Jay Baron Nicorvo's Frostic Reading Rescheduled

Due to weather and the WMU campus closing, the Frostic Reading tonight is canceled.
We've rescheduled Jay Baron Nicorvo's reading for Thursday, February 28th, Bernhard Center, room 208-209. We hope to see you then.

Poet Jay Baron Nicorvo Reads His Work: Spring 2013 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

We'd like to welcome you to the first reading of the Spring 2013 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We're honored to have WMU faculty member and poet Jay Baron Nicorvo read his work this Thursday, January 31st. The reading will take place at the WMU Bernhard Center, in room 208-209, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.

New Issue of Comparative Drama

The winter issue of Comparative Drama arrived from press this week. Volume 46.4, which is also available online through Project MUSE, includes the following contributions: 

Essays

“The Split Screen Syndrome”: Structuring (Non)Seeing in Two Plays on Abu Ghraib
Katarzyna Beilin

Brian Friel’s Transformation from Short Fiction Writer to Dramatist
Richard Rankin Russell

Plays and Playcoats: A Courtly Interlude Tradition in Scotland?
Sarah Carpenter

Staging the Convent as Refuge in The Jew of Malta and Measure for Measure
Kimberly Reigle

“Not to Be Altered”: Performance’s Efficacy and Audience Reaction in The Roman Actor
Eric Dunnum

Reviews

The Tragic Paradox
by Leonard Moss
reviewed by: Jennifer Wallace 

Memories of Chekhov: Accounts of the Writer from his Family, Friends and Contemporaries
ed. and trans. by Peter Sekirin
reviewed by: Valleri Hohman

Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life
by Kenneth Gross
reviewed by: Claudia Orenstein

Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Place and Displaced
by Min Tian
reviewed by: Cecilia Pang

Image Ethics in Shakespeare and Spenser
by James A. Knapp
reviewed by: Jane Kingsley-Smith

Pioneer Performances: Staging the Frontier
by Matthew Rebhorn
reviewed by: Nic Witschi

Hamlet’s Arab Journey: Shakespeare’s Prince and Nasser’s Ghost
by Margaret Litvin
reviewed by: Khalid Amine

Intimacy and Sexuality in the Age of Shakespeare
by James M. Bromley
reviewed by: Gina Bloom

Shaw, Plato, and Euripides: Classical Currents in "Major Barbara"
by Sidney P. Albert
reviewed by: David Kornhaber

NCTE Student Affiliate Hosts "Success" Event for Young Teachers

“New Teacher Success Stories:
Insights and Understandings from
Two, Young, Successful Michigan Teachers”

When: Thursday, February 7, 2013
Where: 3025 Brown Hall (The Humanities Center)
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Target Audience: All of our WMU Pre-service Elementary Students
and Secondary English Education Undergraduates

Spring 2013 Gwen Frostic Reading Series

The WMU Creative Writing Program would like to invite you to the Spring 2013 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. This semester, we’re honored to present four readings featuring five authors. All of the readings are free and open to the public. We look forward to seeing you there.

You can find more information at our website here.

Frostic schedule:

Jay Baron Nicorvo
Thursday, January 31st, 8:00 PM, WMU Bernhard Center 208-209

Edward Allan Baker
Thursday, February 7th, 8:00 PM, WMU Bernhard Center 208-209

Jean Valentine
Tuesday, April 2nd, 8:00 PM, WMU Little Theatre

Mandy Keifetz & Jaswinder Bolina
Co-sponsored by New Issues Poetry & Prose
Thursday, April 11th, 8:00 PM, WMU Bernhard Center 208-209

Steve Feffer talks about New Play Festival on WKZO

Lori Moore is joined by Steve Feffer, playwriting professor at WMU and co-lead producer for Theatre Kalamazoo on the New Play Festival.
Listen to the podcast at:  http://wkzo.com/podcasts/lori-moore-show/3rd-annual-theatre-kalamazoo-new-play-festival/

THEATRE KALAMAZOO NEW PLAY FESTIVAL
January 25 & 26 2013, Epic Center Theatre
Theatre Kalamazoo is proud to present the third annual Theatre Kalamazoo New Play Festival! The event features new plays by local playwrights, performed and directed as staged readings by local actors and directors. This year, Theatre Kalamazoo has commissioned local playwright Bonnie Jo Campbell to write a 10-minute play for the festival. Steve Feffer (Professor of Playwriting at WMU) will conduct post-show conversations to assist the playwrights in further developing their work with input from the audience.

For more information click here:  http://www.theatrekalamazoo.com/play-festival/

Also see the article on Mlive regarding the New Play Festival: http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/01/third_annual_new_play_festival.html#incart_river_default

Call for Submissions: 2013 Frostic Creative Writing Awards

The deadline for this year’s Gwen Frostic Creative Writing Awards is Friday, February 1^st. We very much hope you'll consider submitting your work. 

Here are the details. Be sure to follow all guidelines:

• Submissions will be accepted from current WMU students in four genres: Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction, and Drama.

 

• You may submit to as many genres as you would like; you may submit up to three poems, one story, one essay, and one play. However, each genre submission should be sent in a separate email. So, you may submit up to four different submissions. 

• Each submission email must include a cover sheet as a separate document from the creative manuscript. Each cover sheet should state: your name, the genre of the accompanying submission, the title(s) of the submission, your contact information (name, postal address, email address, phone number), and whether you are a GRADUATE or UNDERGRADUATE student. Each submission must, thus, contain two documents: (1) the cover sheet and (2) the creative manuscript.

