This Week in English | October 14-20, 2024
Caroline Bicks on Maine Calling Radio Program Tuesday
On Tuesday, October 15, Maine Calling with Jennifer Rooks will host an on-air conversation about “essential books” live from eleven to noon and rebroadcast at 8pm. A little bird tells us that our own Caroline Bicks will be on the program along with Kenneth C. Davis, whose The World in Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction was published on October 8th. As a reader, teacher, and scholar, Bicks ranges with enviable ease from Shakespeare to Stephen King, so be sure to tune in for her remarks about the value of reading real books in our digital age and for her recommendations about what to pick up next!
Brian Jansen Presents at National Conference
Last week, Brian Jansen, assistant professor with a joint appointment between the Department of Communication, Media Studies, and Journalism, and the Department of English, chaired a panel and delivered a paper at the annual conference of the MWPCA/ACA conference in Chicago. Jansen’s paper, “The Ballpark Does Not Exist: Notes Toward a Theory of Baseball and Campus,” linked rhetoric about recent campus protests with a long tradition of writing about the baseball park as a space in American life—as a garden in the city, as a retreat from urban life, as a defining element of the civic realm tethered to community—to consider how “the campus” exists in the cultural imagination.
College Composition Updates
Director of College Composition Ryan Dippre writes in with these updates:
On October 4, the College Composition program held its first calibration session. The session was productive, and we all walked away a little more aligned in our understanding of the Portfolio Assessment Rubric than when we walked into the session.
On October 8, Yvonne Lee of Lehigh University stopped into English 693 (virtually) to discuss her chapter, “Toward an Understanding of the Multidirectional Nature of Literacy Development,” which is being read as part of the common assignment sequence in English 101 this fall.
On October 10, Aaron Thibodeau and Kaytlin Black held a workshop, “Making Your Writing a 10/10 on 10/10: Reconceptualizing the Essay” in the Writing Center. First-year teaching assistants Md. Shehjad Khan and Hannah Boyle stopped by the workshop to lend a hand as well. Thanks to all of them for their excellent work!
What’s Happening in College Composition Classes
Tulane Simpson reports in from their English 101 section:
This week, my English 101 students are doing a Show & Tell activity. To prepare, they did some free writing on current issues in a discourse community they participate in. Then, they will put together a short slide show and give a presentation to the class where they explain who makes up their discourse community, where and how community members communicate, and what they view as a current issue or conflict within that community. From there, they state what they see as a potential controlling purpose for their essay. Examples include proposing a solution to the issue at hand, giving a personal account of how the issue affects them as a member of the community, and how collaborating with individuals from other discourse communities can improve their discourse community. This activity serves as both a planning and a reflection exercise. By creating their presentations, my students are practicing sharing lines of inquiry and lines of reasoning with a specific community of language users before they are tasked with doing so in an essay format. The students also have to reflect on which discourse communities they are in, how writing happens in those communities, and why the community members make specific composing decisions.
And Jacqueline Knirnschild shares some updates as well:
This week Jacqueline’s students read the introduction to Margo Neale & Lynne Kelly’s book Songlines: The Power and Promise, which explores Aboriginal knowledge systems and how they encode information within oral stories, physical landmarks and visual art. This reading was meant to challenge the notion that writing is the only form of storing information/knowledge. Students then drew their own Songlines, meaning the ways in which the different locations they frequent unlock and encourage memories, memory-making and knowledge creation. For example, one student drew a picture of their dorm with a line extending to their biology classroom, and then to the Orono Bog, where they went on a field trip. This Songline showed the flow of knowledge throughout the spaces in the student’s life. The Songlines reading and activity will help to foreground Katherine Frankel’s “Writing Beyond the Keyboard,” which encourages students to think about how disengagement, or stepping away to actively do something else, is a crucial part of the writing and revision process. The students’ Songlines maps will help get them thinking about physical spaces and stepping away from the keyboard, while still allowing the creative process to occur in their subconscious mind.
