Department of English Newsletter October 2014
Upcoming Department Events
Publications & Acceptances
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster published Hoarders, Doomsday Preppers, and the Culture of Apocalypse with Palgrave Macmillan, which has received some excellent reviews:
"Gwendolyn Audrey Foster writes passionately about the debased media-scape of our death-worshipping culture. She probes into our collective fascination with an Earth without us, even as we continue activities that are sure to lead to yet more ecological devastation and mass extinction. Hoarders, Doomsday Preppers, and the Culture of Apocalypse is not a comforting book, but it is an eloquent call from a voice crying in the wilderness: a warning that we ignore at our peril." - Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor, English, Wayne State University
"In her newest book, Hoarders, Doomsday Preppers, and the Culture of Apocalypse, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster explores the excesses of late-capitalist American consumerism; her exploration of media representation of gluttony, hoarding, waste, and debt is compelling reading for anyone interested in contemporary popular culture." - Patrice Petro, Professor, English, Film Studies, and Global Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster also published two articles:
- “Bottled Up: The Treacherous Terrain of Poverty, Family, and Love,” Film International June 1, 2014;
and - “Female Sexual Pleasure Unpunished in Bright Days Ahead,” Film International May 14, 2014.
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster and Wheeler Winston Dixon's one hour documentary Women Who Made The Movies, distributed by Women Make Movies, Inc. in New York City, had the following screenings in 2013 - 2014:
- Loyola Marymount University, June 2014
- Hong Kong Baptist University, June 2014
- McDaniel College, Westminster, MD May 2014
- Muhlenberg College, April 2014
- University of Toronto, March 2014
- Mount Holyoke College, February 2014
- Northwestern University, January 2014
- University of Alabama, December 2013
- University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria, October 2013
- University of Delaware, September 2013
- Emory University, July 2013
- Bibliotheque Cantonale, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2013
- Academy of Art University, San Francisco, June 2013
Wheeler Winston Dixon has published the following new articles:
- “Joseph Lawson, Genre Filmmaker: An Interview,” Film International September 22, 2014,
- "Netflix and National Cinemas," in Film International August 24, 2014,
- "A World of Constant Peril: Seriality, Narrative, and Closure," in Film International September 2, 2014,
- "Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia," in Senses of Cinema 72 (September 2014),
- “Juan Orol, Phantom of the Mexican Cinema,” Film International June 23, 2014; and
- “The Trouble With Hitchcock,” Film International June 7, 2014.
Rhonda Garelick's book Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History was published by Random House on September 30th, and comes out in Australia in mid-October with Picador/Macmillan. The launch was held at the Museum of the City of New York, where Rhonda held a public conversation about biography with New Yorker writer, Judith Thurman. Reviews of Rhonda's book have appeared in the New York Review of Books, Town and Country Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, More Magazine, and Vanity Fair, and are upcoming in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, as well as many other publications here and in Australia. She is interviewed this month on Bloomberg Radio and Radio Europe, and will be speaking in different venues in NYC, Washington DC, and Miami.
Also, Rhonda is pleased to announce that, once again, NET has chosen the Interdisciplinary Arts Symposium as the subject of a Nebraska Stories episode, featuring the residency, performance, and community outreach of the It Gets Better Project and the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles (IAS Season V).
"'The Other One': An Unpublished Chapter of Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs" appears in the October number of _J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists_." Melissa J. Homestead discovered this manuscript while on fellowship at the Houghton Library at Harvard University in 2011, and she collaborated with Terry Heller (emeritus, Coe College) on the edition of the chapter and the substantial essay introducing it.
Recent graduate Karen Babine has launched the online journal Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. The inaugural issue features a pedagogical article by Robert Brooke, “Teaching Rhetoric: The Essay”.
Maria Nazos has poetry that will appear in upcoming issues of The Southern Humanities Review and The Florida Review.
Raul Palma's short story "American Leather" is forthcoming in Eclectica. And his flash story "The Gum Scraper" is forthcoming in Vine Leaves Literary Journal.
Conferences, Readings, Workshops & Presentations
Robert Brooke was the featured speaker at the 50th Anniversary Conference of Keep Nebraska Beautiful in Lincoln on August 27, speaking on "Love of Community Involvement in Education."
Daniel Clausen, Ph.D. student in Literature, has been invited to attend a translation workshop in New York City. The workshop will take place in November and is put on by the German Book Office. According to the organizers, the workshop is designed to "cultivate talent and connect translators with editors."
Activities, Accolades, & Grants
The National Education Association Foundation has awarded Daniel Boster a $5000 Learning and Leadership Grant to fund a project to study and develop mindful writing pedagogy. Boster, a Composition and Rhetoric Ph.D. candidate and Ralston High School English teacher, is joined in this project by several writing teachers, including Maggie Christensen (UNL English Ph.D. who is now in the English department at University of Nebraska-Omaha), current UNL English Ph.D. students Darin Jensen (Metropolitan Community College) and Marcus Meade, as well as Paula Anderson (Louisville High School), Shelley Sheets (Ralston Middle School), and Clesta Stevens (Omaha Northwest High School). They are working with Johnathan Woodside of Omaha's Mindfulness Outreach Initiative to create and maintain mindful and humane writing pedagogy that serves students while also recognizing the role of the writing teacher.
The Nebraska Writing Project is partnering with Humanities Nebraska and Veterans Administration Health Care this September and October to offer six Saturday workshops at the Veterans Administration hospital for Nebraska veterans. Humanities Nebraska is funding the program ($10K), Nebraska Writing Project is providing the teachers, and Veterans Administration Health Care is hosting the program at the Lincoln campus.
Have news or noteworthy happenings to share?
The Department of English encourages our faculty and current students to submit stories about their activities and publications of note by filling out the Department Newsletter Submission Form.