Jason Bengtson's latest publication

Jason Bengtson and Brian Bunnett's newest article is called, “Across the Table: Competing Perspectives for Managing Technology in a Library Setting.” Journal of Library Administration 52.8 (2012): 699–715. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.

Tanaya Winder & Cassie Lopez have new Literary Journal

Good Afternoon ABQ English and Writer Fam!

I hope you are well with work, jobs, careers, school, writing, and your own individual happenings. As you may or may not have heard fellow MFA alum Casandra Lopez and I (Tanaya Winder) started a literary journal. As/Us: A Literary Space for Women of the World. I'm starting to outreach to folks to say I'm going to be blasting you on NYE and soon after to help spread the word about our literary journal when it drops like the ball in times square on NYE. I feel like I've been emailing people a lot for different things, fundraisers, etc and not to spamalot (oh wait that's a musical) so I'm just giving you a heads up and hoping you'll help direct people to our site http://asusjournal.org/ when it's up and running with our fabulous and fierce 21 female contributors. I'm hoping we can get 500 "likes" on our page www.facebook.com/As.Us.Journal by Jan 31st and a lot of traffic to our site once we go live NYE.

We have several contributors from the ABQ area and so Cassie and I will be working on trying to set up benefit/fundraising readings in the area during the spring when she is in the area for her residency. If any of you feel like you can help with that process or wouldn't mind reading and bringing your own individual followings as well, let me know. If you can't tell, I'm very excited for the first issue to come out. While we only have a handful of international contributors at this point, I'm hoping with your help with can share more voices of women from different areas in the world in due time.

Thanks for your support and for your own words and all you do. I know you each have your own writing, projects, organizations you support, etc., so if you or a place you support wants to be added to our Links page, let me know and Cassie and I will gladly support and promote you as well. http://asusjournal.org/links/

Maria Szasz's book, Brian Friel and America, being published!

Maria Szasz's book is Brian Friel and America, Dublin, Glasnevin Press. David Jones and Mary Power co-directed the dissertation on which the book is based.

Todd Ruecker to chair Second Language Writing Interest Section

Todd Ruecker has been elected as the future chair of the Second Language Writing Interest Section in the TESOL International Organization. You can read more about the IS here: http://secondlanguagewriting.com/slwis/

Sinclair Lewis Remembered, edited by Scharnhorst & Hofer

Gary Scharnhorst and
Matthew Hofer published the edited volume Sinclair Lewis Remembered (Alabama UP, 2012) this fall.
The multiple and varied perspectives found in Sinclair Lewis Remembered illustrate uncompromised glimpses of a complicated writer who should not be forgotten.
The more than 115 contributions to this volume include reminiscences by Upton Sinclair, Edna Ferber, Alfred Harcourt, Samuel Putnam, H. L. Mencken, John Hersey, Hallie Flanagan, and many others.
http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Sinclair-Lewis-Remembered,5448.aspx

Daniel Worden in The Last Western: Deadwood and the End of American Empire

Daniel Worden's essay "'Securing the Color': The Racial Economy of Deadwood" has just been published in The Last Western: Deadwood and the End of American Empire, edited by Jennifer Greiman and Paul Stasi (Continuum, 2012).

With contributions from scholars in American studies, literature, and film and television studies, The Last Western situates Deadwood in the context of both its nineteenth-century setting and its twenty-first-century audience. Together, these essays argue for the series as a provocative meditation on both the state and historical formation of U.S. empire, examining its treatment of sovereign power and political legitimacy, capital accumulation and dispossession, racial and gender identities, and social and family structures, while attending to the series' peculiar and evocative aesthetic forms. What emerges from this collection is the impressive range of Deadwood's often contradictory engagement with both nineteenth and twenty-first century America.

Jill Jeffery publishes on Education in 2012

Jeffery, J. V., Kieffer, M. J., & Matsuda, P. K. (in press). Toward an Integrated Framework for Research Addressing Multilingual Classrooms: Examining Representations of Writing Competence in TESOL and English Education Journals. Learning and Individual Differences.

Matsuda, P. K., & Jeffery, J. V. (2012). Voice in student essays. In K. Hyland, & C. Sancho-Guinda (Eds.). Voice and Stance in Academic Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jeffery, J. V., & Polleck, J. N. (2012). Practicing teachers’ transformations within a co-instruction model. In. J. Noel (Ed.) Moving teacher education into urban schools and communities: Prioritizing community strengths. New York: Routledge.

Alan Blackstock teaching at Utah State & publishing

Many years ago, I chaired a dissertation by Alan Blackstock on G. K. Chesterton. At the time several folks were puzzled why Alan, a Language/Rhetoric major, was writing on Chesterton. Nonetheless, he did and, shortly thereafter, took a job at a community college in Houston.

Last week I received an email from Alan who is now a professor at Utah State. His Chesterton book has just been published and he's sending me a copy. I could not be more proud of him. He writes that he and a colleague have developed and presented a series of writing workshops for GIS professional in the Forest Service and at BLM. Alan is, for me, a clear example of how language/rhetoric studies and literary studies can merge and be greatly successful.             
                                                         --Lynn Beene

Deborah Weagel publishes “Helen’s Quilt as Autobiographical, Social, and Political Text, in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature

Deborah Weagel, a part-time instructor (PhD UNM 2006), published her article “Helen’s Quilt as Autobiographical, Social, and Political Text in Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water” in Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature (June 2012). A version of her essay “Writing, Quiltmaking, and Feminism” was included in the anthology Writers Who Quilt, Quilters Who Write: Stories Stitched with Pens and Needles (2012), edited by Anne K. Kaler.

English 500 Presents A Mini-Conference of Graduate Student Work

Tuesday, Dec. 4, 12:30-1:45
Thursday, Dec. 6, 12:15-1:50

Please join us for a mini-conference of graduate student work featuring presentations by the graduate students enrolled in English 500. The conference will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 4, from 12:30-1:45, in Hum 324 (the Leon Howard Memorial Library) and on Thursday, Dec. 6, from 12:15-1:50, in the same location.

Tuesday, December 4 Hum 324—Leon Howard Memorial Library 12:30-1:45

Oliver Baker

PhD Student “Illicit Economies in the Ozarks: Challenges to Neo-Liberal Order in Winter’s Bone”

Annie D’Orazio

PhD Student “Ancient Warriors, Insular Hands, and Monster Fights”

Justin Falk-Gee

PhD Student “Language and Negotiation in the Basic Writing Classroom”

Thursday, December 6, 12:15-1:50 Hum 324—Leon Howard Memorial Library 12:15-1:50

Silvia Lu

MA Student “Deferring ‘Perfect Concord’: Proposals of Marriage and Novel Masculinities in Jane Eyre”

Leonard Martinez

MA Student “Robert G. Ingersoll: Forgotten American Polemic”

Nichole Neff

MA Student “Shark Representation in Nineteenth-Century Texts: Into the Belly of the Beast”

Erin Woltkamp

MA Student “Performing the Discourse of Power: Breaking Away from the Madwoman in the Attic through Gendered Language”

Jesse Alemán speaks on Days of the (Un)Dead

Jesse Alemán speaks on Days of the (Un)Dead: Vampires, Zombies, and Other Horrifying Forms of Chicano/a Identity in Film

Wednesday, November 28th, 12:30--1:30 pm
El Centro de la Raza Conference Room

Blue Mesa Review, Reviewed in NewPages.com

Blue Mesa Review, Issue 25, Spring 2012 www.unm.edu/~bluemesa
Review by David R. Matteri
Blue Mesa Review, a product of the creative writing program of the University of New Mexico, almost did not see publication this year. Editor-in-Chief Suzanne Rose Richardson reports that her fellow editors had to fight to keep their magazine alive during their school’s funding crisis: “They organized fund raisers, attended countless meetings, and they brainstormed in order to bring you this very issue you’re holding. Each editor gave above and beyond to ensure this issue had a chance to make it.” The folks at Blue Mesa have a lot to be proud of in this issue. The result of their hard work and dedication is a handsome journal with great content.

