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1.  Announcements

Here we are again, at the start of another Spring semester which commenced, as usual, with rain and, as ever in honor of Lesley Johnstone, the blossoming of pear trees.  And here, in EOTN-land, with a slew of announcements.  And so we begin.

This has been an especially challenging start to the semester, and with the escalation of the enrollment crisis, we have all been faced with desperate students whom we can do nothing to help. Thank you all for your patience and kindness with them, and steely fortitude with the rest.  And to Jackie, especially, for steering the ship so bravely and well in this most difficult time.

Permission numbers have been frozen for all classes; please do not give them out.  Graduating seniors–by which we mean seniors who have filed for graduation and whose graduation date is confirmed–may be granted exemptions, but must see Juana Mora in the Dean’s Office to get them.  Freshmen may also be exempt, although they should be directed to Undergraduate Studies (UN 215).

On January 20, 2012, you received a document from Frank via email detailing all kinds of vital University, College and Department policies.  Here are some highlights, but there’s more–much more–in the original document.  Please dig it up and read it, for your information.  Meantime, here are some highlights:

1) Students who miss the first week of class (the first two meetings of a twice a week class, or the first meeting of a once a week class) have lost the right to remain in the class and should be directed to formally withdraw.  We will not be using instructor initiated administrative drops this term.

2) Please be aware of the College of Humanities office hour policies and abide by them–i.e., be available in your office (or, in some situations, online) for students to see you, and please post them outside your door (and online), and please, please let  Frank know them.

3) Also let Frank know when you’re sick and also when you’re well again, even if it’s not a teaching day, or else you will be charged full sick leave until you physically return to campus.

4) Don’t make long distance calls on your office telephones–we have to pay for them.  Also, please, please, please be frugal with your copying–we have to pay for that too.  (Rumor has it that at another nearby CSU, the Administration, in a last ditch effort to reduce copying costs, was forced to provide iPad2’s for all full-time faculty.  Let’s not let it get to that point here at CSUN.)

5) If you have a problem with your room, please check with Martha.  But please also be aware of our limitations.  For example, in the twentieth century, I used to demand a classroom with windows; now, I am grateful for enough seats.

Also, another ever gentle reminder from Jackie–don’t sell textbooks or instructor copies to strangers or students.  You can give them away, especially to students, or you can buy them, at the bookstore, but at least on campus, these are the only two legal methods of exchange.

And now on to more groundbreaking announcements:  for example, now that it’s official, we can announce that Martin Pousson will be stepping into the role of Queer Studies coordinator beginning in Fall 2012. He’ll serve as Coordinator & Advisor for the Program, as well as Chair of the Queer Studies Advisory Committee. Congratulations, Martin!

Also, a big well done and thanks to yet another hard working and fabulously successful Search and Screen Committee.  Lauren Byler has verbally accepted our job offer and will be joining us in the fall as our brand new Victorianist.  Who could ask for better new colleagues than the ones we’re so lucky, year after year, to attract?  (Yes, that means you.)  Meantime, Lauren would like contact from us and can be reached at lauren.l.byler@gmail.com.

Here is a starred announcement and not-to-miss event:  Dorothy Barresi will be reading this Sunday, Jan. 29 at 4pm at Beyond Baroque, at an event called “Los Angeles: Bastard Child of Literature.”  Along with Michael Ford, Gerald Locklin, Ron Koertge, Eloise Klein Healy (who graced our dept. for many years), and Gary Phillips, Dorothy will read some of her own fantastic Los Angeles poem, proclaiming her proud illegitimacy.  Beyond Baroque is at 681 Venice Blvd. in Venice, 90291. 310-822-3006.

Mark your calendars! All College of Humanities Faculty and Staff are invited to the All College Meeting, with President Harry Hellenbrand & Administrator in Charge William Watkins, an opportunity to share important information regarding the university. Here’s hoping to see many of us there, on Monday, March 5, 2012, from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. in the Whitsett Room.

