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For a complete list of current events (including those not featured as news items) check the Calendar.
11/27/2009 

In Memoriam: Susan Gosling

Dear English Community,

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our beloved co-worker and friend, Susan Gosling. Susan worked at UC Santa Barbara for well over a decade in many capacities. She served as the undergraduate advisor, the graduate student advisor, and as the advising specialist in our department. Susan won a Peabody in her career as a television writer.

Susan and her partner, Dee McBurney, were tragically killed in a car accident last Thursday, November 27th, 2008. We are profoundly saddened by her loss and extend our deepest sympathies to her many friends and family during this difficult time. A memorial service date has not been set but it will likely take place sometime in January or February. Susan is survived by her mother. Dee is survived by her daughter, son, and granddaughter. It goes without saying that we will miss Susan terribly. She will always hold a special place in our hearts and memories.

Her family has asked that any cards or flowers be sent to their home address in Lompoc. If you would like to send something, please bring it to the department office at which time we will forward it for you. Dee's children are caring for their dogs and matters at their home.

In Susan's and Dee's honor, the staff is arranging an informal gathering of the English community and close friends to share memories, thoughts, and reflections of our time with Susan. Please join us on Thursday, December 11th in 2635 South Hall any time between 2:30 - 5pm. Refreshments will be served. We know Susan had many, many friends on campus and welcome them to this gathering.

We will order a plaque for display in Susan's memory. If you would like to make a contribution in memory of Susan and Dee, a collection is available at the front desk. Donations will be made to Lompoc CAPA, a non-profit animal rescue organization. We feel Susan and Dee would be very moved by this gesture as we all know how much they loved their pet poodles and considered them family members.

Cards are available for your thoughts in the department office. All cards and entries will be added to a memory book. We have set up a memorial blog for all to post their reflections as well: http://susangosling.wordpress.com. Please feel free to post your thoughts about Susan.

We have received many questions, many of which we are unable to answer. The Santa Maria Times has an article on the accident which tragically claimed their lives.

As of December 3rd, the Santa Maria Times and MSNBC have both published an article detailing Susan and Dee's lives.

Thank you all for your support and community goodwill during this very sad time.

With deep sadness,
The English Department
11/27/2009     1:30:00 PM
11/5/2009 

ACGCC Event: Celebrate the JTAS at the ASA Conference, Nov. 5-8!

Celebrate the JTAS at the American Studies Association Conference (ASA), November 5-8!

The American Cultures and Global Contexts Center (Department of English, UCSB), the Stanford University English Department, and other supporting institutions and entities invite you to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS) at the ASA conference in Washington, D.C., this year. Our own Shirley Lim will co-host the party in her suite. Details on time and location still to come.
11/5/2009   Washington, D.C.  
9/22/2009 

English Department Discovery Days Open House, 9-22-09, 1-3pm

English Department Discovery Days Open House Come learn about the English department, meet faculty and instructors, find out about opportunities for English majors like studying abroad and English Club, learn about the five different specializations, and more!

Speakers include Professor Carol Pasternack, undergraduate advisor Ann Wainwright, and past graduates of the English program.

September 22rd, 2009 from 1pm to 3pm. South Hall 2635.

[Discovery Days PDF]
9/22/2009   South Hall 2635   1:00:00 PM
6/5/2009 

Early Modern Center Undergraduate Conference 2009

1:00-1:05
Welcome and Opening Remarks
(Ken Hiltner, Professor of English & EMC Director)

1:05-2:00
Panel 1: Shakespeare Revisited

Sunny Sidhu: "Poetic Justice: King Richard in Purgatory."

Natalia Cohen: “Ten”

Chanti Burnette, with Emelie Battaglia: “The Odd Couplet”

Michael Bergin: “The Merchant of Venice Act 5 Revision”

2:00-2:40
Panel 2: Nature and Transformation

Garrett Hazelwood: “Green Thoughts: Andrew Marvell's Garden of Enlightenment Thinking"

Alexis Tai: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Love, an Ephemeral Force”

Amanda Montague: “'Forever Murmurs, and Forever Weeps': Transforming Violence Against Women Into Imperialistic Art in 'Windsor-Forest'"

2:40-2:45
Break

2:45-3:30
Panel 3: Genre and the Early Modern

Katharine Peters: "Eternal Elegies: The Song Lives On; Border Crossings in Thomas Gray's Work"

Caitlin Carlson: On Swift- Title TBA

Emma Hammack: "Man as Poet, and Poet as Man: Pope's Essay on Man"

3:30-4:00
Reception

Please attend and support inventive and refreshing work on early modern topics by our undergraduate students.
6/5/2009   South Hall 2635   1:00:00 PM
5/27/2009 

The Modernism Group lecture: Modernist Authenticity: Sincerity and Lying From Oscar Wilde to Toni Morrison


Speaker: Prof. John-Paul Riquelme, English, Boston University

Title: “Modernist Authenticity: Sincerity and Lying From Oscar Wilde to Toni Morrison”

Prof. Jean Paul; Riquelme is one of the most distinguished modernists currently writing in the US. He is the author of Harmony of Dissonances: T.S. Eliot, Romanticism and Imagination, Teller and Tale in Joyce’s Fiction, both from Johns Hopkins University Press, and the recent Gothic in Modernism. He has edited, among many others, a volume of Modernism/modernity dedicated to Hugh Kenner, and has written numerous articles on topics from Bram Stoker to Octavia Butler.

There will be a reception following the talk and discussion. All are invited.
5/27/2009   South Hall 2617   4:00:00 PM
5/22/2009 

Literature.Culture.Media Center 2nd Annual Research Poetry Slam

Literature.Culture.Media Center Research Slam
Where poster session meets poetry slam!

[click above image for full poster]

1:00 - 1:10 Opening Remarks, SH 2635

1:15 - 2:00 Session I, SH 2635
Nick Alward - Special Content
Hypertext-based project exploring forced simulated torture and our perception of war through both a narrative structured around a hypothetical CIA black site in New Mexico and an essay discussing World of Warcraft.
Salman Bakht - _object.soundingspace.textfield
Sound installation designed for an academic conference setting exploring dichotomies found in language: speech/text, semantics/phonology, sense/nonsense, etc.
Jenna Frazier - Sitt-Marie Rose: The Deaf-Mute Perspective
Using web design and text-analysis tools to explore the significance of the deaf-mute sections in Etel Adnan's Sitt Marie-Rose.
Bola C. King - Pedagogical Affordances and Opportunities in Second Life
Discussing general teaching possibilities and a look at UCSB Lane and its possibilities and limitations.
Julia Panko - Literature on the Record: Mourning, Memory, and Information Storage in The Raw Shark Texts
Exploring how Hall's print novel performs crucial digital humanities work by situating these themes within the intersections between narrative, storage technologies, print, and contemporary information culture.

2:10 - 2:55 Session II, SH 2509
Anne Cong-Huyen - CouchSurfing Toward Self: Identity in Literary and Virtual Space
Exploring contemporary identities that are continually constructed and evolving within digital spaces and communities.
Kim Knight - Describing the Viral
Tag clouds that are drawn from the descriptive labels applied to a sampling of content on YouTube.
Richard Lau - Sacco on Sacco
Analyzing the role of authorial self-insertion in Joe Sacco’s landmark works of New Journalism, graphic novels /Safe Area: Gorazde /and /Palestine/.
Amanda Phillips - The Uncanny Abyss: Reflections on Anxiety, Robots, and Intersubjective Relations
Reworking Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley, theorizing the anxiety induced by robots, realistic CGI, and artificial intelligence.

3:10 - 3:40 Discussion, SH 2635
Led by Anne Cong-Huyen, Julia Panko, and Amanda Phillips

3:40 - 3:50 Closing Remarks

3:50 - 5:00 Reception
5/22/2009   South Hall 2635   1:00:00 PM
5/22/2009 

CONFERENCE: Beyond Environmentalism: Culture, Justice and Global Ecologies

Featuring Ursula Heise and Elaine Scarry.

In the global context, right action on the part of humans toward each other and the biotic community, what Aldo Leopold called the land ethic, is difficult to represent in political speech, in policy, and even in the imaginative realm of the arts. Like the troubled concept of the global, the concept of justice, as Elaine Scarry has argued, founders in the problem of imagining other people, distant people, strangers. As our species faces anthropogenic climate change, world water shortages and world famine, the twin projects of giving expression to a truly global ecology and to global environmental justice have never been more urgent. This conference aims to bring together individuals whose life’s work has been the study or practice of writing—literary historians and theorists, journalists and cultural critics, social scientists and environmental policy makers who have made the written word central to their understanding of how social changes are achieved. All will be asked to pursue a knotty question: are we up to the task of writing a global environment, a global sensorium that impinges upon us so intimately that we are forced to recognize its crises as our own? Can the culture of letters bring the biosphere into our embodied sense of the everyday? What we are interested in is the task of creating a social aesthetic, if we use the term in Ramon Saldívar’s sense to mean “those complex emotions, reflections, and sensations which give rise to a peculiarly poetic organization, responsive to the demands of history."

Click here to view the BEYOND ENVIRONMENTALISM conference website.
5/22/2009   McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB   8:00:00 AM
5/18/2009 

L&E and L&M: Colloquium on the Work of Elaine Scarry

Description forthcoming. Sponsored by Literature and the Environment and Literature and the Mind. Facilitated by Professors Ken Hiltner and Kay Young, Department of English, UCSB.
5/18/2009   South Hall 1415   3:30:00 PM
5/15/2009 

EMC lecture: Poetry, Environment, and the Protected Circle of Wonder

On May 15th, Angus Fletcher will present a talk entitled "Poetry, Environment, and the Protected Circle of Wonder." Fletcher is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York Graduate School, author of A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination. According to Jonathan Bate, "Angus Fletcher is a highly distinguished critic and his New Theory for American Poetry is an appropriately distinguished contribution to the new wave of literary theory that restores the imagination, the aesthetic, the emotions and the natural world to critical discourse." Harold Bloom says, "Angus Fletcher and his work have strongly influenced the way I read poetry…His new book is the crown of his career: bold, original, brimming with imaginative energy on every page."

Time and location TBA. Sponsored by the Early Modern Center.
5/15/2009   5/15/2009, time & location TBA   8:00:00 AM
5/6/2009 

EMC Work-in-Progress Series: Professor Ann Plane (History, UCSB)

Ann Plane, Associate Professor of History at UCSB, and author of Colonial Intimacies, will present a paper as part of the Early Modern Center's work-in-progress series. Her presentation, entitled, "'When I Awaked': Colonial Encounters, Gendered Meanings, and the Cultural Significance of Dream Reporting in Seventeenth-Century New England," explores the convergence of two distinctive 'dream cultures,' that of the Algonquian-speaking natives of the region and that of the seventeenth-century nonconformist English colonists. Her paper also considers how these dream cultures reveal the gendered dynamics of colonization, particularly focusing on the representation of masculinity among both colonizer and colonized. Her presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. This event will be on Wednesday, May 6 from 3:30-5:00 in South Hall 2510 (the Early Modern Center). Please join us!
5/6/2009   Early Modern Center, South Hall 2510   3:30:00 PM
5/2/2009 

2009 Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference

Exchange - among individuals, cultures, markets, and makers - and identity - personal, social, communal, and artistic - are two areas of fundamental importance in medieval scholarship. They are also deeply related. Both are inherently dynamic, given to change and movement over time and space, and each interacts with and helps to constitute the other. This conference will keep to understand the themes of exchange, identity, and their dynamic relationship with a range of disciplinary approaches.

This one-day interdisciplinary conference will feature papers by graduate students in English, History, and Theatre and Dance in an exploration of the topics of exchange and identity in the middle ages.

Click here to view the flier and click here for the conference line-up.
5/2/2009   Marine Sciences Institute Auditorium (Room 1302)   10:00:00 AM
5/1/2009 

Medieval Studies Discussion: Professor Patricia Ingham

Professor Patricia Ingham (English, Indiana University) will be discussing her chapter on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

For more information on the Medieval Studies events and the Graduate Student Conference scheduled for Saturday, click here!
5/1/2009   SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
4/30/2009 

L&M Symposium: Why an ourang-outan? Thinking and Computing with Edgar Allan Poe

Speaker: Professor Sydney Lévy, Department of French and Italian, UCSB
Topic: “Why an ourang-outan? Thinking and Computing with Edgar Allan Poe"

Why did Poe choose an ourang-outan as the assassin in “The Murders of the Rue Morgue”? Poe’s “Analysis of Analysis” suggests a context for the answer to this question. Poe was preoccupied with the “Analysis of Analysis” during the composition of a number of important pieces, e.g., The Dupin Stories and “Maelzel’s Chess-Player,” which features a chess-playing automaton. Drawing on Searle’s “Minds, Brains and Programs” and Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” we will focus on Poe’s attempts to distinguish clearly between the thinking of humans and machines.

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is available at http://www.eapoe.org/WorkS/tales/morguef.htm “Maelzel’s Chess Player” is available at http://www.eapoe.org/WorkS/essays/maelzelb.htm

Turing, Allan. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind, New Series, Vol. 59, No. 236 (Oct., 1950), pp. 433-460: http://cogprints.org/499/0/turing.html
Searle, John. “Minds, Brains and Programs”, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, 1980, pp 417-457: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.searle2.html
4/30/2009   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
4/30/2009 

Teaching with Images

Need images for research and instruction? Having trouble finding quality digital images? What image presentation software alternatives do you have?

Jackie Spafford, Curator of UCSB's Visual Resources Collection will be speaking about and demonstrating several image resources available to the UCSB community. You will learn about resources for wide-ranging subjects in arts, architecture, humanities, social sciences and beyond. You will be introduced to freely available digital image collections and UC licensed services such as ARTstor, the VRC's own online digital database, and many others.

Bring your lunch and come and learn more.

For further information, please feel free to contact: Jackie Spafford (spafford@arthistory.ucsb.edu, 805-893-2509)

Please click here to see the event flyer.
4/30/2009   South Hall 2635   12:00:00 PM
4/29/2009 

Signs, Myth, Ideology: The Role of Visual Narratives in the Symbolic Construction of Barack Obama

Professor Elliott Butler-Evans, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of English University of California, Santa Barbara, will present a talk on "Signs, Myth, Ideology: The Role of Visual Narratives in the Symbolic Construction of Barack Obama."

Chicano/Latino Research Focus Group (IHC). Co-Sponsored By the Department Of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and the Chicano Studies Institute.
4/29/2009   McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB   12:00:00 PM
4/28/2009 

Sweep of Sound: Poetry Reading

"Sweep of Sound": Poetry Reading
by poets from across UCSB -- graduate students, undergraduates, faculty.


Old Little Theatre.
College of Creative Studies.
Refreshments will be served.

Contact Marthine Satris or Ryan Boyd for further information.
4/28/2009   Old Little Theatre, CCS   4:00:00 PM
4/23/2009 

Transliteracies event: Discussion of Bruno Latour's Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

William Warner, Professor of English, UCSB
Discussion of Bruno Latour's Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory


The Transliteracies History of Reading Group is pleased to announce a discussion of Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social, led by Professor Warner. Latour's recent book both introduces Actor-Network-Theory and challenges contemporary assumptions about what we call the "social." [read more . . .]

Professor Warner will lead a discussion of the following sections of Latour's book: Reassembling the Social
- "Third Source of Uncertainty: Objects too Have Agency" (63-86)
"First Move: Localizing the Global" (173-190)
- and for the highly motivated, the "Introduction" (1-17).
4/23/2009   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
4/21/2009 

ACGCC Working Papers Series

The Working Papers Series (WPS) offers graduate students the opportunity to workshop their papers in a supportive environment; we have two official commentators on each paper, one faculty member and one graduate student--and, of course, all who attend the meeting are invited to respond. You needn’t be directly affiliated with the ACGCC to join us. The WPS grew out of the need voiced by graduate students for concrete and helpful feedback from presentations. Thus, the work being reviewed is available in hard copy in the ACGC Center, and the graduate student does not read it at the WPS event. The idea is that the time should be spent discussing the work and responding to it. Therefore, both the faculty and graduate student respondents offer written and verbal responses (the written should be no more than a page), with suggestions and critiques. The meeting will be held in South Hall 2714 and hard copies of the papers will be available in the ACGCC Tuesday April 14. If you want more information or have questions come by the ACGCC.
4/21/2009   South Hall 2714   5:00:00 PM
4/18/2009 

Modernism Group conference

The Spring meeting of the SoCal Irish Studies colloquium will take place on Saturday 18th April at UC Santa Barbara in the McCune Conference Room, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, 6th Floor, HSSB (Humanities and Social Sciences building) between 11.00 am and 5.30pm. The topic of the colloquium, which has been organized by Enda Duffy, Marthine Satris, Julia Panko and other graduate students, is “Lingering Borders: Visions of Irish Spaces and Selfhood.” The keynote talk will be given by new member Tony Crowley, the Hartley Burr Alexander Chair in the Humanities at Scripps College. [read more . . .]
4/18/2009   McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB   11:00:00 AM
4/17/2009 

Career Options for English PhDs

The English Department's Council of Graduate Students (COGS) is pleased to present a roundtable discussion, moderated by Ryan Boyd, featuring:

Carina Evans, UCSB alumna and Assistant Professor at Southwestern University

Sarah McLemore, UCSB alumna and tenure-track professor at Glendale Community College

Thomas Roche, current PhD candidate and former editor at Johns Hopkins University Press.
4/17/2009   South Hall 2635   1:30:00 PM
4/16/2009 

Master of Fine Arts Panel

Thinking About Pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing?

