Thursday’s Notes 58.8

Dear all,

       I hope everyone has had a wonderful fall semester! As always, I have events and accomplishments to report.

Events

CSUN’s first College of Humanities Worldbuilding Festival is taking place Friday and Saturday, November 6 -7. The festival is free and open to all, and we’re especially excited to welcome current and prospective students and our alumni!

Rather than a traditional academic conference, the festival invites students to participate in worldbuilding activities such as collaborative games, Dungeons & Dragons, creative-writing challenges, zine-making, demonstrations on the politics of archives, discussions of carcerality and freedom, and interactive activities about philosophy and community, and more. We’re also partnering with the University Library and the Global HSI Equity Innovation Hub to showcase the many ways the humanities shape and enrich our everyday lives, communities, and professions.

Worldbuilding Festival Details:

Friday November 6, 10 AM – 1 PM: We are hosting 170-200 local high school students on Friday from Northridge Academy. We have Worldbuilding sessions running from 10am-1pm in person.

Friday November 6, 2-3 PM: Our Keynote Speaker–co-creator of the graphic novel series Concrete Park John Puryear— is being hosted at Kurland Hall from 2-3 pm!

Saturday, November 7, 1–6 PM: Main festival at the CSUN’s USU East Conference Center, featuring 50-minute workshops, interactive activities and games, exhibits, and community activities from 1-6 pm.

If you’d like to participate in Saturday’s Worldbuilding activities and the Keynote Speaker (listed below), please fill out this EventBrite to get free tickets!

 

 

We are excited to see many of you at the College of Humanities Worldbuilding Festival, to take place on Friday, 11/6 and Saturday, 11/7.

Are you looking to add some items to your resume or CV? If you’d like to sign up as a volunteer or participant on 11/6, including for the Tony Puryear talk from 2-3pm, please fill out Friday, 11/6 volunteer form; if you’d like to sign up to be a volunteer for Saturday, 11/7, please fill out the Saturday, 11/7 volunteer form. Please fill out the volunteer forms no later than 10/28. We will be in touch with a schedule after then.

If you have any questions, please email danielle.spratt@csun.edu and colleen.tripp@csun.edu.

Warmly,

Colleen and Danielle

Accomplishments

Professor Anthony Dawahare published The Red Christ: The Dangerous Memory of Christianity & Modern U.S. Literatures of Social Protest (Bloomsbury 2026).
 
In June, Professor Anthony Dawahare also presented his new book at the Working-Class Studies Association Annual Conference. A robust roundtable discussion followed with Heath Carter, Associate Professor of American Christianity, Princeton Theological Seminary; Janine Giordano Drake, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of History, Indiana University Bloomington; and Matthew S. Pehl, Associate Professor, Department of History, Texas Tech University.      
 
Professor Jackie Stallcup (English Department) published a new book, Holding the Reins of the Future:  Child-Rearing Experts and Female Novelists, 1860-1940 (Johns Hopkins UP).  In it, she examines the period’s vigorous debates regarding child-rearing, showing how four influential novelists engaged with these debates in fiction for young readers; she argues that writers like Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery did not simply reject domestic ideology, but instead worked within its language and expectations in order to expand the boundaries of women’s influence.  Ultimately, the book shows how fiction became a means through which women claimed interpretive and moral authority over the next generation.