Past Announcements
Below, you will find a list of past announcements made on the English Department website.
Spring 2013
A reading by Tupelo Hassman
***Due to a family emergency, Tupelo Hassman has had to cancel her reading on Monday, May 6th.
We will work with the author to re-schedule her reading at a later date.
Our apologies for any inconvenience and we'll keep you apprised of a new date for the reading.***
Tupelo Hassman is a fresh and genuine new voice in fiction. Hassman, who grew up outside Reno, will read from her poignant, startling and uncompromising debut novel, girlchild, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which is being released in paperback in 2013 by Picador.
Her work has appeared in The Arroyo Review Literary Journal, The Boston Globe, Harper's Bazaar, The Independent, The Portland Review Literary Journal, sPARKLE & bLINK, We Still Like, and ZYZZYVA, among other venues. Hassman received her MFA from Columbia and is the first American ever to win London's Literary Death Match. She currently lives in San Francisco's East Bay.
Made possible by the generous support of the UNR Department of English Public Occasions Committee.
For further information:
Gailmarie Pahmeier
Department of English/0098
University of Nevada
Reno, NV 89557
775-682-6387
gailmariep@unr.edu
Details:
Date: Wednesday, May 6th
Time: 5:30PM
Location: MIKC #422,
UNR Campus
Posted April 29, 2013
Hey It’s 2013 Already! Why Bother with Books?
Paul Gehl of Chicago's Newberry Library is a specialist on book history. In this illustrated talk he will discuss how the physical characteristics of books --whether paper or electronic-- affect our sense of their place in history and society, and what they tell us about the human beings (including of course ourselves) who have read them across the last one thousand years. He will introduce us to a Florentine merchant of the early Renaissance, a schoolmaster in baroque Rome, a decidedly outsider artist in 1910 Prague, and some radical readers of today.
Details:
Date: Monday, April 29th
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: JCSU Theater.
Posted April 24, 2013
"…and don’t f@&$ it up!": Rupaul’s Drag Race and the Gay Marriage Debate
Dr. Justin Gifford—
Jean Sanford Distguished Professor
in the Humanities—
will give a public lecture:
America is currently witnessing a sweeping transformation in its attitudes toward gay civil liberties. Ten years ago, there was not a single state in which gay marriage was legal; now it is recognized in nine states as well as the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court is currently deciding two historic cases—Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor—in order to determine the constitutionality of bans on gay marriage and the denial of benefits to gay couples. It appears we are on the cusp of a significant social revolution not witnessed since the tumultuous 1960s.
What can account for this dramatic and seemingly uncharacteristic shift in America’s attitude toward gay marriage and gay people more broadly? After all, it was only in 1996 that Bill Clinton signed into law the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which restricts federal marriage benefits to opposite-sex marriages.
Professor Justin Gifford explores how gay-oriented reality television has contributed to this cultural turn. Paying particular attention to the underground sensation Rupaul’s Drag Race—an elimination-style competition program with drag queens—Gifford investigates the power of entertainment and social media to effect social change.
Details:
Date: Thursday, April 25th
Time: 4:00PM
Location: RSJ 101
Posted April 19, 2013
Anthony Barcellos reads from Land of Milk and Money 4/25
Land of Milk and Money is the story of the Francisco family, Portuguese immigrants from the Azores who settle on a dairy farm in California's Central Valley. Their plans to eventually return to the Old Country fall by the wayside as their success grows and their American lives take root. The legacy of one generation be- comes a point of contention as the members of the next generation begin to compete to inherit and control their heritage, which includes herds of cattle and tracts of farm land. Land of Milk and Money documents an era in which man and nature transformed each other as water turned a sprawling desert valley into the nation’s greatest food basket.
Vamberto Freitas of University of the Azores regards Anthony Barcellos's Land of Milk and Money as “[t]he first great Portuguese-American novel to fully bring to life a whole way of life and history in California. Steinbeck, believe me, would be jealous.”
The author's sister, on the other hand, worries that he's "going to get into a lot of trouble."
Special thanks to the Public Occasions Committtee of the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno for sponsoring the reading.
Please email any questions to Paul Knox <paulk@unr.edu>
Details:
Date: Thursday, April 25th
Time: 4:00 - 5:30 PM
Location: Graduate / Faculty Reading Room (#422) in the Knowledge Center
University of Nevada, Reno Campus
Posted April 18, 2013
Poetry Reading:
Steve Gehrke, William Wilborn, & Steven Nightingale
Join us Wednesday, April 24 at 6:30 p.m., for an evening of poetry with Steve Gehrke , William Wilborn, and Steven Nightingale. This evening is part of Sundance Books and Music's month long celebration of National Poetry Month.
Steve Gehrke
Steve Gehrke has published three books, most recently Michelangelo’s Seizure, which was selected for the National Poetry Series and published by University of Illinois Press in 2007. His other books are The Pyramids of Malpighi (Anhinga), and The Resurrection Machine (BkMk), winner of the John Ciardi Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming at AGNI, Poetry, Shenandoah, VQR and many others. He teaches at the University of Nevada-Reno.
William Wilborn
I'm a bit of collateral damage from WWII. Raised in Bonner, Montana, by my grandparents. Devoted to words from the beginning. Went to high school and college in Missoula, MT, California and Ithaca, NY. I taught at UNR for 28 years. I regard poetry as something hard to do, a craft before it is an art.
Steven Nightingale
Steven Nightingale is the author of two novels, The Lost Coast and Thirteenth Daughter of the Moon, and several books of poetry including The Light in Them is Permanent, Planetary Tambourine, Cartwheels, Cinnamon Theologies and The Golden Pilgrimage.
For more information, please go to Sundance Book's Webpage.
Details:
Date: Wednesday, April 24th
Time: 6:30PM
Location: Sundance Books
121 California Ave Reno, NV 89509
(775) 786-1188
Posted April 18, 2013
Poetry Reading:
Laura Wetherington & Jared Stanley 4/22
Laura Wetherington
Laura Wetherington grew up in Incline Village and now works at Sierra Nevada College. Her first book, A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence 2011), was selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. Recent work includes poems in The Minnesota Review, Drunken Boat, and The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat 2013). Wetherington co-founded and currently edits textsound.org.