McGillicuddy Humanities Center Fellowship Applications Due Thursday
The deadline to apply for a McGillicuddy Humanities Center Undergraduate Fellowship is this Thursday, October 17. The MHC Undergraduate Fellows program offers juniors and seniors the opportunity to work on independent research or creative projects in the humanities under the supervision of a faculty mentor. Fellows receive $4,000 each per semester, or $8,000 in total, and present the outcome of their work to a public audience upon culmination of their fellowship term. More information and application instructions can be found here.
New Writing Series Hosts Rod Moody-Corbett on Thursday
On Thursday, October 17th at 4:30pm, The New Writing Series will feature Canadian writer Rod Moody-Corbett.
Moody-Corbett will read from his debut novel, Hides, published by Breakwater Books (St. John’s, Newfoundland). The Literary Review of Canada recently described Hides as “a staggering exploration of the way indifference festers, solidifies, forces us into exile — be it physical, moral, intellectual, or otherwise.”
Light refreshments will be served in the IMRC (Stewart Commons 104) starting at 4:15pm. Hollie Adams will introduce the author and host the Q&A to follow.
The New Writing Series is sponsored by the English Department in partnership with the Center for Poetry and Poetics (formerly the National Poetry Foundation). Since its inception in 1999, the series has hosted more than 400 creative writers in a wide range of genres for live readings on campus. This fall the series marks its 25th anniversary by offering seven events, all of which take place in the Fernald APPE Space (in the IMRC) on Thursday afternoons at 4:30pm. They are free and open to the public
Other authors featured this fall include Dawn Lundy Martin (introduced by Jennifer Moxley), Babak Lakghomi (introduced by Greg Howard), Daisy Fried (introduced by Steve Evans), and Nick Rees Gardner (introduced by Morgan Talty).
Art and Literature Events on Friday
The Zillman Art Museum in downtown Bangor is exhibiting a wonderfully bizarre series of prints, “Layered Realities,” inspired by an equally bizarre Henry James story, “The Jolly Corner.” The English department is sponsoring an informal conversation with Jonathan Barron of James’s story, followed by a trip to the exhibit sponsored (with food!) by the Art Department.
3:00 PM Friday October 18, 2024: Informal chat about Henry James’s “The Jolly Corner” with Professor Jonathan Barron in the Wicks Room (next to the English Department main office, 304 Neville Hall). Please email Dr. Barron if you plan to attend to receive a free pdf of “The Jolly Corner”
5:00 PM Friday October 18, 2024: Trip to the Zillman sponsored by the Art Department with Professor Liam Riordan, food and drinks included! To attend the Zillman event, sign up here (carpooling is being arranged).
Talty Presents on New Novel at Bangor Bull Moose on Friday Evening
Morgan Talty will be the guest at the next live installment of Maine Public’s All Books Considered book club. The event is scheduled for Friday, October 18 at 7 PM and will take place at Bull Moose in Bangor. MPR host Bill Nemitz will be in conversation with Talty about his latest book, the acclaimed novel Fire Exit.
The event will be streamed on various channels as well; learn more about those options at the Maine Public website. If you are unable to attend in person, you can submit questions here. This event is free and open to the public.
Banned Together Movie Screening at Orono Performing Arts Center on October 22
Our colleagues and neighbors at the Orono Public Library write with this invitation:
Join us for a special screening of the documentary “Banned Together,” presented in partnership with the Maine Library Association and the Bangor Public Library! This movie pulls back the curtain on two of the most controversial issues in America today: book bans and curriculum censorship in public schools. Join us for a private, pre-release screening of this film at the Orono Performing Arts Center (OPAC) on Tuesday, October 22nd at 6:00 PM. There is no charge for this screening, but please do pre-register for your free ticket.
This Week in English 158 was sent to students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the department on October 15, 2024. If you would rather not receive these weekly bulletins, please reply with <unsubscribe> in your subject line. Earlier installments are archived on our website. If you’re on Facebook, please consider joining the English Department Group. We’re also (since March of 2024) on Linked In. To learn more about faculty members mentioned in this bulletin, visit our People page.
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