1. Announcements

On November 14, 2019, the Career Opportunities and Professional Development Club is hosting a workshop on pursuing an MFA or a Ph.D in creative writing. Guest speakers include Professors Chris Higgs and Rick Mitchell as well as Krishna Narayanamurti. The workshop will be held at 12:30 p.m. in Sierra Tower 703. For more information, contact Dylan Campbell (dylan.campbell.93@my.csun.edu).

The Awards & Amenities Committee is now accepting applications for the fall 2019 departmental awards. The deadline is Friday, November 22, 2019, at 4:00 p.m. Please share this year’s information with your students, and encourage and nominate your best for the awards. For detailed information on the awards and the application process, please visit awards. If you have any questions, please contact Cheryl Spector, the Chair of the Awards & Amenities Committee (Cheryl.spector@csun.edu).

The HSI Pathways to the Professoriate Program is currently opening its application for the 4th cohort of CSUN students, and faculty referrals are an important way that qualified applicants hear about our program. If you have any strong current students who are juniors interested in earning a Ph.D and becoming a professor, consider suggesting they check out the program’s website. They will be holding Info Sessions every week until 10 Student Fellows are selected.

2. Reminders

The Provost’s Office has initiated the process of selecting a search committee for the election of a Dean to the College of Humanities. They would like to have a committee in place in November, and this semester the committee will work on the advertisement, a timeline, and an evaluation instrument. The bulk of the work will happen in Spring 2020. Three tenured associate or full professors from three different departments will be elected. Department chairs are also eligible for nomination and election. By November 8, 2019, please send Noreen Galvin (noreen.galvin@csun.edu) your nominations of faculty who are willing to serve on the committee. In order to have the committee finalized before Thanksgiving, the election will be held during the week of November 11-15.

The graduate students of the University of California, Riverside’s Department of English invite proposals for Disjunctions, their department’s annual graduate conference. This year’s conference theme is “Read for Filth.” Please see their CFP for more information regarding their theme. The two-day conference will be held on April 16-17, 2020 at the UC Riverside campus. The deadline for proposals is January 10, 2020. The CFP is also available at:
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3. Opportunities

The English Internship Program is an opportunity for students to earn college credit while gaining professional experience. English majors, minors, and students in our GE courses are strong potential candidates for the program. For a quick overview, watch this one minute video and visit https://www.csun.edu/humanities/english/internship. If you or your students have questions about the English Internship Program, please contact Kimberly Wells (kimberly.wells@csun.edu).

Daniel Sack, Program Officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), will be onsite at San Diego State University, Friday, November 22nd to present a general overview of NEH programs and special initiatives as well as offer expert insight into the grant review process. Felicia Kelley, Project and Evaluation Director for California Humanities, will also make an informational presentation. The three-hour workshop will be devoted to strategies for success involved in best practices for writing and review of applications, including a mock panel review followed by Q&A. Register here. Space is limited.

Do you find it challenging to manage course content while also addressing unanticipated student writing shortfalls? Please join the LRC and Faculty Development for a four-part series as we work towards creating more transparent writing prompts and more effective collaborations between instructors and the Writing Center to help address student writing improvement across the disciplines and at all levels. For more information, visit LRCFACDEV.

4. Achievements

Martin Pousson’s poem, “Uncivil War,” has just been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Two of his poems, “Uncivil War” and “Proem,” were published this fall in Lovejets: 200 Years of Walt Whitman (Squares & Rebels Press), an anthology of poems written to commemorate the bicentennial of Whitman’s birth, including work by Richard Blanco, Jaime Manrique, and Edmund White.