Already admitted to a program and wondering what it will be like?

Come hear Pavneet Aulakh (M.F.A. in Poetry from Boston University) and Amy Boutell (M.F.A. in Writing from University of Texas, Austin) speak about why they chose to pursue an M.F.A, what the programs were like, and where they are now.

Come with questions, or just to hear about your options. All are welcome.

Pavneet Aulakh is currently pursuing a PhD in the English Department at UCSB, focusing on the “plain style” of poetry in the Jacobean Age. Amy Boutell works at SBCC and is writing a novel.

Questions? Contact CCS Literature Program Assistant and English department grad student Marthine Satris.
4/16/2009   College of Creative Studies, room 143   4:00:00 PM
4/13/2009 

Film Screening: Birth of a Nation

Professor Stephanie Batiste will introduce this classic, yet controversial film by D.W. Griffith. Adapted from Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, director D.W. Griffith's historical saga recounts the genesis of the U.S. Civil War, the destruction it wrought upon the populace, and the social ills spawned by Reconstruction, including the ascent of the Ku Klux Klan. The story plays out in the intertwining fates of two fictional families -- the Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons. Though the film's legacy is stained by its racist content, it remains a landmark in filmmaking technique (Netflix.com).
4/13/2009   South Hall 2635   6:00:00 PM
4/10/2009 

CONFERENCE: Building Community Across Borders

CONFERENCE: "Building Community Across Borders"

California American Studies Association (CASA) Annual Conference.

For more information contact Professor Ann Plane.
4/10/2009   McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB   8:00:00 AM
3/29/2009 

Undergraduate Commencement Reception


You, your family, and your friends are cordially invited to attend a reception to be held before the 1:00pm Commencement Ceremony celebrating the accomplishments of the undergraduate Class of 2008-2009.

Sunday, June 14th
10:30am - 12:00 Noon
Girvetz Courtyard


Refreshments will be served. RSVP to Ann at 805-893-4710 or by E-mail (wainwright@english.ucsb.edu).
3/29/2009     1:00:00 PM
3/20/2009 

Spring Break!

3/20/2009    
3/18/2009 

Lecture: Augustine and the History of Reading: from Post-Medieval to Prenaissance.

Brian Cummings (University of Sussex)
"Augustine and the History of Reading: from Post-Medieval to Prenaissance."
Wednesday, March 18 / 4:00pm
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

The Transliteracies History of Reading Group is pleased to announce a talk by Brian Cummings entitled "Augustine and the History of Reading: from Post-Medieval to Prenaissance." Brian Cummings is Professor of English at the University of Sussex, where he was Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies from 2004 to 2008. He is the author of The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace (Oxford University Press, 2002), which was named a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year for 2003.

This event is co-sponsored by UCSB's Renaissance Studies program and the IHC's History of Material Texts RFG.

For more details, visit http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/category/research-project.
3/18/2009   McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB   4:00:00 PM
3/13/2009 

Global Ecologies Colloquium Panel Discussion: The Psychological Dimensions of Climate Change

Professors Catherine Gautier and Dan Montello from the Department of Geography at UCSB will lead the panel discussion. Professor Gautier is the former Director and Principal Investigator at the Institute for Computational Earth Systems Science and head of the Earth Space Research Group. Professor Montello's research interests include: spatial, environmental and geographic perception, cognition, affect and behavior; behavioral and cognitive geography; environmental psychology and cognitive cartography.
3/13/2009   South Hall 2635   10:00:00 AM
3/13/2009 

Reading as a Social Technology

The History of Reading Group (a Transliteracies research working group) is hosting a one-day, interdisciplinary conference that will provide a forum for sharing recent research findings in the history of reading, with an eye toward investigating the technologies that shape reading as a social experience. The keynote speakers will be Adrian Johns (University of Chicago) and Elaine Treharne (Florida State University).

For more details, visit our conference website. Sponsored by the University of California's Transliteracies Project and the IHC's History of Material Texts RFG.
3/13/2009   McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB   9:00:00 AM
3/6/2009 

Early Modern Center Winter 2009 Conference: Before Environmentalism

In recent years, scholars have looked to the Renaissance and 18th century in order to better understand both the origins of our contemporary environmental crisis, as well as the emergence of modern environmental thinking. Environmental issues such as air pollution, toxic waste, increased urbanization, deforestation, wetland loss, and radical changes in land use were surprisingly timely in Renaissance England, routinely making their appearance in the literature of the day. Indeed, by the time Milton was writing Paradise Lost it was already known that respiratory illness from urban air pollution was second only to the Plague as the leading cause of death in London.

The EMC's one-day interdisciplinary conference will provide a forum to explore early modern literary and cultural responses to the environmental issues that preceded, and indeed gave shape to, modern environmentalism.

The conference will consist of panel discussions, as well as keynote talks by Carolyn Merchant and Jill Casid.

Keynote Speakers:

Carolyn Merchant (UC Berkeley) - "Controlling Nature: Francis Bacon and the Origins of Experimentation"

Jill Casid (U Wisconsin, Madison) - "Practices of Change at the Edges of the Human: Transplantation and Cross-Species Encounter in the Eighteenth Century"
3/6/2009   6020 HSSB, McCune Conference Room (6th floor)  
2/27/2009 

Talk: What Has the Computer Done for the Word?

Marie-Laure Ryan (English, University of Colorado) gives a talk on how digital technologies affect writing and reading. Her article Peeling the Onion: Layers of Interactivity in Digital Narrative Texts is available online.

Sponsored by the Department of English, the Program in Literature.Culture.Media, the Program in Literature and the Mind, and the Department of Film and Media Studies.

2/27/2009   South Hall 2635   4:00:00 PM
2/26/2009 

Film.Literature.Software film screening: Ghost in the Shell 2

The Literature.Culture.Media center's Film.Literature.Software presentation this quarter will be the anime film Ghost in the Shell 2. This film explores the question of humanity and its relation to machines, especially cyborgs and androids. An urban adventure that probes philosophical, moral, and aesthetic issues, this is one of a small number of animated films to become a finalist for the famed Palme D'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Join us on Thursday, February 26, at 6pm in SH 2635 for movie and discussion - all are welcome!
2/26/2009   South Hall 2635   6:00:00 PM
2/26/2009 

Literature & Mind Seminar: Interactive Narrative: What It Can Do & What It Can’t


Interactive Narrative: What It Can Do & What It Can’t

Facilitated by Professor Emeritus Porter Abbott (UCSB) with special guest Marie-Laure Ryan (University of Colorado)

A discussion keyed to 2 texts by Dr. Ryan, “Peeling the Interactive Onion: Levels of User Participation in the Narrative Texts,” and “Interactive Narrative, Plot Types, and Interpersonal relations” (available shortly on ERES).

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Ryan’s books, articles, and presentations have had an immense impact on the fields of narrative theory and media studies. Her landmark 1991 volume, Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory, helped introduce a paradigm-altering take on narrative and won the year’s MLA Independent Scholars Award. Her next authored book, Narrative as Virtual Reality brilliantly expanded the growing field of electronic narrative, winning the MLA’s Jeanne Scaglione Prize for2001. Avatars of Story: Narrative Modes in Old and New Media appeared in 2006. Among her other numerous publications are the edited volumes, From Possible Worlds to Virtual Reality: Approaches to Postmodernism (1995), Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory (1999), and Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling (2004). She was also co-editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory.
2/26/2009   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
2/24/2009 

English Department / Literature.Culture.Media Center Talk

Sue Thomas, "When Geeks Go Camping: Cyberspace and the Outdoor Life"

This talk examines the evolution of nature metaphors in computing and cyberspace via some examples of the influence of Californian outdoor life on computer culture in Silicon Valley and beyond. It is drawn from research for a book-length study, The Wild Surmise: Nature and Cyberspace, which discusses the many ways in which we use our experiences of nature to situate and comprehend our experiences of cyberspace.

Sue Thomas is a Research Professor based at De Montfort University, UK, and works in both the Institute of Creative Technologies and the Faculty of Humanities. She is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, UCSB, funded by the British Academy to research the California section of The Wild Surmise project. More information about Prof. Thomas is available at http://www.suethomas.net
2/24/2009   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
2/24/2009 

ACGCC launches new Journal of Transnational American Studies

The American Cultures & Global Contexts Center is delighted to announce the inaugural issue of its Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS), a new peer-reviewed online journal co-sponsored with Stanford University's Program in American Studies and now available free of charge at http://repositories.cdlib.org/acgcc/jtas/

JTAS seeks to broaden the interdisciplinary study of American cultures in a transnational context and is the first academic journal explicitly focused on what editorial board member Shelley Fisher Fishkin called the “transnational turn” in her 2004 American Studies Association presidential address.

The founding editorial team includes UCSB English Professor Shirley Geok-Lin Lim (editorial board) and doctoral candidates Eric L. Martinsen (managing editor), Caroline Kyungah Hong (co-managing editor), and Yanoula Athanassakis (editorial assistant).

English professors Giles Gunn and Carl Gutiérrez-Jones sit on the journal's prestigious advisory board, which includes American Studies scholars based in Australia, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, the UK, and the U.S.

JTAS's inaugural issue reflects a remarkable geographic and topical breadth with contributions from scholars and writers based in Germany, Ireland, Japan, Poland, Taiwan, the U.K., the U.S., and Vietnam. It includes selections from forthcoming or recently published books on Asian American art, Thurgood Marshall in Kenya, and constructions of race in the U.S. and Brazil, along with meditations by some of the leading figures in the field theorizing transnationalism and analyzing the current moment in American Studies scholarship. [read more . . .]
2/24/2009   SH 2710  
2/20/2009 

Literature & Mind Symposium: Lecture by Edward Slingerland, Asian Studies, University of British Columbia


"Exorcising the Geist in the Machine: Taking the Humanities Beyond Dualism"

This talk will argue that, for the humanities to progress, they need to move beyond the mind-body dualism that underlies our current strict separation between the humanities and natural sciences. Scientific discoveries about human cognition have an important constraining function to play in the humanities, calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the "blank slate" theory of human nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason. The goal of this talk is to suggest how the humanities would be altered if humanists began taking these discoveries seriously, as well as to explore what "vertical integration" or "consilience" would mean for our concept of the person, human consciousness, and human-level truths.

At UBC, Edward Slingerland is Research Chair in Chinese Thought and Embodied Cognition, and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture. He is also the author of What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture.

Co-sponsored with the Department of Psychology. Discussion and reception following.
2/20/2009   SH 2635   2:00:00 PM
2/19/2009 

Johanna Drucker, I.nterpret

Johanna Drucker is Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor of Information Studies at UCLA. In 2008-2009, Drucker is in residence as the Digital Humanities Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, where she is working on a project titled "Diagramming Interpretation." Her recent work focuses on aesthetics and digital media, particularly graphical communication and the expressive character of visual form. She is well known for her publications on the history of written forms, typography, design, and visual poetics.

Her scholarly books include Theorizing Modernism (Columbia University Press, 1994), The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art (University of Chicago Press, 1994); The Alphabetic Labyrinth (Thames and Hudson, 1995), The Century of Artists’ Books (Granary, 1995), Figuring the Word (Granary Books, 1998), and Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity (University of Chicago Press, 2005). In addition to her scholarly work, Dr. Drucker is internationally known as a book artist and experimental visual poet. Her work has been exhibited and collected in special collections in libraries and museums including the Getty Center for the Humanities, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Marvin and Ruth Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry, the New York Public Library, Houghton Library at Harvard University and many others.
2/19/2009   SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
2/19/2009 

Johanna Drucker, Ivanhoe

Originally created and theorized by Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker of the University of Virginia English Department, Ivanhoe is a pedagogical environment for interpreting textual and other cultural materials. It is designed to foster critical awareness of the methods and perspectives through which we understand and study humanities documents. An online collaborative playspace, Ivanhoe exposes the indeterminacy of humanities texts to role-play and performative intervention by students at all levels.
2/19/2009   SH 2509 (LCM lab)   10:30:00 AM
2/11/2009 

English lecturer wins Jean-Pierre Barricelli prize

Congratulations to Professor James Donelan! The prize committee of the International Conference on Romanticism has awarded his book, Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic (Cambridge UP, 2008), the 2008 Jean-Pierre Barricelli prize for the best book in Romanticism studies for the year.

From the book description: "James H. Donelan describes how two poets, a philosopher, and a composer - Hölderlin, Wordsworth, Hegel, and Beethoven - developed an idea of self-consciousness based on music at the turn of the nineteenth century. This idea became an enduring cultural belief: the understanding of music as an ideal representation of the autonomous creative mind. Against a background of political and cultural upheaval, these four major figures - all born in 1770 - developed this idea in both metaphorical and actual musical structures, thereby establishing both the theory and the practice of asserting self-identity in music. Beethoven still carries the image of the heroic composer today; this book describes how it originated in both his music and in how others responded to him. Bringing together the fields of philosophy, musicology, and literary criticism, Donelan shows how this development emerged from the complex changes in European cultural life taking place between 1795 and 1831."
2/11/2009     8:00:00 AM
2/6/2009 

Early Modern Center: Brown Bag Lunch & Paper Presentations

ALL ARE WELCOME! BRING YOUR LUNCH!

Please come to support the following grad students and to give feedback on a set of dynamic papers! The presenters will be:

Charlotte Becker: "The Matter of Words in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Tennyson's In Memoriam."

Liberty Stanavage: "What's a play without a woman in it?": Gendered Revenge and Elizabethan Anxieties in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy

Donna Beth Ellard: TBA

Megan Palmer Browne: "'More vile than is a slave in base servility': Shakespeare?s Queen Margaret and the Conventions of Princely Power."
2/6/2009   SH 2635   11:00:00 AM
2/5/2009 

Film Screening: The Garden (part of FS&FS Conference)

Award-winning documentary The Garden will be screened as part of the Food Sustainability & Food Security Conference. The Garden, by director Scott Hamilton Kennedy, won a Sterling award for best U.S. feature. The Sterling Feature Jury praised the film for "its tenacity in storytelling in the face of injustice, and the filmmaker's singular vision in bringing a gripping, dramatic, and important story to the public eye. The Garden has raw emotion, visceral energy, and nail-biting twists and turns. It unravels a complex and layered tale of the destruction of America's largest urban farm that must not be forgotten."
2/5/2009   Girvetz 1004 (theatre)   8:00:00 PM
2/5/2009 

KCLU interview of Arnhold Post-Doctoral Fellow Allison Carruth

Lance Orozco of NPR-affiliate KCLU interviewed Allison Carruth on the local portion of Morning Edition last Thursday, February 5th: "Food Sustainability, security focus of local conference" (click link to hear the radio interview with Dr. Carruth).

This interview relates to the Food Sustainability and Food Security conference.
2/5/2009     10:00:00 AM
2/5/2009 

CONFERENCE: Food Sustainability and Food Security Invitational Conference

In conjunction with the UCSB Humanities Center's yearlong "Food Matters" program, the Department of English is organizing an interdisciplinary conference that will address the closely related topics of food sustainability and food security. The conference aims to provide a forum for sharing recent research findings in this area and to investigate the future of food studies as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry. In response to current international conflicts over hunger, food prices, and genetically modified seeds, the matter of food has become central to both environmental and economic policymaking. In this context, the interdisciplinary field of food studies has a new purchase. This conference will gather some of the country's leading food scholars--many of whom are affiliated with the UC system--to examine the meaning of food sustainability in particular regional contexts from Africa to the Middle East to the Americas. The conference will provide a timely occasion for scholars from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences as well as activists and farmers to dialogue about the global food system in both contemporary and historical contexts. For further information, contact Allison Carruth. The conference will open with an evening keynote address on February 5th, followed by a full day of panels on February 6th and a closing roundtable with community food leaders on the morning of February 7th.

Visit the official website for more information.
2/5/2009   6020 HSSB, McCune Conference Room (6th floor)   8:00:00 AM
2/1/2009 

Job Talks - all interested parties are welcome to attend!


Literature & Modern Media
Timothy Carmody, "The Dictatorial Perpendicular: Walter Benjamin's Reading Revolution" (Monday, January 12, 3:30; reception to follow)
Timothy Carmody is completing his dissertation in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania.

Literature & Modern Media
Kate Marshall, "Dreiser's Stamping Room" (Friday, January 16, 3:30 p.m.; reception to follow)
Kate Marshall is completing her dissertation in English at UCLA on the topic of media architectures in 20C American literature.

Literature & Modern Media
Mara Mills, "Vocal Codes: From Lip-Reading to Digital Signals" (Wednesday, January 21, 3:30 p.m.; reception to follow)
Mara Mills took her PhD from Harvard in the History of Science and is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is teaching courses for English, Cinema Studies, and the History/Sociology of Science.

Renaissance Drama
Andrew Griffin, "Tragedy, History, and Marlowe's Dido" (Monday, January 26, 3:30 p.m; reception to follow)
Andrew Griffin completed his Ph.D. in 2008 at McMaster on untimely deaths in Renaissance drama and is currently a lecturer in English at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Renaissance Drama
Mimi Yiu, "Othello's Blackwork: Embroidering the Moor" (Thursday, January 29, 3:30 p.m; reception to follow)
Mimi Yiu received her Ph.D. from Cornell in 2005, held a one-year position as Postdoctoral Lecturer in English and Art History at USC in 2005-2006, and is currently in her second year as a tenure-track assistant professor at Georgetown.

