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 colorful turkey

1. Announcements

We begin with wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving, with hopes for warm family gatherings and good and plentiful food for all, not to mention at least a small break from grading and other end term obligations. Enjoy.

But really, don’t blink, for although this news will most certainly come as a surprise to at least some of you, we are now in the 13th week of this semester, and next up is the annual holiday party! Please plan to join us for a bit of end-term cheer on Friday, December 6th from 12:00-3:00 p.m. in JR 319. In addition to celebrating the end of the semester and the holiday season, we will also be honoring our hard-working staff members and the student recipients of this semester’s departmental awards. The English Department will be providing a variety of sandwiches (including vegetarian options), crudités, and beverages. The Amenities Committee encourages all who are willing to bring a side, a dessert, or (if you’re really in the holiday spirit) an entrée to the party. If you plan to make an edible contribution to the party, please put your name and the type of food on the list posted in the mailroom.

The Critical Theory Club will be hosting a discussion with Ranita Chatterjee and Kate Haake Friday, November 22 (tomorrow), on the feminine sentence in the Linda Nichols Joseph Room from 2:30 to 4:00.

Campus Quality Fee proposals for the 2014-15 year have been announced. The proposal document is accessible at the Campus Quality Fee (CQF) website located at http://www.csun.edu/studentaffairs/campus-quality-fee and must be submitted by midnight on December 20, 2013.  Information about the Campus Quality Fee and other alternative funding sources is available at http://www.csun.edu/studentaffairs/cqfiraarra-comparison.

And it’s NEH time again. Each summer, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports residential seminars and institutes for faculty who teach American undergraduates.These study opportunities allow faculty and a select number of graduate students to increase their knowledge of current scholarship and advance their own teaching and research. Participants in these two- to five-week projects receive stipends to help cover travel and living expenses. Many seminars and institutes take place on American campuses; others are held at sites in Argentina, Belgium, England, Greece, Italy, and Mexico.For a list of the seminars and institutes to be offered in the summer of 2014, along with eligibility requirements and contact information for the directors, please visit http://www.neh.gov/divisions/education/summer-programs. And looking ahead, if you’d like to direct an NEW Summer Program in 2015, the deadline this year is March 4, 2014. For complete guidelines, please see http://www.neh.gov/grants/education/summer-seminars-and-institutes (NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes) or http://www.neh.gov/grants/education/landmarks-american-history-and-culture-workshops-school-teachers. Potential applicants are strongly encouraged to discuss their proposals with NEH staff, who will answer questions and critique drafts. Call (202) 606-8500 or send e-mail to sem-inst@neh.gov or landmarks@neh.gov.

The UC Irvine School of Education is looking to lure our most promising students. The school seeks to promote educational success and achievement of ethnically and economically diverse learners of all ages through its research, teaching, and service activities that foster learning and development in and out of school, and focuses on five core issues in contemporary education: equity of opportunity for ethnically, linguistically, and economically diverse learners; teaching and learning in science and math; early childhood education and development; out‐of-­school learning; interfaces between technology and education. Their graduate programs include the Ph.D. in Education, with three specializations (Learning, Cognition, and Development; Educational Policy and Social Content; and Language, Literacy, and Technology), the Master of Arts in Teaching; the Administrative Credential, and Multiple and Single Subject Credentials. Please do keep them in mind for students going on in education who don’t plan to stay here.

red turkey

2. Reminders

Student evaluations are due by December 3. You received them in your boxes and now you just need to have your students fill them out and return them to Tonie or Frank. Really, it’s simple. In addition to receiving useful feedback from your students, you’ll get to leave class ten minutes early — time enough to grade at least one part of one student paper.

3. Opportunities

The Mills College English Department has announced full tuition fellowships for Fall 2014 in Writing and Community Engagement open to students entering its MA and MFA programs in English. Please help spread the word to all of our students potentially headed to Mills, as this is a great opportunity for them.

Let your students know that CSUN’s CAPTURED Student Research Journal is looking for print, artistic, digital, and multimedia pieces for this year’s online/print edition. The faculty editor, Dr. Theresa White of Pan African Studies, has collaborated with a team of student editors to tackle the idea of identity. What do people identify as in terms of occupation, class, status, gender, religion, interest, sexuality, race, culture, hobbies, etc.? The CAPTURED team wants to uncover the different identities that come together to create the diverse student population on campus as well as how individuals choose to express themselves, whether through text, images, sounds, or a combination of mediums. Check out last year’s online edition as well as past multimedia submissions on www.capturedjournal.com! Email your submissions to capturedjournal@gmail.com by February 14, 2014.

And here is yet another opportunity for students to publish: Westwind, UCLA’s Journal of the Literary Arts, which for thirty years has celebrated the work of UCLA student writers, is now accepting poetry, prose, and art submissions from any person affiliated with a Southern California college or university. Submissions for the current issue (Fall 2013) are open until December 13; submissions received after that will be considered for the Winter 2014 issue. Submissions may be emailed to westwinducla@gmail.com, and, in the upper right-hand corner of each page, should include the writer’s full name, email address, and the college or university with which he or she is affiliated. The email subject line should read: [Genre] submission, author’s name and school. And good luck to all our terrific writers.

black turkey4. Achievements

Congratulations to the following fabulous members of our department, who have been awarded College of Humanities Faculty Fellowships for Spring 2014: Lauren Byler, Irene Clark, Charles Hatfield, Scott Kleinman, Iswari Pandey, and Martin Pousson. Here’s here’s wishing each and every one a glorious and productive three unit release.

Dorothy Barresi‘s long poem, “Bones,” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Her poems “Face” and “Penny Impromptu” appear in the Winter Issue of Gettysburg Review.  She will be judging the 2014 Patricia Bibby First Book Prize, sponsored by Tebot Bach.

Ranita Chatterjee‘s article “Gothic Half-Bloods: Maternal Kinship in Rowling’s Harry Potter Series” is now published in  Gothic Kinship, edited by  Sue Zlosnik and Agnes Andeweg, from Manchester University  Press. The book just came out this month!

First year graduate student, Kirk Sever, will have an excerpt of his fabulous poetry featured on the College of Humanities holiday card. Look for it soon in a mailbox near you. And congratulations to Kirk.