{For the complete review,
http://www.newpages.com/literary-magazine-reviews/2012-11-15/#Blue-Mesa-Review-I25-Spring-2012}

US Poet Laureate Is Keynote Reader for 15th Annual Taos Summer Writers' Conference

On Sunday, July 14th at 8 p.m., our newly installed U.S. poet laureate, Natasha Trethewey, will give the keynote reading for the 15th annual Taos Summer Writers' Conference (July 14-21, 2012).

Trethewey's reading is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing and reception.

Natasha Trethewey http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/natasha_trethewey/index.html

the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of three collections and a professor of creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta. Ms. Trethewey, 46, was born in Gulfport, Miss., and is the first Southerner to hold the post since Robert Penn Warren, the original laureate, and the first African-American since Rita Dove in 1993.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/books/natasha-trethewey-is-named-poet-laureate.html

Natasha Jones article published in Journal of Technical Writing & Communication

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Natasha Jones on her lead article, "Plain Language in Environmental Policy Documents: An Assessment of Reader Comprehension and Perceptions," in the most recent issue of the Journal of Technical Writing & Communication. The article can be found here:

 http://baywood.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue%2C2%2C9%3Bjournal%2C1%2C166%3Blinkingpublicationresults%2C1%3A300326%2C1

Gloria Larrieu has a new CD Embarcadero

Dr. Gloria Larrieu, who received her Ph.D. from our department and who took a course from Hector Torres, has a new CD entitled Embarcadero, which will be available the first week of December from Bookworks.

Gloria is generously donating 20% of the profits to the Hector Torres Memorial Fund.

Blue Mesa Review floats through Marigold parade

This past weekend, Sunday, November 4, members of the Blue Mesa Review's editorial board and friends participated in Albuquerque's Muertos y Marigolds Parade as part of the city's Día de los Muertos celebration. The theme of BMR's float was "Writers We Have Loved and Lost."

Dead writers in attendance included Willa Cather, Fernando Pessoa, Sylvia Plath, Ismat Chughtai, Emily Dickinson, and the Fitzgeralds. BMR editors enjoyed promoting the literary journal, which will be releasing its 26th issue online in December.

Colleen Dunn talk November 15

The Feminist Research Institute invites you to attend a talk by Colleen Dunn, PhD Candidate in Medieval Studies here at the University of New Mexico.

"Lives in Translation: The Vitae of Juliana and Katherine in Late Anglo-Saxon and Early Anglo-Norman England"

Colleen Dunn
November 15th, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
SUB Cherry/Silver

As always, there will be refreshments available.
Please join us next Thursday for this enlightening talk.

Taos writer John Nichols lectures this Wednesday, November 7

The 3rd annual Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest features Taos writer John Nichols on this Wednesday, November 7

 

 

 

"From Anaya to Zollinger: A Personal Journey through Southwest Literature"

John Nichols

Wednesday, November 7
7:00 p.m.
George Pearl Hall Auditorium

The lecture is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

A resident of New Mexico since 1969, John Nichols is the distinguished author of 12 novels and 8 works of non-fiction. His most recent novel, On Top of Spoon Mountain, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in October of this year. Nichols has written the “New Mexico Trilogy” of novels—his classic The Milagro Beanfield War, The Magic Journey, and The Nirvana Blues—as well as a non-fiction trilogy about the Southwest—If Mountains Die, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn, and On the Mesa.

“Much of my work has dealt with struggles for human justice, land and water rights issues, the clash between Chicano, Native American, and Anglo cultures,” Nichols writes. “My stuff is often polemical, usually comic. Laugh and the world laughs with us; weep and we weep alone.”

Made possible through a generous gift from New Mexico writer Rudolfo Anaya, the annual Anaya Lecture brings together students, faculty, and community members to address the rich traditions and new directions of Southwest literature. Event co-sponsors: UNM English Department, Division of Student Affairs, Institute for American Indian Research (IFAIR), University Libraries, Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies, Honors College, Center for the Southwest, Feminist Research Institute, Department of History.

If you would like to support the Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture series, click here to give now.
Thank you! http://artsci.unm.edu/funding/index.html

Directions:
George Pearl Hall is located in the School of Architecture and Planning at 2401 Central Ave. NE, across from the UNM Bookstore. The Anaya Lecture will be held in George Pearl Hall Auditorium (room 101).
George Pearl Hall is building 195 on the UNM Central Campus Map.
(http://iss.unm.edu/PCD/campus-map.html)

Visitor Parking
Visitors may park at the UNM Welcome Center Parking Structure at a rate of $1.75 per hour. To get to the structure, turn north from Central Ave. onto Stanford Dr., turn right at the stop sign on Redondo, and enter the structure to your left.
The UNM Welcome Center Parking Structure is building 198 on the Central Campus Map.
(http://iss.unm.edu/PCD/campus-map.html)

Two UNM English Alumna Reunite in Washington, DC

Two of the English Department’s recent graduates reunited for a poetry reading at Marymount University. In a moment of alumna networking, Leigh Johnson (PhD 2011) and Erika Sánchez (MFA 2010) were happy to work together again—this time in Washington DC. Erika gave an excerpted reading of her poetry manuscript at Marymount University in Arlington, VA, where Leigh is an Assistant Professor of Literature and Languages. The November 1, 2012 event was well attended by fifty students and faculty from the Marymount community. Students appreciated Erika's "frankness" in answering questions and her "beautiful grotesque" images.

Erika is a poet, feminist, and freelance writer living in Chicago. She is currently the sex and love advice columnist for Cosmopolitan for Latinas, a reader for Another Chicago Magazine, and a contributor for The Huffington Post, AlterNet, and NBC Latino, Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Drunken Boat, Witness, Anti-, Rhino, Hunger Mountain, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Copper Nickel, Southeast Review, and others. She has written book reviews for Kirkus Reviews and her nonfiction has been published in Jezebel and Ms. Magazine. She has appeared on American Public Media, the Jack Gravely Radio Show, and Huffington Post Live. She is working on her memoir and a poetry manuscript.

Leigh is in her second year as a tenure-track assistant professor at Marymount University. She teaches Early American Literature, American Multicultural Literature, composition, and gender studies to undergraduates. This semester, she's teaching the introduction to graduate studies course. Her article "Covert Wars in the Bedroom and Nation: Motherwork, Transnationalism, and Domestic Violence in Black Widow’s Wardrobe and Mother Tongue" is forthcoming from Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism.

Congratulations to both graduates on their continued success and sustained collegiality!

Nick DePascal Pushcart & Best of the Net Poetry nominations

Nick DePascal has just been nominated by the Emerson Review for a Pushcart Prize for his poem "Entryways." The Pushcart Prize honors the best poetry, fiction, and essays published in small presses each year. The winners' work is collected in an anthology sold in most bookstores and available at most libraries. To find out more about the Pushcart Prize, you could visit http://www.pushcartprize.com/, and to find out more information about The Emerson Review, you could visit http://pages.emerson.edu/organizations/emerson_review/index.html.

Last month, another poem of his was nominated for Sundress Publications' "Best of the Net" anthology. You could find out more about the "Best of the Net" anthology at http://www.sundresspublications.com/bestof/note.htm.

September Faculty Conference Presentations and Readings

David Dunaway: "The Roots of Route 66." Open Space Celebration of Route 66 (East Mountains).
David Dunaway: "What I Learned From Interviewing Musicians." Plenary Address, Oral History Association, Cleveland.

Aeron Hunt: "'Discharged Honorable': Old Soldiers and the Ties of Debt in Bleak House" at the North American Victorian Studies Association conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

Todd Ruecker: “L2 Students’ Stances and Identities in Graduate Peer Review Interactions” at the Symposium on Second Language Writing at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Daniel Worden: "Oil and Corporate Personhood: Form and Style in Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company" at Petrocultures: Oil, Energy, Culture Conferences at the University of Alberta.