Renaissance Drama
András Kiséry, "Politics from the margins" (Monday, February 2, 3:30 p.m; reception to follow)
András Kiséry completed his Ph.D. in 2008 at Columbia on the circulation of political knowledge in early seventeenth-century English drama, and is currently a visiting assistant professor at Vanderbilt University.

Click here to read more extended biographies of each candidate.
2/1/2009   All job talks held in South Hall 2635.   3:30:00 PM
1/30/2009 

Careers in Law Forum: Why the Law?

Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Frank J. Ochoa leads this interactive forum discussion on considering a career in law.

Judge Ochoa earned his Bachelor of Arts in English and History at UCSB, and graduated from the UC Davis School of Law in 1975. Judge Ochoa was Executive Director of the Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County. In 1983, he was appointed to the Municipal Court by Governor Brown—making him the youngest judge in the state at the time. Judge Ochoa was elected to the Superior Court of Santa Barbara in 1996.

Click here for a larger version of the flier.
1/30/2009   South Hall 2635   12:30:00 PM
1/30/2009 

Roundtable Discussion: Technology in the Classroom

Our department has seen technologies such as Facebook, blogs, and wikis utilized in both graduate and undergraduate courses; there has been interest in how these work and what they're good for. Join us for a panel and roundtable discussion on incorporating these and other technologies into your teaching. Our panel includes faculty and graduate students who will share their success stories as well as suggestions and advice on what different applications can do, how you can get your students engaged, and how easy some of thus stuff really is.
1/30/2009   Literature.Culture.Media Center (South Hall 2509)   10:00:00 AM
1/20/2009 

L&M Winter Symposium Event

Literature and the Mind's first winter symposium event!

FACILITATOR: Professor Julie Carlson, Department of English
TOPIC: Deborah Britzman, Novel Education: Pscyhoanalystic Studies of Learning and Not Learning (NY: Peter Lang, 2006).

READINGS:
- Chapter 1, "Psychoanalytic Studies of Learning and Not Learning
- Chapter 2, "Five Excursions into Free Association, or Just Take the A Train" (recommended)
- Chapter 8, "What is a Pedagogical Fact? Notes from the Clinical Knowledge Project" (recommended)
1/20/2009   South Hall 2714   4:00:00 PM
1/16/2009 

ACGCC Film Screening: Up the Yangtze (2007)

Professor Teresa Shewry will introduce this award winning documentary. A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze - navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river's edge - a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam - contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle - provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China. Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang's beautifully photographed documentary of China's peasant life and cultural upheaval had its U.S. premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
1/16/2009   American Cultures and Global Contexts Center   6:00:00 PM
1/14/2009 

EMC wins BSECS Digital Eighteenth Century Prize

Congratulations to the EMC's English Broadside Ballad Archive! The British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies has awarded EBBA the BSECS Digital Eighteenth Century Prize (2009), a new annual award sponsored by JISC Collections, Gale Cengage Learning, Adam Matthews Digital, and ProQuest, in collaboration with BSECS.

In particular the committee made the award in light of EBBA’s “Innovative combination of visual, textual and audio sources, that together make it possible for scholars to engage with the material in ways that go beyond what they could achieve through any single approach. The site's usefulness as a teaching resource, its associated technical innovations, and its adherence to the highest scholarly standards were also influential in the committee's decision.”

EBBA has been generously funded by two National Endowment for the Humanities grants.

The criteria for the award, and further information about it can be found here.
1/14/2009   SH 2510  
12/29/2008 

English Department MLA Party


The English Department of the University of California at Santa Barbara

cordially invites you to

Our MLA Convention Party

In the suite of the Department Chair, Alan Liu

Place: Hilton San Francisco
Time: Monday, December 29, 2008
8:30PM – 10:30PM

12/29/2008   Hilton San Francisco   8:30:00 PM
12/9/2008 

New on The Agrippa Files

  • Recovery of the code from an original 1992 diskette containing William Gibson’s self-encrypting, self-disappearing memory poem and an emulated “run” of its software. (Go to The Poem Running in Emulation)
  • Original footage from December 9, 1992, public debut of Agrippa at the Americas Society in New York City during the “Transmission” event. (Go to The “Hack”)
  • Essay by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, with Doug Reside and Alan Liu, “No Round Trip: Two New Primary Sources for Agrippa"
Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr. The Agrippa Files (http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu) is a scholarly site developed by members of the UCSB English and Comparative Literature departments that presents selected pages from the original art book; a unique archive of materials dating from the book’s creation and early reception; a simulation of what the book’s intended “fading images” might have looked like; a 1993 experimental video "remix" based on the bootleg video from an original 1992 Agrippa “transmission” event; a “virtual lightbox” for comparing and studying pages from the book; commentary by scholars; an annotated bibliography of scholarship, press coverage, interviews, and other material; detailed bibliographic descriptions of the book; and a discussion forum. (more)
12/9/2008    
12/1/2008 

LCM-Event: Film.Literature.Software Series

Guest speaker: Aaron McLeran, MAT
The LCM's Film.Literature.Software series is pleased to present a software demo of the recently-released Spore. This newest game from the makers of SimCity and The Sims is perhaps the most sweeping simulation ever, starting from a cellular organism and ending with a spacefaring civilization.

MAT graduate student Aaron McLeran, who worked on the game's generative music during software development, will be on hand to discuss his work. The Creature Creator program will also be available to allow for a hands-on experience with this unique content-authoring software.

All are welcome for the demo and discussion.
12/1/2008   SH 2509 (LCM lab)   12:00:00 PM
11/24/2008 

L&M Symposium on new media and (new) modes of cognition

Literature & Mind Symposium

This meeting will focus on topics of attention, distraction, and new media. Reading will include N. Katherine Hayles, "Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes" (Profession; 2007).
11/24/2008   SH 2635   12:00:00 PM
11/20/2008 

LCM Event: Gaps, Vexes, and the Digitas

LISA SAMUELS
"Gaps, Vexes, and the Digitas"

Lisa Samuels is a poet, critic, theorist, digital experimental writer, and co-author with Jerome McGann of the influential essay "Deformance and Interpretation." Presently visiting the U.S. from New Zealand, where she is Associate Professor of English at the University of Auckland, she will give a seminar/talk on "Gaps, Vexes, and the Digitas" about "gap scans" - annotated deformances of poetry - and some issues involved in composing her first digital poetry piece, "Vex Increment." Her context is what she calls the "digitas," a term for the digital humanities resonating with "civitas", digital acts, and the digits of our hands. The talk is hosted by the English Department's Literature.Culture.Media center.

For more information on Lisa Samuels, see the Electronic Poetry Center's page: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/samuels/
11/20/2008   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
11/20/2008 

1968: A GLOBAL YEAR OF STUDENT DRIVEN CHANGE

Marking the 40th anniversary of the Black Student takeover of a computer building on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, a conference, 1968: A Global Year of Student Driven Change, will take place at UCSB from November 20-22, of 2008.

All are welcome! There is no need to register, and no fee to attend. The conference especially welcomes students, academics, artists, and people who are interested in how education changed in the 1960s, especially in 1968, when an upsurge occurred in the willingness of students around the globe to take the nature of their education into their own hands. We invite people to engage in a broad range of issues related to the transformation of education at this time by placing black student activism in a comparative and transnational context.

The English department is a co-sponsor of 1968. Click here for a schedule of events.
11/20/2008   UCSB campus   8:30:00 AM
11/18/2008 

ACGCC Film Screening: The End of Suburbia (2004)

Part of the American Cultures & Global Contexts Center's Global Ecologies Colloquium. The ACGCC presents a film screening 
of The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion & the Collapse of the American Dream.

This provocative documentary, a regular on the film-festival circuit, examines the history of suburban life and the wisdom of this distinctly American way of life. A post-World War II concept, suburbia attracted droves of people, giving rise to sprawl and all that comes with it -- good and bad. How has the environment been affected by this lifestyle, and is it sustainable? Canadian director Gregory Greene dares to ask all the tough questions (Netflix.com). Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years, so too the suburban way of life has become embedded in the American consciousness. Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge about the sustainability of this way of life.
11/18/2008   South Hall 2710   6:00:00 PM
11/17/2008 

Brown Bag Lunch Forum: Careers in Teaching

Thinking about becoming a teacher?

The English Department Forum Series presents: Careers in Teaching

Find out what it means to pursue a career in teaching at the elementary, secondary, or community college level. Talk with a panel of professionals, including current grad students and Professor Robert Montgomery from the UCSB teaching credential program. You will also learn about graduate programs leading to MAs in education ir teaching credentials, how to apply, what to expect, and how to choose a program that's right for you. Bring your own lunch!
11/17/2008   South Hall 2635   12:00:00 PM
11/14/2008 

EMC Fall Colloquium: Before Environmentalism

This year's EMC Fall Colloquium will feature speakers Professor Robert Watson and Professor Beth Tobin, both of whom will present work that illuminates this year's theme, "Before Environmentalism." The Colloquium will take place in the McCune Conference Room in the HSSB at UCSB from 1:00-4:00. [read more]

Robert N. Watson is a Professor of English at UCLA, and author of Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance (Pennsylvania UP, 2006), named the Best Book of Ecocriticism of 2005-2006 by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.

Beth Fowkes Tobin is a Professor of English at Arizona State University, and the author of Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1820 (Pennsylvania UP, 2005) and Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (Duke UP, 1999).
11/14/2008   6th floor HSSB, McCune Conference Room   1:00:00 PM
11/7/2008 

Mark Rose History of Books lecture: The Public Sphere and the Emergence of Copyright

The Public Sphere and the Emergence of Copyright: Areopagitica, the Stationers' Company, and the Statute of Anne

Professor Mark Rose will discuss the seventeenth-century publishing practices and developing copyright laws that gave rise to lasting conceptualizations of intellectual property and public access to information. Rose is a Professor Emeritus of the UCSB English Department. He has authored numerous articles on copyright and intellectual property, and his book Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (1993) was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Sponsored by the IHC’s History of Books & Material Texts RFG.
11/7/2008   South Hall 2635   2:00:00 PM
11/5/2008 

LCM Lecture & presentation: Locative Narrative

Literature.Culture.Media sponsors a lecture and presentation of work by Jeremy Hight on the topic of locative narrative.

Read Hight's essay on Narrative Archaeology or one of his three blogs: Floating Points, A Story in the Air, and Nothing at All (Here).

[website: 34 North 118 West]
11/5/2008   South Hall 2635   12:00:00 PM
10/31/2008 

Reading Workshop: 17th-century Copyright

Reading Workshop: 17th-century Copyright hosted by the History of Books and Material Texts Research Focus Group.

This discussion will help participants understand and explore the historical and theoretical context for Mark Rose's Nov. 7 talk "The Public Sphere and the Emergence of Copyright: Aroepagitica, the Stationers' Company, and the Statute of Anne." The three readings are available for download at the IHC's website.

Refreshments will be provided.
10/31/2008   South Hall 2635   2:30:00 PM
10/28/2008 

A Reading with Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Barry Spacks


Shirley Geok-lin Lim, UCSB English professor and award-winning author, and Barry Spacks, the first Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, will each read selections from their latest books, Princess Shawl and Food for the Journey. Princess Shawl, released this year, has been called "a powerful book" by the acclaimed writer Maxine Hong Kingston, while poet Richard Wilber praises Barry Spacks as "The most companionable of poets." These talented authors will share their work in a delightful and energetic collaboration you won't want to miss.
10/28/2008   MultiCultural Center Lounge   4:00:00 PM
10/27/2008 

L&M-related event: Music and Cheesecake

The Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music (CISM) cordially invites you to "Music and cheesecake, or, Why art is not a spandrel" with guest speaker Stephen Davies.

Stephen Davies teaches philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is a fellow of the New Zealand Academy of the Humanities and President of the American Society for Aesthetics. He has published numerous books and articles on aesthetics and music, including Philosophical Perspectives on Art (Oxford UP, 2007), Themes in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford, 2003), Musical Work and Performances: A Philosophical Exploration (Clarendon, 2001), and Musical Meaning and Expression (Cornell UP, 1994). [read more]
10/27/2008   UCen Harbor Room   4:00:00 PM
10/27/2008 

L&M Symposium: Presenter Noelle Batt

Symposium on "Speculations in Neurobiology and Literary Theory: the Brain and the Literary as 'Transducers.' Reading: Chapters 5 and 10 from Gerald Edelman’s Wider than the Sky.

Noelle Batt, professor of English studies, at l'Universite Paris 8, has graciously agreed to give a presentation during the symposium.
10/27/2008   SH 2635   12:00:00 PM
10/24/2008 

LCM Symposium: Careers in New Media and Digital Humanities

You are cordially invited to attend a symposium on the topic of "Careers in New Media and the Digital Humanities," with guest speaker Elizabeth Losh.

Liz will give a short opening presentation outlining her career trajectory from PhD in English to Writing Director of the Humanities Core at UC Irvine. We will then have an open discussion oriented around the following core topics: [read more].
10/24/2008   South Hall 2635   2:00:00 PM
10/21/2008 

Global Ecologies Colloquium: 
Street Theater & Environmental Activism

Co-hosted by the Literature and the Environment specialization, and the American Cultures and Global Contexts Center.

Sharon Paltin’s presentation will include a chance to participate in a taste of street theater, to view action photos form the archives of decades of creative collaboration, and to review some basics, themes, suggestions and useful tips for creating and manifesting your very own street theater. Street theater or activist theater includes puppetry, pageantry or parades, dance, props, costumes, sculpture, graffiti and music. [read more]
10/21/2008   SH 2635   4:30:00 PM
10/16/2008 

Early Modern Center: A Lecture with Thomas Pettitt

Brown-bag lunch to follow on October 17th, 12-2pm, in South Hall 2635.

The Gutenberg Parenthesis
(Renegotiating Mediaeval Studies and Media Studies)

This presentation will recommend the notion of a “Gutenberg Parenthesis” as a useful way of combining the suggestions made from several different perspectives that recent developments associated with the digital media and the internet are a reversion to “medieval” conditions prevailing prior to the rise and dominance of literacy, print and the book. [read more]

- Full description of Gutenberg Parenthesis lecture: [PDF]
- Full description of Ballads and Broadsides talk: [PDF]
10/16/2008   SH 2635   4:30:00 PM
10/13/2008 

Grad School Forum

The English Department Forum Series Presents:
"Applying to Graduate School"

For students interested in furthering their career in an M.A. or Ph.D program in the study of English or other Humanities.

Find out about deadlines, the GRE Exam and tips on what makes a good application.

You will have the opportunity to ask questions of professors and graduate students. Professor Ken Hiltner; grad advisor Chelsea Houdyshell; and graduate students Aimee Woznick, Ryan Boyd, and Judith Hicks will attend the forum to provide invaluable insights and answer questions.
10/13/2008   SH 2635   1:00:00 PM
10/9/2008 

ACGCC: Documenting Globalization Film Series: Life and Debt

English Department Discovery Days Open House
Professor Bishnupriya Ghosh will be introducing this searing documentary that examines how the policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other aid organizations have changed the Jamaican economy over the past quarter of a century, leaving the local people to struggle in poverty and work in sweatshops. Author Jamaica Kincaid narrates with Belinda Becker to a reggae soundtrack that includes songs by Bob Marley, Ziggy Marley, Mutubaruka and Peter Tosh (Netlfix.com).

Sponsored by the American Cultures & Global Contexts Center.

10/9/2008   South Hall 2635   6:00:00 PM
10/2/2008 

LCM Event: Talk/reading by Stephanie Strickland

English Department Discovery Days Open House
The new Literature.Culture.Media Center in the English dept at UCSB is pleased to present a talk and reading by Stephanie Strickland.

Stephanie Strickland lives in New York. Her fifth book of print poems, Zone : Zero, includes two interactive poems on CD. One, slippingglimpse, was introduced at e-Poetry Paris, 2007; and the other, Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot, was chosen by Heather McHugh for the Boston Review Prize. Two of her books, True North and V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L’una, have won Di Castagnola Prizes from the Poetry Society of America, chosen by Barbara Guest and Brenda Hillman respectively. The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil was awarded the Brittingham Prize. [more]
10/2/2008   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
9/29/2008 

Lit & Mind Symposium


Symposium Topic: Discussion of "Turning Our Ghosts into Ancestors: Psychoanalysis as a Neuroplastic Therapy," ch. 9 (pp. 214-44) of Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself (Penguin, 2007) and Denise Levertov's poem "Talking to Grief." The first hour will be devoted to discussion of Doidge; for those who want to remain for a literary half-hour, we will then turn to Levertov's poem.

