Lecture by Professor James Bednarz

"Incorporate Selves: Shakespeare's Mythmaking"

A lecture by Professor James Bednarz of Long Island University

Sponsored by the CUNY Graduate Center Early Modern Interdisciplinary Group (EMIG)

Professor Bednarz is the author of Shakespeare and the Poets' War and the forthcoming Shakespeare and the Truth of Love: The Mystery of the Phoenix and the Turtle.

March 30th
2pm

at the CUNY Graduate Center 
365 5th Ave. at 34th St.
Room 4108

All are welcome. A reception will follow the event.

Spring 2012 Graduation Deadlines

I've been getting a few questions about deadlines for people who want to graduate this May.

MA Portfolios are due by Monday April 16 to the dept office.

Dissertations are due by Monday April 2 to all three members of the committee; doctoral students should also schedule a defense before the end of April with these committee members.  There are also multiple forms to fill out, which you can find here.

Please contact me if you have any questions about this.  Those dates are as late as we can make them and still have you graduate on time, so we can't allow any extensions.

Update:  I've also added a new Page to the blog that has these dates on it.  See the upper left of the blog homepage.

On Campus Reading w/Caribbean Writers

This announcement came through the St. John's e-blast a few days ago, and I thought it would be a great event to repost on the blog in case you missed it. It does require pre-registration, so check out the link at the bottom.

Readings and Conversation with Caribbean Writers

Date: Thursday, April 19th, 2012
Time: 1:45 PM (Common Hour)
Location: Belson/Finley Hall, Law School Atrium, 4th Floor, Queens Campus

Guest Speaker: Diana McCaulay & Yolaine M. St. Fort

Diana McCaulay, is an award winning Jamaican writer, newspaper columnist and environmental activist. Her short story, The Mango, the Ackee and the Breadfruit won the Lifestyle Short Story competition in 1991.

Yolaine M. St. Fort, a writer of Haitian descent holds a M.A. in Creative Writing from Long Island University. The recipient of recent fellowships from the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and Cave Canem in New York, her stark and haunting poetry was prominently featured in General Authority: Haiti Earthquake 1-12-2010.

Readings, Q & A session and Book Signing – Lunch included.

CLICK HERE to register for the event!!  Space is limited, so register now!

Congratulations, Sarah!

Congratulations to Sarah Goncalves! Sarah will be having an original short story published in The Garbanzo Literary Journal, which she wrote for Professor Brownstein's class last year. Her story is entitled, "Not My Story," and will be published on May 25 in both digital and print forms.

Check out the journal's website here, and high five Sarah when you see her!

Thinking Outside the Triangle

Thinking Outside the Triangle: Comp/Rhet Research, Performance Studies, & Queer Theory

Mark McBeth, Associate Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice & CUNY English Ph.D. Program, explores the connections between the theories of comp/rhet research, performance studies, and Queer theory, and consequentially how their intersections can inform classroom practice.

The talk will be held at the St. John's Manhattan Campus, 101 Murray Street in Room 227 on Thursday, March 29 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Please RSVP to Tara Roeder at roedert@stjohns.edu by March 20.

You can find directions to the Manhattan Campus here:

http://www.stjohns.edu/about/general/directions/directions/manhattan

Roundtable on Fall Grad Classes: Tomorrow!

Don't forget to attend tomorrow afternoon's roundtable discussion with faculty teaching graduate courses in the fall. The discussion will be held from 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. in the IWS. Refreshments will be served.

See the full post on the discussion and which faculty members will be attending here. See the full post of graduate course offerings for the fall here.

Reminder: St. John's Grad Conference Submissions due Thursday!

Many of you are compiling panels to submit for the graduate conference, and we can't wait to see all the proposals! Don't forget that we will also accept individual papers. The deadline is Thursday. Please submit abstracts to stjgradconference@gmail.com.

CFP: St. John's Graduate Conference

St. John’s University English Graduate Conference Call for Papers

Discourses of Power: Subjugation, Struggle and Sacrifice in Literary and Political Cultures

Saturday, April 21, 2012

St. John’s University

8000 Utopia Parkway

Jamaica, NY 11439

“The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having moreas a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves.” - Paulo Freire

What motivates humanity’s desire to gain and retain power? Competition for control has permeated society through struggles of class, race, gender, sexuality and ability, in both the public and domestic spheres. Subjugated classes fight for empowerment, while dominant classes struggle to maintain the status quo. Literary, cultural, and political studies have attempted to challenge dominant discourse and shatter hegemony. During the St. John’s University Graduate Conference we will explore issues of power in the private and public spheres. We are seeking submissions considering the discourses of power.

