News for English and Film Studies Students

March 20 - April 3, 2020

Purple flowering trees

Hours

The English Advising Office is closed for in-person meetings for the remainder of the semester. Dr. Lacey will be meeting with students on a virtual basis.

Appointments

Please go to Canvas (under Account--> Settings--> MyPlan--> My Success Network--> Kathleen Lacey). The schedule tab will allow you to see what times are available for individual appointments. You can also search for Kathleen Lacey in the MyPLAN Directory. You are also welcome to email klacey3@unl.edu to schedule an appointment. Please note that all advising appointments through the end of the Spring 2020 semester will now take place via email or Zoom

Walk-in Hours

No appointment necessary

Dr. Lacey will no longer be having appointment with-in her office for the duration of the semester, they will only be held through virtual means. You can still shedule an appointment with her through MyPlan.

Connect with us

Reminders

March 2 (Mon.) - May 17 (Sun.) Open Registration for Summer Sessions 2020
March 22 - 29 (Sun. - Sun.)  Spring Vacation (UNL offices are open Monday through Friday)
April 6 (Mon.) - April 21 (Tue.)  Priority Registration for Fall Semester 2020
April 27 (Fri.)   Last day to withdraw from one or more full semester courses for the term

Courses to Check Out

Open Summer English & Film Studies Courses

You can still enroll in summer courses! The following are still open:

Presession (May 18-June 5)

ENGL 254: Writing & Communities (online) – fulfills ACE 1 or CDR A and writing requirement for ENGL major; will also count toward the ENGL minor.

ENGL 261: American Literature Since 1865 (online) – fulfills ACE 5 or CDR C and survey requirement forENGL major; will also count toward the ENGL minor.

ENGL 303: Short Story (online) – fulfills ACE 5 or CDR C and concentration course for ENGL major; will also count toward the ENGL minor.

ENGL 373: Film Theory & Criticism (M-F, 1-4pm) – fulfills ACE 7 or CDR C and core course for FILM major; will also fulfill theory requirement or a concentration course for ENGL major; also counts toward ENGL and FILM minors.

ENGL 405E: Modernist Fiction (online) – fulfills CDR C and the recent literature requirement or concentration course for ENGL major; also counts toward ENGL minor.

1st 5-week Session (June 8-July 10)

ENGL 244: African American Literature since 1865 (online) – fulfills ACE 5 or ACE 9 or CDR C and the ethnic literature requirement for the ENGL major; also counts toward the ENGL minor.

ENGL 254: Writing & Communities (online & in person) - fulfills ACE 1 or CDR A and writing requirement for ENGL major; will also count toward the ENGL minor.

2nd 5-Week Session (July 13-Aug 13)

ENGL 205: Twentieth Century Fiction (online) – fulfills ACE 5 or CDR C and recent literature requirement for ENGL major; will also count toward the ENGL minor.

ENGL 207: Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (in-person) – fulfills ACE 5 or CDR C. With permission, can also fulfill recent literature or ethnic literature requirement for the ENGL major; also counts toward ENGL minor.

Department of English Announcements and Events

Campus Resources & Other Important Info during COVID 19

SETTING UP AN ADVISING APPOINTMENT

All advising will be done remotely for the rest of the semester. This means that I can meet with you via email or through a teleconference service such as Zoom or Skype. I can do phone appointments if absolutely necessary (working remotely will require me to use my personal cell phone). You can still make an appointment with me through MyPlan, but you’ll be able to choose if you want to meet via email or Zoom. If you decide to meet via email, I will respond to your email at your appointment time and we can continue communicating as long as necessary. If you decide you’d like to meet via Zoom, I’ll send you instructions on how to connect at your chosen appointment time. You can make an appointment on MyPlan in two ways:

  • Sign on to Canvas, click on “Account” in the upper left corner, and then click on MyPlan. Once in MyPlan, you can find me one of two ways. If I am your main advisor, you can click on the menu icon on the top right corner, click on “My Success Network,” and then I should pop up on the next screen (you might need to scroll). Otherwise, you can also search for me by name (Kathleen Lacey) in your success network. Once you find me, you can schedule an appointment by pressing the arrow near my name.
  • Go to https://its.unl.edu/myunl/, and click on the gray MyPlan box. From there, you can follow the above directions to find me and make an appointment.

