Q&A with English Work-Study Student Tori Kerr

Earlier this week, I received the following email:

"Dear Employers," it reads. "As we plan for National Student Employment Week (April 9 - 13, 2012) we'd like to hear what your office has done in the past to recognize your student employees. We'll organize and publish what we learn."

Who knew there was such a thing as National Student Employment Week? Turns out it's sponsored by the National Student Employment Association, "a non-profit association of professionals involved with programs for students who work while attending college."

What would be more fitting, we thought, than to feature our two wonderful work-study students in English this year? Every semester, the English department employs a couple of students, ideally majors, to work with office secretary Linda Terry and manager Constance Kibler. So, in looking forward to the week of April 9, we offer this profile.

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English work-study student Tori Kerr

Meet Tori Kerr, a sophomore English major and creative writing minor from Virginia Beach, Virginia, who is one of this year's two work-study students. "I may be from Virginia, which is geographically close to DC, but my beach town is vastly different than the urban environment here," Tori writes.

 

Did you know about National Student Employment Week? How do you feel about being recognized? 

I actually did not know about National Student Employment Week!  I think it’s wonderful to be recognized.  I think people sometimes forget that the life of a college student is not all parties and all-nighters.

What's the best thing about working in the English department?
The best part of working in the English Department is the wonderful conversations I get to have with witty and intelligent people.  There’s definitely a sense of community among the English-loving folk.

What's the oddest thing you've been asked to do or the oddest phone call you've answered?

The oddest phone call I’ve received was from Pakistan.  A man called inquiring about paperwork for international students so his son could apply.  It was clear that he really cared about sending his son to an American school to study English. 

On a more serious note: How does work-study fit into your experience at GW? What are your thoughts about affording college--not necessarily GW specifically, but private colleges and universities generally? Students elsewhere (in California, for example) have been protesting student debt. Are you and your friends also concerned about student debt?
 Student debt is definitely a looming shadow on my college career, as it is for most students.  GW, though often called “America’s most expensive college”, has been extremely helpful financially.  Work-study is great, not only because of the obvious monetary compensation, but because it allows me a few hours every week to separate myself from the stressful, competitive side of scholarship.  While I may be working on a paper, I’m not surrounded by other students (as I might be in Gelman), which creates a clearer intellectual atmosphere—at least, for me.
 
Are there particular courses/professors/areas of literary or cultural study that you've particularly enjoyed at GW?
It’s quite difficult to discern specific aspects of GW academia that have impacted me—I’m a product of all my Creative Writing and English Literature professors.  What I can specify is the impact of a Women’s Studies course I took last year, with Bonnie Morris.  I was, admittedly, one who scoffed at the idea of “women’s studies”, but that was only because I was so ignorant of the subject.  It was an eye-opening experience not just as a woman but as a scholar and writer.  The feminist lens is hardly a narrow, radical, bra-burning perspective of the world, but one that is crucial to understanding society then and now.  I recommend women’s studies to everyone and anyone—especially boys.

Aryeh Lev Stollman Kicks Off Jewish Literature Live 2012

 

Dr. Aryeh Lev Stollman, who kicks off this year's Jewish Literature Live readings, is one of those remarkable polymaths: an award-winning fiction writer whose "day job" is as a neuroradiologist at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. 

 

His first novel, From the Far Euphrates, was an LA Times Book Review Recommended Book of the Year, winner of a Wilbur Award, a Lambda Award, and other recognitions. It has been translated into German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and Hebrew. He is also author of the award-winning novel The Illuminated Soul and the short-story collection The Dialogues of Time and Entropy.  Stollman's story "Love Returns!" (listen to it here) was commissioned by NPR and broadcast in 2008.

 

The Jewish Literature Live readings series is supported by a generous gift by GW alumnus and trustee David Bruce Smith and curated by Prof. Faye Moskowitz, who teaches the course Jewish Literature Live, a unique GW offering in which students meet in an intimate seminar setting with notable Jewish authors of the day.

 

Aryeh Lev Stollman's reading is Thursday, January 26 in Marvin Center 310 at 7 pm. The event is free and open to everyone.

Meet the New Student Bloggers

Kevin Callahan

It's a pleasure to welcome two new student bloggers for English for spring 2012. 

Junior Kevin Callahan,  an English major and journalism minor, is editor of the G.W. Review, one of GW's two literary magazines. Since last fall, he has also been features editor of the GW Cherry Tree yearbook. In his free time, Kevin reports, he plays tennis and "is an avid collector of nutcrackers." He is very excited to be writing for the English Department blog. Welcome, Kevin!

Andrew Mendelson

 Sophomore Andrew Mendelson, who hails "from the mystical land of Connecticut" [Ed's note: his words] is an English major with minors in psychology and creative writing. He enjoys reading Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger, and "the backs of cereal boxes." He also loves music and "all things sports," especially baseball. 

