Bradburn and McKittrick Present at Narrative Conference

Two WMU English faculty presented papers at the International Conference on Narrative, March 15-17, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Beth Bradburn presented "The Broken Voice: Narrative in the Lyric Sequence" as part of a panel on narrative poetry, and Casey McKittrick presented "Hitchcock's Appetites: Gender, Hunger and Identification" as part of a panel on Alfred Hitchcock.

Re-Make of Utz/Emery, ed., Cahier Calin

Richard Utz and Elizabeth Emery, editors of Makers of the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of William Calin (originally published earlier this year in a bibliophile print edition and electronically with bepress.com) have published the Festschrift with lulu. The twenty well-known scholars featured in this volume for William Calin engage in personal reflection about the ways scholars, writers, musicians, and artists from different periods have "made" the Middle Ages by exploring it in their own work.

Contributors: Barbara K. Altman, Pam Clements, Elizabeth Emery, Karl Fugelso, Caroline Jewers, Alicia C. Montoya, Gwendolyn A. Morgan, E.L. Risden, Nils Holger Petersen, William D. Paden, F. Regina Psaki, Carol L. Robinson, Roy Rosenstein, Tom Shippey, Jesse G. Swan, M.J. Toswell, Richard Utz, Kathleen Verduin, Veronica Ortenberg West-Harling, Gayle Zachmann.

Hybridity Conference @ Notre Dame (3/29-31)

More info, including the schedule of speakers & events:
http://hybridie.nd.edu/

(n.b.: the Eagleton talk is this evening, Thurs., 3/29)

Two Upcoming WMU-NCTE Student Affiliate Events

Our NCTE NCTE Student Affiliate has two events upcoming:

On Tuesday, April 3, 6:00-7:30 we are is sponsoring the film documentary "American Teacher"  in 3025 Brown, a newly released documentary narrated by Matt Damon. We have treats for all that attend.

We are also having our second annual MCTE Spring Round-Table event on  Saturday, April 14 from 9:00 am until 11:30 am on campus at MSU. We began offering this event last year since we were all missing the former "Bright Ideas" conference.

Klekar & Nagle speak at ASECS Conference

Chris Nagle and Cynthia Klekar both participated in the most recent conference meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, held this year on San Antonio’s famed Riverwalk. Chris co-presented a paper on “Female Polyamory and the Masquerade” with a colleague from Indiana University (Courtney Wennerstrom) as part of a panel devoted to eighteenth-century women’s “social networks.” Cynthia spoke on a roundtable entitled “Hard Times: Women Scholars and the Dynamics of Economic Recession,” a special session organized by the ASECS Women’s Caucus. Both of them especially enjoyed the trip to Texas -- one, because it provided a kind of homecoming, the other, simply because the food is so magnificent.

Glenn Shaheen named Norma Farber First Book Award finalist

The Poetry Society of America recently announced that Ph.D. poetry student, author and editor Glenn Shaheen has been chosen as a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award for his book of poems, “Predatory.”

This award was established by the family and friends of Norma Farber, poet and author of children’s books, for a first book of original poetry written by an American and published in either a hard or soft cover in a standard edition in 2011. Translations are ineligible, as are chapbooks. Details can be found on the WMU College of Arts and Sciences website.

Christopher Hart Honored as English Department Presidential Scholar, 2011-2012

The title of "Presidential Scholar" is the highest honor Western Michigan University can bestow upon a graduating senior. Each department selects only one Presidential Scholar, and given the strength of our English major cohort, the recipient must display truly exceptional academic achievement. Our Presidential Scholar this year is Christopher Hart, a Lee Honors College student and member of Sigma Tau Delta. Christopher has worked closely with a number of faculty, including his honors thesis advisor, Dr. Nicolas Witschi, and he spent the first half of 2011 in Belgium, studying French language and literature at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. After graduation, Christopher hopes to spend a year teaching in France, prior to enrolling in a doctoral program in English.

Thursday evening, President John Dunne recognized Christopher and 46 other Presidential Scholars during a ceremony at the Fetzer Center. Christopher's parents, Thomas and Margaret Hart, and his faculty guest, Dr. Gwen Tarbox, accompanied him at the event.

