Recent Achievements October Edition

Recent Achievements in English (October 2012):

 

Under Sandy Baldwin’s direction, the Center for Literary Computing just published the second book in its series "Computing Literature." The only scholarly series devoted to digital literature, and featuring renowned authors and an international peer review board, books are entirely developed by students in the CLC, from copyediting through layout and ePub conversion.

 

The CLC continues to publish and host Electronic Book Review, one of the oldest all-online peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Sandy Baldwin is Executive Editor of the journal and works with an editorial team of scholars from around the work. Graduate and undergraduate students in the CLC keep the journal running, including copyediting and markup, and also work with authors and other aspects of the editorial process.

 

In September, Sandy Baldwin was asked to lead the Consortium for Electronic Literature, an agreement between eight research teams at universities in seven countries, all with databases dealing (in part or in whole) with electronic literature. The current goal of the consortium is synchronization of databases and a shared metadata/name authority enabling search across the databases, and - more broadly - enabling the first authoritative "vocabulary" for the field.

 

In October 2012, Sandy Baldwin's essay "Pervy Intimate Avatars," dealing with embodied performance in Second Life appeared, in the edited collection Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance (Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology).

 

Sandy Baldwin and CLC graduate interns Ben Bishop and Dibs Roy are participating the "crossed perspectives" project funded by the LabEx (laboratory of excellence) at the University of Paris 8, a collaboration by teams at four universities to understand cross-cultural perspectives on electronic literature. Data collection for the project is almost complete and will lead to a collaborative publication.

 

Gwen Bergner gave an invited talk on Oct. 1 at University of Texas--Austin, sponsored by Women's and Gender Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies, titled: "One and One is Three: Edwidge Danticat's Vodou Transnationalism."

 

Mark Brazaitis's short story "Cancer is a Killer, and So Am I" appears in Talking Writing: http://talkingwriting.com/cancer-is-a-killer-and-so-am-i/ His short story "The Meet" is forthcoming in Mid-American Review. A kind stranger reviewed his short story "Blackheart" on line: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/blackheart-mark-brazaitis He is in serious study for his role as Cinderella's father in the on-ice version of the fairy tale, scheduled for March 9 and 10 at the Morgantown Ice Arena. It's the role of a lifetime. Or two-and-half minutes of terror.

 

Amanda Cobb’s "You Owe Me a Coke," a poem, will appear this winter in The Boiler Journal.  Her poems, "Dummy," and "Because I Said So," will appear this Fall in a special print edition of Temenos journal, themed "Trap Doors and Little Triggers."  Excerpts from, "Low-Self Esteem: My Jesus Year," a memoir, will appear this winter in Spittoon.

 

Lowell Duckert moderated a panel ("Ecomaterialism") and gave a paper ("Do Glaciers Dream?") at cruising in the ruins: the question of disciplinarity in the post/medieval university: 2^nd Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group, Boston, September 2012.

 

Lara Farina's article, "Once More with Feeling: Tacility and Alterity, Medieval and Modern," was published in Postmedieval 3.3 (Fall 2012).  She also organized and chaired  a panel, "Synaesthetics" (on sensory organization and academic disciplines) at the 2nd Biennial conference of the BABEL Working Group in September: http://babel-meeting.org/2012-meeting/2012-program/

 

Marilyn Francus presented "'Where does discretion end, and avarice begin?': The Mercenary and the Prudent in Austen" at the national conference of the Jane Austen Society of North America, in October in New York.  Her panel was mentioned in the New York Times' article on the event:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/books/jane-austen-society-of-north-america-meets-in-brooklyn.html

John Jones presented papers at the 2012 Computers and Writing Conference and the 2012 Rhetoric Society of America Conference in May, 2012. He had a paper, titled "Creating Networks Through Search: PageRank, Algorithmic Truth, and Tracing the Web," accepted for inclusion in the conference proceedings, Selected Papers in Internet Research, and another paper, "Programming in Network Exchanges," accepted for publication in the journal Computers & Composition. 

