Volume 50:5

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Chair: Kent Baxter
Notes compiled by: Kate Haake

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Announcements

Mark your calendars now for the first ever bi-annual English Alumni Faculty Lecture Series, launched with the hope of reconnecting with our former students and faithful donors and of helping them reconnect with each other. This semester, Professor Dorothy Barresi and Professor Martin Pousson will be reading from their latest creative work. The afternoon event will have light food and refreshments, a cash bar, and a musical performance by alumnus and faculty Eric Kufs. Come and see, first hand, how your support has strengthened and enriched our intellectual community. The event will be on Saturday, December 1, from 3:00-5:00pm, in the USU Grand Salon. Please click on the following link for more information and to RSVP: English Alumni Faculty Lecture Series.

This Friday, November 9th, at 7:00 PM in Jerome Richfield Hall, Room 319, “The Reimagining Narrative Film Series” returns with its final event for the semester, presenting Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), which has been described widely as both a masterpiece and one of the most influential films in modern cinema. Curated collaboratively by Dr. Christopher Higgs & Katharine Mason, M.A., each film in the series will be introduced & contextualized prior to screening, with an open discussion to follow. Refreshments provided.

Winter is coming. You want to curl up with a good book, don’t you? Try one of the five finalists for CSUN’s 2019-2020 Common Read. And then share your opinion on the Common Read blog. You can find out more about each of the five nominated titles below at https://www.csun.edu/undergraduate-studies/academic-first-year-experiences/nominated-titles-2019-2020:

Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover
Behold the Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue
Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, by David Rakoff
Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening, by Manal Al-Sharif
The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, by Lauren Markham

KITTENS! Several members of the English/ AYFE/ Sustainability programs are helping the mother of our late colleague, Deborah Averill, to get her cat population under control. We have 6 kittens available for adoption; email for photos and videos or to meet the kittens. Kittens are fixed, vaccinated, vetted, microchipped, healthy, and playful! Please contact Amanda.Harrison@csun.edu to adopt. If you’d like to support, but can’t adopt, donations are being accepted here: https://www.gofundme.com/marilyn-blakely-kitten-fund/.

Reminders

The deadline for Department Awards is fast approaching on Friday, November 16, at 4;00 p.m. For details on the following awards, please contact Leilani Hall (leilani.hall@csun.edu), Chair of the Amenities and Awards Committee. And please be sure to encourage your students to apply for the following:

  • the Linda Nichols Joseph English Merit Scholarship, up to four four awards of $2000 for excellence in English studies;
  • the Oliver W. Evans Writing Prize, two annual prizes annual prizes of $500 for the authors of the two best critical or creative pieces of prose submitted in an upper-division English course during the academic year;
  • the Eva Latif Writing Prize in Children’s Literature, an annual prize of $500 for the author of the best piece of writing, critical or creative, by a student on the subject of children’s literature;
  • the Philip E. Love English 205 Scholarship, a prize of $500 for the student whose achievements in the study of Business Communication are considered by the faculty as the most distinguished;
  • the Peterson Morley Award, an annual award of $1,000 for a student (either undergraduate or graduate) currently enrolled as an English major who plans to enter the teaching profession;
  • the Richard Lid and Helen Lodge Scholarship, an award of $500 for a graduate student enrolled in English and/or Secondary English Education, to help pay fees for graduate work;
  • the Thomas Matthew Magness Graduate Memorial Fund, to provide a $1,000 tuition remission for a first-semester graduate student in the English MA program.

Achievements

At its annual scholarship and awards gala on Nov. 3, Pukuu Community Cultural Services gave Scott Andrews its Educational Service Award for his “outstanding dedicated service to the American Indian Studies Program” at CSUN. Pukuu is operated by the Fernandeno Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, the native people of the San Fernando Valley. CSUN is located on Tataviam land.

Scott Andrews also interviewed poet Tiffany Midge, author of The Woman Who Married a Bear, and an edited version of their conversation has been accepted for publication in Studies in American Indian Literatures.

Alumnus Matt Bernstein (MA, Literature, 2005) published an article, “Murder in the Black Hills,” in the December 2018 issue of Wild West magazine.