Death of Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright who was jailed by Communists and then went on to become Czech president and a symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at age 75 on Sunday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/18/us-czech-havel-idUSTRE7BH08W20111218

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/theater/vaclav-havel-an-intertwining-of-artist-and-politician.html

Havel's website: http://vaclavhavel.cz/

Medieval Kalamazoo

A collaborative project at Western Michigan University, sponsored by the Medieval Institute, will negotiate the resonances of medieval culture in a modern North American city. The project leaders are Dr. Richard Utz (English) and Dr. Elizabeth C. Teviotdale (Medieval Institute). LEARN MORE HERE

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO A PUBLIC READING OF ADAM PASEN'S ENGL 2980 CLASS IN SCREENWRITING!

Casey Mckittrick will speak briefly on the practice of screenwriting as an art and a business. The reading is from 10:15-1:15ish in 3025 Brown Hall and PUNCH AND PIE (and some other stuff) will be served! Hope to see you all there --

The two scripts selected for the reading by the students are:

MEET MARIE by Colin McDonnell
Two lifelong friends get sent back to high school to avoid jail time for a party they threw. Their mission: to get close to Marie Carbone, daughter of New York city mobster Nicky Carbone and find some dirt on her father.

COVER YOUR EYES by Adam Stutsman
A madman in a Catholic priest robe and mask kidnaps people to create an "alternate world" where he is God and they are his mankind, by keeping them in an abandoned church.

Adam

Medieval Drama at MLA!

Eve Salisbury is scheduled to preside over a session organized by the Division on Middle English Language and Literature, Excluding Chaucer at the 127th Annual MLA Convention in Seattle, to be held January 5-8, 2012. Entitled Medieval Drama and Performative Theology, the Sunday morning panel (#680 in the program) includes:

1. “Performing Christians Performing Jews,” Sylvia Tomasch, Hunter College, City University of New York

2. “‘The Word Made Flesh’: A Barfieldian Analysis of Ritual Creation in the York Cycle,” Jefferey H. Taylor, Metropolitan State College of Denver

3. “Performing Justice: Law and Theology in the York Plays,” Emma E. Lipton, University of Missouri, Columbia

4. “‘Be Ye Thus Trowing’: Medieval Drama and Make-Believe,” Garrett P. J. Epp, University of Alberta

INQUIRE invites submissions (especially from grad students)

Inquire invites article submissions for its fourth issue, scheduled for publication in the summer of 2012. Please refer to the website for submission guidelines and suggested topics of interest: http://inquire.streetmag.org/submissions. An abridged call for papers is included below.

Thank you,

Gabrielle Kristjanson, Editor
Inquire: Journal of Comparative Literature
inquire@ualberta.ca

Call for Papers: Inquire: Journal of Comparative Literature

Literary Violence

Inquire invites article submissions that consider the relationship between literature and violence.The representation of violence in literature is commonplace and complex, occurring by various means (e.g., physical, psychological), in many forms, across all literary traditions, past and present. Literature can expose, challenge or oppose violent conditions, yet literature can also fall victim to violence, arising from internal (e.g., institutional) or external (e.g., political, economic) forces. In focussing this issue on violence (understood broadly as the exercise or exhibition of force, including any act of oppression, intimidation or unwanted control by individuals or groups, for whatever purpose), Inquire seeks to provide a forum for the investigation of tensions—private and public, regional and global—that speak to the cultural and historical production of identity and community.

Submission Deadline: March 15, 2012.

Inquire is an international, peer-reviewed journal of comparative literature based at the University of Alberta. Inquiries and submissions can be sent to inquire@ualberta.ca.

Inquire particularly seeks graduate student contributions. Also, if you would like to write a book review on the same topic, you can contact: lisaann@ualberta.ca.
---

Congratulations Sean Hoen

BOMB is pleased and proud to announce the winner and runners-up of our 2011 Fiction Contest, judged by author Rivka Galchen.


This is BOMB’s 5th year holding our fiction contest, and we are excited to reveal the winner of this year’s competition. We’re proud to report that we received over 300 submissions. Canadian-born novelist and essayist Rivka Galchen, author of 2008’s Atmospheric Disturbances, winner of the William J. Saroyan International Prize for Fiction, kindly donated her literary expertise to aid us in the difficult process of selecting the contest’s frontrunners. Judging literary merit is never simple, never black-and-white. With due consideration and diligence, Rivka has selected this year’s winner and two runners-up.

Our winner is the short story titled “Label” by Sean Hoen. Sean is a current resident of Brooklyn, but was raised in Dearborn, Michigan. “Label” is his first submission to a literary contest.

This year’s runners-up are “Thirteens” by Richard Weber, a New Yorker currently living in Carouge, Switzerland, and “The Man-Moth” by Naomi Williams of Davis, California.

Congratulations to our winner and runners-up, and here again is a list of this year’s finalists:

“The Last Days of Vander Clyde Broadway” by Christopher Backs

“Letter to Henry Miller” by Suzanne Freeman

“Crisp White Sheets” by Travis Freeman

“A Village in the Country” by Michael Halmshaw

“Aunt Gin in Solipsistic Slope” by Kristopher Jansma

“How to Render Alexa” by Kelly Shriver

“Eta Translator” by Paul Vidich

Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit and patiently awaited the contest’s results.

eLLe Kalamazoo ~ 12/8-10

Episode 5 of the local Kalamazoo ELLE project continues this week, written, directed, and featuring performances by current and former WMU students.

