.

Playwright Rebecca Gilman Presents Her Work: Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our final reading of the Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re honored to have playwright Rebecca Gilman read who will be presenting one of her plays this Thursday, Dec. 9th. The reading will take place at the WMU Bernhard Center, in room 157-158, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

Four English Faculty Are Granted Sabbatical Leaves

It is my pleasure to announce that the following colleagues have been granted sabbaticals by Provost Greene:

Tony Ellis (AY 2011-212)
Lisa Minnick (Spring 2012)
Mustafa Mirzeler (Spring 2012)
Jana Schulman (AY 2011-2012)

Drs. Ellis, Minnick, Mirzeler, and Schulman will be working on scholarly projects during their leaves and bring additional recognition and experience to Western Michigan University, English Department, and their future classroom assignments.

Third Coast Magazine Featured in The Writer

Our Third Coast Magazine is currently featured in the section "Literary Spotlight" of The Writer (January 2011 issue, p. 46) as one of only a handful of nationally distributed literary magazines to regularly include four genres.
BTW, Third Coast's current, Fall 2010, issue features a Symposium on Writing and the Midwest. Check it out!

                                                    

The Kalamazoo Public Library Presents 
Deborah Ann Percy 
Reading from her new collection 
Cool Front: Stories from Lake Michigan 
Tuesday, December 14, 2010 
7 pm - 8:30 pm
315 S Rose St
Kalamazoo MI 49007
Phone 269-342-9837 
March Street Press, ISBN 1-59661-146-44, $15 
www.marchstreetpress.com

The smell of sunshine on sweet water permeates these stories, all set in Michigan's Lake Country.—Stuart Dybek, MacArthur Fellow, author of I Sailed with Magellan // Sand, water, sky are the elements here, edgy is the writing, perfect pitch the dialogue. —Alicia Ostriker, twice National Book Award finalist, author of No Heaven // The waters of Lake Michigan flow through Deborah Ann Percy's veins and into every word she puts on the page in this compelling collection of stories. —Robert Eversz, Nero Award nominee, author of Zero to the Bone // This is fine writing by a storyteller at the top of her game —Richard Katrovas, founding director of the Prague Summer Program, author of The Years of Smashing Bricks and Prague Winter

Students collect funds in support of clean water projects

Students in Allen Webb's "African Literature" class, after becoming aware through their readings and discussions about the desperate shortage of clean water in Africa, rose to the challenge and decided to start the WESTERN 4 WATER project to support Clean Water for the World. This organization provides inexpensive, dependable, and safe drinking water systems at no charge to communities that do not have access to clean water. The system costs $700, and provides 5 gallons of clean, pure water per minute. Clean Water For The World has delivered and installed these drinking water systems in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, Ghana, Kenya, and Ecuador. In order to collect funds, the students are selling all kinds of goods, including special T-Shirts they have created (see your friendly department chair pointing to one of the shirts in Chaucerian manner). If you are interested in supporting the project, please check out our students' website. You can purchase T-shirts in Pam's office on the 6th floor of Sprau Tower.

Celebrating Jaimy's NBA

Dear friends of the English Department,

Western Michigan University will be celebrating Jaimy Gordon's National Book Award in style with a reading on Monday, December 13, from 3:30-5:30 p.m. in the Richmond Center, Room 2008 (followed by a reception in the lobby). All English Department faculty, staff, students, alumni/ae, and emeriti/ae are invited to attend.

See you all there,

Richard

Fiction Writer Christine Sneed Reads Her Work: Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our fourth reading of the Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re honored to have fiction writer Christine Sneed read her work this Wednesday, Dec. 1st, at the WMU Bernhard Center, in room 105-107, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

New MLA Shakespeare Teaching Anthology

MLA has accepted Meg Dupuis' and Grace Tiffany's collection of essays on teaching The Taming of the Shrew, and will publish it as a volume in its world literature teaching series. The collection brings together contributions from twenty-seven college and university instructors in English and theater departments throughout the country.