 

COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES ADVISING CENTER UPDATE

The CAS Advising Center in 107 Oldfather will no longer be open to students for the remainder of the semester. Like me, all advisors are working remotely. As such, there will not be folks available there to take phone calls. If you need to add or change a major or minor, you’ll need to do this by emailing casadvising@unl.edu. Please note that you can still make appointments with the other advisors inside and outside of the center if you need to. Both Meagan Savage and Kristin Aldrich, our CAS Career Coaches, are also available for career advising appointments as well.

PRIORITY ENROLLMENT FOR FALL 2020

Priority enrollment has been pushed back to begin on Monday, April 6. On MyRed, you should find your updated date and time to enroll in fall courses.

ARE YOU DOING A THESIS FOR CAS DISTINCTION?

The deadline to complete and turn in your thesis prospectus has been extended to Friday, April 10. I have not yet received directions on how to submit your prospectus paperwork, but will let you know when I do. The deadline to turn in your completed thesis has been extended to Friday, March 27. You can submit it electronically to CAS-Distinction@unl.edu.  Please be sure to include your name and NU ID in the subject line of the email. Your thesis advisors must submit their evaluations of your thesis by this time as well (to the same email address).

HUSKER HUB SERVICES UPDATE

Husker Hub will no longer be servicing students in person. However, they are still taking phone calls, responding to emails, scheduling phone appointments, and virtual appointments. Currently, there is a 1-2 business day response time for any return calls and/or responding to emails. If you have questions about financial aid, scholarships, registration holds, and the like, you can contact them via phone at 402.472.2030 or email at huskerhub@unl.edu. If you need to submit documents or forms (ie, SAP forms, scholarship reinstatement forms, etc.) you can upload these forms to MyRed, fax them to 402.472.9826, or mail them to Husker Hub, PO Box 880411, Lincoln, NE 68588-0411.

LIBRARY ACCESS UPDATE

All libraries will close indefinitely at 8pm TONIGHT; however, the Adele Coryell Hall Learning Commons will remain open to UNL students, staff, and faculty 8am-8pm, Monday through Friday. There will be no librarians on site as they, too, will be working remotely. The Commons will be monitored by University Police during its open hours. This also means that you will not be able to check out any physical items after 8pm this evening. Librarians will be available electronically and electronic resources will be available for research. This includes ebooks, online databases, and other related materials.

OTHER CAMPUS RESOURCES

Center for Academic Success & Transition (CAST)

The CAST staff is available during regular office hours (8am-5pm) for Zoom, Skype, email, and phone appointments. Students can schedule appointments with academic success coaches through MyPLAN, by calling 402-472-1880, or by emailing success@unl.edu.

Office of Academic Success & Intercultural Affairs (OASIS)

The Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center will remain open (until further notice) and there will be a staff member in the office each day in case there are any students that need immediate assistance.

University Health Center

UHC is currently open 8am-5pm, Monday through Friday. They will be closed on weekends. To best serve the needs of the student body, their focus will be providing care for students with immediate needs. If you are concerned you have COVID-19, complete the Department of Health and Human Services survey. If you have other immediate needs, call the University Health Center at 402.472.5000 before you visit so that they know to expect you. For the health and safety of everyone, all visitors must enter the building through the north doors that face patient parking. Expect to be screened upon arrival.

If you have a previously scheduled University Health Center appointment and you are no longer able to attend, please call as soon as possible to cancel so that they can open the appointment time to another students who needs it.

Dental Services @ UHC

At the guidance of the American Dental Association, the University Health Center Dental Clinic is immediately postponing all routine care services until further notice. We will continue to offer emergency care for toothaches, wisdom tooth pain, jaw pain, facial pain, a broken tooth, facial or gum swelling and loss of a crown. Call us at 402.472.7495 to schedule.

