We've moved!!! We are starting the Fall 2012 semester with a brand new blog www.stjenglish.com, and a new Facebook page, www.Facebook.com/stjenglish. Please join, subscribe or Like us to get the latest postings from the department. Welcome Back!!

Calling All Students!!

Graduate course English 830 (Allegory and Epic) is in danger of being cancelled due to low enrollment. If you are interested in taking this course, please register very soon.

Thank You!!

Here is the original class listing:

Eng. 830: Allegory and Epic (76093)
T. 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Dr. Robert Forman

The course will quickly but closely read the four primary epics of classical antiquity: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Apollonius’s Argonautica, and Vergil’s Aeneid.  What will concern us most, however, will be the variety of critical approaches to them that has appeared during the last fifty years.
The long-held position that oral literature as typified by Homer was a privileged singularity is now generally considered to have been refuted by Milman Parry.  We will analyze Homeric formulas using Parry’s metrics.  

The interplay of Hellenistic Greek and first-century B.C.E. Roman epic is also fertile ground for modern critical approaches.   Apollonius’s characterization of Medea, one might argue, contributed mightily to Vergil’s portrait of Dido, odd as that may seem.  We will examine Donald Norman Levin’s arguments.

Finally, we will compare the conservative Brooks Otis approach to Vergil’s Aeneid (essentially structural) with the mathematical analysis of George Duckworth that it inspired.   Then we will conclude by considering the iconoclastic Homeric Lens approach to the Aeneid of Edan Dekel, aimed primarily at the “odyssean” (1-6) and “iliadic” (7-12) halves of Vergil’s poem as discerned by Viktor Pöschl.

Students will write short but documented responses to each of these critical positions and a final major paper that considers some limited aspect of one of these poems from a critical perspective of their choosing.

NY Shakespeare Internships for Fall 2012

Not much time before the deadline, but these look like fun internships --

NY Shakespeare Exchange

2012 INTERNSHIPS

As part of our commitment to developing a new generation of classical theater professionals, NY Shakespeare Exchange seeks a number of early-career theater artists to participate in a collaborative and hands-on learning environment throughout our 2012 production of Island, or To Be or not To Be by Kevin Brewer; directed by Artistic Director Ross Williams. www.ShakespeareExchange.org

NYSX interns are self-motivated, eager to learn, ready to assist in all areas, and are willing and able to work independently and effectively. Each intern is paired with a staff member who will provide guidance and mentoring in his/her field of focus. Eligibility for college credit will be determined by each intern’s college or university; weekly hours can be adjusted to accommodate the specific requirements of each institution.

We are accepting resumes for the following positions:

PRODUCTION/REHEARSAL INTERNSHIPS
Acting x2 (August 13-October 15)
General Management/Producing (July 1- October 15)
Production Management (August 1-October 15)

DESIGN INTERNSHIPS
Scenic/Props Design (August 1-October 15)
Costume Design (August 1-October 15)
Lighting Design (August 1-October 15)
Sound Design (August 1-October 15)

Send resumes and portfolios, along with e-mails and phone numbers of two references, to Associate Artistic Director Cristina Lundy at InternSearch@ShakespeareExchange.org. Deadline for submission is June 30, 2012.

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Note:  While this is not a position listed, we are also accepting resumes for Internships in STAGE MANAGEMENT (mid-July - October 15).

Loeb Classics available for downloads

You can find a link for all the public domain Loeb classics, the standard bilingual Greek and Latin texts, here. This will be very useful for any scholars, esp. because the pdfs are searchable.

MLA to provide e-dossiers for job candidates

Here's some good news for future job-seekers: starting this fall, the MLA will partner with Interfolio, a leading e-dossier service, to offer dossier- and document-delivery services to all job seekers, as well as services for department's managing searches. Anyone who's every tried to manage the paperwork of a job search in the pre-Interfolio era, or had to pay Interfolio to manage a dossier, will appreciate this move by the MLA.

MLA Director Rosemary Feal's letter below the jump.

New Shakespeare Journal from Stratford-upon-Avon

New Journal: Shakespeare Institute Review - Call For Papers

The Shakespeare Institute Review is a new online academic journal, which is funded by the University of Birmingham College of Arts and Law. It is run by four research students at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.

Students at this institution, and on other postgraduate Shakespeare programmes, are invited and encouraged to contribute short papers for publication. Each issue of the journal will be themed.

We thought it exhilaratingly inappropriate, and so irresistible, to signal the birth of this journal with an issue looking at death.

Students are encouraged to submit papers, between 1,500 and 2,500 words, on topics relating to death, mortality and religion in Shakespeare's plays, or elsewhere in the Early Modern period.

Possible topics might include, but are not restricted to:

• Critical examinations of the way that various of Shakespeare’s characters deal with death, or die. This could include close-reading, comparative analysis, and analysis from a specific theoretical position (Marxist, feminist, etc.).
• Historical studies of how mortality or religion was understood in the early Modern period, and of how Shakespeare makes use of (and plays off) those understandings in his plays.
• Considerations of the political, ethical, religious, spiritual and existential significances of mortality or religion in the Early Modern period, and for Shakespeare’s characters.
• Comparisons between how Shakespeare understands mortality, and how other creative artists and philosophers–-of Shakespeare’s time, or before, or after–-have understood it.
• More intensely personal and experientially engaged writing on how Shakespeare’s plays have helped you deal with death–-with your own mortality, or with the death of people that you know. How does Shakespeare make you look at death, and is this vision comforting or distressing? Does Shakespeare get to the truth of death, for you, or not?
• Reflections on metaphysical and spiritual truths that arise from Shakespeare’s plays.
• More provocative reflections on how the writing that is produced by the Modern academy–-writing that is critical, theoretical, historical—does not deal adequately with death in Shakespeare’s plays, and suggestions as to how this inadequacy can be rectified.

Suggestions of other topics will be warmly received.

Papers should be submitted to shakesreview@gmail.com, with a deadline of 20 May 2012.

All submissions will be reviewed by the editorial board, and those submissions that are selected will be published in our first online issue. Please contact the journal for further information.

The CUNY Annual Victorian Conference

It's tomorrow!  Here's the link.

Welcome
Mario DiGangi

Executive Officer
PhD Program in English
CUNY Graduate Center

Moderator
Nicholas Birns

The New School

Victorians Abroad

David Pike

American University, Washington, D.C.
“The World Street and the Victorian City”

William Cohen

University of Maryland, College Park
“Dickens’s French: Or, a Tale of Two Cities”

Discussion and Break

Dickensian Urbanity

Matthew Beaumont

University College London
“The Old Cupiosity Shape: Dickens and the Nocturnal City”

Julian Wolfreys

Loughborough University, Leicestershire UK
“Quiet: Towards a Phenomenology of Urban Perception in Dickens”

Lunch (on your own) 12:00 P.M.-2:00 P.M.

Afternoon Session
2:00 P.M.-6:00 P.M.

Moderator
Annmarie Drury

Queens College, CUNY

Urban Beauty, Urban Sublime

Michelle Allen-Emerson

U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis
Urban Growth: Gardening in the Late Victorian City

Nancy Rose Marshall

University of Wisconsin-Madison
“‘This Horrid Grandeur’: Imagining Fire in the Victorian World”

Discussion and Break

Cities of Delight

Deborah Nord

Princeton University
“Night and Day: Illusion and Carnivalesque at Vauxhall”

Keynote Address:

Judith Walkowitz

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
“The Victorians and Literary Geography”

Reception
6:00 P.M.

English Common Space, Room 4406