Department of English Newsletter
Welcome to the mid-June edition of the Newsletter for the Department of English at the University of Calgary.
As usual, lots of goings on around the department:
Van Herk Awarded Golden Pen
ARITHA VAN HERK was one of three authors celebrated for a lifetime of achievement at the 2011 Alberta Literary Awards on Saturday night. The Golden Pen Awards were presented by the Writers Guild of Alberta at their gala at the Palliser Hotel. The Golden Pen is the highest award presented by the WGA, and it recognizes the outstanding literary contributions of Albertans. Congratulations to Aritha on this recognition!
Claire Lacey Wins Magazines Canada Award
MA student CLAIRE LACEY has been named Volunteer of the Year by the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association. Claire received the award for her work with Dandelion, where she is the poetry editor. She traveled to Toronto on June 9, where she was celebrated at a reception at MagNet, the magazine conference organized by Magazines Canada. Congratulations to Claire on this honour!
Rudy to London School of Economics
We are thrilled to report that SUSAN RUDY has been awarded a Senior Visiting Fellowship at the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics for the Lent Term, 2012. Established in 1993, the Gender Institute is the largest European research and teaching unit addressing the intellectual challenges posed by contemporary changes in gender relations.
UofC at ACCUTE
The annual meeting of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English was held in Frederiction from May 28th through May 31st. JIM ELLIS and PhD student AARON GIAVANNONE were both there to present papers. Jim spoke on the topic “Children of the Revolution: History After Theory”, while Aaron presented a paper titled “Voyages Home: Performance, Travel, and Ethnicity in Mary de Michele’s Poetry”. Aaron files this report from New Brunswick:
I’ve just stepped out of the whirlwind of panels, plenary addresses, readings, receptions, and dinners that was ACCUTE’s conference at the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. It’s impossible to summarize the academic and social fervent happening in the four days that I spent on the campuses of the University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University, so I’ll just mention a few personal highlights here: a “Big Thinking” lecture by Kwame Anthony Appiah on the value of humanist education, a plenary address by Ian Baucom called “Bare Life to Species Being,” which reconsidered the very category of human, and a panel titled “Archiving Turns in Canadian Poetics,” which was co-chaired by a graduate of our own department, Erin Wunker, who is now teaching at Dalhousie University. I presented my own paper on Italian ethnicity and the return journey to Italy on a panel called “Heading Home.” The feedback I received was generous and thoughtful, and it will certainly inflect my thinking as I launch into my dissertation research over the summer.
The energy, collegiality, and diversity on display at the ACCUTE conference was a vivid reminder why English studies is such a wonderful professional community to be a part of. Many thanks to the Department of English for supporting my adventure.
Next year’s Congress will take place from May 26 - June 2 at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo.
Bök in the UK, Scandanavia, and On Screen
CHRISTIAN BÖK has recently returned from Europe, where he delivered a number of lectures and readings. The Bury Art Gallery in Manchester is currently exhibiting a sculpture of “Protein 13” from The Xenotext, and Christian performed several readings in conjunction with the event, including an ensemble reading of Die Ursonate with the sound-poet Jaap Blonk. In London, he performed at the London Word Festival and lectured at the Birkbeck Centre of Poetics at the University of London. From there, he traveled to Copenhagen for the “Literature in the Expanded Field” conference, performing with poets Charles Bernstein and Caroline Bergvall. In Stockholm, that trio performed at the WELD Gallery and Christian and Caroline Bergvall also read at the Møllebyen Litteraturfestival in Moss, Norway. Finally, he returned to Coxwold in the UK where he was artist-in-residence at Shandy Hall under the aegis of Laurence Sterne Trust.
Additionally, the National Film Board has just released the documentary The Future is Now by award-winning Calgary filmmakers Jim Brown and Gary Burns. In the film Christian plays “The Poet of the Future”. The trailer can be viewed at http://www.nfb.ca/film/future_is_now_trailer
Comics Studies in Cinema Journal
The new issue of Cinema Journal, the journal of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, has an “In Focus” section edited by BART BEATY titled “Comics Studies Fifty Years After Film Studies”. The section examines the opportunities and challenges facing scholars of comics and graphic novels at the present time. This is the first time that comics have been considered in the pages of the flagship journal of film studies.
Sullivan in Vancouver
REBECCA SULLIVAN was invited to speak to the Gender and Politics class at Simon Fraser University last week. She gave a talk on pornography and sexual citizenship, exploring the different arguments about how pornography can be used as a tool of citizenship for otherwise marginalized individuals. Her talk came on the heels of a week of field interviews for her forthcoming book on the controversial 1981 NFB documentary, Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography. She reports that she was happy to return home to a regular diet of Treehouse TV after such a porn-u-rific research trip.
Finally, I’m stepping down as newsletter editor as I take on new responsibilities in the department. Rebecca Sullivan has kindly agreed to take over the reins, so please forward news and announcements to her at rsulliva [at] ucalgary [dot] ca for inclusion in the July edition.