Rypma publishes Chapbook

Wardrop Wins NEA Fellowship

It is my great pleasure to announce that Daneen Wardrop is the recipient of a coveted Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry, awarded by the National Endowment of the Arts.  Selected through an anonymous review process, the fellowships encourage the production of new works of literature by allowing writers the time and means to write. The Creative Writing Fellowships alternate annually between poetry and prose. This year, the NEA received 1,063 eligible applications; the 42 poets recommended will each receive a fellowship of $25,000. Please join me in congratulating Daneen on this wonderful success. rju

Zorn Play to Open on November 19

Gordon Wins National Book Award

Dear friends of the English Department,

This is to let you know that Jaimy Gordon is this year's recipient of the National Book Award in the "Fiction" category for her 2010 novel Lord of Misrule. To contextualize the significance of her success, please consider this: In 1950, publishers, editors, writers, and critics decided to celebrate the first annual National Book Awards, an award given to writers by their own peers. The American Book Publisher’s Council, The Book Manufacturers’ Institute, and The American Booksellers’ Association jointly sponsored the Awards, bringing together the American literary community for the first time to honor the year’s outstanding achievements in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. In later years, Science, Philosophy and Religion, History and Biography, Arts and Letters, Translation, Contemporary Thought, Autobiography, First Novel, Original Paperback, and Children’s Book were added as categories. Over the years, recipients in "Fiction" have included the likes of William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Thornton Wilder, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Susan Sontag, and Peter Mathiessen, to name but a few. For the National Book Foundation's page on Jaimy's award and novel, please see HERE.

Please join me in congratulating Jaimy who, by winning this prestigious award, brings attention to our excellent Creative Writing Program, department, college, and university. Jaimy's award comes after last year's nomination of alumna Bonnie Jo Campbell for the same high honor.

With collegial regards and congrats to Jaimy,
Richard

Sigma Tau Delta English Studies Conference Nov. 20 in Brown Hall

Faculty, staff, students, and the public are invited to the Fall 2010 Sigma Tau Delta English Studies Conference (ESC) on Saturday, November 20. The ESC will get underway at noon in 3025 Brown Hall, with parallel sessions to run until 5 p.m. in 3002, 3003, 3017, and 3048 Brown.

Held every fall and spring semester, the ESC is the signature campus event of the Alpha Nu Pi chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society. The ESC features the best original scholarly and creative work of WMU students and invites submissions from students campus-wide. Membership in Sigma Tau Delta is not required for participation.

27 students will present their work on Saturday, so please join us as we celebrate these fine students and their creative and scholarly achievements!

FALL 2010 ENGLISH STUDIES CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS

Brittany L. Balyeat

Ali Billedeaux

Jessica Bixel

Peter Cullen Bryan

Tim Buchanan

Anthony Cerullo

William Cope

Danielle Favorite

Analiese Grohalski

Christopher Hart

Sarah Hercula

Ian Hollenbaugh

Kenny Jakubas

Bruce Lack

Lauren Lilly

Katie O’Brien

Courtney Ochab

Peter Owens

Kara Anne Pauley

Sean Pickett

Gena Reist

Sean Rodeman

Jacob Smallegan

Valerie Smolarkiewicz

Sara Stratton

Michelle Szeibach

Drew Wolford

English Department honored for support of Russian Festival

Last week, Kalamazoo's 15th Russian Festival took place, this year bringing to town Dr. Vycheslav Vladimirovich Moshkalo, Cultural Attaché at the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the USA in Washington, DC, and Robert Alexander, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Kitchen Boy, a historical novel of revolutionary Russia. As part of the many events, which included the Russian Studies Conference at WMU, the English Department was honored for its continuous co-sponsorship over the last 13 years. Professor Judi Rypma, Conference Director, also recognized the Haenicke Institute for Global Education and the Lee Honors College for their support of the annual event.

Submission deadline for The Laureate coming up

The editors at The Laureate would like you to know that our deadline for submissions is coming up, and we need your help in promoting this wonderful publishing opportunity.
The Laureate is Western Michigan University's only undergraduate literary journal, sponsored by Lee Honors College. Students do not have to be English majors or honors college students to submit. We accept all genres-- short fiction, poetry, playwriting, nonfiction, drawing and photography. However, we need of more short fiction, nonfiction, and playwriting submissions. Attached is a flyer that we hope you will pass on to your students.
Please note: our deadline for submissions was recently changed to December 15th. Students may submit as many works as they want and all entries may be submitted to thelaureatecollection@gmail.com. We accept longer works as well. If you or your students have any questions, they can email us at the address listed above or visit our website at thelaureate.tumblr.com.