Jared Stanley
Jared Stanley is the author of The Weeds, Book Made of Forest and four chapbooks, including How the Desert Did Me In. He co-edits Mrs. Maybe, and is a member of the collaborative public art team Unmanned Minerals. He is a 2012-2014 Research Fellow at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, and teaches at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, NV. Stanley lives in Reno, Nevada.
Sponsored by the English Departmentʼs Public Occasionʼs Committee
Details:
Date: Monday, April 22th
Time: 6:00 - 7:30 PM
Location: The Great Room, Joe Crowley Student Union
University of Nevada, Reno Campus
Posted April 18, 2013
PHILOSOPHERS RESPONDING
TO NATURE
Do we master nature? Do we force her to give up her secrets? Or is our relation to nature more like piety? Not a form of making but of responding? These and related ideas will be considered in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida.
Deborah Achtenberg is Associate Professor of philosophy at UNR. She holds a PhD from the New School of Social Research. She is the author of Cognition of Value in Aristotle’s Ethics (SUNY Press) and Essential Vulnerabilities: Plato and Levinas on Relations to the Other (under contract).
This lecture is sponsored by the Literature and Environment graduate committee in English at UNR.
For more information, please contact Cheryll Glotfelty <glotfelt@unr.edu> 682-6395
Details:
Date: Friday, April 19th
Time: 4:00-5:30 PM
Location: Frandsen Humanities,
Rm 129, UNR Campus
Posted April 1, 2013
UNR Linguistics Club Colloquium
Mary Byram --
Focus in English: a case study in the limits of linguistic knowledge
Our guest speaker is Mary Byram, a PhD candidate from the Linguistics Department of the University of Southern California. Her work primarily examines focus phenomena in English, spanning the linguistic subfields of syntax, semantics, psycholinguistics, and prosody.
Abstract:
Focus in English: a case study in the limits of linguistic knowledge
Mary Byram Washburn
University of Southern California
Focus is a special intonational contour in English that affects every part of how we produce and understand language. For instance, it affects meaning. Example (1a) below means that the only thing John watches are movies (not soap operas or gameshows), but (2) means that the only thing John does with movies is watch them (not write them or direct them).
1) John only watches MOVIES.
2) John only WATCHES movies.
Focus affects word order. Example (3) below is a little strange, but if cup is focused, as in (4), the sentence becomes acceptable.
3) ?Give the sailor who has just come from a distant land the cup.
4) Give the sailor who has just come from a distant land the CUP.
Focus even affects how we think. In example (5) below, it isn't clear whether who refers to the person making the claim or the person who was fired, but focus in (6) resolves this ambiguity.
5) Somebody claims that the president fired someone, but no one knows who. 6) Somebody claims that the president fired someone, but no one knows who.
(Frazier and Clifton 1998)
Despite how important focus is, though, we know very little about it. In this talk, I will outline some of what we do know about focus, but also what we do not know about focus in order to show how much research is still left to do even on a language as well studied as English.
Details:
Date: Friday, April 19th
Time: 3:00 - 4:30 PM
Location: FH 207
Posted April 18, 2013
Teachers Teaching Teachers (TTT):
Stasis Theory
Please join us for the last Teachers Teaching Teachers event of the year. Professor Lynda Walsh will present on stasis theory, a classical system for investigating issues that can help students scaffold research projects in ENG 102 and other writing courses. We hope to see you there!
Special thanks to:
Erin Goldin & Merrilyne Lundahl
Coordinators, Core Writing
Details:
Date: Friday, April 19th
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 PM
Location: FH 233
Posted April 10, 2013
A Reading by Amaranth Borsuk
Amaranth Borsuk is a poet working across media platforms. She is the author of Handiwork (Slope Editions, 2012), selected by Paul Hoover for the 2011 Slope Editions Book Prize; Tonal Saw (The Song Cave, 2010), a chapbook; and, with programmer Brad Bouse, Between Page and Screen (Siglio Press, 2012), a book of augmented-reality poems. Her intermedia project Abra, a hybrid book-performance collaboration with Kate Durbin, Ian Hatcher, and Zach Kleyn recently received an Expanded Artists' Books grant from the Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago and will be issued as an artist's book and iPad app in the fall of 2013.
Borsuk has a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and recently served as Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at MIT, where she taught classes in digital, visual, and material poetics. Her poems, collaborations, translations, reviews and essays have appeared widely in print and online. She currently teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington, Bothell and is at work on a critical book, The Upright Script: Modernist Mediations and Contemporary Data Poetics.
Presented as a part of The Nevada Emerging Writers Series by The Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, the UNR Department of English, and the Nevada Humanities Committee.
For further information:
Gailmarie Pahmeier
Department of English/0098
University of Nevada
Reno, NV 89557
775-682-6387
gailmariep@unr.edu
Details:
Date: Monday, April 15th
Time: 5:30 - 7:00PM
Location: MIKC 422
University of Nevada, Reno Campus
Posted March 31, 2013
Lee Herrick Reading
Lee Herrick is the author of Gardening Secrets of the Dead (WordTech Editions, 2012) and This Many Miles from Desire (WordTech Editions, 2007).
His poems have been published widely, including The Bloomsbury Review, ZZYZYVA, Berkeley Poetry Review, From the Fishouse (online), Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California's Great Central Valley, 2nd edition, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, and One for the Money: The Sentence as Poetic Form.
He is the founding editor of In the Grove and has guest edited various projects, including The Rio Grande Review and New Truths: Writing in the 21st Century by Korean Adoptees, and his narrative essay, "What Is This Thing Called Family?" appears in university textbooks.
Herrick attended Modesto Junior College and California State University, Stanislaus, where he received his MA English with a focus in classical rhetoric. He has traveled throughout Latin America and Asia, has given readings throughout the United States, and served for seven years on the Board of Directors of the English Council of California Two-Year Colleges.