Purchase your ticket by midnight tonight for the eLLe/fuel fundraiser Winter Plate. Dec. 8, and they will feed you a vegan meal by fuel [unpredictably vegetarian], provide live music and include a viewing of eLLe 5 (a play series inspired by the L Word). Tickets at $35. Purchase at thisisfire.com under the events tab.

Show alone only $10, $7 for students any of the nights, Thursday through Saturday, 10:00pm.

Shakespeare's Parables

Grace Tiffany's article, "Shakespeare's Parables," a version of which was presented at the 2011 Renaissance Prose conference at Purdue, will be published in the upcoming issue of the journal Reformation.

Witschi Writes for Art Exhibit

Nic Witschi has been commissioned by Bank of America's Art in Our Communities program to write the official companion essay for an exhibition that will travel to museums around the country over the next few years. Entitled “Searching the Horizon: The Real American West, 1830-1920,” the exhibit makes its first stop at the New Britain Museum of America in Connecticut from 26 Nov. 2011 to 4 March 2012.

Steelman Seeking Eden

On November 4 graduate student Sheridan Steelman presented "Seeking Eden: The Power of Paradox in Andrew Marvell's Poetry" at the Midwest Conference on British Studies, hosted by Indiana State University.  Her essay observes that the sacredness of the green world becomes the antithesis of a rude society and therefore medicinal in its purpose: man will only find Paradise if he leaves God’s work untouched.   She discusssed Marvell’s poetry in light of colonization and the paradox inherent in man’s need to control.

"Grand Illusion" Premiere 12/4@Kalamazoo 10 ~ new Bentley film starring WMU students, faculty, alum

N.B.: tickets are FREE, but also limited (first-come, first-served) for this one-time screening at the cinema. If you want to be certain, you can reserve a seat in advance by emailing: chuckbentley@gmail.com

Comics Studies Poster Event - December 7

On Wednesday, December 7, from 4:10-6:10 pm in 4002 Brown Hall, students in ENGL 4100, Graphic Narratives, will be putting on a poster presentation of their semester projects.

If you have an interest in comics and graphic novels or if you are curious about the sort of scholarship that English students conduct in the field of comics studies, please feel free to attend. You are welcome to bring friends, colleagues, and students. As an added enticement, delicious baked goods will be on offer.

The event is set up in four sessions, each running for a half an hour. During each session, seven students will be standing next to their digital posters, ready to answer questions and to discuss their work. In the past, these sessions have been lively events, where participants and attendees have learned a great deal. Many of the students enrolled in the course are seniors, most of them are members of Sigma Tau Delta, and all of them would welcome the opportunity to show you their work.

Feel free to drop by for a few minutes -- or stay for the whole event!

Anne Fausto-Sterling visit to WMU ~ 12/1, 12/2

The WMU Department of Anthropology
Gender and Sexuality Speaker Series…

ANNE FAUSTO-STERLING

Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology and Gender Studies
Brown University

"How does a child know it is male or female?
From presymbolic to symbolic embodiment"
7-8:30 p.m.
Thursday, Dec. 1
Fetzer Center

Reception following
Free and open to the public



Faculty Seminar

9:30 a.m.
Friday, Dec. 2Moore Hall Anthropology
Seminar Room
RSVP requested but not
required to: bilinda.straight@wmich.edu

Special Student
Meeting
1 p.m.
Friday, Dec. 2
WMU Center for the Humanities
Knauss Hall
Snacks will be available


For more information contact:
bilinda.straight@wmich.edu


Sponsored by: College of Arts and Sciences, Departments of English;
Gender and Women’s Studies; Psychology; University Center for the
Humanities; University Cultural Events Committee;
Visiting Scholar Program; School of Medicine; Women’s Caucus

LINK TO WMU NEWS: http://www.wmich.edu/wmu/news/2011/11/067.html

WMU Alumni Writers Read Their Work: Fall 2011 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our final reading of the Fall 2011 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We're honored to have three WMU alumni: poet Elizabeth Knapp, fiction writer Melinda Moustakis, and fiction writer Jason Skipper. They will read their work this Thursday, December 1st. The reading will take place at the WMU Bernhard Center, room 157-158, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

The Fall 2011 issue of Comparative Drama, volume 45.3, is now available on-line at Project MUSE. Hard copies will begin mailing in early December. This volume features the following contributions:

Essays
Adapting “The Liberal Lover”: Mediterranean Commerce, Political Economy, and Theatrical Form under Richelieu
Ellen R. Welch

Why did Steele’s The Lying Lover fail? Or, The Dangers of Sentimentalism in the Comic Reform Scene
Aparna Gollapudi

“Allow, accept, be”: Terrence McNally’s Engagement with Hindu Spirituality in A Perfect Ganesh
Raymond Frontain

Opening The Notebook of Trigorin: An Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s Adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull
Zackary Ross

Play Doctor, Doctor Death: Shaw, Ibsen, and Modern Tragedy
Bert Cardullo

Reviews
Deathly Experiments: A Study of Icons and Emblems of Mortality in Christopher Marlowe's Plays
by Clayton G. MacKenzie
reviewed by Clifford Davidson

Shakespeare’s Freedom
by Stephen Greenblatt
reviewed by Coppélia Kahn

French Origins of English Tragedy
by Richard Hillman
reviewed by Hassan Melehy

Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
by Jonathan Hart
reviewed by Hillaire Kallendorf

Pageantry and Power: A Cultural History of the Early Modern Lord Mayor's Show, 1585-1639
by Tracey Hill
reviewed by Kara Northway

Performing Bodies in Pain: Medieval and Post-Modern Martyrs, Mystics, and Artists
by Marvin Carlson
reviewed by Barbara Ellen Logan

Declan Kiberd @ Notre Dame, Fri., 11/18

Call for Manuscripts

Knox Robinson Publishing (2010) is unique in that we are an international, independent publisher specializing in historical fiction, historical romance and medieval fantasy. We are keen to sign authors who write in these areas. We welcome the submission of well-written, original and engaging manuscripts in the areas in which we specialize. Unagented manuscripts direct from the author are accepted.



