Monday, October 11, 2010
October is MFA Program Awareness Month
Then, today, Mary Ann Samyn's "My Life in Heaven" was featured as "Monday's Poem" in the Arts and Academe section of The Chronicle of Higher Education website.
The Tenants can hardly wait to see what happens next.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Finally, a Top-20 List That Makes Sense
WVU's MFA in Creative Writing Program gets a much deserved plug as "underrated" -- on the Huffington Post Web site, no less:
Thanks to the MFA students and the Department of English faculty and staff for creating such a dynamic program. Underrated? How about simply superb.
Happy weekend!
Mark
For Profit Colleges
In what has to be the longest opinion piece ever published on the Internet, Maria Bustillos, writing for The Awl, gives you the scoop on the for profit colleges. For the easily exhausted, the Tenants will provide an excerpt:
"According to Frank Donoghue’s book, The Last Professors, fully one-third of American two- and four-year colleges were for-profit by 2003. The University of Phoenix alone currently enrolls over 440,000 students, making it the second-largest higher-education system in the country after SUNY. In 2008, when Donoghue’s book was published, the seven biggest public companies running these schools had a combined market cap of over $22 billion and enrolled nearly 700,000 students—nearly seven percent of all college students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities that year. Total for-profit enrollment had ballooned to over a million by the time of the GAO investigation."
This is particularly relevant because:
"The General Accounting Office reported on August 4th on an undercover investigation that revealed the widespread fleecing of students in order to grab a staggering amount of Federal money: $24 billion in loans and grants provided by the Department of Education in 2009 alone."
And, of course:
"Instruction at for-profit schools is provided exclusively by employees of these companies, rather than by professors—there’s no such thing as research or tenure at a for-profit 'university'—and accreditations are relatively shakier than at traditional schools. Donohue reports that the University of Phoenix never even applied for accreditation from the most prestigious agency for business schools, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, for example. Only 26 percent of their instructors have been with the University of Phoenix for four or more years. Classes are shorter—24 hours of instructor time for a class, compared to 40 hours at a traditional school."
"According to Frank Donoghue’s book, The Last Professors, fully one-third of American two- and four-year colleges were for-profit by 2003. The University of Phoenix alone currently enrolls over 440,000 students, making it the second-largest higher-education system in the country after SUNY. In 2008, when Donoghue’s book was published, the seven biggest public companies running these schools had a combined market cap of over $22 billion and enrolled nearly 700,000 students—nearly seven percent of all college students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities that year. Total for-profit enrollment had ballooned to over a million by the time of the GAO investigation."
This is particularly relevant because:
"The General Accounting Office reported on August 4th on an undercover investigation that revealed the widespread fleecing of students in order to grab a staggering amount of Federal money: $24 billion in loans and grants provided by the Department of Education in 2009 alone."
And, of course:
"Instruction at for-profit schools is provided exclusively by employees of these companies, rather than by professors—there’s no such thing as research or tenure at a for-profit 'university'—and accreditations are relatively shakier than at traditional schools. Donohue reports that the University of Phoenix never even applied for accreditation from the most prestigious agency for business schools, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, for example. Only 26 percent of their instructors have been with the University of Phoenix for four or more years. Classes are shorter—24 hours of instructor time for a class, compared to 40 hours at a traditional school."
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The MLA Commission on the Status of Graduate Students in the Profession
......now has its own webpage. Particularly notable is the sidebar, which contains a number of links: to career resources, reports on graduate education, and even a guide to Doctoral Programs, among other things.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Tattoos and Typos
Tattoos and typos, yes, but not tattooed typos, thank goodness.
But according to The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide, 3rd year MFA Christina Rothenbeck's last name is Westover.
Oh dear.
In any case, aren't we proud of Christina and MFA alum Lauren Reed whose literature-related tattoos (Roethke and The Aeneid, respectively) are included in this collection?
Yes, I think we are.
What would you NOT do for 20 billion?
