News from Bill Olsen

My poem "Light or Dark Speech" was selected for a Pushcart Prize
and will appear in Pushcart XXXV this winter. It appeared first in
Blackbird.

Eimers Earns Pushcart Prize

Nancy Eimers's poem "How We Thought About Toys" has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and will appear in The Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best of Small Presses 2011. The poem is from her poetry collection Oz, forthcoming on Carnegie-Mellon in winter 2011.

CFP: The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife

Conference Name: “The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife”

Date and Location: May 5-7, 2011, at The Ohio State University (Columbus,
OH).
Contact: *kjvconference@osu.edu* , see also
http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu.

The English Department at The Ohio State University will host an
international conference in 2011 on the 400th anniversary of the publication
of the King James (or Authorized) Version of the Bible. Held in *Columbus,
Ohio from May 5-7, 2011*, the conference will focus on the making of the KJV
in the context of Reformation Bible translation and printing as well as on
the KJV’s long literary and cultural influence from Milton and Bunyan to
Faulkner, Woolf, and Toni Morrison. Events will include plenary lectures and
discussions, scholarly panels, and readings by contemporary writers. An
accompanying exhibit will be mounted by the Rare Books and Manuscripts
Library.

Unlike traditional conference panels in which each participant delivers his
or her entire paper at the conference, these seminars will focus on
guided roundtable
discussions of the issues raised in a group of 8-12 position papers. To
that end, *participants **must submit materials well in advance of the
conference*, so seminar leaders can read them, formulate discussion
questions, and circulate the papers and questions to participants.
Individual seminar leaders will determine more precise schedules and seminar
requirements, once enrollments have been reviewed and approved.

*Possible seminar topics include* (but are not limited to) the Bible and
particular authors/works (Milton, Melville, Morrison, et al), the Bible and
periods or genres (e.g., Reformation, 19th century, 20th century,
African-American
Lit, American literature, postcolonial studies), the Bible and
narrative/poetic style, biblical allusion, and the Bible in popular
culture(film, graphic versions, music).


Please submit questions or project titles & statements of interest to *
kjvconference@osu.edu* by *July 1, 2010*.

New Play Project Seven Opens Thursday, May 20th at 7 PM

The seventh annual New Play Project will open Thursday, May 20th at 7 PM in the York Arena Theatre in the Gilmore Complex with the presentation of five new plays. The New Play Project presents script-in-hand staged readings of plays that have been in a rehearsal during Summer 1 with a company of actors, directors, dramaturgs and stage managers, co-taught by English Department professor Steve Feffer and Theatre Department professor Mark Liermann.

This first group of performances includes scripts by Joseph Ruppert, Nashon Halloway, Sohrab Forouzesh, David Topping and Erin Shelton.

Future New Play Project performances will take place on June 2nd (with playwrights Mickey Moses, Elle Ridge, Angela Santilli, Shana Wolstein), June 17th (with playwrights Joe Sanders and Kalamazoo College playwright, Emilia LaPenta), June 28th (with playwright James Nelson) and June 29th. The performance on June 29th will be a special performance and reception featuring the Arnie Johnston Award winning plays, including one by Kristina House, and New Play Project closing night party. Details of this event TBA. All performances are at 7 PM in the York.

Additionally, the New Play Project "Summer Stock" Company will present a full production of WMU playwright Kris Peterson's play Where the Whangdoodle Sings. Performances of Whangdoodle will play June 11th and 12th at 7 in the York.

