This Week in English | November 18 – 24, 2019
I’d like to thank English majors Melissa Pawley and Jackson Heichel for their generous participation in Saturday’s Open House. We spoke with students and parents from as far away as Connecticut and enjoyed a bright brisk walk from the field house to the Wicks Room.
New Writing Series Welcomes Poets Kristen Case and Stefania Heim
This Thursday, November 21, the New Writing Series presents a public reading by poets Stefania Heim and Kristen Case (NWS F’16) at 4:30pm in the Allen and Sally Fernald APPE Space (Stewart Commons 104). The event will be introduced by Jennifer Moxley and followed by a question and answer session.
Stefania Heim is a poet, scholar, translator, editor, and educator. She is author of the poetry collections HOUR BOOK, chosen by Jennifer Moxley as winner of the Sawtooth Prize and published in 2019 by Ahsahta Books, and A Table That Goes On for Miles. Geometry of Shadows, her book of translations of metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chirico’s Italian poems, was published earlier this fall by A Public Space Books. Heim is the recipient of a 2019 Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work on Giorgio de Chirico.
Kristen Case is a co-editor of 21 | 19: Contemporary Poets in the Nineteenth-Century Archive. She is also the author of American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe. Her first collection of poems, Little Arias, won the Maine Literary Award for Poetry in 2016, and her second collection, Principles of Economics, won the 2018 Gatewood Prize. She is also coeditor of Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments and director of Thoreau’s Kalendar: A Digital Archive of the Phenological Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau. She teaches at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she is director of the New Commons Project, a public humanities initiative sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Heim and Case will read again, with poet Julian Randall, at Twice Sold Tales in Farmington on Friday at 7:30pm as part of a celebration of the legacy of James Baldwin.
Rogers and Segal on Higher Education
Deborah Rogers and Howard Segal reviewed Paul Tough’s The Years that Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us for the Times Higher Education on November 14, 2019. “This book lifts the veil on some of our most valued beliefs,” they argue. “Take the argument by top-ranked colleges that they contribute to the overall increased diversity of American educational institutions. Tough demonstrates that, while elite colleges may publicly claim to attract high-achieving poor, diverse students, they actually accept many more low-achieving, high-income students.” For the full text, click here.
Professor Rogers is teaching Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature (ENG 355) and American Short Fiction (ENG 245) this fall. In the spring, she’ll be offering Introduction to Film (ENG 280) and a senior seminar called “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!” (ENG 490). “The rise of the novel in the eighteenth century is one of the most important developments in English literature,” she writes. “This course will consider the development of the novel and wrestle with questions of gender and genre in texts by female writers—and by female impersonators.”
Writing Center Update
UMaine and Orono High School Writing Centers teamed-up at this year’s Maine Writing Project conference, delivering a presentation titled “Writing Center Feedback Loops: A Four-Year History of Secondary and Postsecondary Collaborative Learning between Orono High School & University of Maine Writing Centers.”
Erika Dixon, Orono High School’s Director, invited two of her students to represent their experiences: Sophie Bilodeau, a tutor-in-training, and Theo Erikson Haddad, a recent graduate of Orono High and first-year UMaine student. Paige Mitchell, our UMaine’s Writing Center Director, invited Nolan Altvator, a tutor-in-training, and Connor Ferguson, a senior tutor, to discuss their research. Each student’s work was “brilliant” said Richard Kent, professor of literacy and 43-year supporter and director of student-staffed Writing Centers (and we agree)!
It’s also workshop season in the Writing Center! We’ve had 140 new workshop students cross our threshold from mid-October to mid-November: Four sections of Education in a Multicultural Society (EHD 202), two sections of LAS 150 taught by Naomi Jacobs and John Mascetta, and Jody Crouse’s section of ENG 101. Most workshops were co-hosted by peer-tutors: Sean Van Newkirk, Kate Follansbee, Paul England, Anna Kulinski, and Brooke Curtis! These peer-tutors have all taken on invaluable leadership roles, and are encouraging their peers to share their writing with each other by bringing it to the Writing Center!
CV Workshop Led by Luke Redington on Thursday
The English Graduate Studies Association invites you to attend a two-hour CV workshop led by Luke Redington in the Coe Room, Memorial Union, on November 21, 2019 from 2 – 4pm. EGSA recommends that you bring along your CV, your unofficial transcript, and descriptions of any positions you are interested in applying for.
Haiku Contest Open
All English majors, minors, faculty and graduate students are eligible to submit to the English Graduate Student Association’s haiku t-shirt contest. The submission period opened on November 15th and closes on November 27th, with a voting period to begin on November 28th. If you’ve ever wanted your haiku on a t-shirt, now is the time! The winner will be announced on December 7th, the same day shirt sales begin. Please only submit once to egsa@maine.edu. Funds raised through sales of the winning t-shirt will support EGSA’s endeavors, including their spring symposium.
Celebrating Dickinson’s Birthday on December 10
The 13th Annual Emily Dickinson Birthday Reading will be held at 4:30 pm on Tuesday, December 10 (her actual birthday!) in the University Bookstore. For more information and/or to volunteer to read, please contact event organizer Kathleen Ellis.
Thieves and Liars
Thieves and Liars is a literary journal edited by Tori Hood and Martin Conte, both second year MA candidates concentrating in creative writing. Here’s this year’s call for submissions:
Thieves and Liars wants YOUR scribblings, your rantings, your scholarly questionings, your creative and poetic musings, your leaf-rubbings, and anything else you think we might enjoy! This year, we’re inviting graduate students, Wicks Fellows, AND faculty to submit your work. Our soft deadline is the end of the Fall semester, our hard deadline is the beginning of the Spring semester. Come be a part of it! Email your submissions to martin.conte@maine.edu and/or victoria.hood@maine.edu, we won’t draw insinuations from who you choose to email.
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This Week in English 69 was sent to faculty, students, and friends of the department on Monday, November 18, 2019. 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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