CFP EGSU 2017 Conference: Finding Frontiers: Then, Now, and Beyond

Call for Papers for WVU EGSU Conference 2017

Finding Frontiers: Then, Now, and Beyond

Keynote speaker: Professor Holly Dugan, George Washington University

In 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Frederick Jackson Turner declared that “[by] moving westward, the frontier became more and more American…each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics.” For Turner, the frontier and the American pursuit of the ever shifting frontier line was the force that shaped our democracy. It left upon future generations a temporal residue that found its way onto coming frontier lines, and the future definitions that came out of them Where, then, is the frontier now? How do we identify it if/when we find it? Turner’s declaration, and the questions it elicits, recall parallel issues of space across ages, disciplines, and texts.

The students of the English Graduate Student Union (EGSU) at the West Virginia University Department of English invite you to explore the idea of frontiers and the complications that they entail. The conference this year will be titled Frontiers: Then, Now, and Beyond, and will be held March 11th, 2017 at the West Virginia University downtown campus in Colson Hall.

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to look further at the unexplored, undefined, indefinite nature of frontiers like those that Turner describes in his thesis. Presenters should feel free to explore the idea of frontiers in some of its broadest terms. Guiding questions include: what are the implications of imagined borders within the frontier narratives of 19th century America? How do literary borders situate, sustain, and undermine the British empire during the same period–and where do we find additional historic, scientific, and cultural parallels?  How does the rise of post-apocalyptic fiction in popular culture speak to the constant search for new frontiers? How does the proposed Anthropocene affect the drawing back or expansion of sensual or ecological frontiers? We urge you to broadly explore all questions of, or pertaining to, frontiers. You may consider one of, but are not limited to, the following categories:

• Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies
• African American Literature
• Women, Gender, and Sexuality
• Popular Culture
• Liminality
• Posthumanism
• American Literature
• British Literature
• Transatlantic Studies
• Hemispheric Studies
• Hispanic, Latino/a, and Chicano/a Literature
• Native American Literature
• Postcolonial Literature
• War and/or Trauma and Literature
• Film Studies and Film Theory
• Queer Theory
• Critical Theory and Aesthetics
• Architecture and Urban Planning
• Digital Humanities

Proposal abstracts of 250 words should be submitted electronically to egsuconference2016@gmail.com by January 13th, 2017. All proposals should include the title of the work, presenter’s name, institutional and departmental affiliation, and any technology requests. We also welcome and encourage panel proposals of three to four presenters. We encourage panel organizers to experiment with different formats, including more speakers and shorter papers, discussion groups, PechaKucha, etc. The subject line of your email should also indicate if your abstract is a proposing creative or academic work. Panels will run for one hour and fifteen minutes, and speakers should be prepared to give a presentation lasting approximately fifteen minutes. This allows for ample opportunity in the interim for discussion of each paper. Chairs will see that all panels start and end on time, and that no speaker or group goes over their allotted time. Notification of proposal status will be within two weeks of the submission deadline.

Creative writing panels are also encouraged. Possible panel topics for creative writers might include defying boundaries of genre and/or genre blending, the resurgence of fairy tales in contemporary creative writing, or influences on your work out of genre or that deal in any of the possible subjects listed above. Fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry panels should plan to read for 7-10 minutes per participant and field questions from their audience.

More information can be found at https://wvuegsuconference.wordpress.com/.

Voices Behind the Bars: Four Stories from Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy

Hungry Poets 2016 Contest Call for Submissions

Coming up much earlier than usual this year is the deadline for the Hungry Poets contest in memory of Gabe Friedberg. Usually a spring activity, the contest this year has been shifted to the fall. If you are a poet under 30 years old who would like to participate in a great event please see the flyer below for details. And if you teach creative writing classes (or any English or humanities classes) please distribute this information to your students as soon as possible. Don't be afraid to emphasize that there are cash prizes for first, second, and third place.

Please note that entries must be emailed in on or before 29 August, so the deadline is coming up quickly. See the flyer below for more information, and again, please distribute this flyer to your students.

Post Colloquium Report

Well, this past Saturday was the 2013 EGO Colloquium, and I think it went well overall. We decided to have the colloquium in Colson Hall this year, which (according to the survey monkey survey about colloquium reactions) seems to have garnered a mixed response. Some people liked being in our own space, but some people feel that the mountainlair is a more professional locale. But in general the responses to the keynote address, plenary session, and panels have been mostly positive, though there were complaints about low panel attendance (which seems run of the mill for the colloquium).

Anyway, here are some pictures from a couple of panels, the plenary session, and the keynote address:

2013 EGO Colloquium Poster and Schedule

Memory

Please join us for the 2013 English Graduate Organization Colloquium on the theme of Memory.