As an international company based in London with a presence in New York, we currently publish writers from five countries. We have enjoyed international success with our books, and we are looking for promising new writers to join us. Click here for submission guidelines.

News
Call For Reviewers
Are you an avid reader? Would you like to receive free books?

We are looking for reviewers of our upcoming novels. If you have an interest in our books and you have an active blog or if you are a regular reviewer on sites such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, we will provide free copies of our upcoming novels in ePub (iBooks and Nook), Mobi (Kindle), or PDF format. Hardcovers and paperbacks are available if essential.



To apply to become a reviewer, email us at reviews@knoxrobinsonpublishing.com. Please provide us with links to your online reviews.

Free eBooks


Medieval Fantasy

In Torquemada's Spain during the Inquisition, scholar and manuscript hunter Richard Longmoor knows that everything is not always as it seems...Read more


Historical Fiction

Geoffrey Hotspur is one of the most talented squires in the hall of John of Gaunt; but his place rests on the good will of the lady of the hall and she does not suffer fools gladly.... Read more


Historical Romance

Escaping a brutal father, Briony runs to James, the man she loves. With his family's blessing, they marry and prepare for a new life in a new country – America....Read more


Upcoming Books



ISBN - 978-1-9084830-3-4
Hardcover - 8 December
Paperback & eBook - 6 September 2012

Podcast with the author available

Easter Monday, 1809: Kirkley Hall manor house is mysteriously burgled. When suspicion falls on Jamie Charlton... Read more


ISBN - 978-0-9567901-1-8
Hardcover - 8 December
Paperback & eBook - 6 September 2012



A Viking saga that begins with a fateful kidnapping in Brittany, on to intrigue in Constantinople and ends on a battlefield in England in 1066... Read more


ISBN - 978-1-9084830-6-5
Hardcover - 8 December
Paperback & eBook - 6 September 2012

Podcast with the author available

1494 Barcelona. As Torquemada lights the fires of religious fervor, accused heretics are not the only victims..Read more


Excerpts

The Hermetica of Elysium
1498, Spain

Nadira awoke long before dawn when she felt Marcus roll onto her, his elbow digging into her ribs. He apologized before he got up from his bedding, pulling her to her feet with a strong arm. He passed his hands chastely up and down the sides of her body from her shoulders to her hips.

“Did I crush anything?” His voice was soft and low, a hint of a smile beneath the black beard.

Nadira shook her head, pulling bits of dry grass from her dark braid. He bent double, rolled his bedding with hers. "I spend days keeping you from harm only to squash you myself," he joked, his



blue eyes twinkling.The others were moving about as well, gathering the horses and loading them with bedding and tools. The two boys worked the pack animals while Garreth, already mounted, rode alone up the trail in front of them. Nadira waited until Marcus was ready with his horse, but instead of hauling her up beside him as he had always done before, he led her to one of the packhorses.... Read more


Literally Dead
Chicago, 1935

Ernest Hemingway and I met in the spring of 1935. "April is the cruelest month," a fellow expatriate of his wrote. Hemingway's train from New York was three hours late. Chill rain was falling in Chicago on its arrival. America was in its sixth year of Depression. All that and, to be blunt, the man considered by many as the greatest living prose stylist was just plain pissed about just plain everything.

I recognized him immediately. Broad, large head, bushy mustache, high forehead, and immense eyes were right off the dust jackets of his books. But his mouth was different. I had seen it



photographed clenched as he typed. Crinkled with private irony in pictures from the Twenties. Even smiling over a kudu carcass he'd bagged on safari. On the platform of Union Station that mouth was curled in the most malevolent sneer I ever encountered. Despite being forewarned about his volatile moods, I had a duty to perform...Read more


The House of Women
Leeds, England 1870

Montgomery Woodruff scowled at the low, dirty clouds as though they had appeared just to torment him. He tugged at his lapels, jerking his greatcoat close as the wind tried its best to wrestle a way into his inner garments. The end of January had been unrelenting with blizzards, storms and freezing temperatures. Woodruff entered his carriage and yanked at the folded blanket on the seat, his impatience sending it sliding to the floor.

With a muttered oath, he arranged the blanket to better suit his needs, ignoring his clerk who stood dithering in the elements waiting for last minute instructions.



Woodruff sent him a withering glare before a curt command from his driver, Sykes, sent the showy black horses away from the three-storey Georgian building to merge with the traffic in the bustling streets of the great Yorkshire town. Sighing heavily, Woodruff stretched his neck from the starched collar, trying to relax as they traversed around pedestrians and vehicles. Winter gloom and the cold sent most people hurrying home, shop keepers were packing up, women scolded children towards their own hearths while business men headed for the warmth and smoky atmosphere of expensive clubs... Read more


Harald Hardrada: The Last Viking
Coast of Brittany, 1031

The men from the sea sank for cover in the trees on the far side of the clearing, waiting for the scout to return. Across the glade they grouped together. No word was spoken by any, but a longer shaft of light from the moon lit up bearded faces both tense with expectation and alight with the anticipation of what was to come. Here and there a tongue moistened dry lips, while broken-nailed fingers flexed on the shafts of swords, axes and spears.