Discussion Facilitator: Aranye Fradenburg
9/29/2008   South Hall 2635   12:00:00 PM
9/26/2008 

Department Reception

Annual fall reception for staff, faculty, and grad students of the Department of English. See Shayna or Joni for more details.
9/26/2008   UCSB campus   9:00:00 AM
9/25/2008 

Job Search for Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Literature and Media

We seek a candidate who specializes in literature and media technologies or cultures between 1800 and c. 1980, the epoch of modernization from the first industrial revolution to the onset of the current digital revolution. We are particularly interested in candidates whose research focuses on writing, reading, communicational, computational, visual, or sensory media in the period between early-modern technologies of writing and reading and contemporary digital technologies (two areas in which our department has strength). [read more]
9/25/2008    
9/25/2008 

Job Search for Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Renaissance Studies

Tenure-track Assistant Professor. We invite applications from candidates who specialize in Renaissance drama, including Shakespeare, and who can also teach a range of courses in Renaissance literature. We especially welcome candidates who can intersect with our department's Early Modern Center and other collaborative research and teaching initiatives, and can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching, and service. [read more]
9/25/2008    
9/23/2008 

English Department Discovery Days Open House, 9-23-08, 1-3pm

English Department Discovery Days Open House Come learn about the English department, meet faculty and instructors, find out about opportunities for English majors like studying abroad and English Club, learn about the five different specializations, and more!

Speakers include Professor Carol Pasternack, advising specialist Susan Gosling, and past graduates of the English program.

September 23rd, 2008 from 1pm to 3pm. South Hall 2617.

[Discovery Days PDF]
9/23/2008     8:00:00 AM
9/22/2008 

English Department Grad Student Orientation

Required for new grad students in the department.
9/22/2008   South Hall   9:00:00 AM
9/19/2008 

English Department TA Training

For new and continuing grad students who will teach in the 2008-2008 school year and who have not attended TA-training in the past. Attendance is mandatory as required by the UAW.
9/19/2008   South Hall   9:00:00 AM
9/6/2008 

bsPoems by Barry Spacks: Food for the Journey

Barry Spacks has published many short stories, collections of poems, and novels. He was the first poet laureate of Santa Barbara, and is a UCSB English and CCS Literature instructor.

Barry Spack's latest book, Food for the Journey, "continues the poet’s quest to attend gracefully to the things of this world, both common and unusual, and intuit their larger connections" (Cherry Grove Collections).

Maxine Hong Kingston says, "I enjoy reading Barry Spacks’ poetry for his attention to real things, real people, real life. He finds ways to know everything—the earth, the air—as miraculous, as beautiful, as playful."
9/6/2008    
7/7/2008 

English Department Expands Specializations Offerings

PDF Flyers for Specializations American Cultures & Global Contexts (PDF document) Literature & Culture of Information (PDF document) Early Modern Studies (PDF document) Literature & Mind (PDF document) Literature & Mind (PDF document) Two new specializations for English majors -- Literature & Environment, and Literature & Mind -- join the existing specializations in American Cultures & Global Contexts, Early Modern Studies, and Literature & Culture of Information. Formed around clusters of advanced research in the department, the specializations give undergraduates a chance to work with faculty and graduate students pursuing a cutting-edge topic. . . . more



7/7/2008     8:00:00 AM
7/7/2008 

New Department Knowledge Base Wiki

EDKB-wiki EDKB-Wiki Home Page Teaching Resources page Texts of Authors Taught in Courses Just launched is the new EDKB-Wiki (English Department Knowledge Base wiki). Developed with the aid of a UCSB instructional improvement grant, the wiki is designed to serve both instructors and students by housing much of the evolving, shared institutional wisdom of the department--e.g., syllabi for often-taught courses, sample assignments, teaching materials, "best practices," interviews with veteran teachers, guides to research, writing, technology, and much more.



7/7/2008     8:00:00 AM
7/1/2008 

Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony & Reception (6/15/2008)

Undergraduate Commencement June 2008
7/1/2008     8:00:00 AM
6/30/2008 

End of Year Party honoring RETIREES & GRADUATE STUDENTS

Mark Rose, David Marshall, Bob Erickson...

Mark Rose, David Marshall, Robert Erickson

More photos and information
6/30/2008     8:00:00 AM
6/28/2008 

Richard Helgerson (1940-2008)rh

Renowned scholar of Renaissance Literature and beloved professor of the department passes away. April 26, 2008.
6/28/2008     8:00:00 AM
6/20/2008 

Alan Liu: New English Department Chair

Meet our new chair.
6/20/2008     8:00:00 AM
6/15/2008 

Commencement Reception

You are cordially invite to attend a reception to be held before the 1:00pm Commencement Ceremony celebrating the accomplishments of the Undergraduate Class of 2007-2008.

Sunday, June 15th
10:30am - 12:00 Noon
Girvetz Courtyard

Refreshments will be served
RSVP to Ann at 805-893-4710 or wainwright@english.ucsb.edu
6/15/2008   Girvetz Courtyard   10:30:00 AM
6/15/2008 

Undergraduate Commencement Reception photos


Please click here or the above thumbnail photo to view pictures from the department's reception. Thank you to everyone who attended and congratulations to our English majors. We are very proud.
6/15/2008   Girvetz Courtyard   10:30:00 AM
5/28/2008 

Undergraduate Honors Colloquium

Everyone is invited to attend our department's First Annual Undergraduate Honors Colloquium.
5/28/2008   South Hall 2635   3:00:00 PM
5/24/2008 

ACGCC Conference: “Citizenship in the Era of Globalization” An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

The 2008 American Cultures and Global Contexts Graduate Conference, an interdisciplinary forum at UC Santa Barbara, presents the problem of citizenship in the era of globalization.
5/24/2008   Centennial House   9:00:00 AM
5/20/2008 

ACGCC Film Series: Children of Men (2006)

In anticipation of our fifth annual end-of-year conference, “Citizenship in the Era of Globalization,” the ACGCC presents a screening and casual discussion of the 2006 film Children of Men. Aimee Woznick will introduce the film. All are welcome.
5/20/2008   SH 2710   6:00:00 PM
5/20/2008 

ACGCC Celebration of Undergraduate Majors

Join us for food and drink, American Cultures jeopardy, and discussion and celebration of student Honors theses and projects. Special prizes will be given to outstanding contributors to the American Cultures Specialization.
5/20/2008   SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
5/15/2008 

ACGCC Working Paper Series

Please join us for the second meeting of the ACGCC's "Working Paper Series." The Working Papers Series offers graduate students the opportunity to workshop their papers in a supportive environment; we have two 'official' commentators on each paper, one faculty member and one graduate student--and, of course, all who attend the meeting are invited to respond. For this meeting the presenters are Yanoula Athanassakis and Eric Martinsen. They will be presenting their work-in-progress from their dissertations. Copies of their work will be available beginning on Monday May 12th, in the ACGC Center in 2607 South Hall, in a folder marked: "Working Paper Series."
5/15/2008   ACGCC Center (SH 2710)   6:00:00 PM
5/9/2008 

Transcriptions Research Slam

Research Slam
One of the goals of UCSB's Transcriptions Center is "to demonstrate a paradigm—at once theoretical, instructional, and technical—for integrating new information media and technology within the core work of a traditional humanities discipline."  With this in mind, the center is hosting a Research Slam: an experimental research presentation model that seeks to highlight the unique work done by scholars of media and information technology. . . more
5/9/2008   SH 2635, 2509, and 2510   1:00:00 PM
5/3/2008 

Annual Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference: “Emotion and the Environment”

Participants will explore the ways  in which medieval people’s social, natural, and built environments  colored and shaped their states of mind in a process of dynamic  exchange and mutual inflection.  The conference will address questions  of how people invested their environments with emotional value and how  they framed their responses to the spaces, both literal and figurative, in which they circulated. Cat Zusky and Megan Palmer are among the presenters, and the day will end with the performance of "The Farce of the Fart," translated by Professor Jody Enders and directed by Andrew Henkes, graduate student in Theatre and Dance.
Emotion and Environment
5/3/2008   UCSB Marine Sciences Institute Auditorium   9:30:00 AM
4/11/2008 

Colloquium: Writing History and Lyric in Trilingual England

On Friday, April 11, Medieval Studies is hosting a small colloquium on "Writing History and Lyric in Medieval England," which will showcase two stars of Medieval Studies, both of whom have been major contributors to our knowledge concerning the production, circulation, and reception of texts in medieval England ... more
4/11/2008   SH 2635 (reception to follow)   3:00:00 PM
3/14/2008 

EMC Winter Conference: Science & Technology, 1500-1800

An interdisciplinary one-day conference sponsored by the Early Modern Center, in collaboration with the Transcriptions Project, on the EMC's annual theme.
This one-day conference will be a forum to explore the two interrelated fields of science and technology in the early modern period. For more information about the conference - CFP, conference program and registration, and more - please visit the conference website.
3/14/2008   McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020 -- (3/14/08)   8:00:00 AM
3/7/2008 

LECTURE: “Figurational Sociology: The Critical Potential of a European Approach to American Studies” by Prof. Christa Buschendorf (Johann Wolfgang Goethe University)

Do scholars in Europe approach American Studies differently than their colleagues in the US?...more                                            ACGCC Events Page
3/7/2008   HSSB 6020   1:00:00 PM
3/6/2008 

FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION: Manufactured Landscapes (2006, dir. Jennifer Baichwal)

Join the ACGCC, the Literature and the Environment Colloquium, and the undergraduate English Club for a screening and discussion of this award-winning film about Edward Burtynsky, the internationally-acclaimed photographer known for his large-scale photographs of nature transformed by industry. Tim Gilmore will offer an introduction to the film, and pizza and refreshments will be served.
3/6/2008   SH 2635   6:00:00 PM
2/29/2008 

“Wilde Things: Revivalism and the Unholy Birth of Irish Modernism”

Modernism-Group
The Modernism Group, the long-running Research Focus Group based in the UC Santa Barbara English Dept. and sponsored by the IHC and other Depts., invites you to our Inaugural Meeting of 2008. Our visiting speaker will be Prof. Gregory Castle, Arizona State University ...more.
2/29/2008   SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
2/28/2008 

ENGLISH CLUB Shakespeare adaptations Film Series

Richard III
2/28/2008   SH 2635   6:30:00 PM
2/22/2008 

CONFERENCE: “Backwoods, Backwater: Bartering Social Identities in Faulkner’s South”

This one day conference seeks to explore the range of identities (both chosen and prescribed) seen in William Faulkner's fiction. As the term "bartering" implies, identity in Faulkner's South is something that is highly gendered as well as multifaceted, a narrative of exchange that is mapped onto interpersonal and intercultural interactions... schedule details on ACGCC Event Homepage.
2/22/2008   SH 2635   9:00:00 AM
2/14/2008 

ENGLISH CLUB Shakespeare adaptations Film Series

Titus
2/14/2008   SH 2635   6:30:00 PM
2/8/2008 

Seminar with Raymond G. Siemens - February 8th, 2008

Paper Title: "The Devil is in the Details: An Electronic Edition of the Devonshire MS (BL Add MS 17,492), its Encoding and Prototyping."
Please join us for a seminar on electronic editing and early modern texts with Raymond G. Siemens (English, University of Victoria). The event will feature a brief presentation on a pre-circulated paper by Raymond Siemens, followed by an open forum for discussion of the issues the paper and presentation have raised. Copies of the paper will be available in the Early Modern Center closer to the event.
2/8/2008   SH 2635   2:00:00 PM
2/8/2008 

Medieval Studies Conference: “Disciplining Texts”

Presenting Rachel Fulton, "Hildegard of Bingen's Theology of Revelation," Jennifer Hellwarth , "Sex, salves, and matters of state in Chrétien de Troyes’ Cligés," Daniel M. Klerman, "Reading and Analyzing Medieval Legal Texts" and Zrinka Stahuljak, "Genealogy and Its Discourse." More details ...
2/8/2008   McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020.   9:30:00 AM
12/29/2007 

UCSB English Department MLA Convention Party

12/29/2007   Hyatt Regency Chicago   9:00:00 PM
12/15/2007 

San Clemente Villages - the new housing complex for graduate students

Please check the following link to the housing website which features the new housing complex for graduate students. There will be almost 700 bed spaces and all graduate students are guaranteed housing in San Clemente Villages.
                         San Clemente Villages
12/15/2007     8:00:00 AM
12/14/2007 

Annual Department Holiday Party

Party Friday, December 14th from 3-5 p.m. SH 2635
Faculty, Graduate Students and Staff are invited to the annual holiday party.
Please bring your special guest(s). Children are welcome!
12/14/2007     3:00:00 PM
12/7/2007 

ROUNDTABLE: “Global Warming Discourse, Politics, and Culture”

The ACGCC will host an interdisciplinary roundtable discussion with Professors Josh Schimel (Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology) and Eric R.A.N. Smith (Political Science). The topic of the roundtable will be "Global Warming Discourse, Politics, and Culture." We will discuss the IPCC Climate Assessment and related issues, such as changing public perceptions of global warming and the often conflicting rhetorics of climate change science, politics, and popular culture. For more information on the IPCC Climate Assessment, please see the 2007 reports created by the IPCC's three working groups:
     Working Group I "The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change": IPCC WG1 Report
     Working Group II "Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability": IPCC WGII website.
     Working Group III "Mitigation of Climate Change": IPCC WG III Home
12/7/2007   SH 2617   10:00:00 AM
11/30/2007 

Conference: Science as Navigation: Leonhard Euler's Journeys

This one-day conference investigates the central role played, in the life and work of Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), by the description, calculation and analysis of sites or places (topoi)...more
11/30/2007   Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB   10:00:00 AM
11/16/2007 

Reception for Professor Lawrence Buell

The ACGCC invites all interested graduate students to attend a reception in honor of visiting scholar, Lawrence Buell (Harvard). The public is also invited to attend Professor Buell's lecture, "Environmental Memory and Planetary Survival" on November 15th from 4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m. in HSSB 6020 (McCune). Please see ACGCC Events Page for more information.
11/16/2007   SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
11/16/2007 

EMC Brown Bag Lunch

The EMC Brown Bag Lunch is a forum for EMC Grads to present their ongoing work. The upcoming EMC Brown Bag Lunch will be held in SH 2635 on Friday, November 16th from 11:30-1:30 pm, and will feature Pax Hehmeyer, Patrick Ludolph and Laura Miller as presenters.
Please pack a lunch and join us to enjoy and discuss their presentations!
11/16/2007     11:30:00 AM
11/15/2007 

“Environmental Memory and Planetary Survival” – Lecture by Professor Lawrence Buell

The ACGCC will co-sponsor a lecture by Professor Lawrence Buell of Harvard University, author of several significant studies and this year's Jay Hubbell Award winner. Professor Buell's lecture is part of a year-long series of events sponsored by the ACGCC and intended to promote UCSB's initiative to build upon its already strong programs in Environmental Studies by focusing on how the Humanities contribute to environmental values and activism....more

The Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media is a co-sponsor for this event.
11/15/2007   McCune Room, HSSB   4:00:00 PM
11/14/2007 

EAP for English Majors

Are you interested in studying abroad? Hear experiences from other English majors that have studied abroad, and get answers to your questions from both students and faculty.
11/14/2007   SH 2617   3:00:00 PM
11/8/2007 

English Department “Specializations”: Information Meeting for Students

The English Department now has five "specializations" for English majors interested in using four of their elective courses to focus on one of the areas in which the department is doing innovative, nationally recognized research.

Two new specializations--Literature and the Environment, and Literature and the Mind--join the following existing specializations: American Cultures, Early Modern Studies, and Literature and the Culture of Information.

Besides offering courses in their areas, the specializations also often provide an opportunity for undergraduates to interact with faculty and graduate students in other settings outside the classroom-e.g., in colloquia, film and lecture events, student panels, etc.

Come to an information meeting where the faculty directors of the specializations, and the chair of the English Department's Undergraduate Committee, will introduce the vision of the individual specializations and talk with students about courses and activities.
11/8/2007   SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
11/7/2007 

Careers in Teaching

Learn how to pursue a career in teaching at the elementary, secondary or community college level.

Talk with a panel of professionals, including current grad students and a professor from the UCSB English teaching credential program, and an experienced secondary school English teacher.

Learn about graduate programs leading to MAs in Education or teaching credentials, how to apply, what to expect, how to choose a program that's right for you, etc.
11/7/2007   SH 2617   2:00:00 PM
11/2/2007 

Fall Colloquium with Maureen Quilligan and Lynn Festa

An event to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the British abolition of the slave trade, and to consider the centrality both of slavery and of abolition to the period 1500-1800.

We are very lucky to welcome Maureen Quilligan (English, Duke University) “Rereading the Black Legend: Racing the Atlantic Slave Trade” and Lynn Festa (English, University of Wisconsin-Madison) “Kin, Kind, Slave: Human Difference and Anti-slavery Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Britain” as this year's invited colloquium speakers. Their talks will allow us to reflect on the importance of the abolition of the British slave trade as a historical and political event, as well as to highlight some of the persistent problems that reverberate from it.    EMC Events (for more details)

11/2/2007   SH 2635   1:00:00 PM
10/31/2007 

Halloween at the English Department


x
10/31/2007   SH 2710, 2510 and 2635   8:30:00 AM
10/11/2007 

The Hypersexuality of Race: A Discussion of Pornography, Race, and Sexuality

The ACGCC is co-sponsoring a reading and panel discussion featuring Celine Parrenas-Shimizu (Associate Professor of Asian American Studies,) Constance Penley (Professor of Film and Media Studies) and Mireille Miller-Young (Assistant Professor of Women's Studies.)...more
10/11/2007   McCune Room, HSSB   4:00:00 PM
10/5/2007 

ACGCC Welcome Back Party and Reading by Patrick Sharp

The ACGCC will celebrate the beginning of the new academic year with a Welcome Back Party and reading by former UCSB grad Patrick Sharp (currently Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Liberal Studies at Cal State, Los Angeles)...more
10/5/2007   South Hall 2635   3:00:00 PM
10/4/2007 

The Medieval Studies Program Presents a Lecture by Jeffrey Hamburger (Harvard University)

Inscribing the Word

“Inscribing the Word -- Illuminating the Sequence: Epithets in Honor of John the Evangelist in the Graduals from Paradies bei Soest.”     More details...

