National Poetry Month — April is National Poetry Month, so it seems very fitting to me that Michelle Cahill is joining the English Department for the month of April. Michelle is a highly regraded poet from Australia and a regular instructor for the Kingston Writing School in London. During her month here, she is teaching an Advanced Creative Writing course. She will also be giving a reading on Tuesday, April 12, at 4:00 p.m. in the Dale Halton Reading Room of the Atkins Library.
By joining our department as a visiting poet, Michelle is adding her name to an already impressive list of poets who have associations with our English Department. Among our current creative writing faculty members are a cluster of published poets, including Chris Davis, Allison Hutchcraft, and Lance Phillips. The rest of our creative writing faculty members also help with the teaching of poetry writing. These faculty members include Bryn Chancellor, Beth Gargano, Aaron Gwyn, Paula Martinac, and Coleen Muir.
Over the history of our English Department, many published poets have contributed to our creative writing program. This list includes Peter Blair, Lucinda Grey, and Robert Grey. It is also worth noting that for many years our department was the home to The Southern Poetry Review.
For more information about National Poetry Month, please click on the following link: https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/home
Kudos— As you know, I like to use my Monday Missives to share news about recent accomplishments by members of our department. Here is the latest news:
Balaka Basu recently has an article titled “Virgilian Fandom in the Renaissance” published in Transformative Works and Cultures; the essay appeared in a special issue on “The Classical Canon and/as Transformative Work.”
Paula Connolly recently learned that the second chapter of her book Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790-2010 (Iowa UP, 2013) on Confederate Children’s Literature—“Slavery Debates for Children: 1830-1865: Proslavery Responses”—has been reprinted in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism.
Jen Munroe participated in the “Histories of Sustainability” seminar at the Shakespeare Association of America conference in New Orleans, LA (Mar 23-27). Her paper was titled “Recipes as Alernative Histories of Sustainability.” At that conference she also presented at the Digital Humanities Salon about her ongoing ,work on a database for early modern recipe transcription with the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective. Jen also presented a paper titled “The Dangers of ‘Speaking for’: Violence against Women and Nonhumans in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus” as the Renaissance Society of America Conference in Boston (March 31-Apring 2).
Ralf Thiede recently delivered a paper at the SouthEastern Conference on Linguistics in New Orleans. His paper was on the “Cognitive Linguistics and Literature,” describing how authors can intentionally distribute the reader’s processing load across cognitive domains that interface with language. Ralf is also serving as SECOL’s vice president and will assume the presidency a year from now.
Heather Blain Vorhies recently presented “Are We Splitting Hairs to Our Detriment? Approaches to Graduate Genre Instruction in the Writing Center” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Houston, Texas.
Upcoming Events and Deadlines— Here are some dates to keep in mind:
April 8 — The First Annual Transcribathon event will take place this Friday (April 8) from 10:00 to 3:00 in the Student Union 340 C-F. This event will be hosted by our own students–the Early Modern Paleography Society. At the event participants will be working collectively to transcribe an entire manuscript recipe book. Everyone is invited and no experience is necessary.
April 12 — Visiting poet Michelle Cahill will give a reading on Tuesday, April 12, at 4:00 p.m. in the Dale Halton Reading Room of the Atkins Library.
April 14 — The English Department is sponsoring a screening of F. W. Murnau’s classic silent film Nosferatu in Storrs 110, on Thursday, April 14, at 6:30. Ethan Uslan will provide “live” piano accompaniment. Sam Shapiro will introduce the film and Murnau.
Quirky Quiz Question — The silent film Nosferatu is based on a novel by Bram Stoker. Does anybody remember the title of this novel?Monday Missive