Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships

This week, the mailbox at Colson Hall has been full of fellowship announcements:

From the UCLA Center for Seventeeth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Clark Library:

ASECS/Clark Fellowships

Fellowships jointly sponsored by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Clark Library are available to postdoctoral scholars and to ABD graduate students with projects in the Restoration or the eighteenth century. Fellowship holders must be members in good standing of ASECS. Awards are for one month of residency.

Stipend: $2,500 for one month in residence.

Application deadline: 1 February 2012

Kanner Fellowship in British Studies

These three-month fellowships, established through the generosity of Penny Kanner, support research at the Clark Library in any area pertaining to British history and culture. Fellowships are open to both postdoctoral and predoctoral scholars.

Stipend: $7,500 for three months in residence.

Application deadline: 1 February 2012

From the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation:

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships (www.woodrow.org/newcombe) support the final year of dissertation work for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences.  Eligible proposals have religious or ethical values as a central concern, and are relevant to the solution of contemporary religious, cultural or human rights questions.  The stipend for the Newcombe Fellowship is $25,000 for a twelve-month period of dissertation writing. (Deadline: November 15, 2011)

From the Very Good News department...

The Tenants are super happy to congratulate MFA alum Christina Rothenbeck ('11) on the forthcoming publication of her chapbook, Girls in Art. Dancing Girl Press will do the honors and you can get your copy in August 2012.

From her new home at the University of Southern Mississippi, Christina also reports that she misses Pat Conner (hey, who doesn't?) and that her chapbook includes "a few new bank robbery poems," which is a statement you just don't hear every day.

So congrats to you, Christina... and yes, we will give Morgantown your love.

Mark Brazaitis traveled to Washington D.C. to celebrate 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps.

Associate Professor and Creative Writing Program Coordinator Mark Brazaitis traveled to Washington, D.C., this past weekend to attend ceremonies celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. Brazaitis served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala from 1990 to 1993 and as a Peace Corps trainer in the same country from 1994 to 1995. A few notable Peace Corps authors: Paul Theroux, Maureen Orth, Bob Shacochis, Richard Wiley, Mike Tidwell, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, Norman Rush, P.F. Kluge, and John Coyne. For more, see:

As part of the celebration, Brazaitis attended a ceremony at the Library of Congress honoring writers who have been Volunteers. Chris Matthews, a Volunteer in Swaziland from 1968 to 1970 and the host of Hardball with Chris Matthews, and James Billington, the long-serving head librarian of the Library of Congress, were featured speakers.

With several other former Volunteers who served in Guatemala, he attended a reception at the house of the Guatemalan ambassador to the U.S., Julio Armando Martini Herrera (see photo). Mucha amistad!

Kelly Sundberg, Award Winner

Congratulations to MFA student Kelly Sundberg, who won the "Bridging the Gap" prose contest sponsored by Slice magazine at the Slice Literary Writers' Conference in September.

Kelly received $100 and her piece will be published in the spring 2012 issue of Slice.

The contest was judged by a panel of agents and editors.

As Kelly reports, "I'm really excited. I think Slice is a great journal, and the conference was really helpful."

Not surprisingly, Kelly now has agents and editors interested in her work.

Congratulations to a terrific writer!

2012-2013 Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society

Scholars who are no more than three years beyond receipt of the doctorate are invited to apply for the Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship, a year-long residential fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society. The purpose of the post-dissertation fellowship is to provide the recipient with time and resources to extend research and/or to revise the dissertation for publication. Any topic relevant to the Society's library collections and programmatic scope, and coming from any field or disciplinary background, is eligible. AAS collections focus on all aspects of American history, literature, and culture from contact to 1876, and provide rich source material for projects across the spectrum of early American studies.

The Society welcomes applications from those who have advance book contracts, as well as those who have not yet made contact with a publisher. The twelve-month stipend for this fellowship is $35,000. The Hench Post-Dissertation Fellow will be selected on the basis of the applicant's scholarly qualifications, the appropriateness of the project to the Society's collections and interests, and, above all, the likelihood that the revised dissertation will make a highly significant book.

Further information about the fellowship, along with application materials, is available on the AAS website, at http://www.americanantiquarian.org/post-diss.htm. Any questions about the fellowship may be directed to Paul Erickson, Director of Academic Programs at AAS, at perickson@mwa.org.

