1. Announcements
Kimberly Wells, a former M.A. student and current Lecturer, and her husband, Matt Vacca, are happy to announce the birth of their daughter, Kaia Ember Vacca, who arrived at 12:46 am on 9/1/14. Congratulations on the birth of this sweet child!
The Autry National Center in Griffith park is offering a couple of evening programs in conjunction with a new exhibit, “Route 66: The Road and the Romance.” On September 11th, they will be hosting Waiting for Jack: a Beat Poetry Experience, with several actors and artists participating in an evening of spoken word and beat poetry. Additionally, on October 16th, they have Celebrate Steinbeck! The Road Trip as Inspiration, an event dedicated to commemorating the 75th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath, as well as the artists who continue to be influenced by it. There is a student discount.
The Wings/New Voices Awards ceremony will take place on October 17th from 3-5 in the Grand Salon. Please come to this exciting celebration of our students’ accomplishments.
Annual Open Enrollment is September 15 through October 10, 2014. If you wish to make health benefit enrollment changes, contact your Benefits representative and submit the appropriate forms and documentation between September 15th and October 10th. Additional Open Enrollment information, including CSU rates, will be sent to you in the near future.
Beginning this academic year RosaMaria Chacon will join Anthony Dawahare as one of the two Associate Chairs for the Department of English. Welcome RosaMaria to her new position, and please send your students to both of us for major advising as we are always happy to meet with them.
2. Reminders
Frank De La Santo has recently circulated his ever-helpful Beginning of Semester Notices. Here you will find vital information about such critical issues as office hours, attendance policy, faculty absences, keys, fire alarms, wait lists, copying, etc.
3. Opportunities
PHILIP LEVINE POETRY BOOK PRIZE 2014
$2000 prize and publication by Anhinga Press. Postmark Deadline: 9/30/2014. Full guidelines, as well as the link for online submissions and online payments, can be found at: http://www.fresnostate.edu/artshum/english/graduate/mfa/levine.html.
Granada Hills High School is currently hiring for several instructor and tutor positions for its after school program (3:30-6:00). Positions include SAT Writing Instructor, Academic Tutor, and Guitar Instructor. For more information, contact Maribel Palafox at mpalafox@ghchs.com or 818/360-2361. If you are interested in bringing a noted scholar or writer to speak on campus, please contact the Office of Graduate Studies, Research and International Programs (GRIP) and its Distinguished Visiting Speakers Program. Applications may be submitted in one of two categories: Category I applications (up to $700) request support for classroom visits or department seminars by a guest lecturer, and Category II applications (up to $1,800) request funds for individuals or small groups of scholars with broad appeal to the university community to participate in artistic performances, public lectures, or topical conferences. (Please note that International speakers may have up to 30% of honorarium withheld for taxes.) Applications are available from GRIP and the deadline is September 15.
The Probationary Faculty Support Program provides 3 units of reassigned time to support probationary, tenure-track faculty in their first through fifth years in meeting the qualifications for RTP. Deadline: Wednesday, October 1, 2014, 4:00pm. Please see our website for more details. And good luck to all probationary faculty!
4. Achievements
In July, Irene Clark presented a paper at the International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference in Minneapolis. Her paper was titled “Fostering Transfer Across Writing Contexts: Genre Awareness as a Threshold Concept.”
Irene Clark’s “Print/New Media Transfer: Genre Issues” has been published in the 2014 Issue of The Journal of Teaching Writing.
Anthony Dawahare’s “Richard Wright’s Native Son and the Dialectics of Black Experience” was published in a new volume of essays titled Richard Wright in a Post-Racial Imaginary (Bloomsbury 2104).
Martin Pousson sold two new short stories over the summer. “Altar Boy” will be published in Five Points, and “The Fox in the Trap” will be published in StoryQuarterly. A third story, “Flounder,” is now in the current issue of the Antioch Review.
Over the summer, Scott Kleinman gave a talk on “Modelling the Hybrid Edition/Archive of Early Middle English” at the Archive of Early Middle English workshop in Oxford, England. He also gave a presentation on “Play as Process and Product: On Making Serendip-o-matic” at the Digital Humanities 2014 conference in Lausanne, Switzerland.
For the eighth year in a row, a student in English 371 (Issues in American Jewish Writing) has won the Jewish Studies Essay Contest, along with its $250 prize: Lily Jamgotchian won the award with her essay, “Truth or Fiction.”