ENGLISH Newsletter
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IN THIS ISSUE: Note From the Chair 2 Faculty News 3 Commencement 4 Undergraduate Student News 5 Department Reunion 6 Graduate Student News 8 Featured Alumnus 9 Alumni News 10 In Memoriam 11 SPRING 2012 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH NEWSLETTER DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH www.english.buffalo.edu NOTE FROM THE CHAIR Dear Friends, NEW BOOKS Surely no year has been busier, or more filled with causes for celebration, than this one! Our faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students are publishing, winning prizes, winning fellowships, and generally Professor Graham Hammill’s illustrating the Department’s excellence. The Mosaic Constitution: Political The alumni reunion was a joyful occasion Theology and Imagination from (see the photographs on pages 6-7), and Machiavelli to Milton (University the Poetics Program celebrated its twentieth of Chicago Press, 2012) is anniversary with two celebratory readings. the first book to place Hebrew Also, two faculty were promoted this spring: scripture at the cutting edge of Dimitri Anastasopoulos to the rank of seventeenth-century literary and associate professor with tenure and Graham political innovation. Hammill to the rank of professor. More great news: the University at Buffalo has elected to go forward with plans for a full-fledged Center for Excellence in Writing, thanks to a proposal sponsored by the English Department (co-authored by Arabella Lyon, Alex Reid, SUNY Distinguished Professor Bruce Jackson and SUNY and myself). We think this Center will help to foster a culture of writing across Distinguished Teaching Professor Diane Christian’s In This the campus, encouraging better writing from undergraduates and graduate Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America students in all departments of the college and the many professional schools. (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) documents the capriciousness of capital punishment and captures the day-to-day Within the Department, we are proposing to begin a new Certificate in experiences of Death Row inmates. U.S. Senator John Lewis writes, Innovative Writing (CIW), providing focused opportunity for MA students to “In This Timeless Time underscores how urgent and critical it is to enjoy the benefits of intensive writing workshops within the critical context give voice to the voiceless, hope to the hopeless. This first-rate work of an MA in English. There is no other program in the U.S., or perhaps the speaks to our shared world, structured around this double focus on creative and critical writing, with need as Americans to particular emphasis on the kind of innovative work for which the Department right the wrong that is has long been known. This Certificate program will enable us to teach graduate capital punishment.” courses in the practice of writing for the first time in over a decade, thereby also Bruce also has eight allowing PhD students to take writing courses. And we are certain that the CIW photographs from his will provide greater energy and opportunities for our undergraduate writers. body of work included in the exhibition catalog As the job market remains weak, we continue our deep concern for the for Wish You Were employment prospects of our students. We are developing an increasingly Here: The Buffalo robust placement program for graduate students and are working to develop Avant-garde in the more internships for undergraduates and MA students. We are also hoping to 1970s (Albright-Knox develop more funding support for students at all levels. Art Gallery, 2012). In short, we have had a great academic year and are looking forward to the next with enthusiasm and anticipation. Come see us when you’re in town, join us at any of our many lectures, readings, or events, or let us know about your SUNY Distinguished Professor own accomplishments, enthusiasms, and plans. We’d love to see you and hear Cristanne Miller’s Reading in from you. Time: Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century (University Cordially, of Massachusetts Press, 2012) Cristanne Miller provides new ways of situating Emily Dickinson in relation to nineteenth-century literary culture, examining how her innovative practices relate to the popular poetry of her day. DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 2 www.english.buffalo.edu FACULTY NEWS Andrew Stott, Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the English Department, has been selected to be the next Director of the UB Honors College. Andy is the winner of a SUNY Chancellors Award for Excellence in Teaching and has published two books, Comedy (Routledge, 2005) and The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness, and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian (Canongate, 2009), the latter of which has won numerous awards including the 2010 George Freedley Award. Looking at this new position as less a shift to administrative staff and more an extension of his work in the English Department, Andy is excited to create new curriculum, build community