Julie Williams giving a talk Friday: A 'Peripatetic Philosopher'

The Feminist Research Institute would like to remind you that our paper prize winner
Julie Williams will be giving a talk on
Friday, November 2nd in the SUB Cherry/Silver room from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
The title of her talk is:
"A 'Peripatetic Philosopher': Sexual and Gender Mobility in the Work of Mary MacLane."

Gary Jackson Reading in Santa Fe Nov. 10

Collected Works Bookstore
Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Gary Jackson
Saturday, November 10, 4pm

Gary Jackson’s first collection is Missing You, Metropolis, (selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize). With humor and the serious collector’s delight, Gary Jackson imagines the comic-book worlds of Superman, Batman, and the X-Men alongside the veritable worlds of Kansas, racial isolation, and the gravesides of a sister and a friend.

An MFA graduate from the University of New Mexico, Jackson currently teaches full-time at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque and at the Murray State University low-res MFA program in Murray, KY. He is a contributing editor at Catch Up: A journal of comics and literature, and has been a fierce lover of comics for over twenty years. Two poems:
http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/gary_jackson/luke_cage_tells_it_like_it_is.shtml
http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/gary_jackson/nightcrawler_buys_a_woman_a_drink.shtml

MUSE TIMES TWO Season 3 2012 Fall Poetry Series
202 Galisteo Street, Santa Fe                 505-988-4226

Cristyn Elder announces Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society

The editors of Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society are proud to announce Volume 2.2 of the journal at www.presenttensejournal.org. Vol. 2.2 is a special and double issue of Present Tense that focuses on medical rhetoric and makes forays into gender and body rhetorics. The special issue features nine articles, a comprehensive medical rhetoric bibliography, an interview, and two reviews.

Present Tense is a peer-reviewed, blind-refereed, online journal dedicated to exploring contemporary social, cultural, political and economic issues through a rhetorical lens. In addition to examining these subjects as found in written, oral and visual texts, we wish to provide a forum for calls to action in academia, education and national policy. Seeking to address current or presently unfolding issues, we publish short articles of 2,000-2,500 words, the length of a conference paper.

Creative Writing News

Faculty News:

Dan Mueller’s second collection of stories, Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey, has just been picked up by Outpost 19 Books. Outpost 19 is an independent publisher based in San Francisco and New York. Stay tuned for more updates. Until then, you could check out Outpost 19 at http://www.outpost19.com/

Student News:

Ty Bannerman’s essay “The Exhibition” is a finalist for Midway Journal’s “Monstrosities of the Midway,” and will be published in the October issue of Midway Journal. He has also recently become the Food Editor for the Weekly Alibi.

Mike Smith’s essay “Some Thoughts on LeeAnne” has been accepted for publication in the next issue of The Florida Review. Also, his essay “Start Breaking My Heart” has been accepted by the online journal Eunoia Review.

Nora Hickey’s poem “First Crush: Jane Austen” is forthcoming in the winter issue of Court Green.

Daniel Berger’s poem “Aliens in the Backyard” is forthcoming in the journal NewBorder Anthology: Criticism and Creation from the U.S./Mexico Border (newborder.org).

Alumni News:

Jennifer Simpson (JenniferSimpsonWriter.com)’s accomplishments include:

Publications:
“Mother’s Day Shouldn’t Be About Grief” essay on 40PlusWoman.com (May 12, 2012)
“intervals” poem published in A Year in Ink, Vol. 5 an anthology (2012)
“Mom’s Chicken Divan” essay on StyleSubstanceSoul.com (May 2011)
“Giving Voice to Your Prose” article in LP Creative Humans magazine (March 2010)
“Our House is Like Switzerland” short story published Bartelby Snopes (January 2010)

Readings:
Ongoing/Monthly: Host, Duke City DimeStories Monthly Open Mic for prose, Albuquerque, NM since February 2010
2012 April - L.A. Times Book Festival, Los Angeles, CA (DimeStories Showcase)
2011 September - Church of Beethoven, Albuquerque, NM
2011 February - DimeStories Anniversary Showcase, Albuquerque, NM
2010 December - The Encyclopedia Show (all about Bears), Albuquerque, NM
2010 April - L.A. Times Book Festival, Los Angeles, CA (DimeStories Showcase)

Awards:
2011 A Room Of Her Own Foundation Retreat Participant (partially funded and served as small group workshop leader)
2009 American Welding Society Image of Welding Award (for writing about women welders at: http://www.arc-zone.com/blog/carmenelectrode/category/new-rosies/)

Projects/Community Service/Activities:
- Director, DimeStories International (http://dimestories.org/)
- Founder, The I Write Because Project, Inspired by a writing prompt from Seattle writer Priscilla Long at the Taos Summer Writers Conference, she started this website, a collaborate creative writing project: http://theiwritebecauseproject.wordpress.com/about/
Consider this an open invitation to all UNMers to submit, and spread the word: She’s actively seeking a diversity of voices.
- Judge, New Mexico Press Women Zia Book Award for Non Fiction (2012)
- Bereavement Group Facilitator, Children’s Grief Center of Albuquerque (2009 to present)
- Board Member, University Heights Neighborhood Association (2010 to present)

Kubasek Named the 2012-2013 CRS Hector Torres Fellow

Natalie Kubasek, a PhD candidate in English, with a concentration in American Literary Studies, has received the Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship.

Ms. Kubasek joined the English doctoral program in Fall 2010 after earning her MA in English from Simmons College, in Boston, MA, and her BA in English from Whittier College, in her hometown of Whittier, CA. In 2011-2012, she garnered a Latino/a Graduate and Professional Student Fellowship sponsored by UNM’s El Centro de la Raza and the Title V Resource Center.

Her research focuses on Chicano/a literature, and as a CRS Hector Torres fellow, she plans to conduct research for her dissertation on Chicana feminism and cultural production, with an emphasis on theater and performance art. The study of Chicana theater and performance art, Kubasek maintains, is a rich yet untapped area of Chicana cultural production, and the fellowship will help her locate and access primary documents and resources housed in archives across the southwest; she also plans to locate and interview authors, performers, and playwrights significant to the development of Chicana theater.

The Hector Torres Fellowship, a $10,000-$15,000 stipend, was inaugurated by the University of New Mexico’s Center for Regional Studies in memory of the English Department’s slain colleague, Dr. Hector Torres.

The Center for Regional Studies Hector Torres Fellowship supports graduate research and scholarship in the English Department directly related to Dr. Hector Torres’ fields, as well as the mission of the Center for Regional Studies. Areas include Chicano/a literary and cultural studies; theory (i.e. Marxism, post-structuralism; deconstruction, psychoanalysis; and globalization); film studies; and scholarship related to the mission of the CRS, including history, archival research, literature and other interdisciplinary fields related to New Mexico, the US-Mexico borderlands, and the greater Southwest.

Anita Obermeier’s recent publications and national presidencies

Anita Obermeier published “The Censorship Trope in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Manciple’s Tale as Ovidian Metaphor in a Gowerian and Ricardian Context” in Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice (eds. Stephen Partridge and Erik Kwakkel, Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2012, 80-105).

“The Manciple’s Prologue and Tale” in The Literary Encyclopedia (http://www.litencyc.com/index.php).