At length, the scout returned and spoke in a low murmur to one of the crouching men, one whose face in the moonlight was incongruous in its youthfulness, his only flaw an arm hideously scarred



by a crudely administered cauterization.

"Nothing moves, leder. No lights, no sound. What now?" Harald looked about him, gestured to another shadowy form and pointed wide and to the right. "Skallagrim - your party to cut the road."
“Aye, Harald."

Ten men rose and moved off at a trot in the direction given. The main body moved carefully and slowly through the trees until they thinned, revealing the outlines of several buildings clustered about a small, whitewashed church with a bell tower at its seaward end. Harald whistled softly, and two men turned to him.

“Thorkill and Sweyn - to the church,” he said. “That bell must not ring. Go."Read more


www.knoxrobinsonpublishing.com

Playwright Carlos Murillo Presents His Work: Fall 2011 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our fourth reading of the Fall 2011 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re honored to have playwright Carlos Murillo present his work this Thursday, November 17th. The reading will take place at the WMU Bernhard Center, room 157-158, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

Seth Abramson & Matthew Guenette

Kalamazoo Book Arts Center 

 

Poets in Print: Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011, 7-9 p.m.
Broadside artists: Elizabeth King and a collaboration between Alta Price and Jonah Koppel

Join us for the Poets in Print reading featuring Seth Abramson and Matthew Guenette. Readings are free and open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 with time to browse current exhibitions, the broadsides and books by the poets available for purchase and signing.

Seth Abramson is the author of two collections of poetry, Northerners, winner of the 2010 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Poetry & Prose, and The Suburban Ecstasies (Ghost Road Press, 2009). He is also the co-author of the forthcoming third edition of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook (Continuum, 2012). In 2008 he was awarded the J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize for Poetry, and his poems have appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Best New Poets 2008, American Poetry Review, New American Writing, Boston Review, Colorado Review, and New York Quarterly. A regular contributor to Poets & Writers magazine and The Huffington Post, he is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently a doctoral candidate in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Matthew Guenette is the author of Sudden Anthem, winner of the 2007 American Poetry Journal Book Prize from Dream Horse Press. His latest book, American Busboy, a Finalist and Editor’s Choice of the 2010 University of Akron Press Poetry Prize, will be published in 2011. His work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Barn Owl Review, DIAGRAM, Cream City Review, The Greensboro Review, Indiana Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Southern Indiana Review, and other publications. He is an English instructor at Madison College in Madison, Wisconsin.

Kalamazoo Book Arts Center

326 W. Kalamazoo Avenue, Suite 103A

Kalamazoo, MI

Nagle has Queer Time in Ireland

Chris Nagle recently returned from a conference on “Queer Temporalities” held at the Humanities Institute of Ireland, University College Dublin, where he was invited to discuss the recent work of Elizabeth Freeman, whose Time Binds conceptualizes chrononormativity, temporal drag, and erotohistoriography, offering one of the most important interventions in queer theory and cultural studies of the past decade. The event was sponsored by The(e)ories: Critical Theory & Sexuality Studies, an interdisciplinary seminar series that has been convened by Noreen Giffney and Michael O'Rourke since 2002, and which has established itself as one of the leading queer theory seminars in the world.

Sigma Tau Delta to Induct 58 on Sunday, Nov 20

Inductees, returning members, faculty, and friends of Sigma Tau Delta: Please join us on Sunday, November 20, at 3 p.m., in 3025 Brown Hall, as we welcome our Fall 2011 inductees to the Alpha Nu Pi chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. We will induct 58 new members on November 20, making the Fall 2011 induction class the second largest in our chapter’s history.

And thanks to continuing support from faculty, friends of the Department of English, Dean Alex Enyedi and the College of Arts and Sciences for the Sigma Tau Delta Membership Fund, all 58 inductees will receive their lifetime memberships free of charge. (Faculty, friends, alumni: Please click here if you’d like to contribute to the fund. A gift of only $50 makes it possible to provide a deserving student with a lifetime membership to Sigma Tau Delta.)

The festivities will include (in the immortal words of 2007-08 chapter president Dan Kenzie), a “short but moving ceremony,” with a reception to follow, featuring a cake created by WMU senior and cake baker/decorator extraordinaire Cody Mejeur (Fall 2010 inductee).

Inductees, please invite your family, friends, and significant others. Returning members, please join us in welcoming our new members.

Hope to see everyone on November 20!

Congratulations to our Fall 2011 inductees:

Shantell Ann Aiken

Brittany Marie Aguinaga

Nicole Lynnae Allen

Catherine Bailey

Briana Marie Barnett

Kalani Barbara Bates

Michael Berry

Dustin Brown

Rosie Sharhonda Capps

Micah Isaac Carlson

Emily Chaney

Andrew J. Draper

Madison Edwards

Roslyn Marie Ellis

Erin E. Faultersack

Sebastian Fryer

Beth A. Fuller

Michael Joseph Gahry

Allison Glismann

Melissa Hall

Patrick Heflin

Thomas Kimble

Valerie Krzewski

Jared Seth Madden

Kimberly Ann Mattern

Kelsey McClure

Christen McCool

Shannon Katharine McCullough

Christy McDowell

Christopher George Miller

Kaitlyn Mitchell

Benjamin Adam Moran

Ellen Rachel Murad

Jessica Neuenschwander

Erin Maureen O’Connor

Maureen Elizabeth Pfaff

Kelsey L. Pretzer

Kimberly May Reikow

Cheryl Ririe-Kurz

Jordan Samuel Rossio

Devin Ryan

Samantha Rae Sandler

Nickolas Schrader

Tracy Sever

Joshua Paul Soloc

Alex J. Stacy

Jacob P. Szydzik

Katherine Nicole TerBerg

Taline Breann Topouzian

Paige Van De Winkle

Krista Lynn Van Prooyen

Lauren Vitu

Ashley Lauren Wall

Sarah J. Watkins

Molly Elizabeth White

Jennifer Leigh Wiley

William R. Witters IV

Amy Yuengert

[CANCELLED] Hoad on Wilde and Savagery - Visiting Lecture 11/10

*************************************************************************

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN *CANCELLED* & WILL BE RESCHEDULED FOR A FUTURE DATE TBA!

