GW EGSA

Upcoming Calls-for-Papers

2012-02-24T10:29:00.000-05:00

We have been collecting CFP notices for the past two months, and here are some additional CFPs with deadlines in March and May. Note: These are organized by Abstract Submission Deadline (not by conference date). Please click on the links to get full CFP details. If you have a CFP that you would like to share, please post it in a comment below or email us. And remember that you can "like" us on Facebook or subscribe to this blog via email to receive updates.

March 1 Deadline:

Cross-CulturalEncounters in the Middle Ages

March 17 Deadline:

TheSt. John’s Humanities Review

The St. John’sHumanities Review is a graduate student-run journal at St John’s Universityin New York City that publishes bookreviews, essays, and interviews on a broad range of topics in the arts andhumanities. We encourage submissions from graduate students and accomplishedscholars interested in these discussions locally and around the world.

This year’s issue hopes to feature work that fits under thebroad heading of Nationalism: Roots and Transgressions. The focus is on the areas of national identityor transnationalism, acculturation, cultural diffusion, or culture shock. The approach may be primarily sociologicaland historical, or literary in nature. What we want are submissions that address these theme(s) in new andexciting ways that express the multiplicity of angles and issues these broadheadings generate.

Weseek scholarly essays, book reviews, and interviews suitable for a broadacademic audience. Book reviews should be similar to The New York Review ofBooks and The New Republic and should be under 2000 words. Essaysshould be no longer than 25 pages and in Times New Roman 12 pt. font in MSWordand follow a citation system suitable to the pertinent discipline. Footnotesshould be minimized, but use depends on the material.

Please send your submissions by March 17, 2012.

Send them to:

Danielle Lee, editor

St John’s Humanities Review

sjuhumanities@gmail.com

danielle.lee10a@stjohns.edu

May 4^thDeadlines

Communicationand Conflict

ImmersiveWorlds and Transmedia Narratives

Bullyingand the Abuse of Power

14^thAnnual British Graduate Conference

Summer Jobs

2012-02-23T10:55:00.002-05:00

Thank you for those of you who attended last week's event on Summer Jobs. We would like to post the list of resources as well as two job ads for those of you still looking for work this summer. There will also be a follow-up post to this one after meeting with the GW Career center for additional advice and resources. In the meantime, if you have questions about these links/ideas, please let us know. Most of these come highly recommended from fellow Grad Students. If you have an idea for a great summer job for English Graduate students, please post it in a comment below or shoot us an email!

Summer Jobs forEnglish Graduate Students

Teaching - http://www.fairfaxcollegiate.com/Teach(hurry, the deadlines for this are coming up!)

Temping - KellyServices.com, Manpower.com

Research Assistant

GW Staff positions – www.gwu.jobs

Adjunct Teaching – www.nvcc.edu

Abroad Opportunities (au pair, tour guide, tutor, teacher)

Seasonal Jobs

Paid Writing - http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/2010/05/freelance-writing-as-a-summer-job-for-college-students/

Social Media Consultant

Tutoring (http://www.gwu.edu/~gwriter/,http://nstutors.com/drupal-6.20/)

SAT, Testing Instruction

Docent, Usher

Editing (ask Connie to add you to the GWU Editors list)

Resources

LinkedIn.com

Internships.com

Experience.com

Chronicle of Higher Education - http://chronicle.com/section/Jobs/61/

CoolWorks.com

BackDoorJobs.com

Craigslist.com

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Upcoming EGSA and Campus Events

2012-02-13T10:23:00.002-05:00

Thank you to all who were able to attend our Second Annual EGSA Symposium last Friday. It was a great opportunity to catch up and see current work in our department. There are more professional and academic events to come this semester, and below is a short list of opportunities. We would like to highlight our upcoming Professional Development Event: Summer Jobs which will be held this Thursday, Feb. 16 from 3:00pm to 4:00pm. This session is to discuss potential summer jobs which are suited to English Graduate students. It can be tough finding a good job for only four months out of the year, and one that helps you financially as well as professionally, but we have polled our peers for a wide variety of summer job options. Come for an informal chat (and delicious cookies!) this Thursday in Rome 771.

Februrary 16 EGSA Professional Development Event: Summer Jobs. Come joinus for a conversation about how to fund your summer months with a wide varietyof job options that will help you both financially and professionally.Delicious cookies will be provided.

February 16 Laura Lunger Knoppers (PennState): "Reconsidering Luxury in Seventeenth-Century England: The Case ofJohn Evelyn" Thursday, February 16th, 5:30pm Georgetown University LannanCenter New North 408

March 2 TheWashington Center for Psychoanalysis And The Columbia Academy ofPsychodynamics present the 2012 Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Lecture “A Refugeefrom Chestnut Lodge Receives Asylum at the Folger Shakespeare Library: NewDiscoveries about the Authorship of Shakespeare’s Works”

Speaker: Richard Waugaman, MD*

Friday, March 2, 2012 7 pm – 9pm

Chevy Chase Women’s Club

7931 Connecticut Avenue, ChevyChase, Maryland Free to Students Register at www.wcpweb.org

March 8 David Loewenstein (University of Wisconsin-Madison):“John Milton, William Walwyn, and the 'Terrors' of Heresy inSeventeenth-Century England” Thursday, March 8th, 5:30pm Georgetown UniversityLannan Center New North 408

March 25 MEMSI is holding an interdisciplinary,transhistorical symposium on "Cultural Translations: Medieval /Early Modern / Postmodern" to be held at George Washington University inD.C., 9:30 am - 4:00 pm, Sunday, March 25, 2012.

Free and open to the public. Please stay tuned for updates on the venue andlunch.
Website: http://www.gwu.edu/~acyhuang/culturaltranslations.html
PRESENTATIONS
Medieval
Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Toronto, English and Medieval Studies): Translating thePast: World Literature in the Medieval Mediterranean
Marcia Norton (GW, History): topic to be announced
Early Modern
Barbara Fuchs (UCLA, English and Spanish & Portuguese): Return to Sender:"Hispanicizing" Cardenio
Christina Lee (Princeton, Spanish & Portuguese): Imagining China in aGolden Age Spanish Epic
Postmodern
Peter Donaldson (MIT, Literature): The King's Speech: Shakespeare, Empire andGlobal Media
Margaret Litvin (Boston, Arabic and Comparative Literature): topic to beannounced

April 12 Tobias Gregory (Catholic University of America): “ParadiseRegained and Late Miltonic Values” Thursday, April 12th, 5:30pm GeorgetownUniversity Lannan Center New North 408

Don't get stuck with an empty plate. Please RSVP to the upcoming symposium

2012-02-06T12:09:00.001-05:00

Your RSVP is not just helping the EGSA. It's helping you too. The EGSA will be providing lunch, and we will order food based on the number of RSVPs. So if you are planning on coming (and planning on eating) please let us know through either our Facebook Group or by emailing me directly.

Bodies in Space - Schedule

2012-02-06T11:59:00.003-05:00

EGSA Symposium Keynote Address

2012-02-06T11:57:00.001-05:00

The EGSA Symposium, "Bodies in Space," is this Friday. Put it in your calendars! We have a full day of panels planned, with a keynote by Georgetown University's Dana Luciano.

Dana Luciano is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University. She is the author of Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU, 2007), which won the Modern Language Association’s First Book Prize in 2008. She is currently at work on a monograph exploring the erotics of the non-human in 19th century American literature, entitled Romancing the Inhuman: Animacy and Eros in America, 1840-1910, as well as a collection of essays on contemporary LGBT film and video entitled Once More, With Feeling: The Texture of the Past in Queer Period Films.

Dr. Luciano will be giving a talk titled "Touching Spirits" which explores the innovative intimate and social forms proposed by 19th century spirit photography, focusing primarily on the work of William Mumler (active c. 1862-1870s) and Edward Wyllie (active c. 1890s-1910).

Upcoming EGSA Events

2012-01-30T16:52:00.000-05:00

EGSA would like to kick the week off with a reminder that the EGSA Symposium on Bodies in Space is coming up in just two weeks. In the next few days we will be posting the flyer for the event with all the event details, but please be sure to r.s.v.p. on Facebook so that we can order enough breakfast, lunch, and wine (yes, there will be wine). This is an annual event showcasing our colleagues' work and interesting scholarship, so please make plans to attend and support our department and your EGSA board.

Also coming up:
February 16 - "Summer Jobs for English Grads": a presentation on options available for the summer months for money and for the resume.
February 24 - Join the EGSA board for a trek to the Library of Congress where we will get library cards (an immensely helpful resource in graduate school), and possibly tour the main hall.
March (dates to be announced) - we will organize a "Plan your PhD" event, and cover skills such as Resume/CV writing and Publishing in Academia. Additionally, we are considering another M.A. portfolio presentation, and round-table sessions for the Qualifying and Fields exams.
April (dates to be announced) - we will wrap up the year with a blog series on Alternative Career Options, and we will host another book sale. We will also host elections for next year's board, so start thinking about if you would like to be on the ballot.

We will of course continue to publish CFPs and campus events. Please take a minute and subscribe via email to our blog (note: you may have to use a different browser if you experience difficulty with subscribing).

Friday Fun and A New Research Tool

2012-01-27T09:44:00.000-05:00

Friday is finally here, so come take advantage of the two fun events planned for today. GW Memsi is hosting a lunch (noon in Rome 771) with Ben Tilghman where he will discuss his paper "The Enigmatic Nature of Things." For more details, check out the GW Memsi Blog. Then stick around for EGSA's first Happy Hour of the new year at Founding Farmers from 5 to 7pm. This is a great opportunity to hang out with like-minded friends before the semester becomes too crazy. Check out our Facebook invite for details and to rsvp.

We also wanted to share a new research tool that is taking the academic community by storm. Ever heard of Zotero? The Chronicle for Higher Education posted about it a while back, but it was this graduate student blog post that made us take a second look. Essentially it is a reference tool that grabs citation information from any source that you want to catalogue (much like other programs), however it also gives you the unique ability to add notes to the references, to tag the references, and draw connections between them. Check out their introduction video here to see examples. We are still learning the interface, but it seems to have great potential. This is just one of many digital tools that could be helpful to your work including our *favorite* tool Dropbox. If you have other tools you would like to share or if you have questions about these, please do not hesitate to send us an email or leave a comment below.

Rated X: Perversion and Exclusion - February CFP

2012-01-25T10:40:00.000-05:00

Another interesting CFP with a deadline in February. Don't forget to r.s.v.p. to our first EGSA Happy Hour of the year. Visit our Facebook Page for more details.

The Brandeis EnglishDepartment is holding its sixth annual graduate
student conference.
“Rated X: Perversion and Exclusion”
Keynote Speaker: Lee Edelman, Chair, English Department, Tufts University

In celebration of the 36thanniversary of the initial publication of
Foucault’s first volume of The History ofSexuality, the 6th Annual
Brandeis Graduate student conference will explorethe ins and outs of
various forms of an X-Rating. Being Rated-X impliesbeing marked as
other/as outside/as unacceptable as well as beingmarked as
desirable/as visible/as exceptional. Rated-Ximplies the nakedness of
porn and the openness that comes with that. Forsome there is
liberation in this openness. For others there isonly exposure. This
necessitates the question of whether certainpopulations are made
disposable through exile or instead throughvisibility; through the
erasure or marking of bodies as other. We wouldlike to use this
conference to explore some slippage—between thesetwo (and more) types
of identification with otherness: thetransgression that empowers and
enables pleasure versus the polarizing othernessthat disenfranchises
and dehumanizes. Relevant questions include: Whois doing the marking?
Who draws the boundary lines? Does an “X”marking/rating make the
bodies of those so-rated untouchable orexcessively available for use;
or does an “X” rating elevate a body toexceptional status or release
it from the strictures of its prescribed socialidentities? Thus, we
will be accepting papers about the exiled body,porn, and anything in
between.

This conference will beheld at Brandeis University, Department of
English, on Friday March 30. Abstracts of 250-500words are due on
February 15th. Please submit abstracts via email:
brandeis.grad.conference@gmail.com.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us with anyquestions:
brandeis.grad.conference@gmail.com

Graduate Student Conferences - UMD GEO Conference

2012-01-24T09:34:00.001-05:00

Last semester we hosted a round table on attending and applying to conferences. If you attended, you know that one of the best ways to "break in" to the world of academic conferences is to apply to and attend graduate student conferences. We have already heard of some success stories from some of our M.A.s, and we want to spread that success. Another opportunity has landed on our desk - the University of Maryland's English Department is hosting its annual GEO Conference on March 3, 2012. Of course our own symposium is coming up this February and we thank all of you who submitted an abstract. But don't stop there! The deadline has been extended to January 30 for the GEO CFP. I attended this conference last spring and it was a rewarding experience. Whether you are just beginning to apply to conferences or if you have been to several already, this is a great professional development and networking opportunity. Good luck!
We also want to remind you that you can subscribe to this blog via email using the box to the right. You can also find GW EGSA on Facebook and "like" us to keep up with the latest news and events.

GEO Conference CFP

The Graduate EnglishOrganization of the University of Maryland’s Department of English

invites graduatestudents to submit abstracts for our fifth annual interdisciplinary graduate

conference. Thetheme of this year’s conference is “The Body Electric.”

When Walt Whitmansang about the “body electric” he was thinking about a fantasy of

connectivity, a bodyat once charged and charging. Using the “body electric” as a focal point, this

conference hopes tohighlight a broad spectrum of work from a variety of fields, literary and

otherwise. Abstractsthat focus on studies of the body, connectivity, persuasion, electricity,

philosophy/philosophyof mind, morality, politics/the body politic, and affect theory are welcome

and encouraged.Similarly, “The Body Electric” may tap into discourses of historical and

emergingtechnologies—allowing us to think of writers like Whitman, Mary Shelley,Charles

Dickens, andVirginia Woolf as possessing a clear stake in the popular science of theirrespective

ages. “The Body Electric”creates connectivity and allows for an unbounded self—just as

Clarissa Dalloway “feltherself everywhere; not ‘here, here, here’…but everywhere.”

In considering theway language and literature tenuously work to bridge the gaps they often

create, the categoryof an electric body becomes useful in thinking of affect, rhetoric, social

change, mediation,enlightenment, subjectivity, and technology. For instance, thinking of social

movements in thejournalistic commonplace of “electric” allows us to examine the currents of

communication thatmake them possible. Rhetorically, these currents of communication may

consider the bodiesof work we create and shape; in doing so, one might explore the discourse of

writing asperformance that provides a space to help (our students) develop a vitalconnection to

the delivery oftexts; the “body electric” becomes a central consideration as we performwritten,

spoken, andmultimodal works. Likewise, thinking about the affective scene as implicitlyelectric

allows us to articulatea genealogy of the emotions.

In its broadestsense, “The Body Electric” lends itself to a number of opportunities for

interrogation. Howdo these connections happen? Does considering the body as electric allow for

reformulations ofthe relationship between the body and the mind? between populace and

politician? betweensociety and morality? Do burgeoning social media technologies like Twitter

and Facebook extendor inhibit Whitman’s dream of expansive connectivity?