CFP: Computers & Writing

Dear Colleagues,
The deadline to submit proposals for Computers and Writing 2011 has been extended to Monday, November 22. Please help us get the word out by forwarding this message to your colleagues and other lists you subscribe to.
The conference, hosted by the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan, will take place in Ann Arbor, MI from May 19-22. Visit http://sweetlandcandw2011.com to submit your proposal.
Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you in Ann Arbor!
The Conference Organizing Committee

Tonight at the KBAC: Jake Adam York and Traci Brimhall

Poets In Print
November 13, 2010
7pm (doors open at 6:30)

Jake Adam York and Traci Brimhall with broadsides by Kip Deeds and Michelle Webster.

Traci Brimhall is the author of Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review Online, FIELD, Indiana Review and Southern Review. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a former Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Jake Adam York is the author of three books of poems-Murder Ballads (2005), winner of the 2005 Elixir Press Prize in Poetry, A Murmuration of Starlings (2008), selected by Cathy Song for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and winner of the 2008 Colorado Book Award in Poetry, and Persons Unknown (2010), forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press/Crab Orchard in October 2010. York's poems have appeared in Anti-, Blackbird, The Cincinnati Review, DIAGRAM, Diode, Greensboro Review, New South, Northwest Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, Southern Spaces, Third Coast, and other journals.


The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center
Suite 103A, Park Trades Center
326 W. Kalamazoo Avenue
Kalamazoo, MI 49007
269/373-4938
www.kalbookarts.org

Comparative Drama's Fall Issue

Comparative Drama's fall issue, volume 44.3, arrived last week. This issue contains the following contributions:

Essays
“Are we turned Turks”: English Pageants and the Stuart Courtview abstract
David M. Bergeron

Celebrating Idleness: Antony and Cleopatra and Play Theoryview abstract
Abigail Scherer

Katherine Philips as Political Playwright: “The Songs Between the Acts” in Pompeyview abstract
Anne Russell

Music and Religious Compromise in John Bale’s Playsview abstract
Katherine Steele Brokaw

Reviews
REED: Lincolnshire, ed. James Stokes
reviewed by Victor I. Scherb

The English Clown Tradition from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare, by Robert Hornback
reviewed by Peter Cockett

Mummings and Entertainments, by John Lydgate, edited by Claire Sponsler
reviewed by Roger A. Ladd

Storytelling and Drama: Exploring Narrative Episodes in Plays, by Hugo Bowles
reviewed by Mustafa Kemal Mirzeler

Renaissance Earwitnesses: Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity, by Keith M. Botelho
reviewed by Jennifer C. Vaught

English PhD in Hong Kong

Poet Dennis Hinrichsen, Poet David James, and Fiction Writer Adam Schuitema Read Their Work: Alumni Reading, Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our third reading of the Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re very honored to have three alumni authors: poet Dennis Hinrichsen, poet David James, and fiction writer Adam Schuitema. They will read their work this Thursday, Nov. 11th, at the WMU Bernhard Center, in room 157-158, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

Stony Brook $1000 Short Fiction Prize

The 2011 Stony Brook $1000 Short Fiction Prize, now in its 20th year, welcomes undergraduate students from all over the United States and Canada to submit original fiction of 7,500 words or fewer. The judges are looking for lively storytelling and unique voices.

Eligibility
Only undergraduates enrolled full time in United States and Canadian universities and colleges for the academic year 2010-11 are eligible.

Guidelines
Submissions of no more than 7,500 words. All entries must be accompanied by proof of current undergraduate enrollment. No fax or electronic submissions. Submission assumes Stony Brook's right to publish winning stories on its Web site. For complete submission guidelines, visit www.stonybrook.edu/fictionprize

Deadline
March 1, 2011. All applications postmarked after the deadline will be returned unopened.

