This Week in English | October 15 – 21, 2018
English Major Bria Lamonica on Shakespeare
Bria Lamonica published an article about the continued relevance of Shakespeare in the Maine Campus on October 1. Writing after a recent screening of Julie Taymor’s filmed production of Titus Andronicus at the Fogler Library, Lamonica cites fellow English students Ally Cyr, Hannah Dyer, and Ethan O’Rourke, all of whom are studying the Bard with Professor Caroline Bicks. Lamonica, who writes frequently for the paper, profiled English major Hannah Dyer’s work with Alzheimer’s patients at Dirigo Pines earlier this fall.
Readers Theater on Wednesday
Margo Lukens is cast as Poverty, and Dick Brucher plays the title role in this Wednesday evening’s Readers Theatre Production of Aristophanes’s play Plutus (Wealth), directed by Nancy Ogle with original music by Donald Hagar. The performance is at 7:30pm in the Minsky Recital Hall. It will be preceded by a talk by visiting scholar David Butorac at 6:45pm. Both the talk and the performance are free and open to the public.
News from the Writing Center
Writing Center director Paige Mitchell shares this update: “Last week, thirteen high school tutors-in-training from Camden Hills visited our Writing Center with their director, Renee Maley. They observed a thesis development workshop for Honors College students, and then had lively tutorial sessions with our ENG 395 tutors. This was one of our best workshops yet!”
A Glimpse into Week Seven Syllabi
MA Candidate Elizabeth Zavodny guest lectures this week in Ben Friedlander’s course on Colonial and Early National American Literature. She will be guiding a discussion of theology and conflict in Puritan New England. In Caroline Bicks’s Shakespeare and the English Renaissance, students wrap up their examination of Macbeth and prepare for a midterm. In Dylan Dryer’s section of Research Writing in the Disciplines, the focus is on anticipating reader response to one’s writing. Laura Cowan’s course on Modernism turns to the poetry of H.D. this week. Dick Brucher’s seminar on American Plays of the Cold War takes up Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront. Students in Sarah Harlan-Haughey’s graduate seminar are reading Four Romances of England, while those in Deborah Roger’s Literature of the Enlightenment are reading poems, essays, and the play All for Love? by John Dryden.
“Delightfully Bizarre”: Jac Jemc in the Maine Campus
Niamh Toomey reports on Jac Jemc’s performance last Thursday in the New Writing Series in a Maine Campus article posted earlier today. “This installment of the New Writing Series introduced many people to the world of Jemc’s delightfully bizarre The Grip of It and the writing, planning and creativity that make it what it is.” The event, which was eloquently introduced by Greg Howard, was attended by about forty five people, many of whom participated in the Q&A that followed Jemc’s reading.
Save the Dates
On October 23, the McGillicuddy Humanities Center will co-sponsor Richard Rubin’s talk on “World War I: The Most Jewish War in History?” (flyer attached)
On October 25, the New Writing Series hosts fiction writer Martin Riker, whose novel Samuel Johnson’s Eternal Return was published earlier this fall by Coffee House.
On October 30, the Stephen E. King Chair Lecture Series will host Leigh Gilmore for a talk on “Graphic Witness: Testimony, Confession, and the #MeToo Movement.”
On November 1, the English Department’s Faculty Research and Scholarship Presentation Series, curated by Elizabeth Neiman, will host Luke Redington for a talk on “Ethical Irony in the Metaphor of the Surgical Strike” (flyer attached).
On November 8, Danielle Pafunda reads in the New Writing Series.
On November 15, Meghan Dowling, Leonore Hildebrandt, and William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. will read from their work in the first of two events in the New Writing Series that will showcase the accomplishments of the creative writers teaching English 205 this fall.
On November 16, Dr. Vincent Sherry, Howard Nemerov Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, will deliver a lecture on “Modernism in Wartime: Avant-Gardes, Revolutions, Poetries” (flyer attached) as part of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center’s year-long symposium “War Without End: The Legacies of World War I.” Sherry’s visit is being organized by Laura Cowan.
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Best wishes for the week ahead, everyone. And if there’s anything Ellen, Celeste, or I can do to smooth your path, don’t hesitate to ask.
Steve
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This Week in English 34 was circulated to faculty, students, and friends of the department on Monday, October 15, 2018. If you would rather not receive these weekly bulletins, please reply with <unsubscribe> in your subject line. Earlier installments are archived on our website.
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