Upcoming Events - GW Campus and EGSA

We are pleased to present a list of the upcoming department and campus events for GW EGSA students. These are great opportunities for academic enrichment, for catching up with your fellow English Grads, and for connecting with other scholars from different schools. We hope to see you there! Coming up we will be posting information on how you can participate in EGSA next year, what EGSA events are still ahead, and useful ways to wrap up your semester. You can always follow our blog using the via email box to the right or  "like" us on Facebook to receive updates.  

March 25 MEMSI is holding an interdisciplinary, transhistorical symposium on "Cultural Translations: Medieval / Early Modern / Postmodern" to be held at George Washington University in D.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 and lunch. 

Website: http://www.gwu.edu/~acyhuang/culturaltranslations.html

PRESENTATIONS

Medieval
Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Toronto, English and Medieval Studies): Translating the Past: 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 a Golden Age Spanish Epic

Postmodern
Peter Donaldson (MIT, Literature): The King's Speech: Shakespeare, Empire and Global Media
Margaret Litvin (Boston, Arabic and Comparative Literature): topic to be announced

March 25 5:30 PM, the GW EGSA and DC Queer Studies will collaborate on a reading group/discussion/seminar.  It will be held in Rome Hall 771 and will be a discussion of readings from Freeman's book. And there will be pizza.  This should be a great collaboration between Georgetown, GW, and other area schools and between faculty and graduate students.

March 27 9:30 am the American Religion Working Group will meet for a discussion of "Sex and Secularism." We will come together to discuss two articles from the journal Social Research (Winter 2009): "American Protestant Moralism and the Secular Imagination: From Temperance to the Moral Majority" by Susan Harding and "Obama's Neo-New Deal: Religion, Secularism, and Sex in Political Debates Now" by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini. We will meet in the American Studies building, in room P201, at 9:30 AM, and will provide coffee and snacks. This new working group aims to bring together scholars who find (or suspect) that religion occupies a space within their work. We approach the study of religion from a variety of vantage points, integrating it into our histories, analyses of literature, theories of sexuality, and accounts of politics; the hope of the working group is that it is this interdisciplinary position that can produce the most interesting conversations about how religion has shaped American history and culture. At this first meeting, we can discuss the possibilities  and goals for this working group, including future meetings. If this time doesn't work for you but you are interested in joining us, please send an email to Kim Bolles (kpend@gwmail.gwu.edu). 

March 28 4pm Elizabeth Freeman, author of Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories will be speaking at Georgetown.

March 29 7:30pm Elizabeth Goldsmith (French, Boston U) specializes in seventeenth-century France. Light refreshments provided, books available for purchase. RSVP by March 27 jawood@bu.edu

BOSTON UNIVERSITY WASHINGTON ACADEMIC CENTER

1776 Massachusetts Ave NW, Suite 650

Close to Dupont Circle metro

April 3 7:30pm New York actor and playwright Gabrielle Maisels will bring her
one-woman performance "Bongani" to George Washington University's
Black Box Theater. The play is the second of her trilogy based on her
experiences growing up in a Jewish activist family in South Africa.

Maisels is the granddaughter of Israel Aaron Maisels, the lead defense
attorney for Nelson Mandela during the Treason Trials (1958-61)

The Program is sponsored by Africana Studies, Theater and Dance,
Judaic Studies, English and Women's Studies

RSVP preferred Africana@gwu.edu

March 30 9am-5:00pm The sixth annual Collected Stories and & Twice Told Tales conference will take place in MPA Building, Room 310 located at 805 21st St. NW, Washington, DC 20052. This day-long conference will include a collective of American Studies scholarly papers. A full schedule of events will be available online in early March 

This event will feature Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor of English, The University of Chicago who will present a keynote address from 4:00-5:30 titled “Structures of Unfeeling: Mysterious Skin.” Information about the keynote address is attached. 

You are welcome to join us for some or all of the talks. This event is free and open to the public and no RSVP is required. We hope to see you there!

Newberry Research Workshop

Check out this unique opportunity for Academic Enrichment and Research. It comes highly recommended by our own Dr. Huang. Let us know if you will be participating! 