The deadline for applications for a Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship to be held during the 2012-2013 academic year is October 15, 2011.

Calliope Meeting...

As just announced on the Bolton Writing Workshops blog, based on an email from Marsha Bissett, who got the info from Mark Brazaitis, here's the deal with the first meeting of the year for Calliope:

A meeting of all students interested in working on Calliope, WVU's award-winning undergraduate literary magazine, will be held on Tuesday , October 4, at 7:30 in room 130 of Colson Hall. Students interested in the top editorial positions (editor-in-chief, managing editor, fiction editor, poetry editor, etc.) as well as students interested in contributing in other ways to the editorial and publication process are encouraged to attend. No experience is necessary! Enthusiasm is a plus!

Students who are not able to attend the meeting but would like to be on the Calliope staff should email or call the magazine's faculty sponsor, Mark Brazaitis, at Mark.Brazaitis@mail.wvu.edu/304-293-9707.

Kirk Hazen Receives NSF Grant for "Phonetic Variation in Appalachia"

This just in from Department Chair John Ernest:

Professor Hazen

"I'm very pleased and proud to announce that Kirk Hazen's project, "Phonetic Variation in Appalachia," has been fully funded by the National Science Foundation--a grant of $239,724. Kirk's track record is simply amazing. Since he has been at WVU, this is the third proposal he has had funded by the NSF, and all three were funded on the first review. What continues to impress me the most, however, is Kirk's commitment to this work in all of its manifestations and applications. From the classroom to the community, from his interactions with established scholars to his devoted mentoring of rising students, Kirk approaches his work with a clear sense of the importance of understanding how we have spoken our way through the world--how the world changes our language use and how our language use has the potential to change our worlds."

Susan Webster Schultz Lecture

Department of English and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences will host the English Department’s Eberly Family Distinguished Lecture Series, featuring a presentation by Susan Webster Schultz, Professor of English at the University of Hawaii. Her discussion, “Writing Alzheimer’s: It Must Be Experimental” is scheduled for Monday, September 19 in 130 Colson Hall from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Call For Applications: Mellon Dissertation Fellowships

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is pleased to offer fellowships funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for graduate students who:

* are enrolled in a doctoral program in a graduate school in the United States

* will complete all doctoral requirements except the dissertation and be ready to start research for it as early as June 1 and no later than September 1, 2012, with approval of the dissertation proposal by April 1, 2012

* plan to do dissertation research primarily in original source material in the holdings of archives, libraries, historical societies, museums, related repositories, or a combination

* will write the dissertation and receive the Ph.D. degree in a field of the humanities or in a related element of the social sciences.

To such students, CLIR offers approximately 15 competitively awarded fellowships carrying stipends of up to $25,000 to support dissertation research for periods of 9 to 12 months. Applicants may be of any nationality and may propose to conduct their research anywhere in the world (including in multiple countries), but must be enrolled in a U.S. graduate school and be studying here, not on a campus abroad even if operated by a U.S. institution.

In partnership with the Preservation Directorate at the Library of Congress, for the 2012-2013 academic year CLIR is offering an additional fellowship award through this program to support original source dissertation research at the Library of Congress. Applicants must meet all standard eligibility requirements for the program as well as certain fellowship specific requirements, and will receive a regular stipend of up to $25,000 over the 9 to 12 month fellowship period. The CLIR/Library of Congress fellow will also be eligible to receive up to $6,000 in living expenses.

The application deadline is 5:00 p.m. Eastern time, November 15, 2011. Fellowship awards will be announced on April 2, 2012. Fellowship tenure will begin between June 1 and September 1, 2012, and end within 12 months of commencing. The application form, detailed instructions and further information are available online and may be found at http://www.clir.org/fellowships/mellon/mellon.html.

Public Lecture: "The Historian as Ventriloquist"

This just in from Sandy Baldwin:

Please note the upcoming lecture by Tom Cohen (and maybe also by
Elizabeth Cohen): "The Historian as Ventriloquist: The Joys and
Pitfalls of Speaking for Past People." The presentation will be held on
Friday, 30 September at 3:30 PM in Oglebay 118.