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)

CAPS will be closed for in-person visits, though you can still see a counselor via telehealth services (virtual/phone). If you would like a remote (i.e., Zoom, phone) appointment or if you are in crisis, please call CAPS at (402) 472-7450 between 8am-5pm for assistance. AFTER BUSINESS HOURS: If you need to speak with a counselor on duty for your urgent needs or you are in crisis, please call (402) 472-7450 and Press 4. If you are in imminent danger to yourself or others, please call 911. CAPS also recommends this page for resources about how to tend to our mental health during this time.

Husker Pantry/Food Resources

Husker Pantry is currently closed; however, students can go to 59 Canfield to pick up 3 dining hall passes per person. You are able to get more passes after you use yours, but you need to go back to Canfield. If you need additional items, check out this link for a pantry near you.

Housing & Dining

Residence Halls remain open. Dining halls are serving meals in to-go containers only, and will transition to serving brunch and dinner after Spring Break.

Internet Access

Charter will offer free Spectrum broadband and Wi-Fi access for 60 days to households with K-12 and/or college students who do not already have a Spectrum broadband subscription and at any service level up to 100 Mbps. To enroll call 1-844-488-8395. Installation fees will be waived for new student households. Comcast, AT&T, and Cox Communications also appear to be doing similar things.

ARE YOU A GRADUATING SENIOR WITH A 1CR COURSE THAT BEGINS ON OR AFTER MARCH 30?

I’ve received a number of emails from students who are concerned about their 1cr courses that begin on March 30th or later. First and foremost, stay enrolled in the class; the instructor will contact you with their plan for the course. In the event that the class gets cancelled and you need that credit to graduate, please contact me as soon as possible.

NEVER BEEN IN AN ONLINE CLASS BEFORE?

Don’t panic. In order to stay on track, I recommend the following:

  • Check your email daily, and make sure you are checking your husker account! Read these messages carefully and contact professors and/or other academic staff if you have questions.
  • Make a study/homework schedule and stick to it. It can be easy to forget assignments when you’re not seeing people on a regular basis. If possible, keep the same schedule you did while you were physically going to class.
  • Keep track of readings, assignments, and due dates on a planner or calendar of some sort. Check Canvas frequently. Going fully online is going to be a bit of a shift if you’re not used to it. Make sure to read the revised syllabi for your courses thoroughly; also make sure that you are reading closely all communication from your professors. Such an abrupt shift makes communication absolutely critical, so do your teachers and peers a solid and DO NOT SKIM these messages.
  • Figure out the best place for you to complete your work. Consider distractions, lighting, comfort, etc.

One of the most critical skills online learning requires is time management. Do not expect things to be easy or less work simply because they are now online.

ISSUES THAT I DO NOT HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT

Graduation: There has been no communication on graduation. For now, we are moving ahead as though graduation will take place in person on Saturday, May 9.

Summer Classes: Many summer classes are already online. However, I do not have any information about if classes scheduled for in-person instruction are moving online.

STUDY ABROAD CANCELLED?

I know that many of you were called back from your study abroad semester or that your upcoming study abroad trip has been cancelled. Please do not hesitate to contact me to revise your academic plan.

Internships, Jobs, and Professional Development

ESAB Seeking New Mentors & Members!

The English Student Advisory Board (ESAB) is seeking FOUR new undergraduate peer mentors and 2-5 members-at-large for the 2020-2021 school year. Mentors work closely with new English and Film Studies majors during their first year. Members-at-Large are English and/or Film Studies majors who want to be involved in the department, but are either not interested or ready to mentors. Application deadline is Friday, April 3!

Download more information here.

Stay Woke: Readings in Social Justice

How to Pull Off a 250-Mile Protest March? Grit (And a Little Bit of Harry Belafonte)

Harry Belafonte sat on a couch in his resplendent, wood-paneled office, telling us not to lose hope. The week before, several of us had been arrested outside Mayor Bill de Blasio’s house. We’d gone there to protest the decision not to hold the NYPD accountable for Eric Garner’s death, but our action had yielded no discernable result. Now, at a meeting of Justice League NYC, about 20 of us surrounded Mr. Belafonte. We were perched on chairs and literally sitting at his feet.

The great man was now well into his eighties but was as vital as ever. Even though his voice bore the slightest waver, his eyes were fiery as he told us about being with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis on the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Some 600 people had joined that 54-mile journey along Highway 80. 