10/4/2007   Flying A Studios Room, University Center, UCSB   4:00:00 PM
9/24/2007 

Online World of “Second Life”

The UCSB Transcriptions Project is proud to announce its recent pedagogic and artistic foray into the online world of "Second Life," a popular 3-D virtual environment that first debuted for public use in 2003 and now supports over 30,000 concurrent users.

Funded by a 2007 Instructional Improvement Grant and developed under the direction of Profs. Rita Raley and Alan Liu, the project has successfully created its own experimental classroom space. This property is currently open for all registered Second Life users to explore and utilize for educational purposes. English department undergrads, grads, and faculty are invited to visit our virtual home at the following SLURL location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kerlingarfjoll/179/245/46.

Second Life

For more information, please visit the Transcription's Second Life Project blog.

9/24/2007     8:00:00 AM
9/23/2007 

English Department Fall 2007 Reception Photos - 9/28/07

Reception Photos
9/23/2007     8:00:00 AM
9/19/2007 

TA Training Reminder

TA Training will take place on Wednesday, September 19 , from 8:30AM-4:30PM in South Hall 2617 (across from the Sankey). Refreshments and lunch will be provided. TA Training is mandatory for all new TAs, though new grad students who aren't teaching are also welcome. Required preparatory "homework" ....more
Please RSVP by Monday, September 17
9/19/2007   SH 2617   8:30:00 AM
9/1/2007 

Literature and the Environment Programs Launched

L&E WebsiteThe English Department recently underscored its commitment to the study of literature and the environment (often referred to as "ecocriticism") by announcing a number of exciting new programs and courses. In fact, a total of fourteen L&E courses will be taught in 2007-08 from a range of over twice that many that will now be regularly offered. Undergraduates can both declare an Undergraduate Specialization in Literature and the Environment (USLE) for the first time, as well as have the option of completing it with honors. Graduate students now have the benefit of a L&E graduate colloquium, teaching opportunities, and other exciting new proposals. A number of L&E events will also be taking place throughout 2007-08. UCSB's commitment to environmental issues dates from 1969; after one of the worst oil spills in U.S. history off the coast of Santa Barbara, a group of twenty-one UCSB faculty members calling themselves the Friends of the Human Habitat helped create the modern environmental movement. This commitment to the environment continues today with our English Department, especially the twelve Professors that teach L&E courses.

9/1/2007    
6/29/2007 

EMC Brown Bag Lunch

The EMC Brown Bag Lunch is a forum for EMC Grads to present their ongoing work. The upcoming EMC Brown Bag Lunch will be held in SH 2635 on Friday, June 29th from 12-1:30, and will feature Tassie Gniady, Sören Hammerschmidt, and Megan Palmer as presenters.
Please pack a lunch and join us to enjoy and discuss their presentations!
6/29/2007   SH 2635   12:00:00 PM
5/29/2007 

Sixth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference

Civic Culture: Cities and Towns in the Middle Ages
Please register!           UCSB Medieval Studies
5/29/2007   Centennial House, UCSB   9:15:00 AM
5/4/2007 

EMC Brown Bag Lunch

The EMC Brown Bag Lunch is a forum for EMC Grads to present their ongoing work. The upcoming EMC Brown Bag Lunch, the sixth so far, will be held in SH 2635 on Friday, May 4th from 12-1:30, and will feature Pav Aulakh, Sheena Berwick, Pax Hehmeyer, and Laura Miller as presenters. Please pack a lunch and join us to enjoy and discuss their presentations!
5/4/2007   SH 2635   12:00:00 PM
5/3/2007 

Andrew Elfenbein Lecture

Andrew ElfenbeinAndrew Elfenbein, Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, will give a talk Thursday, May 3rd, on "The Humanities and the Science of Comprehension" as part of the Transliteracies Project's Paradigms Lecture series. Prof. Elfenbein has been a leader in introducing the perspectives and methods of recent cognitive science to humanists interested in the study of texts. (The Transliteracies History of Reading reading group is also meeting on the Tuesday before the lecture to discuss Prof. Elfenbein's 2006 PMLA article on "Cognitive Science and the History of Reading.") [details]
5/3/2007   South Hall 2635   4:00:00 PM
4/26/2007 

“The Fortunes of Piers Plowman and Its Readers” talk
by Maura Nolan (English, Berkeley)

Piers Plowman LectureThis lecture will focus on the role of Fortune in Piers Plowman especially the way in which Fortune can or cannot be remedied by human action and ultimately rely on a Langlandian vision of will to experiment with the potentials for human agency that ill fortune creates and destroys.. The Findern manuscript from the second half of the fifteenth century includes a variety of Middle English texts by Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Hoccleve and functioned as a kind of 'commonplace book' for an aristocratic family and its visitors, illustrating the tastes and worldviews of late medieval gentry readers. medievalstudies.ucsb.edu

Sponsored by Medieval Studies, English and the IHC
4/26/2007   SH 1415   4:00:00 PM
4/18/2007 

William St. Clair Lecture and Discussion

William St Clair, author of 'The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period' and Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge University, will be giving a lecture called "The Political Economy of Reading" in 2635 SH at 3:30 PM on Wednesday, April 18, 2007. A reception will follow. Prior to the lecture, he will be discussing his work with faculty and graduate students. The discussion will take place at 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in 2635 SH.
4/18/2007   SH 2635   1:30:00 PM
4/13/2007 

Richard Halpern lecture

Richard Halpern, professor of English at Johns Hopkins, is author of Shakespeare's Perfume: Sodomy and Sublimity in the Sonnets, Wilde, Freud and Lacan (Penn, 2002), which explores relations between sexuality and aesthetics. Previous books include Shakespeare Among the Moderns (Cornell, 1997) and The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital (Cornell, 1991). Halpern will be speaking on "The Eclipse of Action: Hamlet and Political Economy."
4/13/2007   SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
4/11/2007 

Lucie Skeaping Lecture and Performance (with accompaniment) of 17th Century English Broadside Ballads.

4/11/2007   IHC McCune Conference Room   4:00:00 PM
4/5/2007 

The Medieval Studies Program at UCSB Presents a Lecture...“Christina of Markyate and the St Albans Psalter”Jane Geddes, University of Aberdeen

St.Albans Psalter Site
The St. Albans Psalter is one of the finest examples of English Romanesque painting. Although illustrating each psalm and the Life of Christ, the selection of images suggests a personal agenda reflecting the needs of its user. The Psalter was given by Geoffrey, Abbot of St. Albans to his beloved but feisty anchoress Christina of Markyate. The lecture examines aspects of patronage and reception relating to these vivid characters.
4/5/2007   SH 2635   4:00:00 PM
3/13/2007 

“World History According to Katrina.”A Lecture by Wai Chee Dimock, English Department, Yale University. (March 13, 2007, SH 2635)

Wai Chee Dimock, the William Lampson Professor of English and American Studies, focuses her teaching and writing on American literature, law and literature, and world literature. She is especially concerned with the relation of literature to law, philosophy and the history of science. She has authored two books, "Empire for Liberty: Melville and the Poetics of Individualism" and "Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy."
Dimock is also co-editor of "Rethinking Class: Literary Studies and Social Formations." In her recent work, she has attempted to link American literature to world literature, and she has two new books in progress:
"Literature for the Planet" and "Deep Time: American Literature and World History." Also, I encourage you to visit the web site that has been established regarding the 2006-2007 Critical Issues in American Programming, entitled "Torture and the Future: Perspectives from the Humanities."
(Torture and the Future: Perspectives from the Humanities)
3/13/2007   SH 2635   4:00:00 PM
3/9/2007 

Early Modern Center 2007 Winter Conference on “Making Publics: 1500-1800”

Keynote speakers: Ann Bermingham (Art History, UCSB), Lesley Cormack (History, University of Alberta), David Harris Sacks (History, Reed College) and Brian Cowan
(History, McGill).      EMC Conference
3/9/2007   University Center Harbor Room   8:00:00 AM
3/2/2007 

“Human Rights and Neoliberalism: Universal Standards, Local Practice and the Role of Culture Conference” - (IHC and Campbell Hall, March 2-3, 2007)

Many of the most controversial foreign policy decisions pursued by the United States government in recent years have been defended as means of spreading democracy and of realizing basic human rights. In this regard, the U.S. has been explicit in its attempt to reshape international governance, and to achieve human rights by conjoining these to neoliberal economic policies. Taking up these dynamics, the Human Rights and Neoliberalism Conference will analyze the cultural dimensions of human rights policies, activism and scholarship, and examine closely the ways in which these human rights efforts challenge, extend or otherwise engage the ideals of neoliberalism. Most often associated with free market economies, minimal governmental regulations regarding production, and the dismantling of tariffs and related international trade controls, neoliberalism is also a cultural system, one that claims priority for the individual. Often times echoing the rhetoric of Social Darwinism, advocates of neoliberal policies value individual freedoms and the notion of meritocracy, while arguing against a variety of welfare programs and the recognition of social groups.
Both the international human rights movement and the neoliberal economic imperative (coming of age with Reagan and Thatcher), carry strong cultural assumptions interacting in complex ways that call out for further analysis.
Keynote address: Tariq Ali. For more information, visit: (http://acc.english.ucsb.edu/conference/humanrights/index.asp)
3/2/2007     9:30:00 AM
2/28/2007 

The English Department's Transcriptions Studio invites you to attend a talk by Prof. Harry Reese (UCSB Arts Department) entitled... “If It Works, It's Obsolete: Retrieving Marshall McLuhan.

In this talk, Prof. Reese will talk about the insight and influence of famed media theorist Marshall McLuhan (The Medium is the Massage, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man), both generally, in terms of cultural history and pattern, and specifically, in terms of his influence on his own creative work, teaching and practice.
2/28/2007   SH 2617   4:00:00 PM
2/21/2007 

The ACGCC Film Series - HANNIBAL (2001)

The ACGCC Film Series Presents
HANNIBAL (2001)
Moderated by Gina Valentino (English)
Additional information on ACGCC events
2/21/2007   SH 2635   7:00:00 PM
2/16/2007 

EMC Brown Bag Lunch

The EMC Brown Bag Lunch is a forum for EMC Grads to present their ongoing work. The upcoming EMC Brown Bag Lunch, the fifth so far, will be held in SH 2635 on Friday, February 16th from 12-1:30, and will feature Judith Hicks, Scott Lehman, Rachel Mann, and Kris McAbee as presenters.
Please pack a lunch and join us to enjoy and discuss their presentations!
2/16/2007   SH 2635   12:00:00 PM
2/15/2007 

Medieval Studies Lecture

Medieval Studies Presents a Lecture...
Christopher Baswell, Department of English, UCLA, "The Medieval Virgil Meets the Italian Humanists: MS Cambridge, Jesus College 33"
2/15/2007   SH 1415   5:00:00 PM
2/15/2007 

Transcriptions Research Colloquium


The Transcriptions Studio is proud to announce its first ever...Transcriptions Research Colloquium.

Please join us for this very special event, which brings together three Transcriptions-affiliated graduate students - Kim Knight (English), Lisa Swanstrom (Comparative Lit.), and Mike Frangos (English) - to present and discuss their recent research in various aspects of "the culture of information."    Transcriptions 
2/15/2007   Transcriptions Studio SH 2509   3:00:00 PM
2/14/2007 

“The Abduction Will Not Be Televised: Sentimental Discourse and Child Protection”

Lecture by Rebecca Wanzo (Asst.Prof.) Dept.of Women's Studies, Department of African-American & African Studies, The Ohio State University.
2/14/2007   SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
2/8/2007 

Everett Zimmerman Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies - ROGER CHARTIER - Feb.8 & 9, 2007

2/9/2007 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM      Lecture at State Street Room

We are very pleased to announce that Professor Roger Chartier, Annenberg Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Directeur d'Études at the École des Hautes Études in Paris, will direct the Everett Zimmerman Seminar, to be held February 8 and 9, 2007. Professor Chartier's scholarship in early modern European history has been central to the study of print culture and the history of the book.

Chartier's title for the 2/9 lecture: "Is there a reading revolution in the eighteenth century? Diderot reader of Richardson."...more

2/8/2007   Seminar at SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
2/2/2007 

UCSB Medieval Studies Program 2007 Colloquium: “Conversion and Apostasy in the Medieval World” ....(schedule)

Please register here or contact Edward D. English at 893-3167 or english@history.ucsb.edu.
2/2/2007   McCune conference Room   2:00:00 PM
1/31/2007 

Film.Literature.Software Event Series: Film Screening and Discussion of “Forbidden Planet” (1956)

A screening and discussion of the classic 1956 science fiction film, directed by Fred Wilcox and starring Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielson, and Anne Francis. Based loosely on Shakespeare's The Tempest and influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, Forbidden Planet helped pave the way for a new era and quality of science fiction cinema.
Discussion moderated by Robin Chin.
1/31/2007   SH 2509 Transcriptions Studio   12:00:00 PM
1/26/2007 

The Trial of Floreta d'Ays (1403): Jews, Christians, and Obstetrics in Later Medieval Marseille - Monica H. Green (History, ASU)

Monica H. Green is Professor of History at Arizona State University. She has published Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Premodern Gynecology (forthcoming, Oxford University Press) and The “Trotula”: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
1/26/2007   McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020   4:00:00 PM
1/22/2007 

“Sweet Soul Music,” a lecture/performance by Ron Paris

Singer Ron Paris presents the history of rhythm and blues in a special performance that combines lecture and soul music. The performance describes moments in the history of music in America and music's contribution to social justice and human rights. It pays tribute to those R&B pioneers who literally and figuratively made the rope disappear that used to divide white from black audiences. Hear about Charles Brown, Johnnie Ace, Bobby Bland, Ruth Brown, B.B. King and James Brown, with special focus on the Platters (with whom Ron sang in the early 70s) and Sam Cooke.
The event is free and open to the public.
Winter 2007 ACGCC Sponsored Event
1/22/2007   MCC Theater   4:00:00 PM
1/18/2007 

Critical Issues in America's series on Torture and the Future - Lectures

Mark Danner,"Into the Light of Day: Torture, Human Rights, and the War on Terror" on Thursday, January 18 2007 at 8 pm. Free.

Alfred McCoy,"A Short History of Psychological Torture: Its Discovery, Propagation, Perfection, and Legalization" on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 4 pm. Free.

Also, a day-long (possibly 2-day) conference on Friday, May 28, 2007 in the Multicultural Center.

For more information on all this, see the website at http://www.complit.ucsb.edu/projects/tortureandthefuture/index.html

1/18/2007   Campbell Hall   8:00:00 PM
1/12/2007 

EMC Brown Bag Lunch

The EMC Brown Bag Lunch is a forum for EMC Grads to present their ongoing work. The upcoming EMC Brown Bag Lunch, the fourth so far, will be held in SH 2635 on Friday, January 12th from 12-1:30, and will feature Simone Chess, Jessica C. Murphy, and Maggie Sloan as presenters.
Please pack a lunch and join us to enjoy and discuss their presentations!
1/12/2007   SH 2635   12:00:00 PM
12/29/2006 

English Department MLA Party


The English Department of the University of California at Santa Barbara

cordially invites you to

Our MLA Convention Party

In the suite of the Department Chair, William Warner

Place: Philadelphia Marriott
Time: Friday, December 29, 2006
8:30PM – 10:30PM

12/29/2006   Philadelphia Marriott - Suite of William Warner   8:30:00 PM
12/8/2006 

EMC Brown Bag Lunch

The EMC Brown Bag Lunch is a forum for EMC Grads to present their ongoing work. The upcoming EMC Brown Bag Lunch, the third so far, will be held in SH 2635 on Friday, December 8th from 12-1:30, and will feature Tassie Gniady, Kris McAbee, and Mac Test as presenters.
Please pack a lunch and join us to enjoy and discuss their presentations!
12/8/2006   SH 2635   12:30:00 PM
12/5/2006 

The ACGCC Film Series Presents : Lord of War (2005)

Moderated by Allison Britt and Jenna Taylor, the ACGC Undergraduate Representatives.
12/5/2006   South Hall 2716 (American Cultures Seminar Room)   5:00:00 PM
12/5/2006 

Transliteracies Paradigms Lecture - Rama Hoetzlein -
Quanta: Knowledge Organization for Interdisciplinary Research

Rama Hoetzlein holds a BA in Computer Science and a BFA in Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2001. In 2002, he co-founded the Game Design Initiative at Cornell University with David Schwartz and developed the GameX platform for interdisciplinary education in game design. Rama has worked with artist George Legrady in the area of information aesthetics for the Seattle Public Library Project and has exhibited at the 2nd Beijing Arts & Science International Exhibition in China. He is currently pursuing an MS and Ph.D from the Media Arts & Technology Program at University of California, Santa Barbara where his research focuses on knowledge organization and intelligent systems. (http://www.rchoetzlein.com)
12/5/2006   SH 2635   1:00:00 PM
12/5/2006 

The Time of the Multitude: Materialism Today

Please join the Culture, Gender, and Aesthetics Research Focus Group for a discussion of multitude and materialism. At this, our last meeting of the quarter, we will be discussing Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's work as well as recent responses to their writing. The meeting will be led by Culture, Gender,and Aesthetics co-convener Maurizia Boscagli, and refreshments will be served. To obtain copies of the readings, contact Susan Cook at scook@umail.ucsb.edu.