Student Wins Leads in Major Shakespeare Festival

Theater major Ben Maters has been cast in two lead roles in a major Shakespeare Festival, after auditioning with a speech he encountered and studied last spring in a Shakespeare class at Western. Maters will play Bertram in All's Well that Ends Well and Edgar in King Lear in the Mississippi Shakespeare Festival's 2012 productions in Oxford, Mississippi.

Tarbox Quoted in Detroit News

Dr. Gwen Tarbox's expertise is featured prominently in the Detroit News front page article, "Hungering for a female hero: 'Hunger Games' may break new ground"

2012 Departmental Awards

The English faculty congratulate the well-deserving recipients of the 2012 departmental awards, who will be honored this Friday. These winners are:
Presidential Scholar & George W. Sprau Award: Christopher J. Hart
George Sprau Awards: Jonathan D. Current and William Cope
William B. Brown Award: Benjamin A. Moran
William B. Brown Award Honorable Mention: Matthew J. Ftacek
Ralph N. Miller Award: Grace Brockway
Patrick D. Hagerty Promising Scholar Awards: Richard Carbonneau, Kalani B. Bates
Jean & Vincent Malmstrom Award: Ian Hollenbaugh
Book Awards for English Language and Linguistics: Alana Springsteen, Micah Carlson
Edward F. Galligan Award: Cody Mejeur
Frederick J and Katherine Rogers Shakespeare Award (Undergraduate Essay):
Benjamin A. Moran
Bernardine P. Carlson Award: Alexandria S. Sullivan
Excellence in Rhetoric and Writing Studies: Lacey Johnson
Nash Scholarships in English Education: John Kreider, Rachel M. Bouma
McKetta Award for English Education: Josh Blanchard
Linda Christensen Awards: Amanda Sproule, Tamra Lunford, Ambrose Nolan
Diversity Studies Essay Awards: Kalani B. Bates, Ross P. Landers
Adolescent Literature Award: Sara Carroll
Van Rheenen Awards for Excellence in Teaching College Writing: Courtney Brandt,
Krystal Howard
Effective Teaching Award: Kristin Sovis
David C. Czuk Award: John Abbott
Frostic Undergraduate Award for Fiction: “On Being Blessed,” by Claire Robbins
Frostic Fiction Honorable Mention: “The Scraps,” by Tom Smith
Frostic Graduate Award for Fiction: "Wake Turbulence,” by Laurie Cedilnik
Frostic Graduate Award for Fiction Honorable Mention: "White Maple,” by Dan Toronto

Gardner Awarded Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Dear colleagues and students,

The selection committee met this morning to select recipients of the 2012-13 Dissertation Completion Fellowships, and the Graduate College is pleased to announce that the following doctoral students have been awarded these prestigious university fellowships:

Full year (Summer II 2012 through Summer I 2013
Renee Lee Gardner - English

2004 Graduate Dr. Kirsten Hemmy Awared Fulbright

Kirsten Hemmy (Ph.D., English, 2004) Receives Fulbright Award

Kirsten Hemmy, Associate Professor and Chair, Center for Integrated Studies, Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte, NC, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to write and do research in Senegal during the 2012-2013 academic year, according to the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Hemmy will examine the relationship between African and African American poetry as it crosses the Atlantic and other politicized bodies. Hemmy is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program in 2012-2013.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The Program operates in over 155 countries worldwide.

Fulbright alumni have achieved distinction in government, science, the arts, business, philanthropy, education, and athletics. Forty three Fulbright alumni from 11 countries have been awarded the Nobel Prize, and 75 alumni have received Pulitzer Prizes. Prominent Fulbright alumni include: Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director and Founder, Grameen Bank, and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient; John Atta Mills, President of Ghana; Lee Evans, Olympic Gold Medalist; Ruth Simmons, President, Brown University; Riccardo Giacconi, Physicist and 2002 Nobel Laureate; Amar Gopal Bose, Chairman and Founder, Bose Corporation; Renée Fleming, soprano; Jonathan Franzen, Writer; and Daniel Libeskind, Architect.

For further information about the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, please visit our website at http://fulbright.state.gov/ or contact James A. Lawrence, Office of Academic Exchange Programs, telephone 202-632-3241 or e-mail fulbright@state.gov.