Zach Weiner at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has a recent post about the different pronunciations of "nuclear"
Weiner's comic (here) bases its humor off the idea that the nu-kyu-lar pronunciation is
so abhorrent that a physicist would be incapable of pronouncing it that way without imploding. It is a funny comic (as most of his are), but I am mesmerized by how this word has become somewhat of a litmus test for academia and the political left.Do the Tenants know of other words with such political cache?
Monday, October 4, 2010
Ooh! We Like This!
Beginning today, each Monday of The Chronicle's Arts & Academe page will feature a poem chosen by Lisa Russ Spaar. Remember her? She's the one I was just telling you about in last week's newsy happenings post. She'll be reading on campus on Thursday, October 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Robinson Reading Room. In the meantime, check out this week's poem, by David Baker, and what Lisa has to say about Whitman and Dickinson and how their writing practices are perhaps both strange to us now and strangely familiar:
Whitman and Dickinson both composed much of their work on scraps of paper and in small notebooks or hand-stitched booklets. Dickinson wrote at a table the size of a child’s desk. How did the exigencies of 19th-century life and the technologies of writing culture inform the poems they made—Whitman, the printer, with his choice of an oversized folio for his quicksilver tonal shifts, his relentless lists and cataloging? Or Dickinson’s wildly compressed, volatile, arguably Twitterable and hypertextual scribal explosions that often flooded and confounded the page at hand?
And of course plan to hear Lisa read her own amazing work in just a few weeks.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Winterthur Research Fellowship Program
Winterthur Research Fellowship Program Application
Due Date January 15, 2011
Winterthur, a public museum, library, and garden supporting the advanced study of American art, culture, and history, announces its Research Fellowship Program for 2011-12. Winterthur offers an extensive program of short- and long-term fellowships open to academic, independent, and museum scholars, including advanced graduate students, to support research in material culture, architecture, decorative arts, design, consumer culture, garden and landscape studies, Shaker studies, travel and tourism, the Atlantic World, childhood, literary culture, and many other areas of social and cultural history. Fellowships include 4-9 month NEH fellowships, 1-2 semester dissertation fellowships, and 1-2 month short-term fellowships.
Fellows have full access to the library collections, including more than 87,000 volumes and one-half million manuscripts and images.Resources for the 17th to the early 20th centuries include period trade catalogues, auction and exhibition catalogues, an extensive reference photograph collection of decorative arts, printed books, and ephemera. Fellows may conduct object-based research in the museum's collections, which include 85,000 artifacts and works of art made or used in America to 1860, with a strong emphasis on domestic life. Winterthur also supports a program of scholarly publications including Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture.
Fellows may reside in a furnished stone farmhouse on the Winterthur grounds, and participate in the lively scholarly community at Winterthur, the nearby Hagley Museum and Library, the University of Delaware, and other area museums. Fellowship applications are due January 15, 2011. For more details and to apply visit winterthur.org/fellowship.
Due Date January 15, 2011
Winterthur, a public museum, library, and garden supporting the advanced study of American art, culture, and history, announces its Research Fellowship Program for 2011-12. Winterthur offers an extensive program of short- and long-term fellowships open to academic, independent, and museum scholars, including advanced graduate students, to support research in material culture, architecture, decorative arts, design, consumer culture, garden and landscape studies, Shaker studies, travel and tourism, the Atlantic World, childhood, literary culture, and many other areas of social and cultural history. Fellowships include 4-9 month NEH fellowships, 1-2 semester dissertation fellowships, and 1-2 month short-term fellowships.
Fellows have full access to the library collections, including more than 87,000 volumes and one-half million manuscripts and images.Resources for the 17th to the early 20th centuries include period trade catalogues, auction and exhibition catalogues, an extensive reference photograph collection of decorative arts, printed books, and ephemera. Fellows may conduct object-based research in the museum's collections, which include 85,000 artifacts and works of art made or used in America to 1860, with a strong emphasis on domestic life. Winterthur also supports a program of scholarly publications including Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture.