Mail Submissions To:
John Westermann
Director, The Stony Brook $1,000 Short Fiction Prize
Stony Brook Southampton
MFA program in Writing and Literature
239 Montauk Highway
Southampton, NY 11968

Joslin to "read dress" at UM-Flint

UM-Flint will welcome Dr. Katherine Joslin from Western Michigan University as a leading scholar speaking about her work on Edith Wharton. She’ll present “Reading Dress: The Fiction of Edith Wharton,” which "Intimate Apparel" Director and UM-Flint Theatre Professor Carolyn Gillespie says makes a fascinating intersection in exploring the role of material culture in women’s lives.
The connection rings even deeper as “Intimate Apparel” is set in 1905, the same year Wharton’s blockbuster novel “The House of Mirth” was published.
Joslin's most recent new book, Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion (UPNE, 2009), places Wharton's fiction and non-fiction in the context of fashion design, labor history, and women's dress reform from the corseted and bustled silhouettes of the late nineteenth century to the flowing angles of the twentieth. Joslin will speak at 4 p.m. Nov. 11 in Room 164 of French Hall at UM-Flint. The public is welcome to attend.

The Obama Phenomena

SIGN UP NOW: INTRO to ENGLISH STUDIES, SPRING 2011

You always wanted to get a better picture of what the field of English Studies is all about? You always wanted to know about internships, jobs after graduation, skill sets and kinds of knowledge that your degree in English might provide you with?  

Well, then sign up for INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH STUDIES, Spring 2011.

For more info, check out these three video clips, written and produced by Dr. Gwen Tarbox:

VIDEO 1

VIDEO 2

VIDEO 3

Sigma Tau Delta to Induct Largest Class in Chapter History on November 7

Please join the Alpha Nu Pi chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society, as we welcome our Fall 2010 inductees on Sunday, November 7, at 3 p.m. The induction ceremony and reception will be held in 3025 Brown.

And as always, there will be cake.

As of this writing, 50 undergraduate and graduate students have qualified for membership and will be inducted on Sunday, comprising the largest induction class in our chapter's history.

Please see below for the list of inductees.

Thanks to institutional support from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English, as well as generous donations from faculty, all 50 inductees are able join Sigma Tau Delta free of charge.

The Alpha Nu Pi chapter extends its deepest thanks to all who have contributed to the membership fund. Sigma Tau Delta membership changes lives, and free membership makes it possible now for all students who meet the academic standards to join.

So please join us on Sunday to accept our thanks in person, to cheer on these wonderful students, and to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the granting of our charter.

Fall 2010 Sigma Tau Delta Inductees:

• Brenna Alholm
• Hassan Al-Momani
• Michelle Andrus
• Kyle Blasco
• Sara Bower
• Nayt Boyt
• Kylie Cheevers
• Gretchen Colman
• William Cope
• Eric Cron
• Abby Dame
• Adam Dietz
• Lauren Dixon
• Dana Hall
• Ashley Harper
• Elizabyth Hiscox
• Sarah Jones
• Elyse Jozlin
• Jeanine Kemmer
• Amanda Kissman
• Angela Kramer
• John Kreider
• Chandel Lawrence
• Erika LaFerier
• Jacob Lewis
• Megan Lipp
• Hannah Lucero
• William D. Martin
• Maureen Mead
• Cody Mejeur
• Megan Miller
• Ambrosia Neldon
• Rachel Neubauer
• Melissa Nichols
• Kelly O'Keefe
• Elan Pavlinch
• Katherine Peterson
• Sean Pickett
• Gena Reist
• Justin Reynolds
• Andrew Rhodes
• Jessica Rungaitis
• Jacob Smallegan
• Valerie Smolarkiewicz
• Nora Strehl
• Cora Supenski
• Jacob Swanson
• Michael Venner
• Kristine Voss
• Andrew Wolford

CFP: new journal - "Authorship"

