Spring 2018
THE MASTHEAD SALEM STATE UNIVERSITY ENGLISH GRADUATE STUDENT NEWSLETTER SALEM STATE UNIVERSITY ENGLISH GRADUATE PROGRAM CONTACT INFORMATION Theresa DeFrancis
Chair, English, and Coordinator, Master of Arts in Teaching/English tdefrancis@salemstate.edu 978.542.7422
Spring 2018 registration is here! In the newsletter, you’ll find faculty descriptions of the courses, as well as upcoming events and important dates. If you have questions about registration, or need help deciding what to take, your graduate coordinator will be delighted to assist you. Feel free to contact the instructors of any courses you are interested in if you would like more detailed information.
IMPORTANT PROGRAM DATES November 2
Spring 18 thesis and manuscript proposals due to graduate coordinator
Coordinator, Master of Arts in English kvalens@salemstate.edu 978.542.7050
December 1
Intention to complete a portfolio capstone in spring 2018 due to graduate coordinator
December 1
Final fall 2017 theses and manuscripts, with all forms and signatures, due to graduate coordinator for fall 2017 graduation
Julie Whitlow
December 22
Last day of fall 2017 classes
January 16
First day of spring 2018 courses
February 9
Application for March 7 Language Proficiency Exam due
March 1
Intention to write a thesis and manuscript in summer of fall 2018 due to graduate coordinator
March 15
Spring 2018 graduation and commencement applications due via Navigator
March 27
Summer or fall 2018 thesis and manuscript proposals due to graduate coordinator
April 24
Final spring 2018 theses and manuscripts, with all forms and signatures, due to graduate coordinator for spring 2018 graduation
April 24
Intention to complete a portfolio capstone in summer or fall 18 due to graduate coordinator
May 9
Last day of spring 2018 graduate courses
May 17
Graduate School Commencement
June 15
Application for July 14 Language Proficiency Exam due
Keja Valens
Coordinator, Master of Arts in Teaching/ESL cwhitlow@salemstate.edu 978.542.6595
School of Graduate Studies 978.542.6323
SPRING 18 ENG 707 Nineteenth Century American Novel Professor Nancy Schultz ENG 707 is a hybrid course meeting every other Tuesday, 7-9:20 pm.
What then is the American, this new man? asked a French immigrant who had become a naturalized New York citizen and gentleman farmer in the 1760s. Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur [a.k.a. James Hector St. John (1735-1813)], asking how an American is different from a European, echoed ongoing conversations among American writers about the development of a national literature. The novel became one of the key genres in the formation of U.S. literary tradition. In the early nineteenth century, Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, and others employed New World settings to create distinctive fiction that attempted to sow the seeds of a national literature. The flowering at midcentury of iconic novels by Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, and others, even as the nation lurched toward Civil War, firmly established a tradition that was representative of the U.S., yet nourished by transatlantic currents. The development and diversification of the nineteenth-century American novel sustained the idea of an American fiction, even as it reflected derivation from and cultural dependence upon an array of literary models from elsewhere. This course, then, surveys the key role of fiction in producing a sense of history, politics, and culture in the nineteenth-century United States.
ENG 715: Topics in Digital Studies: Postcolonial Literature in the Digital Age Professor Roopika Risam ENG 715 is a hybrid course, meeting every other Wednesday, 4:30-6:50 pm
Scholarship on digital literature and culture has largely privileged the work of writers and media producers of the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Western Europe. This phenomenon reflects legacies of colonialism that undervalue cultural production from formerly colonized countries. But what is lost when we situate analog, digital, and hybrid cultural production in dominant cultural contexts? To investigate this question, we will begin by examining the relationship between colonialism and literature in print culture. Then, we will consider interventions in digital literature and culture from writers around the world. We will be exploring topics including electronic literatures of Latin America, digital literary archives of the Caribbean and India, digital storytelling from indigenous
communities, and the curious, worldwide popularity of the viral music video “Despacito.” Writers under consideration include Aimé Césaire, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Rabindranath Tagore, Elizabeth LaPensée, Claude McKay, micha cárdenas, Salman Rushdie, Rupi Kaur, and Teju Cole. Through lenses from postcolonial theory, new media studies, and digital humanities, we will develop a vocabulary for our cutting-edge inquiry into postcolonial literature in the digital age. This is a hybrid course that meets face-to-face on January 17 and 31, February14, March 7 and 28, April 18, and May 2. In addition to the MA, the MA-MAT, and the MAT, and the Certificate in Digital Studies.
ENG 726 Studies in Theory: What is Left of Identity Politics? Professor Arthur Riss Wednesdays, 7-9:20 pm
This course introduces students to the political and theoretical debates that surround the controversial term Identity Politics. We will examine the central place that identity categories (such as race, class, gender, ableness, sexuality) have come to hold not only in literary study but in contemporary public discourse. We will read both theoretical arguments and literary texts in order ask several questions: Why is everybody talking about identity politics? What exactly is identity politics? What is relationship between identity politics and literature? Does identity politics belong in literary studies?