*************************************************************************

NEVILLE HOAD (University of Texas-Austin)

“Wildean Savagery”

In his lecture Hoad locates Victorian origin narratives, both Darwinian ontogeny/phylogeny recapitulation and Freud's theories of psychosexual development, as sites which produced curious and deeply imbricated discourses of the primitive and the homosexual. He proceeds to investigate how racial and imperial rhetorics of savagery and sexual deviance became entrenched in the writings of Oscar Wilde as well as in public declarations about the author, particularly during his infamous 1895 trial.

Thursday, November 10, 2011
7:00PM / Knauss 2500 (Center for the Humanities)
a reception will follow


Neville Hoad is an associate professor of English and affiliated faculty with the Center for Women's and Gender Studies, the Center for African and African American Studies, and the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. He authored African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality and Globalization (Minnesota, 2007) and co-edits (with Karen Martin and Graeme Reid) Sex & Politics in South Africa (Double Storey, 2005) and currently is writing a book on the literary and cultural representations of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. His areas of research include African and Victorian literature, queer theory, and the history of sexuality.

Utz on Semantic Concepts, Temporality, and Medieval Rituals

Richard Utz recently published "Negotiating Heritage: Observations on Semantic Concepts, Temporality, and the Centre of the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals," Philologie im Netz 58 (2011): 70-87. This essay is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the "Fifth Conference on the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals" at University of Copenhagen on October 26, 2009. It seeks to review the interdisciplinary scholarship done by the Centre of the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, a project funded by the Danish National Research Foundation since 2001, from the perspective of Reinhart Kosellek's work on semantic concepts and temporality, focusing specifically on a 2009 Centre publication: Negotiating Heritage: Memories of the Middle Ages, edited by Mette B. Bruun and Stephanie Glaser as volume 4 in Brepols Publishers' book series, Ritus et Artes: Traditions and Transformations. By bringing the "father" of conceptual historiography to bear on some of the scholarship in Negotiating Heritage, the essay contributes to tracing, from a meta-perspective, the momentous mutations through which Western societies and their scholars continue to conceive their experiences of the medieval past.

Third Coast poem wins Pushcart Prize

Kathleen Flenniken's poem "Horse Latitudes," which appeared in Third Coast's Spring 2010 issue, was selected by the editors of the Pushcart Prize series for inclusion in Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses.

The FYW Professional Development Series Proudly Presents

Dr. Dànielle Nicole DeVoss

Friday November 11, 2011 in Brown 1002

Dr. DeVoss is a professor of Professional Writing in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. Her numerous publications include a National Writing Project book, Because Digital Writing Matters (in collaboration with Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and Troy Hicks) and the 2007 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award winning title, Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Ethical Issues (with Heidi McKee). Her work has also appeared in publications such as Computers and Composition; Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy; The Journal of Popular Culture; among others. See https://www.msu.edu/~devossda/bio.html for a full bio.


WORKSHOP (10:00 a.m. -11:30 a.m.)
"Text and Typography"

This hands-on workshop will provide some scaffolding discussion of the importance of text as a design element and documents as designed objects. Participants will look at some theory and scholarship about text—from rhetoric and writing studies and from graphic design. Participants will then explore different typefaces and the ways they can express meaning, and do some downloading, playing, and creating of different designed texts. All participants will leave with a jump drive of teaching materials and readings.

SEMINAR (12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.)
"Digital-Visual Rhetorics: Themes, Issues, and Questions"

This presentation will introduce seven dominant themes, issues, and questions related to issues of digital-visual rhetorics. For each of the themes, Dr. DeVoss will share contemporary, situating theory and scholarship, and also contemporary, circulating examples. After the initial discussion of the seven themes, attendees will discuss the implications of these themes in our teaching and scholarship, and work to identify other emergent themes.


If you would like to attend either the workshop or seminar (or both), please RSVP to Jessica Neuenschwander, jessica.m.neuenschwander@wmich.edu, by Friday Nov. 4, 2011.

Words, Imagination, and Calls to Action

Monday November 14th

6:00pm, Edwin & Mary Meader Rare Book Reading Room (#3016), Waldo Library, WMU

Alison Swan, Adjunct Professor, Western Michigan University

Title: No Complacency: Words, Imagination, and Calls to Action


Description: Award-winning writer and wildlands advocate, Alison Swan, has been immersed in the literary arts for as long as she can remember. Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction have been central to her connection and commitment to the wild places that have shaped her. She’ll talk about this, and read from some of the poems and prose she’s written as she works to preserve space for wild nature in an increasingly built-up Michigan.

The lecture series is co-sponsored by the WMU University Center for the Humanities and the Department of English. The reading is free and open to the public.

Poets Gerald Stern and Anne Marie Macari Read Their Work: Fall 2011 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our third reading of the Fall 2011 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re honored to have poets Gerald Stern and Anne Marie Macari read their work this Thursday, Nov. 3rd. The reading will take place at the WMU Little Theatre, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

Medievalism in 2012

As President of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism it is my pleasure to invite you to join us at the 27th Annual International Conference on Medievalism.

