Volume 13, Issue 1
Carriage House Notes English and Modern Languages
RUSSELL SAGE COLLEGE
Winter/Spring 2018
2018 Carol A. Donahue Poets Donika Kelly is the author of
Danielle Pafunda is the author of eight
BESTIARY (Graywolf 2016), winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, long listed for the National Book Award (2016), and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award (2017), and the chapbook AVIARIUM (500 Places 2017). A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, she received her MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in V irginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, and Gulf Coast. She is an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University, where she teaches creative writing.
books, including her most recent poetry collections The Dead Girls Speak in Unison (Bloof Books), Natural History Rape Museum (Bloof Books), and the forthcoming Beshrew That Heart That Makes My Heart To Groan (Dusie Press Books). Her experimental memoir The Book of Scab is forthcoming from Richochet Editions. She holds an MFA from New School University and a PhD from University of Georgia. She sits on the Board of Directors of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and teaches at UC San Diego. She has also taught at Columbia College, University of Wyoming, and at the Education Center of the 29Palms Marine Corps Base in the Mojave Desert.
REV Schedule/Cento Book Launch This spring, The REV presents a full semester of poetry! We’ll feature a reading by faculty poets Elizabethe Kelley and Matthew Klane, as well as readings by visiting poets Shira Dentz, Geoffrey Babbitt, Donika Kelly, and Danielle Pafunda. In March, we’ll launch the Cento Poetry Anthology, and in April, we’ll host the annual Wild Women of Poetry (as part of the WORLD Series). All events are co-sponsored by The Russell Sage Review (The REV), the Department of Arts & Letters, The Sage Colleges Libraries, and supported by the Carol Ann Donahue Poetry Fund. *January 25th: Faculty Poets Elizabethe Kelley and Matthew Klane, 7pm—Shea 2nd floor. *February 8th: Student Open Mic, 7pm—Schacht Gallery *February 22nd: Visiting Poets Shir a Dentz and Geoffr ey Babbitt, 7pm—Shea 2nd floor. *March 15th: Cento Poetr y Book Launch, 7pm—Shea 2nd floor. *April 4th: Wild Women of Poetr y, 1pm—Bush Memorial. *April 11th: WORLD Ser ies with Donika Kelly and Danielle Pafunda (Carol A. Donahue Poets), Community Poetry Activity, 1pm—Bush Memorial. (con’t on p. 2…)
Majors/Minors and Alumni Dinner! Mark your calendars for our annual EML majors/minors dinner! This event will take place on Thursday, March 15th, from 5:30-6:45pm in the French House Dining Room. This year we are excited to invite EML alums to the dinner! Please RSVP to Liz Romero at romere@sage.edu. Students and alums can then join us after the dinner at 7pm for the launching of our Cento Poetry Anthology in Shea 2nd floor. The dinner is a wonderful opportunity to connect with professionals and get to know the larger EML community.
REV Schedule/Cento Book Launch (con’t…) Last April (2017), students, faculty and staff gathered in Buchman to create Centos (poems using lines built from other poems), and collaged them with images from magazines. These poems/images have been collected and are set to be published as an anthology (see image to the right)! Join us on March 15th at 7pm in the Carol Ann Donahue Poetry Room to celebrate the launch of this latest anthology of student work. Then, after the World Series on April 11th, join us in Buchman for the next campus-wide communal poem-making experience! On Thursday, January 25th, the REV Presents will host a faculty reading by our very own Elizabethe Kelley and Matthew Klane. Elizabethe Kelley is author of the poetry collection “Taming the Butterfly.” She is also an Associate Professor at The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York. A writer, storyteller, educator and activist, Elizabethe’s research, writing and artwork appears in cutting-edge creative and critical regional, national and international publications in print and online. She teaches social and environmental justice discourse, storytelling, writing and multi-ethnic rhetorical approaches, including traditional, indigenous modes of teaching and learning.
Matthew Klane is co-editor at Flim Forum Press. His books include Canyons (with James Belflower, Flim Forum, 2016), Che (Stockport Flats, 2013) and B (Stockport Flats, 2008). His e-chapbook, Of the Day, is online at Delete Press and his e-book My is online at Fence Digital. Recent collaborations with Justin Edward Moore are online or forthcoming from Gramma, Word for / Word, and Small Po[r]tions. He currently lives and writes in Albany, NY, where he co-curates the Yes! Poetry & Performance Series and teaches at Russell Sage College.