JEN BERVIN EVENTS, 3/28-3/29

Jen Bervin

“Small Infinities—Emily Dickinson’s Manuscripts”

March 28, 2012 4:00 p.m. Meader Rare Book Room

Jen Bervin will focus on visual and verbal conjunctions
in Dickinson’s manuscripts and look at how they intersect
with earlier formal gestures in her herbarium, embroidery
sampler, letters, and editions of books that she read,
marked or altered. Bervin’s large-scale art works will be
on exhibit at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center, where she
will read from her own poems on March 29 at 7 p.m.

Jen Bervin’s visit is co-sponsored by the Carol Ann
Haenicke Collection of American Women’s Poetry of
Waldo Library, Friends of Waldo Library, the Women’s
Caucus, the Department of English, the Gwen Frostic
Reading Series, and the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center.
She is a WMU Visiting Scholar, nominated by Professor
Nancy Eimers in the Department of English.


2500 Knauss Hall www.wmich.edu/humanities
Kalamazoo, MI 49008 269.387.1811

Jen Bervin’s work brings together text and textile in a practice
that encompasses artist books, poetry, large-scale art works, and
archival research. Her works are in the Getty Museum, Yale and
Stanford Universities, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Dr. Melinda Moustakis named Fellow at Princeton

Lewis Center for the Arts Names Hodder Fellows for 2012-13
Writers James Arthur, Yasmine El Rashidi, Melinda Moustakis, and A. Rey Pamatmat selected

The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University has announced selection of the Mary MacKall Gwinn Hodder Fellows for the 2012-13 academic year. Poet James Arthur, fiction writer Melinda Moustakis, non-fiction writer Yasmine El Rashidi, and playwright A. Rey Pamatmat are recipients of the award created to provide artists in the early stages of their career time to undertake significant new work.

“The Hodder Fellowships are awarded to artists during that crucial period when they have demonstrated exceptional promise, but not yet received widespread recognition,” noted Lewis Center Acting Chair Michael Cadden in making the announcement. “We have a very strong and diverse group of artists joining us next year, and we look forward to what this opportunity for what Mrs. Hodder termed ‘studious leisure’ will enable them to accomplish.”

Hodder Fellows may be poets, playwrights, novelists, creative non-fiction writers, translators, or other artists and humanist who have shown great promise. While many have published a first book or created other work that has contributed to their field of endeavor, the fellowship provides them time to move their work and explorations to the next level. Artists from anywhere may apply in the fall each year for the following academic year. Their proposals include specific work to be undertaken during the fellowship period.

James ArthurJames Arthur was born in Connecticut and grew up in Canada. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, New England Review, and Narrative. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, and a residency at the Amy Clampitt House, as well as fellowships at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. His first book, Charms Against Lightening, will be published in November 2012 by Copper Canyon Press. During his fellowship at Princeton, Arthur plans to work on his second book of poetry.

Yasmine El RashidiYasmine El Rashidi is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor to the Middle East arts and culture journal Bidoun. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Guardian, London Review of Books, Index on Censorship, Aperture, The Wall Street Journal, and the Arabic literary journal Weghat Nazar. A collection of her writings on the Egyptian revolution, The Battle for Egypt, was published last year (New York Review of Books/Random House). She was born and raised in Cairo, where she currently lives. During her fellowship, El Rashidi plans to work on a literary nonfiction book, The Successors -- a portrait and memoir of Egypt's youth generation.

Melinda Moustakis. Melinda Moustakis was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and raised in California. Her first book, a collection of linked short stories, Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, was published by University of Georgia Press in 2011 and won the Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction and the Maurice Prize. She received her M.A. from the University of California Davis and her Ph.D. from Western Michigan University. She was recently named a 2011 “5 Under 35” writer by the National Book Foundation. Moustakis plans to work on her first novel during her fellowship, a full-length book that captures the Alaskan fishing community and its many complicated relationships between fishermen, fisherwomen, guides, locals, tourist, scientists, and the wilderness and wildlife.

