This Week in English | October 29 – November 4, 2018
Congratulations to all the Red Sox fans who may have been neglecting their homework just a little bit of late. Now that the championship is secure, here are a few English-related items for your consideration.
Leigh Gilmore on the #MeToo Movement
On Tuesday afternoon, October 30, the Stephen E. King Chair Lecture Series will host Leigh Gilmore for a talk entitled “Graphic Witness: Testimony, Confession, and the #MeToo Movement.” The event will be introduced by King Chair Caroline Bicks. It starts at 4:30pm in the Minsky Recital Hall and is free & open to the public. A follow-up conversation is planned for November 2 as part of the on-going UMaine / Orono High School collaboration.
Faculty Research and Scholarship Presentation by Luke Redington
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.” The presentation starts at 3:30pm in the Writing Center (Neville 402). The goal of the series is to facilitate conversation about faculty research among colleagues and students. All are welcome!
Jennifer Moxley in Portland Press Herald
The poet Gibson Fay-LeBlanc edits a weekly poetry column for the Portland Press Herald called Deep Water: Maine Poems. This past Sunday, Jennifer Moxley’s poem “7:54 AM” was featured. In introducing the poem, Fay-LeBlanc writes:
This week’s poem tracks a speaker’s thoughts after a “brutal” storm has knocked out the power – a situation most Mainers understand intimately. In these deft lines, it’s also clear that we might not only be talking about a natural disaster – we might also be tracking a human one.
Moxley will be featured again next Sunday, for reasons you’ll deduce from her title: “After Turning the Clocks Back.” She reads from her work at Bridge Street Books in Washington, D.C. this Sunday and at the University of Richmond on November 7th.
Alumni Update: Alyssa (McCluskey) Mako
Former English major Alyssa Mako writes in with this welcome update:
After graduating in 2012, I started working for an online marketing start-up in Rockland, Maine as a content creator and blog writer. I ended up being pretty good at managing Facebook posts for businesses, so I became a social media marketer, creating social media posts, blog posts, press releases, and ads for businesses.
I got married and moved to Blacksburg, Virginia in 2014 with my husband, Calvin, who is now finishing up a PhD in structural geology at Virginia Tech. The Brick came with us and is still on our bookshelf. I started working at Virginia Tech in 2016 as a social media marketing strategist for a program in the human nutrition department. An English degree really can take you anywhere.
My most exciting update is that I had a baby on June 22. His name is Maximilian James Mako, now four months old. Max is amazing. I love being his mom and watching him learn more and more about the world. He enjoys books, so perhaps I have a little Hermeneut on my hands.
Department Meeting on Thursday
The English Department meets on Thursday at 2pm in the Hatlen Room (Neville 406). Dean Emily Haddad will join us for a conversation about the Master’s program. Michelle Gayne, who is the Assistant Director of the Advising & Academic Services Center for CLAS, will also join us.
Upcoming Events
November 6 is election day. The nonpartisan League of Women Voters provides an online guide to the election here.
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 who are 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” 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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This Week in English 36 was circulated to faculty, students, and friends of the department on Monday, October 29, 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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