Upcoming Events

Join us in November for two exciting events at George Washington University Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute and Dean's Scholars in Shakespeare Program: 

On Monday, Nov. 12, from 1-2 pm, Dr. Dennis Kennedy will be presenting a lecture on “The Culture of the Spectator.” Currently Beckett Professor of Drama Emeritus in Trinity College Dublin, Dennis Kennedy will consider examples from sports, popular culture, and the theatre in order to open up a discussion about a ‘culture’ of the spectator in the present. 

For more information: http://www.gwmemsi.com/2012/09/the-culture-of-spectator-lecture-by.html

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Erika Lin will be with us on Tuesday, Nov. 27, from 11:10 am-12:20 pm, to explore early modern theatre. Lin, an Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University, takes a close look at Thomas Dekker’s play “The Shoemaker’s Holiday” as she explores the process by which festivity was transformed into commercial theatre through the act of performance in “Playing with Time: Pancakes and Bells in ‘The Shoemaker’s Holiday.’”

For more information: http://www.gwmemsi.com/2012/10/playing-with-time-pancakes-and-bells-in.html

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GW MEMSI: http://www.gwmemsi.com/

GW Dean's Scholars in Shakespeare: http://columbian.gwu.edu/undergraduate/programs/specialacademicopportunities/shakespeare

Both of these events are open to the public and will be held on the George Washington University campus in Rome Hall, room 771 (801 22nd St. NW, Washington, D.C., one block from the GW/Foggy Bottom metro station). 

For Flyers on each of these events visit: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/esu4js1n2atkjml/DennisKennedy_GW-poster.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ze3o4ch45r1evc8/LinPoster.jpg

Mark Your Calendars! April Campus and EGSA Events

We know this time of year is crunch time, but we have a long list of exciting events coming up this month. EGSA would also like to add that elections are coming up, so stay tuned for Election information concerning your 2012-2013 EGSA Board members (and we will be having a party!). We hope to see you at some of these events - remember that taking a break is necessary, and networking is helpful! 

April 5 Alternate Career Session 5:30-6:30pm Rome 771 Meet our panel of professionals who took their English Graduate degrees and turned them into awesome, interesting careers. Learn about transferable skills and how to make that CV work for you in the professional world. Hosted by EGSA. Light refreshments provided.

April 7 9pm-12am Please join us for night-caps and scamels as we launch the Luminary Tempest at the Shakespeare Association of America in Boston.
The Charlesmark Hotel lounge, 655 Boylston Street,  Boston, MA

April 9 Thomas Bisson “Crisis in Early Ducal Normandy: Some Conjectural History” 2110 Taliaferro Hall; Refreshments 4:00, Seminar 4:30pm.

April 13 Please join us for our last event of the spring semester: a breakfast seminar with Danna Agmon (History, Virginia Tech). We begin at 9 AM in Rome 771 (801 22nd St. NW). Breakfast will be served. Her paper is pre-circulated; please RSVP to me [lduckert@gwu.edu] and I will send you a copy. 

April 14 Hear great poetry from exciting DC writers and help women in your community--come to Will Read for Women, the first poetry reading/pantry drive of its kind! 

So to Speak, a feminist literary journal, will host our first reading drive to benefit a local domestic violence shelter. The reading will feature poetry by Sarah Browning, Joe Hall, Kateema Lee, and Meg Ronan, with an open mic to follow. Audience members are asked to bring toiletry items and other pantry necessities to donate to the shelter, Bethany House. The list of suggested items follows.

The reading is scheduled for Saturday, April 14th at 8:30 p.m. in the Johnson Center Bistro, a cafe on the first floor of the student center at George Mason's Fairfax campus. Parking is available nearby in the Mason Pond, Shenandoah, and Rappahannock parking decks. We'd appreciate your support in reaching out into the community and getting this event off the ground! Contact us at sotospeakjournal@gmail.com with any questions. 

April 19 “Plan Your PhD” 3:30-4:30pm Rome 771 Hosted by EGSA for current PhD students. Come learn about new department policies, check out DegreeMap, and get a chance to ask advanced PhD students all the questions you might have about your program. 

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!

Friday Fun and A New Research Tool

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.

Upcoming Events

November 18

Teaching and Pedagogy Seminar hosted by EGSA 12:30-4:30pm in Rome 771. Please join us for three sessions – 12:30-1:30pm Brown 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 be available for the breaks. Watch our blog for the final schedule and speakers list. To r.s.v.p, check out our Facebook page.

December 1

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

December 2

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

December 2

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

This Week on EGSA

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

November 14

From Jenna Weissman Joselit, GWU Judaic Studies:
In conjunction with The Merchant of Venice production and class that I'm team-teaching with Leslie Jacobson in TRDA, the law school will be holding a conversation next Monday, November 14th, at 3 p.m. in the Burns Faculty Conference Center (B505) of the law school, between Dean Paul Schiff Berman and Barry Edelstein of New York's Public Theater on the legal implications of the play.  The conversation will be moderated by The New Republic's legal affairs editor and GW law professor, Jeffrey Rosen.  It promises to be quite a lively occasion.