The Culture, Gender, and Aesthetics RFG is co-convened by Professors Maurizia Boscagli of English and Bhaskar Sarkar of Film and Media Studies.

Sponsored by the IHC's Culture, Gender, and Aesthetics Research Focus Group
12/5/2006   IHC Research Sminar Room, HSSB 6056   11:00:00 AM
11/17/2006 

Tropics of Youth: Modernism, Colonialism, and the Missing Bildungsroman

A talk by Jed Esty
the Modernism Group
11/17/2006   SH 2617   3:00:00 PM
11/17/2006 

EMC “Making Publics” Fall Colloquium 1-5 pm

with Paul Yachnin and Dena Goodman

Paul Yachnin, Professor English, McGill University, "Hamlet and the Social Thing in Early Modern England."

Dena Goodman, Professor of History, University of Michigan, "Habermas and Feminist Scholarship: Going Beyond the Public Sphere."

Each presenter will speak for 40-50 minutes, with a 10 minute discussion after each talk, and the colloquium will conclude with a roundtable discussion followed by a reception.

Link to: http://emc.english.ucsb.edu/events.asp
11/17/2006   SH 2635   1:00:00 PM
4/8/2006 

2006 UCSB Medieval Studies Graduate Conference

“Manuscript Culture in the Middle Ages: Production, Transmission, & Use”
4/8/2006   McCUNE CONFERENCE ROOM, 6020 HSSB   9:00:00 AM
1/23/2006 

Lecture by Angus Fletcher

"Living Magnets and the Pathology of Grace in Donne's Religious Verse"
1/23/2006   SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
1/20/2006 

Lecture by James Kearney

"Doctor Faustus and the Seductions of the Text"
1/20/2006   SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
1/17/2006 

Lecture by Ken Hiltner

"What Else is Pastoral?"
1/17/2006   SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
11/30/2005 

English Department Faculty Seminar Series proudly presents:

Carl Gutierrez-Jones - "Paranoid Designs: Toni Cade Bambara's Those Bones Are Not My Child and 'The Squalor of the Truth.'"
11/30/2005     3:00:00 PM
11/18/2005 

Arnhold Postdoctoral Fellowship in Early Modern Literature and Media Technology

The UC Santa Barbara English Department invites applications for the Arnhold Postdoctoral Scholar Fellowship. This fellowship has a term of one year, but may be renewable for a second year. The fellowship offers recent recipients of the Ph.D. (awarded between January 1, 2003, and June 30, 2006) a unique opportunity to develop their research and teaching interests within the UCSB Early Modern Center; the UCSB Transcriptions Center for literature and the culture of information; and the UC system-wide Transliteracies Project on the technological, social, and cultural practices of online reading. (Full ad)
11/18/2005    
10/8/2005 

Transliteracies Project Awarded UC Funding

Transliteracies Web siteIn summer 2005, the Transliteracies Project for research in the technological, social, and cultural practices of online reading was granted status as a University of California Multi-Campus Research Group (MRG) for 2005-2010, with total funding of $175,000 from the UC system and another $175,000 in cost sharing from UC Santa Barbara. Headquartered in the UCSB English Department, the project is directed by UCSB Professor Alan Liu and includes scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and engineering from throughout the University of California system. Over five years, the group will study historical reading practices alongside contemporary digital technologies in order to define a framework, development plan, and speculative tools to improve online reading and, equally important, to understand what "improvement" might mean in a broad cultural and historical perspective. The project was launched at a June 2005 planning conference featuring well-known speakers from universities and industry. (fuller statement of Transliteracies topic) (Transliteracies Web site)
10/8/2005    
10/7/2005 

Early Modern Center Creates Online Ballad Archive

A ballad image: Anne Wallens murdering her husbandThe Department's Early Modern Center (EMC) is well on its way to completing an online archive of Samuel Pepys's collection of English broadside ballads, the most important such collection of the seventeeth century. Created with permission from the Pepys Library at Magdelene College, Cambridge, as part of the EMC's ongoing English Ballad Archive, 1500-1800, The Pepys Ballad Archive currently makes available on the Web facsimiles of all 1,857 ballads that Pepys collected; extensive cataloguing of the ballads; introductory essays about ballad culture and the categories in which Pepys assembled his ballads; sample transcriptions, audios of musicians reconstructing the original songs, XML encodings of the works; and sophisticated search functions. In the future, the EMC plans to complete its "facsimile transcriptions" (allowing the reader to toggle back and forth between the difficult to read "black letter" font of the original ballads and roman-type transcriptions that preserve the works' original illustrations and ornaments) and expand its musical repertory to 1,000 available tunes. The goal of the ballad project is to open up new ways of understanding early modern popular culture, literature, art, and music.
10/7/2005    
10/4/2005 

Film Screening: Crash

American Cultures & Global Contexts Center's screening of Crash, Paul Haggis' 2004 film.
10/4/2005   South Hall 2635   5:30:00 PM
9/27/2005 

Race and Pedagogy Project Launched

Race & Pedagogy ProjectThe English Department recently announced the creation of a new web resource: the Race and Pedagogy Project (http://rpp.english.ucsb.edu/). A product of the department's Diversity Work Group and the American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, this resource provides teachers, students, researchers and the interested public with on-site research summaries and citations as well as bibliographies of research and teaching materials. The project has been inspired by lively, ongoing exchanges regarding anti-racist teaching strategies, exchanges that have evolved in a wide variety of disciplines and educational settings. The site attempts to convey the range of these engagements by highlighting representative examples of scholarship. The site developers envision this as a multi-year endeavor and they encourage suggestions and advice from site visitors, especially at this early stage. The site is carefully designed to lend many different voices to race and pedagogy dialogues. To this end, visitors are encouraged to add their comments by making use of the dialogue boxes positioned after each research summary and bibliography. The RPP development team includes four English graduate students, Susan Cook, David Roh, Benjamin Shockey and Katherine Voll, as well as Professor Carl Gutierrez-Jones. The project has been funded by UCSB’s Office of Research and the Rockefeller Foundation.
9/27/2005    
6/21/2005 

UCSB to Host ADE Summer Seminar West on Campus

During this year's meeting of the Associated Departments of English (ADE) Summer Seminar West, which are being held in Santa Barbara on June 20-23, the UCSB English Department is hosting a plenary session entitled "Centers of Innovation: The English Department’s Transcriptions Project, Early Modern Center, and American Cultures and Global Contexts Center at UCSB." (ADE Summer Seminar West program)
6/21/2005   McCune Room (6020 HSSB)   2:00:00 PM
6/12/2005 

English Department Reception for Graduating Class of 2005

The Faculty of the English Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara, cordially invite...
6/12/2005   Girvetz Courtyard  
6/1/2005 

***TODAY*** English Department Faculty Seminar, June 1 - Paddy Fumerton

"Charting the Unsettled 'Low': The Case of Edward Barlow
6/1/2005   South Hall 2635   3:00:00 PM
5/26/2005 

The English Department's LCI Film.Literature.Software Series Presents: Serial Experiments Lain

Screening and Discussion, Thur. May 26, 5:30-7:30 pm, SH 1415 (moderated by Mike Frangos)
5/26/2005   SH 1415   5:30:00 PM
5/14/2005 

Lecture by George Lipsitz - Professor and Chair of American Studies at UC Santa Cruz

"The Metaphor of Two Worlds: Abolition Democracy and Global Justice."
5/14/2005   Centennial House   1:00:00 PM
5/14/2005 

ACGCC Graduate Conference - American Identities and Global Crises

5/14/2005     9:00:00 AM
5/10/2005 

CANCELLED - CISM and the Departments of Music, English, and French are pleased to present a lecture by Daniel Albright

"Britten's Cosmicomedy: A Midsummer Night's Dream"
5/10/2005   1145 Music Bldg   5:00:00 PM
4/29/2005 

Special Symposium-- 19th Century American Culture and Globalization

Featuring Professor Stephanie Lemenager (English), Jacob Berman (Ph.D. candidate, English), and Revell Carr (Ph.D. candidate, Ethnomusicology).
4/29/2005   English Dept. Seminar Room SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
4/22/2005 

Beaumarchais, Mozart... Hegel? The UCSB Department of Music and CISM present a lecture by: Marshall Brown


"Mozart with Hegel: Non Giovanni."
4/22/2005   Music Department 1145   3:30:00 PM
4/19/2005 

Special Events: ACGCC Talks

With Janice Radway and Laurie Shannon on Thursday, April 21 and Friday, April 22.
4/19/2005     3:00:00 PM
4/19/2005 

TODAY - A Lecture by Sandra Gunning - Professor of English & American Culture, University of Michigan- Ann Arbor

“Samuel Ajayi Crowther and the Meaning of African Return.”
4/19/2005   SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
4/16/2005 

Medieval Studies Graduate Conference - Identity Formation in the Middle Ages: Images, Literature, and Culture

Two of the speakers are graduate students in the English Department, Liberty Stanavage and Jeannie Provost.
4/16/2005   McCune Conference Room- 6020 HSSB   9:30:00 AM
4/5/2005 

Everett Zimmerman Memorial Seminar

The Early Modern Center, in collaboration with the Department of English and the Division of Humanities & Fine Arts, invites you to attend the first Everett Zimmerman Seminar, to be offered by Professor John Barrell, Professor of English Literature and Art History at the University of York. Professor Barrell's talk, "Cottage Politics," "looks at the art of the picturesque, at caricatures, and at various kinds of popular prints, as well as at literary texts in Britain in the 1790s; and asks what happened to the idea of the cottage as an idealized place of retirement and privacy when the cottage started being used as an image in anti-revolutionary propaganda."
4/5/2005   SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
3/14/2005 

Winter 2005 - Finals Week

3/14/2005    
3/9/2005 

English Department Faculty Series ***TODAY***

Yunte Huang will give a presentation entitled "Cribs," based on his new book. Refreshments will be provided.
3/9/2005   South Hall 2635   3:00:00 PM
3/7/2005 

Dead Week

3/7/2005    
3/1/2005 

Discussion of The Thirteenth Floor

The next events in the English Department's LCI Film.Literature.Software Series are a screening and discussion of the 1999 film about virtual reality: The Thirteenth Floor. Screening: Thur. Feb. 24, 7-9 pm, SH 1415. Discussion: Moderator: Melissa Stevenson, Tue. March 1, 5-6:15 pm, SH 1415
3/1/2005   South Hall 1415   5:00:00 PM
2/28/2005 

Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Fordham University

Economies of Grace: Counting Female Piety in Medieval Britain
2/28/2005   McCune Conference Room   4:00:00 PM
2/21/2005 

Presidents' Day Holiday - Office Closed

2/21/2005    
1/17/2005 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday - Office Closed

1/17/2005    
1/3/2005 

Winter 2005 - Instruction Begins

1/3/2005    
1/1/2005 

Legal & Regulatory Notices

2008-2009: Notice of Application for Alien Employment Certification (Shewry)
2009-2010: Notice of Application for Alien Employment Certification (Griffin)
1/1/2005    
12/31/2004 

New Year's Holiday - Office Closed

12/31/2004    
12/30/2004 

New Year's Holiday - Office Closed

12/30/2004    
12/24/2004 

Christmas Holiday - Office Closed

12/24/2004    
12/23/2004 

Christmas Holiday - Office Closed

12/23/2004    
12/20/2004 

English Department Knowledge Base (EDKB) Now Online

Screenshot of EDKBFunded by UCSB Instructional Improvement grants, a team of graduate students supervised by the Department's Transcriptions Project has worked since summer 2003 to create the new English Department Knowledge Base. Now online, the EDKB serves as a repository for department teaching and learning resources, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The site includes online readings, course materials developed by teaching assistants for use in undergraduate discussion sections, and the department's TA Handbook. The site also hosts guides to using department technology, such as the South Hall 1415 media classroom, as well as other pedagogical guides. Finally, the EDKB includes resources for graduate students preparing for the first and second qualifying exams--for example, oral exam strategies, online reading materials, handouts from study groups, and advice on dissertation and prospectus planning. (Full article) (Go to English Department Knowledge Base)
12/20/2004    
12/19/2004 

Coursebuilder: The Department's Homespun Course Management System

Coursebuilder Overview Screen Over the past three years, the English Department has developed a Coursebuilder Web-site creation system that instructors can use to put their courses on the Web. The system, which was created by graduate student Eric Weitzel under the supervision of the Department's Transcriptions Project, combines Web forms with a SQL Server database to allow instructors without any knowledge of Web-authoring to create and maintain online sites for their courses, ranging at the instructor's discretion from simple sites (with a syllabus and bibliography of print and online materials) to full-featured sites (with course overview, detailed schedule of readings, description of assignments, bibliography, links to class forums and student presentations, and multiple class notes pages). After instructors add or change information, the database dynamically creates the actual course site and displays it to the end-user in one of a number of templates (or "skins") adapted to the needs of the particular curricular unit that originated the course. There are "skins" that duplicate the look-and-feel of the general department site (sample course), the Transcriptions site (sample course), the Early Modern Studies site (sample course), and the American Cultures & Global Contexts Center site (sample course). Unlike commercially available course management systems, (Full Article)
12/19/2004    
12/11/2004 

Finals end

12/11/2004    
12/6/2004 

Finals begin

12/6/2004    
12/3/2004 

Instruction Ends

12/3/2004    
11/29/2004 

Dead Week begins

11/29/2004    
11/26/2004 

Thanksgiving Holiday Office Closed

11/26/2004    
11/25/2004 

Thanksgiving Holiday Office Closed

11/25/2004    
11/19/2004 

Moderism Group Talk: ‘Douhet and Mrs. Dalloway: Rethinking Totality in the War Metropolis’

Fri. Nov. 19TH,
3PM Free: all are welcome
South Hall 2617
11/19/2004    
11/11/2004 

Veteran's Day Office Closed

11/11/2004    
9/23/2004 

Fall Quarter Begins

9/23/2004    
9/22/2004 

Discovery Days
Open House

South Hall 2635
9/22/2004     2:00:00 PM
9/10/2004 

Session B ends

9/10/2004    
9/6/2004 

Labor Day Office Closed

9/6/2004    
8/2/2004 

Session B begins

8/2/2004    
7/30/2004 

Session A ends

7/30/2004    
6/21/2004 

Session A begins

6/21/2004    
6/11/2004 

Department End of Year Celebration

Our departmental end of the year celebration will be held on Friday, June 11 from 3:00-5:00pm in the Centennial House. Mark your calendars now to come and relax and unwind and enjoy good food and drink with friends and colleagues in the English deparment. Graduate student awards/fellowships will be announced as well.
6/11/2004     3:00:00 PM
5/26/2004 

Faculty Seminar

Enda Duffy
5/26/2004    
5/13/2004 

Fall '04 Registration Begins

5/13/2004    
5/12/2004 

Faculty Seminar

Bill Warner
5/12/2004    
4/29/2004 

Literary Translation: Revisiting the Text in the Humanities

This symposium is an effort at engaging the important field of Translation Studies in the Humanities and Fine Arts, and the interstices between creative and scholarly activity of translation.
4/29/2004     9:00:00 AM
4/28/2004 

John Ridland presents ....