She read narrator parts as well as Lady Mead in the new Chaucer Studio recording of the Middle English poem Piers Plowman (Passus 1-4) (http://creativeworks.byu.edu/chaucer/ViewItem.aspx?id=OR079&language=none&medium=none&keyword=piers)

Finally, she has been elected president of the Medieval Association of the Pacific as well as TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) that also publishes the Middle English Text Series (http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/tmsmenu.htm)

Belinda Wallace and Kadeshia Matthews share panel on Gender, Race, and Feminist Strategies in Africana Literature

Gender, Race, and Feminist Strategies in Africana Literature

Wednesday, October 17th,
2:00-4:00 p.m. in SUB Santa Ana A & B

A panel featuring
Natasha Howard, "Reinventing Blackness in the White Imagination: Examining Race/Gender Narratives in Popular Culture"

Belinda Wallace, "Unconventional Epistemologies: Post-colonial Femininities and Caribbean Culture"

Kadeshia Matthews, "Engendering African-American Identity: Violence and What Can't Be Said"

This event is co-sponsored by the Dean of Arts & Sciences, the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, Chicana/ Hispano/ Mexicano Studies, the Center for the Southwest, the Department of History, the American Studies Department, and the Africana Studies Department.

Talk by Assistant Professor, Dr. Melina Vizcaino-Alemán on October 16th

The Feminist Research Institute welcomes you to attend a talk by Assistant Professor, Dr. Melina Vizcaino-Alemán, October 16th.

“Jovita González and Alice Corbin Henderson: Two Southwest Women Writers”

Tuesday, October 16th

12:30-1:30 p.m.

SUB Cherry/Silver

University of New Mexico
femresin@unm.edu

Recent Faculty and Graduate student conferences and talks

We have been busy . . . late spring and summer 2012 conference and public talks activities by our faculty and graduate students.

April 2012
Lisa Myers was elected to the Executive Council of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association.
33rd Plymouth State Medieval and Renaissance Forum
Nick Schwartz, "Alfred the Great and Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: Towards a Connection"

May 2012
47th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo MI:
Anita Obermeier, “The Queering of Merlin in Shakespeare and Rowley’s Birth of Merlin”
Nicholas Schwartz, Session Chair: Teaching Beowulf in the High School Classroom

American Literature Association, San Francisco:
Diana Noreen Rivera, “Recovering Memorias Transfronterizas: Federico Ronstandt’s Borderman and the Remapping of Southern Arizona”
Julie Williams, “Romancing the Desert: Landscape and Ideology in Willa Cather’s ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop.’”

Rhetoric Society of America, Philadelphia:
Katherine M. Alexander, “Is the Rhetoric of Obamocracy Off Key?”
Dan Cryer, “‘A better chronometer': Time, Ethos & Ethics in Aldo Leopold's 'Smoky Gold’”
Paul Formisano, “Watershed Rhetorics: Resistance and Restoration in the Colorado River Basin”
Rachel Gearhart, “Constructing the Enemy: The Rhetorical Moves of Roosevelt’s ‘Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation’”
Melissa Huffman, “Capitalizing on Ambivalence: Enslavement Tropes in Nineteenth Century America Social Reform Discourses”
Michelle Hall Kells, “The ‘Chamizal Effect:’ Solastalgia and the Rhetoric of Place on the US/Mexico Border”
Deborah S. Paczynski, “Barack Obama’s Rhetorical Regression Toward the Future: The Tyranny of Tyrannizing Images”
Susan Romano, “Emergent and Divergent Latin American Historical Rhetoric: Meeting Reader Expectations for Coverage”

June 2012
Peter White taught in Austria in June for the AAECA Summer Program in which Austrian public school teachers learned about American education, language and culture in an intensive English only program. White taught the American Short Story and played the fiddle for dances at night
In June and July, White studied advanced violin making in Krakow Poland with his former teacher from 1980, Jan Pawlikowski

July 2012
Jason Bengtson, “The Evolution of the Web: from Static to Semantic in Three Big Steps.” Webcast presented to the North Carolina Chapter of the Special Library Association.
Greg Martin, Reading from Stories for Boys, Taos Summer Writers Conference and
Reading from Stories for Boys, SOMOS Reading Series, Harwood Art Gallery, Taos, NM
Peter White taught a course in American English to computer scientists in Vinnitsa, Ukraine

National Consortium of Writing Across Communities Summit, Santa Fe.
Dan Cryer, “Negotiating Scarcity: Starting a WAC Program on Social Capital”
Anna V. Knutson, “Digital Bridges: Multimodal Connections Across Communities”

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK
Colleen Dunn, “Becoming Her Own Accuser: The Art of Courtly Love as a Commentary on Eleanor of Aquitaine”
Lisa Myers, “‘We be yemen of this foreste, under the grene wod tre’: Subversion in the Middle English Ballads of Robin Hood”
Anita Obermeier, “Sent Away, Sainted, or Self-Sainted: the Childless Queens Theutberga, Cunigunde, and Edith”

Council of Writing Program Administrators Annual Conference. Albuquerque, NM
Tiffany Bourelle, Cristyn Elder, and Chuck Paine served on the conference program committee.
Genesea Carter, “Cross-Institutional Collaborations: Peer Writing Groups and Writing Workshops”
Dan Cryer and Lindsey Ives, “Writing and Teaching Online—How Do We Assess and Maintain this Ever-Changing Environment?”
Beth Davila, “Multiple Perspectives on Directed Self-Placement in the Academy”
Cristyn Elder and Chuck Paine, “Broadening the Habits of Mind for WPAs and Students”
Annarose Fitzgerald, “I Didn’t Know This Was a Writing Class!: Fostering Connections Between Composition and Literature Approaches”
Christine Garcia, Danny Bogert, Natasha Jones, Genevieve Garcia de Mueller, “Why Mentorship Matters to Us: A Discussion of the Effects of (Under)Representation of Faculty of Color on Junior WPAs”
Lindsey Ives and Todd Ruecker, “Racism and Native Speakerism in the Writing Classroom”
Michelle Kells and Brian Hendrickson, “Accidental Tourists on the ‘Mother Road’: Route 66 and Other Metaphors for Navigating the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing”
Chuck Paine, “Delbanco’s Plea: What Does a Defense of Liberal Arts Have to Do with Writing Programs?” and “A New Stage for the NSSE Writing Questions – CWPA’s Continued Involvement”
Todd Ruecker, “Preparing Instructors and TAs to Serve the Emerging Majority”
Leah Snyder and Lindsey Ives, “A Roundtable of Ejournal Editors: Digital Spaces that Support and Expand Writing Program Goals”

Conference of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction Writing SIG, Porto, Portugal
Jill V. Jeffery, & Polleck, J. N. “Adolescent authorial identity in a student-initiated writing group: Examining intersections between school-based and voluntary writing”
Wilcox, K., & Jeffery, J. V. “Authorial identity and agency in adolescent English language learners’ stances toward content-area writing”
David K Dunaway, Readings, A Route 66 Companion (University of Texas Press, 2012): Bookworks, Albuquerque; Collected Works, Santa Fe; Booksmith, San Francisco
Taught a workshop: “Broadcasting and Publishing Oral History,” for faculty and graduate students at the University of Sao Paulo

August 2012
Peter White won second place in old time fiddle at the Santa Fe Fiddle and Banjo Contest

Taos writer John Nichols lectures on Wednesday, November 7

The 3rd annual Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest features Taos writer John Nichols on Wednesday, November 7

"From Anaya to Zollinger: A Personal Journey through Southwest Literature"

John Nichols

Wednesday, November 7

7:00 p.m.

George Pearl Hall Auditorium

The lecture is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

A resident of New Mexico since 1969, John Nichols is the distinguished author of 12 novels and 8 works of non-fiction. His most recent novel, On Top of Spoon Mountain, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in October of this year. Nichols has written the “New Mexico Trilogy” of novels—his classic The Milagro Beanfield War, The Magic Journey, and The Nirvana Blues—as well as a non-fiction trilogy about the Southwest—If Mountains Die, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn, and On the Mesa.

“Much of my work has dealt with struggles for human justice, land and water rights issues, the clash between Chicano, Native American, and Anglo cultures,” Nichols writes. “My stuff is often polemical, usually comic. Laugh and the world laughs with us; weep and we weep alone.”