Fellows may reside in a furnished stone farmhouse on the Winterthur grounds, and participate in the lively scholarly community at Winterthur, the nearby Hagley Museum and Library, the University of Delaware, and other area museums. Fellowship applications are due January 15, 2011. For more details and to apply visit winterthur.org/fellowship.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Post-Doctoral Fellowship Opportunities at UCLA (The Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies)
UCLA Center for 17th-& 18th-Century Studies http://www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/
and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/clarklib/
Combined fellowship information can be found here: www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/fellowships.htm
Post-doctoral application forms can be accessed directly via this link: www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/postdoc-app.htm
Clark Short-Term Fellowships:
Fellowship support is available to scholars with research projects that require work in any area of the Clark's collections. Applicants must hold a Ph.D. degree or have equivalent academic experience. Awards are for periods of one to three months in residence. Stipend: $2,500 per month in residence. Application deadline: 1 February 2011.
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 2011
Kanner Fellowship in British Studies:
This three-month fellowship, established through the generosity of Penny Kanner, supports research at the Clark Library in any area pertaining to British history and culture. The fellowship is open to both postdoctoral and predoctoral scholars. Stipend: $7,500 for three months in residence. Application deadline: 1 February 2011
Clark-Huntington Joint Bibliographical Fellowship:
Sponsored jointly by the Clark and the Huntington Libraries, this two-month fellowship provides support for bibliographical research in early modern British literature and history as well as other areas where the two libraries have common strengths. Applicants should hold a Ph.D. degree or have appropriate research experience. Stipend: $5,000 for two months in residence. Application deadline: 1 February 2011
Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Fellowships:
This theme-based resident fellowship program, established with the support of the Ahmanson Foundation of Los Angeles and the J. Paul Getty Trust, is designed to encourage the participation of junior scholars in the Center's yearlong core programs.
The core program for year 2011–2012:
Rivalry and Rhetoric in the Early Modern Mediterranean directed by Clark Professor Barbara Fuchs (UCLA)
The program, which is based at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, invites applications from humanities scholars whose research interests relate to the representation of empire and imperial rivalry in the early modern Mediterranean. The field of Mediterranean studies has grown tremendously in recent years, with rich investigations both within the national disciplines and in a comparative framework, placing empires side by side. This series will focus on the imbrication and entanglement of the various actors in the early modern Mediterranean (the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, Portugal, Morocco, France, England, Venice, and so forth). How is imperial competition managed in different genres? How do literary and cultural productions render the alterity and the attraction of the cultures encountered? Rivalry and Rhetoric will feature three symposia that take us from the broadest problems of representation to a case study—early modern England—for which the "Mediterranean turn" has radically changed the field.
“Envisioning Empire in the Old World,” the first and broadest meeting, will consider problems of visual, material, and textual representation of contact zones and encounters among the Mediterranean empires. Topics include: Spain in Italy, Spain on the Ottomans, versions of Lepanto, North African Borderlands, travel writing, captive’s tales, merchants and ambassadors, citational and textual traditions, lingua franca and the problems of communication, and contested spaces on the page and the stage.
“Black Legends and Domestic Dissent” explores the intersections between the discourses that discredit Spain or the Ottomans as imperial actors and the contestation of orthodoxy in the domestic sphere. How is anti-Spanish sentiment used across Europe, and how does it enable local or national forms of resistance? How do conceptions of the Ottomans intersect with or influence conceptions of Spain? What is the role of race in the black legends? Conference sessions will focus on different iterations of black legends across Europe and the Americas, as well as on their interpenetration.
“Imagining the Mediterranean in Early Modern England” explores how England engages the Mediterranean as conceptual space, and how this engagement intersects with those of other European nations. What role does the representation of Mediterranean empire serve in thinking through England's own expansion? How is the threat of the Mediterranean negotiated in various genres? How has the canon of early modern English writing changed in response to the Mediterranean turn of recent years? Topics include: the geography of revenge tragedy, Iberian tragedies, Shakespeare's Mediterranean, Machiavellianism on stage, Spanish plots and plotting Spaniards, translation and appropriation.