With collegial regards,
Richard Utz (Western Michigan University)

----------

The meeting will be hosted by the Kent State University Regional Campuses on October 18-20, 2012, and the focus will be on:

Medievalism(s) & Diversity

Is there diversity in medievalism? How has medievalism represented diversity of religion, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, gender,...? How have medievalist works supported issues concerning equity and inclusion? How have medievalist works oppressed and suppressed?    Are there elements of bigotry and discrimination? What about human rights as a medieval concept, as a contemporary concept? Media to consider might include (but are not limited to) any of the following: novels, plays, films, art works, the Internet, television, historical works, political works, comics, video games. Angles to consider might include (but are not limited to) any of the following: race, gender, sexuality, disability/ability, religion, corporation and/or class, nationality, human rights, political correctness, marginalization, anti-marginalization tactics, rewritten codes, rewritten ideologies, re-affirmed codes, re-affirmed ideologies.

Conference Location: Nestled on 200 beautiful acres, yet only minutes from the hustle and bustle of The Strip and Westfield Belden Village Mall, Kent State University at Stark provides a quiet, serene and picturesque setting for students and the community to enjoy. With rolling hills, a pond, walking trail, and a Campus Center and Food Emporium, it is located in Jackson Township, just five minutes from the Akron-Canton Airport and easily accessible from Interstate-77.

Publication Opportunities: Selected papers related to the conference theme will be published in The Year’s Work in Medievalism.

Deadline: June 1, 2012
Please send paper and/or session proposals to either Carol Robinson (Conference Chair) or to Elizabeth Williamsen (Conference Assistant Chair).

Carol L. Robinson, Conference Chair
International Conference on Medievalism
Kent State University Trumbull 4314 Mahoning Avenue, NW Warren, Ohio 44483 EMAIL: clrobins@kent.edu FAX: 330-437-0490

Elizabeth Williamsen, Conference Assist. Chair
International Conference on Medievalism
Kent State University Stark 6000 Frank Avenue, NW North Canton, Ohio 44720 EMAIL: ewilli46@kent.edu FAX: 330-437-0490

For more information, please visit: http://www.medievalism.net/

Utz presents on Robin Hood, Frenched

Richard Utz presented a paper, "Robin Hood, Frenched," at the 26th Annual International Congress on Medievalism at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He also presided over a section that discussed "Camelot on the Small Screen: Enchantment and Authority." The conference was held under the auspices of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism as whose president Utz currently serves.

New Issues Currently Accepting Submission for the First Book Prize

We are currently accepting submissions for our First Book Prize. This year's judge is Jean Valentine:

Jean Valentine won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, Dream Barker, in 1965. Her eleventh book of poetry is Break the Glass, just out from Copper Canyon Press. Her previous collection, Little Boat was published by Wesleyan in 2007. Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965–2003 was the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry. The recipient of the 2009 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, Valentine has taught at Sarah Lawrence, New York University, and Columbia.

Submissions may be sent to:

New Issues Poetry Prize

New Issues Poetry & Prose

Western Michigan University

1903 W. Michigan Ave.

Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5463

Entries can also be uploaded to submishmash: 

http://newissuespoetryprose.submishmash.com/submit.

Nagle on Poly Pedagogy

Chris Nagle’s essay on “Teaching the Polyamorous (Long) Eighteenth Century” appears as the lead piece in a new special issue on “Eighteenth-Century Studies and the State of Education” in the online journal Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe and his Contemporaries. The cluster of essays gathered there began as conference presentations from a session devoted to pedagogy at an earlier meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Nagle’s piece draws from both an introductory pilot course on the subject as well as his seminar from the current semester. The essay can be accessed through the link above.

Wed. November 9, 2011 at 7 p.m. Reading with Judith Rypma

Two WMU Poet with New Book


Judith Rypma, author of Rapunzel's Hair, Forget-Me-Not and Holy Rocks, will be reading from and autographing her new poetry book at Kazoo Books, 2413 Parkview Ave., Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008. The reading is free, and refreshments will be served. For more information, e-mail read@kazoobooks.com ; or go to the website http://www.kazoobooks.com

Scholarly Speakers Series Presents Dr. Randy Bomer

Dr. Randy Bomer, Associate Professor in the College of Education at University of Texas Austin and and Director of the Heart of Texas Writing Project, will give a talk entitled "Building a Literacy Curriculum on Student Strengths: Learning to See What Already Exists" on Thursday, October 27, at 7:00 p.m. in Brown 2028.

On Friday, October 28, Dr. Bomer will lead an informal conversation on "Teaching English for a Better World: Bringing Students into Literacy Practices for Social Change." This will take place at the new University Center for the Humanities (2500 Knauss Hall) from 10-11:30 a.m.

All department members are warmly encouraged to attend both events. Dr. Bomer's visit is co-sponsored by the WMU Department of Education and Human Development and the Third Coast Writing Project.

"The Cannibal War-Machine - Sacred Empowerment and the New World Order"

Presentation date: October 20 at 5:30 pm. at 3025 Brown Hall.

Dr. Whitehead will lead a graduate seminar for faculty and graduate students on October 21 from 10:00 to 11:00 am in 4028 Brown Hall.

Dr. Whitehead's visit has been supported by WMU's Visiting Scholars's series, the Department of Anthropology, Africana Studies, English, and Global Studies and the Haenicke Institute.

Contact Dr. Mustafa Mirzeler for more information regarding Dr. Whitehead's visit to WMU.