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

CFP: Revisiting Medieval Performance

EMBODYING POWER: WORK OVER TIME JOINT CONFERENCE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THEATRE RESEARCH, THE THEATRE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION,
AND THE CONGRESS ON RESEARCH IN DANCE
Seattle, WA; 18-21 November 2010; The Renaissance Seattle Hotel
CALL FOR PAPERS & PARTICIPANTS FOR WORKING SESSIONS;DEADLINE: May 31, 2010*
Call for Papers for the Working Session entitled
REVISITING MEDIEVAL PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE, THEORY, PRAXIS
Conveners: Lofton Durham, Western Michigan University, and Jenna Soleo-Shanks, Briar Cliff University
The thousand years between the Roman theatre and Shakespeare’s stage was an extraordinarily fertile time in the history of Western performance, yet this era suffers from comparison with the adjoining periods.  Still dogged generally by the problematic inheritance of 19th century philology and, more specifically, by the evolutionary paradigms established by medieval theatre scholars in the early 20th century, the study of medieval performance is ripe for new scholarship. As Carol Symes has argued, “the medieval theatre was more multifaceted, more immediate, and more representative (in every sense) than that circumscribed by the playhouses of the Renaissance.  This is the medieval theatre we need to be studying.” Although scholars from various disciplines have made valuable and important contributions to the study of medieval performance, the future of medieval performance studies depends on the unique perspectives and specific theoretical tools of theatre scholars.  Such scholarship contributes to our appreciation of performance as a dynamic cultural form by considering, among other ideas, how performance related or reacted to existing power structures and how the bodies of performers existed in and interacted with spaces that were not exclusively meant for performance.  Theatre scholars also offer new perspectives on the limits and definitions of performance evidence.
This working group will bring together various theoretical perspectives and broad definitions of evidence, in order to explore the unique function and importance of performance in medieval cultures. We are particularly interested in three aspects of this topic: new primary source evidence or alternate applications of evidence; new or revised methodologies for approaching medieval performance practices; and theoretical applications that draw connections among disparate cultural phenomena, illuminate new bodies of evidence, and/or alter conventional understandings of medieval performance, theatre, and drama. 
Session Format and Guidelines:
Session chairs will group papers in clusters.  Each member of the cluster will be responsible for reading all papers in the cluster.  At the conference, each cluster will receive a set of questions from the session chairs, which the cluster will consider as a group during a break-out session.  After these break-out sessions, the clusters will give a summary report of their discussion to all session participants.  The session chairs will facilitate the reporting session in order to create a summary report of the questions raised, lessons learned, and possible future actions or avenues of scholarship and dissemination.  -- To apply, send a 200-word abstract and a brief bio by MONDAY, MAY 31st to BOTH lofton.durham@wmich.edu and jsoleo@gmail.com.  All participants will be required to join ASTR or CORD and register for the conference.  Please visit http://www.astr.org/Conference/WorkingSessionsGuidelines/tabid/128/Default.aspx for more information on participants' responsibilities.
Thanks for your interest,
Lofty Durham; Assistant Professor; Department of Theatre; lofton.durham@wmich.edu

May/June Poetry Events for Kalamazoo

Reading by Diane Seuss

Thursday, May 20, 7 p.m.
Stetson Chapel, Kalamazoo College

Diane Seuss will read from her new book, WOLF LAKE, WHITE GOWN BLOWN OPEN, recipient of the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Press. Books will be available for purchase and for signing. A reception will follow the reading.

Reading Celebrating the publication of Herbert Scott's Selected Poems

Thursday, June 10, 5:30 p.m.
Edwin and Mary Meader Rare Book Room, WMU's Waldo Library

Herbert Scott will be celebrated at a reading from a new selected collection of his work: The Other Life: Selected Poems of Herbert Scott 1974-2005, edited by David Dodd Lee Carnegie Mellon University Press. A reception follows the reading, which is free and open to the public.

“Poets in Print” at the KBAC
Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson

Saturday, June 12, 7 p.m.
The Kalamazoo Book Arts Center

Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson present readings from their work on Saturday, June 12, 2010. A unique broadside will be created for the event. This event is free and refreshments are served. Doors open at 6:30.

Utz in Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages

At this year's International Medieval Congress, Richard Utz presented a paper (in a section honoring Tom Shippey), "Them Philologists: Philological Practices and Their Discontents from Nietzsche to Cerquiglini."

He also published 25 entries in the new Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Robert Bjork (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010): “Ball, John;” “Clanvowe, Sir Thomas;” “Clanvowe, Sir John;” “Everyman;” “Gower, John;” “Hardyng, John;” “Hereward, ‘The Wake’;” “Higden, Ranulf;” “Hoccleve, Thomas,” “Hugh, Little of Lincoln;” “Julian of Norwich;” “Margery Kempe;” “Langland, William;” “Lydgate, John;” “Mandeville’s Travels;” “Mannyng, Robert (of Brynne);” “Paston, Family and Letters;” “Philippa of Hainault;” “Richard Rolle, of Hampole;” “Trevisa, John;” “Straw, Jack;” “Peterborough Chronicle;” “Usk, Adam;” “Metham, John;” “Medievalism;” “Literary Nominalism.”

Grace Tiffany Acquires Three Minutes of Fiction Fame (But Only Three)

Grace Tiffany traveled to Knox College in Illinois last week, where she read from her novel-in-progress about the Gunpowder Plot, Gunpowder Percy, and conducted (as outside reader) an honors thesis defense. At the Medieval Congress the following weekend, she delivered a paper entitled "Shakespeare's Miracle Plays" as one of a panel devoted to the discussion of Shakespeare's views on miracles. Fellow panelists were Hope College's John Cox and the Blackfriars Theatre's Bob Jones; the organizer was Taylor University's Joe Ricke; and the respondent was U. of Chicago's David Bevington. Grace also received word last week that her very-short story, "Subjectivity" (about the MLA convention), had been posted on NPR 's website (topic page: fiction) in connection with its three-minute fiction contest.