Also in March (but start planning now) is the 2012 Majors Fair.  The event will take place on March 7, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Matador Square.  The SSC/EOP and Liberal Studies will be representing the College of Humanities, but is asking us to help promote the event with our students.  This is a wonderful opportunity for the College of Humanities to recruit new majors and minors from within CSUN’s existing student body.  If anyone has any materials they’d like to have displayed and/or distributed to students there, please deliver them to Kate Haake (me) who will see that they’re delivered the EOP.

Closer to now–actually, this very day–is the much-heralded Grand Opening of our new, state of the art Student Recreation Center where we can all work on our fitness goals. If you are interested in a faculty/staff membership to the SRC, those memberships  are now available for purchase.  Faculty and Staff memberships are $163 per semester. Faculty or staff who are current Alumni Association members can join the SRC for $130 per semester. Information about joining the Alumni Association can be found here <https://www.csunalumni.com/default.aspx?page=Membership> . Membership for spouses, domestic partners and dependents will be available later in the Spring semester. Membership details can be found here <http://src.csun.edu/about/membership.php>.

Faculty, staff and students are invited to join the Linguistics Club on Tuesday, January 31st at 7:00 p.m. in the Oviatt Presentation Room for an evening  with Dr. David Harrison and Dr. Gregory Anderson of The Living Tongues  Institute for Endangered Languages and the movie, The Linguists. Their  presentation, entitled “Endangered Languages: Global and Local  Perspectives,” will chronicle their work around the globe to document and  revitalize dying languages. Their visit has been made possible through  funding by the Distinguished Visiting Speakers Program and the Office of  Graduate Studies. In conjunction with the event, there will be a screening of The Linguists on  Friday, January 27 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm in the Santa Susana Room in the USU  Complex. All are welcome. In addition, an exhibit on endangered languages will open in the Oviatt  Lobby on January 30th. Please join us for all of these exciting events!

Red Hen Press is offering discounted tickets to students ($10) for an evening with award-winning writers Dana Gioia, David Mason, and Katharine Coles.  For more information, please contact Jessica Lynn Kubnec at publicity@redhen.org.

And for students, the Learning and Behavioral Center, LLC is now offering Academic Internship opportunities to English majors who are motivated, energetic, and caring individuals interested in teaching in our public school system. This program will allow students to gain experience working with children with various learning and behavioral disabilities as well as accumulate teaching hours that can be added on to resumes. They are amongst the most experienced organizations effectively treating children with Autism, A.D.D., A.D.H.D., O.C.D., mental retardation and more, and have been involved with CSUN’s Child & Adolescent Development Internship Fair with Dr. Joyce Munsch.

And for those of you interested in making a little extra money, Educational Testing Services (ETS) is currently recruiting for EAP Raters to score EAP essays in 2012.  Hiring will continue through the first week in March, and the reading takes place beginning the second week of April.

Finally, anyone interested in a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition might consider the program at University of Texas at El Paso, which has sent us a letter of recruitment and will begin reviewing applications on March 1.

2.  Faculty Opportunities

The 2012-2013 Call for Proposals for the Judge Julian Beck Learning-Center Instructional Projects is available on the Faculty Development website: http://www.csun.edu/facdev/grants.htm  Applications are due March 16, 2012.

Research and Sponsored Projects grants, for scholarship and creative activities, are coming up.  Three unit assignments or $5000 mini grants are available to successful applicants.  Guidelines and proposal application forms are available here http://www.csun.edu/grip/research/forms/index.html.  The deadline this year is February 27.  And good luck!