REV Schedule/Cento Book Launch (con’t…) Geoffrey Babbitt is the author of Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light, which was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry, the Robert Kroetsch Award in Innovative Poetry, the Richard Snyder Memorial Publication Prize, the Madeleine P. Plonsker Innovative Poetry First Book Prize, and the New Measure Poetry Prize. His poems and essays have appeared in North A merican Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Notre Dame Review, TYPO, Tarpaulin Sky, The Collagist, and elsewhere. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Utah and teaches at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, where he also coedits the Seneca Review. More can be found at: geoffreybabbitt.com.
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Shira Dentz is the author of four full-length books, black seeds on a white dish, door of thin skins, how do i net thee (forthcoming), and the sun a blazing zero (forthcoming), and two chapbooks, Leaf W eather and FLOUNDERS. Her writing has appeared in many journals including Poetry, The A merican Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, New American Writing, jubilat, and Western Humanities Review, and featured at The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, NPR, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. She's the recipient of an Academy of American Poets’ Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Memorial Awards, Electronic Poetry Review’s Discovery Award, and Painted Bride Quarterly’s Poetry Prize. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a PhD from the University of Utah, and teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and is special features editor at Tarpaulin Sky. More about her writing can be found at shiradentz.com.
Medusa Medusa is Russell Sage's campus-wide creative writing and poetry club. They meet each week to discuss both student and faculty produced work, as well as the poetry of published authors. Meetings take place in the Poetry Room of the library, which affords the opportunity to explore the works of many poets, and to further an understanding of poetry. Under the guidance of Dr. Kelley, members learn to critique their work and share it with other creative writers in a relaxed and encouraging environment. As a community of writers, they participate in the EML Spring Poetry Blitz, and present “Wild Women of Poetry,” which supports the annual “Girl Stuff” drive for the YWCA in Troy. Medusa is currently looking for new members and executive council leaders! Questions? Interested in joining? Please contact Dr. Kelley at: kellee@sage.edu.
17-18 Program Club Leaders
Meet RSC Student, Hajar Hussaini
The Russell Sage Review: Editor, Hajar Hussaini, hussah2@sage.edu Medusa: Faculty Advisor , Dr . Kelley, kellee@sage.edu Sigma Tau Delta: If you ar e inter ested in the office of President of Sigma Tau Delta, please contact faculty advisor Dr. Moutray at moutrt@sage.edu Spanish Club: Pr esident, Kelly Clinton, clintk@sage.edu The Quill: F aculty Advisor, Dr. Kelley, kellee@sage.edu Get involved! Contact these club leaders for details. New members are especially welcome.
Welcome Back, Dr. Sharon Robinson! Dr. Sharon Robinson, who retired at the end of the
2012-13 academic year, spent thirty-five years at Sage-twenty-five as a Professor of English and ten as Dean of the College. She's happy to be returning to RSC this semester to teach one of her favorite courses, ENG 201 (British Literature 1), wherein students can discover how funny, bawdy, and insightful medieval writers were. Dr. Robinson earned her B.A. in English and Art History at Vassar College (member of the last all-women class!); an M.A. in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins University; and a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature and Linguistics at the University of Toledo. Since retiring, she has been working on a mystery novel--working title: Dean's List. She is also close to completing a more scholarly project, an edition of a 14th century French manual of deportment for young ladies, The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry. Last year, Dr. Robinson and her husband became part-time Brooklynites, in order to spend more time with their daughter and family. Milton the dog and Henry the cat complete the picture.
Important Dates
Spring Semester Classes Begin: January 16 Last Day for Add/Drop: January 23 Spring Break: March 3-11 EML Majors/Minors/Alumni Dinner: March 15 Last Day to Withdraw from a Course: April 6 Undergraduate Research Day: April 25 Last Day of Classes: April 27 RSC Baccalaureate: May 11 Commencement: May 12
Hajar Hussaini was
born in 1991 in Iran to an Afghan immigrant family. When she was thirteen and after the collapse of the Taliban regime, her family came back to Afghanistan. After graduating from high school, she started working for grassrootslevel organizations, including GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) and GoodWeave USA in Herat and Kabul, Afghanistan. In April 2015, she started writing for the Afghan Women's Writing Workshop, which published many of her poems. Hajar came to the U.S. to attend The Sage Colleges, where she received a full undergraduate scholarship from the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women in order to study “Writing and Contemporary Thought.” At Sage, she is the editor of the Russell Sage Review literary magazine. Hajar was featured as a poet to read at the Bravest Women in the World conference at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and at the Art of Burqa Exhibition at Pen and Brush Gallery in New York City. She has also collaborated with Eleanor Dubinsky, a New York Based Musician, on a song on the issue of Domestic Violence. In the summer 2017, she wrote, directed, and produced her own short film based in Afghanistan. Last academic semester, she did her internship for the Computer Science Department: Laboratory for Algebraic and Symbolic Computation of Bard College, where she translated research from English to Farsi. This past November, Hajar received a scholarship from the International Center of the Capital Region to attend the 69th annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as an international delegate. She intends to pursue a doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies. She is quite the accomplished student, and we wish her the best of luck in everything she does!