Aside from taking lots of English classes and contributing to this blog, he also periodically updates his own blog, Ironwaffles.

Andrew and Kevin will write about department events, news, and people, including professors, students, and alumni. Please let them know if you have story ideas, or if you have news you'd like to share with the wider GW English community. 

You can find Andrew at amen127@gwmail.gwu.edu. Kevin's email is kevincal@gwmail.gwu.edu.

"Newsweek" Dubs Mallon's Novel "Watergate" One of 12 for 2012

In February, GW English Professor Thomas Mallon's new novel Watergate will be published by Pantheon. (Go here to pre-order your copy.) A historical novel that "conveys the drama and high comedy of the Nixon presidency through the urgent perspectives of seven characters we only thought we knew before now," Watergate is a highly anticipated work--and the first of Prof. Mallon's works to be released simultaneously as an audiobook. It recently made Newsweek magazine's list of 12 books "not to miss" in 2012, a list reprinted by The Daily Beast.

Currently director of the English department's program in creative writing, Prof. Mallon will spend the spring 2012 semester at Davidson College, where he will be the visiting McGee Professor of Creative Writing.

New Lounge Near Completion

Jenny Moore Writer-in-Residence Tim Johnson relaxes in the new lounge.

The renovations of the English Department lounge are almost complete. You've got to love a makeover--care of the wonderful Laura Van Biber and Elise Katzif Walker, MA students in Interior Design and members of Project George--that includes mod touches such as knitted "poofs" and Lucite chairs. There's also the amazing wall--not shown in this photo--covered in HudsonPaint chalkboard paint and colorful chalk for messages, doodles, and inspiration.

Next up: a few minor repairs, installation of a couple of wall magazine racks, and the hanging of several pictures, including a print of a circa-1940 Works Progress Administration (WPA) poster by the artist Arlington Gregg. Are you a member?

Look for an announcement soon of our lounge dedication party.

Renee Calarco's Kicks Off Theater J's "Locally Grown" Initiative

The Religion Thing, a world premiere comedy by GW playwriting professor Renee Calarco, kicks off Theater J's "Locally Grown: Community Supported Art/From Our Own Garden" Initiative. In it, according to Theater J,

Mo and Brian are a picture-perfect DC couple: they’re smart, they’re witty, and they have a beautifully remodeled kitchen. But when Mo’s best friend Patti announces she’s found Jesus and is putting her own career on hold, Mo must take a closer look at the harder truths surrounding her own marriage. A brand new comedy about relationships, faith and the fine line between compromise and regret.

The Religion Thing runs through January 29 at the Theater, which is in the Jewish Community Center at 16th and Q Streets, NW. Theater J has special pay-what-you-can performances, and offers weeknight tickets at a discount to theatergoers 35 and younger.  While you're there, check out the Locally Grown festival, which runs through February.

Students reading this might be interested in Prof. Calarco's "Dramatic Writing" course, ENGL 2250.80, which meets this semester (spring 2012) on Mondays from 3:30-6 p.m. (ENGL 1210, Introduction to Creative Writing, is a prerequisite.) There are still spaces available!

Prof. McRuer Makes a "Top-10 Most Provocative" List--of Books, That Is

Just in time for Christmas or Hanukkah: Sex and Disability, a collection of essays co-edited by Prof. Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow, a PhD student at UC Berkeley, will be published by Duke University Press on December 22. And it's already making Top 10 lists!

Here, DailyLoafing's Shawn Alff calls it one of the "10 most provocative books out this December."

According to the publisher,

The title of this collection of essays, Sex and Disability, unites two terms that the popular imagination often regards as incongruous. The major texts in sexuality studies, including queer theory, rarely mention disability, and foundational texts in disability studies do not discuss sex in much detail. What if "sex" and "disability" were understood as intimately related concepts? And what if disabled people were seen as both subjects and objects of a range of erotic desires and practices? These are among the questions that this collection's contributors engage. From multiple perspectives—including literary analysis, ethnography, and autobiography—they consider how sex and disability come together and how disabled people negotiate sex and sexual identities in ableist and heteronormative culture. Queering disability studies, while also expanding the purview of queer and sexuality studies, these essays shake up notions about who and what is sexy and sexualizable, what counts as sex, and what desire is. At the same time, they challenge conceptions of disability in the dominant culture, queer studies, and disability studies.

Contributors include Prof. McRuer and GW University Writing Professor Abby L. Wilkerson.

Tom Mallon on Christopher Hitchens

A portrait by Jeff Singer. (Click through for more about the photographer's memory of the shoot.)

