Leah Sneider - Arts & Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence

Leah Sneider has been chosen to receive the 2009-2010 Arts and Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence. This award, made to a single Teaching Assistant from among all the departments of the College of Arts and Sciences, recognizes the awardee's excellence in the classroom and as a colleague in the program, the department, and the university.

Jim Burbank - Outstanding Faculty Recognition Award

Congratulations to Jim Burbank who has received the American Indian Student Services Outstanding Faculty and Staff Recognition Award in recognition of valuable contributions to the UNM Native Student community. He has also been elected Vice President of the UNM Chapter of the AAUP.

Academy of Poets Prize Winners Announced

Academy of American Poets Prize, 2010 Winners

We are pleased to announce the winners and honorable mentions of the 2010 Academy of American Poets Prize Competition! 39 UNM poets participated in both the grad and undergrad contests. Winners
each receive $75. Thanks to everyone who submitted work!

Dana Levin, Contest Coordinator

Graduate Competition:

Winner: Tommy Archuleta, for "Jack's Creek Soliloquy"
Hon Mention: Erika Sanchez, for "Earthquake"

Judge: Amy Beeder

Undergraduate Competition:

Winner: Katlyn McKinney, for "Water Passing"
Hon Mention: Oakley Merideth, for "Vulgar Latin"

Judge: Lisa Chavez

Transparency Statement:
All submissions were presented to judges with identifying marks removed. The contest coordinator did no pre-screening, ranking or evaluation, added no commentary on submissions, and engaged in no conversation with the judges regarding submissions. For more information on the contest and the Academy of American Poets, see the organization web page.

Reading: May-lee Chai

Tonight! April 30th, 7 p.m.
Humanities 108

May-lee Chai is the award-winning author of six books, including Hapa Girl: A Memoir, Glamorous Asians,  and The Girl From Purple Mountain. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Literature Fellowship in Prose. She has published short stories and essays in many journals, magazines and anthologies, including Seventeen, Missouri Review, North American Review, and The Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine. Her new novel, Dragon Chica, is coming out this fall.

Anglo Saxon Manuscripts Digitized

The Parker Library, held at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, has been digitized and can now be seen on the internet. The collection of over 550 manuscripts includes the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, the earliest written history in English.

Visit the Parker Library website here.

History Department Colloquium Event: Dr. Maria Lane

You are invited to Dr. Maria Lane's presentation of her work "Water, Technology, and
the Courtroom: New Mexicans Resist the Reclamation Era" as the final History Department Colloquium Event for Spring 2010.

Friday April 30th. 
Time: 2-4 pm,
Location: History Department Commons Room, Mesa Vista Hall.

Works in Progress Seminar: Geoffrey R. Russom

Tuesday, May 4, 12:45 - 2:00 PM
Mesa Vista Hall 1104 (History Department Commons)

Ancient Poems and Universalist Poetics
With Dr. Geoffrey R. Russom, Brown University, Visiting Scholar in Medieval Scandinavian Studies

Refreshment will be served

Greg Evans: Future Faculty Award

Congratulations to Rhetoric and Writing student Greg Evans who has won the Future Faculty Award from OGS, which supports summer coursework, research or development opportunities not available at UNM that prepare students for higher education careers.

With his award, Greg will work at the Jefferson Library and Hannah Arendt Center focusing on hermeneutic and
post-process pedagogies for teaching critical thinking.

Royal Shakespeare Company PBS Broadcast of Hamlet

PBS to broadcast Hamlet - Wednesday 28 April at 8pm EST

In 2009 a film company called Illuminations recorded the Royal Shakespeare Company's award-winning 2008 production of Hamlet, directed by RSC Chief Associate Director Gregory Doran, for broadcast on national UK television for the BBC.

The play was shot on location with the original cast including David Tennant and Patrick Stewart and using all the original costumes and props. The RSC now confirm that this filmed version of Hamlet will be broadcasted on PBS on Wednesday 28 April.

Lecture: Anglo-Saxon Visiting Scholar Dr. Jo Buckberry

Place: Dane Smith Hall, room 233

Time: Thursday, April 22, 2:00 - 3:15 PM

Last week, Anthro had the annual meeting of Physical Anthropologists in Albuquerque; some of the attendees are Europeans who are now stranded for a while.