Read more of Linda Sarsour's essay on Lit Hub

The Coronavirus Is Making Mental Health In ICE Detention Even Worse

On Wednesday, a 27-year-old Honduran man reportedly killed himself while jailed at Karnes County Residential Center, an immigrant detention center in Texas.

It is not clear that the man’s death was related to the coronavirus. But unless the Trump administration releases people from immigrant detention during the pandemic, activists and legal groups warn, the nearly 40,000 immigrants in government custody could face serious mental health issues in addition to physical illness. 

“The mental health impact on people who are imprisoned for the crime of seeking a safe haven is overwhelming,” Lucia Allain, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, said in a statement.

“The added stress of the coronavirus potentially getting inside the center is deadly. We anticipate that this won’t be the last death at Karnes unless ICE immediately releases all those detained at this detention center and in custody around the country.”

Read more of Angelina Chapin's article on HuffPost

Literary News

Wordsworth: Caught in the Act of Making Poetry!

Only after a long time did I realize that this was as it should be, that I could not expect to receive all the blessings and beauties from them without incurring some version of the costs, especially when I spent time with the notebooks of William Wordsworth, where the struggle to register and respond to the realities swaying and surging between mind and world are evident on every page. This was, in fact, the price of poetry, a price that is rarely allowed to surface in any published text but surely lies below much of it, the cost of beauty, the fee exacted by the need for resolution. “Do you not see,” Keats would write in a letter to his siblings, “how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!”

*

In Wordsworth’s notebooks, the scattered lines read as if gobbets of music and language are pushing out through his pen on to the surface of the visible world. The atmosphere is of retrieval, of quite literally the re-collection of ideas and associations, the memory of sights and sounds he had gathered when out in the woods and on the high tops of the Quantocks. It is tempting sometimes, from these ragged, scratched-at, fragmentary pages, to think that they must have been written on site, notations from the living world, from his presence in that world; but that was not his method. He was clear, when asked about this late in life, that for poetry to surface it had first to pass through the great digestive organ of his mind.

Read more of Adam Nicolson' essay on Lit Hub

Women’s voices dominate the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prizes

Yale University today announced a female-dominated slate of recipients for the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prizes. The eight writers, including seven women, were honored for their literary achievement or promise and will receive $165,000 each to support their work.

This year’s prize recipients are: in fiction, Yiyun Lee (United States/China) and Namwali Serpell (Zambia); in nonfiction, Maria Tumarkin (Australia) and Anne Boyer (United States); in poetry, Bhanu Kapil (United Kingdom/India) and Jonah Mixon-Webster (United States); and in drama, Julia Cho (United States) and Aleshea Harris (United States).

The recipients were announced online from London on March 19 by writer and playwright Damien Barr and Michael Kelleher, director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes.

Together, the recipients form a rich collection of writers whose work explores pressing political and social themes across identity, culture, and power, Kelleher said.

Read more of Mike Cummings article on YaleNews

Literature for Justice: 5 books that explore the criminal justice system

ast year, the National Book Foundation (with help from the Art for Justice Fund) launched Literature for Justice, a three-year program dedicated to heralding stories that contextualize and humanize the experiences of incarcerated people in the United States.

When the committee shared this year’s reading list, they stated: “In the second year of this initiative, the selection committee deemed it crucial to focus on those often neglected in public conversations on mass incarceration: women and families. The list centers first-person narratives from formerly incarcerated authors, partners of those behind bars, and leaders of prison reform and abolition movements since the 1980s.”

This year, five esteemed writers and leaders within the space of mass incarceration and social justice—Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow), Reginald Dwayne Betts (Felon), Zachary Lazar (Vengeance), Kelly Lytle Hernandez (Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol), and Shaka Senghor (Writing My Wrongs)—formed the committee that selected the reading list. The titles listed below convey inmates’ real life experiences and confront many often-overlooked aspects of mass incarceration in America.

Read more of Book Marks article here

Film News

Showing This Week at the Ross

Due to COVID-19 The Ross is closed

Stay tuned for more film news