John Ridland will be offering a reading of his latest work on Wednesday, April 28, 2004 in South Hall 2635. The presentation, "Translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", will be followed by a reception celebrating the occasion of his retirement.
4/28/2004     3:00:00 PM
4/23/2004 

Contest Deadlines

Kieth E. Vineyard Honorary Scholarship
William and Marjorie Frost Memorial Award
4/23/2004    
4/15/2004 

Homi Bhabha

UCSB Corwin Pavillion 4:00 PM.
4/15/2004    
4/14/2004 

Faculty Seminar

Aranye Fradenburg

"Chicken Soup for the Calamitous Fourteenth Century"
4/14/2004   South Hall 2635   3:00:00 PM
2/20/2004 

EMC Center Conference

2/20/2004   McCune Room  
2/18/2004 

Faculty Seminar

2/18/2004   SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
2/11/2004 

Faculty Seminar

2/11/2004   SH 2635   3:00:00 PM
1/31/2004 

Cultural Conflicts and Collaborations in the Middle Ages

1/31/2004   McCune Conference Rm, 6th floor HSSB   9:00:00 AM
12/12/2003 

Holiday Party

12/12/2003     3:00:00 PM
6/10/2003 

Department Hours

The Department of English office hours are 8-noon, 1-4:30 p.m. The Sankey Room will close at 4:30 as well.
6/10/2003     12:00:00 PM
3/31/2003 

Spring 2003 Class Changes

Please check out the changes posted here for Spring Quarter English course changes.
3/31/2003    
3/31/2003 

Spring Quarter Begins

Instruction begins for the Spring 2003 quarter.
3/31/2003    
2/21/2003 

"Bodies, Bawdies, and Nobodies": Early Modern Women, 1500-1800

The Early Modern Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara and its affiliates invite scholars to attend a conference Feb. 21-22 on the role of Early Modern Women in literature and literary production entitled "Bodies, Bawdies, and Nobodies": Early Modern Women, 1500-1800. The two-day conference will explore the concept of embodiment as it relates to women as creators, subjects, and consumers of British, Continental, and early American cultures.
2/21/2003   McCune Room, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, HSSB, 6th Floor  
2/17/2003 

Presidents' Day holiday

The UCSB campus will be closed for the Presidents' Day holiday.
2/17/2003    
5/20/2002 

Today: The Strangeness of Creative Writing

Professor Shirley Geok-lin Lim, UCSB’s 2002 Faculty Research Lecturer, will examine the institutional history and role of creative writing in the American research university and read from her published works. Lim is only the second UCSB female faculty member to receive the Lecturer award in its 47-year history. This award is considered the highest honor the UCSB faculty can bestow on one of its members. In addition to being a scholar and internationally recognized poet, Lim is also a novelist, editor, and memoirist. Please join us for this special event. Reception to follow.
5/20/2002   McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020   4:00:00 PM
5/18/2002 

Saturday: Early Modern Center's Second Annual Undergraduate/Graduate Student Conference

The Early Modern Center will hold its second annual Undergraduate and Graduate Student Conference May 18th. This year's focus is on Early Modern Visual Culture and will feature students from many of the classes that have been exploring this topic through the year: classes of Prof. Ann Jensen Adams of the department of History of Art and Architecture, and Profs. Bob Erickson, Patricia Fumerton, Elisa Tamarkin, and Mark Rose of the English Department.
5/18/2002   HSSB 1173   9:30:00 AM
5/16/2002 

Today: Copyright And Its Metaphors

Mark Rose discusses two metaphors that have structured the relationship between authors and their texts: the notion of a book as the child of the author's brain and the notion of a book as a piece of property analogous to real estate. Professor Rose indicates how these metaphors have combined to reinforce the claim that literary property is an absolute right of property that should in principle be perpetual. But, he suggests, the same metaphors, critically examined, can provide ways to envision a more balanced view of copyright than we presently have.
5/16/2002   McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020   4:00:00 PM
5/10/2002 

American Studies and War Narratives Conference

This two-day conference will examine cultural responses to war in America, with particular emphasis on how literary, visual and dramatic representations of armed conflict from the 17th century to the present become occasions to reimagine America’s place in the world. As such, this conference is devoted to “internationalizing” American Studies by inviting renewed attention to specific moments of ethnic violence and military intervention, to global partnerships, diplomacy, strategic alliances and transcultural contact. 15+ speakers from UC campuses, Cornell, and U. Illinois. Sponsored by the American Cultures Center, English Department, Center for Chicano Studies, Humanities and Fine Arts Division, and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
5/10/2002   McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB   9:00:00 PM
5/3/2002 

Come To "Entertainment Value" Conference Today and Tomorrow!

What is the future of entertainment? How can the humanities work with people engaged in the creation or distribution of entertainment to help shape its value? "Entertainment Value" is a unique conference that brings together scholars, artists, critics, designers, screenwriters, producers, architects, programmers, and business leaders to share their view of contemporary entertainment. Presented by the English Department's Public Humanities Initiative. (Conference Web site)
5/3/2002   McCune Room, 6th Fl. Humanities and Social Sciences Building (HSSB)  
5/2/2002 

Kevin Sharpe, "Recovering the Renaissance Reader"

5/2/2002   Seminar Room, 2417 South Hall   4:00:00 PM
4/29/2002 

Lev Manovich, Author of Language of New Media to Discuss His Work and Views Today

Author, computer artist, and theorist Lev Manovich is the UCSB English Department's Digital Cultures Project Fellow for Spring 2002. He will present his work and discuss his theories at Digital Media Lecture Series talk entitled "Info Aesthetics" to be held today in the Chemistry building, room 1171, from 4-5:30.
4/29/2002   Chemistry Building room 1171   4:00:00 PM
4/26/2002 

LCI Field Trip to Panasonic Speech Technology Laboratory

Alan Liu, director of the English Department's Literature and the Culture of Information specialization, is leading students on a field trip to the open house of the Panasonic Speech Technology Laboratory (PSTL), located in Santa Barbara. The PSTL, which is staffed by both engineers and language specialists, will demo its many speech recognition and generation projects. Interested students who need a ride should meet at 3 pm on Friday, April 26th, just outside the English Dept. office in South Hall, second floor.
4/26/2002     3:00:00 PM
4/24/2002 

Faculty/Student Social And English Major Info Presentations Set For April 24!

Come talk to your professors and hear about the English Major specializations, new requirements, and the Education Abroad Program, all while enjoying a delicious array of food and drink!
4/24/2002   South Hall room 2635   3:00:00 PM
4/20/2002 

Violence in the Middle Ages Conference

The theme "Violence in the Middle Ages" foregrounds the first Medieval Studies Program Spring Graduate Student Conference scheduled for April 20 in the Centennial House from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Plenary speaker David Nirenberg of Johns Hopkins will present his work "Massacre, Mass Conversion, and the Reconstruction of Religious Identities in Medieval Spain."
4/20/2002   UCSB Centennial House   9:00:00 AM
4/13/2002 

Crossing Lines Conference: Race and Mixed Race Across the Geohistorical Divide

The American Cultures Center and the English Department will cosponsor a Graduate and Undergraduate Student Conference, entitled Crossing Lines: Race and Mixed Race Across the Geohistorical Divide. Keynote speaker for the event is George Lipsitz, PhD, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UCSD.
4/13/2002   English Department Seminar Room, South Hall 2635   8:00:00 AM
4/9/2002 

Professor Shirley Geok-Lin Lim Reads From Her New Novel Joss and Gold

American Book Award Winner Shirley Lim will read from Joss and Gold. Her "long-awaited first novel traces the unconventional development of an extended and unlikely family, moving from the newly born state of Malaysia to the heart of middle-class America to the capitalist explosion of 1980s Singapore" (The Feminist Press).
4/9/2002   MultiCultural Center   4:30:00 PM
3/15/2002 

Leah Marcus Seminar

Seminar on the writings of Elizabeth I.
3/15/2002   Early Modern Center   3:00:00 PM
3/14/2002 

The Early Modern Center presents Professor Leah S. Marcus

The Early Modern Center is most pleased to announce two upcoming events by Leah S. Marcus, Edwin Mims Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. A lecture, "Reading Elizabeth Writing: The Text as Visual Artifact" and an informal seminar about her work editing Elizabeth I's writings.
3/14/2002   English Department Seminar Room, SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
3/14/2002 

Leah Marcus Lecture

"Reading Elizabeth Writing: The Text as Visual Artifact"
3/14/2002   Seminar Room   3:00:00 PM
3/11/2002 

Mark Rose gives Melville B Nimmer Memorial Lecture

Mark Rose, Professor of English and former Department Chair, will give the annual Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture on March 11, 2002, at UCLA's School of Law. Professor Rose will be the first non-attorney ever invited to give this prestigious talk.
3/11/2002   UCLA Faculty Center, California Room   7:00:00 PM
3/8/2002 

Interfacing Knowledge: New Paradigms for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

This brief rehearsal of the meanings of "interface" helps to suggest the wide range of questions opened by the interface, and the act of "interfacing" knowledge. This conference approaches the term "knowledge" in an equally broad manner, as befits a university-oriented conference. We seek to explore the diverse university discourses that involve the production, storage and distribution of knowledge, the various epistemological practices that characterize how knowledge is understood to be structured and therefore to function. Artists, humanists, computer scientists, social scientists and others all approach issues of knowledge and how we interface it in idiosyncratic fashions, yet we all participate in a single institutional community. It is perhaps more accurate to speak of "knowledges"rather than the more abstract and utopian "knowledge" in the singular. We hope this conference itself can serve as an interface that helps us question and make better sense of how we engage with one another intellectually, socially and politically. The way we work with and within the interface engages the many fraught ways that our society at large negotiates what constitutes legitimate knowledge in such realms as politics, economics, law, and popular culture.
3/8/2002   UCSB McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB  
3/7/2002 

Susan Lee Johnson, "Return to Roaring Camp"

Susan Lee Johnson will discuss the intellectual and political contexts in which Roaring Camp took shape, including the emergence of gender studies, the persistence of ethnic studies, and the turn of the historical discipline toward linguistic concerns.
3/7/2002   English Department Seminar Room, SH 2635   3:30:00 PM
3/5/2002 

Carl Gutierrez-Jones "Critical Race Narratives"

The IHC presents Carl Gutierrez-Jones speaking from his new book Critical Race Narratives. Courtesy of the UCSB Book store, copies of Critical Race Narratives will be available for purchase and signing at this event.
3/5/2002   McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB   4:00:00 PM
2/28/2002 

"Sweet Soul Music" Lecture-Performance

Soul singer and former Platters member, Ron Paris, will give a lecture-performance about the development of rhythm and blues and of soul music that are part of the history of music in America and of music's contribution to social justice.
2/28/2002   Corwin Pavillion at the UCEN   7:00:00 PM
2/28/2002 

Research Positions Announced for Literature & Culture of Information Specialization

The English department is now accepting applications for two paid research positions on the undergraduate "research team" to be fielded by the Literature and Culture of Information (LCI) specialization in spring quarter. These research teams allow English majors to research topics they are interested in relating to digital media or online culture. Applications due Friday, Feb. 28th in the English Dept. office (details). Prof. Alan Liu, who directs the LCI, will hold special office hours on Monday, Feb. 25th, 3-4, in South Hall 2509 to answer questions.
2/28/2002    
2/21/2002 

Shirley Geok-lin Lim Reading and Book Signing

Shirley Geok-lin Lim will read from her new novel JOSS AND GOLD at State Street Borders in Santa Barbara.
2/21/2002   State Street Borders Bookstore in SB   7:00:00 PM
2/19/2002 

An Evening with Don Foster

There will be a talk and reception for Don Foster, Professor of English at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and a legal expert on authorial attribution. Both events are sponsored by the English Department, the Early Modern Center, and the Vassar Club of Santa Barbara.
2/19/2002   IHC, McCune Conference Room, 6th Floor HSSB   5:30:00 PM
2/19/2002 

Don Foster Lecture

Don Foster is a Professor of English at Vassar, as well as a UCSB graduate. Well-respected as a literary "sleuth," Professor Foster is now working on the anthrax letters sent to public officials earlier this year.
2/19/2002    
2/15/2002 

American Cultures Center Potluck

The American Cultures Center invites interested graduate students and faculty to share a meal and discuss the future of our new center. What directions should this new center take? What suggestions do you have for programming and library development? Come hear your colleagues' thoughts on what is --- and should be --- American Studies, and bring a dish that you feel somehow represents a segment of American culture.
2/15/2002   South Hall 2635   4:00:00 PM
2/2/2002 

Shirley Geok-lin Lim, guest appearance on PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers.

View a video clip of featured poet, Shirley Geok-lin Lim reading her poem, "Learning to Love America" on Bill Moyer's PBS show, NOW, at http://www.pbs.org/now/poet/poet.html
2/2/2002    
2/1/2002 

Linda Seidel Lecture

"Pain and its Antidote in Fifteenth-Century Painting"
2/1/2002   State St. Room.   3:00:00 PM
12/5/2001 

Open Forum on English 10

English Dept. faculty, graduate students, teaching assistants, and undergraduates are invited to participate in a frank and lively discussion about English 10. This course will be a requirement for all undergraduate students who declare their major to be English in Fall 2002 or later. (agenda)
12/5/2001   South Hall 2635   3:00:00 PM
11/16/2001 

Early Modern Visual Culture: Visualizing the Stage

11/16/2001     1:00:00 PM
11/15/2001 

American Cultures Center Inaugural Event

The American Cultures Center, housed in the UCSB English Department, will host a roundtable event, "The Future of American Studies".
11/15/2001   UCen Harbor Room   3:00:00 PM
11/15/2001 

Early Modern Center will host a colloquium on Friday, November 16, 2-5pm., in 2635 South Hall.

This colloquium will explore this year's EMC theme, "Early Modern Visual Culture." The event features Stephen Orgel, Professor of English at Stanford University speaking on "Shylock's Tribe" and Joseph Roach, Professsor of English and Art History, Yale University speaking on "The Global Parasol: Accessorizing the Four Corners of the World". The colloquium is co-sponsored by Art History and Renaissance Studies. A panel discussion with follow the talks, consisiting of Ann Bermingham, Robert Hamm, Mark Rose, Stephen Orgel, and Joseph Roach. The event will conclude with refreshments in the Early Modern Center. All are welcome.
11/15/2001   2635 South Hall   2:00:00 PM
11/13/2001 

Reading and Book Signing by Shawn Wong.

The English Department, in conjunction with the Film Studies Department and Center for Chicano Studies, is pleased to announce a reading and book signing by noted author Shawn Wong.
11/13/2001   Girvetz 1004   9:30:00 AM
11/9/2001 

Medieval Studies Colloquia

The English Department is pleased to announce on behalf of its affiliate,the Medieval Studies Program, the first in a series of lectures on the theme of "Violence."
11/9/2001   State Street Room, UCEN   3:00:00 PM
11/8/2001 

Modernism Group Hosts Two Events Featuring Prof. Daniel Albright

The department's Modernism Group (under the auspices of its newly formed IHC Research Focus Group in Modernist Studies) presents a two-part program featuring Daniel Albright, Richard L. Turner Professor in the Humanities at U. Rochester. On Nov. 8th, 4 pm, McCune Conference Room (6020 HSSB), Prof. Albright will present a lecture entitled, "Noble Savages in Armani Suits: American Art in the Late Twentieth Century." On Nov. 9th, 3:30 pm, South Hall 2617, Prof. Albright will speak on Samuel Beckett and Technology.
11/8/2001    
11/2/2001 

Job Search for Tenure-Track Professor in American Literature with Emphasis in Race & Ethnic Studies

The department is conducting a job search for a tenure-track Assistant Professor (with possibility of appointment as tenured Associate Professor for qualified candidate). (text of job ad)
11/2/2001    
10/25/2001 

Beyond Solidarity: Pragmatism and Difference in a Globalized World

The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center cordially invites you to a lecture and book signing with Giles Gunn. Giles Gunn is professor of English and Global & International Studies at UCSB.
10/25/2001   McCune Conference Room   4:00:00 PM
10/25/2001 

The Literature & Culture of Information Specialization Information Meeting.

The English Department's Literature & Culture of Information specialization will hold an informational meeting for interested students on Thursday, October 25, at 3:30 in South Hall 2509. All interested parties are welcome to attend!
10/25/2001   South Hall 2509, Transcriptions Studio   3:30:00 PM
10/5/2001 

Early Modern Center Graduate Conference on "Violence and Civility"

The English Department's Early Modern Center is starting its year's events with a graduate conference on "Violence and Civility." Gina Schaffer of UC Irvine will speak on "The Invocation and Domestication of Sacrifice in Shakespeare's Othello and Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness," and Sheila Hwang of UCSB will speak on "People, Places, and Things: Objects of Subjectivity in Emma." A mixed faculty and graduate-student panel will respond to the talks.
10/5/2001   Early Modern Center, South Hall 2510   3:00:00 PM
10/5/2001 

EMC Graduate Student Colloqium: Violence and Civility

10/5/2001    
6/18/2001 

English Dept. Hosts Digital Cultures Project Summer Institute

The annual Summer Institute of the Digital Cultures Project, directed by Prof. William Warner, brings faculty and graduate students from throughout the Univ. of California system to UCSB for five intensive days of presentations and workshops. This year's theme is "Archive Cultures" (program).
6/18/2001   South Hall 2635   10:00:00 AM
5/23/2001 

Undergraduates take note! Here is your chance to take a 197 seminar during the summer session.

Two English 197 seminars have been added to the first summer session.
5/23/2001    
5/5/2001 

Early Modern Center Spring Conference: The Early Modern 'New': Discoveries and Rediscoveries

Collaboration between classes together with invited speakers will open up an exchange between the different explorations of the "new". Keynote Speaker: Professor Jean Howard of Columbia Univ.
5/5/2001   McCune Conference Rm., 6th Floor HSSB   10:00:00 AM
5/5/2001 

The Early Modern "New"

An Undergraduate/Graduate Student Conference, featuring Professor Jean E. Howard of Columbia University, along with faculty and students from several English Department early modern courses.
5/5/2001   McCune Conference Room, 6th Floor HSSB   10:00:00 AM
5/3/2001 

"Narrative at the Outer Limits" Conference

The UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center is presenting a conference to explore the similarities and differences between narrative and non-narrative thinking at the outer limits of narrative in genres such as film, pictorial art, hypertext fiction, and performative poetics. Speakers include David Bordwell, James Elkins, Katherine Hayles, and Jerome McGann. (See Conference schedule)
5/3/2001   McCune Conference Room (6020 Humanities & Social Sciences Building)  
5/2/2001 

The English Department announces a Faculty/Student Social.

