Reminder: Graduate Application Seminar Tonight

Emily Mitchell reminds us that "the grad school application seminar is this evening at 7pm in Colson 130. Anyone who is thinking about pursuing graduate study in English is encouraged to attend."

A Genuine Letter from Santa

. . . to your little kid, or to your friend's little kid, will do wonders to combat the ugly rumors that the bewhiskered Victorian spirit of Xmas is dead. TO THAT END, there are applications in the English Department Mailroom which will be forwarded to the Jolly Old Elf himself (at $5.00 ea.) and which will guarantee that a letter arrives in the hands of its intended sometime around December 15, 2009, addressing the urchin by name and indicating his or her name for you (if that name is socially acceptable) composed and signed by Mr. Claus (no automatic pens are used to sign the letter). SC, being a socially responsible sort of fellow, allows the sawbuck to be kept by the Monongalia County Literacy Volunteers in conjunction with the United Way Corporate Volunteer Council. Remember: Literature can only come after Literacy, in life as in the dictionary.

A Structurally Sound Time to Die

"Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who transformed Western understanding of what was once called “primitive man” and who towered over the French intellectual scene in the 1960s and ’70s, has died at 100," reports the New York Times today. In the days when Structuralism was king (not the days of the Silent Movies, either) he reigned, as much for his work with myth and its contexts and contents as for his work with individual groups, most often in Brasil. A scholar like him should live and die once in a hundred years.

EJS ABD: Congratulations Erin

Lisa Weihman asks us to join in congratulating Erin Johns Speese "on the completion of her Examination for Formal Admission to Ph.D. Candidacy. Erin braved the potentially sublime experience of the exams with characteristic intelligence and enthusiasm. Brava!"

Panel on Applying to Grad School: Thursday at 7:00

If you are planning on applying to grad school in English, please consider coming to the grad panel this Thursday evening at 7pm in 130 Colson Hall. Patrick Conner, Mary Ann Samyn, Brian Ballentine, Emily Mitchell, and Michael Germana will be fielding questions you might have on the process and progress of graduate study in English. Take advantage of this great opportunity!

Local Boy (and Prison Book Project) Make Good

The Daily Athenaeum just ran a great story about Jason Stupp's innovative English 102 class. It also has a nice photo of Katy and publicizes the Appalachian Prison Book Project. You can check it out here.

Creative Writing's New Web Site

Hello, friends --

It is my pleasure to introduce you to the Creative Writing Program's new Web site, which you may access here:

http://creativewriting.wvu.edu/

or here:

http://creativewriting.wvu.edu/about_the_program

or here:

http://creativewriting.wvu.edu/stories

but, alas, not here (yet):

DennisAllenForProfessorOfTheMillenniumAndChauffeurToTheStars@greatteaching.wvu.edu (forthcoming)

We're proud of our students, our faculty, and our staff (which is to say everyone in the Department) -- and we hope our Web site shows what makes the Creative Writing Program at WVU special.

Big thanks to the Creative Writing Program's graduate assistant, Emily Watson, as well as Rebecca Herod and Dustin Mazon in the Eberly College, for their fine work on the Web site.

Enjoy!


Mark Brazaitis
Professor of the Moment and Chauffeur to His Children
Oh -- and Director of the Creative Writing Program

Doctoral Student Meeting

The annual doctoral student meeting will be this Friday, October 30th, from 3:30-4:30 in 223 Colson, the Seminar Room. As it turns out, Lindsay will not be able to attend, but she did send gift bags so the first twenty people to show up will receive legwarmers.

New Writing Center Podcasts

The WVU Writing Center has several informational/instructional podcasts available for download. Our two newest episodes are:

# 3 - Making the Most of your Writing Center Visit. In this episode John and Nathalie talk about ways to make your tutoring session successful.

and

# 4 - How to Write a Professional Email (with Attachments). In this episode, Emma creates a screen cast to show the audience the most appropriate ways to write a professional e-mail. From the salutation, to adding an attachment, she includes everything that you need to know.

If you don't have iTunes visit the official WVU Writing Center website to stream all of our podcasts from your web browser.

Stay tuned to Tutor Talk, as there will be plenty more video podcasts on the way!

We recommend downloading Tutor Talk through iTunes via this link. iTunes is a free download to all users both Mac and PC. If you don't have iTunes, stream any of the podcasts from your browser by clicking HERE.

Pumpkins!

Can you guess which pumpkin belongs to which TCH blogger? Oh, and yeah, we did grow them ourselves. And thanks, they are pretty darn impressive. We're glad you like them.

James Kincaid Lecture

The Department of English and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences are sponsoring the next Jackson Distinguished Lecture on October 27, from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in 130 Colson Hall.

James Kincaid's lecture is titled "Here’s Looking at You Kid." The lecture will discuss what we see when we look at a child. More to the point, what is involved in manufacturing that "child" in our culture, in causing us to look at all, and in forming the way we see? What constitutes illicit looking at kids? This talk is an experiment in looking, shifted over to the field of reading, exercising on The Catcher in the Rye a reading-through-the-eyes.

James Kincaid is Aerol Arnold Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting and Annoying the Victorians.

For more information, contact Donald Hall, Department of English, West Virginia University at 304-293-3100 or donald.hall@mail.wvu.edu.

Poets Do the Darnedest Things

What you have heard is true. The grad poetry workshop did end early last evening so that we could go, as a class, to see Where the Wild Things Are. And it was like watching a really intense lyric poem, so we’re pretty sure it still counts as class time. And we won’t spoil it for you, but we’re thinking it’s not a movie for kids. Or at least not for the footed pajama-wearing toddler who was up way past bedtime. This was the 9:30 show, after all, and teenagers were out in full force to prove that “school nights” mean nothing nowadays. We’ll include two photos for your enjoyment. One because we like the word “condiments,” and one because it’s actually pretty good.