Language Study at Sage Sage’s Culture and Language Acquisition Program (CLAS), in an agreement with and with the support of Rosetta Stone, offers French, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Portuguese. Please contact Dr. Kate Kagan (kagane@sage.edu) for mor e infor mation, or visit:
The New York State Writer’s Institute at the Univer sity atAlbany features a dynamic list of authors, readings, and films. See the complete Spring 2018 schedule at:
https://www.sage.edu/academics/russell-sagecollege/culture-and-language-acquisition-at-sage/
https://www.albany.edu/writersinst/index.html
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Spring at Theatre Institute
EML to be Represented at RSC Conference Join us for the 6th Annual Capital District Feminist Studies Consortium Conference on Jan. 31, 2018! Spanish major Kelly Clinton (see photo) will be presenting a research poster entitled “Literary Mistreatment,” which explores just how controversial domestic violence was in Anne Bronte’s Victorian fiction. Dr. Tonya Moutray and Dr. Kathleen Buono will also be pr esenting a poster , entitled “Ill-Behaved Women: Feminist Pedagogy." The poster session for both students and faculty is from 4:00-5:00pm in Bush Memorial. Visit the English and Modern Languages website at www.sage.edu/english for more information and photos!
It is the program faculty’s expectation that every English and Modern Languages major attend each program-sponsored event. It is vital that you show your support for our events.
Internships can be a crucial part of your education and can often lead to a permanent job upon graduation. Contact Dr. Moutray for more information! moutrt@sage.edu
Carriage House Notes (unless otherwise noted) is written and designed by Liz Romero, to whom any questions or comments should be directed. Contact her at 518-244-2237 or romere@sage.edu.
WORLD Series The WORLD Series schedule for Spring 2018 is posted below. All events are on Wednesdays at 1pm in Bush Memorial, and are free and open to all.
Jan 24: John Kucij, “Liberia Over the Years.”
Feb 7: Black History Month: Jamaica Miles.
Feb 14: Student reading of The V agina Monologues by Eve Ensler.
Feb 21: Sarah Jaffe: “The Resistance: Fighting for Justice in the Trump Era."
March 21: Miriam Pemberton, PhD: “The Budget: Our Country, Our Values, Our Planet Up for Grabs”
April 4: Wild Women Poetry Reading, sponsored by Medusa, Russell Sage College’s Creative Writing Group.
April 11: The 2017 Carol Ann Donahue Poetry Reading: The REV Presents, Poets Danielle Pafunda & Donika Kelly.
April 18: 30th Annual Hoffman Lecture in Sociology and Social Policy. April 25: Undergraduate Research Symposium.
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February 8-18: The Giver, directed by David Bunce.
April 13-22: Tribes, directed by David Baecker.
May 30-June 10: Backbeard: A New Musical, directed & composed by Michael Musial. For more information, visit: https://theatre.sage.edu/
Writing Studio REMINDER: The Writing Studio is available for any kind of writing assistance. Located on the third floor of the Shea Library, the Studio has posted hours and tutor schedules outside the office. The Writing Studio is open when classes are in session. To make an appointment, call 244-6737, stop by, or visit them on the web at: https://www.sage.edu/academics/academic-support/
Changes to Facebook Groups! Alumni of EML programs at RSC now have access to more updates from the program, and can easily network with current students in the program! The Alumni Facebook page has been shut down, and all members were invited to join the current EML students at RSC on the Facebook group entitled “English and Modern Languages at Russell Sage College.” If you are an alumni and have not yet moved over to this page, please contact Liz Romero at romere@sage.edu. If you are a current student, don’t miss this opportunity to chat with those who know what life is like after graduation! On March 15th, current EML students can meet and network with alumni and faculty at the Majors/Minors dinner (see p. 1), and start making connections that will be beneficial long after you leave RSC.
17-18 Program Directory
Dr. Kate Kagan. Modern Languages Program Director (kagane, x2238, Carr iage House #3)
Dr. Elizabethe Kelley (kellee, x4586 Carriage House #7)
Mr. Matthew Klane (klanem, x4559 French Annex)
Dr. Tonya Moutray, English Program Director and Department Chair (moutrt, x2406, Carriage House #5)
Dr. Shealeen Meaney (meanes, x2404, Carriage House #1)
Dr. Sharon Robinson (robins, x.3179, French Annex)
Ms. Liz Romero, Department Secretary (romere, x2237, Carriage House #2)