Made possible through a generous gift from New Mexico writer Rudolfo Anaya, the annual Anaya Lecture brings together students, faculty, and community members to address the rich traditions and new directions of Southwest literature. Event co-sponsors: UNM English Department, Division of Student Affairs, Institute for American Indian Research (IFAIR), University Libraries, Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies, Honors College, Center for the Southwest, Feminist Research Institute, Department of History.

If you would like to support the Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture series, click here to give now.
Thank you! http://artsci.unm.edu/funding/index.html

Directions:
George Pearl Hall is located in the School of Architecture and Planning at 2401 Central Ave. NE, across from the UNM Bookstore. The Anaya Lecture will be held in George Pearl Hall Auditorium (room 101).
George Pearl Hall is building 195 on the UNM Central Campus Map.
(http://iss.unm.edu/PCD/campus-map.html)

Visitor Parking
Visitors may park at the UNM Welcome Center Parking Structure at a rate of $1.75 per hour. To get to the structure, turn north from Central Ave. onto Stanford Dr., turn right at the stop sign on Redondo, and enter the structure to your left.
The UNM Welcome Center Parking Structure is building 198 on the Central Campus Map.
(http://iss.unm.edu/PCD/campus-map.html)

Greg Martin publishes Stories for Boys, Reading on Nov. 8 at UNM

Greg Martin's second book, STORIES FOR BOYS, was published this fall by Hawthorne Books.

"STORIES FOR BOYS is a memoir and tells the story of my relationship with my father, who came out of the closet as a gay man after 39 years of marriage to my mother, and who came out to me after surviving a suicide attempt. The book also tells the story of how I came to share this change in the life of our family with my two young sons. I’m really grateful also that the book is now in its third printing and has been named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection for Holiday 2012."

You can see more about STORIES FOR BOYS on Greg's website here: http://gregorymartinwrites.wordpress.com/

And on the website for Hawthorne Books: http://hawthornebooks.com/authors/greg-martin

The book is available at the UNM Bookstore, at Bookworks on Rio Grande, as well as on Amazon or Powells or Barnes & Noble. You can also purchase the book as an e-book, for the Kindle or the Nook.

Greg Martin will be giving a Reading, with a book signing to follow

November 8th

on the UNM Campus,

in Dane Smith Hall, in room 123,

at 7:00 PM.

Parking is close and convenient at the Yale Parking Garage, just a half block north of Lomas on Yale.

Greg's Upcoming Readings:
I just got back from a trip up to Missoula to give a reading and be on a panel about the memoir at the Montana Festival of the Book, and this week I’ll be reading at Powell’s in Portland, then the Wordstock Book Festival this weekend, and next week, I’ll be reading in Bellingham and Seattle and Salt Lake as part of the Utah Festival of the Book. If you know folks in those towns, and want to pass along that I’ll be up there, you can see the specifics of those readings on the appearances page of my website here: http://gregorymartinwrites.wordpress.com/appearances/

Julie Williams publishing and prizes!

Julie Williams' article, "Romancing the Desert: Landscape and Ideology in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop" was published in the fall 2011 edition of Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature.

Her paper, "Female Embodiment and the Western Landscape in the Story of Mary MacLane" won the Phyllis Bridges Award for Outstanding Paper in Biography at the SW/TX Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference in February.

Julie also won the Feminist Research Institute's Graduate Student Paper Prize for the 2011-2012 school year. She is a PhD student in American Literature at UNM English.

Lois Rudnick will talk on "The Suppressed Memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan" on Wednesday, October 24th

Lois Rudnick will give a talk on "The Suppressed Memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan: Sex, Syphilis, and Psychoanalysis in the Making of Modern American Culture"
on Wednesday, October 24th at 4pm in Dane Smith Hall.

Lois Rudnick is professor emerita of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and she is a leading scholar of modernist art and literary cultures in New Mexico.
The talk is free and open to public, and her books will be available for purchase.
For questions or more information, please contact Daniel Worden: dworden@unm.edu

The Suppressed Memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan:
Sex, Syphilis, and Psychoanalysis in the Making of Modern American Culture

Dr. Lois Rudnick

Wednesday, October 24th

4 p.m.

Dane Smith Hall, Room 120

Internationally known as a writer, hostess, and patron of the arts of the twentieth century, Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962) is not known for her experiences with venereal disease, unmentioned in her four-volume memoir that was published in the 1930s. Making the suppressed portions of Luhan’s memoirs available for the first time, Lois Rudnick examines Luhan’s life through the lenses of venereal disease, psychoanalysis, and sexology. She shows us a mover and shaker of the modern world whose struggles with identity, sexuality, and manic depression speak to the lives of many women of her era.

Among Lois Rudnick's many books are Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds and Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture, both available from the University of New Mexico Press.

Sponsored by
Center for Southwest Research, Center for the Southwest, Department of English Language and Literature, Department of History, and the Feminist Research Institute

Randall Gann Lecturer in Literature and Film Studies at NAU

Randall Gann, PhD in American Literature, 2011, has accepted a lectureship in Literature and Film Studies starting this fall at Northern Arizona University. Congratulations, Randall!

British Women Writers Conference at UNM in April 2013

Looking forward to April 2013!

The English department at the University of New Mexico is pleased to be hosting the 2013 British Women Writers Conference. The conference will be April 4-6, 2013 at the Hyatt in downtown Albuquerque, NM. The conference theme is “Customs,” and we look forward to a wide range of unique presentations on the topic. Please see:  http://2013bwwc.com/ for detailed description of the conference and topics.

The 2013 British Women Writers Conference will center around the theme of “Customs.” Customs are often thought of as the habits or social norms that dictate behavior, sometimes so rigidly that they appear to be laws. Conversely, though, “custom” can refer to a product or service tailored to the “customer’s” individual specifications, or the taxes or duties on imports/exports, the governmental department charged with implementing such fees, or the place in which all items entering a country from foreign parts are examined for contraband. Regardless of its particular connotation, “custom” denotes a sense of rigidity, restriction, or control; it is these forms of social, economic, and/or personal limitations that we wish to explore with this year’s conference. Prospective panelists are encouraged to think of “customs” broadly as the term might apply to British and Transatlantic women writers and their often-underrepresented contributions to literary studies.

Please send abstracts of 250 words for panel proposals by November 15, 2012 and for individual paper presentations by December 15, 2012 to BWWC2013@gmail.com.

Daniel Worden's book wins Thomas Lyon Book Award

Daniel Worden's book, "Masculine Style: The American West and Literary Modernism, has won this year's Thomas Lyon Book Award in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies! Each year, the Western Literature Association honors outstanding, single-authored scholarly books on the literature and culture of the American West.

The chair of the 2012 Lyon award committee called the book a, "lucidly written and cogently argued examination of the construction of masculinity and its deployment in a number of significant western American texts. The field of nominees was rich and representative of the best in recent literary and cultural criticism."

A previous winner of the award is Gary Scharnhorst, so he's in good company. To see other books and authors who share this honor, go to http://www.usu.edu/westlit/thomas-j-lyon-book-award-in-western-american-literary-and-cultural-studies/.

Todd Ruecker publication and presentation

Todd Ruecker has published an article: “Exploring the Digital Divide on the U.S.-Mexico Border Through Literacy Narratives.” in Computers and Composition, 29.3 (2012): 239-253. Print. He has also made a presentation: “L2 Students’ Stances and Identities in Graduate Peer Review Interactions.” to the Symposium on Second Language Writing. West Lafayette, IN. 6 September 2012.

