Passing Strange in the IWS

If you could not make it to last Friday's event, please remember to look at the nine images-text combinations that are hanging in the IWS for at least a few more weeks.  You might also enjoy reading my blog recap of the event.

I'll post some photos of the afternoon as soon as I get them.

Landscapes of the Passing Strange tomorrow: anyone have a camera?

Looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible tomorrow afternoon for this event.  A favor if possible: since Tara is at the Blackfriars conference in Virginia, our ace photographer won't be able to take any pictures of this event.  Any other photographers in the program?  I'd be very grateful if someone could take a few pictures and then send them to me.  Phone-pix count, but in an ideal world we'd be able to get some better hardware working for us.

See you tomorrow!

Guest Speaker: Dr. Sondra Perl on 11/8

Why Max Van Manen is Such Good Company for Compositionists

Please join guest speaker Dr. Sondra Perl of the CUNY Graduate Center and Lehman College and hosts Roseanne Gatto, Sean Murray, and Tara Roeder of St. John’s University’s Institute for Writing Studies for a conversation on Chapter One of Max Van Manen’s Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy.  (Participants should come with three passages they would like to discuss in more depth.) Leave a comment here if you would like to attend and need a copy of the chapter, or you may request a copy from Tara Roeder when you contact her to RSVP.


When: Tuesday, November 8th, 6-7:30 pm
Where: St. John’s University, Manhattan Campus
(101 Murray St.), Rm. 118

For Directions, Click the Link Below:
http://www.stjohns.edu/about/general/directions/directions/manhattan

Refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP by Saturday, November 5th to Tara Roeder: roedert@stjohns.edu

Satellite Posting from Staunton, Va!

I will be writing to you this week from the Blackfriars Conference at American Shakespeare Center in beautiful Staunton, Virginia. STJ English Blogger Danielle Lee and I are presenting papers at Blackfriars this week, and we drove down yesterday from NYC. It was a long but very lovely drive, and we arrived at our hotel around 9:30 p.m.

After getting settled in, we checked out the town of Staunton today and registered for the conference this afternoon. In our conference bags, we received travel coffee mugs and stainless steel water bottles along with our name tags and schedules and maps. After registering and signing up for some more limited events, I had fifteen minutes to rehearse three actors who will be performing during my presentation tomorrow. Two of the actors are actually performing the roles of Prospero and Caliban in ASC's production of The Tempest, which we'll get to see tomorrow night -- and they are reading selections of these roles in my paper. They read beautifully this afternoon, so I am looking forward to the full presentation tomorrow afternoon at 3:15 p.m.

My greatest fear about this conference is the fact that I got really sick over the weekend, and today I have hardly any voice. I am presenting my paper in the Blackfriars Theater so I'm going to have trouble filling the space with the very little voice I have. Lots of tea and honey and vocal rest between now and 3:15 tomorrow. I'm happy to say that I feel good about my paper and very good about my actors, so let's hope I can actually speak when the time comes. Unfortunately, this means that Daniella and I are both missing out on the Early Arrivers Party this evening, but we're hoping to both feel better in the morning and ready for the conference to officially begin!

So Whose Critique Are We Really Reading?

According to Bayard and Goldsmith it’s acceptable to not only not read but also to repurpose someone else’s reading of something they read (or may have read or may not have read). So this makes me wonder when we are asked to cite reviews of any form of text how can we be sure that what we are reading is actually written by someone who actually read what they are critiquing? According to Bayard:

One of the implicit rules of the virtual library is that we must not attempt to find out the extent to which someone who claims he has read a book has actually done so, for two reasons. The first is that life in the virtual library would quickly become unlivable if not for a certain amount of ambiguity around the truth of our statements, and if we were instead forced to reply clearly to questions about what exactly we had read. The other reason is that the very notion of what sincerity would mean is questionable, since knowing what is meant by having read a book, as we have seen is highly problematic (Bayard 126).

To Thine Own Self Be True...I didn't read read Hamlet either, yes you read that right

I could tell you that Hamlet was played by Kenneth Branaugh, Mel Gibson in the movies and most recently Jude Law in an off-broadway production. I could tell you that the play was integral to the works of Freud and Nietzsche. I could name some other characters if you'd like, I could even quote a line or two but that's about it. I didn't read read Hamlet and Pierre Bayard would tell me not only is that perfectly ok, but I should not feel any guilt whatsoever. I should accept the fact that my cultural literacy is shaped by gaps and fissures and this does not prevent me from forming my own solid portfolio of literary knowledge (Bayard, 124). Furthermore to act as if I read read Hamlet without having actually read Hamlet would further inculcate me in a cycle of shame and prevent me from ever fully being me - Jeanette (my mom calls me gingy...long story), autonomous, academic capable of transmitting to you dear reader my authentic thoughts on any book in my own voice...but Bayard, what is my voice? Where is it? How do I find it and more importantly, how do I write it?