Born in Daejeon, South Korea, adopted at ten months old, and raised in the East Bay and Central California, Herrick now lives with his daughter and wife in Fresno, California, where he teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College.
Details:
Date: Thursday, April 11th
Time: 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Location:The Great Room, Joe Crowley Student Union
University of Nevada, Reno Campus
Posted April 2, 2013
Poetry Reading:
Ann Keniston, June Saraceno, & Lindsay Wilson
Join us Wednesday, April 10 at 6:30 p.m., for an evening of poetry with Ann Keniston, Lindsay Wilson, and June Saraceno. This evening is part of Sundance Books and Music's month long celebration of National Poetry Month.
Ann Keniston
Ann Keniston’s poetry collection, The Caution of Human Gestures, was published in 2005 by David Robert Books; a new chapbook, November Wasps: Elegies, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is also the coeditor (with Jeffrey Gray) of The New American Poetry of Engagement: A 21st-Century Anthology (McFarland). Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Antioch Review, Interim, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. She is also a scholar of contemporary American poetry and associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno.
June Saraceno
June Saraceno is author of the poetry collection Altars of Ordinary Light and a chapbook of prose poems, MeannGirl Trips. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Nursing, California Quarterly, Pedestal, Silk Road and many other journals; as well as in several anthologies including A Bird as Black as the Sun:nCalifornia Poets on Crows and Ravens; and Intimate Kisses: The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure. She is English Program Chair at Sierra Nevada College and founding editor of the Sierra Nevada Review.
Lindsay Wilson
Lindsay Wilson, an English Professor at Truckee Meadows Community College, edits the local literary journal, The Meadow. He has published four chapbooks, and he has poems appearing in The Portland Review, Verse Daily, The Minnesota Review, Salamander, The South Dakota Review and others.
For more information, please go to Sundance Book's Webpage.
Details:
Date: Wednesday, April 10th
Time: 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Location: Sundance Books
121 California Ave Reno, NV 89509
(775) 786-1188
Posted March 31, 2013
“Reformation in a Flood”:
Three Shakespeare plays,
two religions, and one fat knight
The Core Humanities Program presents a lecture by Crowley Distinguished Professor of the Humanities James Mardock
Which of these men is the cowardly, fat drunken, thieving, lecherous old “Sir John” that provides the laughs in Shakespeare’s greatest history plays? What does that question have to do with medieval and Renaissance England, and its violent history of religious reform?
Come find out. Bring your own sack.
Details:
Date: Tuesday, April 9th
Time: 4:00 - 5:30 PM
Location: RSJ 101
Posted April 2, 2013
Reading by Kelle Groom
"Without pretension or rancor, the author recalls her struggles after losing the son she’d had at age 19."
— Editors' Choice, New York Times Book Review
Kelle Groom's memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Free Press/Simon & Schuster 2011; paperback 2012), is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice selection, a Library Journal Best Memoir of 2011, Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Month, Oprah.com O Magazine selection, and Oxford American Editor's Pick. Her poetry collections are Five Kingdoms (Anhinga Press 2010), Luckily (Anhinga 2006), and Underwater City (University Press of Florida 2004). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2010, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Poetry, among others, and has been recognized in the Pushcart Prize 2010 and Best American Non-Required Reading 2007 anthologies. She is the recipient of fellowships from Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada-Las Vegas in partnership with the Library of Congress, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Millay Colony for the Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, American Antiquarian Society, and Ucross Foundation, as well as both a 2010 and a 2006 Florida Book Award, a State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs grant, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant. Groom is Distinguished Writer-in-Residence (2012-2013) at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, where she is also on the faculty of the low-residency MFA Program. Former poetry editor of The Florida Review, she is now a contributing editor.
Event sponsored by the English Department's Public Occasion Committee.
For information about this reading, please contact Steve Gehrke at sgehrke@unr.edu.
Details:
Date: Monday, April 8th
Time: 6:00 - 7:30 PM
Location: The Great Room, Joe Crowley Student Union
University of Nevada, Reno Campus
Teachers Teaching Teachers (TTT):
100i/105/106 Assessment: Assignments that Work
Join us for a discussion about designing assignments that allow our students opportunities to demonstrate the kind of writing we value. Based on preliminary results from the 100i/105/106 assessment project, we will be looking at the features of assignments that correlated to higher scoring portfolios and considering the role of those features. Bring your own assignment sheets and questions with you! Snacks will be provided.
Details:
Date: Friday, April 19th
Time: 2:00-3:00 PM
Location: FH 233
Poetry Reading:
Joe Crowley, Gailmarie Pahmeier, & Roy A. ChÁvez
This evening is part of Sundance Books and Music's month long celebration of National Poetry Month.
Joe Crowley
Joe Crowley is a former professor and administrator at the University of Nevada, Reno, who writes poetry in retirement. His publications include books about the college presidency and related subjects, the centennial history of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and lately, various poems.
Gailmarie Pahmeier
Gailmarie Pahmeier teaches creative writing and contemporary literature courses at the University of Nevada, where she has been honored with the Alan Bible Teaching Excellence Award and the University Distinguished Teacher Award. Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. She is the author of the poetry collection The House on Breakaheart Road, two chapbooks from Black Rock Press, and Shake It and It Snows, which won the 2009 Coal Hill Chapbook Award from Autumn House Press. In 2007, she received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Roy A. ChÁvez
Born in Lima, Perú, Roy A. Chávez now lives in Carson City, Nevada where he is a mechanical designer. He is a recipient of the 2001 Nevada Arts Council Fellowship; Reflections in Motion, 2004 and the 2005 Sierra Arts Foundation Grant.
For more information, please go to Sundance Book's Webpage.
Details:
Date: Wednesday, April 3rd
Time: 6:30 - 7:30 PM
Location: Sundance Books
121 California Ave Reno, NV 89509
(775) 786-1188
Posted March 31, 2013
Denice Turner
Lecture
Life Legacies From the Heavenly Frontier to the Intermountain West
Denice Turner discusses writing to thesis and writing to theme, making peace with the re- search trajectory and writer’s platform, shame and shameless promotion, whilst reading from her latest work, Legacies.