A year ago this week—at which point he’d been thinned by chemotherapy but not yet harrowed with radiation—a few of us sat with Christopher Hitchens around his dining-room table, trying to come up with a title for the essay collection he had scheduled for publication.  The question hovering over us, of course, was whether or not Hitch would still be here to see the book appear, but we set that aside and went merrily to work.  The evening proved inconclusive, and I can see from a search of my e-mail files that we were still at it the next day.  I wrote to him:

How about Persuasion?  It's what you've engaged in all your life.

It's got its Jane Austen echo--a certain ironic delicacy--and seems somehow to combine the political and literary sides of you.  It also seems to suggest the art involved in what you do (the gentle art of making enemies, etc.).  And it makes the book into a single entity, rather than a collection of items.

He wrote back, with one of our usual joke-salutations:

angelface and dream-rabbit,

this is thought, despite its near-uncanny percipience, to be just a shade genteel. can you continue to cudgel?

love,

C

The collection appeared—and he was here to see it—as Arguably.  As titles go, it’s not bad, but when I consider it now, it seems faintly misleading.  It suggests arguments undertaken just because they can be made.  Hitch did love the pleasures of argument—why shouldn’t he?  he was argument’s Michael Jordan—but for all that, I never, not once, saw him argue a point merely to display his wit (incomparable) or to hear his own voice (soft and seductive).  His beliefs were always authentic, passionate, and wholly sincere; he regarded cynicism as the most boring form of naivete.

Our country and city have suffered a terrible loss.  Christopher Hitchens was a wonderful friend, a brave man, and (I can now hear him saying “if you insist”) a great soul.

New Course on Asian American Cultural Studies for Spring 2012

Spring 2012 is the first semester in which English will be offering ENGL 3965, a new topics course in Asian American Cultural Studies. Next semester, Prof. Patty Chu--known to many majors as our Director of Undergraduate Advising (she probably signed you up for the major!)--will be teaching the inaugural course under this new rubric. 

As you'll see below, "Globalization and Its Discontents" has students reading works by a wide range of Asian American authors, from Korean American novelist Chang-Rae Lee to Iranian-French graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, whose award-winning book Persepolis, adopted as a 2007 Academy Award-winning animated film of the same name. Here's a fuller description:

English 3926.10 Globalization and Its Discontents: Asian American Cultural Studies

Tu-Th 2:20-3:30 (67249)

This course examines the cultural legacies of Asian North Americans from China, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, India, Iran, and the Philippines.  We’ll discuss race and identity, orientalism and neocolonialism in the U.S.; adopted, queer, and colonial subjects; trauma, memory, and racial melancholy; real and imaginary homelands; and the ongoing project of inventing Asian American literature.  Representative texts:  The Inheritance of Loss, M. Butterfly,  The Namesake, Native Speaker, Persepolis.  Fulfills the theory/culture studies or the minority/postcolonial requirement for the English major.

"Jewish Literature Live" Authors Announced for 2012

Spring 2012 will mark the fourth iteration of Jewish Literature Live, the unique course in which students read the works by writers who then visit their classroom for an intimate discussion. As before, each author visiting campus will give a free public reading. 


This year, the inimitable Prof. Faye Moskowitz has assembled a line-up of writers that includes the author a 1965 bestseller (Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase) as well as younger writers of a 2010 novel about Russian-Jewish immigrants in Connecticut (Nadia Kalman's funny The Cosmopolitans).  


Mark your calendars now for these public readings, and check in to our department calendar for updates about the times and locations of talks. One again, Jewish Literature Live at GW is generously supported by English department alumnus David Bruce Smith.


Thursday, Jan 26, Aryeh Lev Stollman, author of The Far Euphrates

Thursday, Feb 9, Nadia Kalman, author of The Cosmopolitans

Thursday, March 1, Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love

Thursday, March 22, Pearl Abraham, author of The Romance Reader

Tuesday, April 10 Erica Jong, author of Fear of Flying

Tuesday, April 24, Bel Kaufman, author of Up the Down Staircase

"What does it do?": A Student's Tribute to His Professor

Recently we blogged about the news that RateMyProfessors.com may be a relatively reliable indication of students' assessments of their professors, contrary to what some of us thought.

Here is a teaching"assessment" of the old-fashioned sort. The subject is Assistant Prof. H.G. Carrillo. The author is senior Joe Mancinik, who officially closes out this semester as student blogger.

On any given afternoon turn a corner on the seventh floor of Rome Hall and you'll probably hear the question, at once so terrifying to creative writing majors everywhere, pronounced with a heavy emphasis on the last syllable, "What does it do?" Now, granted, you may not know what "it" is, or what it might be doing (it is probably not doing much), but you will have the feeling that it needs to do much more; and you would be right.