Friday, September 28, 2012

9:00 am to 5:00 pm

The Poetics and Politics of Cultural Translation

Directed by Jyotsna Singh, Michigan State University
This workshop will be relevant to early-career graduate students in a range of fields and disciplines, including, but not limited to: Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, History, Literature in English or other relevant languages, Middle Eastern Studies, and Religious Studies. The workshop will help graduate students to develop and fine-tune skills in research methods and theoretical approaches, through the lens of the growing subfield of early modern Anglo-Muslim encounters.
Eligibility: Enrollment is limited to 20. Graduate students in a terminal master’s program and those who have not yet completed comprehensive exams in a PhD program may apply. No language prerequisites. Students from Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies consortium member institutions have priority.
About  |  Schedule  |  Pre-workshop Preparation  |  Travel Funding |  Register Online


The aims of this workshop are twofold:

·  to guide a close micro-reading of selected archival materials, primarily from the Newberry special collections, that illuminate the interactions and “translations” between early modern English and Muslim empires and travelers, as evident in both texts and images

·  to explore two related thematic strands: the emergence and divergence of Muslim empires from both English and Muslim perspectives; and the figure of the ambassador or emissary—both official and unofficial—as mediator and translator between different cultures and empires.

Drawing on the growing scholarly engagement with Anglo-Muslim relations from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, this workshop will focus on figurations of Islam and Muslim cultures, within both intercultural and intra-cultural contexts. While European Renaissance cultures cast both a skeptical and a fascinated eye on the Muslim world on their peripheries, we hope to illuminate those Muslim societies from both local and globalizing contexts.


Schedule
8:30 – 9:00: Coffee and continental breakfast
9:00 – 9:45: Presentation by Jyotsna Singh
9:45 – 11:00: Discussion: participants share precirculated responses to the required readings
11:00 – 11:40: Obtain reader cards/library tour and orientation
11:40 – 12:30: Catered lunch
12:30 – 1:15: Presentation by Matthew Dimmock, University of Sussex
2:15 – 3:30: Rare books “show-and-tell” session
3:30 – 5:00: Concluding discussion


Pre-workshop preparation
The participants of this workshop will prepare short responses on one or two of the works below to be precirculated prior to the workshop (details of the assignment and copies of the readings will be made available to those who register):
1. Thomas Newton [Celio Curione], A Notable Historie of the Saracens (1575) [Case F 622.62]
2. Richard Eden, The history of Travayle in the West and East Indies (1577) [VAULT Ayer 110.E2 1577]
3. Sir Paul Rycaut [and Richard Knolles], The Turkish history, from the original of that nation, to the growth of the Ottoman empire (1687) [Wing folio F 59.4661]
4. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625) - especially books 4 (pp. 535-92) and 9 (pp. 1383-1406 and pp. 1464-83) [2 copies: Case folio G 12.71 and VAULT Ayer 110.P9 1625][1] 
5. Thomas Preston, Lamentable Tragedie, mixed full of plesant mirth, containing the life of Cambises, king of Percia(1584) [VAULT Case 3A 650]
6. Elkanah Settle, Cambyses, king of Persia: a tragedy (1670) [Case V 135.S48755]
7. William Bedwell, Mahommedis Imposturae (1615)
8. Tarih-i Hind-i garbi [A history of the India of the West] manuscript in Turkish c. 1600. [VAULT Ayer MS 612].[2]. English Translation - E101.G66 1990.
9. Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (1504-1529).  Ed. and Trans. W.M. Thackston. Modern Library Paperback Edition, New York: Random House, 2002.
10. Humayun Nama: The History of Humayun. Princess Gulbadan. (c.1580). Trans. Ed. Annette Beveridge. London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1902. [Y 301.641 v.13]
11. Tuzk-i-Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir (1569-1609) Eds. Alexander Rogers and Henry Beveridge, London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1909-1914. [Y 301.641 v.19, 22]
Download a bibliography of secondary works.
We encourage participants to plan to return to the Newberry on the following Saturday morning to explore Newberry materials on their own in the Readings Rooms (open 9:00 am-1:00 pm on Saturdays).

Journal Announcement: Monsters and the Monstrous

This came across our desk recently, and we would like to share this unique opportunity for publication. They are accepting a wide range of items for this publication, but hurry - the deadline is March 21st. 

Journal Announcement and Call for Submissions

Monsters and the Monstrous

Volume 2, Number 1, Special Issue on Monstrous Memory

The Editors welcome contributions to the journal in the form of

articles, reviews, reports, art and/or visual pieces and other forms

of submission on the following or related themes:

Monstrous Memory.