An educator, scholar, and creative writer, Denice Turner has taught writing for two decades and specializes in life story. Her first book, Writing the Heavenly Frontier, celebrates the voices of America’s first aviators, while her second, Legacies, takes a narrative approach to what Brené Brown has called “an epidemic of shame.” Her work has been anthologized in Travel Writing: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies (Routledge), Borne on Air (Eastern Washington UP), and has appeared in AOPA Pilot and Utah State University Magazine. Selections from Legacies have won the Western Literature Association’s Fredrick Man- fred Award for narrative nonfiction, and an essay formed from its final chapters was featured in the Georgetown Review as one of its national prose prize winners.
SPONSORED BY THE HILLIARD ENDOWMENT AND THE UNR English Department
Details:
Date: Monday, March 29th
Time: 4:00 - 5:00 PM
Location: Frandsen Humanities 129
University of Nevada, Reno
For further information please contact:
Professor Cheryll Glotfelty
Email: glotfelt@unr.edu
Phone: 775-682-6395
Posted March 15, 2013
Congratulations to Alumna Claire Vaye Watkins for Winning the Prestigious Story Prize
Reposted from NPR's Website.
The 10 stories in Claire Vaye Watkins' debut collection — Battleborn — explore the past and present of the American West, specifically Nevada, where Watkins spent much of her childhood and adolescence. On Wednesday, it was announced that the 28-year-old author had won two major literary prizes for Battleborn: the $10,000 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the $20,000 Story Prize. Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Diaz (This Is How You Lose Her) and Dan Chaon (Stay Awake) were the other finalists for The Story Prize, which is the most significant award for short fiction in the U.S.
Watkins' mother and stepfather settled in Pahrump, Nev., when Watkins was 6, and, she tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies, she and her sister "spent a lot of time traipsing around naked through the desert, wandering and playing with our dogs and finding creatures and rocks. ... [My parents] taught us a lot about rocks and the desert and the natural world, and it was really sort of our playground."
Posted March 15, 2013
Linguistics students travel to Mexico, deliver research in Spanish
Students at the University of Nevada, Reno present research at language conference in Oaxaca
At the University of Nevada, Reno students have the opportunity for their education to be in many different forms, and take them to unexpected places. Allyson Stronach is one of seven University students who were given the chance to travel to Oaxaca, Mexico after taking a linguistics class with Professor Brook Lillehaugen last spring.
Professor Lillehaugen and her students at the “Coloquio Sobre Lenguas Otomangues y Vecinas” conference in Oaxaca, Mexico. From left: Brook Lillehaugen, Ellyn Morrill, Brent Coulter, Rebecca Whistler, Cameron Rees, Allyson Stronach, Enrique Valdivia and Oanh Luc.
Students learned about the Zapotec language and culture, but were also able to translate documents in the language from the 16th and 17th centuries into English. Lillehaugen, who travels often to Oaxaca, offered her students the chance to travel and participate in "Coloquio Sobre Lenguas Otomangues y Vecinas," an annual linguistics conference on Otomanguean, a large family of languages generally spoken in Mexico, and other neighboring languages. The students then presented research papers in Spanish.
Article by: Stephany Kirby
Read full piece here: http://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2013/linguistics-in-mexico
Posted March 5, 2013
Marcela Sulak
Poetry Reading
Marcela Sulak is the author of two collections of poetry Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press, 2010) and the chapbook Of All The Things That Don't Exist, I Love You Best (Finishing Line Press). Other poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Guernica, The Black Warrior Review, The Cimarron Review, The Notre Dame Review, Fence, The Indiana Review, The Cortland Review, Quarterly West, Third Coast and No Tell Motel, among others.
SPONSORED BY THE HILLIARD ENDOWMENT AND THE PUBLIC OCCASION COMMITTEE
Details:
Date: Monday, March 4th
Time: 4:00PM
Location: Graduate Student Lounge
4th Floor
UNR Knowledge Center
For further information please contact:
Professor Steve Gehrke
Posted February 26, 2013
Renovation: Graduate Student Conference
Dear Faculty, Staff, and Graduate Students,
The Renovation conference is here! We, the Conference Committee, are excited to invite you to attend.
The conference opens on Friday, March 1, 2013, with a roundtable from 4-5 PM, "Renovation: Transforming Our Local Community," in Davidson Math and Science 103. This session will be an opportunity to explore connections between universities and their local communities. What commitments should universities and local communities share? How are institutions working together to promote sustainability and resilience in today’s world? Sarah Lillegard (Holland Project), Monique Monteverde (River School Farm), Jeff Mitchell (Reno Bike Project), Amber Sallaberry (Great Basin Community Food Co-op), and Jessica Schneider (Junkee Clothing Exchange) will discuss how their organizations benefit Reno by providing goods and services that are often as "renovative" as they are innovative. A reception with hors d'oeuvres and beverages will follow soon after.
On Saturday, March 2, panels begin at 8:15AM and run until 3:30PM in Frandsen Humanities. Attached you will find a full schedule. There are 46 presenters from UNR, UNLV, and schools in California, Utah, and Washington. The conference's interdisciplinarity is best embodied in our panelists who represent Literature, Rhetoric, Creative Writing, Literature and the Environment, History, Sociology, French, Spanish, Education, Music, and Art. We are pleased to showcase so many young, promising scholars from around the region and from diverse intellectual traditions.
The conference concludes on Saturday with a keynote address by Dr. Alicia Barber. Her talk, "Renovating Reno: Image and Environment in the Biggest Little City," begins at 4:00pm in the Knowledge Center auditorium. Please see the attached flier for more information. A reception will follow the keynote address.
We want to thank all of you for your support and help in making this conference happen. Additionally, we would like to thank the Hilliard Endowment in the Humanities; the English Department; the Gender, Race, and Identity Program; and the Graduate Student Association for their financial support.
Please do join us this Friday and Saturday, and please invite your friends and colleagues.