ENG 748: Young Adult Literature Professor Roopika Risam ENG 748 is a hybrid course, meeting every other Wednesday, 4:30-6:50 pm
Young adult literature is often perceived as trivial, filled with teen angst, sick kids, or derivative dystopian futures. Yet, its commercial success and ability to engage readers gives the genre significant power. How are a range of writers using young adult literature to unveil structural inequalities and social problems in the U.S. today? This course will examine young adult literature tackling a range of issues: histories of race (John Lewis, March; Sonia Manzano, The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano; Robin Talley, The Lies We Tell Ourselves), contemporary anti-racist discourse (Kekla Magoon, How It Went Down; Angie Davis, The Hate U Give), Islamophobia (G. Willow Wilson, Ms. Marvel: No Normal), immigration (Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star), LGBTQ rights (Emily Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, Fat Angie,
Ami Polonsky, Gracefully Grayson), technology and embodiment (Ernest Cline, Ready Player One), and rape culture (Mindy McGinnis). Through reading and discussion, we will consider how theoretical frameworks like critical race theory and intersectionality facilitate interpretation of these texts, how such texts might influence our teaching or research practices, and how to facilitate difficult, but much-needed, dialogue with our students, families, and communities. In doing so, we will reimagine young adult literature as a genre of resistance as we explore its potential for understanding and engaging with contemporary political and social upheaval. This is a hybrid course that meets face-to-face on January 24, February 7 and 28, March 21, April 11 and 25, and May 9.
ENG 771 Sociolinguistics Professor Julie Whitlow Online
At a time when our national discourse is at its most heated, this course discusses and helps explain the ways that language and society intersect. We will discuss and look at authentic language data related to power, politics, gender, dialects, discourse pattern, and education, among other topics.
ENG 819 Advanced Creative Writing Professor J.D. Scrimgeour Thursdays, 7-9:20 pm
Advanced Creative Writing will survey genres of creative writing: poetry, fiction, playwriting, and creative nonfiction. Students will write in each of these genres. Class time will be divided between discussing models and exploring features and opportunities of each genre and workshopping student writing. The class will emphasize trying new things and taking risks. It is an especially useful course for student teachers who want to bring different genres of creative writing into their classrooms.
ENG 820 Fiction and Narrative Forms Guest Professor Carla Panciera Mondays, 4:30-6:50 pm
A workshop course concentrating on the short stories, novels-in-progress, and nonfiction narratives of the participants. Workshop members read and critique one another’s work and discuss works by accomplished authors. Topics include how to publish.
ENG 899 Seminar in Literature Studies, “Picturebooks” Professor Stephenie Young Tuesdays 4:30-6:50 pm
This course will focus on how we record the memory of trauma by looking at narratives that incorporate photographs/images to tell a story (novels, graphic novels, photography, film). We will discuss topics such as aesthetics, nostalgia, forgetting, oblivion, and surrealism/dreams within the context of modern war, insurrection, conflict, and dictatorship. Class material will focus mainly on 20th- and 21st century stories. Readings may include Nadja (Andre Breton), Camera Lucida (Roland Barthes), Flowers in the Desert (Paula Allen), The Peron Novel (Tomas Eloy Martinez), On Photography (Susan Sontag), The Lazarus Project (Aleksandar Hemon), and Metro (Magdy el-Shafee). In addition to MA, the MA-MAT and the MAT, this course can be used for the Certificate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
REMINDERS Website:
Check out our graduate website for up-to-date information about events, important links to forms, and program details. It is a work in progress, so please have patience as we bring it into the twentyfirst century! www.salemstate.edu/graduate/ admissions
Facebook:
If you didn’t know already, there is a Facebook page for English graduate students. Please like it to receive frequent posts on goings-on: facebook.com/groups/79668990098/.
Financial support for conferences from the School of Graduate Studies:
If you would like to apply for money for a conference to which you have been accepted, have applied to, or are planning to apply to please visit this page and read the directions carefully: www.salemstate.edu/crca
ABOUT THE SPRING 18 FACULTY Carla Panciera’s collection of short stories, Bewildered, received AWP’s 2013 Grace Paley Short Fiction Award (University of Massachusetts Press). She has also published two collections of poetry: One of the Cimalores (Cider Press) and No Day, No Dusk, No Love (Bordighera). Her work has appeared in several journals including The New England Review, Nimrod, The Chattahoochee Review, Painted Bride, and Carolina Quarterly. Carla lives in Rowley, MA, with her husband and three daughters. She will be at Salem State to teach ENG 820 Fiction and Narratives Forms in spring 2018.
Roopika Risam (ENG 715 Topics in Digital Studies: World Literature in the Digital Age and ENG 748 Young Adult Literature) was recently awarded an NEH grant with librarian Susan Edwards for “Networking the Regional Comprehensives,” developing a network of digital humanities practitioners of teaching-intensive universities. Her book New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy will be published in fall 2018 with Northwestern University Press.
