English Department Newsletter - November 2014

OU English Department OU College of Arts and Sciences

11/10/2014

Fall 2014

Faculty News

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Jen Elsner

Amanda Klinger

Elsner recently joined the writing staff of “Boyd Street Magazine” as a regular contributor. Look for her articles starting in the November issue.

Klinger’s article “The Violence of Enlightenment in William Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion” was accepted for publication in Nineteenth Century Studies.

Nancy El-Gendy On Oct. 22, El-Gendy interviewed Mia Couto, a Mozambican writer and the winner of the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The interview will be published in the January print issue of World Literature Today.

On Oct. 24, she moderated “‘What Africa Does the African Writer Write About:’ Understanding the Work of Mia Couto,” a roundtable discussion with Niyi Afolabi, University of Texas at Austin; David Brookshaw, University of Bristol; Juan Pérez-López, University of Oklahoma; and ElGendy. The experts in African Lusophone literature discussed the work of Neustadt winner Mia Couto. The audiences for this discussion included OU faculty and students and around 200 high school students who had read several short stories by Couto.

Since the start of October. El-Gendy hosted “ShutUpAndWrite Meet Ups” every Friday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at OU’s Writing Center, located in Wagner Hall. Everyone is invited to visit and enjoy positive energy, coffee, snacks and SILENCE.

David Anderson Anderson was invited to give a talk at Vanderbilt University on Nov. 18. The talk, titled “Enlightenment Violence: Religious, Political or Rational?” is part of the “Early Modern Enlightenments” symposium at Vanderbilt.

Amit Baishya Baishya presented a paper titled "Bisected Lives: narrating History's Footnotes in Aulingar Zui," at the 43rd Annual Conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in October.

Baishya also was the organizer of the panel. He presented his paper titled "Regional Transmutations: Northeast India as a Space of Improvisation."

Brian Hudson

Shannon Madden

Hudson is one of seven scholars from North America asked to speak at a bioethics conference at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany in June of 2015.

In October, Madden presented her research on writing program administration at the Watson Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, in a paper titled "Curricular Change in a Culture of Contingent Labor: WPA as Negotiation."

He also edited and wrote a foreword to Osage poet Carter Revard's recent book of poetry “From the Extinct Volcano, A Bird of Paradise,� which was published by Mongrel Empire Press, a literary press established by an OU English alumna.

Trevor McMichael Trevor had a paper - "Gender, Neutrality, and the Nursing Father in Pratt's Emma Corbett" accepted in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, forthcoming fall 2015.

He has also been accepted to the 2015 Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (WSECS) conference in San Luis Obispo, CA. Eve Bannet

Su Fang Ng Ng presented "Alexander the Great in the Transnational Mirrors for Princes from Britain to Southeast Asia" for the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Brownbag series on Nov. 13.

The talk is based on research supported by OU's Vice-President for Research's Office's Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship; she was one of three fellowship winners for the award in its inaugural year, which gave her the opportunity to conduct research in fall 2013 as a visiting scholar at the Scaliger Institute at Leiden University, the Netherlands.

Bannet has had an article ("The Narrator as Invisible Spy: Eliza Haywood, Secret History and the Novel") published for New Approaches to Eliza Haywood, special edition of Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 14:4 (Fall 2014): 143-162.

Vincent Leitch Leitch published a new book, Literary Criticism in the 21st Century: Theory Renaissance (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

Lauren Brentnell Brentnell will attend the Watson Conference in November to present a paper, "A Delicate Balancing Act: Graduate Student Assistants in the First-Year Composition Office," co-written by our recent English graduate Evin Groundwater, now a doctoral degree student at UIUC. James Yoch Emeritus Professor James Yoch was invited by the Huntington Library to give the Brody Lecture this year, titled "Surprises, Adventures, Thrills: Landscape from the Villas of Roman Emperors to the Gardens of California Patricians," in San Marino, California in June.

The International Association of Word and Image Studies invited him to prepare attendees at the triennial international conference for a field trip to the famed Scottish garden, Little Sparta, built

by Ian Hamilton Finlay, concrete poet and collaborative artist in many media: "Playing with Words, Mottoes, and Eulogies in the Garden: Theocritus, Virgil, Shenstone, & Finlay” (Dundee, Scotland, August, 2014).