Thursday night October 28, 7:00, 2028 Brown

Building a Literacy Curriculum on Student Strengths: Learning to see what already exists

Sometimes, in the rush to pull a curriculum into alignment with official standards, we might neglect to consider the literacy practices in which our students already engage. But as educators have long understood, and as research is increasingly demonstrating, it's necessary to build new learning on the basis of what students already know. This conversation will allow us to become acquainted with strategies for bringing students' existing competence into the English classroom and then connecting those discoveries to the growth of advanced, academic literacies.


Friday morning 10-11:30 (probably in the Brown Humanities Center, room still awaiting confirmation)

Teaching English for a Better World: Bringing students into literacy practices for social change

Reading and writing can position students as powerless or powerful, as passive receptors or active world-changers. Teachers make decisions about the kinds of people who will be produced by the curriculum they offer, and enacting that curriculum, they help create the social world. In this conversation, we will examine first the ways the classroom itself promotes democracy, and second, some of the literacy practices we might make available to students that can build capacity in them to be agents of social justice.

Fiction Writer Sterling Watson Reads His Work: Fall 2011 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our second reading of the Fall 2011 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re honored to have fiction writer Sterling Watson read his work this Thursday, October 13th. 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.

Alumni visit Brown Hall and Medieval Literature

Robert Bradley and Karl Sandelin, English Department Distinguished Alumni 2008-2009 and 2009-2010, respectively, visited their academic home department as part of their 2011 Homecoming activities. Both of them took classes with Dr. William R. Brown, the English Department's second chair, after whom Brown Hall was named. Sandelin and Bradley were greatly pleased to see their former professor honored by the new mural recently added on the left of the Brown Hall main entrance. They also visited Richard Utz's ENGL 5300 class on The Matter of Troy in Medieval Literature, speaking to students in the class about their experience at Western and actively participating in classroom discussions about Benoit de St. Maure's Roman de Troie, Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, and other matters regarding various cultural, literary, and political translationes of texts from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages.

Mark your calendars for December 1, 2011 !

Anne Fausto-Sterling will give a public lecture in Fetzer Auditorium with schedule as follows:

> 7-7:50 p.m. Public lecture,
> 7:50-8:30 p.m. Informal Q & A with audience immediately following
> lecture
> 8:30-9:15 p.m. Reception

"5 Under 35"

The National Book Foundation’s
“5 Under 35” Fiction, 2011

5 Under 35 LogoThe National Book Foundation will recognize the 2011 5 Under 35, five young fiction writers selected by National Book Award Winners and Finalists, on Monday, November 14, once again at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn. This year’s celebration will be hosted by filmmaker and author John Waters, with poet and National Book Award Finalist Patricia Smith as DJ.

Rebecca Keith, Program Manager at the National Book Foundation, who oversees the 5 Under 35 program, comments, “Host John Waters writes in his essay collection, Role Models, ‘Don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool!’ This could well be the mantra for 5 Under 35, a program which has honored some of the best young fiction writers in the game since its inception in 2006. We’re pleased to see this year’s list of authors expand into new territory, with John Corey Whaley, the first ever Young Adult novelist honored, and Shani Boianjiu, one of our youngest 5 under 35 authors ever, at 24, who is completing the manuscript for her first novel.”

5 Under 35 Honorees

The 2011 5 Under 35 Honorees are:

* Shani Boianjiu, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid
(Hogarth, an imprint of Crown Publishers, forthcoming in 2013)
o Selected by Nicole Krauss, National Book Award Fiction Finalist for Great House, 2010

* Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
(Riverhead Books, 2010)
o Selected by Robert Stone, Winner for Dog Soldiers, 1975, and Finalist for A Flag For Sunrise, 1982 and 1983, Outerbridge Reach, 1992, and Damascus Gate, 1998

* Mary Beth Keane, The Walking People
(Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)
o Selected by Julia Glass, Fiction Winner for Three Junes, 2002

* Melinda Moustakis, Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories
(The University of Georgia Press, 2011)
o Selected by Jaimy Gordon, Fiction Winner for Lord of Misrule, 2010

* John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back
(Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2011)
o Selected by Oscar Hijuelos, Fiction Finalist for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, 1989

5 Under 35 Honorees

Shani BoianjiuShani Boianjiu was born in Jerusalem in 1987, from an Iraqi and Romanian background. She was raised in a small town on the Lebanese border. At the age of 18, she entered the Israeli Defense Forces and served for two years. She is at work on her first novel, The People of Forever Are Not Afraid.
(Photo courtesy of Shani Boianjiu)

Danielle EvansDanielle Evans is the winner of the 2011 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. A graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories 2008, and The Best American Short Stories 2010. Her collection of stories, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, is her first book. She lives in Washington, D.C.
daniellevaloreevans.com
(Photo by Nina Subin)

Mary Beth KeaneMary Beth Keane graduated from Barnard College in 1999, and received an MFA from the University of Virginia in 2005. She was a winner of the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Prize, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. One of her stories was selected as a PEN/O. Henry Recommended Story for 2009, and her first novel, The Walking People, received Honorable Mention at the 2010 PEN/Hemingway Awards. She is currently working on her second novel, and lives in Pearl River, New York with her husband and two sons.
marybethkeane.com
(Photo by Carina Romano)

Melinda MoustakisMelinda Moustakis was born in Fairbanks, Alaska and raised in Bakersfield, California. She received her MA from UC Davis and her PhD in English and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, her first book, won the 2010 Flannery O'Connor Award in Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. She is currently a visiting professor at Pacific Lutheran University. www.melindamoustakis.com
(Photo by Emily Stinson)