Individual papers may be submitted, but panel submissions are encouraged. Multimedia will be available for Power Point presentations, music, or video. Abstracts (150 words or less) are due by March 15 to stjgradconference@gmail.com. Include abstracts in email as a PDF or MS Word attachment. If submitting as a panel, please include an abstract for each individual paper. The names and contact information for each panelist should be included in the email submission but NOT on the abstract attachments.

You may direct any questions to stjgradconference@gmail.com. Serving on the St. John’s English Graduate Conference Committee are Dr. Steve Mentz, Tara Bradway, Regina Duthely, and Elizabeth Walsh. Please feel free to forward this to any other possibly interested parties.

Paper topics might include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Class relations in literature
• Writing Pedagogy and Compositional Theory
• Power relationships in drama
• Political discourse
• African-American rhetoric
• Trauma Studies
• Disability Studies
• New Media and the Digital Culture
• Queer Studies
• Post-colonialism
• Feminism
• Law and Literature
• Topics related to history or social sciences

Congratulations!

Many congratulations to Dr. Steve Mentz and Dr. Carmen Kynard for their respective promotions to Full and Associate Professor!

Summer 2012: Graduate Online Course Offerings

They're here! I know I've been waiting for these course listings with excitement: the Graduate Course Offerings for this summer. These are all online courses, which is perfect for the summer.

Summer 2012: Graduate Course Offerings Online

The St. John's University English Department will offer three graduate seminars online this summer. These courses extend our engagement with our students beyond the academic year. We log into dynamic course platforms to engage in discussions, post questions, and communicate with each other. Everyone is welcome; non-matriculated students can take summer courses and apply to the program next year.

Summer Session I: May 29 - July 2

E. 135: Critical Issues in Writing Assessment (31263)
Dr. Harry Denny


Teachers spend countless hours assessing their students' writing. This course focuses on the history, theory, and methods of writing assessment in English Studies. Students will explore their own experiences and practices and embark on original research that may commingle material from other online courses this summer. For secondary school teachers, we explore how stat-mandated exams and the prepping of students for them might be re-imagined pedagogically outside received notions of templates and canned rhetoric. Students will respond to critical issues, push one another through discussion threads, and workshop their own writing and scholarship.

Please email the instructor, Harry Denny, for more details: dennyh@stjohns.edu

Summer Session II: July 9 - August 9

E. 770: Studies in 20th Century American Lit. & Culture: Ezra Pound and Modernism (32008)
Dr. Stephen Sicari


With Pound's epic poem The Cantos as our main text, the course connects literary "modernism" to more general social, cultural, political, and scientific conditions suggested by the term "modernity." We will think about Pound the radical literary experimenter who helped shape the poetics of the twentieth century; we will think about Pound the pagan who recoils at established and orthodox religion; we will think about Pound the pedagogue who used his poetry to enact what can be seen as an Enlightenment project, and we will watch how this project leads to his endorsement of Fascism and to his own internment as a traitor; we will watch him re-think his life's work in Pisa as he writes what a poem of confession and hope; we will watch him respond to the Cold War and its "propaganda of luxury and terror" (his phrase).

Please email the instructor, Stephen Sicari, for more details: sicaris@stjohns.edu

E. 300: Teaching Shakespeare: The Dramatist or the Myth? (31262)
Dr. Steve Mentz


Every so often all of us who teach Shakespeare all get asked if we think he really wrote his plays. It's a silly question, but it's true that we read, teach, watch, and think about Shakespeare inside four hundred years of mythologized biography. This summer seminar explores how mythography around Shakespeare's life affects our practices as teachers and students of the works. We'll hold our noses and see last year's anti-Shakespearean film, "Anonymous," revisit the musch more fun but still inaccurate "Shakespeare in Love" (1998), and contrast both with an innovative recent scholarly book, Nine Lives of William Shakespeare. We'll also read four plays and see a live performance of Romeo and Juliet.

This Shakespeare...

 ...this one...

... or this one?