Landscapes of the Passing Strange -- Fri 10/28, 2-4 pm, IWS

 

I hope everyone knows already about the great event this coming Friday at the IWS, in which we'll be talking, looking a great images, and talking about Shakespeare with Rosamond Purcell and Michael Witmore.  The artwork should go up in the IWS tomorrow.  Please come, and bring so many friends that we run out of food before we even start talking!

For more information, contact Steve Mentz (mentzs@stjohns.edu)

Diary of a Mad Grad Student

My first few weeks as a graduate student at St. John’s were exciting and frightening all at once. The combined anxiety of relocating to a new city, “the City,” alone, finding a living space and becoming acclimated with a new learning environment presented significant challenges. However I have come to regard challenges as opportunities in disguise. My fear was not unfounded but warranted. This is a new life and there will be growing pains. But with those pains come a whole lot of joy.

The Joy of Comps

Earlier this week, D.A. students received an email from Dr. Lowney announcing an upcoming change to the comprehensive exam all D.A. students are required to take after course work has been completed. The comprehensive exam format is switching from written to oral beginning with the D.A. students who enter the program next fall. Luckily, all current D.A. students have the opportunity to choose the format in which they would like to receive their examination. There are pros and cons related to both formats, but thankfully in Chapter 7 of Gregory Colon Semenza's Graduate Study for the 21st Century entitled "Exams," Semenza reassures us that no matter the format, we will all survive comps.

A Halloween Event with Thom Metzger

Join us next Monday for a one-of-a-kind Halloween event with author, poet, and musician, Thom Metzger, proudly presented by the Institute for Writing Studies.

Mr. Metzger is the author of three novels:

• Big Gurl
• Shock Totem
• Drowning in Fire

three works of nonfiction:

• Blood and Volts: Edison, Tesla, and the Electric Chair
• The Birth of Heroin
• Select Strange and Sacred Sites: the Ziggurat Guide to Western New York

and one book of short fiction and poetry

• This is Your Final Warning.

His newest book is Hydrogen, Sleep, and Speed: A Verse Tale of Rommel, Egypt, Angry Gods, Dr. Caligari, and Amphetamines.

Under the pseudonym, Leander Watts, Mr. Metzger has written four young adult novels:

• Stonecutter
• Wild Ride to Heaven
• Ten Thousand Charms
• Beautiful City of the Dead

He is also a musician who has sung and played tenor sax, ontic trombone, trumpet, guitar, and percussion in a number bands, including Health and Beauty, Nemo's Omen, and The Badenovs. Mr. Metzger is also active in the Sacred Harp and shaped note communities, and writes his own hymns.


How cool does this guy sound? Do not miss this talk with such a versatile, eclectic, one-of-a-kind writer!

Monday October 31, 3:00 – 4:30 pm

Institute for Writing Studies

free food to those who wear a costume!*

*and probably those who don’t as well

CFP: Graduate Conference at Binghamton U.

Following is some information on the upcoming Graduate Student Conference at Binghamton University. Graduate student conferences are a wonderful way to get some conference experience under your belt, a bit more low key than a professional conference. These are typically designed to help you get your feet wet and see what a conference application process and setting are like. Don't forget that the St. John's English Department will also host its own graduate student conference in the spring as well.

Conference Title: Shifting Tides, Anxious Borders: A Graduate Student Conference in Transnational American Studies

Theme: “Re-Imagining the New World(s)”

Dates: April 20th & 21st, 2012

Location: Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY

Keynote Speakers: Donald Pease, Dartmouth College
Daniel T. O’Hara, Temple University
(Closing address by William V. Spanos, Binghamton University)

Graduate Student Registration

English Grad Students: Registration will open on November 9 for the spring semester.

Email Lana or Gina for your course registration so you can register for your classes online. If you'd like to meet with Dr. Lowney to discuss the offerings, you may visit him during his office hours on Monday and Thursday from 1:00 - 3:00 p.m. Or you may email him for an appointment.