A. Rey PamatmatA. Rey Pamatmat recently received the 2011-12 Playwright of New York Fellowship from the Lark Play Development Center. His play, Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, began its rolling world premiere at the 2011 Humana Festival before playing at New Theater, Actors Express, Mu Performing Arts, B Street Theater, and Manbites Dog Theater in the 2011-12 season. His plays have been produced off-off Broadway by Second Generation (Thunder Above, Deeps Below), the Vortex Theater (DEVIANT), HERE (High/Limbo/High), and Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company (Red Rover). Samuel French will publish both Edith and Thunder Above in spring 2012. Rey’s work has been developed nationwide at The Public Theater, Playwrights’ Horizons, the Eugene O’Neill Theater, Victory Gardens Theater, Magic Theater Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and New Dramatists. He has received a Princess Grace Fellowship for Playwriting, a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, an Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation commission, and is a member of the Ma-Yi Theater Company Writers’ Lab. He received his B.F.A. from New York University and his M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. Pamatmat hopes to explore some new, adventurous theatrical projects during his fellowship.

In addition to creating new work, Hodder Fellows engage in any number of lectures, performances and other events at the Lewis Center for the Arts, many of which will be open to the public.

Photo credits: (Moustakis) Photo by Emily Stinson; (Others) Courtesy of the artist

New Issue of Comparative Drama

Comparative Drama is pleased to announce the arrival of our winter issue, volume 45.4. The image to the right is included in "Moroccan Acrobats in Britain: Oriental Curiosity and Ethnic Exhibition," by Layachi El Habbouch. Other contributions to this issue include:

Essays

Elizabeth Hutcheon: From Shrew to Subject: Petruchio’s Humanist Education of Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew

Carolyn Tilghman: Staging Suffrage: Women Writing Politics and the Edwardian Theatre

Yeeyon Im: Oscar Wilde's Salomé: Disorienting Orientalism

Layachi El Habbouch: Moroccan Acrobats in Britain: Oriental Curiosity and Ethnic Exhibition

Maurice Hunt: Purging the Jesting Spirit in The Tempest

Reviews

Ann Nichols- Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools, by Max Harris

Matthew Smith- The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood, by Joel Altman

Freddie Rokem- The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy, by Martin Puchner

Jay Halio- Metaphor and Shakespearean Drama: Unchaste Signification, by Maria Franziska Fahey

Bonnie Jo Campbell Reads Her Work: Spring 2012 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We welcome you to join us for our third reading of the Spring 2012 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re honored to have fiction writer and this year's English Department Distinguished Alumna Bonnie Jo Campbell read her work this Friday, March 23rd. 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.

Comics Workshop on Friday, March 16

Department of English

Workshop for

Faculty and Graduate Instructors

“Integrating Comics into English Studies Courses”

Dr. Gwen Athene Tarbox

Friday, March 16 2012

1-3 pm

3027 Brown Hall

Interested in adding a graphic novel to one of your English Studies courses? This workshop will address the following topics:

• Developing a basic theoretical and pedagogical grounding in comics studies

• Selecting comics texts that work well in English Studies courses

• Creating comics-centered assignments

2012 Frostic Creative Writing Awards Winners

We are pleased and honored to announce the winners for the 2012 Gwen Frostic Creative Writing Awards. Below you’ll find the results for each genre, as well as comments from our judges. Please join us in congratulating the winners for their excellent work and their success.



Fiction
Judge: Jennifer Vanderbes’ first novel, Easter Island, was named a “best book of 2003” by the Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor and her second novel, Strangers at the Feast, was published by Scribner in 2010. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, and her work has been translated into sixteen languages. Her third novel, about a young girl who becomes a nurse during WWII, will be published in 2013.

Undergraduate

Winner: “On Being Blessed” by Claire Robbins
“A sophisticated narrative combination of the personal and political. Suspenseful, insightful and vividly written.”

Honorable Mention: “The Scraps” by Tom Smith
“A gracefully-drawn portrait of a man struggling to become a good father. A mature and heartfelt story.”

Graduate

Winner: “Wake Turbulence” by Laurie Cedilnik
“A vivid setting and a cast of memorable characters come together in this dramatic and absorbing story of a young girl trying to understand the meaning of motherhood.”

Honorable Mention: “White Maple” by Dan Toronto
“A sympathetic look at a young couple discovering their sexuality and the challenges of adulthood.”



Poetry
Judge: Rachel Eliza Griffiths is the author of Mule & Pear (New Issues), Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), and The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press). Reviewer Roxane Gay (The Rumpus) writes, “Griffiths tackled sex(uality), slavery, the strength of women, the mark of history, and the power of language, in fierce poems that were so memorable I return to them over and over.” A Cave Canem Fellow, she is the recipient of fellowships from Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Cave Canem Foundation and others. A photographer and painter, her visual work has been published widely in both national and international magazines and journals. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York.