Details:
Date: March 1-2 2013
Location: University of Nevada, Reno
Conference Homepage:
http://www.unr.edu/cla/engl/renovation/index.html
Conference Sechdule:
http://www.unr.edu/cla/engl/renovation/images/Conference
%20Program%20Final%20for%20Web.pdf
For further information please contact:
Posted February 15, 2013
2013 National African American Read-In
Come celebrate Black History Month participating in this African American Read-In. You can read from or listen to passages from your favorite black-authored books.
Details:
Date: Thursday, February 28th
Time: 4:00 - 5:30PM
Location: Back Room of Bibo on Record Street
For further information please contact:
Professor Justin Gifford
jdgifford@unr.edu
or
Diane Miniel
dminiel@unr.edu
Posted February 21, 2013
A Reading and Craft Talk by Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison’s debut novel, The Gin Closet, published when she was just 26, earned recognition as one of the Best Books of 2010 by the San Francisco Chronicle, was named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award, and garnered critical praise for its unflinching yet lyrical portrait of addiction. Her forthcoming book, The Empathy Exams: Essays on Pain, which covers subjects from slum tourism to ultra-running, won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and will be published in the fall.
Jamison has taught courses in fiction at Wesleyan University, Yale University, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She also mentors through the PEN Prison Writing Program. A native of Los Angeles, Jamison has earned degrees from Harvard and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and is pursuing a Ph.D. in literature at Yale.
Details:
Date: Wednesday, February 20th
Time: 4:00PM
Location: Joe Great Room
Posted February 15, 2013
PART WILD: The Beauty and Tragedy of Living with a Measure of Wildness
A public talk by Ceiridwen Terrill
In 1993 American scientists reclassified the dog as a subspecies of gray wolf because their mitochondrial DNA differs by no more than 0.2%. But 40,000 years or more of selection has made it possible for dogs to live with humans on human terms, whereas the survival of wolves depends upon their avoiding human contact. Part Wild is the personal story of one woman's life with Inyo, a canine both wolf and dog, a creature divided between her bond to one woman and her need to roam free. Interwoven with the story are the results of five years' investigation into the genetics and behavior of wolves and dogs.
Ceiridwen Terrill specializes in creative nonfiction, including environmental journalism, science writing, and memoir. Her essays have appeared in Slate, High Country News, BARK, and Oxford American. Her second book, Part Wild (Scribner), is a finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Terrill teaches field courses in botanical medicine and urban ecology, and she is a horsewoman, backpacker, and sailor. Her website is www.myurbanwild.com.
Details:
Date: Friday, January 25th
Time: 4:00PM
Location: Frandsen Hall 129
Posted January 22, 2013
Professor Coake's You came Back wins award
Christopher Coake's new novel You Came Back, published in June 2012 by Grand Central Publishing, tells the story of Mark Fife, a Midwesterner who believes he has successfully moved past the accidental death of his young son Brendan, as well as his subsequent divorce from his college sweetheart Chloe. He's successful, he's in love again, and he believes he's mastered his own memories.
But then he is contacted by a strange woman who tells him not only that she owns his old house, but that she believes it to be haunted by Brendan's ghost. Will Mark--who does not believe in ghosts--come to accept the mounting evidence that Brendan's is real? Will his engagement to his new love Allison be threatened by the reappearance in Mark's life of Chloe--who does believe? If the ghost is real, what can these two wounded parents do to help their son?
You Came Back examines the beauty and danger of belief in all its forms--not only belief in the supernatural, but in the love that binds parents and children, husbands and wives. The novel was released to critical acclaim; it was named a Best Book of 2012 by BookPage, The San Francisco Book Review, and the Kansas City Star, and was named the November 2012 book club pick of The Times of London.
Posted January 22, 2013
Fall 2012
Hail and farewell to Monica Grecu
Our friend and colleague Monica Grecu is retiring at the end of this month. During her twenty-seven years at UNR, Monica has contributed enormously to our university community and touched many lives. Monica began her career here in Student Services where she offered seminars in language, writing, and test-taking skills, as well as providing academic advising and support in grant writing.
In 1995, Monica joined the English Department. Over the years, her many devoted students have found her to be a dedicated and enthusiastic teacher and an unselfish advisor. She made significant contributions to UNR's growth as a global university by fostering exchanges between UNR and Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. As many of you know, Monica gave generously of her time and energy to this program, hosting faculty, making living -- and academic -- arrangements for them. She also served the broader community as a member of the Mayor's International Advisory Board, as a member of the Executive Board of the Nevada Faculty Alliance, as a longtime teacher in the Lifescapes and ElderCollege programs, and as President of the Phi Beta Delta ETA Chapter.
We are deeply grateful to Monica for her many years of teaching, service, and commitment. She will be very much missed by her colleagues and her students. We wish her well on this new phase of her life.
Posted December 2, 2012
The Super PAC Poets Present Poetry for the End of the Era
FEATURING: Doomsday Solar Flares, Live Music, Gangnam Style
Readings by:
- Virginia Allen
- Alexander King
- Monique Normand
- Jen Vineyard
- Joe Crowley
- Mary Nork
- Suzie Shoemaker
- Michael Brian Austria
- Lucian Matthew
- Maurice Barrientos
- Melanie Ann Peck
Details:
Date: Tuesday, December 11th
Time: 5:30M -- 7:00PM
Location: The Great Room, Joe Crowley Student Union, UNR Campus
For further information please contact:
Gailmarie Pahmeier
Department of English/0098
University of Nevada
Reno, NV 89557
775-682-6387
gailmariep@unr.edu
Posted December 2, 2012
A Reading and Craft Talk
by Peter Covino
Peter Covino is the author of Straight Boyfriend, winner of the 2001 Frank O'Hara Chapbook Prize, The Right Place to Jump, and Cut Off the Ears of Winter, winner of the 2007 PEN/America Osterweil Award and finalist for both the Publishing Triangle Thom Gunn Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize.
