University at Buffalo

 

Department of English

December, 2006

 

 

Newsletter

 

 

 

 

As of January 2007, we are starting a section in our English Department Newsletter for information on current activities of alumni.  If you received a BA, MA, or PhD from UB in English, please send us any information you’d like to share with your former fellow students and faculty.  We’d like to hear from you!

 

 

Calendar of Events

 

 

Buffalo Film Seminars

 

Peter Greenway

Prospero’s Books

December 5, 7:00 p.m.

Market Arcade Theater

 

Holiday Party for Undergraduates

 December 6

4:00-5:30 p.m., room 306

 

Department Holiday Party

Date, TBA

 

 

 

Juxtapositions Lecture

 

Ian Baucom (Duke Univ.):  “The Disasters of War: On Inimical Life”

December 7, 4:00 p.m.

830 Clemens Hall

 

 

David Marriott:  “’upon a ground of black’:  Burke, Kant, Adrian Piper”

December 12, 4:00 p.m.

Poetry Room

 

MLA Convention

 December 27-30, Philadelphia

 

Speakers

 

December 27

 

Carine Mardorossian:  “The Missing Muslim in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis

5:15-6:30 p.m., Regency Ballroom C2, Loews

 

Susan Howe:  “Speaking for the Wilderness:  Notes on Jonathan Edward’s ‘Personal Narrative’ and ‘The River of Rivers in Connecticut’ by Wallace Stevens”

7:00-8:15 p.m., 305, Philadelphia Marriott

 

 

December 28

 

Stacy Hubbard:  “Possessive-Obsessive Reading:  Ralph Waldo Emerson and Marianne Moore”

8:30-9:45 a.m., Liberty Ballroom Salon B, Philadelphia Marriott

 

Arabella Lyon:  “Sinocentric Culture, Speech-Act Theory, and Plagiarism”

8:30-9:45 a.m., Washington B, Loews

 

Susan Howe:  “The Sound of Poetry, the Poetry of Sound”

10:00-11:45 a.m., Regency Ballroom A & B, Loews

 

Stephen McCaffery:  “Sound Poetry”

12:00 noon-1:15 p.m., Regency Ballroom C, Loews

 

Ming-Qian Ma:  “Sounding the Visual”

1:45-3:00 p.m., Regency Ballroom C, Loews

 

Cristanne Miller:  session organizer for “Orality and Sound in Poetry”

7:15-8:30 p.m., 411-412, Philadelphia Marriott

 

December 29

 

Randy Schiff:  “Presenting a Prepostcolonial Arthur; or, Engaging the Non-Arthurians, Too”

12:00 noon-1:15 p.m., 306 Philadelphia Marriott

 

December 30

 

Randy Schiff:  “Ambivalent Aggression:  Divine Violence and the Engagement with the Jew in the Alliterative Siege of Jerusalem

8:30-9:45 a.m., 307, Philadelphia Marriott

 

Ming-Qian Ma:  “Imagining Worlds ‘Never before Existing’:  Formal Innovation, Unreadability, and the Poetics of ‘Crossing’”

10:15-11:30 a.m., Congress C, Loews

 

Ruth Mack:  “Decorative Historiography at Strawberry Hill”

10:15-11:30 a.m., 302, Philadelphia Marriott

 

Susan Muchshima Moynihan:  “Shame and the Refugee Subject in the Work of lê thi diem thúy and Aimee Phan”

10:15-11:30 a.m., 406, Philadelphia Marriott

 

Cristanne Miller:  “Describing Dickinson:  The Reader’s Relation to Sound”

12:00 noon-1:15 p.m., Independence Ballroom Salon III, Philadelphia Marriott

 

Neil Schmitz:  “Mark Twain, Cormac McCarthy:  Reading the Southern River”

1:45-3:00 p.m., Independence Ballroom Salon III, Philadelphia Marriott

 

Graduate Activity

 

Graduate British Studies Group, November 30

 

The following works in progress were presented

 

Jacob Bodway:  “Storming the Borders:  Discourse on Aesthetics and the Caricature of Revolt”

 

Mike Clody:  “Possibility in Negation:  Shakespeare’s Procreation Sonnets”

 

Morgan Denton:  “Historiography of Irish Prostitution in the 20th Century”

 

Sarah Hogan:  “Planted Laws and Perfect Plots:  Capitalist Imperialism in Spenser”

 

Jake Jewusiak:  “The Last Tape:  At the End of Exhausting Autobiography”

 

Trevor Speller:  “Great Britain:  The State of ‘The State of Nature’”

 

Alumni News

 

Victor Verney:  delivered a paper at a joint conference of the Hawthorne, Emerson and Poe societies last July 13-16 in Oxford, "Transatlanticism in American Literature: Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe."  His paper was titled "Hawthorne's 'Marble Faun': Art, Eros, and Italy."

 

More currently, his article, "Byron & the Greek War of Independence," has been published in the current (Dec. '06) issue of 'Military History' magazine. In addition, a second article will be published in that same magazine's Jan./Feb. '07 issue on Tolstoy's experiences as a young Russian Army artillery officer fighting in Chechnya and the Crimean War.  Also, a third article, on Orwell's combat experience in the Spanish Civil War, is slated by 'Military History' for publication later in '07.