The conferencecommittee invites proposals for fifteen-minute papers from a broad range of

disciplines andtheoretical backgrounds. Presentations of creative work are also welcome. Panel

submissions (3-4participants) are highly encouraged. Please limit individual abstracts to 300

words and panelabstracts to 500 words. Full papers may accompany abstracts. Please include

three keywords atthe end of the abstract to assist panel formation.

The deadline forsubmissions is January 30th, 2011. Please send all proposals to

conference.geo@gmail.com.

January EGSA Happy Hour

2012-01-23T13:16:00.003-05:00

Greetings!

PhD Comics ImageGreetings!

Start of the semester?Need a drink?

Attending a MEMSI event?Need a drink?
Currently not drinking? Need a drink?

5:00pm until 7:00pm (Friday,January 27, 2012)

FoundingFarmers, 1924 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington D.C.,20006

Join the English Graduate Student Association at Founding Farmers for drinksand food (vegan friendly) for the inaugural happy hour of the"Spring" semester!

Check out the menu:
http://www.wearefoundingfarmers.com/washington-dc/ff_menus/menu-lunchdinner/

Sincerely,

M Bychowski

EGSA Social EventsCoordinator

EGSA CFP Extension

2012-01-18T08:13:00.004-05:00

Borrowed Image

Please read the following message from the EGSA VP for Academic Enrichment:

Hi everyone.

I hope you had a relaxing break. I'm writing to let you know that the deadline for the call for papers to the EGSA conference "Bodies in Space" has been extended until Monday, January 23 at midnight. This is a great opportunity to test conference papers out [for instance, in a happy accident, the UMD graduate conference is also focused on bodies this year] in a relaxed environment and a chance to share your work with your classmates, (plus a nice line on your cv for those of us who think about such things). I highly encourage you to submit an abstract to support our second annual conference.

Thanks

Peyton

Here's the CFP again:

Call for Papers: Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary and Cultural Studies

[The Panopticon] is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchal organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of power ... – Michel Foucault

The English Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce the call for papers for oursecond annual graduate student symposium Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary andCultural Studies to be held Friday, February 10, 2012.

Foucault’s reading of the production of docile bodies notwithstanding, the aim of this conferenceis not to consider the ways that the multiplicity of concentrations in the fields of Literature andCultural Studies stand in relation to each other, but instead consider how they stand in relationwith each other (and the ways that these relationships are always promiscuous and overlapping).Thus, rather than an image of a body pinned to a specific space, the title alludes to the many waysthat bodies and spatiality might be productively considered in literary criticism. More generally, wemean to provide a frame large enough to encompass all of the interesting work going on in the GWEnglish department. In this symposium, we hope to foster conversation between presenters andparticipants across concentrations and even disciplines through the intersections of currentgraduate student work. We welcome any and all submissions and encourage submissions frompreviously written course work or works in progress, including dissertation chapters andconference papers.

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be submitted, along with your contact information, to gwegsa@gmail.com by 11:59pm on Monday, January 23, 2012. Submissions must be 250 words or less and must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document or PDF. Please include 2-3 keywords at the bottom of your submission and include the words “Conference Submission” in the subject line of your email. Conference presentations will be approximately 15 minutes, and panels will be organized after submissions have been accepted.

We also welcome any volunteers who would like to be involved in the organizational / logisticalside of the symposium, be it chairing a panel or assisting with lunch.

Another January CFP

2012-01-17T08:19:00.000-05:00

Another CFP with a January Deadline came across our desk...

Call for Papers:
5th Annual GEO Conference
“The Body Electric”
University of Maryland, College Park
March 3, 2012

The Graduate English Organization of the University of Maryland’s Department of English invites graduate students to submit abstracts for our fifth annual interdisciplinary graduate conference. The theme of this year’s conference is “The Body Electric.”

When Walt Whitman sang about the “body electric” he was thinking about a fantasy of connectivity, a body at once charged and charging. Using the “body electric” as a focal point, this conference hopes to highlight a broad spectrum of work from a variety of fields, literary and otherwise. Abstracts that focus on studies of the body, connectivity, persuasion, electricity, philosophy/philosophy of mind, morality, politics/the body politic, and affect theory are welcome and encouraged. Similarly, “The Body Electric” may tap into discourses of historical and emerging technologies—allowing us to think of writers like Whitman, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, and Virginia Woolf as possessing a clear stake in the popular science of their respective ages. “The Body Electric” creates connectivity and allows for an unbounded self—just as Clarissa Dalloway “felt herself everywhere; not ‘here, here, here’…but everywhere.”

In considering the way language and literature tenuously work to bridge the gaps they often create, the category of an electric body becomes useful in thinking of affect, rhetoric, social change, mediation, enlightenment, subjectivity, and technology. For instance, thinking of social movements in the journalistic commonplace of “electric” allows us to examine the currents of communication that make them possible. Rhetorically, these currents of communication may consider the bodies of work we create and shape; in doing so, one might explore the discourse of writing as performance that provides a space to help (our students) develop a vital connection to the delivery of texts; the “body electric” becomes a central consideration as we perform written, spoken, and multimodal works. Likewise, thinking about the affective scene as implicitly electric allows us to articulate a genealogy of the emotions.

In its broadest sense, “The Body Electric” lends itself to a number of opportunities for interrogation. How do these connections happen? Does considering the body as electric allow for reformulations of the relationship between the body and the mind? between populace and politician? between society and morality? Do burgeoning social media technologies like Twitter and Facebook extend or inhibit Whitman’s dream of expansive connectivity?

The conference committee invites proposals for fifteen-minute papers from a broad range of disciplines and theoretical backgrounds. Presentations of creative work are also welcome. Panel submissions (3-4 participants) are highly encouraged. Please limit individual abstracts to 300 words and panel abstracts to 500 words. Full papers may accompany abstracts. Please include three keywords at the end of the abstract to assist panel formation.

The deadline for submissions has been extended to January 30th, 2011. Please send all proposals to conference.geo@gmail.com.

Upcoming CFPs: March Deadlines

2012-01-17T08:17:00.000-05:00

Check out these upcoming Calls for Papers. Remember that these are organized by Abstract Deadline, not by the conference date. If you have additional CFPs to share, please email us or leave a comment below. You can also subscribe to this blog via email using the bar on the right of this page.

March 16, 2012

· 2nd Global Conference: Beauty: Exploring CriticalIssues
Friday 21st September – Sunday 23rd September 2012; Mansfield College, Oxford,United Kingdom

Call for papers:
“The first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty,”
wrote the poet-playwright- novelist Yukio Mishima, in Temple of the
Golden Pavilion as he pondered beauty’s relevance, meanings, and the
spell it cast over him. Beauty is complicated by the word beauty
itself. Limited or overloaded, beauty has been celebrated as essential
or denounced as irrelevant. The existence of beauty has been
challenged, called a search for El Dorado. Some find no beauty in
life, a recurring motif in subcultures, music lyrics, and the notes
left by suicides. Others dismiss that perspective, arguing that common
sense, experience, and multidisciplinary research reveal the reality
and centrality of beauty in our lives. But what exactly is beauty?
Speculations about the nature of beauty are various and contradictory.
Some philosophers have argued that it will remain a mystery. Other
theorists have held less modest beliefs, arguing that beauty expresses
a basic spiritual reality, has universal physical properties, or is an
experience and construction of mind and culture. The beauty
‘project’ will explore, assess, and map a number of key core
themes.These will include:

1. Understanding Beauty

- Defining beauty

- Theorising beauty

- Power of beauty

- History of beauty

- Politics of beauty

- Culture of beauty

- Religion of beauty

2. Experiences of and Representations of Beauty

- Pursuit of beauty

- Expressions of beauty

- Appearance of beauty

- Making beauty

- Documenting beauty

- Emotion and beauty

- Beauty and seduction

- Representing beauty in art, literature and popular culture

3. Beauty and Nature

-Beauty and the natural world

-Beauty and the Sublime

-Beauty and desire

-Science and mathematics of beauty

-Medical aspects of beauty

4. Beauty, Culture, and Identity

- Beauty subcultures

- Beauty and social stratification: gender, sexuality, class, race,
ethnicity, age, etc.

- Beauty collectors

- Beauty specialists

- Beauty disciples

-Enhancing the body beautiful: cosmetics, tattoos, piercings,
surgical interventions, and other forms of body modification

5. The Business of Beauty

-Beauty and consumer culture

-Beauty and cultural capital

-Beauty professions and trades

-Beauty cities

-Beauty marketing and forecasting

-Professional beauties (models, actors, celebrities, beauty pageants
etc.)

-Fashion and beauty

-Glamour and beauty

6. Diminishing the Beautiful

-Beauty and transgression

-Beauty and ugliness

-Beauty and aging

-Defiling the beautiful

-Destroying the beautiful

-Beauty and death

-Beauty and decay

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed
panel proposals. Papers will also be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday16th March 2012. If
an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should
be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. Abstracts should be submitted
simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this
order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords
E-mails should be entitled: Beauty Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using
footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as
bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is
planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be
included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all
paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a
week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be
lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative
electronic route or resend.

The conference is part of the Critical Issues series of research
projects. The aim of the conference is to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various
discussions which are innovative and exciting. All papers accepted for
and presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an
ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for
development into a themed ISBN hard copy volume.
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/beauty/

March 16

· 4th Global Conference Strangers, Aliens andForeigners
Friday 21st September 2012 – Sunday 23rd September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers

This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the crucial place
that strangers, aliens and foreigners have for the constitution of
self, communities and societies. In particular the project will assess
world transformations, like phenomena we associate with the term
‘globalisation’, new forms of migration and the massive movements
of people across the globe, as well as the impact they have on the
conceptions we hold of self and other. Looking to encourage innovative
trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all
disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand
what it means for people, the world over, to forge a sense of self in
rapidly changing contexts where it is no longer possible to ignore the
importance of strangers, aliens and foreigners for our contemporary
nations, societies and cultures.
Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the
following themes:

1. Transformations of Self

~ How is Self interweaved with Other? And the many ways in which Self
depends on Other

~ Acknowledging the importance of strangers for our lives, for our
sense of well-being

~ Recognising our dependence on aliens and foreigners for our
communities, cities and towns, for our countries and nations

~ The decline of the value of sameness and homogeneity, the rise of
diversity and plurality

~ Opposing the construction of self by othering, excluding and
stigmatising

2. Boundaries, Communities and Nations

~ Who is a stranger? Aliens and foreigners to whom?

~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive movements from
peripheral to central countries

~ Trans-national networks and the blurring of boundaries; are we
living trans-national and post-national realities?

~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing
the responsibility of change on foreigners

~ What has happened to ideas like acceptance, hospitality and
cosmopolitanism

3. Economies, Institutions and Migrants

~ Labour migration as key for economic growth and prosperity

~ The politics of making aliens, foreigners and migratory labour
‘invisible’

~ Global politics of money over people; new forms of global exclusion

~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalisations

~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political
control

4. Art and Representations

~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing and stereotyping

~ The contested space of representing self and other, native and
foreigner

~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid constructions of art and
culture

~ Fictions of strangers, stories of aliens, fables of foreigners

~ The artistic constructions of otherness

5. Self (inevitably) linked to Other

~ De-centering selves; who am I if not the relation with others?

~ Thinking and acting with others in mind; orienting life
inter-subjectively

~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of living recognising aliens
and foreigners

~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion,
ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography

~ Non-recognition as social and cultural violence

The 2012 meeting of Strangers, Aliens and Foreigners will run
alongside a second of our projects on Beauty and we anticipate holding
sessions in common between the two projects. We welcome any papers or
panels considering the problems or addressing issues that cross both
projects. Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word
abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an
abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be
submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords

E-mails should be entitled: Strangers Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the
end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this
publication We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic
route or resend.

March 16, 2012

· 1stGlobal Conference: The Graphic Novel
Friday 7th September 2012 – Sunday 9th September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

“Behindthis mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask
there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.” ― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
Call for Papers:

This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine,
explore and critically engage with issues in and around the
production, creation and reading of all forms of comics and graphic
novels. Taken as a form of pictographic narrative it has been with us
since the first cave paintings and even in the 21st century remains a
hugely popular, vibrant and culturally relevant means of communication
whether expressed as sequential art, graphic literature, bandes
dessinees, tebeos, fumetti, manga, manhwa, komiks, strips,
historietas, quadrinhos, beeldverhalen, or just plain old comics. (as
noted by Paul Gravett)

Whilst the form itself became established in the 19th Century it is
perhaps not until the 20th century that comic book heroes like
Superman (who has been around since 1938) became, not just beloved
characters, but national icons. With the globalisation of publishing
brands such as Marvel and DC it is no accident that there has been an
increase in graphic novel adaptations and their associated
merchandising. Movies such as X-men, Iron man, Watchmen and the recent
Thor have grossed millions of dollars across the world and many
television series have been continued off-screen in the graphic form,
Buffy, Firefly and Farscape to name a few.

Of course America and Europe is not the only base of this art form
and the Far East and Japan have their own traditions as well as a huge
influence on graphic representations across the globe. In particular
Japanese manga has influenced comics in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong
Kong, China, France and the United States, and have created an amazing
array of reflexive appropriations and re-appropriations, in not just
in comics but in anime as well.

Of equal importance in this growth and relevance of the graphic novel
are the smaller and independent publishers that have produced
influential works such as Maus by Art Spiegleman, Persepolis by
Marjane Satrapi, Palestine by Joe Sacco, Epileptic by David B and even
Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware that explore, often on a personal level,
contemporary concerns such as gender, diaspora, post-colonialism,
sexuality, globalisation and approaches to health, terror and
identity. Further to this the techniques and styles of the graphic
novel have taken further form online creating entirely web-comics and
hypertexts, as in John Cei Douglas’ Lost and Found and Shelley
Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, as well as forming part of larger
trans-media narratives and submersive worlds, as in the True Blood
franchise that invites fans to enter and participate in constructing a
narrative in many varied formats and locations.

This projects invites papers that consider the place of the comic or
graphic novel in both history and location and the ways that it
appropriates and is appropriated by other media in the enactment of
individual, social and cultural identity.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels
are invited on issues related to (but not limited to) the following
themes:

* Just what makes a Graphic Novel so Graphic and so Novel?:
~Sources, early representations and historical contexts of the form.
~Landmarks in development, format and narratology.
~Cartoons, comics, graphic novels and artists books.
~Words, images, texture and colour and what makes a GN
~Format, layout, speech bubbles and “where the *@#% do we go from
here?”

* The Inner and Outer Worlds of the Graphic Novel:
~Outer and Inner spaces; Thoughts, cities, and galaxies and other
representations of graphic place and space.
~ Differing temporalities, Chronotopes and “time flies”:
Intertextuality, editing and the nature of Graphic and/or Deleuzian
time.
~ Graphic Superstars and Words versus Pictures: Alan Moore v Dave
Gibbons (Watchmen) Neil Gaiman v Jack Kirby (Sandman).
~Performance and performativity of, in and around graphic
representations.
~Transcriptions and translations: literature into pictures, films
into novels and high/low graphic arts.