November 16

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

November 16

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

November 18

Teaching and Pedagogy Seminar hosted by EGSA 12:30-4:30pm in Rome 771. Please join us for three sessions – 12:30-1:30pm Brown 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 be available for the breaks. Watch our blog for the final schedule and speakers list. To r.s.v.p, check out our Facebook page.

December 1

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

December 2

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

This Week with EGSA

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 World Literatures”

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

March 21-25, 2012 The 33^rd International Conference on the Fantastic in Arts “The Monstrous Fantastic” 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. What are the differences between résumés and CVs? Develop a better understanding of these two primary career and job search documents, including appropriate content, format and length. Learn more about how to utilize these two important self marketing materials to advance your career. Co-sponsored by the Office of Graduate Student Enrollment 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 her acclaimed new book, Black Gotham, a cultural history of free black elites 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).

Outside the Box: What Other Departments Have to Offer

Borrowed Image

Graduate School in English can be so overwhelming that we lose sight of what other departments have to offer. Many seasoned Grads will tell you that looking beyond our department and beyond our institution can benefit your studies and your overall graduate experience. Here are just some of the ways that you can tap into the valuable resources of other departments:
1) Take a class. I know it is hard to say no to the offerings of our own department each semester, but take a minute and consider the course options in different departments. Focusing on a specific historical period of Literature? Consider taking a graduate history course to supplement your understanding of that period. Interested in a specific theoretical approach? See what your campus has to offer in related fields. At least a few people on the EGSA board have taken courses in other departments and found the experience enriching and helpful.
2) Attend an event hosted by another department. You already know how busy the GW English calendar is, but have you considered checking out the history department calendar? Or the Women's Studies department calendar? Take a moment to look through events that might interest you - sometimes these talks can generate new ideas for your work or offer unique opportunities to meet interesting people in your field. As it happens, there is a history department event approaching this Thursday (see the event details below)
3) Join a Colloquium or Seminar group. Not only will this enable you to get different perspectives from different departments, it will also enable you to make contacts with people at other institutions. These groups meet around once a month and often have pre-circulated reading material. GW MEMSI and 19th Century Colloquium are just two examples - check the other departments to see if they host anything similar.
4) Take a class at another institution. Although the application process for this can be tricky, EGSA strongly encourages you to consider the course offerings in the area schools. This could be a great opportunity to take a specialized course in your field or to try something new.

So consider tapping into the valuable area/department resources. If you have questions about these options, talk with your adviser or mentor - ask around, we are willing to be that most of your peers have taken advantage of these opportunities.

Start your involvement with another department by attending the GW History Research Colloquium's talk with Professor Goldberg this Thursday October 13th at 2:00-:3:30pm in Phillips 328. Hear Prof. Goldberg speak on "Reading Other People's Mail: What Can We Discover about Islamic and Jewish Culture from Eleventh-Century Mercantile Letters Discarded in the Cairo Geniza?"
Also, check out this other upcoming history event: 
November 10, 4-6, Dagmar Herzog, City University of New York, "Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History," location t.b.a.

What Monsters Mean

Borrowed Image

EGSA is excited to announce the upcoming MEMSI "Monster" series co-sponsored with your favorite English Graduate Student Association. Right before Halloween, these two events promise lively discussions about ghost stories, vampires, and medieval monsters. We encourage you to take advantage of this unique opportunity for academic enrichment and plain fun. Come network with your peers, your professors, and scholars from other programs. Even if you are not in the MEMSI program, we highly recommend attending these events which promise interesting developments in recent scholarship as well as interdisciplinary discussion opportunities!

EGSA would also like to announce the creation of a reading group to meet in advance of these events for some "monstrous" discussion about the work of our speakers. Come join us for Halloween-themed snacks and a discussion of "What Monsters Mean." If  you would like to participate in the reading group, please complete this Doodle Poll to indicate your time preference or email Peyton Joyce (pmjoyce@gwu.edu) for additional information. To R.S.V.P. to the events, and to receive copies of the texts, please email Lowell Duckert (lduckert@gwu.edu). 

For more information about the speakers at these events, check out the GW MEMSI Blog. 

What Monsters Mean: 10/27 & 10/28

Join us for both events if you can:

Thursday October 27 at 4 PM, 1957 E St. NW Room 213

Professors Weinstock and Mittman will lead "What Monsters Mean," an informal discussion of the cultural significance of monsters from the medieval period to the present day. The event is open to all who wish to attend.

Friday October 28 at 12 PM, Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW)

GW MEMSI and the English Graduate Student Association (EGSA) are co-sponsoring a seminar on monster theory. Both professors will discuss selections from the work as well as the contours of the larger field. This lunchtime seminar is open to all interested faculty and graduate students, but you must pre-register with Lowell Duckert to receive the readings [lduckert@gwu.edu]:
1. Selections from Jeffrey Weinstock, Vampires: Undead Cinema. Wallflower Press's "Short Cuts" series. Forthcoming 2011.

2. Asa Simon Mittman and Susan Kim, "Anglo-Saxon Frames of Reference: Spatial Relations on the Page and in the World," Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art, vol. 2 (2009), with Susan Kim.

3. Asa Simon Mittman, "Introduction: The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies," Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman, with Peter Dendle (London: Ashgate, January 2012). 

See you later this month!

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