• The creative manuscript itself must not include any identifying information.

• All electronic submissions must be saved in PDF, DOC, or RTF file formats.

• In the subject line of each submission email, state the genre of the attached submission, your name, and whether you are a GRADUATE or UNDERGRADUATE student.

• Email submissions to Thisbe Nissen (thisbe.nissen@wmich.edu), and copy to Dustin M. Hoffman (dustin.m.hoffman@wmich.edu).

• If you have any questions, please direct them to Dustin.

Creative writing faculty will determine the finalists in each genre and classification (GRAD and UNDERGRAD), which will then be passed on to outside judges. Those judges will pick a single winner in each genre and classification. Fiction submissions will also be considered for the annual Gordon Prize in Fiction.

Thank you for sharing your work and being a part of this year’s contest!

Good luck to you all,

Thisbe Nissen

Coordinator, Creative Writing

Maria Gigante to Present at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Maria Gigante will present at a scholarly symposium at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago on Friday, April 26, 2013.  Gigante will present her work on composition studies and the teaching of first year writing.  The purpose of this symposium is to foster  scholarly conversation on the field of composition studies, to educate and inform on some of the major currents of thought in composition studies, to share information about recent developments and techniques in the field, and to illuminate the implications of first-year writing for undergraduate student education and English Studies overall.

John Saillant Keynote Lecture ~ Thurs., 1/24/13

The English Department’s Scholarly Speakers Series
presents its
Spring Keynote Lecture

PROF. JOHN SAILLANT (WMU)

“The Raw and the Cooked in
African-American Textual Production, 1770-1830”

John Saillant will discuss the aims and methods of one of his current projects in African American history and culture. It is a study of early black writings in English (1770--1830) as fluid texts beginning with autographs that were turned into printed editions that were then reprinted in a variety of forms---abridged, bowlderized, or expanded. Readers and publishers---including occasionally the author himself or herself as a reader---forced material changes in these texts. What interests were expressed in the revisions? Were all the genres in which early black writers worked subject to the same revisonary pressures? And, is there now any authoritative text within such writings?

Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013
7:00 PM
Brown 3025

The talk is free and open to the public.

A reception will follow.


John Saillant received his A.B., A.M., and doctoral degrees in American Civilization from Brown University. He is the author of a monograph (Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes) and essays in scholarly journals, the editor of one collection of documents and of one collection of scholarly essays, and the co-author of a textbook. He was one of the founding moderators of H-NET and since 1994 he has been moderator of H-OIEAHC, the electronic association of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. Most recently, he served several years as one of the editors of the African American National Biography, which appeared in early 2008. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and several other organizations. He has worked with several colleagues in a U.S. Department of Education project, Teaching American History, in which he has led discussion among middle-school teachers of the American Revolution and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. At WMU, he teaches in the English, History, and Comparative Religion Departments: Early American Literature, African American Literature, Colonial American History, The New Nation, American Religion, and occasional special-topic courses.

"Geronimo Johnson's novel reviewed in Time Magazine."

Hold It ‘Til It Hurts, by T. Geronimo Johnson — This politically-charged novel came out last fall...

Read more: http://nation.time.com/2013/01/15/winter-reading/#ixzz2I4uY6MNX

WMU alumnus Thomas Christopher has e-book success with dystopian novel

Click on the following link to read more: http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/01/wmu_alumnus_thomas_christopher.html

Bentley, Almeda Publish Articles in English Journal

Recent WMU English Department graduates, Dr. Cheryl Almeda (currently a professor at Kalamazoo Valley Community College) and Dr. Erinn Bentley (now an assistant professor of education at Columbus State University, GA) both published articles in English Journal, NCTE's primary journal for English language arts teaching at the middle and high school level.

Dismantling Bullying with a Class Magazine: Creating Connections and Community

Cheryl H. Almeda

The Wish List: Articulating and Responding to New Teachers’ Concerns

Erinn Bentley with Allison Morway and Tammie Short

WMU poetry student Traci Brimhall wins $25,000 creative writing fellowship

Traci Brimhall, a doctoral student in WMU’s creative writing poetry program, is one of 40 people in the United States to receive the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, which provides writers with the time and freedom to pursue their craft. More than 1,100 people applied for the fellowship.

Click on the following link to read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2012/12/wmu_student_traci_brimhall_win.html#incart_river_default

Dr. David Kirkland guest presentation.

Dr. David Kirkland, from MSU, will be a guest presenter at a Brownbag on Friday, January 25 from 12-2 . Dr. Perryman-Clark would like to extend an invitation to you all to attend both the presentation and a late lunch afterward at the Roadhouse.



Here is a link to Dr. Kirkland's profile:   http://wrac.msu.edu/tag/david-kirkland/



Please email Kristin Koski, kristin.a.koski@wmich.edu by Friday, the 18th, regarding whether you will attend both the Brownbag and lunch, just the Brownbag, just the lunch, or neither so that appropriate arrangements can be made.

Room arrangements will be posted at a later date.
 

Richard Utz comments on English Studies on Chronicle.com

Our former chair and colleague, Richard Utz, recently posted an insightful post on English studies in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.

Bonnie Jo Campbell Chosen as MLive Kalamazoo Gazette book club

Campbell, who was named the Michigan Library Association's Author of the Year in 2012, won with 52 percent of the vote, with T. Geronimo Johnson's "Hold It 'Til It Hurts," coming in second with 29 percent. "When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man," by Nick Dybek was third, with 19 percent.
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/01/mlivekalamazoo_gazette_book_cl.html