Covino was born in Italy. He earned an M.S. degree from Columbia School of Social Work and received his Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing at the University of Utah, where he was a Steffensen Cannon Fellow.
His poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Columbia, The Journal, The Paris Review, Verse, and The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing.
He has worked as a professional social worker in the fields of foster care, AIDS services, and youth and family services. He currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Rhode Island. Covino’s newer work reflects a growing concern with Italian historical influences, issues of environmental impingement, contemporary art, and visual and poetic experimentation.
The Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, the UNR Department of English, and the Nevada Humanities Committee Present The Nevada Emerging Writers Series
Details:
Date: Monday, November 26th
Time: 5:30 - 7:00 PM
Location: Great Room of the Joe Crowley Student Union.
For further information please contact:
Gailmarie Pahmeier
Department of English/0098
University of Nevada
Reno, NV 89557
775-682-6387
gailmariep@unr.edu
Posted November 22, 2012
Suzanne Roberts wins Literary Prize
Congratulations to Suzanne Roberts (PhD 2008), whose recent memoir, Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail, won the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award< in the Literature category. Almost Somewhere, published this fall by the University of Nebraska Press, recounts a month-long backpacking trip that Suzanne took in 1993 with two other women friends. The intrepid trio encounter bears, bulimia, injuries, strange men, and their own fears, as Suzanne shares a woman's perspective on outdoor adventure. Suzanne Roberts is a professor of English at Lake Tahoe Community College and teaches for the low-residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.
Posted November 22, 2012
Congratulations to Professor Steve Gehrke named 2013 Artist Fellow to the Nevada Arts Council
Steve Gehrke has been named as one of six 2013 Artist Fellows by the Nevada Arts Council. See details here. Steve has also been a recent recipient of an NEA literature fellowship. His first book, The Resurrection Machine, received the 1999 John Ciardi Prize. His second book, The Pyramids of Malpighi, won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. His most recent book, Michelangelo’s Seizure (2007), was selected for the National Poetry Series. In addition, his poems have been published in dozens of periodicals such as The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, The Yale Review, and Prairie Schooner.
Posted November 17, 2012
The New American Poetry of Engagement
A Poetry Reading
at
Sundance Bookstore
The New American Poetry of Engagement:
A 21st Century Anthology
This anthology of poetry collects 21st century American works by both established and emerging poets that deal with the public events, government policies, ecological and political threats, economic uncertainties, and large- scale violence that have largely defined the century to date. But these 138 poems by 50 poets do not simply describe, lament, or bear witness to contemporary events; they also explore the linguistic, temporal, and imaginative problems involved in doing so. In this way, the anthology offers a comprehensive look at contemporary American poetry, demonstrating that poets are moving at once toward a new engagement with public concerns and toward a focus on the problems of representation. A detailed introduction by the editors along with poetics statements by many of the poets add depth and context to a book that will appeal to anyone interested in the state and evolution of contemporary American poetry.
The Editors:
Ann Keniston is an associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Jeffrey Gray is a professor of English at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New
Jersey.
Details:
Date: Thursday, November 29th
Time: 6:30 - 8:00PM
Location: Sundance Books and Music
121 California Avenue Reno, NV 89509
Posted November 13, 2012
Academic Job Placement Workshop
Topic: Telephone and MLA Interviews
The third of the department's Academic Job Placement Workshop series takes place next Friday. All are welcome to attend. You need not have attended the first workshops to attend this one.
- Coordinator/Moderator: Don Hardy
- Panelist: Bill Macauley
- Panelist: Cathy Chaput
- Panelist: Stacy Burton
Details:
Date: Friday, November 16th
Time: 1:00-3:00 PM
Location: FH 129
Posted November 8, 2012
Rebecca Dunham, Poetry Reading
Rebecca Dunham is the author of two collections of poetry. Her first book, The Miniature Room, won the 2006 T.S. Eliot Prize and was published by Truman State University Press. Her second book, The Flight Cage, was a Tupelo Press Open Reading selection, and was published in 2010. A chapbook of poems, titled Fascicle, is just out from Dancing Girl Press in 2012.
Her other awards and honors include a 2007 NEA Fellowship, the 2005-2006 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Fellowship in Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the 2011 Terrain.org Poetry Prize, and the 2005 Indiana Review Prize for Poetry. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, and FIELD. She is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Sponsored by the Hilliard Endowment
For more information, please contact Steve Gehrke.
Details:
Date: Thursday, November 15th
Time: 4:00 PM
Location:UNR Knowledge Center, graduate student lounge
Posted November 8, 2012
Dr. Kevin DeLuca: China, Social Media, and Saving The Earth; Deploying Decentered Knots of World-Making to Challenge the Global Corporatocracy
A lecture by Dr. Kevin DeLuca, author of Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism
The emergence of China and the advent of social media are two events that rupture the world as it is and force us to rethink everything. How do social media and smartphones transform how activists act? The social media norm of perpetual participation creates new expectations of what it means to be a citizen and a democracy. In China environmental protests enabled by social media suggest new possibilities for activism.
Details:
Date: Thursday, November 15th
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Joe Crowley Student Union, room 423
Posted November 8, 2012
Professor Palwick reading from Brief Visitsat Sundance Bookstore
Hi, everyone. On November 15 at 6:30, I'll be reading at Sundance Bookstore from Brief Visits, a collection of 45 sonnets, just published by Texas Review Press, about my volunteer work as a lay ER chaplain. Below is the link to Sundance's official announcement. I hope some of you will be able to attend.
For additional information, please refer to the announcment from Sundance Bookstore.
Details:
Date: Thursday, November 15th
Time: 6:30 PM
Location:Sundance Bookstore
121 California Avenue Reno, NV 89509
Posted October 2012
Congratulations to Professor Anupama Mohan on her new book: Utopia and the Village in South Asian Literatures
Utopia and the Village in South Asian Literatures provides a searching exploration of twentieth-century literatures of the Indian subcontinent by refocusing attention on works that engage with the village and the rural as a trope. Mohan breathes new life into Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia and continues a conversation with thinkers of utopia about the need for recuperating the utopian potential in postcolonial writings. For both the novice and the scholar, this is a book that will truly define the horizons for understanding South Asian literatures and cultures, and their broader significance within postcolonial scholarship.