This year’s keynote address will be:

“The Novelist as Prophet: Memory in Don Delillo’s Falling Man”

Given by Daniel Shank Cruz of Westminster College

The Colloquium will also feature panels, roundtables, creative writing readings, and a plenary session of WVU faculty.

Saturday 13 Apr. 2013

8:30AM-5PM

Colson Hall (Registration outside 130)

West Virginia University English Graduate Organization

2013 Graduate Colloquium

Sat. 13 Apr. 2013

Memory

8:30-8:45: Meet & Greet, Coffee Time

8:45-9: Welcome & Official Opening of Colloquium, Colson 130

9-10:20: First Session

Colson 130—Something that Stands Still: A Creative Writing Panel of Collected Memories

            Moderator—Sadie Shorr-Parks

• Christina Seymour, West Virginia University
• Rebecca Childers, West Virginia University
• Morgan O’Grady, West Virginia University
• Sadie Shorr-Parks, West Virginia University

Colson G06—(Traumatic) Encounters

            Moderator—Crystal Harper

• Amanda Bailey, West Virginia University —“Ghosts from the Past: Memory-making and the Sensual Experience”
• Mallory Findlay, Georgetown University—“Bearing Witness: Trauma and Narration in Melmoth the Wanderer”
• Shaunté Montgomery, Howard University—“‘Look Closely on His [or Her] Body’: The Cycle of Trauma in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant”

Colson 223—Prosem Roundtable

            Moderator—Ryan Fletcher

10:30-11:30: Plenary Session, Colson 130

• John Jones
• Jim Harms
• Sarah Neville
• Lowell Duckert
• Kevin Oderman
• Catherine Gouge

11:30-1: Lunch Break, Morgantown

1-2:20: Second Session

Colson 130—Literary Memory

            Moderator—Valerie Surrett

• Ryan Fletcher, West Virginia University—“‘O Cursed Folk of Herodes al Newe’: Navigating the Anti-Semitism of Chaucer’s Prioress”
• Jeff Yeager, West Virginia University—“‘The Horses Share a Common Soul’: Myth, Identity, & Deep Ecology in John Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown & Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses”

Colson G06— Carried Countenances: Issues of Identity and Memory in the Work of Charles Dickens

            Moderator: Dominique Bruno

• Phillip Zapkin, West Virginia University—“‘Rewriting His Destiny’: Jack Maggs, Competing Writers, and Narrative Discourse”
• Dominique Bruno, West Virginia University—“‘As if I was your Doll or Puppet’: Ventriloquism and Identity in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend”

• Kayla Kreuger McKinney, West Virginia University—“In that bony light: Museum and Marriage Networks in Our Mutual Friend”

Colson G18—Rhetoric and Style

            Moderator—Bonnie Thibodeau

• Andi Stout, West Virginia University—“Couch Burners Serving Pineapple Upside-down Cake: Talking about Disruption in the Composition Classroom”
• Amanda Berardi, Carnegie Mellon University—“Deconstructing the Urban Frontier: An Analysis of the Role of Media Discourse in the Revitalization of Braddock, Pennsylvania”
• Nita Shippy, West Virginia University—“Styling Your Space: The Influence of Cognitive Spaces on Style-Shifting”
• Jay Kirby, West Virginia University—“As We Think: Examining Memory in Electronically Mediated Work”

2:30-3:30: Keynote Address, Colson 130

• Daniel Shank Cruz, Westminster College—“The Novelist as Prophet: Memory in Don Delillo’s Falling Man”

3:40-5: Session Three

Colson 130—Film

            Moderator—Ryan Fletcher

• Autumn Athey, West Virginia University—“Black Power and Patriarchy in Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood”
• Maureen Pearson, Howard University—“‘The Exceptional Negro’: Phrenology and Cultural Memory in Django Unchained”
• Yvonne Hammond, West Virginia University—“‘Get Some’: Fact-Finding, History, and Waiting for Someday in Jarhead, Stuff Happens, & Generation Kill”

Colson G06—Creative Writing

            Moderator—Kelly Sundberg

• Jesse Kalvitis, West Virginia University
• Rebecca Thomas, West Virginia University
• Rebecca Doverspike, West Virginia University

Colson G18— The Novel Novel: Form, Discourse, and the Emergence of the Early Novel

            Moderator—Harrington Weihl

• Will Van Camp, Independent Scholar—“The Silent Language of Love: Silence and Satire in Oroonoko”
• Whitney Sandin, West Virginia University—“(Re)Defining the Novel: From Fantomina to Pamela”
• Harrington Weihl, West Virginia University—“The Shift from Epistolary to Gothic Novels in Colonial North America”

