Recent Negotiations

There have been a number of Negotiations meetings for graduate students to read papers since the last update. On April 18 Corinne Martin and Rachel Collins read papers. Corinne's was titled "'Gifted with All Lore': Lydia Maria Child and the Construction of American Legend," and Rachel's was "'Where all the ground is friendly': Reading Space in Willa Cather's My Antonia."

On September 29 Rachel Collins read "Representing Capital as Landscape: The Naturalization of Corporate Practice in The Octopus" and C.J. Dosch read "A Greenleaf Revolution: Flannery O'Connor's 'Greenleaf' and the New Agricultural South." The flyer appears below.


On October 24 Laurel Ahnert, Mike Dwyer, and Chuck Robinson read papers. Laurel read "Third Cinema Clash: The Politics of Hybridity in Wend Kunni," Mike read "More than a Feeling: Nostalgia and The Historicity of Affect," and Chuck read "Global Designs and Global Desires from Mark Twain to Matt Harding." In November Steven Doles and Ryan McClure read papers. Flyer and titles forthcoming.

Collection for Tammy

As I'm sure everyone knows by now, MA Tammy Bluewolf-Kennedy was in a serious car accident a few weeks ago. In an effort to support her and her family, we've taken up a collection for her. Please give whatever you can to help. The box is in Terri's office.

Negotiations - February 29

The February Negotiations panel is scheduled for Friday, February 29 at 2:30 pm in 421 HL. Drinks and food at Faegan's to follow.

Negotiations is both a showcase for new scholarship produced by graduate students in the department, and a workshop that offers feedback and criticism for graduate student work in its early stages. Please attend, ask questions, and support the work of your colleagues and your department.


Michael Dwyer will be reading from his work, "Back to the Future and the Fantasy Return to the Fifties", which attempts to understand the role of a particular understanding of "the Fifties" in the rise of the New Right in the 1970s and 1980s.

Chuck Robinson's "The Country and the City (and the Zombie)" uses Raymond Williams' foundational text to inquire into the ambiguous, and ambivalent, place of "the zombie" in contemporary film & culture.

Rounding out the panel will be Ivy Kleinbart, who will read from her paper "'Church-bells beyond the stars heard': Reading Form and Structure in George Herbert's The Temple".

See you all there!

Professional Development Seminar

"Dissertation" Is Not a Four-Letter-Word: Managing the Doctoral Life

The prospect of writing a dissertation can be overwhelming. Can you get through the process successfully - and maintain your sanity too? Nisha Gupta, PhD in Cultural Foundations of Education, will lead this interactive workshop in which we will discuss ways of navigating the dissertation process and time line as well as methods for completion. Come prepared to participate! A video tape of this seminar will be made available in 423 Bowne Hall for those unable to attend.

Date: Thursday, February 28, 2008
Time: 12:30 - 1:30 PM
Location: Bowne Hall 111

Presenter: Dr. Nisha Gupta, Associate Director of Professional Development, Instructor in Women's Studies and Cultural Foundations of Education

RSVP for this seminar to Corrie Burdick

New Links

Hey everyone. You might want to check out two links I just added to the sidebar:

• Drek's Tips for First-Year Graduate Students

• Orgtheory.net: Grad School Rulz

Some of that stuff seems like common sense to me now, but I think it's good to have that stuff available to you in black and white as soon as possible.

Spring Semester Updates

It's already turning out to be a very busy spring semester, and we still have quite a bit of winter ahead of us. Here are some upcoming events to keep an eye out for:

• First, congratulations to Cristina Stasia, whose lecture "Mrs. Croft: Angelina Jolie & the Straightening of the Female Action Genre" was, by all accounts, a successful start for the spring colloquium lineup.

• Hearts of Westcott, the English Dept soccer team, has its first match of the indoor season on Monday night.

• PhD admit Eve Eisenberg is headed our way this Wednesday to have lunch with graduate students and sit in on a graduate seminar. Please make her feel welcome. More PhD & MA admits will be visiting this term, and will be announced soon.

• Thursday the department will be hosting prospective senior hire Sarah Projansky, who is currently in the Gender & Women's Studies program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. If you would like to attend the lunch with Professor Projansky, or the teaching talk, please contact Mike Dwyer.

• Ben Jonson's Head, the Department's Trivia team, is firmly entrenched in the peleton, but needs help to make the push to the top of the rankings. Trivia starts at 9pm at the Inn Complete.

• This month's Negotiations panel will be held on February 29th.

• Finally, we're trying to get a ego website together that is a little more comprehensive & appealing. Feel free to check out the new Syracuse English Graduate Organization homepage and tell us what you think.
  
  As a part of this, we'd like to put together a backlog of abstracts of Negotiations panels, so if you have abstracts for papers you've given, you can send those along as well.
  
  But the thing we need the MOST help with is the "Guide to Syracuse" section. We just want to give people a sense of what kind of resources might be available to them as a grad student in Syracuse. If you want to see a model, you can check out the Univ of Florida's EGO site here.
  
  So, I'll ask two things, respond to me at mddwyer (at) syr.edu.
  
  1) List up to three favorites in any categories you have opinions on.
  2) Write up (at least) one very brief description for any one of your choices. 100-200 words, tops.

Thanks!
Mike

Congratulations, Tristan!

It was just announced that Tristan Sipley (MA 05), currently in the PhD program at the University of Oregon was elected regional delegate to the MLA assembly. Congratulations, Tristan!