Karmen Lenz publishes Ræd (Counsel) and Frofer (Consolation): Christian Poetics in the Old English Froferboc [book of consolation] Meters

We are happy to report the publishing success of one of our recent graduates in Medieval Studies, Karmen Lenz. Rodopi just published Karmen's book Ræd (Counsel) and Frofer (Consolation): Christian Poetics in the Old English Froferboc [book of consolation] Meters, with a Foreword by Kurt Otten. Published by Rodopi, Costerus New Series 195, 2012. (http://rodopi.nl/functions/search.asp?BookId=COS+195)

Froferboc refers to King Alfred's OE translation of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and was the subject of Karmen's Popejoy award-winning dissertation about six years ago. Kurt Otten, who wrote the foreword, is a major scholar on Alfred and his translation of the Boethius Consolation. Kurt was also a visitor in our department from Heidelberg for a semester. Karmen is Associate Professor of English at Macon State College.

Daniel Worden co-edited Twentieth-Century Literature

Daniel Worden has co-edited a special issue of the journal Twentieth-Century Literature, which has just been published.

The journal Twentieth-Century Literature has just published a special, double issue on Postmodernism, Then (volume 57, numbers 3-4), edited by UNM English Department faculty member Daniel Worden and Jason Gladstone (Ball State University). In a contemporary moment that signals both the institutionalization and the exhaustion of postmodernist aesthetics, the Postmodernism, Then special issue returns to the category of the postmodern and explores how postmodernism takes on new meanings when scholars can think of postmodernism as not only the present but also the recent past, not only a unifying category that contains all late 20th-century literature but also one aesthetic among many.

The special issue features an introductory essay by Daniel Worden and Jason Gladstone, as well as contributions from leading scholars in the field: Rey Chow, Hillary Chute, Madhu Dubey, Ursula Heise, Andrew Hoberek, Caren Irr, David James, Adam Kelly, Mark McGurl, Brian McHale, Walter Benn Michaels, Emilio Sauri, and Rachel Greenwald Smith.

Opioid Addiction Guidelines Edited by James Burbank

Professional Writing lecturer, writer, and technical editor James Burbank has just completed work on New Mexico Treatment Guidelines for Medical Providers Who Treat Opioid Addiction Using Buprenorphine. In collaboration with six New Mexico physicians, two nurses, and members of the Heroin Awareness Committee, Burbank served as project management editor in developing, designing, editing, and publishing the first guidelines for innovative opioid addiction treatment in the United States. Sponsored by the state Dept. of Health, the book-length guidelines were just published and will be distributed free to qualified New Mexico physicians during training sessions and to inform doctors of the treatment, policy, and clinical procedures required to conduct medication assisted treatment (MAT) of opioid addictions. Burbank also edited an electronic version of the guidelines that will appear on a special website dedicated to opioid addiction treatment. Burbank also was project editor of Managing Co-occurring Mental and Substance Use Disorders in Primary Care: A Guide for the Busy Primary Care Provider by Florian Birkmayer, M.D. published by the UNM Center for Rural and Community Behavioral Health in 2010.

Center for Regional Studies Research Scholar Joins the English Department for the Year

Dr. Karen R. Roybal

The Center for Regional Studies and the English Department are happy to announce that Dr. Karen R. Roybal, a CRS Visiting Research Scholar, will be housed in UNM’s English Department of Language and Literature for the Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 academic year.

As a CRS scholar, Dr. Roybal will work on her book manuscript, Archives of Dispossession: Uncovering Mexicana Memory through Testimonio —a project that draws on literature, land title records, and testimonios to argue that the history of Mexican land claims cannot be understood only as a racialized story, but must also be recognized as a story linked to gender. In the book, she coins the phrase testimonios de herederas to describe inherited histories of land struggle on the part of women of Mexican and/or Spanish descent. Dr. Roybal’s interdisciplinary book chronicles women’s active participation in and indispensability to the legacy of land-related struggle by focusing on a combination of archival court testimonies taken from 1854-1890 by the United States Surveyor General’s Office in New Mexico during the land adjudication process; literary-based testimonios de herederas penned by Mexican American women—such as María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Jovita González, and Fabiola Cabeza de Baca—directly and indirectly involved in land struggles from 1848-1954; and ethnographic oral history interviews provided by women engaged in the contemporary land grant movement in New Mexico. She argues that because the legacy of land grant studies has largely excluded women from view, the stakes of re-materializing women and making their active participation visible is crucial to understanding the full nineteenth- and twentieth-century history of the “violence over the land” in the U.S. Southwest.

While visiting in the English Department, Dr. Roybal is also slated to teach two courses. The first, English 315: Chicana Literature and Film, is being offered in the second eight week session of the fall semester and will provide a historical survey of Chicana literature and film in relation to gender, race, agency, and aesthetics. See the course description below. Her second class will run in the spring. She’s also working with the department on launching a Southwest Studies Institute initiative.

Dr. Roybal received her PhD in American Studies from the UNM in July 2011 as an Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellow, and from 2011-2012, she was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Latina/o Studies Department. She was recently awarded a short-term research fellowship by the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin to conduct research at the Benson Latin American library. Her broader research interests include Chicana/o, Latina/o Literature, Autobiographical Theory, Chicana/Latina Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Mexican-American History.

Hector Torres papers available in Center for Southwest Research

The final stage of the Hector Torres Papers is completed. The collection is housed in the Center for Southwest Research, and it's now listed on the Rocky Mountain Online Archive. You can find the index here:
http://rmoa.unm.edu/docviewer.php?docId=nmumss891bc.xml

Karen Roybal Visiting Professor UNM English

Dr. Karen Roybal, visiting Research Scholar in the Center for Regional Studies, is also a visiting professor in the English department this year.

Melina Vizcaino-Aleman has articles in Aztlán & Southwestern American Literature

Melina Vizcaino-Aleman has recently published a couple of articles. One, "Rethinking Jovita González’s Work: Bio-ethnography and Her South Texas Regionalism," was published in the Spring 2012 Southwestern American Literature journal (out of Texas State-San Marcos - http://www.swrhc.txstate.edu/publications/sal/current.html), and another article will be coming out in the Spring 2013 issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, which is the premier journal for Chicana/o studies, out of UCLA (http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/journals/default.asp).

Jason Bengtson publications and presentations

Jason Bengtson (MLIS, AHIP), currently studying Literature at the Master's level at UNM, has quite a few recent publications and presentations, revealing his very accomplished other hat, as Emerging Technologies/ R&D Librarian at UNM in the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center.

publications:
* Eldredge, Jonathan, Sarah Morley, Ingrid Hendrix, Richard Carr, and Jason Bengtson. "Library and Informatics Skills Competencies Statements from Major Health Professional Associations" Medical Reference Services Quarterly 31.1 (2012) : 34-44. Print.

* Bengtson, Jason. "Preparing for the Age of the Digital Palimpsest." Library Hi Tech 30.3 (2012). Print.

* Bengtson, Jason. "The Art of Redirection: One Library's Experiences and Statistical Results from the Deployment of Mobile Redirect Script." Journal of Hospital Librarianship 12.3 (2012). Print

accepted:

* Bengtson, Jason. "Scaling Into the Future with Smart Links." Journal of Hospital Librarianship 12.4 (2012). Pre-publication.

* Bengtson, Jason. "Imagining Emergent Metadata, Realizing the Emergent Web." Journal of Library Metadata (2012). Pre-publication.

presentations:
* "Preparing for the Age of the Digital Palimpsest." Paper presented at the South Central Chapter of the Medical Library Association Conference entitled "Info on the Geux". 14-19 October 2011, Baton Rouge Capitol Center Hotel.

* "The Evolution of the Web: from Static to Semantic in Three Big Steps." Virtual Lunch presented to the Rio Grande Chapter of the Special Library Association. 22 February 2012.

* "Imagining Emergent Metadata, Realizing the Emergent Web." Paper presented at the Library Technology Conference. 14-15 March 2012, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.

* "The Art of Redirection: Putting Mobile Devices Where You Want Them." Instructional session at the Library Technology Conference. 14-15 March 2012, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.

* "The Evolution of the Web: from Static to Semantic in Three Big Steps." Webcast presented to the North Carolina Chapter of the Special Library Association. 10 July 2012.