Please email the instructor, Steve Mentz, for more details: mentzs@stjohns.edu

________________________________________________________

For more information, please contact Lana Umali umalil@stjohns.edu
or Steve Mentz, Director of Graduate Studies mentzs@stjohns.edu
For a registration form, visit http://www.stjohns.edu/admission/undergraduate/visitsummer/register.stj
For more on St. John's Graduate Programs in English, please visit http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/liberalarts/departments/english

CFP: Hunter College Graduate Conference

Hunter College Graduate Student Conference
May 11-12, 2012
Storytellers: Crafting, Testifying, Fibbing

All of us are natural storytellers. Whether fictional, non-fictional, biographical, or autobiographical, the narratives we weave throughout our lives relate us to each other, to our collective histories, and to our notions of personal identity. Yet the methods and structures of storytelling are as varied and unique as the individual storytellers themselves. Who is behind the text, or within the text, and how do we come to understand the motivations and objectives of storytelling?

This conference seeks to interrogate the figure of the storyteller in literature, and what that figure contributes to the overall structure of the work, especially with regard to testifying and fibbing. What gives a storyteller believability, power, and authority? What are the power structures embedded in the act of storytelling? What does it mean if a storyteller is inaccurate or untruthful? What is the relationship between storytelling and experience, or between storytelling and history? How do we come to know the politics of storytelling through the figure of the storyteller, and how can we build a critical consciousness around the knowledge structures of stories and the storytelling process?

We welcome papers that explore the nature of the storyteller in general and specific ways. Possible topics to examine include (but are not limited to):

· How the storyteller engages personal and/or collective memory

· The power structures embedded in acts of storytelling

· The histories of different kinds of storytellers and the ways in which they gain legitimacy, authenticity or popularity

· The relationship between storytelling and historical record

· Ideas about the nature of truth, and the concept of fibbing

· Notions of testimony, as well as cultural or historical witness

· Storytelling as identity formation

· Ideas of gender politics through the figure of the storyteller

· Culturally-specific historical storytelling, including fables and myths

· Storytellers in the digital age and ways in which digital media allow the storyteller to craft identity

· The storyteller’s psychological relationship to fear, trauma, and imagination

· How translation complicates the authorial relationship and/or the storyteller’s relationship within or outside of the story

· The privileging and/or silencing of stories and the voices who tell them


Please submit abstracts of 150-250 words to HunterGEC@gmail.com by Thursday, March 23, 2012. All proposals should include your name, affiliation, contact information (including email address), and a short bio. Please also include a title to your paper. Proposals sent in by graduate students will be given priority, however, we will consider proposals from independent scholars and recent graduates. (Pre-organized panels of three to four related papers are also welcome. Please include all submitters’ information in one email.)

Summer Undergraduate Course Listings

It's time to start thinking about summer! Here are the undergraduate listings for both Summer Session I (May 29 - July 2) and Summer Session II (July 9 - August 9). All the courses are online, so if you are planning to get out of the city for the summer, you can still catch up on some coursework.

UNDERGRADUATE FLYER

SUMMER SESSION I

May 29 - July 2, 2012

Eng.  1040: Writing for Business (30703)
Online
Dr. Kathleen Lubey
This course will emphasize the particular skills necessary for clear and efficient communication in business environments. Surveying the diverse forms of professional writing, from emails and cover letters to executive summaries and proposals, students will focus on the role clarity, organization, revision, and research in producing strong and purposeful writing. By the conclusion of the course, students will have collected a portfolio of various forms of business communication. This course will be taught fully online, and will require extensive work with texts and with other students’ writing through peer review exercises.

Eng. 1100C: Literature in a Global Context (30193)
Online
Dr. Melissa Mowry
Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe (1719) is one of the most iconic works of imaginative literature written in English.  Upon its publication 1719, it was an immediate best-seller and in the nearly three hundred years since it first appeared, its influence has never waned.  This semester we’re going to take a look at Robinson Crusoe, its influences and its sources in order to think about the ways it established or failed to establish a paradigm for England’s cultural conquest of much of the rest of the world.

Fall 2012 Registration

Spring break is over, which means registration for next fall's semester is almost upon us.  I've actually already met with one early-loving undergraduate advisee, and I've chatted a bit with a few grad students about next fall as well as summer courses.

As readers of this blog already know, we've posted the undergrad course offerings here, the grad offerings here, and the summer courses will be available soon.

For undergraduates, if you don't know who your adviser is, you can check with Gina or Lana at the English dept chair's office in St John Hall.  It's also possible in a pinch to get a different faculty member to advise you, though I suggest tracking down your adviser.  Grad students can come see me -- office hours TF 8 - 10 am, and I'm also around various other times -- or any of your graduate faculty.