Undergraduate

Winner: “Late Echo” by Brian Bender
“This poem reflects a poet whose voice considers the importance of craft and originality. The balance of rhythms and vivid imagery achieve a sustained and interesting reflection on the significance of ordinary passage and the interrogation that accompanies a certain sort of thoughtfulness. Invoking Ashbery, of course, opened ‘Late Echo’s’ quiet window while the poem makes use of its own questions and its own frank and dreamy regard for the world.”

Honorable Mention: “El Hatillo” by Claire Robbins

Graduate

Winner: “Swarm” by Natalie Giarratano
“This poem is powerful in its ability to weld a persistent line of intimacy against its visual imagery. The rhythm of the poem is both natal and nautical. The craft and use of prose poem as form served the interior of this poem beautifully. ‘Swarm’ provides a remarkable body for a poem that is concerned with the earth and the flesh.”

Honorable Mention: “I am the same age as my best friend's killer” by Laurie Ann Cedilnik




Playwriting
Judge: Kamarie Chapman received her M.F.A. from The University of New Mexico in 2009 with dissertation work in gender and playwriting. Kamarie is thrilled to be teaching Theatre History, Playwriting, Theory, and Outreach Education as adjunct at Western Washigton University (where she earned her BA in Arts). She has taught and directed theatre and outreach to many diverse populations and was the Artistic Director of a mixed-ability company in Albuquerque, NM called Equilibrium through VSA during her final year working on her Masters. Kamarie is a member of the Northwest Playwrights Alliance, The Dramatists Guild, The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) and Artists Trust. Her play Deception Pass: An American Story was the winner of two national awards from The Kennedy Center (The David Mark Cohen and co-winner of the Paula Vogel playwriting awards). This play was also the national winner of The ATHE playwriting award. In 2010 her short play, Dijon Love, was a finalist for the Humana Heidman Award and she was a top five finalist for the NPA/Seattle Rep/SAG Screenwriting contest in June of 2010. She has had her work published by NPA and numerous zines, including most recently in the fifth volume of Your Hands Your Mouth.

Undergraduate

Winner: Shades of Grey by Kelsey Pretzer
“Relationships in families have always been complex and fragile (even when they aren’t). In a story of a mid-western family with plenty of skeletons practically jumping out of multiple closets, the implications of the matriarch of the family passing leads three sisters and their families in a new direction in hopes of reinforcing all those fragile cracks in the foundation of their lives. Told with a classic Americana style, Shades of Grey is a script that will strike all those dysfunctional chords that just about anyone can relate to.”

Honorable Mention: Dysrhythmia by Katina Marguerite Donoghue
“For many parents it seems when children reach ‘that age’ their sole intent is to break away from the family unit, often in a colossal storm of family drama. Dysrhythmia asks to see the story from the point of view of the children. Events that take place during peoples’ lives during their formative years are some of the most unforgettable and so are so many moments in this script. Told in style that feels like it’s ready for film, this script takes a poignant peek into the lives of people connected by the most extreme situations.”

Graduate

Winner: “B-11” by G. William Zorn
“‘B-11’ is play that not only examines the life of one mother and her relationship with her daughter who was one of the thousands of victims from airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. This play is particularly impressive in its structure and style paying homage to surrealist movements—liberation and exploration. Caught someplace between a nightmare and the truth, much like the epic lore that surrounds the events that happened on 9/11, this script tells the story of a mother caught in one moment in time.”

Honorable Mention: “Starf*cker” by Adam Pasen
“There are always ‘those kids’ in any industry scene, and Hollywood might be one of the most reputable places for would-be superstars. ‘Starf*cker’ tells the story of two hopefuls seeking out two very different outcomes in a classic structure style with lovely naturalistic dialogue and an age-old story of unrequited love. This short script is smart and funny and will leave you with one of those ‘AwwwWWWwww’ moments at the end.”



