Saturday, July 28, 2012

CFP: Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900

The 41st annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 will be held at the University of Louisville, February 21-23, 2013.

All submissions will be accepted via email. 

Critical papers may be submitted on any topic that addresses literary works published since 1900, and/or their relationship with other arts and disciplines (film, journalism, opera, music, pop culture, painting, architecture, law, etc.).

Work by creative writers is also welcome.

Visit our website for complete submission guidelines: http://www.thelouisvilleconference.com                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Prearranged panels are also welcome. Group Societies are welcome.
Deadline for submission is 11:59 PM EST September 15, 2012.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Recent Achievements in English


Recent Achievements in English (July 2012):


Rudy Almasy presented a paper entitled "Pastor Katherine Parr: Word, Text, and Performance" for the Society for Reformation Research at the 47th Medieval Congress in May at Western Michigan University.  He's sure everyone knows that Parr, Henry's sixth wife, wrote The Lamentation of a Sinner  (1547), the first published work in the Sixteenth Century by a woman, and that in 2012 we observe the quincentennial of her birth.  Almasy also concluded his service on the nominating committee for The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference.
 
David Beach received a grant from the Information Literacy Course Enhancement Project and has been working with Kelly Diamond and Alyssa Wright to integrate more information literacy assignments in ENGL102.

Mark Brazaitis's short stories appear or are forthcoming in the Beloit Fiction Journal ("Cuts"), Cimarron Review ("Rick the Dick"), West Branch ("The Blind Wrestler"), H.O.W. Journal ("Barbados," in print and online: http://howjournal.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/h-o-w-contest-winners-fiction-edition-2/ ), Ascent ("No Less Afraid": http://readthebestwriting.com/?p=1133 ), Witness ("Blackheart," in print and online: http://witness.blackmountaininstitute.org/author/markbrazaitis/ )
and Carve ("Truth Poker": http://www.carvezine.com/issue/2011/summer/brazaitis.htm ).

His essay "Sucker" appears in Lunch Ticket (http://lunchticket.org/sucker/ ) and his essay "Lament" appears in Under the Sun.

His poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry East ("Spring is Here") and Slant ("The Dancer").

His community service included compiling a 0-22 record as the girls' basketball coach at North Elementary. His youngest daughter (point guard) has demanded a trade to Mountainview.

Pat Conner ‘s “Four Contiguous Poems in the Exeter Book: A Combined Reading of ‘Homiletic Fragment III’, ‘Soul and Body II’, ‘Deor’, and ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’,” appeared in The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A.N. Doane, Matthew T. Hussey and John D. Niles, eds., (Brepols, Belgium, 2012): 119-39.

His acting credits in 2012 include:  The Merchant of Venice: Shylock (South Park Theatre), 2012; The Full Monty: Marty, Ensemble (McKeesport Little Theater), 2012; Lysistrata: Commissioner (Three Rivers Theatre), 2012.

Katie Fallon’s book (Cerulean Blues) was recently named a finalist for the Southern Environmental Law Center's Reed Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment.

Sandy Florian’s poetic novella called Boxing the Compass was accepted for publication by Noemi Press and will be published by the spring of 2013. This is her fifth book.

Byron Nelson’s article article, "John Donne's Pulpit Voice," appears in Prose Studies, 34:1 (2012), 50-58. This was based on the paper he gave at the Renaissance Prose conference at Purdue last October. His review of Chanita Goodblatt's "John Donne's Christian Hebraism" appears in Sixteenth-Century Journal 43/1 (Spring 2012), 226-27.

Kelly Sundberg had an essay published in the Spring 2012 issue of Slice Magazine and an essay published in the Summer 2012 issue of Reed Magazine. Another essay will be published the Fall 2012 issue of the Mid-American Review, and another essay was a finalist for the Southeast Review's Narrative Nonfiction Prize and will be published in the Spring 2013 issue of the Southeast Review.

Glenn Taylor saw the February 2012 UK paperback publication of THE MARROWBONE MARBLE COMPANY, Blue Door/HarperCollins, and the March 2012 France paperback publication of THE BALLAD OF TRENCHMOUTH TAGGART, Points (Editions du Seuil).  He also served as a Faculty member at the Ninth Annual Chautauqua Writers Festival (June 14-17th, 2012), alongside other faculty members such as Cristina Garcia and Martin Espada. 

Phillip Zapkin presented three papers at academic conferences (not counting the EGO Colloquium) this past academic year:  “‘Borrowed Robes’: Macbeth, Mimetic Desire, and the Monstrous Double” at Shepherd University's Sigma Tau Delta Literary Festival and Conference; "Visiting Grandmother: A Question about the Ethics of the Friendly Teaching Persona" at the 2012 CEA Conference; and "Timelines: Temporal Representations in Three Film Versions of King Lear" at the 2012 NeMLA conference.  Videos of these second two presentations are available through his youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/PhillipLewisify. At CEA he presented with Rebecca Doverspike and Jessi Kalvitis, and his youtube channel also has videos of their presentations.



 



Spotlight on Andi Stout: A New Voice in WVU Poetry

Andi Stout, going into her third year in WVU’s MFA program, has had an exceptionally productive year. She has received a number of awards and honors this past year, and has two forthcoming poetry publications.