*Authorship*

*Call for Contributions*

The peer-reviewed, open access e-journal *Authorship*, planned to go online
in the summer of 2011 and to appear twice a year, is seeking submissions for
its inaugural issue. The journal aims to offer a venue in which to describe
diverse historical and discursive settings of authorship, and to grapple
with the complex issues of authorial authority, independence or
interdependence, and self-fashioning. The Romantic or New Critical concept
of the solitary genius or auteur (if indeed such an entity ever existed at
all) has for decades now been the subject of intense critical scrutiny and
revision; as a result, what the general public might once have thought of as
authorial agency is now submerged in an elaborate tissue of critical
feedback, textual instability, editorial intervention, and accidents of
publishing, branding, and spin. And yet the Author persists, as a
nomenclature, as a catalogue entry, as a biographical entity, as a popular
icon, and as an assumed agent of creativity and innovation. In analyzing
cultural formations of 'authoriality' as they developed historically, over a
long period of time and in a variety of geographical locations, in relation
to cultural networks and social change, to transformations of the media, as
well as to changing perceptions of gender and personhood, *Authorship* hopes
to foster a more refined and precise theoretical and historical
understanding of the complex ideological, technological and social processes
that transform a writer into an author. We therefore welcome articles in
English on the cultural performance of authorship in any contemporary or
historical literary milieu.


Topics include, but are not limited to:

- Authorship across and within diverse languages, literatures, and
geographical locations: colonial, transatlantic, transnational, translated,
polyglot.

- Varieties of authors: dramatists, novelists, poets, journalists, sages,
critics, humorists; authors as entertainers, public intellectuals,
moralists.

- Authenticity, authority, agency, attribution.

- Authorship and the canon.

- Gender and authorship: interrogating putative "feminine" and "masculine"
models of writing, self-fashioning, and getting published.

- Fame, infame, disfame, lack of fame; the self-creation, branding and
reception of authors.

- Anonymity, pseudonymity, and authorial personae.

- Authors and collaboration; single and multiple authors. Authors and
cultural networks.

- The quotidian activities of writers as they relate to the public image of
authors.

- Translation, editing, redacting, and reviewing considered as kinds of
authorial performances.

- Authorship and the marketplace; authors and patrons; authorship and
intellectual property.

- The textual re-creation of authors by editors, publishers, and printers.

- Authorship and/in the material book; authorship & new technologies (film,
digital media, the internet).



Submissions may be sent to the editors (mailto: authorship@ugent.be). The
recommended length for articles is about 5,000 words, and the deadline to be
considered for inclusion in the first issue is 1 May, 2011. See the website
of *Authorship *at http://www.authorship.ugent.be/ for more information and to sign up for email notification of future issues.



This journal is an initiative of the Research project on Authorship as
Performance (RAP). For further information, visit http://www.rap.ugent.be/



--
Dr. Sören C. Hammerschmidt

Postdoctoral Research Fellow/Postdoctoraal onderzoeker
Research on Authorship as Performance (www.rap.ugent.be)
English Department/Vakgroep Engels
Ghent University/Universiteit Gent
Room 130.033
Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent
Belgium/België

soren.hammerschmidt@ugent.be

http://www.rap.ugent.be/index.php?id=15&type=content
http://www.english.ugent.be/sorenhammerschmidt

Poet Beckian Fritz Goldberg Reads Her Work: Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our second reading of the Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series, cosponsored by New Issues Poetry & Prose. We’re very honored to have poet Beckian Fritz Goldberg read her work this Thursday, Nov. 4th. The reading will take place at the WMU Bernhard Center, in room 105-107, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

Intro to English Studies: The Movie

This spring, Drs. Meg Dupuis and Jil Larson will be teaching ENGL 2980-15372: Introduction to English studies on Wednesdays from noon to 1:50 pm. The course is ideal for English majors, English minors, or students who are interested in English Studies. In order to publicize the course, we've made a video -- please consider playing it for your classes (especially 1000, 2000, and 3000 level courses) and posting on your blogs or websites.

Intro to English Studies: The Movie

Eagleton on Wilde at Notre Dame

Terry Eagleton will deliver the Notre Dame Department of English public lecture "The Contradictions of Oscar Wilde" at 4:30 PM in the Hesburgh Center Auditorium on Wednesday, November 3rd.

The Fall 2010 issue of Third Coast is now available! The issue includes work by Jake Adam York, John Matthew Fox, David Wagoner, Patty Seyburn, Keith Ratzlaff, Jennifer Fawcett and many others. There's also an interview with Alicia Ostriker AND a Symposium on Writing and the Midwest (with contributions from Eula Biss, Mark Halliday, Patricia Henley, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and our own Bill Olsen, Nancy Eimers and Stuart Dybek, among others). It's a cornucopia of literary delights.