If you happen to turn that corner and peak into the office from which this terrifying verb is emanating you'll likely see a shivering form seated in a chair in the center of the room. Fingernails digging into the chair's arms, the figure dodges books flung from shelves upon which they were formerly clinging. A man is seated at a computer shoved against the wall. His desk is overflowing with books steepled in the center, making librarians everywhere cringe. Wearing blue jeans, a long-sleeve white shirt, and impeccably-shined black boots, the man is thumbing through a sheaf of papers. Like cigarette ash the leftover pages drift to the floor. Pay attention; blink a few times. Be a good observer, as Ernest Hemingway once admonished. For amidst this swirling elixir of agony, books, and manuscripts magic is occurring. To have sat in this chair, as the author has on many occasions, leaves one panting both in exasperation and anticipation, as the man digresses from comments on the style of Swann's Way, a viral video on YouTube, the role of the paragraph break in narrative, the brilliance of John Updike, the charm of Flannery O'Connor's racist characters, and the latest episode of Glee. Topics to be avoided are the works of Jane Austen, paragraph breaks in the narrative, and the latest episode of Glee. 

The man, of course, is Professor Hache (pronounced as "H" in Spanish) Carrillo. What he asks of young writers that is at first so dreaded to the novice is the most important question for all of us: What is your story doing? How is your story working within the framework you have created? Creation, that is what he is asking of his tutelage. Wilted roses mean something much more to him if that is the image the writer decides upon. Books are not flung from his shelves in anger. They are maps. Find your way. Have a voice! As with all the most magical teachers he gives very few few guided suggestions. And he is a magician. And a teacher. And a writer, escritor. (To see how these multiple forms can exist--teacher, writer, language--in one form, within, read Hache's beautiful debut novel Loosing My Espanish)

Laughing with fellow author Terry McMillan

So come prepared to defend your work. He asks nothing less. I could dwell on the number of times he has said that one word, that one phrase (The work is bigger than us, he says softly, as I hold the phone between my legs watching the little red slivers break out on my knuckles), which turned me back from whatever abyss I was staring into. It is not exaggeration to say that he has taught me everything I know about writing, by first teaching me everything that I didn't know. Did I do all of this for nothing? he recalls of his own formative experiences as a writer, but the message is unmistakable.

So how can I ever describe my teacher, my friend, my inspiration? What does it do? 

I just did.

- By Joe Mancink

Dec. 8 Reading by Randall Kenan to Conclude Fall Jenny McKean Moore Series

Writer Randall Kenan

Join the English Department in welcoming Randall Kenan, the last speaker in this fall's Jenny McKean Moore readings series. Kenan will read from his work on Thursday, Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m. in the Marvin Center, Room 310. 

Kenan’s fiction includes the novel A VISITATION OF SPIRITS and the short-story collection LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEAD.  He is also the author of several works of nonfiction.  A highly decorate writer, Kenan is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Sherwood Anderson Award, the John Dos Passos Award, and was the 1997 Rome Prize winner from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was awarded the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2005.

Kenan is Associate Professor of English at UNC, Chapel Hill. His reading is free and open to the public.

Jane Shore Has a Perfect RMP Score!

RateMyProfessors can be a delicate subject for faculty members, who often mistrust and fear it the way business owners mistrust and fear Yelp! ("The food was awesome!" "The food was inedible!" "Awesome!" "Inedible!").

But according to an interesting piece in The Hatchet, the site ranking system seems to produce results that roughly mesh with evaluations conducted the old-fashioned way. Except, of course, for the chili peppers, which are a RateMyProfessors hallmark.

We know that RateMyProfessors has is getting something right, though, because as the Hatchet piece reveals, Jane Shore has perfect scores on the site! By my wholly non-scientific reckoning, this either means that:

1. Jane Shore's students love her.
2. Jane Shore's students feel passionately enough about her teaching to go to RateMyProfessor.
3. All of the above.

If you're an English major, do you use RMP to record your thoughts about English courses? To award chili peppers? Do you trust RMP as a guide to choosing courses from semester to semester?

Creative Writing Presents Its Annual Fall Student Reading

T. S. Eliot grabs the open mic to read

the swingin’est “Waste Land” ever

Lenthall House (606 21st Street, b/t F&G) 

Thursday, Dec. 1 at 7:30 p.m.

Refreshments will be served. 

Sign up for a slot (5 mins.) on the sheet in the English department office (Rome 760).  Poets, prose writers, dramatists, screenwriters all welcome!

"Tempest" Debate: A Guest Post by English Major Tori Kerr

Students from Prof. Huang's and Prof. Dugan's Shakespeare classes debated The Tempest last week.

With the Republican debates taking up most of media’s attention in the month of November,  it seems fitting that GW should have its own debate—only,  this one wasn’t political. Students from both Prof. Holly Dugan’s and Prof. Alexander Huang’s Shakespeare classes took to the stage in a debate concerning the protagonist of The Tempest—the topic was: “Resolved that Prospero genuinely pardons his foes and is a model of true forgiveness and reconciliation.”  Does he truly forgive his enemies or is it all an act? Four students from each class formed arguments complete with opening statements,  rebuttals,  and closing remarks. 

