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!

This Week: Academic Enrichment Events

We want to take this opportunity to remind you of two important Academic Enrichment events taking place this week. We know it is difficult with classes and work to make time to attend on-campus events, but we strongly recommend that you do. These events are invaluable learning and sharing opportunities that connect you with your program community and enable you to stay abreast of new scholarship. Even if you are not a MEMSI scholar or involved with African American Studies, we encourage you to attend these events. You never know how valuable someone's ideas can be to your own or how valuable time spent with your peers can be to your sanity! Please consider attending the following events. Also, if you get the chance to participate, we encourage you to share your experience with us - via email or in the comments or forum on this blog. Your feedback and observations are important to us.

Friday, October 7th 9am - Jessica Frazier, doctoral candidate at GW, will discuss her paper called "Re-Orienting the Diamond: India, the Transnational Jewel Trade, and the Early Modern Theater.” A light breakfast will be served. We meet at 9AM in Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St NW). Her paper will be pre-circulated ahead of time to encourage fruitful discussion. If you would like a copy and to r.s.v.p, please email lduckert@gwu.edu. Also, check out this post about Jessica Frazier's participation in the NEH seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library this summer: "Shakespeare: From the Globe to the Global." 


Tuesday, October 4th 2pm - E. Patrick Johnson, the Northwestern University Professor and performer, will visit GW during the run of his critically acclaimed one-man show "Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South" at Arlington's Signature Theater. He will discuss the questions raised by his show in a presentation at the Multicultural Student Services Center, 2127 G Street. Look forward to a conversation that draws a diverse crowd (a great networking opportunity!). Co-sponsored by Africana Studies, the MSSC, and other GW units.

Johnson's books include the award-winning Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke UP). You can see him discuss "Sweet Tea" here. Also, Johnson last visited GWU as a guest of Prof. Wald's "Post-Soul Black Literature and Culture" course in 2007, when he was workshopping an early version of "Sweat Tea." He also consulted with faculty participants in CCAS's Performance Studies Seminar