At the beginning of March, Andi read her poems “Folding Paper” and “Six Words About Myself” at the AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Conference, at an off-site reading sponsored by Connotation Press. She read after Meg Tuite and before Natasha Trethewey (the new United States Poet Laureate). Andi’s poems received a really warm reception, as you can here in the video of her reading.



At the beginning of April, the WVU English Department nominated Andi for the Best New Poets Anthology. This anthology selects fifty poems from emerging writers across the country, and Andi was chosen as the voice to represent WVU.



Later in April, Andi won second place in the Hungry Poets Competition for her poem “Folding Paper.” This is the second time Andi has placed in this annual competition, the first time being in 2009 for “Hang in There, Baby.”



Perhaps most impressive, however, is that Andi has two poems that will be published this coming August: “Folding Paper” has been picked up by Scissors and Spackle and will be available in print and online in the 23 August issue.


The poem “Six Words About Myself” has been selected to be part of The Living Poetry Project, which prints poems on car magnets which “will be place all over the Southern California region in hopes of infusing our long commute times with poetry.”



Andi will continue infusing the WVU community with her poetry, and will undoubtedly continue to achieve spectacular things.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Alumni News, Update 47: Professor De's New Book

The Tenants continue to while away the summer evenings opening the mail while Mary Ann reads aloud from the Collected Works of Robert W. Service.

She was right in the middle of "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and some of the younger tenants were getting a bit agitated by the narrative suspense, when, fortunately, one of us came across a big envelope that contained a copy of Aparajita De's co-edited collection Subaltern Vision: A Study in Postcolonial Indian English Text (CAS, 2012), and we all gathered round to admire the cover...

The Book in Question
And to read the very nice blurb on the back....

"The present volume offers a stimulating collection of essays primarily devoted to literary representations of subaltern issues by Indian novelists writing in English and with a particular focus on gender, nation and language. It brings together essays on two writers who have been frequently associated with subaltern concerns, Amitav Ghosh and Mahasweta Devi, and discussions of other internationally acclaimed writers, such as Kiran Desai, Rohinton Mistry and Khushwant Singh, whose work also deals with disparities in Indian society and the problematics of representing this. Subaltern Vision has a valuable contextualizing Preface by Debjani Ganguly. The editor, Aparajita De’s Introduction, both illuminates the evolution to subaltern studies and introduces the individual essays. The volume is a significant intervention in the field and it is essential reading for anyone interested in the ways in which literature has responded to the challenges posed by the widening gap between India’s haves and have nots.”
– John Thieme, Professor, University of East Anglia

We were also pleased that Aparajita included a recent photo of herself, which provoked a big debate about whether it was taken in ancient Athens or contemporary Philadelphia. We'll let you decide:


Congratulations to Dr. De!




Tuesday, July 17, 2012

A Musical Summary of This Summer

It's been a difficult summer, not because of the drought or excessive heat but because it's been completely unclear what the song of this summer is, which has caused any number of arguments on the tennis courts or among the parterres of the formal gardens of Colson Hall. Will it be Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" or Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" that comes on the radio in the assisted living facility in 2043 and reminds us of that steamy July back in "Aught '12"? Fortunately, indie duo Pomplamoose have solved this problem by doing a mashup of both songs, complete with a video that maintains their alterno-cred by having an indeterminate "New Yorker story ending."

More Job News (and an Update)

No sooner had the Tenants made it through all the postcards and letters and telegrams about graduate employment and put them all neatly in a pile and then put the pile in the Tiffany bowl on the old oak table in the hall outside the music room, just as Mrs. Marshall, the housekeeper, told us to do....no sooner had we done all that than even more came in. The Tenants are pleased to announce that:

Irina Rodimtseva (PhD 2012) (in about two weeks, actually) has accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor at Alderson-Broaddus College.

And it turns out that Dr. Dragulescu's job at Virginia Union University is tenure-stream so that, as she notes, she plans to be in Richmond for awhile.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Hi there, blog readers...

Sorry to be a little MIA. Long story short: I've been busy---summer teaching sure is fun!---but I've been thinking of you and I'm never too busy to share a poem this good. So here it is. See what you think.


THE ILLITERATE

By William Meredith

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think that this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
that keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?


1958

Friday, July 6, 2012

And Speaking of Jobs....

The University of Pittsburgh--Johnstown announces the following adjunct positions:

Adjunct Instructor of English Composition





Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Alumni News: Jobs Update


Thomas Hart Benton, Changing West
The Tenants are still sorting through all the mail on the table in the library, but we are very pleased to be able to announce the following employment news.

Aparajita De (PhD 2009) has accepted a tenure-track job as an Assistant Professor at CUNY Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn.

Jon Harvey (PhD 2010) has accepted a permanent position as an Assistant Professor at Northern Virginia Community College.

This coming year, Luminita Dragulescu (PhD 2011) will be a Visiting Assistant Professor at Virginia Union University in Richmond.

Lori Zerne (PhD 2011) will be teaching next year at Highland View Academy in Maryland.

Jeremy Justus (PhD 2012) received multiple offers of visiting appointments for next year. The one he chose is a one-year position at University of Pittsburgh--Johnstown.