* Identity, Meanings and Otherness:
~GN as autobiography, witnessing, diary and narrative
~Representations of disability, illness, coping and normality
~Cultural appropriations, east to west and globalisation
~National identity, cultural icons and stereo-typical villains
~Immigration, postcolonial and stories of exile
~Representing gender, sexualities and non-normative identities.
~Politics, prejudices and polemics: banned, censored and comix that
are “just plain wrong”
~Other cultures, other voices, other words

* To Infinity and Beyond: The Graphic Novel in the 21st Century:
~Fanzines and Slash-mags: individual identity through appropriation.
~Creator and Created: Interactions and interpolations between
authors and audience.
~Hypertext, Multiple formats and inter-active narratives.
~Cross media appropriation, GN into film, gaming and merchandisng
and vice versa
~Graphic Myths and visions of the future: Sandman, Hellboy, Ghost in
the Shell.

Papers can be accepted which deal solely with Graphic Novels. This
project will run concurrently with our project on Fear, Horror and
Terror – we welcome any papers considering the problems or
addressing issues on Fear, Horror and Terror and Graphic Novels for a
cross-over panel. We also welcome pre-formed panels on any aspect of
the Graphic Novel or in relation to crossover panel(s).

Papers will be accepted which deal with related areas and themes. 300
word abstracts should be submitted by Friday16th March 2012. If an
abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be
submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords
E-mails should be entitled: GN1 Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic
route or resend.

The conference is part of the Education Hub series of research
projects, which in turn belong to the At the Interface programmes of
Inter-Disciplinary.Net. It aims to bring together people from
different areas and interests to share ideas and explore discussions
which are innovative and challenging. All papers accepted for and
presented at this conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN
eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development
into a themed ISBN hard copy volume or volumes.

March 16

· 6th Global Conference Multiculturalism, Conflictand Belonging
Sunday 16th September 2012 – Wednesday 19th September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

This multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the new and
prominent place that the idea of culture has for the construction of
identity and the implications of this for social membership in
contemporary societies. In particular, the project will assess the
context of major world transformations, for example, new forms of
migration and the massive movements of people across the globe, as
well as the impact of globalisation on tensions, conflicts and on the
sense of rootedness and belonging. Looking to encourage innovative
trans-disciplinary dialogues, we warmly welcome papers from all
disciplines, professions and vocations which struggle to understand
what it means for people, the world over, to forge identities in
rapidly changing national, social and cultural contexts.

Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the
following themes:

1. Challenging Old Concepts ofSelf and Other

~ Who is Self and who is Other?

~ The new value of social diversity and cultural multiplicity;
breaking with homogeneity and sameness

~ What is the place of difference and alterity, of normality and
normalisation in defining identity and membership

~ How to account for social membership and cultural identity?

~ Making sense of transformations and their effects over culture,
identity and membership

~ Othering, excluding, stygmatising

2. Nations, Nationhood and Nationalisms

~ What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation?

~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive movements from
peripheral to central countries

~ Resurgence of the local and the diminishing importance of the
national

~ Are we living post-national realities?

~ What is the place of cultural claims in today’s forms of social
membership?

~ Models of multiculturalism and the contemporary experience of
multiculturalism(s)

~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing
the responsibility of change on the Other

3. Institutions, Organizations and Social Movements

~ Evaluating the promises and institutions of post-national governing

~ Institutions and organisations that do more for money than for
people

~ Political battles over globalization

~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalizations

~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political
intentions or control

~ New forms of global exclusion

4. Persons, Personhood and the Inter-Personal

~ De-centering individuals and the making of persons; thinking and
acting with others in mind and interpersonally

~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of identity formation and
social membership

~ New sources and forms of belonging; new tribalism, localism,
parochialism and communitarianism

~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion,
ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography

~ Who am I if not the relation with others?

~ Non-recognition as cultural violence

5. Media and Artistic Representations

~ The role of new and old media in the construction of cultures and
identities, of nations and place

~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing and stereotyping

~ The contested space of representing culture, identity and belonging

~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid and impenetrable
constructions of culture

~ Living, being and belonging through art

~ Life imitating art and fiction

6. Transnational Cultural Interlacing of Contemporary Life

~ What is shared from cultures? How are cultures shared? Who has
access to the sharing of cultures?

~ Cultural claims and human rights

~ Exploring multiculturalism as a plural experience: Shouldn’t we
be talking about multiculturalisms?

~ Living in a context with the cultural markers of a different
context: Is that transculturalism?

~ Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of wanting to bridge the
‘invisible’ divide of cultures

~ Symbols and significations that connect people to places other than
‘their own’

~ Culture, identity and belonging by choice

7. New Concepts, New Forms of Inclusion

~ Recognition and respect without exclusion

~ An ethics for social relations in a new millennium

~ What to do with historically old concepts like tolerance,
acceptance and hospitality?

~ Should not we all be strangers? Should not we all be foreigners?

~ Is there any use for cosmopolitanism these days?

~ Loving the other within the self; building fluid boundaries of
belonging and being

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts
should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If an abstract is
accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by
Friday 22nd June 2012.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs;
abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this
order: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Multiculturalism Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using any
special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or
underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is planned for the
end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be included in this
publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals
submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should
assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic
route or resend.

March 16

· 3rd Global Conference Space and Place
Monday 3rd September – Thursday 6th September 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:

Questions of space and place affect the very way in which we
experience and recreate the world. Wars are fought over both real and
imagined spaces; boundaries are erected against the “Other”
constructed a lived landscape of division and disenfranchisement; and
ideology constructs a national identity based upon the dialectics of
inclusion and exclusion. The construction of space and place is also a
fundamental aspect of the creative arts either through the art of
reconstruction of a known space or in establishing a relationship
between the audience and the performance. Politics, power and
knowledge are also fundamental components of space as is the
relationship between visibility and invisibility. This new inter- and
multi-disciplinary conference project seeks to explore these and other
topics and open up a dialogue about the politics and practices of
space and place. We seek submissions from a range of disciplines
including archaeology, architecture, urban geography, the visual and
creative arts, philosophy and politics and also actively encourage
practioners and non-academics with an interest in the topic to
participate.

We welcome traditional papers, preformed panels of papers, workshop
proposals and other forms of performance – recognising that
different disciplines express themselves in different mediums.
Submissions are sought on any aspect of space and place, including the
following:

1. Theorising Space and Place

~Philosophies and space and place

~Surveillance, sight and the panoptic structures and spaces of
contemporary life

~Rhizomatics and/or postmodernist constructions of space as a
“meshwork of paths” (Ingold: 2008)

~The relationship between spatiality and temporality/space as a
temporal-spatial event (Massey: 2005)

~The language and semiotics of space and place

2. Situated Identities

~Gendered spaces including the tension between domestic and public
spheres

~Work spaces and hierarchies of power

~Geographies and archaeologies of space including Orientalism and
Occidentalism

~Ethnic spaces/ethnicity and space

~Disabled spaces/places

~Queer places and spaces

3. Contested spaces

~The politics and ideology of constructions and discourses of space
and place including the construction of gated communities as a
response to real/imagined terrorism.

~The relationship between power, knowledge and the construction of
place and space

~Territorial wars, both real and imagined.

~The relationship between the global and the local

~Barriers, obstructions and disenfranchisement in the construction of
lived spaces

~Space and place from colonisation to globalisation

~Real and imagined maps/cartographies of place

~Transnational and translocal places

4. Representations of place and space

~Embodied/disembodied spaces

~Lived spaces and the architecture of identity

~Haunted spaces/places and non-spaces

~Set design and the construction of space in film, television and
theatre

~Authenticity and the reproduction/representation of place in the
creative arts

~Technology and developments in the representation of space including
new media technologies and 3D technologies of viewing

~Future cities/futurology and space

~Representations of the urban and the city in the media and creative
arts
~Space in computer games

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 16th March 2012. If
an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should
be submitted by Friday 22nd June 2012. 300 word abstracts should be
submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order: a) author(s), b)affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) upto 10 keywords
E-mails should be entitled: SP Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using
footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as
bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is
planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be
included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer all
paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a
week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be
lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative
electronic route or resend.

Upcoming Calls for Papers: February Deadlines

2012-01-13T08:33:00.000-05:00

Here are some CFPs with deadlines in February. Remember that these are organized by the Abstract Deadline Date (not the date of the conference). If you have other CFPs to share, please email us or leave a comment below. We have additional postings for March coming up, so check back with us!

February 6, 2012

*The Fifth Annual DC Queer Studies Symposium*

University of Maryland, College Park

*Friday, April 20, 2012*
*Deadline for submission of materials: February 6, 2012*

We invite proposals for presentations at DELANY AT 70, the 5th Annual DC QueerStudies Symposium at the University of Maryland. The symposium will be adaylong series of conversations in critical queer, race, and gender studiesinspired by the multifaceted cultural work of author, literary critic, andprofessor Samuel R. Delany, whose seventieth birthday is April 1, 2012. Eventswill include paper sessions featuring faculty and graduate students. The daywill culminate in Mr. Delany reading from his new novel, /Through the Valley ofthe Nest of Spiders/, and engaging in conversation with Robert Reid-Pharr,Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the CityUniversity of New York.

In recognition of Delany's wide-ranging influence on queer studies scholarship,the symposium takes themes prominent in his work as its point of departure. Weare eager to invite papers dedicated to Delany's diverse body of writings, butwe also encourage proposals that address any of the following (or related) pointsof contact with key preoccupations of Delany's work:

. Black and queer cultural politics
. Crossing boundaries: cross-class contact, private/public divides, thedynamics of normativity and respectability
. Landscapes: utopia, dystopia, heterotopia, desire, lust
. Queer time: futurity, potentiality, paradox, anniversaries, commemorations
. Queer/ing visions: reflection, refraction, mythology, memory, language,perception
. Geographies of power: settler colonialism, racialization, territorialization,gentrification
. World-making and undoing: fantasy, performativity, self-elaboration,autobiography, selfhood, abjection

Proposals for 15-minute presentations should include name, affiliation, e-mailaddress, title of paper, a 250-word abstract, and a 1-2 page CV. Please sendmaterials by e-mail attachment (Word or PDF only) by February 6, 2012 to lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu.Put "Submission for Delany at 70" in the subject line of yourmessage. For more information, contact JV Sapinoso at sapinoso@umd.edu.Selected participants will be notified by February 27, 2012.

In the words of Jeffrey Allen Tucker, Samuel R. Delany is "the idealpostmodern intellectual." Delany is known for his long andwell-established career as a writer of science fiction, fantasy, and memoir aswell as his critical work in literary, African American, urban, and LGBT/queerstudies. Speaking about the significance of his work, Delany says,"Science fiction isn't just thinking about the world out there. It's alsothinking about how that world might be -- a particularly important exercise forthose who are oppressed, because if they're going to change the world we livein, they -- and all of us -- have to be able to think about a world that worksdifferently." Exercising the need to "think about a world that worksdifferently" might well be adopted to describe the projects of both LGBTand queer studies.

DC Queer Studies is a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium ofUniversities of the Washington Metropolitan Area formed in 2006 to discuss newworks in the field and to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engagingwith LGBT/Queer/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines and acrossinstitutions. The DC Queer Studies Symposium is hosted and sponsored by theUniversity of Maryland and co-sponsored by American University, GeorgetownUniversity, and the George Washington University. Seehttp://www.lgbts.umd.edu for details.

February 15, 2012

· Innovationsand Anxieties; Saturday, March 31, 2012

A Graduate Conference hosted bythe Graduate Program in English at the University of Rhode Island (Kingston,RI)

Innovations cross a multitude ofinterdependent fields: aesthetic, scientific, technological, historical,informational, educational, political, and ethical. Across these fields, innovationcleaves fault lines between, for instance, the hope for cosmopolitan bettermentand the politico-economic success of an isolated few; between the possible formationof open, more egalitarian social relations and the breakdown or deformation ofnormative modes of relation; between the anticipation of solutions to pressing problemsand the inequalities, violences, and injustices caused by those solutions. Thisyear the URI Graduate Conference title, Innovations and Anxieties, captures thedynamic negotiations that are and have been possible within and across thesefault lines. We ask:

•What have innovations enabled or disabled?

•What traces or tracks do innovations leave behind?

•What sort of futures might innovations prefigure?

•What histories or continuities will have been

possiblein the wake of innovation?

•How might innovations inspire praise and critique,

hopeand fear, promise and imbalance, progress

anddiversion, quietude and combat, tranquility

andanxiety?

Weinvite graduate students to submit papers, panels, or creative works thatattend to these and other questions in a variety of fields: history, film, philosophy,languages, literature, political science, rhetoric and composition,communications, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, biology,medicine, women’s studies, technology, visual and media studies, library andinformation studies, (though not limited to these fields). Possible topics include,but are not limited to:

• adaptation, serialization • socialnetworking • revolution • graphic novels, web comics • organic, local movements

• digital humanities • citizenjournalism • disability technologies • outsourcing • E-books

• gender & transexuality • scientificbreakthrough • multiliteracies • transnationalism • E-learning

• digitization • globalization• online media •cosmopolitanism • critical theories

• workplace technologies • sustainability• textiles and manufacturing • information sharing •architecture, planning design

• robotics, cyborgs • cybernetics• neuroscience, medical innovation • artificial intelligence •modernization

IndividualPapers: Please submit an abstract of 250-350 words. Include full name, title ofyour work, contact info, a brief bio, and institutional affiliation.

Panel Proposals: Please submitabstracts of 250-350 words for each presentation/presenter. A panel willconsist of 3-4 presenters. In addition to the required contact and biographicalinformation, please include title of the panel on each submission. You maychoose to provide your own panel chair.

Creative Submissions: We welcomeproposals for creative works, including creative writing, visual art, music,video production, and dramatic performance. Please submit an abstract of250-350 words describing your project and its connection to the conferencetheme, as well as the required contact and biographical information.

Submission directions: Pleasesubmit all abstracts and proposals via our website at www.urigradconference.orgby clicking on the Submit Your Abstract link.Direct all questions regarding submissions and conference details to urigradconference@etal.uri.edu. Visit our website at www.urigradconference.org for more information.

**Deadlinefor receipt of proposals is Wednesday, February 15, 2012**

Upcoming GW English Events

2012-01-09T15:03:00.000-05:00

Please check out this schedule of upcoming events. These are designed to pull our community together and offer academic and professional development opportunities. We hope you can make it! For updates, check back with our blog or "Like" us on Facebook.

January

Jan 26 Job Talkfor GW Romanticist position; take advantage of this opportunity to meetpotential candidates for the new faculty position. Time and Location is TBA

Friday January 27th at 12 PMGW MEMSI will host Ben Tilghman, Professional Lecturer of Art History at GWU.Lunch will be served. The event takes place in Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW).His paper, "The Enigmatic Nature of Things," will be available twoweeks in advance. Please email Lowell Duckert [lduckert@gwu.edu] to RSVP for the event and receive a copy. For more information visit the GWMEMSI Blog.