Here are the dates after which each group of students is allowed to register:

Seniors (i.e., seniors next fall):  March 27
Juniors:April 2
Sophomores: April 10
First-years: April 16
Grad Students: April 10

Please remember to look at the offerings before you see your adviser, and come to the meeting with your "advisement report" (ie, the computer record of all the courses you've already taken) and ideally with some idea of courses that you're interested in taking.

Fall 2012 Grad Courses Roundtable on March 15

The flyer that's up on my door and in the IWS and various other places has a fun picture that I can't get to upload on the blog right now, but in any case I want to invite all grad students to an event introducing our fall 2012 grad seminars.  Come if you're not sure what courses to sign up for, or just for the fun!

The English Department presents a Round-Table on its upcoming

Fall 2012 Graduate Courses

An informal round-table discussion featuring 

            Nicole Rice, Chaucer                                  
         G. Ganter, Intro to Profession

         Elda Tsou, Critical Theory                           
         Melissa Mowry, Milton

         Amy King, The Victorian Imagination         
         Robert Forman, Classical Epic

         Lee Ann Brown, Poetry and Poetics

         Carmen Kynard, African-American Literature and Theory

            Institute for Writing Studies                                                            Thursday, March 15

            3:00 to 5:00 pm                                                                                Light Refreshments

Travel funding for graduate students

To encourage our graduate students to take the next step and present work at outside professional conferences, St. John's has made available up to $500 per student to support this kind of travel.  To receive this funding, students must have a paper accepted for presentation at the conference.  You should present documentation of that acceptance to Dr. Sicari in the English Department, and then you'll need to fill out a preapproval form beforehand and a Travel and Expenses form, with receipts, after the trip.  It usually takes a week or so to get the reimbursement issued. 

Here's the intranet link to the T&E form you'll need to use.  You can also contact Dr Sicari directly.

Travel Request and Expense Reimbursement Form 2012 http://intranet.stjohns.edu/download.axd/d7dd761d8b734000a6e0cd73bd9c2c77.doc 

Reminder: Dr. Lubey's Lecture at NYPL

Don't forget that Dr. Lubey is giving a talk on 18th Century Feminisms at the NYPL this Friday, March 9 at 1:15 p.m. See our full post for more details!

A Poetics of Nothing

Looking for something to do on the last day of spring break?  Come to the grad center at 2 pm for a Poetics of Nothing!

A Poetics of Nothing

Come to the CUNY Grad Center next Friday afternoon for –

A Poetics of Nothing:
Air in the Early Modern Imagination

A Lecture by Professor Steve Mentz of St. John’s
University

Friday, March 2
2 pm
The CUNY Graduate Center
Room 5409
365 Fifth Avenue (34th-35th Sts)
New York, NY 10016
A reception will follow the lecture. All are welcome.
Sponsored by the CUNY Early Modern Interdisciplinary Group (EMIG)

Job Opening at the New York Public LIbrary

Grad students who are finishing up might be interested in this --

There is a fulltime opening at the NYPL for an Assistant Site Advisor in Upper Manhattan - time is split between St. Agnes Branch  (81st and Amsterdam) and Harlem Branch (124th and 5th Ave)

https://jobs-nypl.icims.com/jobs/6661/job

The work is at the Centers for Reading and Writing, which works with adult students who attend small group, volunteer led classes for 4 hours each week.  The Director is looking for someone with experience teaching Literacy and/or ESL and can support volunteer tutors in teaching adult learners.

The work is to assist the Site Advisor in all areas.

External Responsibilities:

Co-teaching pre-service and in-service training workshops for volunteer tutors using the standardized curriculum. Planning instruction with students and tutors. Evaluating students' verbal, reading and writing needs and progress. Leading computer-assisted instruction, providing small group instruction, fostering student writing, assembling student journals,  initiating contact and maintaining links with community agencies. Maintaining program data. Participating in professional development. May be required to work at more than one site.

External Qualifications:

A four year college degree and experience teaching reading and writing or ESOL to adults at a basic level. Demonstrated knowledge of current theory and practice in emergent language and literacy development  and assessment with an emphasis on collaborative learning. Experience working with volunteer tutors preferred. Strong overall communication skills. Demonstrated reliability and flexibility. Knowledge of computer assisted instruction and Spanish preferred.