Check out the Spring 2012 Course Offerings here!

Attn: Doctoral Students!

In the last week, there have been some important changes to the D.A. program with the foreign language requirement and the comprehensive exams.

Beginning in the spring semester, students will now be able to take a translation exam that will be administered by English faculty. This exam replaces the ETS exams, which are no longer offered by St. John's. The translation exam will ask you to translate about 500 words of prose in an hour. You will be permitted to consult a dictionary. The languages that will be offered are French, German, Italian, Latin, or Spanish.

The options for fulfilling the foreign language requirement will be:

Graduate Course Time Change: ENG 700

There has been a time change to the following course:

Eng. 700: The Emergence of Modernism (15198)
W. 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Dr.  Rachel Hollander
This course will center on several of Virginia Woolf’s novels and essays as a focal point for exploring the emergence and development of Anglo-American modernism. As the daughter of a Victorian man of letters, center of the Bloomsbury group, co-founder of the Hogarth Press (which published T.S. Eliot and the first English translations of Freud, among many others), prolific essayist, and originator of the modern novel, Woolf is a crucial figure in any formulation of literary modernism. With an emphasis on the politics of gender and sexuality, and the more recent considerations of modernism as a global phenomenon, we will follow the trajectory of Woolf’s career to trace early twentieth-century experimentation both aesthetic and cultural. In addition to Woolf, primary authors may include Djuna Barnes, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, H.D., James Joyce, Nella Larsen, Katherine Mansfield, Olive Schreiner, and Gertrude Stein.

Please note the time change from Wednesday at 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. to Wednesday at 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Reminder: The Ghosts in the Machine

Professor Joseph Drury's talk will be held today during common hour -- 1:50 - 3:15 p.m. in the Sun Yat Sen Art Gallery (across from the D'Angelo Center).

Don't miss "The Ghosts in the Machine: Science and Spectacle in Fielding's Tom Jones." Read the full post on the event here.

Add On to Professor Brown

Here are the links I promised yesterday. Professor Brown would love if we all read through these before class on Tuesday.

Bernadette Mayer's "List of Experiments"
http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html

Interview with Paul Hoover, author of Sonnet 56:
http://jacketmagazine.com/40/iv-hoover-ivb-joritz-nakagawa.shtml

Resource, especially newly posted PoemTalk on Pound & Mac Low::
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/

Happy Reading!

Interview With Professor Lee Ann Brown

This coming Tuesday the Intro to the Profession class will have a visitor, Professor Lee Ann Brown. Due to a few difficulties with setting up an interview I settled for a phone call with Professor Brown. I was nervous, knowing I am awkward and uncomfortable with phones but glad to chat with Professor Brown again, whom I had met in April when visiting St. John's for the first time. Tomorrow (Sunday), Professor Brown will send me some links to some readings she feels might be interesting for the class, but for now, I wanted to put this post out in the world before the words faded from my mind and I could no longer read my notes.

We started off chatting about her poetry, the main focus of our discussion. I found online some of her more recent poetry published by Salt Publishing ( http://www.saltpublishing.com/saltmagazine/issues/02/text/Brown_Lee_Ann.htm ). One of the poems, "Having a Margarita By Myself So Far and Preparing to Read Victor Hernandez Cruz again in a Fruitful Way" was inspired by the poem by Frank O'hara "Having a Coke With You." I was very much impressed by the amount of observation required for the poem. However, when asked if this observational style was the way she would categorize her work, Professor Brown intimated that she tries to write in as many styles as possible. Her first book of poems was written in polyverse, and was aptly titled after its style: Polyverse (Sun&Moon, 1999). In another style, she is currently working on a project of North Carolina poems, inspired by her home state. These poems take in inspiration from anthropology, history, local histories and more.

Spring 2012 Undergraduate Course Offerings

UNDERGRADUATE FLYER

SPRING 2012

Eng. 2200: Introduction to English Studies (14975)
MR 3:25-4:50 p.m.
Dr. Kathleen Lubey
This course will acquaint students with what it means to read and to write as an English major. It will be our concern throughout the semester to read representative texts from the major genres of English literature (epic, drama, poetry, novel, essay) and to develop skills for discerning how texts create meaning through both formal and thematic means. The other major focus of the course will be to express this expertise in writing. Acquainting ourselves with how to write critically about literature, we will learn the methods that are central to an analytical engagement with texts: quoting exemplary passages, “close reading” texts, and utilizing specialized literary terminology. We also will become familiar with the major resources for research in our discipline. Evaluation will be based on several papers, a mid-term, a final, and class participation, which will involve class discussion, small group work, and peer review of writing.

