Ruth Salvaggio Lecture: Trash, Old Women, Angels, Poems: Promising Figures for Disaster Poetics

Dr. Ruth Salvaggio will give a talk titled "Trash, Old Women, Angels, Poems: Promising Figures for Disaster Poetics" on Tuesday, March 5th at 12:30pm in SUB Acoma A&B.

Ruth Salvaggio is the author of several books on poetry and feminist studies, most recently Hearing Sappho in New Orleans: The Call of Poetry from Congo Square to the 9th Ward. A native of the New Orleans 9th Ward, she has written on the imperatives of poetry in times of disaster—before, within, and beyond Katrina. In this talk, Professor Salvaggio ponders the fate and functions of some unanticipated yet promising poetic figures who continue to arise at scenes of disaster in our increasingly trashed environments.

Professor Salvaggio taught for over a decade in the American Studies Department here at UNM, and she is currently Professor of English and American Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

The talk is free and open to public, and her recent book will be available for purchase.

Caleb Smith passes

Warren Smith and our own Dr. Patricia Smith's son Caleb passed away of complications from an illness.

Sharon Warner remembers him this way: "He was such a fine young man, a librarian at Columbia, and briefly famous for his blog on walking all the streets of Manhattan. http://www.newyorkcitywalk.com/html/html/about.html . He was written up in the New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/03/050103ta_talk_mcgrath and elsewhere. Pat was so proud of him." He is also survived by his brother Josh.

For some interesting information about Caleb, and his work at Columbia University, please see: http://www.unmalumni.com/caleb-smith.html .

The Department will be officially dedicating the Patricia Clark Smith and Hector Torres Department Memorial Lounge on April 22, 2013.

Faculty and Graduate Student November 2012 Appearances

Jesse Alemán. “Rebel: The Screening of Loreta Janeta Velazquez.” American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nov 15-18.

Jesse Alemán. “Days of the (Un)Dead: Vampires, Zombies, and Other Horrifying Forms of Chicano/a Identity in Film.” El Centro de la Raza Brown Bag Series, University of New Mexico. November.

Marissa Greenberg. “Neuvomexicano Shakespeare: The Case of The Merchant of Santa Fe.” American Society for Theatre Research, Nashville, TN. November 1-4.

Natalie Kubasek. “Teatro on the Border: Re-Figuring Teatro Campesino as Transnational Avant-Garde.” Midwest Modern Language Association, Cincinnati OH. November 8-11.

Greg Martin. Readings from Stories for Boys. University of New Mexico. November 8.

Kathleen Washburn. “Lili’uokalani's Indigenous Modernity.” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Research Triangle Park, NM. November 11.

Julie Williams. “Access for All? The New Nature Writing of Lucia Perillo,” Western Literature Association, Lubbock TX. November 7-10.

Mellisa Huffman wins A&S Teaching Award!

Many congratulations to Mellisa Huffmann, who just won the College of Arts & Sciences TA Teaching Award. This speaks highly of her and the RWPW Program. We're so proud of you, Mellisa! -- Gail Turley Houston

Danny Bogert passes

I’m deeply saddened to inform the English graduate student community of the passing of Daniel J. Bogert. For those of you who weren’t fortunate enough to meet Danny during his time at UNM, he was a student in the Rhetoric and Writing program who dedicated his life and research to Hawaiian language, culture, and sovereignty. Danny passed away in Honolulu on January 18th due to injuries that he suffered in a motorcycle accident in early January.   -- Anna V. Knutson

Many of you will remember Danny Bogert as a dedicated Rhetoric & Writing graduate student. He was only with us for a year and then decided to go back to his beloved Hawaii. We were lucky to know this extraordinary young man. He will be greatly missed.
 -- Gail Turley Houston

Carmen Nocentelli's Empires of Love published this month!

Carmen Nocentelli's Empires of Love: Europe, Asia, and the Making of Early Modern Identity was released earlier this month by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Drawing on a wide range of sources in multiple languages, the book charts the overlapping construction of race and sexuality from the early sixteenth through the late seventeenth centuries, arguing that the encounter with Asia contributed to the development of Western racial discourse while also shaping European ideals of erotic reciprocity and monogamous affection. A book presentation is scheduled for Wednesday 20 February at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, 12:00 to 1:00 pm.

October Blog

Our Graduate students and Faculty have been very busy this past Autumn. Please see below for a brief list of their accomplishments.

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, Boulder, CO. October 11-13
Katherine Alexander. Session Chair, The Brontë Sisters
Katherine Alexander. “Catherine Earnshaw's Unexpected Gift? Love, Possession, and Dispossession on the Moors.”
Annarose Fitzgerald. “Gentle Jesus and the Sauce Tureen: Naming the Divine in Mina Loy’s ‘Ova’ Poems.”
Marcella Garvey. “Marriage and the Crisis of Faith in Emily Brontë’s WutheringHeights.”
Feroza Framji Jussawalla. Session Chair, Comparative and Non-Western Critical Approaches to Non-European Literatures
Doaa Abdel Hamid Omran Mohamed. “Occidentalism as Ambivalence: A Modern Understanding of Islam.”
Erin Woltkamp. “Subversive Gestures: Hands as Tools for Rebellion in Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Julie Williams. “Home Sweet (Dirty) Home: Discourses of Disease in Native American Boarding School Literature.”
Ying Xu. “A Chinese Serpent Prince or a Chinese Empress: Transculturation and Wong Chin Foo's Reconstruction of Chinese Women in Late Nineteenth-Century America.”

Modernist Studies Association, Las Vegas, NV. October 18-2
Matt Hofer. Panel Organizer, The New American Poetry and the West.
Matt Hofer. “ ‘Few / People are lost as I am’: Ed Dorn in the Great Basin-Plateau.” This work will also appear in his forthcoming expanded edition of Ed Dorn and Leroy Lucas's The Shoshoneans (UNM Press, fall 2013).
Matt Hofer. Panel Chair, Learning from Detroit.
Daniel Worden. Organizer of and Participant on the “Postmodern/Postwar: After the New Modernist Studies” Roundtable.

Greg Martin

Panel Discussion, The Lay of the Land: Memoir and Landscape; Readings from Stories for Boys. Montana Festival of the Book Missoula, MT. October 5.
Readings from Stories for Boys. Powell’s Books, Portland OR. October 11.
Readings from Stories for Boys with Kambri Crews; Workshop, Breaking the Conventions of Memoir: the Art of Speculation; Panel, One Big Happy Queer Family. Wordstock Book Festival, Portland, OR. October 13-14.
Readings from Stories for Boys. Village Books, Bellingham, WA. October 15.
Readings from Stories for Boys. Seattle Public Library, Seattle, WA. October 16.
Readings from Stories for Boys in conjunction with UMOCA’s exhibit Battleground States. Utah Book Festival, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. October 17.

Jason Bengtson. “Digital Scavenger Hunt” and “Smart Links” Tech Expos, and “Are We Poised For a Digital Biblioclasm?” Round Table. South Central Chapter of the Medical Library Association Conference, Lubbock, TX. October 13-17.

Justin Falk-Gee. “Deconstructing Differences in the Classroom.” The TYCA Southwest Conference, Las Cruces, NM. October 25-27.

Carmen Nocentelli. panel presentation, CL/CS Roundtable discussion, “What is Desire?” University of New Mexico. October 25.

Joe Serio. “Is What We See What We Get? Flip Wilson and the Civil Rights Movement.” 2nd Annual Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference: Mic Check: Resistance and Revolution, New York. October 26.