 

Jim Harms has a poem, “The New Moon Economy,” in the current issue of Shenandoah http://shenandoahliterary.org/621/the-new-moon-economy/ and a long poem, “Orpheus Beach,” in the current issue of Ping-Pong.  His essay, “Jean Valentine:  Remnants and Recognition,” has just been reprinted in Jean Valentine:
This-World Company, published by the University of Michigan Press.

 

Kirk Hazen travelled on September 12-14, 2012 to Centre College (in the now wet Danville, KY) to give an invited-talk entitled “The Competing Myths of Appalachian Speech”. The talk was for a convocation at the college, and it drew 180 people. It was Kirk's first private, liberal arts college, and it was a learning experience. Kirk also spoke to three classrooms of Centre students, including an introduction to language and two cultural anthropology courses.

 

Sarah Neville been invited to deliver a seminar lecture on "Reassessing the Reprint in the Early English Book Trade" in the Open University's Book History Research Group Seminar Series in London in January. Amongst the 9 speakers of established/emerging scholars discussing recent developments in new theatre history and Shakespeare, I'm the only North American who was invited to take part. (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/english/book-history/documents-shakespearean-performance.shtml)

 

Renée K. Nicholson’s essay “Coda: Partnering” is forthcoming in Blue Lyra Review and her essay “Hair: A Short History” is forthcoming in Switchback.

 

Renee Nicholson and Natalie Sypolt will present “Radio Girls: Our Journey in Book Podcasting” at the annual Winter Wheat Writers’ Conference sponsored by Mid American Review at Bowling Green State University. Their podcast, SummerBooks, went from idea to over 700 hits in three months.

 

Morgan O’Grady’s poem "Elegy to R.M.O, Not Yet Dead" has been accepted by the Susquehanna Review and will be featured online and in their next print issue.

 

In August, Katy Ryan and Ryan Claycomb both presented at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference on a panel on Political and Protest Theatre Post 9/11.  Katy's paper was entitled "A View of the Brig: From the Cage to the Street," and Ryan's was entitled "Voices of the Other: Documentary and Oral History Performance in Post-9/11 British Theatre."

Mary Ann Samyn published three poems—"Flute-like, or You Didn't Know Me Then," "Another Christ or Two," and "Desire"—in Eleven Eleven (Cal Arts) and two poems—"Stupidity, Crabbiness, Moorings & Love" and "Long Sunday"—in The Kenyon Review.  

Nevena Stojanovic's article "'Like a Dazzling Curtain of Light': Fanny Assingham's Performances of Jewishness in The Golden Bowl" has been accepted for publication by the Henry James Review.

 

 

The Department of English presents:

The Faculty Research Colloquium

One and One is Three: Edwidge Danticat’s Vodou Transnationalism

by Gwen Bergner

The dynamic religion of Vodou in Haiti indicates the modern character of this island nation formed at the crossroads of cultural and economic exchange in the Black Atlantic. Yet ever since the Haitian Revolution produced the Atlantic world’s first free black nation in 1804, U.S. commentary persistently invokes a savage and sinister “voodoo” as shorthand for and evidence of Haiti’s political incompetence and cultural barbarism. Such fantasies of voodoo have worked to rationalize U.S. interventions in a presumably failed state while simultaneously preserving the illusion that Haiti remains isolated from modern civilization. In her novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat reclaims Vodou to imagine a new geography of transnational citizenship that bridges the imagined distance between Haiti and the U.S. opened by this primitivizing voodoo discourse. Danticat deploys the Marasa, the spirit twins of Vodou, not only to characterize the paradoxical dualities of diasporic citizenship but also to connect the ordinarily untold “social” history of sexual violence against women to the politics of the nation. In this way, the novel’s Vodou sensibility reconfigures the transnational feminist approach to framing sexual violence against women within the discourse of human rights.