Nancy Lusignan Schultz (ENG 707 Nineteenth Century American Novel) joined the faculty at Salem State University in 1983, where she teaches writing and literature courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has served as a past graduate coordinator, and English Department chair for six years. Schultz is Founding Officer and Treasurer of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Society, an author society established in 1996. She is a past recipient of fellowships from Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition to her six books, Transatlantic Conversations: Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Encounters with Italy and the Atlantic World, with Beth L Lueck and Sirpa Salenius (University of New Hampshire Press, 2017); Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory, with Dane Morrison (Northeastern UP, 2004, updated second edition, 2015); Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle: the Prince, the Widow, and the Cure that Shocked Washington City (Yale UP, 2011); Fire and Roses: The Story of the Charlestown, Massachusetts Convent Burning, August 11, 1834 (Free Press 2000); Veil of Fear: Nineteenth Century Convent Captivity Narratives by Rebecca Reed and Maria Monk (Purdue UP 1999); and Fear Itself: Enemies Real and Imagined in American Culture, Purdue UP 1999), Schultz has written numerous articles on both teaching and literary criticism, and essays for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
At the end of June 2017, Stephenie Young (ENG 899 Seminar in Literary Studies: Picturebooks) co-organized the international conference “Why Remember? Memory and Forgetting in Times of War and Its Aftermath” together with photographer Paul Lowe in Sarajevo, Bosnia. See: warmfoundation.org/event/2017-06-30-whyremember-memory-and-forgetting-in-times-of-warand-its-aftermath. She is also the Latin American subject area editor and contributing writer to 1001 Photographs You Must See Before You Die, released in September 2017. See: ibs.it/1001photographs-you-must-see-libro-inglese-paullowe/e/9781844039173.
Julie Whitlow (ENG 771 Sociolinguistics) is the coordinator of the graduate programs in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and the co-author of Same-Sex Marriage, Context, and Lesbian Identity: Wedded but Not Always a Wife, Lexington Books, 2015, a sociolinguistic exploration of how women in same-sex marriages refer to and introduce each other.
J.D. Scrimgeour’s third collection of poetry, Lifting the Turtle, will be published in November of 2017. He’s also the author of two collections of nonfiction, including Themes for English B: A Professor’s Education In & Out of Class, which won the AWP Award for Nonfiction. He often combines writing with other genres, having collaborated with choreographers, photographers and others. With musician Phillip Swanson he released the CD, Ogunquit & Other Works, which blends poetry and music, and the musical that he wrote with his two sons, Only Human, was performed in 2014. Recently, he has turned to fiction, with stories that have appeared in Aethlon and Sport Literate. Professor Scrimgeour will teach ENG 819 Advanced Creative Writing in spring 18.
UPCOMING EVENTS Emerging Consequences:
A Two-Day Symposium on Aesthetics in the Aftermath of Atrocity Sponsored by the Salem State University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies November 3-4, 2017 Friday, 9 am-5:15 pm, Central Campus, Petrowski Room Saturday, 9 am-1:30 pm, Central Campus, Viking 123 (behind Starbucks) International experts will talk about aesthetics and atrocity in visual art, film, music, literature and museum studies. It is free and open to the public.
Writers Series: Travels with Kirun Kapur and
Mark Vanhoenacker Mon. Nov. 6, 2017, 7:30-9 pm Ellison Campus Center
Writers Series: Writing the Past with Rachel
Hall and Cindy Veach Thursday, November 16, 2017, 7:30-9 pm Ellison Campus Center
Brown bag lunch event on supporting/ teaching multilingual writers:
Mon, March 26, 2018 11 am-12 pm WIC Room, MH 102D rsvp: eventbrite.com/e/supporting-multilingualwriters-tickets-38280170019?aff=es2
IMPORTANT PROGRAM DATES November 2: Spring 18 thesis and manuscript proposals due to graduate coordinator
December 1: Intention to complete a portfolio capstone in spring 2018 due to graduate coordinator
December 1: Final fall 2017 theses and
manuscripts, with all forms and signatures, due to graduate coordinator for fall 2017 graduation
December 22: Last day of fall 2017 classes January 16: First day of spring 2018 courses February 9: Application for March 7 Language Proficiency Exam due
March 1: Intention to write a thesis and
manuscript in summer of fall 2018 due to graduate coordinator
March 15: Spring 2018 graduation and
commencement applications due via Navigator
March 27: Summer or fall 2018 thesis
and manuscript proposals due to graduate coordinator
April 24: Final spring 2018 theses and
manuscripts, with all forms and signatures, due to graduate coordinator for spring 2018 graduation
April 24: Intention to complete a portfolio
capstone in summer or fall 18 due to graduate coordinator
May 9: Last day of spring 2018 graduate courses
May 17: Graduate School Commencement June 15: Application for July 14 Language Proficiency Exam due