John Corey WhaleyJohn Corey Whaley is a former teacher from Springhill, Louisiana. Where Things Come Back is his first novel. He was named a Spring 2011 Flying Start Author by Publishers Weekly. His novel was a Spring 2011 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance and is currently a nominee for the American Library Association's Best Fiction for Young Adults 2012. The ABC Children's Group also included Whaley on their New Voices for Teens Top Ten List this year. He found an agent for Where Things Come Back through www.webook.com, being the first author to do so using this medium, and you can watch him on YouTube as WeBook’s #1 AgentInbox Success Story. For more information, visit his website, www.johncoreywhaley.com, or follow him @corey_whaley. (Photo by Ashley Bankston)


National Book Award Authors

Julia GlassJulia Glass is the author of Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction; The Whole World Over; I See You Everywhere, winner of the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Book Award; and most recently The Widower’s Tale in 2010. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her short fiction has won several prizes, and her personal essays have been widely anthologized. She lives in Massachusetts with her family. (Photo by Dennis Cowley)

Jaimy GordonJaimy Gordon’s fourth novel, Lord of Misrule, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2010, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; it also won the Tony Ryan Award for the year’s best book about horse racing. Gordon’s previous novels include Bogeywoman, a Los Angeles Times Best Book for 2000, and She Drove Without Stopping, which brought her an Academy-Institute Award from the American Institute of Arts and Letters. She has been a Fellow of the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. Among her other books are Shamp of the City-Solo and Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue. She has translated several works of Maria Beig from German, most recently Hermine, an Animal Life. Born in Baltimore, Gordon teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and in the Prague Summer Program for Writers. (Photo by Alan Ritch)

Oscar HijuelosOscar Hijuelos is the international bestselling author of eight novels, including The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, for which he became the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and a memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes. He has also received the Rome Prize and prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lives in New York City.
(Photo by Dario Acosta)

Nicole KraussNicole Krauss is the author of Great House, which won the ABA Indies Choice Honor Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is also the author of the international bestseller The History of Love, which was published by W. W. Norton in 2005. It won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Ėtranger, was named the Amazon.com Editors’ #1 Choice in Literature and Fiction, and was short-listed for the Orange, Médicis, and Femina prizes. Her first novel, Man Walks into a Room, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction and was selected as a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2002. In 2007, Krauss was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and in 2010, she was included as one of The New Yorker’s 20 under 40 best writers. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and Best American Short Stories, and her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
www.nicolekrauss.com
(Photo by Joyce Ravid)

Robert StoneRobert Stone is the acclaimed author of seven novels: Dog Soldiers (winner of the National Book Award), A Hall of Mirrors, A Flag for Sunrise, Children of Light, Outerbridge Reach, Damascus Gate, and Bay of Souls. His short-story collection, Bear and His Daughter, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His memoir, Prime Green, was published in 2006. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stone lives with his wife in New York City. His most recent book, a collection of short stories entitled Fun with Problems, was published in 2010. (Photo by Gigi Kaeser)

The 5 Under 35 Celebration’s Host

John WatersJohn Waters is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and visual artist best known for his cult films, including Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, and Cecil B. DeMented. He is most recently the author of Role Models and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
(Photo by Greg Gorman).


The 5 Under 35 Celebration’s Featured DJ

Patricia SmithPatricia Smith is the author of six books of poetry, including Blood Dazzler, chronicling the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, and one of NPR's top five books of 2008; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection. Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah will be released in spring of 2012. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Tin House, and both Best American Poetry 2011 and Best American Essays 2011. She is a Pushcart Prize winner and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. She is a professor at the City University of New York/College of Staten Island, and is on the faculty of both Cave Canem and the MFA program of Sierra Nevada College. And she plays good music. http://wordwoman.ws/
(Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths)

Our Video Interviewer, Emma Straub

Emma StraubEmma Straub is the author of the story collection Other People We Married, as well as the forthcoming novel Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures. She also works as a bookseller at Brooklyn's BookCourt. Follow her thoughts about books, baked goods, and trashy television @emmastraub, and at www.emmastraub.net.




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Press inquiries
contact Sherrie Young
syoung@nationalbook.org

2011 5 Under 35 is
sponsored by:

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Photobooth LogoPhotography provided by
The Photobooth Party

Images from Photo Booth Party, 2010

View Photobooth images from the 2010 5 Under 35
Celebration

5 Under 35 Selections

2010
2009
2008
2007
2006

Donations and support
provided by:

BOE

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Stella Artois

Purdue Conference on the King James Bible

Beth Bradburn and Grace Tiffany presented papers last week at the biannual conference on Renaissance prose at Purdue University, held this year in honor of the 400th anniversary of the first publication of the King James Bible. Beth Bradburn's paper discussed the KJV's status as an (or as the) original seventeenth-century prose poem. Grace Tiffany discussed Shakespeare's adaptation of biblical parables to comedy, history play, and tragedy.

Utz reviews Post-Historical Middle Ages

Richard Utz recently reviewed the following volume for the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 110/4 (2011), 520-22: 

The Post-Historical Middle Ages. Edited by Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 

The front cover of this essay collection gives equal space to a picture of Karl Marx and a medieval manuscript, but neither of them is at the center of what the editors and contributors really have in mind for their readers. In fact, George Edmondson’s essay on the “Naked Chaucer” in Brian Helgeland’s 2001 movie A Knight’s Tale may serve to explain why Marx and manuscripts can only serve as backdrops to the scholarship presented in this volume....

READ COMPLETE REVIEW HERE.