Colson 223—Recalling the Surveys: Various Approaches to Teaching the Literature Survey Course, Roundtable

·        Andrea Bebell, West Virginia University

• Jessica Queener, West Virginia University
• Teresa Pershing, West Virginia University
• Kate Ridinger, West Virginia University

"D.H. Lawrence, Misogynist?"--Dr. Erin Johns Speese's Current Thoughts Lecture

The English Graduate Organization

Proudly Presents:

“D.H. Lawrence, Misogynist?: The Possibility of Sublime Intersubjectivity in

The Rainbow”

By (the new) Dr. Erin Johns Speese

Spring 2013 Current Thoughts Series Lecture

18 Mar. 2013 at 4PM

Colson 130

Finally the Fall 2012 Last Lecture is Here

The English Graduate Organization Presents

The Fall 2012 Last Lecture, by Lisa Weihman:

Irish Lesbian Terrorists!

Or, How I Stopped Worrying about Yeats and Learned to Love

The Bomb

  

Friday, 15 Feb. 2013 at 4 PM

Colson 130

Last Lecture Postponed

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond mine, Lisa's, or Lowell's control, the Last Lecture will need to be postponed until an as yet undecided date in January.

When more info becomes available, I will keep you appraised of the situation.

Irish Lesbian Terrorists! Or, How I Stopped Worrying about Yeats and Learned to Love The Bomb--The Last Lecture, by Lisa Weihman

The English Graduate Organization Presents

The Fall 2012 Last Lecture, by Lisa Weihman:

Irish Lesbian Terrorists!

Or, How I Stopped Worrying about Yeats and Learned to Love

The Bomb

 

Friday, 7 Dec. 2012 at 7:30PM

Colson 130

EGO/COW Book & Bake Sale this coming Monday 29 Oct.

For those of you who haven't heard (or hadn't heard before the title of this post), this coming Monday 29 Oct. EGO and COW are hosting our annual Fall Book & Bake Sale. From roughly 10-4 on Monday EGO members will be staffing the Sale in Colson 130 and COW members will be selling baked goods at a table in front of the Mountainlair.

As many of you know, this is our main fundraiser for the year, so please try to stop in and buy some cheap lovely books and some delicious baked goods. Your grad students very much appreciate the support.

Also, on Sunday 28 Oct. we will need assistance bringing the books down and unpacking them, then help on Monday after 4 to repack them. Anyone who shows up will be much appreciated (and we will be having pizza Sunday).
The last call for assistance is to anyone with a truck. We will be getting several shoping carts from the Giant Eagle on Green Bag Road, and a truck (or van, or SUV) would be a great help in transporting them (I only have a Chevy Cobalt, so I might be able to fit two carts in there, but it will be awkward).

Many thanks in advance.

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

Current Thoughts Series: Lives in Play

The Current Thoughts Series

Hosted by EGO Presents:

Lives in Play: Autobiography and Biography on the Feminist Stage

A Presentation Based on the Newly Published Book by Dr. Ryan Claycomb

Monday 17 Sept. 2012, at 7:30

Colson 130

2012 Appalachian Studies Association conference to be held in Indiana, PA

This CFP caught my eye when it popped up in my mailbox.  The Appalachian Studies Association is a great organization, and I've heard good things about their annual conference, although I've never been.

But here's a terrific opportunity for anyone who's looking for a national conference venue that's close by (about a two-hour drive from Morgantown) and relatively inexpensive--registration is $125 for faculty and $75 for students; both rates include a one-year membership in the ASA.

The theme of next year's conference is "The Wide Reach of Appalachia," and organizers are especially interested in papers on northern Appalachia (that's here, folks):

As mapped by the Appalachian Regional Commission, Appalachia extends as far north as southwestern New York State, but this will be the first time that a national ASA conference has met anywhere to the north of Morgantown, West Virginia. It has been remarked that in the minds of many people, “Appalachia is always somewhere to the south”—but in reality, Appalachia is to the north, too. By a large margin, there are more square miles of the Appalachian Regional Commission’s “official Appalachia” in Pennsylvania than in any other state. We especially encourage proposals on any aspect of northern Appalachia—but also, considering “The Wide Reach of Appalachia,” proposals about the Appalachian diaspora and about Appalachian influences and connections in other parts of the country.

Featured panels will include, among others, literary readings and at least one on Marcellus Shale natural gas “fracking.”

For more information, visit the conference website or download the registration details here.  Deadline for proposals is October 15, 2011.

Stiff Dick and other Appalachian wonders

Illustration by L. Leslie Brooke in The
House in the Wood and Other Fairy
Stories  (London, 1909)

Stop me if you've heard this one.