Sethe: "It's so hard for me to believe in . Some things go.
Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. .
. . But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns
down, it's gone, but the place-the picture of it-stays, and not just
in my rememory, but out there, in the world".

Denver: "If it's still there, waiting, that must mean that nothing
ever dies."

Sethe: "Nothing ever does." (Morrison, Beloved)

 Monsters of memory, monstrous memories, monsters as memories.

Keywords: memory, remembrance, history, trauma, the past, undead,
re-memory, undying, haunting, unheimlich, spectre's, monsters, ghosts.

The Call for Articles:

This special issue of Monsters and the Monstrous is looking for
articles and reviews that are based around the idea of Monstrosity and
Memory.

Memories of the past, whether individual, societal or national
constantly invade our everyday lives. Sometimes as the remembrance of
monstrous past events that can, and should, never die or be forgotten
but also as disruptive and destructive presences that upset, intrude
and invade our equilibrium and sense of self.

EXAMPLES:

Monstrous events and people that live on today:

-the holocaust and national geneocides, hiroshima etc.

-natural disasters, tsunami's, eartquakes and volcanic eruprions.

-monstrous figures from the past such as Rasputin, Jack the Ripper,
Stalin.

-the national and cultural disparities in the conceptions of all of
the above.

Monstrous entities from the past in fiction and film:

- Manifestations of the national past and political extremism, The
Grudge, Godzilla, Dead Snow, Frostbite

- Representation of monsters that lived before humans, Cthulu
(Lovecraft), Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers, Priest.

-

Ghosts and Spirits that Haunt the Present:

-Popular series such as Medium, The Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer

-Discontented figures that want justice or revenge, Woman in Black,
Death Watch, Ringu, Nightmare on Elm Street

- traumatic events that cannot be escaped, Silent Hill, Triangle,
Inception

Whether Proustian flashbacks or actual embodiments , metaphorical,
psychological, or phantasical the monsters of the past will not
relinquish their hold on our times, lives and imaginations.

Submissions for this Issue are required by 31st March 2012 at the
latest.

Contributions to the journal should be original and not under

consideration for other publications at the same time as they are

under consideration for this publication. Submissions are to be made

electronically wherever possible using either Microsoft® Word or
.rtf

format.

Length Requirements:

Articles - 5,000 – 7,000 words.

Reflections, reports and responses - 1,000 – 3,000 words.

Book reviews - 500 – 4,000 words.

Other forms of contributions are welcome.

Submission Information:

Send submissions via e-mail using the following Subject Line:

‘Journal: Contribution Type (article/review/...): Author Surname’
and marked "Monstrous Memory."

Submissions E-Mail Address:

monstersjournal@inter-disciplinary.net <javascript:location.href=>

Submissions will be acknowledged within 48 hours of receipt.

Contributions are also invited for future issues of the journal which
will include: "Twilight and Teaching the Monstrous", "Monstrous
Spaces."

We also invite submission to our special features on Non-English
Language Book Reviews, and Monstrous Pedagogy. Please mark entries for
these topics with their

We look forward to folks getting involved in and with the journal.

Warmly,

Rob



---------------
If you do not want to receive any more conference information,
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=d9e695351eee9986cb0a1344552cd2fc

To update your preferences and to unsubscribe visit
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/lists/?p=preferences&uid=d9e695351eee9986cb0a1344552cd2fc

Forward a Message to Someone
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/lists/?p=forward&uid=d9e695351eee9986cb0a1344552cd2fc&mid=3581
===============
Dr Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Leader
inter-disciplinary.net

Registered in England No: 05494488
Harvestway House, 28 High Street
Witney, Oxfordshire, OX28 6RA
Tel: 01993 882087

Please note: The inter-disciplinary.net office is open from 9.30am to
1.30pm Monday to Friday. We check our email once per day at 10.00am UK time
- and we will endeavour to reply to you in a timely fashion.

University Job Opportunity

Following up on our last post, we have come across announcements for University job opportunities for Graduate students. The GW Student and Academic Support Department lists several part-time and full-time fellowship opportunities for current and continuing Graduate students. Check back later in the week for additional positions, and be sure to check out the External posts as well (which includes a long list of positions open at American University).
Check back with us this week for posts about upcoming Academic Enrichment events as well as CFP and Journal posts. Remember to "like" us on Facebook to receive updates and/or subscribe to our blog via email with the box to the right.