About Tom, from the York University (Canada) website:
"Professor Tom Cohen (*Thomas* only when in print) works on
Renaissance Italy, Rome especially, and that city*s rural hinterland.
His take is a mix of cultural and political anthropology. He studies
gestures and symbols and decodes actions. As a writer, he often uses
microhistory, telling fine-grained stories about the lives of ordinary
Romans. He looks to coalitions, conspiracies, trades, bluffs, dares, and
wily dodges. A devotee of style and vividness in scholarly writing, he
tells stories about seductions, betrayals, conspiracies, murders, and
poisonings, not just for the tales themselves, but for the clues they
offer about the culture of negotiation and the habits of coalition that
made a distant world work. As a social historian with a Humanities
inclination, employs close reading to extract the hidden esthetics of
everyday language. His current main project is a book on a rebellious
village high in mountains east of Rome."

Tom's recent books include Cultural History of Early Modern European
Streets (Brill, 2009), and Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (Chicago,
2004).

There is money in poetry.

That caught your attention, didn't it?

And it's only a small exaggeration. There is money, in poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction, for one lucky undergraduate who is selected as this year's Virginia Butts Sturm Creative Writing Scholarship recipient. So if you're an English major with a creative writing concentration, think about how great it'll feel to hit it big and tell your parents that being a writer does pay! Deadline: Wednesday, September 28.

And if you're a poet, grad or undergrad, don't miss the deadline---Monday, September 19---to apply for this year's Sturm residency with poet Carol Frost. She's pretty terrific. And here's a poem to prove it.

All Summer Long

The dogs eat hoof slivers and lie under the porch.

A strand of human hair hangs strangely from a fruit tree

like a cry in the throat. The sky is clay for the child who is past

being tired, who wanders in waist-deep

grasses. Gnats rise in a vapor,

in a long mounting whine around her forehead and ears.

The sun is an indistinct moon. Frail sticks

of grass poke her ankles,

and a wet froth of spiders touches her legs

like wet fingers. The musk and smell

of air are as hot as the savory

terrible exhales from a tired horse.

The parents are sleeping all afternoon,

and no one explains the long uneasy afternoons.

She hears their combined breathing and swallowing

salivas, and sees their sides rising and falling

like the sides of horses in the hot pasture.

At evening a breeze dries and crumbles

the sky and the clouds float like undershirts

and cotton dresses on a clothesline. Horses

rock to their feet and race or graze.

Parents open their shutters and call

the lonely, happy child home.

The child who hates silences talks and talks

of cicadas and the manes of horses.

“All Summer Long” by Carol Frost from Love and Scorn: New and Collected Poems. © 2000 by Carol Frost. Published by TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.

Poetry in your pants

Last summer, parts of Morgantown were visited by the "Midnight Poet," who would leave cryptic and frankly not very interesting poems on people's porches and doors overnight.  Colson Hall tenant Cari Carpenter received one, and it was fun to speculate about what the writer might be trying to accomplish by secretly distributing poetry door-to-door.  Was it performance art?  A cry for help?  Terrorism?

This video suggests that there might be better ways to be a poetry vandal.



--and while you're at the "Salvo Boutique," Goodwill, or Lucky's Attic, be sure to pick up the requisite pieces for this fall's retro-chic Flashdance look.  Since this is a very complicated ensemble to put together, here are some helpful instructions:



And remember that when it comes to accessories, "You can even add a little bit more, all the way up your wrist, to look like a people in the 80s!"

Career Workshops for Graduate Students

The Office of Graduate Education has announced the following workshops:

September 12: CVs for the Academic Job Search Oglebay 107, 5:00 – 6:30

September 19: Cover Letters for Faculty Positions Percival Hall 316, 5:00 – 6:30

September 27 & 29: How to Conduct a Literature Review

September 27: Downtown Library, 4:00 – 6:00

September 29: Evansdale Library, 4:00 – 6:00

*Please register by emailing GradEd@mail.wvu.edu or calling 304-293-7173

October 3: Teaching Statements for Faculty Positions Oglebay 107, 5:00 – 6:30

October 17: Teaching Portfolios for Faculty Positions Oglebay 107, 5:00 –6:30

October 24: Research Statements for Faculty Positions Percival Hall 316, 5:00 – 6:30