February

Feb 2 Job Talkfor GW Romanticist position; take advantage of this opportunity to meetpotential candidates for the new faculty position. Time and Location is TBA

Feb 9 Job Talkfor GW Romanticist position; take advantage of this opportunity to meetpotential candidates for the new faculty position. Time and Location is TBA

February 10 EGSASpring Symposium; come participate in this day-long event where graduatestudents from our department and other disciplines share their current work. Thisis a unique opportunity to engage with your faculty outside of the classroom,hear new ideas, and network with other graduate students. This is both anacademic enrichment and professional development event. Lunch and snacks willbe provided. Visit Facebook or our Blog post for more details.

February24 "EcologicalMovement," a panel co-sponsored by English Graduate Studies at GW. Ourspeakers are Stacy Alaimo (University of Texas at Arlington), Lowell Duckert(GW), Jennifer James (GW), and Eileen Joy (Southern Illinois UniversityEdwardsville). The event takes place on Friday February 24th at 5:30 PM inRome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW). More info about our speakers may be found inthe GWMEMSI Blog.

Upcoming Calls for Papers: January Deadlines

2012-01-09T14:44:00.003-05:00

We are taking a quick break from the Teaching Seminar material to post a collection of CFPs with deadlines in January. We hope you have all enjoyed the break, but now it is time to start contemplating your spring projects. Here are just a few CFPs that have come across our desks in the past couple months. All of these are organized by the Abstract Deadline Date (not the conference date). We also have an impressive line up for February and March coming in future posts, so check back! Also, we will be posting the final material on technology from the Teaching Seminar.

January 10

EGSA Spring Symposium February 10, 2012 George Washington University

Call for Papers: Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary andCultural Studies

[The Panopticon] isa type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals inrelation to one another, of hierarchal organization, of disposition of centresand channels of power, of definition of the instruments and modes of power ...– Michel Foucault

The English Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce the call for papers for our second annual graduate student symposium Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary and Cultural Studies to be held Friday, February 10, 2012.

Foucault’s reading of the production of docile bodies notwithstanding, the aim of this conference is not to consider the ways that the multiplicity of concentrations in the fields of Literature and Cultural Studies stand in relation to each other, but instead consider how they stand in relation with each other (and the ways that these relationships are always promiscuous and overlapping). Thus, rather than an image of a body pinned to a specific space, the title alludes to the many ways that bodies and spatiality might be productively considered in literary criticism. More generally, we mean to provide a frame large enough to encompass all of the interesting work going on in the GW English department. In this symposium, we hope to foster conversation between presenters and participants across concentrations and even disciplines through the intersections of current graduate student work. We welcome any and all submissions and encourage submissions from previously written course work or works in progress, including dissertation chapters and conference papers.

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be submitted, along with your contact information, togwegsa@gmail.com by 11:59pm on Tuesday, January 10, 2012. Submissions must be250 words or less and must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document or PDF.Please include 2-3 keywords at the bottom of your submission and include thewords “Conference Submission” in the subject line of your email. Conferencepresentations will be approximately 15 minutes, and panels will be organizedafter submissions have been accepted.

We also welcome any volunteers who would like to be involved in the organizational / logistical side of the symposium, be it chairing a panel or assisting with lunch.

January 13, 2012

· 5th Global ConferenceDiasporas: Exploring Critical Issues
Friday 29th June 2012 – Sunday 1st July 2012
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Papers:
This inter- and multi-disciplinary project seeks to explore the
contemporary experience of Diasporas – communities who conceive of
themselves as a national, ethnic, linguistic or other form of cultural
and political construction of collective membership living outside of
their ‘home lands.’ Diaspora is a concept which is far from being
definitional. Despite problems and limitations in terminology, this
notion may be defined with issues attached to it for a more complete
understanding. Such a term which may have its roots in Greek, is used
customarily to apply to a historical phenomenon that has now passed to
a period that usually supposes that Diasporas are those who are
settled forever in a country other from where they were born and thus
this term has lost its dimension of irreversibility and of exile.

In order to increase our understanding of Diasporas and their impact
on both the receiving countries and their respective homes left
behind, key issues will be addressed related to Diaspora cultural
expression and interests. In addition, the conference will address the
questions: Do Diasporas continue to exist? Is the global economy,
media and policies sending different messages about diaspora to future
generations?

Papers, workshops, presentations and pre-formed panels are invited on
any of the following themes:

1. Movies and Diasporas

The presence and impact of displaced / globalized populations of
audiences, spectators and producers of new mainstream /Hollywood
/Bollywood cinema are crucial to the emergence of this post-diasporic
cinema, as these narratives from texts to screen constitute a
fundamental challenge for the negotiation of complex diasporic issues

2. Motivational Factors for Research into Diaspora

Factors are numerous including most prominently, artistic and musical
creations, intellectual outputs, and specific religious practices and
which have made a significant international impact.

3. Myths and Symbols: how to meet, and get to know each other through
the use of créative lenses

Diasporas group, re-group and their group myths and symbols change
accordingly. Or Diasporas remain dominated, their myths and symbols
mirror (or rebel) their domination. This manifestation could take in
linguistic, artistic and other creative forms…right down to graffiti
to propaganda. The effects of Diaspora through a creative lens, as
often this is where the true effects of migration and cultural
adjustment expose themselves in a personal and celebratory way. These
could include:
* Creative Expression as a result of shifting and integrating
cultures. Cross cultural and cross disciplinary practices / cross
cultural collaboration / representing the self and the nation /
connecting history to the future / third space practice
* Shifting Art Practices and how traditional folk based art forms
(art / music / literature / dance) can accommodate and represent
modern diasporic communities in flux
* New Languages that represent broken boundaries such as graffiti /
rap / interactive & web based art forms / global design aesthetics /
symbolism / sound & vision / poetry and text / Esperanto

4. Public, Private and Virtual Spaces of Diaspora

The controversial meaning of private/public spaces remain fundamental
arenas in the re/construction of gendered identities in an in-between
space as a Diaspora context nurtures challenges to traditional
socio-cultural behaviors. Virtual Diasporas – This questions a range
of pre conceived notions about physicality, actuality and place (which
in turn open up the discussions around ownership, representation and
nation). Virtual diasporas are not limited to the arts of course but
the shifts toward new technologies within art and design production
are highlighting such issues through various forms of creativity and
the critique that surrounds it.

We anticipate that these and related issues will be of interest to
those working/researching in philosophy, education, ethics, cinematic
/ literature, politics, sociology, history, architecture, photography,
geography, globalization, international relations, refugee studies,
migration studies, urban studies and cultural studies.

5. Novel ways to think about Diaspora due to globalization

In the new global world in which cultures act simultaneously how
should we be thinking about Diaspora?

Some pertinent questions in this area that the conference is
interested in addressing are: What are some of the ways to identity
and define the subject in changing political boundaries where cultural
interactions are amplified? What are the processes of social formation
and reformation of? Diasporas that is unique to a global age? How do
an intensified migration age that is coupled with broader and more
flexible terrains of social structures can give Diaspora communities a
window of opportunity to redefine their social position in both the
country of origin and the host country? How does immigration in an age
where the media and the internet are highly accessible, bring
individuals to deal with multiple levels of traditions and cultures?
What new cross-’ethnoscapes’ and cross-’ideoscapes’ are
emerging in? In what new methods can we capture the web of forces that
influences Diasporas at the same time?
Other aspects of Diaspora that we are interested in having
discussions about are:

* Economics ofdiaspora
* Gendered diasporas
* Queer diasporas ‘flexible citizenship’
* Contested diasporic identities
* Invisible diasporas
* Emerging and changing patterns – is there an ‘American
diaspora’ in China? In Dubai? Etc.
* Stateless or homeless diasporas – diasporas of no return
* Guest workers as diasporans?
* Diasporas created by shifting state boundaries
* Internal (intranational diasporas) – for example, First Nations
or Indigenous/Native migration into urban areas
* Diasporans by adoption or ‘diasporans-in-law’ (partners of
diasporans adopted into diasporic communities, extended diasporas
through family relations, etc.)
* Overlapping diasporas, entanglement
* Competing claims or multiple claims on diasporans Inter-diasporan
or multi-diasporan realities

January 15, 2012

· Medievalists @ Penn (M@P) presents its FourthAnnual Graduate Student Conference

Textual Intercourse: Medieval Appropriations andAppropriation of theMedieval

March 17th-18th, 2012

University of Pennsylvania

Keynote speaker: Prof. Kevin Brownlee

Medieval appropriation of ideas served as a method of transcultural andtranshistorical interaction, which led to a burgeoning production of new texts.Whether through an explicit translatio studii maneuver or through unapologeticborrowing, medieval cultural producers positioned themselves in relation toother writers, thinkers, artists, and musicians. This year’s theme ofintercourse asks us to probe and complicate the questions of influence,communication, translation, and adaptation across time, space, media, andculture, and it will serve as an entry point into this complex matrix of textsand ideas, broadly defined. Our conference invites submissions concerning oneor more formulations of the idea of intercourse and appropriation. We alsowelcome paper proposals on the concept of medievalism as a post-medieval appropriationof the cultural products of the Middle Ages. As per our group's mission, wewelcome a plurality of perspectives from across all fields of study inrecognition of the profound interdisciplinarity of our common object ofinquiry: the Middle Ages.

Pleasesend 300-word abstracts to pennmedieval@gmail.com byJan 15, 2012

January 15, 2012 – Video Games As Text

· University of Wyoming April12-14, 2012

Possible Topics:

How does the role of first person narrative change in video games? What does the reader experience whileactively undergoing the events of the narrative, vs. passively experiencingthem?

What does the ability of choice in a narrative do for the experience ofreading the text? Is the player moreconnected to the characters by choosing the actions and outcomes of thatcharacter? Or is a specific, singlenarrative path that allows all players to experience it in a similar way abetter kind of narrative?

How is sexuality dealt with in video games? How is sex depicted, and what happens whencontroversy arises? How does this differfrom more traditional narrative forms? What about games with all characters being unrealistically bisexual?

How is feminism handled in video games? What, if anything, establishes characters like Samus as feministcharacters? Is there a double standardwith women with exaggerated female characteristics, like Lara Croft, beingattacked as problematic from women, while exaggerated male characteristics incharacters, such as Marcus Fenix, are not?

What impact does race have on games? Why are so many player characters white; what does that do to thenarrative? How could/should race beused? Why are games like Resident Evil 5 criticized because thevillains are black?

What is the difference between reading an evil character and activelyplaying one? How does that change theexperience of the text?

Why are video games so oriented towards violence? What about the textual form of video gamesmakes violence such a common choice in game play? Is this healthy for the medium? How does this affect games in the largerculture?

Please submit your 200-300 wordsabstracts before January 15 via www.uwplayology.com. We will let you know no later than February 15. Please include contact information, yourinstitutional affiliation, and any audio/visual requirements. Any questions can be answered by contactingthe conference organizers using the website or emailing the conferenceorganizers at uwplayology@gmail.com.

January 16, 2012

· ZdC Critical Studies GraduateConference 2012: The Ephemeral Trace
Call for Papers - USC School ofCinematic Arts, University Park Campus
Los Angeles, California, April 7, 2012

Thesixth annual ZdC graduate student conference will bring together graduatestudents and scholars from around the country. The conference isorganized around the themes of ephemerality, materiality, and the trace. The various meanings of ephemera and ephemerality within media studiesoffer productive cross sections for scholarship, from the study of theimpermanence of the moving image to the use of ephemeral material within thearchive. We are interested in exploring the various ways media histories andtheories use objects as a basis or approach to types of knowledge by outlining‘ephemeral’ as a category of study and critical methodology. We hope to exploreapproaches to film and media through the questions that arise when applying thephysical to an object of study that is immaterial. What happens when werethink types of collections, documents, and objects within media histories?How do we re-animate certain objects, ideas, or figures to play a critical rolein structuring visual, aural, and written discourses? How do performance andliveness create certain impossibilities in archiving events, encounters, andoccurrences that are beyond representation? How do theories and histories ofnew media relate to the impermanence of digital archives?

We are interested in papers that expand uponvarious film and media histories by examining the notion of objects (bothwithin and around film and media) and their relationship to cinematic andhistorical archives, as well as those that engage with discourses around theephemerality of moving image media. Some areas of inquiry might include,but are not limited to:
> * Discourses on projection
> * Alternative approaches to archival histories
> * Ephemera and collections
> * Theories on documents and documenting
> * Sensual and material histories: affect and feeling discourses
> * Temporality and alternative temporal histories
> * Film and media texts involving memory and traces
> * The digital and the archive

Keynote Speaker: Shelley Stamp, Professor of Film & Digital Media,University of California, Santa Cruz. Shelley Stamp is a leading expert onwomen and early film culture interested in tracing the contributions women madeto early Hollywood as filmmakers, moviegoers, performers, critics andtheorists. She has served as a consultant for the National Film PreservationFoundation, Turner Classic Movies and the American Movie Classics cablechannel. Stamp is the author of Movie-Struck Girls: Women and MotionPicture Culture After the Nickelodeon (Princeton University Press, 2000) andthe co-editor of American Cinema's Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions,Practices, (University of California Press, 2004) with Charlie Keil and"Women and the Silent Screen," a special issue of Film History 18,no. 2 (2006) with Amelie Hastie. Her current book project, a study of early filmmakerLois Weber, is supported by a Film Scholars Grant from the Academy of MotionPicture Arts and Sciences.

The conference will also include a workshop panel with representatives ofvarious Los Angeles-based archives. http://zdcusc.org/conference/

300-word abstracts and a short bio should be sent to Luci Marzola and LaraBradshaw atzdccsusc@gmail.com no later than January 16, 2012.

January 21, 2012

· Exploring I–Lands:Borders, Identity and Myth

TheUniversity of Virginia Department of English Graduate Conference; March 16-18

Borders abide and abound—betweendisciplines, between languages, between periods, between persons, betweengenders, between communities, between generations, between the self and theworld. They define us in both liberating and limiting ways. This conferencewill investigate how borders and barriers are made, broken and refashioned,giving special attention to individual and national identities and themythologies that inform them. Just how impermeable are such borders? Is therean unshakeable human drive to draw them?

Other possible topics:

· How much is too much? Where does the linefall between satisfaction and satiety?

· What is the use of musical boundaries(a/tonality, bar-lines, etc.)?

· What are the limits of genre? If genres bendand break, are they still useful terms for describing works of art?

· How do myth and folktales constitute thegeographic and cultural boundaries of the nation? Of the self?

· How do we define the self? The function ofthe lyric “I”?

· What is the role of landscapes (physical,emotional, or otherwise) inconstructing identity?

· What is the nature of linguistic barriers—thetask of translation?

· What is the fate of class or racialboundaries?

· What is the interpretive significance ofparatextual borders (margins,gutters, etc.)

· How is digitization changing ourunderstanding of all the above?

KeynoteSpeaker: Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison is a Jamaican poetwho teaches creative writing at the University of Michigan. She has publishedeleven poetry collections; her second, I Am Becoming My Mother, won the 1986Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas region. Her work often confrontsJamaica’s colonial history and its linguistic and cultural implications,exemplified by the code-switching between Standard English and Creole thatoccurs in many of her poems. She both celebrates Jamaica’s cultural hybridityand reclaims traumatic aspects of its history by presenting nuancedcharacter-portraits of its marginalized denizens. Her most recently publishedwork is a memoir titled From Harvey River(2008).