To order a copy, visit http://thirdcoastmagazine.com, stop by the Third Coast office, or email Emily Stinson. We'll also have issues available at our Nov. 6 party (7-9pm at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center).

Sweeney receives Graduate College support

Creative Writing Graduate Student Chad Sweeney is the recipient of a competitive Graduate Student Research and Travel Grant by the WMU Graduate College. Congrats!

academic publishing internship opportunities

Comparative Drama, WMU’s scholarly journal devoted to the study of drama, invites applications for an internship position in Academic Publishing for the Spring 2011 semester.

Comparative Drama seeks three exceptional students to participate in the journal’s production for a semester term. The students will gain valuable, hands-on publishing experience and exposure to advanced academic writing.

Interns will meet with an editor once a week and attend editorial meetings. Responsibilities include reading essay contributions, fact checking, researching humanities databases, and assisting with editing and correspondence.

All undergraduate English majors are encouraged to apply. The internship will be helpful especially for students pursuing careers in publishing and/or who wish to attend graduate school. The internship will serve as an elective toward the English major. For students majoring in Practical Writing, the internship can substitute for 3620, “Readings in Creative Nonfiction,” or 3700, “Writing Creative Nonfiction.” Contact comparative-drama@wmich.edu for more information.

comparative drama staff

Eve Salisbury, Editor

Anthony Ellis, Associate Editor         

Cynthia Klekar, Associate Editor
Nick Gauthier, Editorial Assistant

comparative-drama@wmich.edu

 

Academic Publishing: Internship Application

(Spring 2011 semester)

Completed applications are due by 4:00 p.m. on Friday, November 12, 2010, to Professor Anthony Ellis’s mailbox in the English Department main office, 6^th floor, Sprau Tower. For questions, please contact either Professor Cynthia Klekar (cynthia.klekar@wmich.edu or 387-2600) or Professor Ellis (anthony.ellis@wmich.edu or 387-2606).

Name: ______________________________________________________________________

Address: _____________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

Phone:          ______________________________________ 

Email:          ______________________________________

Major:          ______________________________________

Minor:          ______________________________________

Major GPA:         ______________________________________

Please submit a one-page explanation of why you are interested in completing an internship with Comparative Drama.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

CFP Michigan Academy 2011 Annual Meeting

CALL FOR PAPERS

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE SECTION

Michigan Academy 2011Annual Meeting

MARCH 11. 2011

Saginaw Valley State University, University Center, Michigan

TWENTY MINUTE PAPERS

ON ANY ASPECT OF LITERATURE

BRITISH, AMERICAN, ETHNIC, COMPARATIVE, LITERATURE AND FILM

LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE

Some  Suggested Areas

Interdisciplinary approaches to Literature

From Literature into  Film

Popular Culture and Literature

Seventeenth and Eighteenth  Century Literature

Shakespeare and the Renaissance

Ethnic Voices in  Literature

Victorian Literature

Modern and Contemporary Literature

Foreign Literature in English

Submit 200 Word abstracts to the Michigan Academy Website. For questions concerning the Language and Literature Section Contact

Maureen Thum

Department of English

University of Michigan-Flint

mthum@umflint.edu   ( “Michigan Academy” as Subject)

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: December  23, 2010

Please Submit 200 word Abstracts on the

Michigan Academy Website:  http://themichiganacademy.org/

ENGL 1000 student wins second place in WMU Essay Contest

One of our English 1000 students, Petter Kerizareth, was a finalist in the university-wide "Grab the Reins" essay contest held last month.  Petter is a student in Joe Law's ENGL 1000 class and his essay, "Who helped Me Grab The Reins", won second prize.  Though this year's "Grab the Reins" contest is finished, other students in Joe's class are interested in writing essays about who has inspired them to attend Western.  So, Joe is organizing his own essay contest for these students during the month of November, and Erinn J. Bentley, Director of Developmental Writing, will be serving as the contest's judge.