"This is the important new step the field has been waiting to take." - Linda Hutcheon, University Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
“The book is spectacular in its conceptual grasp of the field, and it is possibly the only book in the last two decades to offer a radical and immensely valuable methodology for reading South Asian literature.” – Chelva Kanaganayakam, Professor, Department of English, University of Toronto
Posted October 2012
"Crrrritique”: An Investigation of the Limits of Critique and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion
By: Professor Rita Felski
The idea of critique drives much contemporary work in the humanities. Why is critique so often held to be the most rigorous, scrupulous, and radical form of thought? And what intellectual and imaginative possibilities does it overshadow or overrule? In this talk, Professor Felski develops a five-part definition of critique—in the hope of prompting reflection on the value and limits of critique as a scholarly method.
Rita Felski is the William R. Kenan Professor at the University of Virginia and a scholar of feminist theory, modernity and postmodernity, and cultural studies. She is the editor of the scholarly journal New Literary History, and she is the recipient of a number of honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the William Parker Riley Prize for best article in PMLA.
Professor Felski is the author of a number of important books in the field of literary and critical theory, including Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Harvard University Press, 1989), The Gender of Modernity (Harvard University Press, 1998), and Literature After Feminism (University of Chicago Press, 2003). Most recently, Professor Felski’s research has focused on an investigation of the aesthetic experiences of enchantment and shock, as exemplified in her manifesto Uses of Literature (Blackwell’s, 2008).
Details:
Date: Friday, November 2nd
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Wells Fargo Auditorium,
Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center,
Room 124
Talk sponsored by: The Department of English, in association with the Gender, Race, and Identity Program, the Hilliard Endowment in the Humanities, the Guy L. Leonard Memorial Fund in Philosophy, and the Public Occasions Committee.
Posted October 2012
Teachers Teaching Teachers (TTT):
If everything's an argument, how do I teach argument without teaching everything?
Join us on Thursday for a presentation from Bill Macauley on various models of argument and a discussion of how we teach argument in our classes. Bring your questions and insights for a lively discussion. Best,
Bill Stobb will read some of his Great Basin poems (including pieces inspired by Double Negative's land artist, Michael Heizer) and discuss how he forges poetic forms to translate emptiness into meaning.
Details:
Date: Thursday, November 1
Time: 12:00-12:50 PM
Location: MSS 227
Posted October 2012
William Stobb Absentia: Poems
-- A Reading
In selecting William Stobb’s 2007 collection for the National Poetry Series, August Kleinzahler writes, “William Stobb has nerve, talent, and engages this madly accelerating, often nearly indecipherable world in what's called real time. And he manages it without sacrificing emotional force. That’s something special.” Stobb’s subsequent publications include two 2010 chapbooks, Pointless Channel (Goss 183) and Artifact Eleven (Black Rock Press), and a second Penguin Poets volume, Absentia (2011). Of that collection, Alison Hawthorne Deming writes: “the vitality of these poems, the necessity of their questioning, makes life feel deep and strange and satisfying.”
Stobb lives in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and works as Associate Editor and podcast producer for the award-winning literary magazine, Conduit. His poems appear regularly in journals and zines including, American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, and DIAGRAM. In 2011, Stobb co-wrote the hit Chicago production, Predator: The Musical, which returns to the stage in 2012. Stobb holds an MA from the creative writing program at the University of North Dakota, and a PhD in English from the University of Nevada.
Bill Stobb will read some of his Great Basin poems (including pieces inspired by Double Negative's land artist, Michael Heizer) and discuss how he forges poetic forms to translate emptiness into meaning.
Details:
Date: Monday, October 29
Time: 4:00-5:30 PM
Location: JCSU Student Union Great Room (403)
UNR campus
Talk sponsored by: UNR English Department and Public Occasions Committee; Literature & Environment graduate emphasis.
Questions? Cheryll Glotfelty, glotfelt@unr.edu, 682-6395
Posted October 2012
Core Writing Rreads Hardcore Writing
Wednesday, Oct. 24, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Frandsen Humanities 129 Refreshments will be provided courtesy of Core Writing and the English Department.
Readers:
- Jamie Albright
- Linda Kay Hardie
- Forrest Hartman
- Joe Hunt
- Frank Merksamer
- Katherine Toy Miller
- Diane Miniel
- Jeffrey Opfer
Details:
Date: Wednesday, October 24.
Time: 5:30-6:30 PM
Location: Frandsen Humanities 129
Room 124
Contact Katherine Toy Miller at ktmiller@unr.edu for any further information.
Posted October 2012
Professor Lynda Walsh and Alumnus Kenny Walker featured on New York Times Blog
Andrew Revkin's "Dot Earth" blog features an article co-authored by Kenny Walker (L&E MA 2009, currently pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Arizona) and Professor Lynda Walsh. Terrific that the work of our graduate students and faculty is being profiled in such important venues. Congratulations Kenny and Lynda!
Posted September 2012
Language & Linguistics Major Allyson Stronach Accepted to deliver paper at The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas
Language & Linguistics major Allyson Stronach -- who presented a paper at a conference in Oaxaca, Mexico last spring and conducted research on child language acquisition at the Harvard Lab for Developmental Studies over the summer -- just had a paper accepted for the forthcoming meeting of The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas.
Posted September 2012
Professor Jen Hill featured in
The Chronicle
Professor Jen Hill features substantially in a recent article published on September 25 in the the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article "Journeys to the Ends of the Earth" surveys recent scholarship of polar exploration.
Posted September 2012
Historic Walking tour of Reno
This tour will be led by Dr. Alicia Barber, author of Reno's Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City. Alicia Barber is Assistant Professor of History at UNR and Director of the Nevada Oral History Program.
Grad students, faculty, and families are welcome to join us!
Details:
Date: Friday, October 12
Time: 3 - 5:00 PM
Location:10 N. Virginia.