I entered the event with my own opinion,  which was that Prospero was certainly no model for forgiveness. I must admit,  however,  that the negative team had an advantage in the wording of the prompt: can a debator argue that any person,  not only Prospero,  is a model of “true” forgiveness?  As the negative team pointed out,  that would be like arguing that Prospero is Christlike; even on the cross,  Jesus pardoned his enemies.  It was this tricky word “true” that the negative team utilized in order to formulate their arugment.  

I knew the debate would get heated among the participants,  but I didn’t expect to feel so excited just as an audience member. The argument quickly transformed from animated to passionate and then to fiery.  Members of the opposing teams talked over each other,  threw out sassy rebuttals and even waved fingers in the air to punctuate their speeches. While this sort of frenzy might not be acceptable for the GW Mock Trial team,  state courtrooms,  or the Republican presidential candidates,  it made for a surprisingly exciting debate on The Tempest. I didn’t expect to enjoy the debate as much as I did.  The debators’ energy clearly showed that Shakespeare’s plays were not written for only 16th century audiences—his themes are timeless. Revenge and forgiveness are topics for debate that will endure as long as humans (and politcal campaigns) do.

Graduate Teaching Assistant Molly Lewis for Prof. Huang's class was also impressed by both teams' performance. She wrote: 

"The impassioned debaters were allowed an opening and an additional statement (both followed by cross examinations by the opposing team), as well as a rebuttal at the end of the debate. These vibrant “back and forth”s elicited strong reactions from their audience members, who eventually had to vote for which debate team they agreed with. In the end, though, many actually abstained from voting, a true testament to how well both debate teams performed."

 

- Tori Kerr

 

Click HERE for video highlights of the debate.

Books by GW PhDs

Congratulations to Joseph Fisher and Brian Flota on the publication of their co-edited volume The Politics of Post-9/11 Music, which will be available next month from Ashgate.

Seeking to extend discussions of 9/11 music beyond the acts typically associated with the September 11th attacks - U2, Toby Keith, The Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen - this collection interrogates the politics of a variety of post-9/11 music scenes. Contributors add an aural dimension to what has been a visual conceptualization of this important moment in US history by articulating the role that lesser-known contemporary musicians have played - or have refused to play - in constructing a politics of protest in direct response to the trauma inflicted that day. Encouraging new conceptualizations of what constitutes "political music", "The Politics of 9/11 Music" covers topics as diverse as the rise of Internet music distribution, Christian punk rock, rap music in the Obama era, and nostalgia for 1960s political activism.

Joe is currently a Learning Specialist with Disability Support Services at GW; Brian is Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University.

Also recently out from Ashgate: Law, Literature, and the Transmission of Culture in English 1837-1925 by Cathrine O. Frank, which originated as a PhD thesis under the direction of Prof. Jennifer Green-Lewis. Cathrine is Associate Professor, Department of English and Language Studies, at the University of New England.

Focusing on the last will and testament as a legal, literary, and cultural document, Cathrine O. Frank examines fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras alongside actual wills, legal manuals relating to their creation, case law regarding their administration, and contemporary accounts of 'curious wills' in periodicals. Her study begins with the Wills Act of 1837 and poses two basic questions: What picture of Victorian culture and personal subjectivity emerges from competing legal and literary narratives about the will, and how does the shift from realist to modernist representations of the will accentuate a growing divergence between law and literature? Frank's examination of works by Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Samuel Butler, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, and E.M. Forster reveals the shared rhetorical and cultural significance of the will in law and literature while also highlighting the competition between these discourses to structure a social order that emphasized self-determinism yet viewed individuals in relationship to the broader community. Her study contributes to our knowledge of the cultural significance of Victorian wills and creates intellectual bridges between the Victorian and Edwardian periods that will interest scholars from a variety of disciplines who are concerned with the laws, literature, and history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

"And the Bridge Is Love" and More Books

Faye Moskowitz at Politics and Prose on Nov. 13.

Prof. Faye Moskowitz's reading tonight from the recent re-issue of her collection And the Bridge Is Love (Feminist Press) was a huge success. Not only did Faye get a standing-room-only crowd at Politics and Prose, but the store sold every copy of Bridge in stock. Faye read her wonderful piece about a Michigan family seder disrupted  by the smell of something burning. GW English was well represented, with faculty as well as current and former students in attendance. 