One of them is Dr. Jo Buckberry, a Lecturer in Physical Anthropology at the University of Bradford. She has generously agreed to give a lecture in the Medieval Archaeology course (ANTH 420) that Jim Boone & Osbjorn Pearson are teaching this semester.  To see an abbreviated vita:
http://www.brad.ac.uk/AGES/Research/index.php/Staff/DrJoBuckberry   Much of her work focuses on Anglo-Saxon health (from bones) and burial rituals from archaeology).

Dr. Buckberry's talk will be on Anglo-Saxon burial archaeology from the period of conversion to Christianity.

Reading: Suzan Shown Harjo

Monday, 4/26
1:00 - 2:00
Humanities 108

Suzan Shown Harjo is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator and policy advocate, who has helped Native communities recover more than 1,000,000 acres of land and numerous sacred places. Harjo (Cheyenne and Holdugee Muscogee) is President of the Native rights organization The Morning Star Institute, a Founding Trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, a recipient of the Dobkin Native
American Artist Fellowship from the School of American Research, and the first Vine Deloria, Jr. Distinguished Indigenous Scholar at the University of Arizona. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and several anthologies, including Reinventing the Enemy's Language, The Remembered Earth, and Third World Women.

Dig for Shakespeare: Archaeology Project at Stratford-Upon-Avon

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is conducting an archaeological dig in three locations around Shakespeare's house. You can follow their blog and read about the project at the Dig for Shakespeare website here.

Marissa Greenberg - Teaching Award

Congratulations to Marissa Greenberg who has been named by OSET as one of three recipients of the 2009-2010 New Teacher of the Year Award.

Alumni News - Eileen Garvin reading

Eileen Garvin will read from her memoir, How to Be a Sister: A Love Story with a Twist of Autism. The book explores the simultaneously awkward, hilarious, and heartbreaking situations she experienced as a younger sister to Margaret, diagnosed with severe autism at age 3.

How to Be a Sister begins when Eileen, after several years in New Mexico, has just moved back to the Pacific Northwest, where she grew up. Being 1,600 miles away had allowed Eileen to avoid the question that has dogged her since birth: What is she going to do about Margaret? Now, Eileen must grapple with this question once again as she tentatively tries to reconnect with Margaret. How can she have a relationship with someone who can't drive, send email, or telephone? What role will Eileen play in Margaret's life as their parents age, and after they die? Will she remain in Margaret's life, or walk away?

This is a rarely explored relationship, and for anyone interested in the human experience, this story reveals a bewildering and beautiful world that will dismantle regular notions of normalcy, family and acceptance.

"A marvelous, harrowing, life-affirming book. In looking to forge a meaningful relationship with her severely autistic sister, Eileen Garvin finds a simpler way of being in, and extending, every moment. Isn't that what we're all after? I loved this book. And boy, can she write!"
-Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life: A Memoir

Location:

Bookworks
4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW#Flying Star Plaza
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87107-3157

Samantha Tetengco & Dan Darling: Teaching Excellence

Congratulations to Sam Tetangco and Dan Darling who have won the Susan Deese-Roberts TA Teaching Awards for 2010.

Tanaya Winder: Poetry Award

Tanaya Winder has won First Prize for the A Room of Her Own (AROHO) Foundation's Orlando Poetry Prize for her poem "The Impermanence of Human Sculptures."

BBC article: Were the 'Mad' Heroines of Literature Really Sane?

BBC News published an interesting article over the weekend talking about a new BBC Radio4 documentary about insanity in female characters in literature. You can read the full article here.

Leigh Johnson: Amerian Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship

Leigh Johnson, a doctoral candidate in American Literary Studies, has received the 2010-2011 American Association of University Women’s $20,000 dissertation fellowship for her dissertation, “Domestic Violence and Empire: Legacies of Conquest in Mexican American Writing.” The AAUW supports and advances educational opportunities for women, and its competitive dissertation fellowship is part of the AAUW’s mission to “recognize outstanding women around the globe” and fund “pioneering research” related to women. The award is based on scholarly excellence, teaching experience, and active commitment to helping women through service in their communities, professions, or fields of research.

