Volume 38:3

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1. Observation

It is probably not my place to say so, but this issue of EOTN is being published a day and a half after our library and other parts of campus were closed due to a threat of violence for many hours (but who was counting?), during which we all received multiple emergency updates from our campus administration and police regarding a “man who indicated he had a gun.” There were bomb squads and SWAT teams and yellow tape and nervous students and personal decisions we all had to make. So, like I say, even though it is probably not my place to say it, we might all want to acknowledge, at least privately, and be grateful that, faced with a very difficult situation, the University made some hard calls and did a good job of keeping things going and keeping us safe.

2. Announcements

  • For those of you with students who may not be headed to law school, you might be interested in the Enhancing Student Success on the Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE) workshop sponsored by our own Anne Kellenberger (Coordinator, Learning Resource Center Writing Programs)and Sharon Klein (English/Director, Writing and Reading Across Disciplines). The workshop will be held on Monday, 10/3/2011, from 3:30 to 5:00 pm, in the Writing Center, Bayramian Hall 414. Maybe they’ll end up in law school after all!
  • And whether or not you have students headed to law school, you probably have students interested in the LGBT Civil Rights Lecture by Lieutenant Dan Choi, on National Coming Out Day–Tuesday, October 11 at 6:00 pm in the Northridge Center, University Student Union.  The lecture is free and open to the public. Tickets will not be issued; seating at the event will be first-come, first-served. Faculty members may reserve seats for their classes. For more information and to RSVP, please contact Shanell Tyus, Manager of USU Events at shanell.tyus@csun.edu or 818-677-4171.

3. Reminders

  • Don’t respond to fraudulent emails that ask for account information, especially those that seem to be from some legitimate webmail or tech support source (“we will be undegoing regularly scheduled maintenance, and access to your mailbox via our mail portal will be unavailable for some time during this maintenance period,”). If it asks for account information and you provide it, you will be sorry and may get a virus.
  • And for your students who may need support, don’t forget the following resources available to them: our ever-exemplary Humanities Adivising Office downstairs in JR 240, (818) 677-476; the Learning Resource Center (818) 677-2033; University Counseling Services, (818) 677-2366; Disability Resources, (818) 677-2684; CSUN Help Line (818) 349-HELP (4357).

4. Events

  • RESCHEDULED: The Northridge Review reading has been rescheduled to October 21, in the VPAC Room 181, at 7 pm. Please come celebrate another successful publication and the amazing work of our fantastic creative writing students.
  • While we’re on the subject of our fantastic creative writing students, you won’t want to miss the first Graduate Reading Series event of the year.  This one follows our next Department meeting, at 7:00 pm on October 14, in our own JR 319.

5. Faculty/Staff/Student/Alumni Achievements

  • Scott Andrews will have four poems, “Greasy Grass Fantasy,” 1-4, in the next issue of Yellow Medicine Review A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought.
  • Robert Louis Chianese, Emeritus Professor of English, has been selected as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science–Pacific Division (2011-2012). Bob taught in our department for forty years (1969-2008), where he developed numerous interdisciplinary courses, linking literature and the humanities with areas such as history, art, sociology, psychology, ecology, religious studies, and philosophy. For many years he team-taught a literature and science course with Prof. Joyce Maxwell of Biology. Over the last twelve years and since retirement he has offered symposia linking literature and the arts with science at the annual meetings of the hundred-year-old AAAS-PD. As the first non-scientist president of this organization, Chianese will continue offering cross-fertilization projects linking various disciplines, with a symposium and reading last June on Poetry and Science, and a symposium and juried exhibition of “Art Inspired by Science” the year before.
  • Congratulations to Sharon Klein for being awarded a $250,000 large grant from the California Postsecondary Education Commission for her project, “Enhancing Quality for Teachers of Students Who Are Deaf/Hard of Hearing.” This is a local grant, with the bulk of the funding going to support 25 teachers who work primarily with DHH students to work their ways through the new national Common Core Standards in the Language Arts that California ratified, focusing especially on the Speaking and Listening standards. Sharon will be working with SPED colleagues Rachel Narr-Friedman and Ellen Schneiderman to design workshops (beginning November 5th) and projects to find ways of applying the new standards and of using them to advance both students’ language knowledge and use and teachers’ understanding of some of the helpful linguistic underpinnings–both formal and sociolinguistic underpinnings. This is an important project and wonderful news all around!
  • And from the other side of the world, our own recent graduate, Tommy Vinh Bui, writes to us as a Peace Corps Volunteer from Kazakhstan, Kyzylorda, where he is serving as an education and community development volunteer working at a pedagogical college in Kazakhstan. Good work, Tommy. But we can do good work from here too by helping Tommy with a project he’s envisioned involving a classroom correspondence. As Tommy writes, “Many of my students are profoundly interested in American culture and I feel this is a good opportunity for some cultural exchange. If you could inform the teachers in the department (or anyone you feel that would be interested) about my proposal, I’d greatly appreciate it.” If there are classes where this would work–or if you know of others–this seems like a great opportunity. Let’s think about it.

6. Faculty Development Opportunities

  • The Office of Research and Sponsored Projects has alerted us to a wide range of grant opportunities with upcoming deadlines. For more information, please see the Open Funding page athttp://www.csun.edu/humanities/grants/openfundingopportunities.html and/or discuss with the Humanities Grant Officer at your earliest convenience. (Hmm, that position is currently vacant, but you can still contact the office of the Dean.) Current oppartunities include, but are by no means limited to: NEH, Collaborative Research, (deadline, 12/8/11); Folger Shakespeare Library Research Fellowships (deadline, 11/1/11); NEH Digital Humanities Implementation Grants, (deadline,1/24/12); and the Endangered Language Fund Native Voices Endowment: A Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Legacy Project (10/17/11).
  • Google teams with the CSU. Space is limited–don’t miss out on new exciting webinar opportunities, covering such topics as: Modern search literacy: Leveraging literacies to get quality from popular tools (11/4); Believe it or not: Authority and credibility (11/18); More Google resources for education: Scholar, Books, Patents (and more!) (12/2); and Extending your search skills: Staying relevant in a changing world (12/16). Staying relevant, what could be better? For more information on and to register for these, and other, webinars, please see http://ctfd.sfsu.edu/event/series/google-fall-webinar-series-for-the-csu-community.htm

7. Jobs and Opportunities

  • Illinois State University at Normal, Illinois, seeks applicants for two positions:  Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and Composition, specializing in histories of rhetoric, and Assistant Professor in Children’s and Young Adult Literatures.
  • Otis Books / Seismicity Editions is calling for submissions of manuscripts of poetry and prose (fiction or non-fiction) in the English original or in translation. Deadline is December 15, 2010. Send a hard-copy of your manuscript (only one per author, please) to: Graduate Writing program, Otis College of Art and Design, 9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90045, ATTN: Seismicity. Be sure to include complete contact information (postal and email addresses, as well as a telephone number). Selected manuscripts will be announced February 1, 2011. For more information, please visit: http://www.otis.edu/seismicity/.

Compiled by Kate Haake, Associate Chair