Masterclass Speaker: Jahan Ramazani

Jahan Ramazani is the Edgar F.Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is the editor ofthe third edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (2003)and the recipient of the American Comparative Literature Association’s 2011Harry Levin Prize for his book A Transnational Poetics (2009). His interestsinclude modern and contemporary poetry and postcolonial studies.

Thisconference is interdisciplinary, and we welcome submissions from a variety offields including but not limited to: Anthropology, Art and Art History,Psycho/geography, Literature, Mathematics, Music/ology, Philosophy,PoliticalScience, Psychology, Religious Studies, and the sciences. To submit,send an abstract (up to 350 words) for your 15-minute presentation to gesaconference2012@gmail.com by Jan 21,2012. Please specify your name, institutional affiliation, and anytechnological needs.

January 31, 2012

· Geographies of Desire: A Medieval andEarly Modern Interdisciplinary Conference University of Maryland, College Park-- April 27-28, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Valerie Traub, Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of English andWomen’s Studies at the University of Michigan

Geography is produced by an investedinterest in the world, such that the mapping out of one’s desires is aprecondition for mapping out the world. The desire for geographies both literaland figurative results from having outgrown local, national, imperial, andearthbound spaces. And yet, satisfaction often eludes us: the geography ofdesire pursues a sense of completion but risks corruption in the process.“Geographies of Desire” seeks papers that explore how desires are mapped acrossspatial planes; how do spaces such as markets, shrines, bedrooms, and courts producematerial, spiritual, erotic, and political desires?

How does the geography of desire upsetor reinforce the economic, political, erotic, and cosmological centers of ouruniverses? How do literature, the visual arts, travel narratives, histories, religiouswritings, natural philosophy, and theater imagine these geographies? How andwhy do we imagine ourselves into the personal, cultural, ecological, andpolitical spaces of others?

The Graduate Field Committee of Medievaland Early Modern Studies and the Department of English at the University ofMaryland invite papers for “Geographies of Desire,” a graduate-facultyconference to be held April 27 and April 28, 2012 at the University ofMaryland, College Park. This two-day interdisciplinary conference aims tofoster insightful and vigorous conversation on this topic through an innovativeformat that includes graduate paper panels, roundtables, and plenary sessionswith local scholars. Participants and attendees can look forward to a seminarled by Ricardo Padrón (University of Virginia), a digital humanities panel withMartin Foys (Drew University), Elizabeth Rodini (Johns Hopkins University), andBen Tilghman (George Washington University), and plenary sessions with TheresaColetti (University of Maryland), Katherine Jansen (Catholic University of America), Frances Gage (BuffaloState College), and Ralph Bauer (University of Maryland), with more paneliststo be announced.

In addition to traditional papers, weare soliciting proposals for workshops related to the conference theme. DigitalHumanities workshops centered on new research tools, pedagogy tools, or digitalarchives are especially welcome. We expect this theme to be interpretedbroadly, but encourage interested participants to visit the conference websitefor suggested ideas and topics.

Abstracts of 400-500 words for workshopsor 20-minute papers related to the conference theme should be emailedto (fieldcommittee.umd@gmail.com) no later than January 31, 2012.

Please check http://geographiesofdesire.blogspot.com/ for an expanded CFP, registration information, andother conference related updates.

January 31, 2012

· 9thAnnual Yale Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education

Yale Graduate School of Arts andSciences – New Haven, Connecticut March 30‐31, 2012

2012 Call for Proposals

PROPOSAL DEADLINE: Proposals mustbe postmarked by January 31, 2012

Alimited number of proposals will be accepted in each of the followingdivisions: Humanities, Social Sciences, Biological and Biomedical Sciences,Physical Sciences and Engineering.

Determining theFuture of Diversity Discussions:

Welive during precarious times of political, religious, social and economicunrest. No one can argue that inequities abound. The increased polarizationcharacterizing our own political system is becoming more and more evident. Weare constantly being reminded through the media that disparities in wealth,which transcend racial and socioeconomic lines, are widening. Overt, passive,and unconscious discriminatory practices, based on race/ethnicity, gender,sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and personal ability, are stillprevalent in our society. The potential impact on access to and subsequentsuccess at every level of higher education in the U.S. is staggering.

Nowmore than at any other time in our recent history it is of paramount importanceto not only take a more proactive stance but to perhaps re-evaluate and ifdeemed necessary reframe our approach to diversifying institutions of highereducation. In light of recent and possible upcoming state and federal courtdecisions related to affirmative action in the higher education admissionsprocesses, the following questions arise: How do we begin to set the stage forfuture conversations about diversity within the context of an uncertain future?What should the nature of these conversations be? How do we shape or positionour careers to enable the development of diversity ideals for higher education?Should we?

Weinvite oral presentations, poster presentations, academic panels and workshopsfrom professional, graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, andadministrators, based on your research, teaching or practice perspective, orthe conference theme.

Studentsfrom diverse backgrounds, particularly women and other underrepresentedstudents are especially encouraged to present their research. While researchprojects should be original, they need not be responsive to the conferencetheme questions posed above. We seek to feature the research of professional,graduate and undergraduate students in order to recognize outstandingscholarship among students in progress.

Studentawards and certificates for the most outstanding Oral Presentation ($200) andPoster Presentation ($150) will be awarded in each of the three divisions: (Humanities),(Social Sciences), and (Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Physical Sciencesand Engineering). Judges will evaluate all presentations and provide writtenfeedback to presenters.

General Guidelines:

All submissions mustbe accompanied by the Submissions CoverSheet

A 250‐word abstract(including purpose and background, methods, results, conclusions) is requiredfor all submissions.

ElectronicSubmissions are preferable (Please send either Word Documents or PDF documentsto michelle.nearon@yale.edu)

All notifications andannouncements will be made via e‐mail by February 25, 2012.

Session Lengths:

Academic Panels: 1 hour total (nomore than 3 paper presenters and 1 discussant)

Workshops : 1 hour total (no morethan 3 presenters)

Oral Research Presentations(individual): 15 minutes with 5 minutes for questions

Poster Research Presentations(individual): poster presenter must be available to discuss his/her posterduring the poster session/judging session lasting 1 hour.

ELECTRONIC,FAX, or POSTAL SUBMISSIONS are acceptable. All electronic or faxedsubmissions must be received by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time JANUARY 31, 2012. All postalsubmissions must be postmarked by JANUARY 31, 2012

Send to:

Yale Bouchet Conference 2012

Office for Diversity & EqualOpportunity

Yale Graduate School of Arts andSciences

P.O. Box 208236

New Haven, CT 06520‐8236

FAX: (203) 432‐7765: (Pleaseindicate Yale Bouchet Conference Submission on cover sheet)

E-MAIL: michelle.nearon@yale.edu: (Please indicate Yale Bouchet Conference Submission inSubject Heading)

For further information: Phone (203) 436-1301; E‐mail: michelle.nearon@yale.edu

Part 3: Using Technology in the Classroom

2012-01-04T12:00:00.000-05:00

Part three of our online content from the Teaching Seminar focuses on how we use technology in the classroom and for teaching. We focused primarily on how English teachers can use this technology, and we discussed a range from basics about Blackboard to incorporating digital humanities.

1) Blackboard - Many of us wish that we had an alternative to blackboard because it is a challenging system to use effectively for teaching. However most students expect teachers to rely on this tool to some degree. Check with your school's IT department and see if they are offering workshops on Blackboard. They can teach you tricks and tools that would be hard to learn on your own. If you intend to use blackboard in your course, make sure your students are, in fact, familiar with the system. It may be useful to set an initial discussion board assignment or a class writing submission in the first week so that you can be sure they know how to use these blackboard functions. Familiarize yourself with the Grade Center! This can be one of the most helpful tools in blackboard because it gives your students a clear idea of their current grade all term and helps clear up grade confusion. Use the Course Documents tab to post all handouts and assignment sheets that you give out in class. This allows students to find copies of them if they lose the hard copy, and takes away the excuse if they miss a class. Finally, try out the External Links function - this can be extremely useful if you want to keep links to the Writing Center or Library on your campus, or if you want students to view a youtube video or author website before class.

2) Dropbox - many of you may be familiar with this tool, but let us reiterate how amazing this file system is. Dropbox allows you to store files on a server that you can access on any computer. You can also download the "box" on any computer that you use regularly so that saving and accessing files is as easy as pie. No more keeping track of a USB drive or emailing files to yourself. It also allows you to share files easily with your colleagues or students. Watch the tutorial here and sign up asap!

3) Powerpoint or Prezi - We often wonder if using powerpoint presentations would be useful for lectures, especially for literary lectures. Can they really be useful in this context? Well an interview with one of our speakers made me a believer. This faculty member uses powerpoint presentations not only to show his class useful images such as maps and historical pictures, but also to perform in-class close reading. In one example he showed me how he highlighted a passage in the powerpoint and explained the way in which his class unpacked the quote. For certain parts of the quote, he was able to flip to another slide to contextualize the word, listen to a sound clip, or see a revision of that quotation. In this, he avoids the problem of lecturing with slides and an inattentive audience. The way he uses powerpoint encourages his students to engage. We also want to mention Prezi here because it is an alternative to Microsoft's powerpoint. It is a unique program to construct presentations, and you can open a free educator's account with them. So check it out here.

4) Alternative Course Management System - You may feel that Blackboard is simply too limiting to manage your course (many of us are in agreement). So one of our speakers addressed an alternative system which allows him to use technology creatively in his classes. This particular system relies on a website called Wordpress (one of many blog/web page options, but this does not require that you know html). Setting up the course here allows him to do many of the traditional Blackboard functions such as post documents (which he grabs from his dropbox files), post external links, and moderate a discussion forum. It also allows him to use technology creatively for his course. For example, he blogs after each class what the main discussion points were, any questions for future readings, or any announcements such as changes to the syllabus or assignment deadlines. He also utilizes the blog function as a writing assignment tool - requiring his students to post in-depth blog posts (including embedded art or music and close reading), and for students to respond to each other's posts. Even though this takes a bit of work to build and maintain, it seemed to be a great alternative to blackboard course management. Check out the Chronicle for articles which detail ACM systems and how to start one of your own.

5) Social Media - We also discussed how various social media can be employed as a teaching tool. Twitter, for example, has been featured on The Chronicle as a potential tool for teaching (click here for an example of this), although it is debatable how handy it actually is. We also discussed Facebook as an option. One of our speakers uses Facebook a few ways to engage students - creating a group for the class which allows the professor to post class updates or links. Students can also create fan pages for certain authors, allowing for some creative research opportunities. Using this, as our speaker pointed out, integrates academic work into their normal lives (social networks).

6) Digital Humanities - We also briefly discussed the growing field of Digital Humanities. While this subject is too involved for this small blog post, I do want to mention the specific focus of digital archives coming out of the field of Digital Humanities. Our speaker mentioned the Mark Twain Project as a great example of how digital humanities can be useful not only in research, but in teaching text. Another example is the Global Shakespeares Project which provides open access to film adaptations of Shakespeare, as well as an opportunity to see how scholarship can develop in a Digital Humanities context. If you are interested in exploring this further, check out this text The Youtube Reader recommended by our speaker.

7) Online Presence - As professionals, we need to be aware of what is out there online for our students, colleagues, and prospective bosses to see. I regularly google myself just to see what comes up. However, it is not enough to prevent embarrassing things from ending up on the internet. One of our speakers suggested that we take some time to cultivate our online presence as part of being a professional. Join LinkedIn or Academia.edu (a professional social network for those in Academia) to collate your professional information. Create your own webpage and purchase the URL (for an example, click here).

This concludes the information from our Fall 2011 Teaching Seminar. We are contemplating a spring Teaching Seminar as well, and we want your ideas and feedback! Was there a topic not covered in this series that you would like to see in the Spring? Please email us or leave a comment below. Also, please take a minute "Like" us on Facebook to see upcoming events, advice, and links. Finally, remember that you can now subscribe to this blog via email using the bar at the right (if you have trouble with this, delete your cookies and try multiple browsers until it works). Thanks, and stay tuned for upcoming Spring professional development events, including EGSA's Symposium (February 10 - see our Facebook page for details).

Part 2.3: Teaching while in Graduate School

2012-01-03T20:04:00.001-05:00

One question that was on all of our minds during the "Issues in Pedagogy" session was how to balance teaching with graduate work. It certainly complicates an already complicated experience. How do you budget time for graduate work when you always have grading on your desk, syllabus revision on your mind, and student emails in your inbox?

1) Time Management - this sounds too simplistic for two such time-demanding activities as teaching and graduate school, but it really does help to set management parameters for yourself. When your work is never done (and as a teacher/grad student it never is) how do you maintain your sanity or accomplish anything on time? If you are like most of us, you have a "teacher" head-space and a "conference/writing" head-space. We discussed how it might be helpful to organize time for these two spaces. Granted, it is hard to allot time to writing when you have grading that you must do, but it is important. For example, one of our speakers limits looking at drafts to office hours. A few participants limit all teaching work to "business hours" so that they have time for life necessities like laundry and speaking to other adults. One piece of advice: use weekends and breaks carefully. It is extremely tempting to stop working altogether on breaks and weekends since you are so tired of work when you get to that point, but juggling two full-time jobs requires some persistence and organization, especially in Summer. This time period is important for the graduate student, and you want to make as much of it as you can. Learn your own habits. Do you work best in the morning/afternoon/evening? How many papers can you grade at one time before you go "paper blind"? For your graduate work, you also have to know what kind of student/writer you are. Some people work best with time limits, some with page/word limits per day - use this information to keep yourself on track. Also check out this helpful guide to graduate student time management.

2) Boundaries - after you have set some boundaries for yourself, put some effort into setting them with your students. It is tempting to answer student emails right away to get them off your desk, but you could unwittingly establish that you are available to your students at all hours (a hard thing when it turns out that you are not). Consider your time as valuable - work out a way to penalize no-shows to office hours and late work (if you allow it at all). Once I had a student who sent inappropriately long and chatty emails to me almost every day - eventually I had to ask the student to stop because I simply did not have the time to read those emails and dig out the important question. You certainly do not want to be unapproachable, but keep in mind that your time is valuable.

3) Goals - When teaching it is often all too easy to let your goals fall by the wayside because of the demands on your time. Try to establish solid deadlines and goals with an adviser or mentor to help with accountability. Set group goals with your colleagues if that helps (for example, I know some grad students who apply to conferences together). Remember that you do have writing to do, conferences to apply to, and other professional goals on your plate - and that these should have designated time/head-space.

4) Be Realistic - as confident and organized as you can be, you have to realize that as a teacher there will be periods where even your most careful plans will drop off (and that this is okay) - namely November and the two first weeks of December for the fall term, and the last half of April/first week of May in the spring term. Make up for these periods during the breaks if you can, but go easy on yourself - this is part of the juggle act.

Part 2.2: Issues in Pedagogy

2012-01-03T16:54:00.001-05:00

We continue with "Issues in Pedagogy" from our Teaching Seminar with a focus on issues in teaching literature effectively, using handouts, and incorporating creative assignment design. As noted in our previous post, this session was open to issues and themes that our participants wanted to cover.
One of the themes on our minds was what techniques to use when teaching literature. How do you keep it interesting and accessible? Do you focus on larger themes or close readings of specific passages? How do you attend to the balance between writing about literature and talking/thinking about literature? These are just a few of the questions we tossed around in this session.