Here’s a relatively new one (second year):  CSUN ScholarWorks:  The CSUN ScholarWorks Learning Objects collection was established to preserve and distribute original electronic learning objects and teaching tools within the CSUN academic community and beyond.  In its second year, ScholarWorks will focus on materials for frequently-taught courses with high enrollments with the goal of creating learning objects that can be put to immediate use and assessed by the faculty in the course of their implementation.   Selected projects will be awarded funds within the range of $500-$2000. Proposal review will begin February 6, 2012; the deadline is February 20; and recipients will be informed of their awards beginning in March.  For more information and proposal forms, please see http://library.csun.edu/ScholarWorks/DLOG2012.html.

For more opportunities, please check out the COH grants page, at http://www.csun.edu/humanities/grants/.

And while you are there, you might also want to update your digital measure information, at http://www.csun.edu/csm/digitalmeasures.htm.

Elsewhere, the School of Advanced Study, University of London offers a Visiting Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.  Applications for 2012–13 are now invited from professorial staff and early to mid-career academics (applicants must have been awarded their PhD between eight and fifteen years before applying for a fellowship) who wish to pursue research in London in any of the areas covered by the School, and to engage in an active relationship with the multidisciplinary scholarly community across the School. The Fellowship is tenable for up to six consecutive months between September 2012 and June 2013.  The Fellowship offers an allowance towards travel, accommodation and research costs up to a determined maximum. The deadline for submission is January 31, 2012.  For more information, please see www.sas.ac.uk/school-visiting-fellowship, or contact Peter Niven at peter.niven@sas.ac.uk

And closer to home, our own Robert Louis Chianese is soliciting symposium proposals on science-themed fiction for AAAS, Pacific Division 93rd Annual Meeting.  As Bob writes, we are quite familiar with the popular genre of science fiction, but we give much less attention to science-themed fiction, works of literature in the form of novels and short stories, that derive some or much of their content from science ideas or figures. Issues and themes from astronomy to zoology–including cosmology, biology, ecology, genetics, medicine, mathematics–can form key elements of both historical and contemporary fiction. This symposium explores the use of science by fiction writers and the more general theoretical connections between literature and science.   And as a special bonus, they are hoping to hold a reading of original works of science-themed fiction sometime during the conference and in conjunction with the symposium. Writers should send a copied passage of their work with some explanatory information about its science content. The meeting will take place from June 24 to June 27, at Boise State University, and submission should be sent to : Dr. Robert Louis Chianese, Emeritus Professor of English, CSUN/2465 Hall Canyon Road/Ventura, CA 93001-2467.

 3.  Faculty Achievements

Graduate Student Norma Aceves presented at 2012 Modern Language Association Conference in Seattle this January on a panel organized by the Children’s Literature Association. The theme of the panel was how technology has influenced form and readership in children’s literature. Her paper was entitled, “Twilight Online Fandom: Reaching Femininity through Textual Manipulation and Abstraction.”  Congratulations, Norma!

Also at MLA, Nate Mills presented “Consuming the Cadillac: Ralph Ellison, Postwar Consumption, the Dozens, and Civil Rights Politics” and “Postmodern/Post-Racial African-American Radicalism: Reading Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea in Obama’s Nation.”  Congratulations, Nate!

Martin Pousson will be a featured reader for the Rattling Wall book release at The Standard Hotel in West Hollywood. The event is sponsored by PEN Center USA and will take place on Saturday, February 4 at 7:00 p.m.. Martin will read from his story, “The Masked Boy,” which is published along with two poems, “Hoodoo” and “Voodoo,” in the newest issue of Rattling Wall.

Nancy Taylor and Pat Swenson have announced the impending publication of their new book Online Teaching in the Digital Age, published by SAGE Publications.  This quick-start guide to online teaching is now available for purchase on Amazon.com at  http://www.amazon.com/Online-Teaching-Digital-Age-Swenson/dp/1412996198/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1.  The Matador bookstore will also carry their book, as will Barnes and Noble.   Additionally, they have created a Facebook page to encourage dialogue regarding the ideas presented in the book and to offer support to our ever-growing online community of teachers.  Please “like” them on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/TeachingOnline.  Congratulations to you both!