Scholars will need to have received their doctorates in the last six years, (no earlier than July 1, 2005 and no later than September 30, 2011). Scholars whose research pertains to the announced theme are eligible to apply. Fellows are expected to make a substantive contribution to the Center’s workshops and seminars. Awards are for three consecutive quarters in residence at the Clark. Stipend: $37,740 for the three-quarter period together with paid medical benefits for scholar. Application deadline: 1 February 2011
and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/clarklib/
Combined fellowship information can be found here: www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/fellowships.htm
Post-doctoral application forms can be accessed directly via this link: www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/postdoc-app.htm
Clark Short-Term Fellowships:
Fellowship support is available to scholars with research projects that require work in any area of the Clark's collections. Applicants must hold a Ph.D. degree or have equivalent academic experience. Awards are for periods of one to three months in residence. Stipend: $2,500 per month in residence. Application deadline: 1 February 2011.
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 2011
Kanner Fellowship in British Studies:
This three-month fellowship, established through the generosity of Penny Kanner, supports research at the Clark Library in any area pertaining to British history and culture. The fellowship is open to both postdoctoral and predoctoral scholars. Stipend: $7,500 for three months in residence. Application deadline: 1 February 2011
Clark-Huntington Joint Bibliographical Fellowship:
Sponsored jointly by the Clark and the Huntington Libraries, this two-month fellowship provides support for bibliographical research in early modern British literature and history as well as other areas where the two libraries have common strengths. Applicants should hold a Ph.D. degree or have appropriate research experience. Stipend: $5,000 for two months in residence. Application deadline: 1 February 2011
Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Fellowships:
This theme-based resident fellowship program, established with the support of the Ahmanson Foundation of Los Angeles and the J. Paul Getty Trust, is designed to encourage the participation of junior scholars in the Center's yearlong core programs.
The core program for year 2011–2012:
Rivalry and Rhetoric in the Early Modern Mediterranean directed by Clark Professor Barbara Fuchs (UCLA)
The program, which is based at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, invites applications from humanities scholars whose research interests relate to the representation of empire and imperial rivalry in the early modern Mediterranean. The field of Mediterranean studies has grown tremendously in recent years, with rich investigations both within the national disciplines and in a comparative framework, placing empires side by side. This series will focus on the imbrication and entanglement of the various actors in the early modern Mediterranean (the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, Portugal, Morocco, France, England, Venice, and so forth). How is imperial competition managed in different genres? How do literary and cultural productions render the alterity and the attraction of the cultures encountered? Rivalry and Rhetoric will feature three symposia that take us from the broadest problems of representation to a case study—early modern England—for which the "Mediterranean turn" has radically changed the field.
“Envisioning Empire in the Old World,” the first and broadest meeting, will consider problems of visual, material, and textual representation of contact zones and encounters among the Mediterranean empires. Topics include: Spain in Italy, Spain on the Ottomans, versions of Lepanto, North African Borderlands, travel writing, captive’s tales, merchants and ambassadors, citational and textual traditions, lingua franca and the problems of communication, and contested spaces on the page and the stage.
“Black Legends and Domestic Dissent” explores the intersections between the discourses that discredit Spain or the Ottomans as imperial actors and the contestation of orthodoxy in the domestic sphere. How is anti-Spanish sentiment used across Europe, and how does it enable local or national forms of resistance? How do conceptions of the Ottomans intersect with or influence conceptions of Spain? What is the role of race in the black legends? Conference sessions will focus on different iterations of black legends across Europe and the Americas, as well as on their interpenetration.
“Imagining the Mediterranean in Early Modern England” explores how England engages the Mediterranean as conceptual space, and how this engagement intersects with those of other European nations. What role does the representation of Mediterranean empire serve in thinking through England's own expansion? How is the threat of the Mediterranean negotiated in various genres? How has the canon of early modern English writing changed in response to the Mediterranean turn of recent years? Topics include: the geography of revenge tragedy, Iberian tragedies, Shakespeare's Mediterranean, Machiavellianism on stage, Spanish plots and plotting Spaniards, translation and appropriation.
Scholars will need to have received their doctorates in the last six years, (no earlier than July 1, 2005 and no later than September 30, 2011). Scholars whose research pertains to the announced theme are eligible to apply. Fellows are expected to make a substantive contribution to the Center’s workshops and seminars. Awards are for three consecutive quarters in residence at the Clark. Stipend: $37,740 for the three-quarter period together with paid medical benefits for scholar. Application deadline: 1 February 2011
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