1) Verbal v. Textual - you may find that it is easier for your students to answer critical questions verbally than in writing, and often it is easier for them to talk about larger themes or ideas than to deal with text directly. It may be intimidating to ask a student to "show" his or her analysis with a passage, but we explored the idea of group work as a good way to allow students to gather textual evidence. In-class or pre-class writing assignments are another way to accomplish this. One teacher creates quote clusters for her students and asks them to use those quotes to build an argument about the text. Whatever approach you take, it is important to keep these issues in mind when designing your literature class.

2) Using Handouts - we discussed this tool as well in our conversation about teaching literature, especially in how to incorporate a writing component into a literature class. Handouts can be helpful in striking that balance between themes and textual evidence, but also in clarifying literary concepts for students. They can also be useful in adapting to different learning styles - for some students, visuals are more useful than lectures. And of course we discussed handouts in the context of writing assignments and rubrics (see this post for Gayle's thoughts on using rubrics). Finally, check with your peers - sometimes they come up with great handouts that can change the way your students learn.

3) Creative Projects - I know that this was one of the questions I had for the round table: Do you use creative assignments in a literature class, and, if so, how? And what are the merits of using creative projects? Well many of the participants use creative projects in their classes, and most of them had decisive opinions on the utility of creative projects. It is one way to make the text accessible and interesting to students - it can also be a unique way to get students engaged closely with the text. If you ask students to finish an unfinished poem, they need to consider the poem itself carefully for the assignment. If they have to gather and comment on modern adaptations (or create one of their own) they are honing research skills as well as analysis and comprehension. Consider pursuing some of these ideas in your course design even if you are nervous about their potential success.

4) Consult the Net - as teachers, we always think carefully about how to approach a text - both which passages to analyze and what themes to discuss. We decide what kind of biographical/historical details to include as well as publication information and anecdotes to share. One thing that we should be thinking about is what students will find when they type our reading assignments into Google - you know they do it. Even if they read the entire text on their own, most students will still look it up online. It might be useful to do this as well. Additionally, there are some great opportunities in this pre-lecture research for cultural references, artwork, and adaptations which your students may find helpful and fun in engaging with the text.

These are just some of the issues we discussed in this session, and we know that we have many more. If you have questions or suggestions, please email us or leave a comment below. The next post will wrap up our "Issues in Pedagogy" session by exploring some advice for graduate students who are also teaching.

Please remember that you can now subscribe to this blog via email using the subscribe bar on the right hand side of this page (if you experience trouble subscribing, try clearing your cookies and/or a new web browser). Also, you can "like" us on Facebook to keep track of post updates and upcoming events.

Part 2.1: Issues in Pedagogy: Discussion

2012-01-03T16:46:00.002-05:00

We continue with part two of our online content from the Teaching Seminar with ideas on "Classroom Discussion." The second session focused on "Issues in Pedagogy" which we purposely left open to our speakers because we wanted to know what issues, challenges, and ideas were foremost on their minds. Again we had a round-table discussion of the issues and themes. However if you are interested in even more pedagogical ideals or "issues," we recommend subscribing to The Chronicle of Higher Education - many of the ideas for future posts will come from this valuable resource.

Class Discussion - How do you engage students in discussion? How do you organize/balance between discussion and lecture? How do you utilize discussion effectively in a reading/writing course? These are just some of the questions we covered in our conversation about classroom discussion.

1) One approach we discussed is to connect to each student if you can. One professor chose to conduct one-on-one meetings with her students first thing in the semester in part to get to know her students but also to break down any discomfort they had in approaching her with problems. Other teachers use writing samples from the first day or ice breakers. Still others poll students -What are they reading? What/Who are their cultural interests? Of course the most basic piece of advice everyone had was to learn their names! Nothing helps you connect more and encourage participation when you can refer to them by name.

2) Have a clear vision for your course. We all agreed that alerting your students to the course vision along the way is helpful to them in general, but also specifically with class discussion. For example, one teacher likes to outline what they will try to cover in each class, and to take a few minutes to remind the students of discussions from other classes to help contextualize the readings for the day. It may also be useful to remind students that these discussions are fodder for future assignments. One last suggestion is to create a "master lesson plan" at the start of each term - which is basically an expanded, annotated syllabus just for you - and it explains and details your vision for your text/assignment decisions. At the same time, we have to be adaptable - sometimes you need to throw out the notes and let the discussion go where it may. Chances are, you have sat in a class with a professor who excels in encouraging and shaping discussion - take a tip from him or her!

3) Explain clearly what you mean by "participation" to your class - especially if it is a part of their overall grade. More specifically, explain the difference between "showing up" and "participating." Half the battle is setting out clear expectations. Another suggestion is to send warning emails both for attendance and participation.

4) Another part of class participation - student presentations. Should you have them or not? If so, what should the requirements be? Again, be clear about your expectations - give them an example handout if they will be required to provide one. Give them a definite time limit/minimum, and, if possible, require that they meet with you to discuss their presentations in advance. Another suggestion is to encourage the students to lead discussion for a certain number of questions as a way to encourage more peer-to-peer discussion.

5) Consider having them write short responses before launching into discussion. This may help get them focused and engaged before asking questions about the text. Another option is beginning with a mini-lecture to, again, help contextualize so that your questions seem more organic.

6) Check in on how you are doing with a mid-term evaluation. Design the evaluation form to get genuine feedback about discussion and comprehension in the class. This gesture will not only help you course-correct if it is needed, it will also show your students that you are focused on their progress in your class.

7) One final thought on classroom discussion - how should you respond to student comments? While you do not want to discourage comments and conversation, you may want to shape discussion by re-emphasizing a particularly good point, or steering a comment toward a larger idea.

Do you have any other ideas to contribute? Please email us or leave a comment below. Up next - a continuation of "Issues in Pedagogy" with a focus on teaching literature effectively, using handouts, and incorporating creative assignments.

Part 1: Teaching Composition

2012-01-03T15:52:00.000-05:00

We return with information from last semester's Seminar on Teaching. The first session covered Teaching Composition, and we explored methods for teaching a writing component in a literature class, traditional composition classes, and business writing classes. This session ended up being more of a round-table where we exchanged ideas and went over previous teaching experiences. Much of this advice will depend on your individual campus, department, and course goals.
Some Starting Points:
1) Familiarize yourself with the course descriptions of the classes that you will teach as well as any department policies regarding those courses.
2) Familiarize yourself with the requirements and standards of the prerequisite classes for your courses - it is helpful to know what your students may have covered before coming to your class (but this is not a guarantee).
3) Examine available resources. For example, we have posted a long list of teaching/writing resources here. Additionally, ask around - your fellow graduate students and faculty most likely have helpful resources saved that they would love to share with you. Finally, look to your campus - what resources does it offer? Get to know your writing center director (how can you encourage your students to utilize this valuable resource?); check out the library for applicable workshops or library introduction programs; check with your campus writing program to see if they offer workshops for writing teachers or if they can give you access to their databases. If you are a GWU teacher and would like a copy of a very useful writing handbook (with helpful handouts and advice on teaching writing, please email us and we will pass it along).

Two of the biggest questions that our participants had were - How do you balance teaching "big picture" (structure, argument) writing skills with "small picture" (grammar, MLA) writing skills? How do you incorporate teaching a writing component in a literature class effectively?
Some thoughts:
1) Whatever class you are teaching, approach writing with your students as a "process" and not an end goal. Some ways to do this is to design your course so that your writing assignments build off of each other or toward a larger writing project. For example, you could assign a shorter close reading paper that they must revise and expand into a research paper.
2) Get to know your students' writing strengths and weaknesses - some teachers like to evaluate them right away with a writing sample on the first day.
3) Be clear about your expectations - for example some teachers draw up a list of their "zero tolerance" writing mistakes and then graduate to more complex writing concepts as the semester continues. One professor uses the first formal assignment as a "test drive" wherein all errors are highlighted and students have an option to revise and resubmit to avoid a grade penalty. Whatever you end up doing, consider carefully both your expectations for students and their current writing skills.
4) Drafts - Should you have rough drafts? How many? Should you do peer review? Some of these questions can be answered by the policies and course goals of your particular class, but you still must decide on the most effective way to deal with these questions. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish by allowing rough drafts or by mandating peer review. A few of us considered how to use peer review without sacrificing a whole class - using blackboard is one option here. One teacher offers an unlimited draft option up to the due date - the idea being that if students plan ahead, they can revise until they are satisfied with the final product. Consider these questions carefully, and trial and error will help you shape your draft/revision policy.
5) Peer Review - What makes an effective peer review session? How should you incorporate it into your class? If it is a literature class, should you sacrifice one whole session for peer review? All of our speakers had different approaches to peer review, and most of them agreed that it can be a helpful exercise. However, most of us have had trial and error experiences with using peer review because each group of students is different, and each approach produces different results. One suggestion was to create "stations" in the classroom for revision - students go from station to station to focus on specific aspects of the writing process. If you do a more traditional peer review session, you could match two students together or create small groups. You could have them focus on "large picture" issues or "small picture" issues. Another approach is to save the class period and perform the peer review over blackboard - pairing students up to review each other's work. Some inevitable difficulties arise: students give "incorrect" feedback on a student's paper, a student feels the review is useless because they are not paired up with a student who can help them, and/or students bring incomplete drafts. There are different ways to handle these, but keep them in mind as you design your peer review approach.

A few closing thoughts on composition-based classes:
1) Be clear with your students about the applicability of their writing skills and assignments. They will take it more seriously if they know they can use these skills in their majors or these documents in their academic careers.
2) Consider your primary texts - what textbooks does your school want you to use for these comp classes? How useful are they? While you should always consider the expectations of your department carefully, do not feel like you are trapped in a bad textbook either. You may have to do some research to find alternate materials or come up with them on your own, but do not feel bound by one single text.
3) Take advantage of networking opportunities. As a new teacher or a teacher new to composition, it can be tough making these decisions without support. Sometimes you just need to vent or ask for an example handout - find out what opportunities for networking your campus offers. Some campuses have teacher brown-bag presentations (try to attend!), some have social events or happy hours (try to participate!). At the very least cultivate a relationship with a mentor or colleague - they can be life-savers.

If you have additional advice for composition classes, please email us or leave a comment below - this is just a starting point, and we would love to learn from your experiences as well.

EGSA This Week

2011-12-07T10:50:00.001-05:00

Apologies for the temporary absence of new posts, but please take a look at this week's EGSA events.

Please joins us this Friday, December 9th from 11 am to 2pm for the EGSA Book Sale! (Rome 753) All proceeds will go toward funding our EGSA Symposium in Spring 2012. Please take a look at our CFP for the Symposium and consider submitting your work.

Looking for something to read over break? Do you have a bunch of library books on your shelves because you can't afford to buy a copy? Do you already know what books you'll need for the spring semester? Come by the EGSA book sale and see if we have what you need! Our selection contains books from multiple disciplines and periods, including Norton editions, critical works, and anthologies. Prices range from $1 - $5.

Spread the word among your GWU peers. And if you teach or TA a class, consider making an announcement to your students or emailing them.

Also Friday December 9 we are getting together for the final EGSA Happy Hour of the year (4-6pm). We know it is a stressful time, so come blow off some steam with us over a few cocktails. Location is TBA (but it will be near campus) - so watch our Facebook Group and Fan Page for Updates.

EGSA Spring 2012 Symposium Call-for-Papers

2011-11-22T13:19:00.001-05:00

The EGSA is happy to announce that we will be holding our second annual graduate symposium, Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary and Cultural Studies, on Feb. 10, 2012. We welcome any graduate student work, from seminar papers to works in progress, and encourage everyone to submit an abstract and share their work with their peers from other concentrations. This is also a great chance for those who haven't yet presented at a conference to get some practice before a very generous audience.

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Call For Papers

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Call for Papers: Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary and Cultural Studies

[The Panopticon] is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one

another, of hierarchal organization, of disposition of centres and channels of power, of definition of the

instruments and modes of power ... – Michel Foucault

The English Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce the call for papers for our second

annual graduate student symposium Bodies in Space: Emerging Scholarship in Literary and Cultural

Studies to be held Friday, February 10, 2012.

Foucault’s reading of the production of docile bodies notwithstanding, the aim of this conference is not

to consider the ways that the multiplicity of concentrations in the fields of Literature and Cultural Studies

stand in relation to each other, but instead consider how they stand in relation with each other (and the

ways that these relationships are always promiscuous and overlapping). Thus, rather than an image of

a body pinned to a specific space, the title alludes to the many ways that bodies and spatiality might be

productively considered in literary criticism. More generally, we mean to provide a frame large enough

to encompass all of the interesting work going on in the GW English department. In this symposium, we

hope to foster conversation between presenters and participants across concentrations and even disciplines

through the intersections of current graduate student work. We welcome any and all submissions and

encourage submissions from previously written course work or works in progress, including dissertation

chapters and conference papers.

Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be submitted, along with your contact information, to gwegsa@gmail.com by 11:59pm

on Tuesday, January 10, 2012. Submissions must be 250 words or less and must be submitted as a

Microsoft Word document or PDF. Please include 2-3 keywords at the bottom of your submission and

include the words “Conference Submission” in the subject line of your email. Conference presentations

will be approximately 15 minutes, and panels will be organized after submissions have been accepted.

We also welcome any volunteers who would like to be involved in the organizational / logistical side of

the symposium, be it chairing a panel or assisting with lunch.

Teaching Resources

2011-11-22T09:05:00.001-05:00

Here is part of our online content from the recent Teaching Seminar. If you have additional resources, please share them with us! Also, take a minute to follow this blog, or subscribe via email - we have many more exciting posts planned.

TeachingResources

Learn about our school's Writing in the Discipline Program, and use the new WID Board to find helpful writing resources:

GW WID Program - http://widstudio.wordpress.com/

WID Board (find handouts, advice, hot topics in teaching writing) – http://widboard.proboards.com/index.cgi?

Consider encouraging your students to use these campus resources:

GW Writing Center - http://www.gwu.edu/~gwriter/

GW Gelman Library - http://www.library.gwu.edu/

General Writing Resources for Students and Faculty:

List of Writing Resources for Students - http://www.nvcc.edu/annandale/lrc/writing/links.htm

Dr. McClennen’s Close Reading Guide - http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/s/a/sam50/closeread.htm

Even if you do not teach an online class, this site can offer guidance in using course management and incorporating technology into your curriculum:

Online Teaching Resource - http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

Good Resources to list on your syllabus:

MLA Resources – www.mla.org and http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/and http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocMLA.html

Teaching Students with Disabilities - http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/disabilities.html

GW Disability Support Services (Faculty Resources) -http://gwired.gwu.edu/dss/faculty/

GW English Department (Undergraduate Information) - http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/english/undergraduate

Explore the possibilities for digital humanities, using technology for teaching, and alternative course management systems:

Digital Humanities - http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/digital-resources.htmland www.digitalhumanities.org

Dr. Alex Huang Projects and Resources - http://alexanderhuang.org/

Dr. Jonathan Hsy's Course Management Blog: http://eng3420.wordpress.com

For ideas, developments, and issues in pedagogy, subscribe to news updates at the Chronicle:

The Chronicle of Higher Education – http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5

Upcoming Events

2011-11-21T10:17:00.001-05:00

November18

Teaching and Pedagogy Seminar hosted by EGSA12:30-4:30pm in Rome 771. Please join us for three sessions – 12:30-1:30pmBrown Bag Lunch Session “Teaching Composition” 2:00-3:00 “Issues in Pedagogy”and 3:30-4:30 “Using Technology in the Classroom.” Light refreshments will beavailable for the breaks. Watch our blog for the final schedule and speakerslist. To r.s.v.p, check out our Facebook page.