October 24, 2012 2:30 p.m., 130 Colson Hall

Reflections of the Other: An EGO Arts Series Presentation

The EGO Arts Series

Hosted by EGO Presents:

A Reading from the Newly Published Book by Ethel Morgan Smith

Friday 19 Oct. 2012, at 7:30

Colson 130

Praise for Mark Brazaitis' latest book

It's no small thing to have your book reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement.

Positively.

Alongside a book by Steven Barthelme.

Except Mark's new book of stories, The Incurables, gets, oh, several paragraphs of the review and Barthelme's gets, well, a lot less.

Because, as you probably know, Mark's book is pretty great; after all, it's not every collection that "deserves a lasting place among regional story cycles."

Yep. That's what the review says.

Sounds good to us.

Poem Time

Here's one from Jim Harms, just in time for homecoming and football, autumn and the election.

Kennedy Wins West Virginia!

He started out

a friend of Kennedy’s,

though he started out

a Texan.  Today

he swings

on the porch next

door and sings “Someone

to Watch Over Me,”

as dusk thickens

in the street and

grays the day

down to shouts

and T.V.’s mumbling

through open windows.

Twice he’s talked

of Texas as all

horizon, the sort of

promise that slips

as evening wears away

the light, of coming here

to mountains so old

they ache and drift

beneath the weight

of sky, the way day

ends in hill shadow

and dust, smell of slag,

of water.  He delivered

Hancock County

in a locked box, shook

J.F.K.’s hand, and

went home.  But home

is an accident

of calculation or birth,

is where you run out

of money or grace or find

yourself standing still

too long.  L.B.J. sent him

back and Elaine

came with him; she liked

the virgin hemlocks,

the rhododendrons,

so they stayed.

He watches swallows

smoke from the glass

factory’s cold chimney

and waits.  Maybe home

is where purpose falls

in love with the light

settling in the trees

at dusk.  L.B.J. called

once more to say

thanks, to say

Come on home.  But Elaine

liked the chances

of her garden better here,

even when Carter

didn’t need him, even

when summer turned

south and drought

fell on the hills

like a burlap blanket.

There’s no end

to the Texas range

and no horizon here

to remind him what’s

out of reach.  He likes

to hear the roar

on Saturdays

from the stadium

across town, the crowd

noise bending in the silver

autumn air like

a train whistle entering

a tunnel.  He likes

the way the river implies

an ending.  So maybe

home is where we don’t

mind ending, or rather

don’t mind thinking

about ending, or don’t

reach to flick on

the porch light

when afternoon is ending,

ending early, the sun

surprised by the hills. 

How easily

the hills surprise us.

Current Thoughts Series: A Retrospective

Earlier this evening Ryan Claycomb presented on his new book Lives in Play: Autobiography and Biography on the Feminist Stage. The lecture went quite well, asking us to consider the interplay of reality and performance, identity and theatre.

Omohundro Postdoctoral Fellowship

Omohundro Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship 2013–2015 

The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture offers a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in any area of early American studies, to begin July 1, 2013. A principal criterion for selection is that the candidate's dissertation or other manuscript have significant potential as a distinguished, book-length contribution to scholarship. A substantial portion of the work must be submitted with the application. Applicants may not have previously published or have under contract a scholarly monograph, and they must have met all requirements for the doctorate before commencing the fellowship. Those who have earned the Ph.D. and begun careers are also encouraged to apply. The Institute holds first claim on publishing the appointed fellow's completed manuscript. The Institute's scope encompasses the history and cultures of North America's indigenous and immigrant peoples during the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods of the United States and the related histories of Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, the British Isles, Europe, and Africa, from the sixteenth century to approximately 1820. 

Fellows devote most of their time to research and writing, work closely with the editorial staff, and participate in colloquia and other scholarly activities of the Institute. In addition to a beginning stipend of $50,400, the fellowship provides office, research, and computer facilities as well as some travel funds for conferences and research. Fellows hold concurrent appointment as visiting assistant professor in the appropriate department at the College of William and Mary and teach a total of six semester hours during the two-year term. The calendar year 2014 is reserved solely for research and writing. Institute fellows also have the option of spending a summer at the Huntington Library on a full grant within five years of their residency in Williamsburg. 