Recent books by English faculty on display at the Celebration of Scholarship Nov. 11

The photo above is of the display at last Friday's CCAS Celebration of Scholarship. Pictured here are recent works by Patrick Cook, GW President Steven Knapp (The Predicament of Belief), Tara Wallace, Chris Sten, Alex Huang, Evelyn Schreiber, Thomas Mallon, Jonathan Gil Harris, and Holly Dugan.

Shakespeare @GW English

Friends of GW English know that our community is collegial; what you might not have known is that we also have lots of drama in Rome Hall.

ACT I. Collaboration is a wonderful thing

The Shakespearean International Yearbook Volume 11: Special issue: Placing Michael Neill. Issues of Place in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture is now out. The special issue is edited by GW English professors Jonathan Gil Harris and Alex Huang, and Tom Bishop (University of Auckland, New Zealand), and Graham Bradshaw (who has retired).

 

ACT II. Students Debate The Tempest

Last night (Thursday, Nov. 11) Shakespeare students from two teams culled from Prof. Huang's and Prof. Dugan's classes came to rhetorical blows over the following:

Resolved that Prospero genuinely pardons his foes and is a model of true forgiveness and reconciliation.

We eagerly await news of the outcome.

ACT III. We set Anonymous straight

Graduate students in English and students in Prof. Huang's and Prof. Dugan's Shakespeare classes were treated to a pre-release screening of Roland Emmerich's controversial new film Anonymous on Oct. 25 at the Regal Theatre Gallery Place in downtown DC. "Set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England," the film--with Shakespearean actor Derek Jacobi in the prologue--proposes that the Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere was the author of Shakespeare's plays. Along the way, the film dramatizes "cloak-and-dagger political intrigue, illicit romances in the Royal Court, and the schemes of greedy nobles hungry for the power of the throne were exposed in the most unlikely of places: the London stage." 

As a follow-up, on Nov. 3, students enjoyed a roundtable to discuss the propaganda machine set in action by the film. In attendance were graduate and undergraduate students in English, and Profs. Hsy, Huang, and Dugan. Among the topics discussed were the social expectations and resistance of "geniuses," Hollywood's penchant for "conspiracy" and scandals, and--most importantly--how to set historical facts straight. 

Anonymous calls to mind such films as Miloš Forman and Peter Shaffer's Amadeus. But there is one thing even undergraduates and non-specialist audiences do not buy. The film presented a very unconvincing picture of literary production. In the whole of early modern England, no one other than the Earl could write good poetry,  and "Shakespeare," Jonson,  and Marlowe stumbled over one another to beg (or threaten as the case may be) de Vere for an uninterrupted supply of manuscripts (which acts peculiarly as drugs). The film also misled the audience to assume that no other companies or performance venues mattered in Shakespeare's time. 

The good thing that can come from "Anonymous" is that it can lead people to the real tour-de-force that is James Shapiro's fine book Contested Will, Records of Early English Drama,  Early Modern London Theatres online,  and other vetted sources for further study.

ACT IV: The Korean Tempest

Renowned Korean director and playwright OH Tae-suk visited GW on Nov. 4 to talk about his film version of The Tempest.  Oh's Tempest won the prestigious Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh International Festival this year (August 2011). 

Rachel Hadas Reading Tonight @ 7:30, Marvin Center Amphitheater

"Gay Bombay" Talk Today

Flying High Like a Disco Jalebi: Gay Bombay and Beyond, a talk and reading

Parmesh Shahani, TED and MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow, and author of "Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India" (2008)

Tuesday, November 8,  2-3.30 pm  Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW)

Parmesh Shahani is not your usual academic. He runs a newly formed corporate funded ideas lab that examines the nature of modernity in contemporary India. He also has a parallel life in which he travels all over India as Editor at Large for Verve, India’s leading fashion and lifestyle magazine, and tops lists like 2010 CNN list of “Mumbai’s coolest queers”. In his talk (accompanied by feature and documentary film clips), Parmesh will reflect on the changes taking place on the ground for LBGT people in India, set against the context of the larger national changes that the country is going through. Drawing on his ethnographic research within an online-offline gay community in the city of Bombay, Parmesh will mull over questions of identity, community and the national imagination. He will also read excerpts from his book.

Co-sponsored by GW's English Department and Women's Studies Program.

Lounge news (what else?)

To decorate our new lounge space, English has partnered with Project George's Laura Van Biber and Elise Walker (both MFA candidates in Interior Design at GW). Here's the plan they proposed. It includes seating for 7 people. Laura and Elise also helped us pick out durable, attractive, and inexpensive furniture that will add a bit of color and make the room a bit less institutional. Highlights: wall lighting, a floor lamp, and colorful accent chairs that double as table space.

Furniture, including a new refrigerator for storing lunches, should be arriving next week.

"Evil" Inspires (When Taught by Prof. Carrillo)

Had you taken Prof. Carrillo's class on "Evil," you, too, could have written about Marilyn Manson.