Posted September 2012
How to think about Graduate school
Friday, October 12th, Professor Stacy Burton will conduct an informal seminar entitled,"How to think about graduate school." Is it right for you? How do you prepare? What do graduate admission committees look for in an applicant?
The department will provide pizza so bring yourself a beverage and learn about the process of choosing and getting into a graduate program. If you are considering graduate studies at UNR or elsewhere, you will want to attend this informative session. You are welcome to leave after the first hour or to arrive in time for the second hour’s presentation.
FIRST HALF: 11-12:00 PM
Deciding whether to go to graduate school: what kind of program to choose.
SECOND HALF: 12:00-1:00 PM
Planning wisely: when and where to apply
What is required in an application
What do graduate admissions committees look for in an applicant?
Details:
Date: Friday, October 12th
Time: 11:00- 1:00 PM
Location: FH, Room 109
Posted October 2012
Suzanne Roberts Reading
The English Department is pleased to welcome back alumna Suzanne Roberts as she celebrates the publication of her newest book, a memoir. Her books include Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), and the poetry collections Plotting Temporality (2012), Three Hours to Burn a Body: Poems on Travel (2011), Nothing to You (2008), and Shameless (2007). She has won numerous awards for her creative work and for her work in the classroom. Suzanne holds degrees in biology and English from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and a doctorate in literature and the environment from the University of Nevada-Reno. She currently teaches at Lake Tahoe Community College and for the low residency MFA in creative writing at Sierra Nevada College.
Details:
Date: Thursday, September 27th
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Great Room of the Joe Crowley Student Union.
Posted September 2012
Giddy Neighbors:Englishness
and the Foreign in Henry V
The Core Humanities Program
presents a lecture by
Crowley Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
James Mardock
In Summer 2012, when England hosted the Olympics and celebrated the Queen’s Jubilee, a new BBC film of Shakespeare’s Henry V seemed an obvious way to remind the country of what makes it great: it’s the story, after all, of England’s most heroic king winning a hopeless battle against all odds, with God, apparently, on his side. It’s stirring and patriotic stuff, even today. As Tom Hiddleston, the actor of Henry on the BBC, put it, “The words are 410 years old, the battle was 200 years before that, and we’re that same culture.”
But what does that mean? What was national character to Shakespeare? Is the us-versus-them mentality ever as simple as “us versus them”?
Details:
Date: Wednesday, September 19th
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: DMS, Room 104
Posted September 2012
A Reading and Craft Talk by
Melinda Moustakis
Melinda Moustakis was born in Fairbanks, Alaska and raised in Bakersfield, California. She received her MA from UC Davis and her PhD in English and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University.
She was named a 2011 “5 Under 35” writer by the National Book Foundation and is a 2012-2013 Hodder Fellow at The Lewis Center of the Arts at Princeton University.
2011, won the Flannery O'Connor Award and the Maurice Prize. It has also been shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Conjunctions, Cimarron Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.
Details:
Date: Wednesday, September 12th
Time: 5:30-7:00 PM
Location: Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center, Room 422
For further information please contact:
Gailmarie Pahmeier
Department of English/0098
University of Nevada
Reno, NV 89557
775-682-6387
gailmariep@unr.edu
Posted September 2012
Iceberg Slim: Portrait of
a Pimp
Professor Justin Gifford is featured as the literary expert in the new documentary Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp. The film — which examines the life and work of legendary African American crime writer Robert Beck (a.k.a Iceberg Slim) — will have its world premier at the Toronto Film Festival on September 8th. Produced by Ice-T, Portrait of a Pimp draws from interviews with Chris Rock, Snoop Dogg, Quincy Jones as well as our own Dr. Gifford. It reconstructs the story of how ex-pimp Iceberg Slim transformed African American and American culture with the publication of seven underground pulp novels.
More information on the Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp can be found at http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2012/icebergslimportraito and
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2180016/
Justin Gifford is an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and he currently holds the Jean Sanford Distinguished Professorship in Core Humanities. His book about Iceberg Slim titled Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing will be published early next year.
Posted September 2012
Congratulations to Professor William J Macauley, Jr.
Congratulations to Professor William J. Macauley, Jr. on his new book Building Writing Center Assessments that Matter.
The Utah State University Press has this to say about Professor Schendel and Macauley's work:
No less than other divisions of the college or university, contemporary writing centers find themselves within a galaxy of competing questions and demands that relate to assessment—questions and demands that usually embed priorities from outside the purview of the writing center itself. Writing centers are used to certain kinds of assessment, both quantitative and qualitative, but are often unprepared to address larger institutional or societal issues. In Building Writing Center Assessments that Matter, Schendel and Macauley start from the kinds of assessment strengths already in place in writing centers, and they build a framework that can help writing centers satisfy local needs and put them in useful dialogue with the larger needs of their institutions, while staying rooted in writing assessment theory.
Posted September 2012
Congratulations, Claire
Congratulations to Alum Claire Vaye Watkins whose debut book Battleborn is recieving glowing reviews. Vogue's review, for instance, had the following to say:
"Filled with ghost towns and lost souls, her debut story collection, Battleborn (Riverhead), features the most captivating voice to come out of the West since Annie Proulx and Denis Johnson—though it’s to early Joan Didion that she bears comparison for her arid humor and cut-to-the-chase knowingness." Read the full review on Vogue's website.
Posted August 2012
Congratulations, Professor Keniston
Congratulations to Professor Ann Keniston for her new anthology The New American Poetry of Engagement.
This comprehensive anthology collects poems by established and emerging 21st century American poets that deal with the public events, government policies, ecological and political threats, economic uncertainties, and large-scale violence that have largely defined the century to date. But these poems do not simply describe, lament, or bear witness to contemporary events; they also explore the linguistic, temporal, and imaginative problems involved in doing so. A detailed introduction by the editors and statements by many of the poets add depth and context to a book that will appeal to anyone interested in the evolution of contemporary American poetry.
Ann Keniston is an associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno. Jeffrey Gray is a professor of English at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.
Posted August 2012