Spring Issue of Comparative Drama Arrives

Comparative Drama's Spring 2010 issue was published last week. Volume 44.1 includes the following contributions:

Essays
Coriolanus: Inordinate Passions and Powers in Personal and Political Governance
by Unhae Langis

Soyinka and the Dead Dramatist
by Kenneth J.E. Graham

The Biblical Intertext in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus (Or, Saul and David in Eighteenth-Century Vienna)
by Nehama Aschkenasy

Chinese Ethnicity and the American Heroic Artisan in Henry Grimm’s The Chinese Must Go (1879)
by Hsin-yun Ou

Reviews
Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spainby Barbara Fuchs
and
English Renaissance Drama and the Specter of Spain: Ethnopoetics and Empireby Eric J. Griffin
Reviewed by Hilaire Kallendorf

John Florio: The Man Who Was Shakespeareby Lamberto Tassinari
Reviewed by Scott McCrea

The N-Town Play: Drama and Liturgy in Medieval East Angliaby Penny Granger
Reviewed by Douglas Sugano

New Issues Press Poetry Title Wins National Award

Zero at the Bone (New Issues, 2009), the debut poetry collection by Stacie Cassarino has won the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from the Publishing Triangle. The other finalists were Kristin Naca's Bird Eating Bird (Harper Perennial) and Lee Ann Roripaugh's On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year (Southern Illinois University Press).

The winners were announced at the 22nd annual Triangle Awards, April 29, 2010, at the New School in NYC.

In 2009, Elaine Sexton's Causeway (New Issues, 2008) was a finalist for the same award.

Buy Zero at the Bone:
Amazon.com | spdbooks.org

June 10th Event Celebrating the Publication of Herb Scott's Poetry Collection

The life work of Poet Herbert S. Scott, a 30-year professor in Western Michigan University’s Department of English who died in 2006, will be celebrated at a reading from a new selected collection of his work at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, June 10, in the Edwin and Mary Meader Rare Book Room, Waldo Library.

The Other Life: Selected Poems of Herbert Scott 1974-2005, edited by David Dodd Lee
Carnegie Mellon University Press

A reception follows the reading, which is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Margaret von Steinen at (269) 387-3993, or via e-mail at: margaret.vonsteinen@wmich.edu.

Call for Papers,

English and Welsh Diasporas, Regional Cultures, Disparate Voices, Remembered Lives
Loughborough University, Loughborough UK, April 13-16, 2011

English & Welsh Diaspora:
Regional Cultures, Disparate Voices, Remembered Lives

13th -16th April 2011
Keynote & Plenary Speakers:
John Barrell, York University, Roger Ebbatson, Lancaster University,
Nick Groom, Exeter University, Ronald Hutton, Bristol University,
Bridget Keegan, Creighton University, Donna Landry, University of Kent,
Ruth Robbins, Leeds Metropolitan University

Performers, musicians and artists provisionally booked: BILLY BRAGG, ELIZA CARTHY,
JOHN KIRKPATRICK, HUGH LUPTON, CERI RHYS MATTHEWS, CHRIS WOOD.
Others to be announced. In addition to conference panels, there will be music and related workshops

While the histories of Scots and Irish rural and local culture are well documented, and Celtic tradition celebrated, less explored are the traditional ways of life of English and Welsh rural or local communities and identities in terms of diasporic event. ‘English & Welsh Diaspora’ aims to address all aspects of rural and regional experience, consciousness, and representation of displacement, dispossession, the transformation or destruction of communities, the idea of community, across a millennium of change and loss, from the Norman Invasion and the Harrowing of the North, the loss of Welsh and the decline of the language community in Wales, to more recent historical and cultural events, such as the closure of mines and factories, the gentrification of villages, and the closure of post offices. There will, in addition be the exploration of the historical transformation of the landscape, the relation of land to identity, regional as opposed to national identity, folklore, folk practices and oral tradition through song, dance, story-telling and forms of ritual and seasonal Practice.

Papers are welcome from all humanities disciplines, including, but not restricted to, English, History, Geography, Cultural Studies. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
Representations of agricultural labouring classes; regional narratives and representations; Brythonic traditions; George Eliot & the midlands; landscape and identity; traditional song; folklore and belief; seasonal ritual and practice, oral traditions; enclosure; myth and tradition; changing ways of life; John Clare; the English or Welsh village; Thomas Hardy; dispossession & displacement; the remains of Anglo-Saxon culture & language; riots, rebellion, & protest; agricultural & labouring class poetry; William Cobbett’s rural rides; cricket & rural life; local and communal subjectivities; ‘documentary literature’ from Woodforde to Blythe; mummers & Morris; de-Cymrisization; modern rural life; parish records & local history; disappearance of the Welsh language; the Poor law; cultural memory & oral tradition; charity & the poor; politics & policing; rural & regional dialect; parish life; gypsies, witches, poachers, highwaymen & other demonized groups; rural crafts.