 For this post, I'll just quote at length from GW student Ali Peters, writing in Monday's Hatchet:

It began with Marilyn Manson. One of my first college assignments was to dissect the lyrics to “The Beautiful People.”

For a kid coming from a suburban high school where slapstick poet Billy Collins and artist Salvador Dalí were considered controversial, Manson’s “The Beautiful People” brought education to a whole new level. I was completely out of my league.

Filing through YouTube videos of zombies, women in lacy straight jackets and dental torture devices, I began to wonder: Was this professor serious? It was the first time I had ever heard of shock rock, and as it was chock-full of cryptic one-liners like, “Hate every motherfucker that’s in your way.” I was definitely shocked.

The class was called “Evil.” Looking back, it’s not surprising that the simple, one-word nomenclature in itself prompted so many eager students to register for the course. The professor asked us to call him by his first name, so Hache quickly became the subject of my weekly phone calls home. Evil is where I was introduced to what would be a never-ending slew of ‘ism’s, like Panopticism and other concepts I had never encountered before. Every class was an adventure, whether we were picking apart Manson or debating post-Columbine massacre literature. I was excited and challenged. I finally felt like I had arrived. I was in college.

High praise indeed for Prof. H.G. Carrillo, affectionately known to students by his first initial. Students considering their spring schedules should consider Prof. Carrillo's ENGL 1310, "Critical Readings in English," a course that will focus on the short story and on techniques of literary analysis. The course will be held Mondays and Wednesday at 3:45 p.m.

Prof. Faye Moskowitz Reads Nov. 2 (Wednesday)

Beacon Press, 1993

The Feminist Press, 2011

  



















The English Department cordially invites you to join us for a celebration of Prof. Faye Moskowtiz's literary gem And the Bridge Is Love, a book of essays originally published in 1993 by Beacon Press and recently reissued by The Feminist Press. Prof. Moskowitz will be reading from her book of essays--at turns funny and tragic--in the Marvin Center 402 on Wednesday, November 2, at 5 p.m.

Hearing Faye read her own prose--always so felt, and yet always so beautifully shaped and controlled--will be a real treat for all of us. The reading is part of the "Jenny 2" series underwritten by the Jenny Moore Fund. 

If you have to miss Wednesday's reading, you can catch Faye on Sunday, November 13 at 1 p.m. at Politics and Prose bookstore in Northwest DC.

All are welcome, and this event is free.

Recent Faculty Media Mentions & Other News

Although you wouldn't know it from the mild manner of those of us who inhabit Rome 760, the English Department has been quite busy lately.

This is not Prof. Tongson at GW last week, although the set up was remarkably similar and the photo is in the commons!

Last week, in addition to seeing the completion of the construction work on our new department lounge, we hosted Prof. Karen Tongson of USC, who gave a well received presentation about her new book, Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries. In various case histories centering on the part of Southern California sometimes dubbed "Lesser Los Angeles," Tongson explores the ways in which queer lives and queer sensibilities flourish in suburban spaces. Part of Tongson's project is to pose a challenge to queer cultural theory, in its privileging of urban spaces as the spaces of queer identities, as in its perpetuation of the all-too-familiar story of queer migration out of "provincial" spaces and into urban spaces. The suburbs, as Tongson reminds us, are also inhabited by migrants of color who have "relocated" to the United States. As we know from the suburban strip malls of northern Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland, the suburbs are crucial spaces for thinking about diaspora, including queer diaspora.

Two members of the GW English community (full disclosure: I'm one of them) were also in the news this week.

On Tuesday, October 24, Gayle Wald attended a ceremony in North Philadelphia to unveil a historical marker at 1102 Master Street, the last home of the gospel crossover superstar Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The marker was the idea of local entrepreneur Bob Merz, who worked with Girls Rock Philly to raise money. The small but joyful event was the culmination of various efforts to bring to public attention the career and legacy of Rosetta Tharpe, an American musical treasure.

Today, English PhD student Tariq Al Haydar published a blog post in The Atlantic on women in Saudi Arabia. Tariq, a novelist, is also an English lecturer at King Saud University, one of leading higher research institutions in the Middle East. You can follow him on Twitter at @TariqAlhaydar

Congratulation to Tariq for this notable publication!

Freshman English Major Pens Op-Ed for The Hatchet

Congratulations to Marissa Fretes, a freshman English major, for her op-ed piece in today's Hatchet. In her editorial, Fretes argues that the University should not subordinate socioeconomic diversity to other diversity goals.

And our lounge today!

Our lounge space was painted yesterday, and today the new carpeting was put down. (This photo doesn't do the carpet justice.) Now we just need some furniture and a smart design.

And our lounge today

We're getting there. Paining is being done today, and new carpets are being installed tomorrow. By next week we will have a new--if empty--lounge! Look for a new refrigerator and new seating soon!