Creative Nonfiction
Judge: Richard Katrovas is the author of Green Dragons (winner of the Wesleyan University Press New Poets Series, 1983), Snug Harbor (Wesleyan, 1986), The Public Mirror (Wesleyan, 1990), The Book of Complaints (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1993), Prague, USA (stories, Portals Press, 1996), Dithyrambs (choral lyrics, Carnegie Mellon, 1998), Mystic Pig (novel, Small Mouth Press, 2001; Oleander Press, 2008), The Republic of Burma Shave (memoir, Carnegie Mellon, 2001), Prague Winter (Carnegie Mellon, 2005), The Years of Smashing Bricks (an “anecdotal memoir,” Carnegie Mellon, 2008), and Scorpio Rising: Selected Poems (Carnegie Mellon, 2011). Katrovas edited Ten Years after the Velvet Revolution, the first anthology of Czech poetry to appear in English after Czechoslovakia’s bloodless revolution. Katrovas’ poems, stories and essays have appeared in dozens of the leading literary journals and anthologies. Witness to the Velvet Revolution on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1989, Katrovas is the founding director of Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program, which is going into its eighteenth year. Katrovas is married to the yogini Krista Katrovas, and is the proud father of three Czech-American daughters, Ema, Anna, and Ella.

Undergraduate

Winner: “Secret” by Michelle Repke

Graduate

Winner: “Light as a Feather” by Laurie Ann Cedilnik

Honorable Mention: “Operation Toe Breaker” by Brandon Davis Jennings

News from Dr. Perryman-Clark

Thought I would share an article that just came out today in TETYC. They have allowed free access to it. To view the article, title posted below, go to:

http://wwwncte.org/library


Cheers! spc


Toward a Pedagogy of Linguistic Diversity:
Understanding African American Linguistic
Practices and Programmatic Learning Goals

Rhetoric & Writing Studies/First Year Writing Position

WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

Assistant Professor of English – Rhetoric and Writing Studies/First Year Writing.

Major Responsibilities: Support First-Year Writing and Developmental Writing Programs; teach within Rhetoric and Writing Studies undergraduate major and English graduate programs; engage in research; provide university service.

Qualifications: 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 rhetoric and writing studies courses; involvement with teacher mentoring; experience with digital technologies.

Desirable: Interest in curriculum development, diversity, community writing, collaborative projects and grants, community outreach, new media.

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 diversion 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.

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

Required Application Documents:
Applicants must visit WMU’s Human Resources site at http://www.wmich.edu/hr/careers-at-wmu.html to apply and submit:
•        Letter of application
•        Curriculum vitae
•        Graduate transcripts
•        Three letters of recommendation
•        Summary of teaching evaluations (if available)

Send materials that cannot be submitted electronically to: Dr. Jonathan Bush, 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.

"Intergrating Comics into English Studies Courses"

Hi Gang--

Please see the attached flyer announcing Dr. Gwen Tarbox's upcoming workshop on teaching comics in English Studies Courses, to be held Friday, March 16, 2012 in Brown 2037 from 1-3 p.m. This workshop promises to be especially useful as graphic selections increasingly make their way into the anthologies we use in any number of courses.

All are encouraged to attend.

Jon


Department of English
Workshop for
Faculty and Graduate Instructors
March 16, 2012
1:00-3:00 pm
2037 Brown Hall

“Integrating Comics into English Studies Courses”
Dr. Gwen Athene Tarbox

Interested in adding a graphic novel to one of your English Studies courses? This workshop will address the following topics:
• Developing a basic theoretical and pedagogical grounding in comics studies
• Selecting comics texts that work well in English Studies courses
• Creating comics-centered assignments

Ph.D. student Brandon Jennings recent publications

Please join me and congratulate Brandon Jennings on his recent list of publications.

"Operation Toe Breaker" published November 1st, 2011
"Boots" published December 1st, 2011
"Paul Maidman~Banana Man" R.kv.r.y published January 2012
Interview by Dustin Hoffman, in r.kv.r.y February 2012

For more detailed information please visit the following sites:

http://monkeybicycle.net/boot/
http://www.rkvry.com/essays/314-brandon-jennings
http://rkvry.com/blog

Congratulations Brandon !

Witschi, Playwrights Highlighted by WMU

Check out these sites to see all the news !

http://www.wmich.edu/cas/alumni/wordpress/?s=playwriting

http://www.wmich.edu/cas/alumni/wordpress/2012/02/witschi-book-named-outstanding-academic-title-by-choice/