Chad Sweeney to be read on NPR

Garrison Keillor will read Chad Sweeney's poem on the Writer's Almanac on NPR this Halloween Sunday.  The poem is "The Methodist and His Method" from the new book Parable of Hide and Seek. 

Also Chad has just won a Travel Grant from WMU to support his book tour and readings from Farsi translations at the ALTA translators conference in Philadelphia. His cotranslation of the Iranian poet H.E. Seyeh's Selected Poems 1946-2000 will be published by White Pine Press next year.

Utz @ MEMESAK Conference

Richard Utz delivered the plenary lecture, "Medievalism and Medieval Romances," at the 2010 International Conference of the Medieval and Early Modern English Studies Association of Korea (MEMESAK) at Ewha Womans [sic] University, Seoul. The conference, which united scholars from the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and the United States, was entitled, "The Once and Future Romance: The Transformation of Romance Tradition in the Middle Ages and Beyond." Utz also delivered a seminar, entitled "The Colony Writes Back: F.N. Robinson's Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and the Translatio of Chaucer Study to the United States," to faculty and graduate students from Ewha Womans University, Seoul National University, Sogang University, and Yonsei University.

Why Mark Twain Matters

Profs. Lisa Minnick and Nicolas Witschi were recently interviewed by a writer for the A&E section of the Kalamazoo Gazette regarding the forthcoming publication by the University of California Press of an authoritative, uncensored edition of Autobiography of Mark Twain . See the full story here.

Christoph Irmscher of Indiana U. to Speak about American Literature and Sustainability on 10/28

On Thursday, October 28, 2010, Christoph Irmscher, professor of English at Indiana University, will visit WMU to participate in the English Department’s Scholarly Speakers Series.
Dr. Irmscher will give the lecture “Straw Leaves, Table Bugs, and Birch-Bark Poems: Sustainability in American Literary Culture” at 7 pm in Brown Hall 3025. In this lecture, he will discuss an art exhibit on literature and sustainability that he curated this fall at IU’s Lilly Library.
Prof. Irmscher teaches and writes about nineteenth-century American and Canadian literature and culture, and has a particular interest in ecocriticism. His published books The Poetics of Natural History: From John Bartram to William James (Rutgers UP, 1999), an edition of the writings of John James Audubon (Library of America, 1999), Longfellow Redux (UP of Illinois, 2008), and the anthology A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History (Temple UP, 2009), co-edited with Alan Braddock. He recently completed a book about the nineteenth-century anti-Darwinist Louis Agassiz, which also seeks to understand the beginnings of graduate instruction in this country.
This speaker has worked extensively with public institutions, the National Park Service, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Maine Historical Society, and Harvard University’s Houghton Library, where he guest-curated the recent Bicentennial Longfellow exhibit.
Dr. Irmscher’s visit is being co-sponsored by WMU’s Environmental Studies Program.
Please contact Professor Anthony Ellis of the English Department for further information at (269) 387-2606 or anthony.ellis@wmich.edu.

Newberry Grad Seminars (Jan-March 2011)

Registration is now open for this Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies Winter 2011 graduate seminar:

Disability and Marginality in Medieval England and France
Professor Edward Wheatley, Loyola University Chicago
2:00-5:00 p.m. Thursdays, January 6 - March 10 at the Newberry Library, Chicago

Limited enrollment: www.newberry.org/renaissance/consortium/consortiumsems.html#wheatley

Printable flyer--please post and distribute: www.newberry.org/renaissance/consortium/WheatleySeminar.pdf

Enrollment fees are waived for graduate students from Center for Renaissance Studies consortium institutions. Faculty auditing is encouraged.

Registration is also open for this Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies Winter 2011 graduate seminar:

The Anglo-Saxon Seminar: Masculinity and the Anglo-Saxons
Professor Allen Frantzen, Loyola University Chicago

2-5 p.m. Fridays, January 7 to March 11 at the Newberry Library, Chicago

Limited enrollment: www.newberry.org/renaissance/consortium/consortiumsems.html#frantzen

Printable flyer--please post and distribute: www.newberry.org/renaissance/consortium/FrantzenSeminar.pdf

Enrollment fees are waived for graduate students from Center for Renaissance Studies consortium institutions. Faculty auditing is encouraged.