Lounge Renovation!

The drywall came tumbling down today! Here is a photo of our lounge-in-process. Right now, the main office is a bit of a mess, and the hallway is currently serving as the location for faculty mailboxes, but we're hopeful that the renovation will create a better community space by combining two smaller spaces. 

Now we have to figure out decor. Small table? No table? Where to put the refrigerator? What a pleasure to have such questions to ponder!

Save the Dates

October and early November are chock-a-block with English department or English-affiliated programming. Mark your calendars now for these upcoming events. 

October 4: E. Patrick Johnson

The Northwestern University Professor and performer E. Patrick Johnson visits GW during the run of his critically acclaimed one-man show "Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South" at Arlington's Signature Theater. He will discuss the questions raised by his show in a presentation on October 4 at 2 pm at the Multicultural Student Services Center, 2127 G Street. Look forward to a conversation that draws a diverse crowd. Co-sponsored by Africana Studies, the MSSC, and other GW units.

Johnson's books include the award-winning Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke UP). You can see him discuss "Sweet Tea" here.

Johnson last visited GWU as a guest of Prof. Wald's "Post-Soul Black Literature and Culture" course in 2007, when he was workshopping an early version of "Sweat Tea." He also consulted with faculty participants in CCAS's Performance Studies Seminar.


October 10: Jewish Women Who Rock

Did you know that The New Yorker's first pop music critic was Ellen Willis, a Jewish feminist? That Genya Raven, aka Goldie Zekovitz, was the lead singer of an all-female band that toured with the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and the Kinks? That some of the original Riot Grrrls were Jewish?

On October 10 at 7 p.m. in Phillips 411, join a lively exchange about gender, Jewish identity, and rock & pop music featuring Sara Marcus, author of Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution (2010), and Nona Willis Aronowitz, editor of Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (2011). We'll discuss the roles Jewish girls and women have played in pop music history and how Jewish identities are enacted (or not?) by women today. Heard of the Shondes, the Brooklyn-based indie-punk band with Jewish influences and radical politics? You will after this event.

This is not your mother's "Hava Nagila." Co-sponsored by English, Judaic Studies, GW Hillel, Jewish Literature Live, the Women's Leadership Program, Music, and Women's Studies.


October 20: USC Prof. Karen Tongson 

Just announced. Karen Tongson, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California, will be presenting a talk on Thursday, October 20 at 2 p.m. in Rome 771 titled "Finding the Cloverleaf in Queer Cultural Studies." Tongson's hotly anticipated book, Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries, just came out from New York University Press. Here's what the press has to say about the book:

What queer lives, loves and possibilities teem within suburbia’s little boxes? Moving beyond the imbedded urban/rural binary, Relocations offers the first major queer cultural study of sexuality, race and representation in the suburbs. Focusing on the region humorists have referred to as “Lesser Los Angeles”—a global prototype for sprawl—Karen Tongson weaves through suburbia’s “nowhere”spaces to survey our spatial imaginaries: the aesthetic, creative and popular materials of the new suburbia.

  

November 3-4: Composing Disability: Writing, Communication, Culture

GW English Prof. Robert McRuer, a leader in the field of disability studies, is one of the organizers of a two-day symposium that considers some of the ways that disability studies and disability culture are transforming higher education and assesses how academic spaces and programs might be generated to respond to that transformation. The exciting keynote speakers for this groundbreaking GW event include Michael Davidson (Concerto for the Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body), Terry Galloway, performer and author of Mean Little Deaf Queer, and Merri Lisa Johnson (Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: Memoir of a Borderline Personality).

“Composing Disability” brings together Disability and Deaf Studies, Writing Studies, Education, and Global Cultural Studies for spirited, collegial dialogue, about the production of disability culture, disability writing, and disability representation in and beyond academia today. The program is scheduled to begin on Thursday, November 3 at 1 pm and will run through Friday, November 4 at 3:30 pm. Look here for the full program.

   

November 4-5: Korean Shakespeare Coming to GWU

As part of Staging Korea: Korean Theatre in Search of New Aesthetics, a day-long event celebrating the beauty of Korean performance traditions, scholars and directors will discuss the internationalization of Korean theatre.

This year's highlight is the visit of Master Oh Tae Suk from Seoul and the screening of the film of his production, The Tempest, which won the Herald Angel’s Award at the 2011 Edinburgh International Arts Festival. The screening is on November 4 at 4 p.m.; the audience will have an opportunity to interact with the director at a presentation on November 5. Both events at the Harry Harding Auditorium, 1957 E Street. The events are part of this year's Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium in the Korean Humanities.

 

New GW English Prof. Alex Huang recently discussed the show in the context of global Shakespeare in guest appearances on the BBC and at a lecture in Edinburgh.