Justin Brock book review published

Justin Brock's book review on Dante's Commedia: Theology as Poetry, an anthology edited by Vittorio Montemaggi and Matthew Treherne, was published in the journal Literature and Theology 26.2 (2012): 233-235. Justin is a Master's student in Medieval Studies here at UNM.

Greg Martin & Amy Beeder Read at Bookworks

Sunday, September 30, 2012
3:00pm

Gregory Martin is the author of the memoir, Stories for Boys, published in Fall 2012 by Hawthorne Books. Barnes & Noble has named Stories for Boys a Discover Great New Writers selection for Holiday 2012. Martin’s first book, Mountain City (FSG/North Point Press), received a Washington State Book Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and is referred to by some people in Mountain City as “the book.” Martin’s work has appeared in The Sun, The Kenyon Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Writer, Witness, and elsewhere. For his teaching, Martin has received the University of New Mexico’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. He is an Associate Professor of English and serves as Director of UNM’s Combined BA/MD Degree Program.

Amy Beeder is the author two books of poetry: Burn the Field and Now Make an Altar, both from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, AGNI, The Nation, Pleiades, American Letters & Commentary, and other journals. She teaches poetry at the University of New Mexico. A former human rights observer in Haiti and Suriname, and a high school teacher in West Africa, Amy Beeder balances an ear for meter with an often ominous tone, creating a musical, at times mythical, exploration of how we construct beauty and strangeness. Beeder’s honors include a 2001 “Discovery”/The Nation Award, a Bread Loaf Scholarship, and an award from the Emerging Writers Network.

Luci Tapahonso's "Everyday Sacredness" and Rudy Anaya's film of Bless Me, Ultima

Check out the Fall 2012 Mirage magazine: our own Luci Tapahonso is on the cover! The story is titled "Everyday Sacredness." http://www.unmalumni.com/mirage-magazine.html

Rudy Anaya's film of Bless Me, Ultima will be premiering on October 17 at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival! http://www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/blog/morning-edition/2012/08/bless-me-ultima-to-open-santa-fe.html

Don't we have fabulous faculty and emeriti! gail

Feroza Jussawalla edited "Crossing Borders/Creating Homes" issue of Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature

The special on-line issue which Feroza Jussawalla edited for RMMLA (Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature) on "Crossing Borders/Creating Homes" on writers who have "crossed" borders and written about transculturality, including three Chicana women writers, in now up on their site at:
http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/SI2012/default.asp

Diane Thiel list of recent accomplishments, publications, awards and readings

Diane Thiel published her book, Three Genres, with Pearson/Longman, 2011. She won the PEN Translation Award, 2010, for translation project of Eugenia Fakinou's poetic novel, The Great Green. She also was awarded a summer residency grant from the International Writers' House in Rhodes Greece. She also wrote and recorded a Longman lecture (print and audio) on Louisie Erdirch, 2011.
Her poem, "The First Sea," was published in The Burden of the Beholder: Dave Armstrong and the Art Collage, a fine art book, Colorado College press, 2010. Her non-fiction, "Memento Mori and Terza Rima," was published in Mentor and Muse, 2010. Her interview with Sherman Alexie was published in Conversations with Sherman Alexie, 2009. She has had work selected for several new anthologies from 2010-2012, including Backpack Literature from Longman, The Ablemuse Anthology, Poets of the American West, and Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined, among others.
Several of her poems, including "Kinder und Hausmarchen" and "Editorial Suggestive" have been set to music by composers Lori Laitman, Dale Trumbore, and David Conte and were performed in CA, NJ, FL, and others, particularly on an extensive tour in 2011. One venue in particular was Carnegie hall. Her poem, "The Minefeld," chosen for national NEA initiative, Poetry Out Loud, and was performed by high school students across the country in national competitions, particularly in 2010-11.
She visited several Albuquerque schools as a writer-in-the-schools in 2011-12. Diane Thiel was recorded on NEA nationally distributed cd about Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me Ultima. She was interviewed by NPR in 2009. Some of the readings she has given include for the Florida College English Association, 2010, Virginia Tech Creative Writing program's Reading Series, 2010, plenary speaker, Sewanee: University of the South School of Letters, 2011, Albuquerque's Local Poet's Guild, 2012.
She also designed and taught 6 new UNM online courses, and chaired or served on 7 dissertation committees.

Vincent Basso’s poem a semi-finalist for the Knightville Poetry Prize

MA Literature student Vincent M. Basso’s poem “On the Death of Poets” was a semi-finalist for the Knightville Poetry Prize, and will be forthcoming in the 2012 issue of The New Guard Literary Review.

Jesse Alemán Bread Loaf Faculty (pt. 2)

Professor Jesse Alemán has been a Bread Loaf sum­mer grad­u­ate fac­ulty mem­ber for six years, teach­ing courses on nineteenth-century Amer­i­can renais­sance, the Amer­i­can gothic, and south­west­ern lit­er­a­ture and film. At UNM, he also teaches Chicano/a literature.
Alemán is acclaimed at UNM, as well. He is the recip­i­ent of the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences’ Award for Teach­ing Excel­lence; the Amer­i­can Indian Stu­dent Ser­vices’ STARS Award; the Wertheim Award for Out­stand­ing Eng­lish Fac­ulty mem­ber; and was named Out­stand­ing Fac­ulty Mem­ber by the Eng­lish Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Asso­ci­a­tion and UNM’s Peer Men­tor­ing for Grad­u­ate Stu­dents of Color.
Please see below (or the Aug. 7 posting) for the full story.
http://news.unm.edu/2012/08/aleman-named-endowed-faculty-chair-for-bread-loaf-school-of-english/

Nick DePascal Poetry and Book Reviews Published

Nick DePascal has been publishing his poetry, including: "After This," in The Houston Literary Review, Fall 2009; "Winter in Hartford," in The Monongahela Review, Fall 2009; "Bonds," in Breadcrumb Scabs, December 2009; "Shallow Turquoise Graves," in Sugar House Review, Spring 2010; "Cathedrals" and "Late Winter," in Adobe Walls, Fall 2010; "Awards Committee," in The LosAngeles Review, October 2011; "Letter to a Sick Friend," in the Golden Sparrow Literary Review, November 2011; "The Incomplete," in Mas Tequila Review, March 2012; "Entryways," in The Emerson Review, April 2012; "Form," in Aesthetix, July 2012; and an untitled poem for Ditch Poetry Journal.

Nick has also published a number of book reviews, including reviews of: Missing You, Metropolis, Gary Jackson. in Sugar House Review, April 2011; In a Beautiful Country, Kevin Prufer. In Rattle, April 2011; Remnant of Another Age, Nikola Madzirov. in Rattle, June 2011; Randy Lopez Goes Home, Rudolfo Anaya, in Tucson Weekly, July 2011; The Human Condition, Paul Christensen, in Texas Books in Review. Summer 2011; Devil's Kitchen, Clark Lohr, in Tucson Weekly, September 2011; Flies, Michael Dickman, in Word Riot, September 2011; The Network, Jena Osman, in Sugar House Review, October 2011; Sweeney, Robert Julyan, in Tucson Weekly, October 2011; My Town, Margaret Randall, in Southwestern American Literature, Fall 2011; The Last Usable Hour, Deborah Landau, in Rain Taxi, November 2011; From This Wicked Patch of Dust, Sergio Troncoso, in Tucson Weekly, December 2011; Space, in Chains, Laura Kasischke, in Rattle, January 2012; Bad Daughter, Sarah Gorham, in Rain Taxi. March 2012; The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold, Kate Bernheimer, in The Colorado Review, March 2012; Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, Grace Dillon, in Tucson Weekly, April 2012; Western Avenue and Other Fictions, Fred Arroyo, in Tucson Weekly. May 2012; Army Cats, Tom Sleigh, forthcoming in Pleiades June 2012.