December 1

Symposium on KarlSteel's important new book How toMake a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages (OhioState University Press, 2011). The book is available for $40 in hardcover viaAmazon, and $10 for an e-version on CD. If you plan to attend, please try toread the book ahead of time. The symposium features Julian Yates, PeggyMcCracken and Tobias Menely, as well as Karl Steel. The event will take placefrom 4-6 PM (notechange of time) in GW's Academic Center, 801 22nd St NW, Rome Hall 771. Thesymposium is free and open to all who wish to attend. It will be followed by aninformal vegetarian dinner. The cost is $15 exclusive of beverages. If youwould like to join us for dinner, you must register by Tuesday November 29here: http://www.gwmemsi.com/p/animal-symposium-dinner-rsvp.html

December 2

CriticalAnimal Studies Seminar, with all the guests from the previous night'ssymposium speaking about the field. You do not need to attend the Thursdaysymposium to participate in the Friday seminar. Some short readings will bedistributed ahead of time. Lunch will be served. If you would like toattend, you must reserve a spot and secure the readings by emailing LowellDuckert (lduckert@gwu.edu)no later than Tuesday November 29. If you RSVP please come: we pay for everylunch reserved, and it is a shame when people hold a spot but do not attend theseminar.

December 2

Join the GWU English Department for a Symposium onFrancophone Studies featuring Sylvie Durmelat (Georgetown), Valerie Orlando(UMD), and Lydie Moudileno (U Penn). The event is located in Phillips Hall #411from 2:00pm to 4:00pm with a reception to follow.

TGIF - Teaching Advice and November Happy Hour

2011-11-18T08:36:00.001-05:00

Please join us for the EGSA Teaching Seminar today from 12:30-4:30pm in Rome 771. We have three interesting sessions with an exciting group of speakers. For more details, check out Facebook or this blog post. We would also like to invite you to join us after the event for a November Happy Hour at TGI Fridays right near main campus (see the location and map to the right of this post). We will meet up from 4:30-6:30, and we hope you can take a study break and join us!

We also want to begin the online content from the Teaching Seminar today, knowing that many of you will not be able to join us. Throughout this process we have come across many interesting articles, resources, and teaching suggestions that will appear on this blog over the next few weeks. To begin with, we polled some faculty and graduate students about their top advice for new or beginning teachers. Our department chair, Dr. Gayle Wald, kindly offered the following advice:

1.Plan well but don't over-plan. Unless you're lecturing, scripted classes willinevitably disappoint.
2. Try usingrubrics for grading. I'm using them for the first time this semester, and it'sgoing very well. I never thought I'd say that, but it's true.
3. Students todayare accustomed to multimedia. It's nice to be able to give students variousways in to material: visual, oral, tactile, etc. Try using video, readingaloud, incorporating handouts, having students compile notes which someonewrites on the board.
4. Try at least oneexperimental assignment each time you teach--you never know what will work.
5. Approach eachclass with a set of objectives. What do you want your students to LEARN? (Thisis different from what you want to get through.)
6. Be VERY clearabout your expectations on the first day and on the syllabus. After that, don'tbe afraid of enforcing them.
7. Do not getinvolved in students' dramas. This is especially important when you are a gradstudent and (often) closer to undergrads in age. Be friendly and supportive, ofcourse, but draw the line clearly. Refer students to other resources (deans,counselors, etc.) when necessary.
8. Don't forget touse your Chair! (Not the one you sit on--me!) If you need back-up or want anopinion about how to handle a situation, please ask. Often there are departmentpolicies that can guide you challenging situations. If a student is everydisruptive, let the chair of the department know.

Do you have any suggestions or advice? Please leave a comment or email us - and don't forget to check back often (or subscribe with our new email service) because we will continue to post online content from today's sessions.

EGSA Teaching Seminar Schedule and Sessions

2011-11-16T10:09:00.001-05:00

Many of you probably saw the schedule for the Teaching Seminar (this Friday November 18) in your email box, but we would like to elaborate on the schedule here so that you know what to expect. This seminar is designed for all graduate students who have been teaching or are thinking about teaching writing and/or literature courses. We are lucky to have such experienced and interested faculty and grad students available to speak in these three sessions. We know that some of you will not be able to attend all of the sessions, so we will be posting online content following the seminar. However, we encourage you to attend as many sessions as you can. These will be unique opportunities to ask questions, get feedback on your ideas, and learn from the personal experiences of our distinguished colleagues. All of these sessions will take place in Rome 771.

Session 1 12:30-1:30pm Brown Bag Lunch “TeachingComposition.” Please bring your lunch and join us for this session which will focus on the field of composition and writing. We have both Professor Reidner and Mr. Cobb speaking on the GW WID program. They will cover teaching first-year UW courses as well as WID courses and the opportunities for graduate student teachers. One of our own board members, Erin Vander Wall, will discuss her experiences with teaching composition at a community college and her current post at GW. Our EGSA Board President, Leigha McReynolds, will be speaking on her experience teaching business writing at GW in the WID program. We are excited to hear what these speakers have to say about these teaching opportunities, as well as the skills necessary to apply for these positions and, of course, to become successful teachers.

Break and Light Refreshments 1:30-2:00pm (Otherwise known as Tawnya's famous cookies)

Session 2 2:00-3:00pm “Issues in Pedagogy.” This session has a broad theme, and an equally broad range of presentations by our speakers. These speakers will address challenges, issues, and solutions that teachers face on a daily basis. Many of these subjects are not even on your radar as a new teacher and continue to be important and difficult subjects after teaching for years. Dr. Schreiber has elected to speak on a variety of pedagogical issues specific to teaching literature courses. Both Elizabeth and Nedda are going to speak to their experiences in the classroom and what they believe to be important pedagogical issues.

Break and Light Refreshments 3:00-3:30pm

Session 3 3:30pm-4:30pm “Using Technology for the Classroom.” This session will focus on using basic technology for teaching as well as more advanced, creative uses for technology in the classroom. For many new (and experienced) teachers, Blackboard is something like a dinosaur - mysterious and cumbersome. I will address the ways in which I personally use technology for my own teaching, and how I use blackboard specifically. Dr. Huang has kindly agreed to share his own innovative uses of technology for enabling students to engage more critically with online media. He may also address the importance of cultivating a professional online presence for graduate students. Dr. Hsy will be our final speaker to address his way of using technology for teaching by exploring an alternative to Blackboard for course management. He will also address the possibilities for power-point presentations in literature courses.

EGSA November Meeting

2011-11-15T08:13:00.001-05:00

Please join us on Wednesday November 16 at 2:00pm for our November EGSA meeting. We will address pending events and business, but you are all welcome to attend. If you have any suggestions, concerns, or even if you would just like to listen in, we would love to have you. This meeting will be in Duques Hall 458.

This Week on EGSA

2011-11-09T16:17:00.001-05:00

Check out this week's GW EGSA events as well as events coming up this December.

November 14

From JennaWeissman Joselit, GWU Judaic Studies:
In conjunction with The Merchant of Venice production and class thatI'm team-teaching with Leslie Jacobson in TRDA, the law school will be holdinga conversation next Monday, November 14th, at 3 p.m. in the Burns FacultyConference Center (B505) of the law school, between Dean Paul SchiffBerman and Barry Edelstein of New York's Public Theater on thelegal implications of the play. The conversation will be moderatedby The New Republic's legal affairs editor and GW lawprofessor, Jeffrey Rosen. It promises to be quite a lively occasion.

November 16

"Funding YourDissertation Research," on Wednesday, November 16th from 4:00pm to 5:00pmin Marvin Center 302. This information session is for PhD candidates focused onfunding for doctoral research at the dissertation phase. The session willalso touch on general funding opportunities for PhD candidates.

November 16

Join George Washington University's Visiting Artist andScholars Committee for our last lecture of the fall series featuring arthistorian Mitchell Merback! Dr.Mitchell Merback is a professor in Art History at Johns Hopkinswho specializes in Medieval and Renaissance, particularly German, CentralEuropean and Netherlandish art of the 15th and 16th centuries. He plans todeliver a lecture to a GW audience entitled"From Icon to Mirror of the Soul: Ritual Reciprocity and TherapeuticExchange in Medieval and Renaissance Man of Sorrows Imagery."Dr. Merback will visit GW on November 16 at 6:15 in Smith Hall 114.

November18

December 1

December 2

Tempest Debate

2011-11-09T16:11:00.001-05:00

EGSA would like to announce the Tempest Debates hosted by Dr. Alex Huang and Dr. Holly Dugan. On November 10, 2011 at 6pm Funger Hall 210, their classes will be debating about The Tempest. The Topic: Resolved that Prospero genuinely pardons his foes and is a model of true forgiveness and reconciliation.

This is a unique opportunity for academic enrichment and to witness an interesting teaching approach. This is why we encourage our fellow grads to attend this event. For the flier or for more information, contact Dr. Alex Huang at acyhuang@gwu.edu.

Attending Conferences

2011-11-08T08:10:00.000-05:00

Borrowed Image

This is our final post of online content from our "Designing Abstracts and Attending Conferences" Workshop in October. We want to begin by pulling a recent quotation from an article in The Chronicle for Higher Education (a highly recommended resource for Eng. Grads):

““I advise students to attend professionalconferences for a number of reasons. First, there is the inevitable networking,which helps you not only now but also later in your career. Second, byattending sessions at the conference, students can learn the latest scholarlyinsights circulating, well before the publication of those ideas (which willtake those glacial several years of research and publication that I mentioned).Third, the book exhibits of such professional organizations will let studentsbrowse the newest texts and even unpublished page proofs before the material isfiltered through the review mill and enters the consciousness of scholars andcritics.”

Chronicle for Higher Education

We want to encourage you to think about conferences no matter where you are in the program. You may not be ready to jump right in, but keep tabs on annual conferences in your field, on themes and CFPs that apply to your work, and any local opportunities to attend conferences.

How to Choose a Conference: We know that it can be difficult wading through all of the conferences out there, so we recommend first relying on your peers and faculty advisers for guidance. It is certain that your faculty advisers will have some suggestions for conferences that pertain to your field. See our previous post for more suggestions about finding relevant CFPs. However you come across these conferences, we encourage you to consider a few important factors:

1) Your Field - not every conference is created equal. This is where your adviser and peers come in handy; find out if the conference you are looking at is worth the following two factors.

2) Time/Deadlines - Consider the date of the conference as well as the deadline for the abstract, and ask yourself "Do I have enough time to work on this? Are the conference dates doable with my schedule?"

3) Money - an important factor for any grad student. Check with Connie in the GW English Dept. for current department reimbursement policies. The department will reimburse you up to a certain amount in a given academic year. The rest is up to you (and some conferences offer scholarship opportunities), so plan carefully how much the trip will cost you.

Preparation Tips:

Square Away Travel Plans: Once you are accepted and you confirm with the conference, fill out the appropriate forms to send the Department Chair (Gayle). If you are traveling internationally, you must register your travel details (flight, duration, etc) with GW (and when you do this GW has you covered for travel insurance).

Research the Conference Website: These will often have great recommendations for housing as well as important details about the conference fee (how/when to pay it), and the schedule (you may be required to submit certain items by certain deadlines).

Time Your Presentation: We all speak at different speeds, so adjust your paper length accordingly. It is important and respectful to stay within the amount of presentation time allowed by the conference.

Get Feedback: Ask your advisers for their feedback on your conference paper - they can give you great insight on the paper itself as well as conference/presentation tips (you may have to bug them, however, so do not hesitate to send them "friendly reminders" in order to hear back before the conference).

Your Panel Chair: Check out the program when you can to see who will chair your panel and who is on your panel. Often, the chair will contact you in advance to ask for bio details or a copy of your paper. You can also send these ahead of time and introduce yourself. Take at least a little time to familiarize yourself with your panel members - read their abstracts if you can (you will likely be asked questions from the audience about how your work and another panel member's work speak to each other).

Make Business Cards: Not all conferences have a strict "business" aspect to them, but many emphasize the importance of networking. I suggest business cards because I have been handed many over the few conferences I have been to, and have had nothing to give them in exchange. Most conferences will set up a listserve or email contact details, but I still recommend printing off some cards to exchange with people you meet.

Carry copies of your CV, prospectus, and conferencepaper: Part of this recommendation is to prevent any technology errors that can ruin your experience (not having access to your paper digitally for example). The other part is that you will be making valuable contacts, and if you are on the market, it might be useful to have these items with you.

Bring a Notebook: I recommend having one at least when you are on your panel waiting for your turn to present for a couple reasons. One, it gives you something to do while you are listening to your panel's presentations (this can be awkward). Two, if you jot down notes about your panel members' presentations (or how they connect to yours) it will be much easier to field questions from the audience when they address two or more presentations.

During and After

Responding to Your Panel: As previously stated, audience members may want you to respond to something someone else said on your panel - so pay attention!

Criticism means they care – How to Respond to theAudience: We all dread the prospect of audience members critiquing our work or asking us obscure questions that we can hardly process, let alone explain. A few things to remember - it is a good thing that someone is interested enough to say something, and a good response when you do not know what to say is "I have not considered that before, so thank you." You also have the right to ask them to explain their questions.

Back Up Everything: Bring printed copies and save your items to multiple locations (use dropbox) to avoid stress (also, check ahead with the conference organizers or your hotel about internet options).

Dress Code: Most conferences will send out information regarding dress code, but if you are unsure you can ask the organizers and/or play it safe with casual business attire (and a possible cocktail/evening item).

Attend Events – Networking: We cannot stress this enough - attend all of the events! Most conferences will have meal times, tea/coffee hours, cocktail hours, etc. These are great networking opportunities and a lot of fun (believe me, sitting in one chair or another for 10 hours is not as easy as it sounds - you will need these breaks). Try not to think of "networking" as a dirty word - see it as creating connections and building relationships. (Note: wear your name tag on your right shoulder, that way when you extend your hand to shake hands, the person can clearly see your name as you say it).

Keep Receipts! In order to be reimbursed for any part of your trip, you need to produce all the receipts related to it, including housing, travel, conference fees, etc.

Follow Up: It is always polite and nice if you send a thank you note to one of the organizers. You should also keep any promises you made to the people that you met - friend them on facebook, shoot them an email, send them that link or picture, etc. This is where you take the initial "networking" of the conference and cultivate it into valuable relationships.