Proposals of 200- 250 words are invited (deadline 30th September 2010)
For further details, or to send a proposal, please contact Julian Wolfreys (Diaspora@lboro.ac.uk)

Doing Queer Studies Now (Grad Conference-update)

Call for Papers

– Doing Queer Studies Now –

Graduate Conference

University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
October 21-23, 2010

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: PAUL AMAR (Law & Society Program, Global Studies, Feminist Studies, UC-Santa Barbara), ADAM GREEN (Sociology, U. of Toronto), JOON LEE (English, Rhode Island School of Design), HEATHER LOVE (English, U. of Pennsylvania).

WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF: DAVID HALPERIN, HOLLY HUGHES, ESTHER NEWTON, GAYLE RUBIN, VALERIE TRAUB.


What is queer about queer studies? Does queer refer to a set of topics or a mode of inquiry? What is the role of theory in queer studies? How is new scholarship bridging the social sciences and the humanities? What is the relationship between actual queer practices and queer studies? What is the relationship between scholarship and activism? How are radical sex critique and queer studies related? What are the limitations of queer?


These are some of the questions we are interested in twenty years after the emergence of queer theory. The purpose of this conference is to take stock of and provide a showcase for innovative practices and pursuits in queer studies, both in the humanities and social sciences, as well as emerging fields that bridge the two.


We are not calling for papers that engage these questions at a meta-level, but rather for work that is conditioned by them.

While we welcome a range of topics, some of the topics we are interested in include:

- the role of historical, political and economic forces in shaping queerness
- governmentality, state and biopolitics
- transnational flows of capital and migrations
- queer intersections with race, gender, class, ability, age, etc.
- queer subjectivities, experiences and identities
- queer historiography, phenomenology and temporality
- visual culture, new media

Paper abstracts of 250 to 300 words should be sent by June 1, 2010 to doingqueerstudiesnow2010@umich.edu. We wish to notify presenters by Monday, June 21. We will ask for the completed paper for respondents by October 1, 2010.

Nat O'Reilly's Chapbook "Symptoms of Homesickness" Released

Nat O'Reilly's first chapbook, "Symptoms of Homesickness," was released in Australia this week by Picaro Press (http://www.picaropress.com/). You can order a copy directly from the publisher (for about the same price as a pint of Guinness, according to the author). Nat graduated in 2008 with a PhD in English from WMU and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature and Languages at the University of Texas at Tyler. In addition to his many scholarly publications, Nat has had his poetry published in the US, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia in such journals as Antipodes, The Oklahoma Review, The White Leaf Review, and Southern Ocean Review.

Recent English Graduate Accepted to Prestigious Post-Bac Program

The staff of Comparative Drama would like to congratulate our editorial intern and recent Department of English graduate, Joshua C. Boardman, on his acceptance to the College of Liberal and Professional Studies at The University of Pennsylvania's Post-Bac program.

“The Post-Baccalaureate (Post-Bac) Classical Studies Program was founded in 1984 for students who already have a B.A. and some background in Latin and Greek, and who wish to continue their study without immediately entering an M.A. or Ph.D. classical studies program. The Post-Bac Classics Program offers such students an opportunity for rigorous training in the languages, testing their motivation for graduate work, preparing them for further study, and allowing them to experience life in a large university.”

This program is one of the best in the country of its nature and “upon completion of the post-baccalaureate programs at Penn, many graduates go on to study at some of the world’s best schools, including Cornell, Harvard, Oxford, Penn, Yale, and UCLA.”

Tiffany wins WMU Distinguished Teaching Award

It is my great pleasure to announce that Grace Tiffany is the recipient of WMU's Distinguished Teaching Award. The award is one of the most prestigious honors our institution bestows upon a faculty member and attests once again to the quality and quantity of teaching and mentoring that are hallmarks of our highly productive unit. Please join me in congratulating Grace, who is a most deserving recipient. rju

Premiere of "The Gay American" by Kristian O'Hare

The Gay American
A world premiere by Kristian O'Hare | Directed by Allison Shoemaker
May 16-19 & 23-26, 2010 at The Side Project Theatre (1439 W Jarvis Ave)

Performance Schedule
Week 1
Sunday, May 16 7:30 PM
Monday, May 17 7:30 PM
Tuesday, May 18 7:30 PM
Wednesday, May 19 7:30 PM

Week 2
Sunday, May 23 7:30 PM
Monday, May 24 7:30 PM
Tuesday, May 25 7:30 PM
Wednesday, May 26 7:30 PM

Tickets to The Gay American are $10 and may be purchased online at ruckustheater.org or by phone at (773)-769-7257.

For more information, please visit ruckustheater.org