This Week in English | January 31 – February 6, 2022
Sarah Harlan-Haughey Publishes New Article on Chaucer
Sarah Harlan-Haughey’s article “The Dragon of Love: Chaucer’s Jason and the Cycle of Consumption in the Legend of Good Women” appears in the new issue of The Chaucer Review (vol. 57 no. 1, 2022, pp. 101-128). She comments:
I wrote this during and after the last graduate seminar on Chaucer I taught in Spring 2020, and our class discussions in that class helped me think through the premise. I am teaching “Chaucer and Gender” again this year, as a 400-level Major Author’s seminar with crossover with WGS. Class discussions are already lively and inspiring, and I hope will lead to more publications from me and from the students in the future.
In addition to ENG 460 on Chaucer, Harlan-Haughey is leading a section of ENG 170: Foundations of Literary Analysis, one of the “core requirements” for the English Major. In the fall, she led two separate sections of Research Learning Experiences (RLEs), a major new initiative of the Provost’s office with support from the recent Alfond Gift.
Rosalie Purvis Announces LGBTQ+ Play Reading Sessions
Rosarlie Purvis holds a joint appointment in Theatre and English at UMaine. She is teaching two classes for English this spring, one on performance writing (ENG 405) and one on LGBTQ+ dramatic literature (ENG 382). In conjunction with the latter, she plans a series of informal play readings, beginning this evening. Here’s her invitation:
As part of a class I am teaching on LGBTQ dramatic literature, my students and I plan to hold weekly zoom meetings to read some of these plays out loud together in a low-key/fun way. You are invited to join, read and/or listen! Invite your friends! Pass this along!
This Monday 1/31 we are meeting at 8 pm EST to read God of Vengeance by Sholom Ash (in English – Isaac Goldberg’s translation). This is the play that eventually led to “the first lesbian kiss on broadway.”
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://maine.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUofuCuqDwsHdQGxw4qud3uQhHJ2MkGJ-KI
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions rosalie.purvis@maine.edu
Note on above photo montage: These photos are all from productions of God of Vengeance or Paula Vogel’s contemporary play Indecent, which is about the history of God of Vengeance. Links below:
https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/12/21/but-is-god-of-vengeance-good-for-the-jews/
https://taggmagazine.com/indecent-eric-rosen/
https://www.offoffonline.com/offoffonline/2016/12/19/new-show
Elizabeth Neiman’s Work on Minerva Press Recognized
When the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism meets in late February, the conference proceedings will include a panel on “The Gothic Women Writers of the Minerva Press.” The online workshop for postgraduate and early career researchers is scheduled for Monday, February 28, from 1-2:30pm GMT. The panel organizers write:
In recent years there has been a considerable rise in scholarly interest around William Lane’s Minerva Press, exemplified by the recent special issue of Romantic Intertextualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840 (2020) and the publication of Elizabeth Neiman’s Minerva’s Gothics: The Politics and Poetics of Romantic Exchange, 1780-1820 (2019). While many of the Press’ gothic women writers remain in obscurity due to the reputation of Lane’s Press as a ‘factory of cheap, formulaic novels’, reclaiming these women can in fact contribute to new formations of the Romantic canon, in turn destabilising the gendered binaries that persist within evaluations of what constitutes literary value (Neiman, p.1). As Kathleen Hudson notes in her introduction to Women’s Authorship and the Early Gothic: Legacies and Innovations(2020): ‘in seeking new paths into the gothic, we must remember that the mode itself is a study of lost, hidden and marginalised voices’ (p.18).
This PGR/ECR online workshop offers a panel of speakers focusing on ‘the hidden and marginalised voices’ of Minerva Press and raises the question: why reclaim Minerva’s gothic fiction now? Participants will have the opportunity to contribute their ideas to an informal discussion regarding the Minerva Press and its place within studies of Romanticism and the gothic. A key quotes sheet and bibliography will be circulated in advance of the event.
Programme
13:00-13:10 – Welcome
13:10-13:50 – Flash talks from panel (Beth Brigham, Colette Davies and Fern Pullan)
13:50-14:00 – Q&A
14:00-14:30 – Roundtable Discussion
To register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/255114774157
Elizabeth Neiman holds a joint appointment in WGS and English. She is teaching a graduate seminar on “Romantic Empathy” (ENG 549) this spring.
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