Daniel Berger's Recent Poetry Publications

Daniel Berger, new incoming poet to our MFA program, has recently published "What Winter is," in Mosaic 51; "First Snow," in Matchbox Magazine, 6th issue; and "Ash" and "My Grandmother's Angels," in Arroyo, issue 5.

Natalie Scenters-Zapico Publishing Poetry

Natalie Scenters-Zapico has been publishing her poetry, including: "His Taste," in Caper Literary Journal, Fall 2010; "Guerrero Pears," in The Acentos Review, Spring 2011; "Succulence," in the Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2011 Vol. 11 No. 2; "How Borders Are Built," in The Minnesota Review, Fall 2011 Issue 77; "After I Read Your Obituary," in Cura: A Magazine of Art and Action, Spring 2012 Issue 5; "I Light The House on Fire and Lie Down" and "A Torero's Daughter is Killed in La Plaza de Toros, Juarez," in Cream City Review, Spring 2012 Issue 36.1; "Dear Angel," and "La Mariscal," in Palabra, forthcoming; and "Bibbed in Paisley He Reads Zizek Instead," in The Believer, forthcoming.

Suzanne Richardson keeps on publishing and winning awards

Suzanne Richardson's essay "Oh, Niagara!" won the 2012 nonfiction prize at Ohio State University's Literary Magazine, The Journal. The nonfiction contest was judged by Sonya Huber. The write up is here:

http://thejournalmag.org/archives/2045

She also is having her nonfiction "Throw it Up," published in New Ohio Review, Winter 2011 Issue 11, and "Meredith is Missing," in the New Haven Review, June 2012.

Her poems, "The Curse" and "The Cursed," were published in PANK Magazine, May 2012.

Her fiction, "Nouvelle Vague," was published in Front Porch, Spring 2012; "In His Grandfather's House," in High Desert Journal, Summer 2012; and "Yard Dogs," in Southern Humanities Review, forthcoming.

Greg Martin publications and award

Four of Greg Martin's essays were recently published: “Two True Stories About Breathing” (essay) Kenyon Review Online, August 2010; “A Memoir is a Reckoning” (craft essay) The Writer, September 2010; “The Great Bewilderment” (essay) The Sun, March 2011; and "Brittany's Choice: A ten-year-old girl refuses life-sustaining surgery" (literary journalism) Witness, Spring 2012. Also, his memoir: Stories for Boys, will be published by Hawthorne Books and Literary Arts, forthcoming October 2012.

Greg also received the Federal Assistance Award: The U.S. Embassy Speaker Series, October 2010 (U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassy, Madrid, Spain). Award sponsored honorarium and travel for a series of invited lectures and readings at universities in Madrid, Alcalá de Henares, Bilbao and Vitoria-Basteiz, Spain, including the Keynote address at The American Literary West International Conference, The University of the Basque Country.

Justin St. Germain's story will be published by UNM Press

Justin St. Germain had his story, "The Last Day of the Boom," accepted for the anthology: New Stories from the Southwest volume 2, to be published by UNM press.

Adam Nunez & Bonnie Arning: MFA publications and awards

Adam Nunez had his poetry published in the Connecticut Review, Fall 2011 and LUMINA, Fall 2010. He also had a review published in Pleiades, Winter 2011. He also published a chap book, with associated reading series: Ghosts and Projectors, Spring 2012. Adam also received 2nd place in The Atlantic's Student Writing Contest, October 2009, the Patricia Clark Smith Scholarship in Creative Writing, Spring 2011, and the Outstanding TA Award, Spring 2011. Adam was the Poetry Co-Editor for BMR, 2010-2011, and will have BA/MD GAship 2012.

Bonnie Arning will publish her poetery, "Lost Body," in Cream City Review, forthcoming fall 2012; and her fiction, "Bodies of Water," in Gargoyle Magazine, forthcoming fall 2012.

Jesse Alemán named endowed faculty chair for Bread Loaf School of English

Dr. Jesse Alemán was recently awarded the Ruth and Lillian Marino endowed faculty chair for Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf Summer Graduate School of English. Named chairs represent endowments given to the Bread Loaf School of English by those who held it dear; the endowments are a major honor awarded to different faculty members across the four Bread Loaf campuses (Ripton, Vermont; Ashville, North Carolina; Oxford, UK; and Santa Fe, New Mexico) each year in recognition of excellence in teaching. The Ruth and Lillian Marino chair was established by Ruth and Lillian Marino, sisters and Bread Loaf graduates, who left the largest gift in Bread Loaf’s history. The fund has supported the salaries of many great Bread Loaf professors over the years, and this year, Bread Loaf awarded the Ruth and Lillian Marino Chair to Dr. Jesse Alemán. One student wrote, “Dr. Jesse Alemán is fantastic… the best professor I’ve had in three years of Bread Loaf. He’s dynamic, brilliant, caring, fun, fair and just wonderful!” In honor of the award, Dr. Alemán received a miniature Adirondack chair from Vermont, plus recognition of his teaching excellence at the annual Bread Loaf awards ceremony.

The Bread Loaf School of English is a summer residential graduate program of Middlebury College, providing education in British, American, and world literatures. The program offers Master of Arts and Master of Letters degrees in English and draws faculty from leading institutions to cultivate a diverse and dynamic learning community that fosters innovative, culturally responsive thinking, teaching, and professional development. Dr. Alemán has been a Bread Loaf summer graduate faculty member for six years, teaching courses on nineteenth-century American renaissance, the American gothic, and southwestern literature and film.

Gail Houston gives address at “The Other Dickens Conference,” in Portsmouth, England

On July 9, 2012, Professor Gail Turley Houston gave a plenary address at “The Other Dickens Conference,” sponsored by the University of Portsmouth in Portsmouth, England, where Dickens was born 200 years ago. Professor Houston spoke about her research on how the Victorian radical press viewed Dickens. Houston’s research on radical newspapers suggests that literature was as important to the radical movement as were political texts.
Her research on newspapers like The Northern Star, The Champion and Weekly Herald, and The Charter suggests that the radical press viewed Dickens as one of a handful of writers who brought a revolution to writing: a.) in terms of literally revolting against the contemporary writing style and b.) in terms of the content of the writing, which was considered politically revolutionary. Part of that revolution was to put the lower and lower middle-class at the center of the novel. As one radical journalist wrote, Dickens’s novels had made it possible to
“enlarg[e]” the “public sympathies” and to picture the “neglected bastard,” the “penniless poor,” and the “thin-dieted asylums,” cheap schools, prisons, and union workhouses.
The Northern Star points out a major historical shift because just “a few years ago the reading world was held captive by the magic pen” of Sir Walter Scott who limned the “chivalric doings and unmerited misfortunes or fictitious sorrows of gallant knights and ladies fair.” But “All this is changed” because “Charles Dickens and others like him have effected a revolution in novel writing.” As the journalist notes, “It is the many, not the few, who now form the materials from which are quarried the heroes and heroines of fiction” (“Reviews” The Northern Star and National Trades’ Journal 11 Jan 1845 issue 374).. To whom do the people “owe” a “deep debt of gratitude” for this change? Says the Northern Star, “to the William Howitt’s [and] . . . the Charles Dickens’ . . . of the ‘glorious republic of letters.’”
In 1846 The Northern Star describes Chartist T. Cooper’s response to the statement that, “The men of intellect and heart—Charles Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, Eugene Sue, Thomas Cooper, and others” have given “free utterance to the aspirations and the thoughts that vibrate in the minds of the many” regarding the “sufferings endured by their fellow men.” Reiterating the idea that a new kind of writer made political change possible in England, Cooper comments, “There was now a literature that made the people think for themselves.” In conclusion and as a sign of that literature, Cooper testifies that though he himself was a “despised Chartist” when he “came from prison, Douglas Jerrold and C. Dickens were the first to take him by the hand.”