Spring 2012 Graduate Course Offerings

This is one of my favorite times of the semester ... when the course offerings for the next semester come out! The listings below are for the English Graduate courses which will be offered in the spring. The Undergraduate Course Offerings will be posted shortly. Enjoy!

(Click the "Read More" link below to see the full post.)

GRADUATE FLYER

SPRING 2012

Eng. 100: Modern Critical Theories (14776)
T. 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Dr. Harry Denny
In the context of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, global imperial conflict, and an on-going crisis of the humanities and the place of higher education in the new millennium, equipping oneself with critical theories to problem-pose and challenge the hegemonic could not be more important for better understanding the world in which we find ourselves, for providing a foundation to guide us to action and social change, or for offering a platform through English Studies to engage the everyday practices of aesthetics, creativity and production of meaning. This course explores literary, linguistic and socio-cultural influences on criticism in English Studies with specific attention given to Marxist/Frankford-inspired theories of domination, ideology, and post-Fordism; cultural studies; postmodernism; and the politics of identity. Students will explore key terms and lines of inquiry through comparative and in-depth study of primary texts, mainly book-length, that will provide a foundation for individual semester-long projects. Beyond weekly in-class discussions, students will develop collaborative/online working documents applying key terms to issues arising in everyday literary, literacy, composition or cultural studies research happening in relation to their own teaching/learning/mentoring. 

Bookmarks with Dr. Derek Owens

Save the date: Thursday, November 10 for our first Bookmarks event of the school year!

Join us for a talk with Dr. Derek Owens on November 10 from 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. at the Institute for Writing Studies. He will be discussing his most recent publication, Memory's Wake, with us.

The St. John's English Department presents the Bookmarks events each semester to showcase the publications of the English faculty.

Refreshments will be provided.

Fortuitous Ferrini Writers' Society Meeting

By chance as I was walking into the Writing Center today, I was handed a flier announcing the Ferrini Writers' Society meeting today, October 12 at 6:00 p.m. The meeting will gather in front of St. Augustine Hall. It's great to see the many opportunities for building communities of writers here at St. John's this year. Hopefully some of you will be able to make this meeting tonight.

If not, you can contact Niko Wentworth for more information at nicholas.wentworth11@stjohns.edu, or find the Ferrini Writers' Society on Facebook.

Creative Writing Opportunity

Last week, we posted about a bi-monthly creative writers' workshop happening in the Institute for Writing Studies. It looked like a great turn-out, and I hope some of you were able to make it. If you couldn't make it, not to worry: there will be another one later on in the semester.

Here's another opportunity for our creative writers out there. St. John's Alum Greg Dybec is running an online fiction magazine. The magazine features previously published authors as well as new writers. There is also accompanying artwork and a t-shirt that is designed based on the winning story every issue. The magazine is published on a quarterly basis.

Here's the link: www.fixitbroken.com. Be sure to let us know if you submit and are chosen for publication!

Reminder for Columbus Day Holiday

Just a reminder that the Institute for Writing Studies is closed today (Sunday, October 9) and tomorrow (Monday, October 10) for the Columbus Day holiday. We hope you enjoy your long weekend, and we'll see you back at it on Tuesday!

On the Same Page

The Wanderer and The Seafarer swim up to us through history as though from the bottom of a swampy East Anglian fen. Their original textual home is The Exeter Book, a tenth century work typifying a time before movable type, that contains many different pieces of literature bound into a “sort of single-volume ‘library.’”[1] These community books containing stories of the culture were placed between birch wood covers and kept in cathedrals. I imagine their heft and splintery texture, parchment pages crackling loudly as they are turned, pocked by enlarged illuminated capitals to signal the start of another tale. From The Exeter Book’s poems themselves we can see some of what life was like for Anglo-Saxon people in the years before William the Conqueror brought their culture to a close.  

"Uncreative Writing" and other versions of imitatio

For Intro to the Profession students and other interested parties: I mentioned this article on "uncreative writing" to a few people after class last night.  Let's talk more about it when we return to Semenza and (especially) Bayard in a few weeks.