Rachel C. Jackson In May 2013, Jackson began a position at the OU Writing Center that has evolved into a digital storytelling project. Next month, the center will offer a second community workshop at the Moore Public Library for survivors, caregivers and first responders of the spring 2013 storms. “Survivors in Motion,” supports participants in learning basic

video production software as they produce threeto four-minute digital narratives that focus on recovery from extreme weather. This experience has yielded many insights that will be presented as formal research at the 2015 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Tampa, Florida.

Jackson began her position at the OU Writing Center with the goal of developing a community literacy project a week prior to the May 23 tornado. She and Moira Ozias asked themselves, “What can writing studies provide in this effort to help the community recover?”

Beginning in January 2014, with OU Writing Center support, Jackson began training as a workshop facilitator with the Center for Digital Storytelling.

Last July, the OU Writing Center offered the first “Survivors in Motion” workshop at the Moore Public Library. They partnered with the Oklahoma Disaster Recovery Project and OK Strong to recruit and support participants.

Campus sponsors, Zarrow School of Social Work and College of Architecture - Division of Regional and City Planning, have provided food.

Multiple undergraduate and graduate students working in the OU Writing Center have assisted with the workshop, including Michael Mohon, Katie Bramlett and Jordan Woodward.

Research around trauma and writing crosses disciplinary boundaries, and scholars in multiple fields agree that the construction of narrative is critical to recovering from traumatic experience. ***

English Events Frank Usbeck’s Talk On October 31, visiting scholar Frank Usbeck presented “Fellow tribesmen: perceptions of indigeneity in German nationalism and Nazi ideology" in Gittinger Lounge.

Tea with the Professor At the end of October, the English Department hosted our first “Tea with the Professor.” To celebrate Halloween, we read and discussed Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart.” Area grade school students joined us for the spooky fun.

Department Dinner at Scratch The English Department held a dinner in October at Scratch Kitchen and Cocktails in Norman to celebrate our colleagues’ tenure, promotion and retention. Congratulations to: Jonathan Stalling, Susan Kates, Kenneth Hodges, Daniela Garofalo, Joshua Nelson, and David Anderson!

Faculty and Staff of the OU English Department

Halloween in English

A fun crowd was on hand for Halloween! We enjoyed snacks and tea with our Avengers and Miss Fisher.

Jen Elsner, our IT specialist, is a published author in many genres including cookbooks. Below is one of her delicious recipes.

Elsner is the author of two cookbooks, including the OU Cookbook. She authored the ebook Devil Inside, Victoria Vex Book 4: A new threat stalks Chicago's adolescents, and Victoria Vex is losing faith in her usual allies. She is in a race against time to stop the next victim from meeting an untimely fate.

Caramel Apple Crisp Ingredients: 4 medium apples, sliced (granny smith works best, but any tart apples will do) 1 tsp. ground cinnamon Juice from ½ lemon 1/2 tsp. vanilla 1 (14 ounce) package individually wrapped caramels, unwrapped

2 Tbls. of milk 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup packed brown sugar 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats 1/3 cup butter, softened 3/4 tsp. ground allspice

Instructions: •

Heat oven to 375ºF. Grease bottom and sides of 8-inch square pan with shortening or cooking spray, set aside.

•

In a large bowl, mix together the apples, lemon juice, vanilla, and cinnamon. Transfer the apple mixture to your prepared baking dish. Place as many caramel squares on top of the apples as you would like, then sprinkle the milk over the caramel layer. Set aside.

•

In medium bowl, stir together sugar, brown sugar, flour, oats, allspice, and butter until well mixed; sprinkle evenly over caramel-covered apples.

•

Bake about 35-45 minutes or until topping is golden brown and apples are tender when pierced with a fork.

Serve warm.

We want to hear from you! Send us your news and we’ll include it in our next newsletter.

Send news to Michael Risenhoover at mrisenhoover@ou.edu.