University at Buffalo Department of English

Issue #2 December, 2003

Newsletter

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Distinguished Speakers Series

WOLF BLITZER

CNN News Anchor

Thursday, October 2^nd ………….8:00 p.m…. Alumni Arena

CAS HOT DOG ROAST

To Benefit SEFA

Thursday, October 2^{nd …….}11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Student Union Grove (Across from Union)

Exhibit X: New English Department Fiction Series

BRIAN EVENSON

Thursday, October 2^nd

7:00 p.m. Hallwalls in the Tri-Main Building

UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION

Wednesday, October 8^th

3:00 p.m. ……Center for the Arts

English Department Colleagues Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe and Dennis Tedlock will be honored as SUNY Distinguished Professors

LESLIE FIEDLER SYMPOSIUM

October 30^th

8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Coffee service in second floor Atrium of Baird Hall

9:00 – 10:30 a.m. In Memory of Leslie Fiedler

10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Mark Royden Winchell

12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Lunch at CFA

1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Fiedler in the Classroom; Fiedler on the Roof

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Dedication of 538 Clemens

3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Wine and Cheese Reception

(Complete details will be available soon)

Faculty Activity

In May Joan Copjec gave two lectures at the University of Essex in England: one to the Department of Sociology, and one as a keynote speaker at the Conference on “Rhetoric.” In June, she gave a paper on “Love” in the “Impossible” lecture series sponsored by the Foundation for Art Resources in Los Angeles.

Bruce Jackson gave a presentation at “Carovane” 2003 in Piacenza, Italy. The theme of this year’s “Carovane”, which ran September 6-14, was "Addio alle armi", farewell to arms. He spoke, on a day devoted entirely to September 11 violence, about the 1971 Attica prison massacre and the prisoners’ 26-year-long civil rights trial; he also organized a photographic exhibit based on state police photographs taken during and immediately after the 1971 prison massacre. The two other topics for the day were the September 11, 1973 destruction of the Salvador Allende government in Chile and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Bruce has been appointed to the editorial board of the Inter-Nord: revue internationale d’études arctiques, published annually by CNRS-Économica in Paris.

In May, 2003 Ming-Qian Ma presented a paper “Style as the Threshold: Writing and Textuality of Becoming in Contemporary Philosophy and Avant-Garde Poetry” at the conference on “Literature and Its Others” held at the University of Turku, Finland. In August, he presented another paper at the conference of the 21^st World Congress of Philosophy in Istanbul, Turkey. This paper, titled “Becoming Phenomenology: Style, Poetic Texture, and the Pragmatic Turn in Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres,” has been accepted for publication in the forthcoming issue of Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research.

Graduate activity

English Department Ph.D. candidate Kevin Costa has been named Dean of the Senior Class at the Nichols School in Buffalo, where he teaches English and annually produces their spring Shakespeare play.

Ann Keefer’s review of Justine Larbalestier’s Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction appeared in Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres, Volume 18.

Ann has accepted a position as a Senior Lecturer in Michigan State University’s Department of American Thought and Language.

July saw the release of Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres, Volume 18, “Fifties Fictions”, edited by Josh Lukin and Samuel Delany. In addition to having edited the volume, Josh contributed the following:

“Introduction: Under Gray Flannel,”

“Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train as Tragedy of Manners,”

“Paradoxa Interview with Chandler Davis: ‘Trying to Say something True,”

“Paradoxa Interview with William Tenn: ‘A Jew’s-Eye View of the Universe,’” and he collected the reminiscences of Leslie Fiedler with which the issue concludes. At 407 pages, “Fifties Fictions” is the longest-ever issue of Paradoxa.

Josh has also accepted a non-tenure-track position in the English Department of Temple University.

Kerry Maguire has been named Dean of the Faculty at the Park School in Amherst, where she has taught literature for a number of years. Kerry is a English Department Ph.D. candidate.

Alumni/ae activity

Peter Gizzi has three poems in the July/August American Poetry Review.

Woosung Kang, a 2002 Ph. D. graduate, has received a tenure-track position in the Department of English, Hansung University, Seoul.

Bansari Mitra, a former English Ph.D. graduate reports her book, The Renovation of Folktales by Five Modern Bengali Writers was recently published by the Anthropological Survey of India. In addition, Bansari received a full-time tenure-track position at Grambling State University in Louisiana.

Adjunct Activity

In July, Kandace Brill Lombart was invited to present her paper “’Is Alone More Alone Than I Was Led to Believe’: Seulete Suis, A Poetic Comparison of the Phases of Grieving in Ruth Stone and Christine de Pisan” at the University de Salzburg for the Fifth International Christine de Pizan Colloquium.

UUP part-time academics and professionals at UB are also now officially represented by Kandace. She is extremely active in representing part-time issues at the university’s UUP Chapter Board level, as well as at the UUP State Delegate Assemblies. Please contact her with any issues, questions or concerns that you wish to be addressed. Please note: the second UUP part-time faculty and staff reception is scheduled for Friday, October 24^th.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Harry T. Hunt, Professor of Psychology, Brock University, author of The Multiplicity of Dreams and On The Nature of Consciousness, both from Yale University Press, will lecture on the topic “Why Psychology is/is not Traditional Science: Some post-Vico and post-Dilthey Reflections on Psychological Research” on

Thursday, October 16^th

1:30 p.m.

Clemens 640

Sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Philosophy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BOOK FAIR

is scheduled for

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5th

9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Clemens Third Floor Lobby

WEDNESDAYS @ 4 PLUS

Lytle Shaw

Poetry Reading

Wednesday, October 1^st

4:00 p.m……CFA Screening Room

If All Of Buffalo Read The Same Book

Thursday, October 2^nd – 4^th; Lorene Cary

Tomaz Salamun

Poetry Reading with Thom Ward & Peter Ramos

Friday, October 10^th

8:00 p.m. Just Buffalo’s Hibiscus Room

Buffalo Indie Lit Luau

Small Press Book and CLMP Magazine Fair

Friday, October 10^th, 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Saturday, October 11^th, 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

More information available @ www.medaille.edu/bill

Forrest Gander

Poetry Reading

Saturday, October 11^th 8:00 p.m.……..Hallwalls

Rachel Tzvia Back

Poetry Reading

Wednesday, October 15^th

4:00 p.m…….CFA Screening Room

Clayton Eshleman

Talk: “Charles Olson and the Archaic”

Wednesday, October 22^nd

4:00 p.m….Poetry/Rare Books Collection

Peter Culley and Bernadette Mayer

Poetry Reading

Friday, October 24^th

8:00 p.m…..Just Buffalo’s Hibiscus Room

Trevor Joyce

Poetry Reading

Wednesday, October 29^th

4:00 p.m….CFA Screening Room

Re-Reading Louis Zukofsky’s Bottom

A Symposium for Poets, Scholars, and Students

Friday, October 31^st 12:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. and

Saturday, November 1^st…10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Poetry/Rare Books Collection