Leigh’s dissertation project, which is directed by Dr. Jesse Alemán, spans the nineteenth-century to the present and examines how Mexican American writers represent and critique domestic violence as it occurs 
in the home but also as a form of colonial violence that implicates Mexican and US forms of patriarchy in the treatment of women. Her project examines writers such as María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Maria Cristina Mena, Sandra Cisneros, and Demetria Martínez, to name a few, and portions of it have already been published in peer-reviewed journals. Leigh’s work corresponds with her commitment to combine her interests in literary studies, women’s studies, and Chicano/a studies in the classroom and in her scholarship.

Professors Tey Diana Rebolledo (UNM—Spanish), Barbara Reyes (UNM—History), and Sonia Saldívar-Hull (UT-San Antonio—English) also serve on Leigh’s dissertation committee, and Leigh plans to use the one-year tenure of the AAUW fellowship to complete and defend her dissertation in Spring 2011.

Blue Mesa Review - Issue 23

Announcing the publication of Issue 23 of Blue Mesa Review. You can take a sneak peak at the contents on the Blue Mesa Review website here, or order your copies using the information on this page.

Blue Mesa Review is the English Department's annual national literary magazine and is edited and produced entirely by our Creative Writing students. Congratulations to the Blue Mesa staff:

Editor in Chief
Samantha Tetangco

Managing Editor
Suzanne Richardson

Production Editor
Dan Darling

Poetry Editor
Jennifer Krohn

NonFiction Editor
Nari Kirk


Copyeditor
Marisa P. Clark

Editorial Assistants/Interns
Production: Kimberly Keller
Poetry: Bob Sabatini
Prose: Joe Byrne, Aaron Espinosa, Lenore Gusch, Cody Jones, Monet Maloof, and Sarah Yasmin Osman
UNM Press Liason: Carmela Starace

Readers
Colleen Bazemore-Colclough, Randi Beck, Elizabeth Delorenzo, Aaron Espinosa, Casey Frank, Kathryn Hickling, Rachel Hill, Cody Jones, Cassandra Lopez, David Madan, Katlyn McKinney, Samuel Montoya, Delaine Mottershead, Victoria Brooke Rodrigues, Francesca Shirley, Jennifer Simpson, Elizabeth Tannen, and Tanaya Winder

Faculty Advisor
Marisa P. Clark

Fall 2010 Course Descriptions

Fall Course descriptions are up on the Department web site!

Remember, registration opens on April 19th for graduate students, on April 20th for undergraduates with 120 hours or more. You can see the full list of registration dates here on the registrar's page.

Summer 2010 course descriptions will be posted as soon as they are available.

English Department Preview Day

The Undergraduate Office and Sigma Tau Delta present

English Department Preview Day

Before you register for fall classes, explore topics within the undergraduate English course offerings.

English Department Lounge
Wednesday, April 14th
11:30-1:30

Refreshments Provided

Scholarship Information 2010 Now Posted

This year's deadline is April 21, 2010 so students are highly encouraged to prepare their applications early.

Undergraduates should email their materials in Word or pdf formats to Associate Chair, Dan Mueller, dmueller@unm.edu

Graduates should email their materials in Word or pdf formats to Associate Chair, Anita Obermeier, AObermei@unm.edu

See full details on English Department scholarship opportunities here.

Faculty News: Helen Damico

Helen Damico has been honored for her many distinguished years of scholarship, teaching and service to the discipline of Medieval Studies with a festschrift edited by Catherine E. Karkov, entitled Poetry, Place, and Gender: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honor of Helen Damico.

The book is available from Amazon.com here.

EGSA Lunchtime Lecture Series: Academic & Creative Publishing

The event consists of a panel and Q&A with faculty from Literature, Rhetoric & Writing, and Creative Writing

Wednesday, April 7th
2:00 - 3:00 pm
English Department Lounge

Refreshments will be served.

Academy of American Poets Prize

One Undergraduate and one graduate winner will each win $75

Submission due date: Friday, April 16th in Dana Levin's English Dept mailbox

Guidelines for submission:

1. Submit 1-3 poems
2. Remove your name from the poems
3. Include a cover sheet with:

Your name
titles of the poems you are submitting
Your contact information (email, phone, snail-mail)

Submissions without a cover sheet will not be considered
Winners will be determined by April 30th and contacted soon after

Judges: Amy Beeder, Lisa Chavez, Dana Levin