Once upon a time,

...this orphan boy's a going along, traveling, [and] he had him a paddle.  Walking along, [he sees] seven of these big old green flies a settin'.  And he upped his paddle and killed seven at the lick.  He traveled on, and then he went and had a buckle put on his belt and had it printed on his buckle,

Stiff Dick:
Killed Seven at a Lick.

First thing he knowed, he got to the king's house, and he went in and stayed 'til dinner.  And the king, he got done eating and he happened to notice this on his belt.  When he got done eating, he said, "You must be a terrible warrior."  Says, "Here it is on your belt: 'Stiff Dick:  Killed Seven at a Lick.'"

Says, "You're the very man I've been looking for.  I've got a job for you.  There's a unicorn and a lion and a wild boar in these woods that destroyed--no telling the people and stock that they destroyed.  I never could run acrost no man brave enough to destroy 'em--til you."

Some of the tenants might recognize this as a cognate of the Grimm Brothers' "The Brave Little Tailor," but this version was collected in 1939 from Samuel Harmon of Maryville, Tennessee.  And it's one of many traditional European folk- and fairy tales that migrated to the U. S., and specifically to Appalachia, that Carl Lindahl of the University of Houston will be focusing on with participants in the English Department's 20th annual Summer Seminar in Literary and Cultural Studies.

Even if you're not participating in the whole seminar, though, you can find out more about these narrative gems when Prof. Lindahl kicks off the seminar with a public lecture titled "The Magic of the Eternal Frontier" this Thursday evening, June 9th, at 7:30 p.m. in 130 Colson Hall.

Please join us for the lecture and stick around for a reception afterward.  Honorary belt-buckle to be awarded to the attendee who can eat seven Flying WV cookies in one lick.

If you're feeling more low-brow, check out this 1938 Mickey Mouse version.

BTW, the hero of Harmon's story never quails at the prospect of catching giants or killing unicorns.  Get it together, Mickey!

Registration deadline for the Summer Seminar is nigh!

Tenants and friends, just a reminder that the deadline to register for the English Department's 2011 Summer Seminar in Literary and Cultural Studies is tomorrow, April 29th.* 

This summer's topic is "American Magic: The Fates of Folk and Fairy Tales in the Appalachians," and the seminar will run from June 9-12.  Carl Lindahl of the University of Houston, whose scholarship in both medieval literature and folklore has been highly praised, is the seminar leader. 

The seminar explores the Appalachian märchen tradition, with emphasis on the disjunctions, gaps, and misunderstandings in much of the work on these traditions:  in particular, we'll consider why most of the documented examples of such tales come from men, when women seem to have been the more active tellers of these stories, and also why West Virginia is underrepresented in collections of Appalachian märchen.

If your only exposure to Appalachian folktales is through Richard Chase's Jack Tales, join us to discover how much more complex and varied this tradition really is.  This is a non-credit seminar, so you only need to do the readings and enjoy the discussions--no papers, no exams, no stress.

Details and a downloadable registration form are available here.  Grad students in the English Department can register at the discounted rate of $125!

*Well, OK.  Realistically, we can probably take registrations for another week or so. But please, don't delay!

"WVU Student Voices: Undergraduate Writing on Display"

As part of WVU's upcoming Mountaineer Week festivities, students from several undergraduate English courses will showcase their writing at the following event:

"WVU Student Voices: Undergraduate Writing on Display"

Friday, November 5, 4-5 p.m.

Bluestone Room, 2nd floor, Mountainlair

This event will be a great opportunity to learn about the many interesting and intellectually engaging ways that WVU undergraduates use writing in their academic lives. A variety of the English department's courses and programs will be represented, including the Undergraduate Writing Program (English 101, 102, and 103); the Shakespeare course (English 363); the Professional Writing & Editing program's Multimedia Writing course (English 303); and the Creative Writing and Literature capstone courses (English 418 and 496).

Please support our undergraduates and their writing by attending this fun, enlightening event.

Foreign Languages Invites English to a Party

The Department of Foreign Languages Presents:
Spectacular Spectacular
Friday, 1 May 2009
6-8:30 pm in G 24 Eiesland Hall
Join us for an evening celebrating foreign languages through plays, skits, songs, music, dance, and poetry in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish! Everyone is welcome, and refreshments will be served.

EGO Last Lecture: Ryan Claycomb

Ryan Claycomb will present "To Delight and Instruct," the final EGO Last Lecture of the semester, this Friday, April 24th at 4:00 in 130 Colson. Rumor has it that tap dancing will be involved. Whether this will be discursive or actual remains to be seen.