News & Events
Spring 2010 Departmental Events
Friday, February 12, 2010 |
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English Department Colloquium Series Many of us fondly recall being read to as children; our earliest encounters with literature occurred through the ear. While electronic "talking books" began seventy years ago as aides to the blind and illiterate, they now constitute a vibrant site of literary engagement for those who commute, travel, rest their eyes, or multitask while listening to a book on tape, CD, or .mp3. Does this activity "count" as reading? How might audiobooks add or detract from the experience of literature? While critics like Harold Bloom insist that having the text before one's eye is necessary for close reading, self-professed "tapeworms" extol the narrative pleasures of sound, and remind us that Charles Dickens himself travelled the world reading his works to attentive audiences. How does the present-day popularity of the audiobook suggest new varieties of literary experience and interpretation? What is at stake in expanding or defending the boundaries of the textual in an age of new media proliferation? |
Friday, February 19, 2010 |
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Zora Neale Hurston Window Unveiling Ceremony and Reception In addition to the reception, there will also be a 55-minute performance of Buffy Sedlachek's Jump at the Sun: The Life and Times of Zora Neale Hurston that begins at 3:30pm. This Jungle Theater production features Twin Cities actress and singer Regina Williams as Zora. Stories of Hurston's idyllic hometown of Eatonville, tall tales she collected during her travels in the rural South, and her struggle to maintain her unique voice as a writer despite criticism from the male literati of the Harlem Renaissance all emerge over the course of this performance. The show also includes original music by local composer Roberta Carlson. A short question and answer period will follow. |
Friday, February 19, 2010 |
| Graduate and Undergraduate English Alumni Reception 5:30-7:30pm O'Shaughnessy Room (Leather Room--108), OSF Library The English Department invites graduate and undergraduate English alumni to join us and retired faculty for an informal reception celebrating the dedication of a new stained glass window in honor of Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), author of Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Hurston was a ground-breaking essayist and fiction writer closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Her work was instrumental in breaking down barriers of race and gender during a turbulent period of American history. This will be the first window in the library to honor a woman author and the first to recognize a writer of color.
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Friday, February 26, 2010 |
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ACTC English Majors Conference and Dinner English Majors from St. Thomas and the other ACTC schools (Augsburg, Hamline, Macalester, and St. Catherine's) will be presenting papers at this annual conference. |
Monday, March 1, 2010 |
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Graduate Program in English Application Deadline for Summer and Fall Admission |
Monday, March 8, 2010 |
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ACTC Visiting Writers Series Bonnie Jo Campbell, the ACTC visiting writer at UST this year, will be reading from her work. She was a 2009 finalist for the National Book Award in fiction for her book of short stories, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press), and is a current finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her previous collections include Women and Other Animals, winner of the AWP Award for Short fiction, the novel Q Road, and an anthology of stories about work for which Campbell served as editor. Additional information about Campbell can be found on her website: http://www.bonniejocampbell.com. |
Friday, March 19, 2010 |
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ENGL 100-Level Student Essay Contest Deadline Submissions are due by 3pm in JRC 333. Submission guidelines can be found here. |
Friday, March 19, 2010 |
| English Department Colloquium Series Dr. Andrew Scheiber--“I Don’t Worry About a Thing Because I Know Nothing’s Gonna Be All Right”: The Blues Aesthetic as Equipment for Living in the 21st Century 3:00-4:00pm O'Shaughnessy Room (Leather Room--108), OSF Library
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Monday, March 29 - Monday, April 5, 2010 |
| Spring and Easter Break--NO CLASSES |
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 |
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Kristin Naca Poetry Reading: Bird Eating Bird Her poems are playful and serious all at once. They explore the richness of her cultural and linguistic heritage, which spans the globe from Mexico to the Philippines. They defend with vigor and humor the color purple. And they analyze the insecurities of the letter ′h′ -- among other things. For thirty years, the National Poetry Series has discovered many new and emerging voices and has been instrumental in launching the careers of poets and writers such as Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Denis Johnson, Cole Swensen, Thylias Moss, Mark Levine, and Dionisio Martinez. |
Friday, April 16, 2010 |
| English Department Colloquium Series Dr. Amy Kritzer--Antebellum Plays by American Women: Contexts and Themes 3:00-4:00pm John Roach Center, Room 126 Women playwrights in the early decade of the new American nation challenged notions of "women's place" by building on an already strong perceived link between national life and domestic life, and by expanding the concept of the domestic. The industrial revolution which brought widespread changes to American society in the decades just before the Civil War, however, changed the dominant perceptions of the domestic sphere and created new barriers for women trying to transcend the division between public and private. This talk will touch upon the work of selected women dramatists from 1795 to 1855, exploring changing themes and emphases within their plays. |
Monday, April 19 - April 30, 2010 |
| Early undergraduate registration for Summer/Fall 2010 classes |
Friday, April 23, 2010 |
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O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award Event Theo Dorgan was born in Cork in 1953, and educated at University College Cork, where he earned an MA in English. His poetry collections are The Ordinary House of Love (Galway, Salmon Poetry, 1991); Rosa Mundi (Salmon Poetry, 1995); and Sappho’s Daughter (Dublin, Wave Train Press 1998). He has a lengthy career as a broadcaster of literary programs on both radio and television, having been a presenter of Poetry Now on RTÉ Radio 1, and later, the host of the book program "Imprint," on the Irish national television station. Dorgan has also worked extensively in the area of translation. He has published his own work in Italian and Spanish, translated the work of the Slovenia poet Barbara Korun, and was series editor of the European Poetry Translation Network. Dorgan was formerly the director of Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann, a national organization somewhat comparable to The Loft in Minnesota. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish Academy of Arts and Letters, and serves on the Arts Council of Ireland. |
Monday, April 26, 2010 |
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English Major Student Essay Contest Dealine Submissions are due by 3pm in JRC 333. Submission guidelines can be found here. |
Friday, May 14, 2010 |
| Last day of undergraduate and graduate spring semester classes |
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 |
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Graduate English Master's Essay Presentations and Reception Spring graduates present their capstone projects--overviews of the essay and a look into their research and writing process. This is open to anyone who wants to celebrate with friends who are graduating as well as students who want to learn more in preparation for their own essays. |