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Faculty and graduate students from Center for Renaissance Studies consortium schools are eligible to apply for travel funding to attend Center for Renaissance Studies programs or to do research at the Newberry Library. Contact your school's faculty representative for details: www.newberry.org/renaissance/consortium/exec.html. The Center's main web page is: www.newberry.org/renaissance.

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Gordon nominated for National Book Award

Please check HERE for excellent news about Jaimy Gordon's forthcoming novel, Lord of Misrule.

Third Coast Magazine Celebrates 15 years

"Mark your calendars!  Third Coast magazine is having a 15th Anniversary Celebration/Fall Issue Release Party on Saturday, Nov. 6, from 7-9pm, at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center (located in the Park Trades Center, 326 W. Kalamazoo Avenue). The celebration will include readings, refreshments and live music.  It's free and open to the public! (Tell your students!  Tell your friends!).
Featured readers include  Nancy Eimers, William Olsen, and Monica Berlin, who are part of the Fall 2010 issue's Symposium on Writing and the Midwest.  Austin Bunn will also be performing his one act play "Basement Story," from the Spring 2010 issue. Live music will be provided by the always wonderful Joe Gross.
More details to follow....  For now, save the date and plan to help celebrate a decade and a half of Third Coast, WMU's own national literary magazine."

All best,
Laura
--
Laura Donnelly
Instructor of English
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
laura.k.donnelly@wmich.edu

Book Arts for Poets Reading

(left) Sheep, From Indigo by Susan Ramsey; 

(right) pages from Joe's Garage by Elaine Koren Seaman

Book Arts for Poets, an Exhibition and Reading
Saturday, October 23, 7 to 9 p.m., doors open at 6:30

KBAC Gallery, 103A Park Trades, 326 W. Kalamazoo Avenue

During the summer of 2010 six local poets participated in a six-week workshop in which they created limited-edition handmade books at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. These poets include Nina Feirer, Shanda Hansma Blue, Conrad Hilberry, Elizabeth Kerlikowske, Susan Ramsey, and Elaine Seaman. The poets made handmade paper covers for the books, created relief print illustrations, and sewed the books together by hand.

For this event the poet’s books will be displayed in the gallery, and they will read from their work. Please join us for this special exhibition and reading.

Tiffany on Shakespeare

Grace Tiffany's "Being English through Speaking English: Shakespeare and Early Modern Anti-Gallicism," first presented at a conference of the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, has been published in Word and Rite: The Bible and Ceremony in Selected Shakespearean Works, edited by Beatrice Batson. Another article by Tiffany, "Rank, Insults, and Weaponry in Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy," will appear in the forthcoming issue of Papers on Language and Literature.

Thisbe Nissen Reads Her Work: Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our first reader of the Fall 2010 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re very honored to have WMU’s new fiction faculty member, Thisbe Nissen, read her work this Thursday, Oct. 7th. The reading will take place at the WMU Bernhard Center, in room 209-210, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

CFP: Newberry Grad Conference (10/15/10)

The Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies is pleased to announce:

Call for Papers for the 2011 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

Deadline for submissions: October 15, 2010

Conference dates: January 27-29, 2011

www.newberry.org/renaissance/conf-inst/gradstudents.html

www.newberry.org/renaissance/conf-inst/2011CFP.pdf: PDF flyer printable in color or black-and-white. Please distribute and post.

We invite abstracts for 15-minute papers from master's or Ph.D. students on any medieval, Renaissance, or early modern topic in Europe or the Mediterranean or Atlantic worlds. We encourage submissions from disciplines as varied as the literature of any language, history, classics, art history, music, comparative literature, theater arts, philosophy, religious studies, transatlantic studies, disability studies, and manuscript studies.

We also hope to include at least one panel of papers dealing with the digital humanities.

Priority is given to students from member institutions of the Center for Renaissance Studies consortium.

Please feel free to forward this message to others who may be interested.

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Faculty and graduate students from Center for Renaissance Studies consortium schools are eligible to apply for travel funding to attend Center for Renaissance Studies programs or to do research at the Newberry Library. Contact your school's faculty representative for details: www.newberry.org/renaissance/consortium/exec.html. The Center's main web page is: www.newberry.org/renaissance.