10/17 -- "The Ghosts in the Machine"

Please join us on Monday, October 17 for a lecture by Joseph Drury. Professor Drury joins us from Villanova University where he is an Assistant Professor of English. His talk will be on "The Ghosts in the Machine: Science and Spectacle in Fielding's Tom Jones." It is taken from his current book project: "The Machine in the Novel: Science, Technology, and Narrative in Eighteenth-Century Britain."

Dr. Lubey recommends this talk in particular for anyone with an interest in British literature, history, and culture; history of science and material culture; cultural studies; gender; and comedy. While the lecture will be geared toward graduate students, we encourage our undergraduate majors and minors to attend as well.

Monday, October 17
1:50 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Common Hour
Sun Yat Sen Art Gallery (across from the D'Angelo Center)

We hope to see you there!

How Do We Evaluate the Spoken?

On Friday, I met with Dr. Granville Ganter to talk before writing this post. I assumed all the information about where he went to school, the courses he teaches, and the awards that he has won (of which there are many) can be found on the Saint John’s website.

So I thought, “What would Jack Kerouac do?” The answer was easy: he would go and talk with the man, give him space to tell his story, and show genuine interest in what makes him tick; engage in a conversation.

Before going to see Dr. Ganter, I read his paper “Tuning In Together: Daniel Webster, Alfred Schutz, and the Grateful Dead”. Though I am not a fan of The Grateful Dead, I always felt that I might be “missing out” on something, and I was struck by this specific quotation:

As in any community, there is a collective pedagogy at work. People teach each other how to understand their world. This education occurs on several levels, and it starts primarily with the band’s style of musical interaction. The millisecond pause that characterizes much of the Dead’s music (their slow or hesitating sound), allows the band members to hear what each other does. (Ganter)

Was this the piece that I was missing? Could a musical experience really be a collective learning experience? Being a huge fan of Heavy Metal music, the overall experience one has at, say, a Slayer concert is one of isolated catharsis and chaotic camaraderie. This was a much different experience than the one Dr. Ganter was writing about in his paper. Then I thought, “Is this like the seminar table?”

Walking into any professor’s office usually makes me a bit nervous. Although having read Dr. Ganter’s essay beforehand, I felt a bit more relaxed. To say that I remember everything about our discussion would be a lie. To say that I took really great notes that are legible would also be a lie. Yet the mere gesture of our conversation, the gradual sense of familiarity that was built between student and teacher, put me even more at ease:

For Schutz, music is a doorway to the living consciousness of other people, stripped of conceptual ideas (Schutz 159). Schutz felt that some forms of literary narrative could achieve the same effect, but words generally obstruct contact with the durée itself. In contrast to seeing a word or a sentence on a page (which is virtually instant and which refers to a previously established network of ideas in other books), the significance of a musical note is purely situational: it is conveyed over time in relation to other notes. (Ganter)

I am reminded of something that Dr. Ganter said during our conversation, which I will try not to butcher: “Much of history is held hostage by the Book.” I would like to take this even further by adding that much of our everyday interactions are held hostage by word, character, and line limits. If “…music is a doorway to the living consciousness of other people,” then conversation is the laid path that we are supposed to take our time traveling together, “brightening the chain of friendship” (Ganter 128).

So why did I make the choice to write this awkwardly disjunctive introduction? Firstly, I am an awkward person. The other reason is people should not be taken at face/website value. If I did not read his papers and/or make an appointment to speak to Dr. Ganter, I would have never moved past his degrees and list of academic work, I would have never found out that Dr. Ganter took a class taught by Allen Ginsberg, and I would have never found out that he went to school with a former professor, now a recent colleague of mine, Dr. Christopher Hobson. I would have missed a lot of things.

Work Cited

• Ganter, Granville. "Make Your Minds Perfectly Easy: Sagoyewatha and the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee". Early American Literature: Volume 44, Number 1. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. 121-146. Web.

• Ganter, Granville. "Tuning in Togehter: Daniel Webster, Alfred Schutz, and The Grateful Dead". Web.

Attn: Creative Writers!

A bi-monthly writer's workshop for

• Fiction
• Poetry
• Creative Non-fiction

is beginning this week! There will be an opening, informational meeting this Wednesday, October 5 at 5:00 p.m. The meeting will be held in the back lounge at the Writing Center (St. Augustine Hall #150).

This workshop is open to all Students, Faculty, and Staff of St. John's University. For more information, you can contact marshals@stjohns.edu.

Hope to see you there!