in and outside the classroom, and work with UB students in the interdisciplinary and challenging environment of the University Honors College. Committed to the “think globally, act locally” approach of the Honors College, Andy plans to emphasize civic engagement and active student participation in their educational, local, and global communities. He is also pleased to continue teaching and working within the English Department. Of Andy’s selection, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Diane Christian writes: “In a national search, Andy Stott emerged from a pool of highly qualified candidates as a brilliant and visionary choice for Director of the Honors College andAssociate Dean for Undergraduate Education. The Search Committee, Honors staff and students, and University administration were unqualified in their regard for him. Professor Stott succeeds the founding director SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Kipp Herreid. He will lead Honors College development in the new heart of the campus Capen offices, setting a standard of excellence for undergraduate education at UB.” Associate Professor Rachel Ablow won an ACLS Fellowship for 2012- 13 to work on her book project “Speaking Pain.” Her book argues that Victorian writers consistently describe pain in terms that run counter to Congratulations! our usual assumptions that pain is essentially private, prior to or even resistant to language, and unavailable to doubt. Instead, she argues, Dimitri Anastasopoulos has been promoted to the rank of they offer a model of pain that refuses to imagine the subject as prior to Associate Professor. the social, that resists the reduction of pain to a medical or physiological problem, and so too negates any too-clear distinction between physical Graham Hammill has been promoted to the rank of and emotional suffering. Such invocations insist on pain as an ethical and Professor and been awarded a 2012-13 Humanities Institute a political problem rather than simply a medical or even a psychological Faculty Research Fellowship. one. In addition, they call attention to pain’s literary dimension, revolving as they do around the nature, limitations, and resources of language. Associate Professor Carine Mardorossian received a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. A member of the Department since 1999, Carine has taught a range of courses including immigrant literature, Caribbean literature, and environmental literature. She has just completed the manuscript for her second book, “Framing the Victim: Rape, Agency, and Masculinity in the Contemporary United States.” Adjunct News Doug Basford, Assistant Director of Composition, has won a $2500 poetry prize from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund, the second time he has been awarded a prize by that organization. Out of 1600 applicants, Doug also received one of 30 fellowships to attend poetry workshops in Concordia University’s 2012 Summer Literary Seminars hosted in Vilnius, Lithuania. DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 3 www.english.buffalo.edu COMMENCEMENT The English Department Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony took place on Friday, May 11 in Clemens 120 From 11:00-1:00. Robert Daly, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Patrick Riedy, winner of the George Knight Houpt Prize and the Friends of the University Libraries Prize, addressed the seniors and their families. “As each of us moves forward, writing our own narratives, we will re- member fragments of our experience here at UB. However, I like to believe that what we will remem- ber more than anything is the collective search for truth through words. I feel it is safe to say that part of what we all hope for through literature is a better understanding of why we are here, on earth. If nothing else, literature offers us the comfort of knowing we are not alone. It is hard to make note of why each of us chose to study literature. Some of us want to be teachers, some lawyers, and some may want to boycott books for a few years. Whatever you plan on doing from this day forward, chances are words will find you at the proper time. Remember, then, how important it is to share those words, to write them down or tell your friends and family. Because words are, simultaneously, what we study to find ourselves and what we use to understand each other.” -Patrick Riedy, BA 2012 Congratulations and good luck to all of our graduating seniors. The following have shared their future plans: Karina Galinskaya will work for the AEON Corporation of Japan, teaching Caitlin Scully is going to the Graduate School of Education at UB for an English to adults and college students in Okayama for a year. Ed.M. in English Language Arts Education for grades 5-12. Caleb Houseknecht will work as the Content Writer/Journalist for the Rachelle Toarmino will be working at Talking Leaves Books, doing company KegWorks. freelance artwork, writing, and interning for some local artists as their Public Relations Assistant. Eventually, Rachelle hopes to attend graduate school. Zachary Lang is going to SUNY Cortland for an MA in English.