English Department Newsletter, Summer 2007

Peter Christensen has two essays in a forthcoming volume entitled HORROR 101, edited by Aaron Christensen.  The volume is currently scheduled to appear in 4-6 months.  The book is a collection of essays designed to introduce its readers to the "best" horror films from the silent era to the turn of the century.  Peter’s essays are on ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1933) and THE BODY SNATCHER (1945). The book is published by Midnight Marquee Press.

Arielle Greenberg will be visiting a poetry class at Carleton College in MN in May and reading at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC with Julie Carr and Rebecca Wolff in June.

Amy Hawkins facilitated a panel entitled Art and Activism and AIDS at the Chicago Cultural Center for the Intersections series on April 4, 2007. She also opened for Leslie Feinberg at Genderfusions on April 17 by reading creative nonfiction piece “Without Rhyme, Within Reason.�

Amy adds, “Kevin Fuller, Heather Minges-Wols and I have been selected as a team representing Columbia College Chicago at the APTR/AACU Public Health and Liberal Education Project in Washington D.C, July 9-10.  The July workshop has been funded by the AACU and the CDC and focuses on the creation of public health curriculum for schools that do not have a School of Public Health.  We were selected as one of 19 participating institutions from a pool of 60+ applicants. I just returned from LA where I met with folks at the AIDS Project of LA, Art Center College of Design and UCLA to begin discussions regarding a conference on art and activism.â€?

Garnett Kilberg Cohen's short story, "Fence," was just accepted by Pinch (formerly The River City Riview) in Memphis.  It will be published in Spring 2008.

Sarah Odishoo will have her short story “Testing: Exposing Men� published in the Rio Grande Review in the Spring ’07 issue.

Karen Lee Osborne has a short story, “Incident on Clark St.â€? and a poem, “A Letter to My Father,â€? forthcoming in  Wet:  A Journal of Proper Bathing.

Brendan Riley gave a presentation, "Detectives, the Supernatural, and the Digital Age, or What Do Cal MacDonald, Angel, and Harry Dresden Have to Do with the Internet?.� at the National PCA/ACA National Conference in Boston last April.

Tony Trigilio was on the “Writing Buddhist Humorâ€? panel at the AWP Conference.  In May, he is presenting a paper at the American Literature Association Conference titled, “Selfhood in a Culture of Surveillance: Language and Vision in Ginsberg’s ‘Mugging.’â€?  He did poetry readings for his book The Lama’s English Lessons at Woodland Pattern Book Center (Milwaukee, WI), Café Express (Evanston, IL), and Myopic Books (forthcoming Apr. 29; Chicago).  He also was nominated this year for a Columbia College Chicago Excellence in Teaching Award.

David Trinidad’s anthology SAINTS OF HYSTERIA: A HALF-CENTURY OF COLLABORATIVE AMERICAN POETRY (which he co-edited with Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton) is just out from Soft Skull Press.  At AWP he participated in a panel and book signing for the anthology.  The panel was called “Pull My Daisy: The Making of Collaborative Poetry.â€?  Other participants included Denise Duhamel, Maggie Anderson, and Charles Harper Webb.

During AWP he participated in a reading at a bar called Django.  The reading was organized by one of our graduate students, Brandi Homan.

Also while at AWP, David recorded poems for the Poetry Foundation.  The recording will be posted online, as part of their audio archive, in the future.

In March David promoted SAINTS OF HYSTERIA in New York City, hosting events at KGB Bar, The Cornelia Street Cafe, and the Ear Inn. Participants at these readings included Tom Breidenbach, Elaine Equi, Jacqueline Johnson, Nathan Kernan, Mike Topp, Susan Wheeler, and Rachel Zucker.

David adds, “While in New York, I committed to begin working on a collected poems of Tim Dlugos.  Tim was a wonderful poet; he died of AIDS in 1990.  I edited his selected poems in 1996.  This project will take years; I will begin working on it in the near future.â€?

A short essay David wrote about Tim Dlugos’s poem “Gilligan’s Island� appears in DARK HORSES: POETS ON OVERLOOKED POEMS, just out from University of Illinois Press.

An excerpt from his long poem “A Poem Under the Influence� appears in the current issue of BLOOM.

Big Games Books published his poem “Tiny Moon Notebookâ€? as a limited edition chapbook.  The chapbook, illustrated by Maureen Thorson, comes in a little silver tin.  David says, “It’s really beautifully made.  You can see it (and order it--it’s only $7.00) here:

http://www.reenhead.com/biggame/biggame.html

David was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

TECH/PED CORNER

Summer thinking list

As we move into summer, I'd like to urge you to think about the role technology takes in your courses.  Have you investigated new technologies to see if any of them have potential to aid you in your courses?  At the Computers and Writing conference in Detroit last weekend, I saw several interesting presentations about the ways instructors are using new technologies to augment their writing pedagogies.

iTunes U: One presenter explained how he creates podcasts to amplify the messages and explanations he gives in class.  Through a partnership between his school and Apple, he's able to upload his materials to iTunes, and his students are able to download them via the same channel.  I investigated and found that Columbia has iTunes U already set up! The CIT is even offering a course about how to use it this summer. Check it out.

Wiki-writing: several presenters talked about the powerful possibilities of wiki software for fostering community and facilitating collaborative writing.  I have used wikis for a year or so now, and agree wholeheartedly with their analyses.

Blogs: Blogs are still all the rage.  Many instructors talked about the potential for this epistolary form to augment their students' classroom work and, among other things, bridge the gap between personal and academic writing voices.  Aside from the sharing cultures team, there are other instructors here in English and all over the college using blogs in a variety of ways.

To get started with any of these technologies, just shoot me an email and we'll discuss it.  If there's enough interest, I could even hold a seminar on them this fall.

Have a great summer!

Brendan