Don't miss this opportunity to meet with the English faculty members. This exciting and informative event will take place in the English Department, South Hall 2635 on Wednesday, May 2nd from 3:00 to 4:30pm.
5/2/2001   South Hall 2635   3:00:00 PM
4/25/2001 

R. S. Gwynn Poetry Reading

R. S Gwynn is widely known in the academic world as editor of three Longman Pocket Anthologies--of Poetry, Fiction, and Drama--which are taught in many English classes around Santa Barbara. Gwynn's Selected Poems 1970-2000, No Word of Farewell was recently published by Story Line Press. (more)
4/25/2001   Old Little Theater, College of Creative Studies   4:00:00 PM
4/20/2001 

Spring Medieval Studies Colloquium

The Colloquium will feature post-colonial perspectives of chivalry in medieval literature.
4/20/2001   Centennial House   1:00:00 PM
4/9/2001 

Transcriptions & Early Modern Center Exhibits at UCSB Instructional Media Day

The Transcriptions Project and Early Modern Center will for the first time have exhibition booths at UCSB's annual UCSB Instructional Media Day, a showcase for the use of information technology on campus. Also featured at the department's booths will be a cluster of under-construction projects now converging with Transcriptions - including a new, database-driven version of Voice of the Shuttle and a new site for the department specialization in Literature and the Culture of Information (see demo page).
4/9/2001   Corwin Pavillion, UCEN   10:30:00 AM
3/16/2001 

Catalyst, UCSB's undergraduate literary journal, seeks submissions

Catalyst, an entirely student-run publication distributed at no cost to readers, is seeking poetry, prose, short stories for its 2001 edition (up to 4 poems; short stories no longer than 6-7 pages typed and double-spaced). Submission boxes are located in the English Department, 2nd floor South Hall, or at the College of Creative Studies.
3/16/2001     4:00:00 PM
3/14/2001 

Robyn Bell Poetry Reading

Robyn Bell, UCSB graduate and Ph. D. (1988), will be reading in the College of Creative Studies Literature Symposium.
3/14/2001   Old Little Theater, College of Creative Studies building   4:00:00 PM
2/16/2001 

Information Meeting for "Literature and the Culture of Information" Specialization

If you are an English major interested in the Department's new "specialization" in Literature and the Culture of Information, please come to this information meeting. Meet some of the specialization's faculty and graduate-student research assistants; learn about the specialization's background, goals, and future plans (including special events for students).
2/16/2001   South Hall 2509   3:30:00 PM
2/12/2001 

Public Humanities Initiative Event

Amy Hollywood (Religious Studies, Dartmouth C.), "Popular Medievalism Today" & Constance Penley (Film Studies, UCSB), "Pornography and the Fabliau." Respondents: Alexandra Cook and Zia Isola (graduate students, English Dept.) See Public Humanities Initiative Web page for speaker backgrounds and more details.
2/12/2001   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
2/9/2001 

Medieval Studies Program Colloquium on The History of Medievalism

Speakers: John M. Ganim (English, UC Riverside) and Amy Hollywood (Film Studies, Dartmouth C.); Respondents: Sharon Farmer (History, UCSB) and Erika Rappaport (History, UCSB)
2/9/2001   Centennial House, UCSB   1:00:00 PM
12/29/2000 

English Department's MLA Party in Washington, D.C.

The department will hold its annual party at the Modern Language Association convention for graduate students, alumni, and friends. The convention this year is in Washington, D.C., where the department will have its suite in the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel (the main convention hotel). (Details)
12/29/2000   Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, D.C.   8:30:00 AM
12/1/2000 

Modernism Group Discusses The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Eric Weitzel will meet with the department's Modernism Group to discuss his dissertation chapter, "'Some Other Story Behind It': The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as a Gossip Book."
12/1/2000   South Hall 2617   3:30:00 PM
12/1/2000 

Work in Progress: Robert Bennett and Jennifer Jones

A presentation of work in progress by graduate students Robert Bennett ("The Aesthetic Politics of Urban Space: Interart Representations of Post-WWII New York City") and Jennifer Jones, ("Virtual Sublime: Romantic Transcendence and the Consequences of the Digital").
12/1/2000   South Hall 2635, Seminar Room   12:00:00 PM
11/30/2000 

Christopher Craft on "Queering the Specular: Ovid, Wilde and Lacan"

Christopher Craft, Asst. Prof. of English, will lecture at the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center on "Queering the Specular: Ovid, Wilde and Lacan." The talk, which derives from his current research project titled "Ocular Capture: Visuality and Fetishism in Victorian Culture," explores the intertextual relations among Ovid’s Narcissus myth, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Lacan’s Mirror Phase.
11/30/2000   McCune Conference Room (6020 Humanities & Social Sciences Building)   4:00:00 PM
11/17/2000 

Public Humanities Open Planning Forum with Mary Childers

Following upon her talk in the department's Public Humanities series on Thurs., Nov. 16th, Prof. Childers will on Friday the 17th serve as external consultant in a strategy session of the Public Humanities Initiative.
11/17/2000   South Hall 2635   10:00:00 AM
11/16/2000 

Mary Childers, "The Humanities and The Human Dollar"

A Public Humanities Initiative Event: Mary Childers, Former Director of Capital Giving at Dartmouth College, will speak on "The Humanities and The Human Dollar." Childers will also appear at a Public Humanities Open Planning Forum the next day. See the Public Humanities Web site for more event information.
11/16/2000   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
10/20/2000 

Early Modern Sexualities Conference Friday, October 20, 1:15-5:30pm.

The English Department's new Early Modern Center is hosting its inaugural event, a half-day conference on Early Modern Sexualities, Friday, October 20, in the Seminar Room from 1:15 to 5:30. Our guest speakers will be two of the leading scholars in this field, Valerie Traub from the University of Michigan and George Haggerty from UC Riverside. (Details) See the Early Modern Center for the full program and preview of the new Center.
10/20/2000   South Hall 2635-Seminar Room   1:15:00 PM
10/20/2000 

Informational Meeting for Graduate Students About This Year's Departmental Job Search

To keep graduate students apprised of this year's departmental job search for an assistant professor of "digital humanities" (a step recently recommended by the department's Administrative Committee for every job search), Mark Rose and Alan Liu will give a briefing and answer questions. (Details)
10/20/2000   Seminar Room (SH 2635)   12:00:00 PM
10/19/2000 

Prof. Michael O'Connell, "The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early-Modern England"

The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center sponsors a lecture by Michael 0'Connell titled "The Idolatrous Eye:Iconoclasm and Theater in Early Modern England
10/19/2000   McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020   4:00:00 PM
10/6/2000 

Public Humanities "Open Planning Forum"

The English Department's Public Humanities Initiative is convening a "summit meeting" of humanities scholars on campus who might help plan future Public Humanities events.
10/6/2000   South Hall 2635   10:00:00 AM
10/5/2000 

Public Humanities Initiative to Feature John Guillory

Prof. John Guillory, author of Cultural Capital (1993) and a member of the English dept. at New York University, will launch this year's Public Humanities events in the department with a talk titled, "Some Observations on the Difference Between Lay and Professional Reading."
10/5/2000   South Hall 2635   3:30:00 PM
10/4/2000 

General Department Meeting Wed Oct 4

The department will have a start-of-the-year informational meeting for staff, graduate students, faculty, and others teaching in the department on Wednesday Oct 4 in the Seminar Room. The meeting will include reports from the graduate and undergraduate advisors and information about such matters as the year's recruiting plans. Please come join in the informational festivity.
10/4/2000   Seminar Room-2635 South Hall   3:30:00 PM
9/27/2000 

Fall 2000 Reception

The beginning of the year reception will be held at the Centennial House on Wednesday, September 27, 2000 from 3:00pm to 6:00pm
9/27/2000   Centennial House   4:00:00 PM
9/12/2000 

New Graduate Student Orientation

Orientation sessions for new graduate students in English.
9/12/2000   South Hall 2635   12:00:00 PM
 

-- Happy Thanksgiving from the English Department! --

   
 

UCSB English Department MLA Convention Party


The English Department of the University of California at Santa Barbara
cordially invites you to
Our MLA Convention Party
Suite of the Department Chair, William Warner
Hyatt Regency Chicago
Chicago,IL
Saturday, December 29, 2007
9:00PM – 11:00PM



Please call the hotel for William Warner’s suite number after he checks in on the evening of Dec. 27th. The address of the Hyatt Regency Chicago is 151 E. Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60601, Tel: (312) 565-1234
   
 

Richard Helgerson

In Memoriam

Richard Helgerson, 1940-2008

Richard Helgerson, one of the leading scholars of Renaissance literature, died in Santa Barbara, California, on April 26 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Helgerson, who was known among other things for his studies of the ways in which the earliest European nation states described themselves to themselves and to the world, was a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, an institution at which he had taught since 1970. A memorial service will be held at the UCSB Faculty Club from 4:00-6:00 p.m. on Friday, May 23.
Richard Helgerson
Full Obituary
"Now cracks a noble heart."
   
 

Agrippa Files Web Site Launched

Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr. The Agrippa Files (http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu) is a scholarly site developed by members of the UCSB English and Comparative Literature departments that presents selected pages from the original art book; a unique archive of materials dating from the book’s creation and early reception; a simulation of what the book’s intended “fading images” might have looked like; a video of the 1992 “transmission” of the work; a “virtual lightbox” for comparing and studying pages from the book; commentary by the book’s publisher and scholars; an annotated bibliography of scholarship, press coverage, interviews, and other material; a detailed bibliographic description of the book; and a discussion forum. (more)
   
 

Alumni Association

   
 

America and the Reshaping of a New World Order:
Normative Implications, Cultural Constraints

A year-long project supported by the "Critical Issues in America" endowment (Office of the Provost, College of Letters and Science) and co-sponsored by the American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, the Department of English, the Global and International Studies Program, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and co-directed by Giles Gunn and Carl Gutiérrez-Jones.
   
 

American Cultures and Global Contexts Center

"American Identities and Global Crisis"
Explore the ways that various dimensions of American identity change and are changed by the exceptionally charged global environment of recent years.
   
 

Announcing Two Great English Contests for Spring Quarter 2005:

The Kieth E. Vineyard Honorary Scholarship and the William and Marjorie Frost Memorial Award. The Vineyard scholarship is given in memory of UCSB alumnus Kieth Vineyard. It is open to all UCSB undergraduates who have registered for at least 12 units in at least one quarter of the 2004-2005 academic year. First place will recive $600, second $400, and third $200.

The Frost award is for Senior UCSB English majors. Students will be judged on their academic excellence and on a critical scholarly essay of approximatley 10 pages. An $800.00 dollar award will be given in memory of English Professor William Frost and his wife Marjorie, a noted artist and Civil Rights activist.

Contest rules and application forms are available in the English Department office - 2607 South Hall. All entries must be received by 4:30 April 21, 2005.

   
 

Classes full? Need to crash a class? Feel a headache coming on? You are not alone.

Here are some options for action an English major or minor can take when in need of an English class and things are looking bleak.
   
 

College of Letters and Science Research and Special Awards, Spring 2001

These seven awards, scholarships, and other opportunties are available for undergraduates. See details for descriptions and application deadlines.
   
 

Early Modern Center Courses for 2004

For information about the undergraduate specialization in Early Modern Studies (1500-1800), see Early Modern Center Undergrads
   
 

English Department Poetry Winners

Kieth Vineyard Scholarship
William and Marjorie Frost Memorial Award
   
 

English Dept. Starts Public Humanities Initiative

"The Public Humanities Initiative is creating an innovative series of colloquia, workshops, field trips, online resources, and other occasions for humanities scholars to experiment with modes of public engagement.
   
 

Faculty Job Search in "Digital Humanities"

The English Department is searching in 2000-2001 for an Assistant Professor who works in the emerging field of digital humanities and new media. The job advertisement was placed in the Modern Language Association Job List.
   
 

Faculty Research Interests

Current list of English Department faculty and their areas of research. (Go to list)
   
 

Fall 2000 Course Descriptions Released

The English Department has announced course descriptions for Fall 2000. For more information, see the Web page mentioned below.
   
 

In Memoriam.....Lee Bliss (August 9, 1943 - December 8, 2006)

“Rest in soft peace.”
   
 

LCI Courses for 2004

Students interested in information culture and its intersection with literature might be interested in the LCI courses scheduled for 2004. For more information go to the Transcriptions Course page.
   
 

New Advising Tool for EAP Students

English majors and minors are encouraged to complete some portion or their studies through the Education Abroad Program. A new advising tool, makes it easy to see how courses may be counted toward major requirements and electives.

Students can also complete a substantial part of their foreign language requirement through EAP's short-term language and culture programs. Information can be found at this same link.
The Education Abroad Office is in South Hall 2431.
   
 

New Department Newsletter

A new Department Newsletter began publishing in Fall 2000. Edited by Carolyn Butcher (Ph.D. 2002) and Patricia Marby Harrison (Ph.D. 1999), the Newsletter covers general department news but also makes a special effort to involve alumni. To receive a copy, make suggestions, or contribute news for the next issue, fill out the online questionnaire.
   
 

New Instructional Technology

Anglo-Irish Literature Web SiteRecently, Professor Enda Duffy's course English 150: Anglo-Irish Literature was accompanied by a beautiful course site that was designed using Flash technology. This is one of the courses in the English department that has experimented with new instructional technology and innovative uses of the Web. More courses are being developed on topics such as hypertext fiction, American literature and business culture, Enlightenment communications, and censorship and free speech. Instructors are using new computing studios in the department to develop their courses and new multimedia projectors in the department's classroom to teach. One of the unique aspects of instructional technology in the UCSB English Dept. is that its development is being guided by a philosophy of critical engagement with past "information revolutions," including the transition from orality to writing and from manuscripts to print. For more on these developments, see Technology Resources
   
 

Notice for Students Considering Engl 10 in Summer

English 10 is for lower division students with a special interest in literature. This course is an introduction to literary study for those expecting to be English majors. Writing 2 is its prerequisite, and English 10 meets the requirement for an additional writing course such as Writing 50 or 109. Only freshmen or sophomores with a special interest in literature are eligible to take this course. Others should meet the writing requirement with one of the above courses given by the Writing Program.
   
 

Poetics@UCSB

New speaker series organized by Prof. Yunte Huang featuring poets, artists, and scholars whose work rethinks the mission and practice of poetry/poetics in the age of media, globalization, and multilingualism. Winter 2004 speakers include the poets and critics: Jerome Rothenberg, Marjorie Perloff, and Charles Bernstein.
   
 

Redesigned Major

New Major RequirementsAfter three years of consultation, the English Department rolled out a new major in Spring 2000. Important changes were made in the department's required lecture courses, and new, optional "specializations" were introduced to give students an opportunity to use their electives in a focused way. According to Prof. William Warner, who headed the department's Undergraduate Committee during the redesign process, "By making these changes, the English department is able to modernize its requirements and achieve a greater balance between British and American literature. At the same time, . . . we have freed up more time in a student's career for electives. Now students can choose to take advantage of the department's new specializations. The primary benefits of these changes include greater flexibility in meeting requirements and greater individual initiative in shaping a course of study in English." For more information, please see The Undergraduate Program.
   
 

Sign Up for the "Literature and Culture of Information" Specialization

Undergraduates intending to take the English Department's new specialization in Literature and the Culture of information (LCI) may sign up by contacting the specialization's director, Prof. Alan Liu (ayliu@humanitas.ucsb.edu). They will also be added to the LCI e-mail list, which announces news about the specialization, its courses, and extracurricular events. (See description and future plans of the specialization.)
   
 

Tenure Track Position Search: African-American Literature

African-American Literature
Rank open: Tenure Track or Senior Level.


[More. . .]
   
 

The 2004-2005 Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize

   
 

The English Department's Graduate Recruitment Weekend at UCSB

The English Department hosted 21 prospective graduate students on April 2, 3, and 4, 2004.
   
 

Three New Versions of English 10/Intro to Literary Study

(These courses satisfy the last half of the Area A General Education Requirements)
   
 

Two new upper-division English courses have been opened for enrollment in the Fall 2001 quarter

English 122JZ, Cultural Representations: Jazz
EC# 45641 MWF, 4:00-4:50pm, Girvetz 2123 Instructor: Robert Bennett
English 165LT, Topics in Literature: Literature of Technology
EC# 54692 T/R, 2:00-3:15, Girvetz 2123 Instructor: Rita Raley
   
 

UCSB English Department Alumnus wins Pulitzer for editorial writing.

David Moats, the editorial page editor of the Rutland Herald, celebrates Monday after getting official word of his Pulitzer Prize. Moats received his undergraduate degree in English at UCSB in 1969.
   
 

UCSB Humanities and Fine Arts Graduation Speech by Elizabeth Gabler

The following speech was delivered at the 2006 UC Santa Barbara Commencement Ceremony for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts by Elizabeth Gabler, alumnus of UCSB's English Department, and President of Fox 2000.
  2006 UC Santa Barbara Commencement Ceremonies  
 

Undergraduate Commencement Reception (Class of 2006-2007)

The English Department Undergraduate Commencement Reception,
held Sunday, June 17th 2007.

William Warner, Kay Young, Ann Wainwright, Alan Liu

Text of Professor Kay Young's speech
Photo Gallery of Reception

   
 

Undergraduate Graduation Ceremony - Speech by Professor Kay Young

"Graduations make me sad. And I don’t want that. I want just to feel the happiness of the occasion—this moment that marks the culmination of your education. If to educate means to draw out, to lead to--this is a celebration of the place to which you have been led. And of course this place is nowhere concrete. It lies within. It’s who you are today--someone who knows everything and nothing, all at once. What a true place that is, impossibly open, deeply human, and all too soon forgotten. (Click title above for rest of speech).
   
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