The award is open to all eligible persons equally. Foreign nationals may apply. The College of William and Mary is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.

Further information may be obtained by contacting: Institute Fellowship, OIEAHC, P. O. Box 8781, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8781. E-mail: IEAHC1@wm.edu.   

Information and application forms for Institute fellowships can be found on our web site at http://oieahc.wm.edu/fellowship/submission/step_1.cfm. 

Application must be postmarked by November 1, 2012.

 

That's Not What They Meant!, a new book for early Americanists and anyone interested in contemporary US political rhetoric

Michael Austin, a provost and English professor at Newman University (and one of my undergrad instructors from Shepherd Univeristy), has a new book being released tomorrow. The book's title is That's Not What They Meant! Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America's Right Wing. The book is being published through Prometheus Books for the very afforable price of $19 (the link I've provided is to the book listing on the Prometheus website).

Austin's work, which has been partially developed through his insightful, unique, and sometimes downright funny blog Founderstein, works to deconstruct the mythos of a unified set of 'Founding Fathers' for the American republic. Prompted by the casual use of the 'Founding Fathers' as a stick with which to threaten or a talisman with which to legitimate any position in contemporary US political rhetoric, Austin goes back to contemporary documents and debates of the Early Republic period and shows how diverse and messy the founding of our nation actually was--and that the mess and diversity is how things are supposed to be.

Although I haven't read the book (I have read every Founderstein post though), I would say this is going to be an important text for early Americanists (I'm looking at you, Tim Sweet and Ryan Fletcher), or anyone who follows contemporary US politics and the rhetorics of political debate.

Tales of Capitalism: Have A Prof Write Your Paper

It's difficult to believe that it's not a satire, but there's now a website, Unemployed Professors.com that offers to have graduate students and professors bid to write everything from a response paper to a dissertation. Their rationale is that the contemporary system of higher education is not only "corrupt" but that "professors can only stay in business if they force students to write essays, within their disciplines, that will do nothing to contribute to their own education or edification."

This particular professor would be perfectly happy to write a neo-Marxist analysis of the website itself but not without the benefits of collective bargaining to establish a fair return on his labor.

The Oldest Living Tenant Tells It All

School's been going on for awhile, but the weather in the environs of Colson Hall this week has been a reminder that it's still technically summer, with cloudless skies and golden end-of-the-summer light and not a hint of mellow fruitfulness just yet. On days like these, in the afternoons, some of the older Tenants like to sit in Adirondack chairs on the lawn behind the Hall, gazing down the tree-lined vista at the gazebo and the ha-ha in the distance, talking about that one time, back in '87, when that student said that thing.

In the meantime, though, the young folks are all abustle, reading and writing and publishing. Doctoral student Sreya Chatterjee came back from summer vacation with an edited collection in her hand that contains her latest essay. If you've been swayed by Mary Ann's retro-advertising post and want to read something, you can check it out here: "Beyond Barriers: Transnational Feminist Solidarity," Modern Social Thinkers. Ed. Pradip Basu (Kolkata: Setu, 2012).

And recent graduate Dr. Nevena Stojanovic has just heard that her essay on Henry James, “'Like a Dazzling Curtain of Light': Fanny Assingham's performances of Jewishness in The Golden Bowl,” derived from a chapter of her dissertation, has been accepted for publication by The Henry James Review.

On a slightly different note, Teresa Pershing and Kate Ridinger Smorul received grants for research travel from the Robert Stitzel Graduate Student Travel Fund. There's a nice writeup about them here. (As it happens, there turned out to be more publicity about this than anyone expected, and Teresa and Kate both seemed to have been empowered in the process.)

Although it's been getting a bit cold when the sun goes down these days, I may keep sitting on the lawn for just a little while longer in the twilight, looking at the stars, thinking about that time during that one winter that the snow was so deep, but mostly just basking in the reflected glow of the young people's achievements.