Thursday's Notes

Announcements:

• The deadline for applications to the 2006-2007 Distinguished Visiting Speakers Program for the Fall and Spring semesters is Oct. 9. Category I applicants can receive up to $500 for a classroom visit or department seminar by a guest speaker. Category II applicants can receive up to $1,500 for individuals or small groups of scholars with broad appeal to the university community. Applications are available from the Office of Graduate Studies, extension 2138.

Reminders:

• The College of Humanities is calling for proposals for Fall 2006 Academic Programming Support. All full- and part-time faculty in the college are invited to submit proposals. Funding from this source will be supplemental only; projects will not be funded in full from this source. This fund provides supplementary support for academically related activities and events only (e.g., guest lecturers, workshops, performances). Funding from this source will not be allocated to support individual faculty stipends, curriculum development, travel, faculty research or creative projects, materials or resources for faculty or student training, and/or to hire student assistants. The deadline for Fall 2006 semester proposals is 5 p.m. Sept. 29. Contact the College of Humanities for more information.
• CSUN will sponsor a panel discussion open to the community on the U.S. Constitution at the Sierra Center on Constitution Day, Sept. 16. A continental breakfast will be served from 8:30 to 9 a.m., with the panel following. Dr. Stephen Shortell of Political Science and Dr. James Sefton of History will discuss “how a document written for and by a sparsely populated agricultural democracy has survived for 219 years to remain viable as the constitution of an industrial nation of nearly 300 million people,” according to the CSUN announcement.
• On top of the excellent assistance and support provided by Herby Carlos and Damon Luu, the English Department welcomes three new student assistants: Joshua Beard, Cecilia Lu, and Marianne Maun. Please stop by to introduce yourself.
• Due to a vacancy, the Faculty Senate is accepting nominations for senator-at-large (one year term). All full-time faculty who wish to run, and who have not yet been nominated, may submit to the Faculty Senate Office (mail code 8221 or delivered to OV10) a petition with 15 faculty signatures by 5 pm, Sept. 20. Please contact Heidi Wolfbauer, x3263 or email heidiw@csun.edu if you have any questions.
• Thursday’s Notes is also published weekly on our department webpage.  Please submit items for upcoming Thursday’s Notes to Scott Andrews, the Associate Chair, or to the Thursday’s Notes folder in Martha Alzamora’s office.
• If you have not already done so, please put a copy of your course syllabi in Jennifer Lu’s box.  The syllabi will be filed in the notebooks in our Conference Room for reference by other faculty teaching similar courses in the future.

Faculty/Student/Staff Achievements:

• Irene Clark gave a presentation at the Advanced Placement Teachers conference in New York City on Sept. 9.  Her presentation was titled "Expectations of College Writing."  She has been invited to present a paper, "Genre and the Performance of Identity," at the Conference on College Composition and Communication to be held in New York City in March.
• Barbara Kroll’s application to The Council for the International Exchange of Scholars has been accepted, and she has been added to the roster of Fulbright Senior Specialist Program candidates in the field of TESL/Applied Linguistics.
• Jack Lopez's novel, In the Break (Little, Brown), was published in July.  The inaugural Kirkus Special (April 2006) stated, "While Kirkus Reviews has been reviewing first fiction for nearly three-quarters of a century, the magazine has never before culled, from among the season's most promising debuts, a group to highlight," and went on to say:  "Lopez's keen observations and experiences are ...entrancing."  Kirkus Reviews (July 2006) praised the book for "capturing a gritty, dead-on teen speak that surges through the pages.”  Publishers Weekly in the "Hollywood Reader," a section devoted to books that will go to film, said:  "Take a lower-middle class The OC, throw in The Endless Summer, mix it up with some Y tu mamá también, and what do you get?  In the Break...."  Recorded Books has published the audio book version of In The Break, and it is narrated by Ramon de Ocampo, a New York based actor who has done guest roles on CSI, and The West Wing, among others. You can see more at http://www.inthebreak.com and at http://www.jacklopez.net.
• John Peters gave a paper, "The Borders of Fidelity: Cosmopolitan Ethics in Ondaatje’s The English Patient," at the "Marges et Confins [Borderlands and Borderlines]" Conference held in late June at the Centre de Recherches d’Etudes Anglo-Américaines, University of Paris 10. The following week, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, he delivered the Werner H. Rubrecht Keynote Address at the biennial Conference of the International Lawrence Durrell Society. His lecture was titled "Imagined Cultures and Modern Cartographers: T.S. Eliot, C. P. Snow, and Lawrence Durrell."

New Items in the Thursday’s Notes file (ST708) or on Bulletin Board (Outside 710)

Competitions and Fellowships

• Glimmer Train Press is offering a prize of $2,000 and publication to the winner of its Winter Fiction Contest. The first runner-up will receive $1,000 and the second runner-up will receive $600. The submission deadline is Jan. 15. Online submission procedures are available at http://www.glimmertrain.org.
• The National Humanities Center offers 40 residential fellowships for advanced study in the humanities during the academic year, September 2007 through May 2008, in Chapel Hill, N.C. Applicants must hold a doctorate or equivalent scholarly credentials. More information can be found at http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us. Applications are due Oct. 15.

Lectures and Other Events

• CSUN will sponsor a panel discussion open to the community on the U.S. Constitution at the Sierra Center on Constitution Day, Sept. 16. A continental breakfast will be served from 8:30 to 9 a.m., with the panel following. Dr. Stephen Shortell of Political Science and Dr. James Sefton of History will discuss “how a document written for and by a sparsely populated agricultural democracy has survived for 219 years to remain viable as the constitution of an industrial nation of nearly 300 million people,” according to the CSUN announcement.

Jobs and Opportunities

• The University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., is seeking applicants for an Assistant Professor (tenure track) in Creative/Literary Nonfiction to begin in Fall 2007. Information on the position and electronic applications can be obtained at http://www.sthomas.edu/hr.

Compiled by Scott Andrews, Associate Chair

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