We discussed much more than this at our workshop, so if you have any questions, please send us an email. Also, if you have resources, ideas, or suggestions regarding Abstracts/Conferences, please leave a comment below.

This is a reminder that copies of these handouts and resources can be found outside Rome 751.

This Week and Next in EGSA

2011-11-05T11:24:00.000-04:00

The next few weeks are brimming with academic and professional development events, so mark your calendars! Of special note is EGSA's upcoming seminar on Teaching (note the date change: now November 18). Please visit Facebook to r.s.v.p. and for more information. Additionally, we have an update on one of the CFP posts - an extension for Predicate Abstracts to November 7 - they really want to see contributions from GW grads! Visit their website for more details.
So here is a list of upcoming events - and stay tuned for the second part of our online Abstract/Conference content.

November 8
Flying High Like a Disco Jalebi: Gay Bombay and Beyond, a talk andreading

ParmeshShahani, TED and MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow, and author of Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing inContemporary India (2008)

Tuesday,November 8, 2-3.30 pm Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW)
Parmesh Shahani is not your usual academic. He runs a newly formed corporatefunded ideas lab that examines the nature of modernity in contemporary India.He also has a parallel life in which he travels all over India as Editor atLarge for Verve, India’sleading fashion and lifestyle magazine, and tops lists like 2010 CNN list of“Mumbai’s coolest queers”. In his talk (accompanied by feature and documentaryfilm clips), Parmesh will reflect on the changes taking place on the ground forLBGT people in India, set against the context of the larger national changesthat the country is going through. Drawing on his ethnographic research withinan online-offline gay community in the city of Bombay, Parmesh will mull overquestions of identity, community and the national imagination. He will alsoread excerpts from his book.

Co-sponsored by GW's English Department and Women's Studies Program

November 10

The George Washington University History Department ResearchColloquium presents

Professor Dagmar Herzog

Graduate Center, City University of New York

Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History
Dagmar Herzog is Professor of History and the Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar atthe Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has published widely inthe history of religion in Europe and the U.S., on the Holocaust and itsaftermath, and on the histories of gender and sexuality. Her presentation willbe drawn from her recently completed Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-CenturyHistory (Cambridge 2011). She is also the author of Sex inCrisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics (Basic2008), Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-CenturyGermany (Princeton 2005), andIntimacy and Exclusion: ReligiousPolitics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton 1996).

Thursday, November 10, 4-5:30, 1957 E Street, Room 211

November 10

The Office of GraduateStudent Assistantships and Fellowships Office is hosting an information sessionfor the IAF Fellowship onThursday, November 10th at 3:30 PM in RiceHall Conference Room 304. A representative from IAF will be presenting atthe session.

This session would be of interest to PhDstudents who need support for dissertation research in Latin America andthe Caribbean. The deadline to apply for this fellowship is January 17th, 2012.Applicants must be U.S. citizens or citizens of the independent Latin Americancountries.

Students interested in attending this eventshould RSVP to gradfell@gwu.edu.

November 11

Carla Peterson will be discussing her acclaimed new book, BlackGotham. November 11^th, 2:30pm, 771 Rome Hall. The Africana Studies Cities Seriesand The Department of English are pleased to host Carla Peterson for adiscussion and signing of her acclaimed new book, Black Gotham: A Family History of Nineteenth CenturyNew York

“Part detectivetale, part social and cultural narrative, Black Gotham is Carla Peterson'sriveting account of her quest to reconstruct the lives of hernineteenth-century ancestors. As she shares their stories and those of theirfriends, neighbors, and business associates, she illuminates the greaterhistory of African-American elites in New York City…Black Gotham challengesmany of the accepted ‘truths’ about African-American history, including theassumption that the phrase ‘nineteenth-century black Americans’ means enslavedpeople, that "New York state before the Civil War" refers to a placeof freedom, and that a black elite did not exist until the twentiethcentury. ”

Peterson is Professor of English at theUniversity of Maryland and author of Doers of the Word: AfricanAmerican Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880) (OxfordUP).

November 16

"FundingYour Dissertation Research," on Wednesday, November 16th from 4:00pm to5:00pm in Marvin Center 302. This information session is for PhD candidatesfocused on funding for doctoral research at the dissertation phase. Thesession will also touch on general funding opportunities for PhD candidates.

November 18 (Friday) Teaching and Pedagogy Seminar – Please join us for this EGSA professional development seminar. 12:30-1:30 - brown bag session on "Teaching Composition." 2:00-3:00 - Session on "Issues in Pedagogy" which will focus on pedagogy questions for literature and writing courses. 3:30-4:30 - Session on "Using Technology in the Classroom" which will cover basic teaching technology, creative and innovative use of blogs, twitter, and other social media, and recent news in digital humanities. Please visit our event on Facebook to r.s.v.p. In the coming weeks we will also post more detailed information about speakers and the schedule.

Tips on Writing Abstracts and Managing CFPs

2011-11-02T17:06:00.000-04:00

Hello again, grad school community! Apologies for the delay in information - we have been busy gathering information for our upcoming Teaching Seminar. Here is part two of our online content from our "Designing Abstracts and Attending Conferences" Workshop. You can also find copies, example Abstracts, and Handouts from this event outside of Rome 751.

Call-For-Papers: How do you begin thinking about Abstracts and Conferences? Finding call-for-papers is an excellent start. This is a good practice to begin even if you feel that you are a few semesters away from attending conferences. Where should you look for good CFPs? We offer you some tips on locating these opportunities -

1) U Penn's CFP Site is an excellent resource with a useful search engine tool. We all highly recommend it because it is updated fairly regularly and has such a wide variety of CFPs available.

2) Join List-serves. Chances are, if you have already attended a conference or two, you are on a group listserve - these can be immensely helpful in keeping up to date on upcoming CFPs and conference dates. Keeping in touch with people you meet at conferences can be helpful as well - I personally get between 2-3 CFPs a month just from being on former conference listserves and connecting with people I met at those conferences via social networks.

3) Consult your Faculty Advisers! Some of our best experiences with conferences were as a result of a recommendation by a trusted faculty member. Many times they are aware of the most interesting/relevant conferences to your particular field or line of criticism. This is also another way to cultivate a relationship with your adviser - a practice EGSA highly recommends!

4) Check your email and our blog! Faculty and other professionals regularly email CFP information to students, including extended deadlines and updated information - so pay attention to your email boxes! You can also look on our blog - where we will attempt regular updates on CFP and conference information.

First Experiences: Intimidated by the variety of conferences or attending a large, professional conference as a newbie? Consider some "starter" opportunities to get used to writing abstracts and attending conferences with ease.

1) Graduate Student Conferences - look out for CFPs which are designed for graduate students. These conferences are made up entirely of your peers, and are often closer to home - a time and money saver. Try these out to begin your career of Abstract writing and conferences.

2) EGSA Symposium - look even closer to home. This spring (2012) EGSA will host a symposium where you will have the opportunity to turn your course work papers into a conference opportunity. Look out for our CFP coming soon.

3) Program Symposiums or Seminars - Many of the programs at GW offer opportunities to participate in symposiums or seminars. Take advantage of these opportunities to share your work with other GW grads and faculty. It may be intimidating, but it is great experience, and it contributes to the academic enrichment of our program.

Abstract Elements: What belongs in an Abstract? This of course largely depends on the CFP - its requirements for length and the theme of the conference. Many of us urge you to use work that you already have from course work for conferences. Transforming your seminar paper into a conference length presentation can be challenging, but here are some general guidelines for what belongs in the abstract:

Reason for writing:
What is the importance of the research? Why would a reader be interested in thelarger work?

Problem:
What problem does this work attempt to solve? What is the scope of the project?What is the main argument/thesis/claim?

Methodology:
Introduce your source information and any steps in your project.

Results:
What are your findings?

Implications:
How does this work add to the body of knowledge on the topic?

Tips on Writing Abstracts:

Meet the word limitations/range - it is very important to stay within the word count range for any abstract.

Delete extraneous words, use meaningful language, Avoiddefining terms - the idea is to state the parameters of your argument as clearly and concisely as possible.

Limit the Jargon, Consider your Audience - part of keeping your abstract clear and concise is limiting academic jargon and appealing to a wider audience than a specific professor or class.

Pay Attention to Key Words - if your CFP asks for key words, consider carefully which words to include because in this digital age, they are "key" to being able to find your work. They also can contribute to the way in which the conference organizers put together panels.

It is okay to deviate (a little) from the Abstract - If you are writing an abstract specifically for a conference, and writing a paper to go with it, do not feel like your end result must match up perfectly with the abstract. You will be writing abstracts for papers that don't exist your whole career - it is okay to deviate a little in your expected results (but don't mislead your conference organizers either).

Reverse Outlining or Cut/Paste - If you are using work you already have, try these methods for pulling an abstract out of your completed paper. Using sentences from your paper to create the abstract is useful and time-saving.

Ask for Peer or Faculty feedback, Revise! The best advice we can give you is to take advantage of your relationships with peers and faculty. They can give you the perspective that you need and want for a successful abstract.

Thanks for tuning in for our Abstract and CFP online content. If you have additional suggestions or resources to share, please email us or leave a comment below. Check back with us for the final part of this online content as well as upcoming events and professional opportunities.

This Week with EGSA

2011-10-25T08:19:00.000-04:00

First, thank you for joining us at the October Happy Hour last Friday! As part of our continuing Abstract/Conference online content, we have provided some information below on upcoming Conferences. These are recommended by your fellow grads and faculty. We also have many exciting campus events approaching, including some special seminars and professional development opportunities. We hope to see you at some or all of these events. Stay tuned for more online content from our Abstract/Conference Workshop

Upcoming Conferences:

November 3-4, 2011 University of Maryland “Rethinking World Literatures/ Other WorldLiteratures”

February 17-18, 2012 British Commonwealth PlanningCommittee, Savannah Georgia. “21^st Annual BritishCommonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference.”

March 21-25, 2012 The 33^rd InternationalConference on the Fantastic in Arts “The MonstrousFantastic” in Orlando, FL.

Upcoming GW English Events:

October 27 Thursday 4pm (1957 E St NW Rm 213) Please join MEMSI members for a panel on "What Monsters Mean" with Asa Simon Mittman and Jeffrey Weinstock

October 28 Friday 12:15pm (slight change in time!) Please join us for a seminar on "Monster Theory" co-sponsored by GW MEMSI and EGSA. Lunch will be served, so you should r.s.v.p. for this event by October 25 (today!): lduckert@gwu.edu. Many of your EGSA Board members will be in attendance, so we hope to see you there!

November 1 Tuesday 5pm Marvin Center 307 The GW Career Center is hosting: Graduate Students: Resume vs. CV. Whatare the differences between résumés and CVs? Develop a better understanding ofthese two primary career and job search documents, including appropriatecontent, format and length. Learn more about how to utilize these two importantself marketing materials to advance your career. Co-sponsored by the Office of Graduate StudentEnrollment Management. RSVP through the GWork Workshop calendar.

November 3-4 Composing Disability: Writing, Communication,Culture George Washington University, Washington DC. Organized by one of our favorite faculty, Robert McRuer, this event promises to be a unique opportunity to discover how Disability Studies and Disability Culture are transforming higher education. “Composing Disability” brings together Disability and Deaf Studies, Writing Studies, Education, and Global Cultural Studies for spirited, collegial dialogue, about the production of disability culture, disability writing, and disability representation in and beyond academia today. Please click on the link for the program schedule, information about the keynote speakers, and to register for the event. Even if you are only able to attend part of the seminar, please take time to register.

November 4 4pm Join GW MEMSI for Master Oh Tae Suk's screening of the film of his production, The Tempest. The audience will have an opportunity to interact with the director at a presentation on November 5. Both events at the Harry Harding Auditorium, 1957 E Street. The events are part of this year's Hahn Moo-Sook Colloquium in the Korean Humanities. This event is co-sponsored by MEMSI and co-organized by Professor Alex Huang.

November 11 2:00-3:30pm Rome 771 Carla Peterson will be discussing heracclaimed new book, Black Gotham, a cultural history of free blackelites living in antebellum New York. Hosted by the English Dept.

November 18 2:30-4:30 Rome 771 EGSA Teaching and Pedagogy Seminar. Mark your calendars for this final 2011 Professional Development event. Chances are you will be spending some part of your career as an English graduate student teaching in the classroom. We want to provide you with all the tools you need, including information on teaching composition (and how to convince a future employer that you can), information on the latest issues in English pedagogy, and how to use technology in the classroom. This seminar is designed for all English grads, even those that have been teaching for a while. Stay tuned to this blog for more information, and please direct any questions to Tawnya Ravy (tcravy@gwu.edu).

Stress Management

2011-10-19T18:56:00.000-04:00

Thanks to your M.A. Representative to EGSA, Haylie, here is a post of compiled resources to help alleviate that burdensome graduate school stress. It is important to take breaks, to at least attempt to achieve a mind/body/soul balance during these rocky years of study, and to take advantage of the stress-relieving opportunities of the DC Metro Area. I would also add to this list that attending EGSA workshops for baked treats and to vent your frustrations is a great way to alleviate stress (shameless plug!).
We welcome your feedback and contributions. If you have additional stress management resources, please share with us!

Health Resources

· Lerner Health and Wellness Center (aka the gym)

o Location: 2301 G Street, NW (Corner of G and 23^rd)

o General hours: M-F: 6:30am – 11:30pm; Sat: 9am – 8pm; Sun: 11am – 11:30pm

o Gym use is free for students. Costs for classes:

§ Drop-in pass: $6 per class

§ Mind & Body pass (unlimited yoga and pilates classes): $65/term

§ Full Fitness pass (all classes): $85/term

o Other features: racquetball and squash courts, indoor track, three-lane lap pool, free weight and cardiovascular fitness areas

o Free Mindfulness Meditation class, Tuesdays 1:10 – 1:50 pm in fitness classroom

· Student Health Service Center

o Location: 2141 K St. NW, Suite 501

o Hours: Varies daily; generally 8:30am – 6:00pm

o Variety of services; $25 office fee per visit (waived if you are covered by GW Student Health Insurance plan)

· University Counseling Center

o Phone: 202-994-5300; email: counsel@gwu.edu

o Location: 2033 K St. NW, Suite 330

o Hours: M, T, Th: 8am – 6pm; W, F: 8am – 5pm

o Offers: Individual counseling, group counseling (including dissertation support group and graduate student group), academic support services, career counseling, alcohol/drug services, referral assistance

o Fees:

§ New this year: Up to first 6 individual counseling sessions free

§ $50 per session after initial six

Other (Vaguely Stress-Related) Resources

· Career Center (dealing with stress by getting a job)

o Location: 1922 F St. NW (corner of F and 20^th)

o Hours: M-Th: 8:30am – 6pm

o Walk-in consulting hours: M-F: 1pm – 4pm

o Offers a variety of career support services

· Free in DC (dealing with stress by leaving the house for cheap)

o 101 Free Things to Do in DC

o Free in DC blog

o LivingSocial (area-specific deals via email)

o WTD Deals (basically a lot like LivingSocial)

o Groupon (also a lot like LivingSocial)

o Thrilllist (Information about events, artists, designers, and coupons for DC area)