Thank you for voting too!
1. Announcements
Proposition 30 sweeps California coast! (well, excepting Del Norte, Ventura, Orange, and San Diego counties). With Imperial, Mono, and Alpine counties also embracing the measure, the final count in Tuesday’s elections was 53.9% Yes to 46.1% No. “Now we have more revenue,” Governor Brown has said, “but that revenue will be used prudently and judiciously.” Well, here’s a prudent and judicious sigh of relief, and a big thank you to everyone who helped make this happen.
President Dianne Harrison has announced a new initiative: Help Make CSUN Shine Brighter. Every few weeks or months, a new topic or issue that can benefit from the innovative ideas and solutions of the campus community will be posted at a campus website, with everyone invited to contribute. To find out the inaugural question, go to http://www.csun.edu/MakeCSUNShineBrighter/ and share your thoughts!
And in the realm of all bright shining things, please join me in welcoming the arrival of a brand new member of the human race, who will be known as Oliver and who joined the family of Anthony, Anna, and Agnes Dawahare at 12:36 p.m. on Halloween (although possibly only Anna was spooked). Weighing in at a healthy 8 lbs, 5 oz, Oliver is gorgeous to boot! Congratulations to all of them on this truly blessed event.
This next announcement pales in comparison to new human beings, but November is–ta daaa!–National Novel Writing Month, the largest writing event in the world, bringing together 300,000 writers from over 60 countries for one month of literary abandon. Participants pledge to write 50,000 words in 30 days, starting from scratch and reaching “The End” by November 30. There are no judges, no prizes, no fees, and entries are deleted from the server before anyone even reads them. Although the event emphasizes creativity and adventure over creating a literary masterpiece, more than 90 novels begun during NaNoWriMo have since been published, including Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, and Cinder by Marissa Meyer, all #1 New York Times Best Sellers.Many university professors have incorporated the NaNoWriMo challenge into their curriculum as an extra credit option. Thousands of ambitious students take on the challenge on top of their regular coursework and gain not only a novel at the end of the month, but also a refreshing confidence in their writing abilities. For more information about resources for students and instructors, please visit www.nanowrimo.org/en/nanouniversity. Please let your students know. And while you are at it, how about you? Don’t you have a novel in you to write before finals? If not you, who? Seems we need all the novels we can get.
And when you are done with your novel, you can celebrate at the department party, so please mark your calendars now for December 14, from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (awards will be presented at about 1:30), when everything will already be different.
Or if you need a little extra time for that novel you’re writing, consider applying for the spring Faculty Fellows Awards, which will provide 3 units of reassigned time or funding for a student assistant or research-related travel to the successful (and happy) candidates. The application deadline is November 21 (but awards are contingent on available funding). Application forms are available in Word format from Associate Dean Juana Mora’s office.
The Fall 2012 Northridge Review had a fabulous launch on November 2 with a large and enthusiastic crowd attending and a host of amazing readers. Congratulations to all involved on yet another beautiful issue filled with good work! And a special thank you to Mona Houghton for making it happen, term after term.
Speaking of excellent reading, the four finalists for CSUN’s 2013-2014 Common Reading are: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo; Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes; The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir by Michele Norris’ Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight about Animals by Hal Herzog. The selection committee will choose the winning title for AY 2013-2014 in January 2013. But you still have time to let your opinion be know! For more information (and an invitation to share your own opinion), see http://www.csun.edu/afye/Titles-2013-2014.html.
The Eighteenth-Century Reading Group is hosting their second meeting on Tuesday, November 27th, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., in ST 701. This is a new group that seeks to advance the conversation surrounding literature from this period among the CSUN community and others, and the first book under discussion will be Francoise de Graffigny’s Letters of a Peruvian Woman. Even if you haven’t read the book, please feel free to come by–all are welcome! Come for the fun discussion, free snacks, and friendly faces, and to be among the first to hear what the next reading is going to be. For more information, please contact Hannah Jorgenson, at, or hannah.jorgenson.22@my.csun.edu, or Stephanie Harper, at stephanie.harper.15@my.csun.edu.
The Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, CSUN Pride Center and the Distinguished Visiting Speakers Program, Office of Graduate Studies, is pleased to be sponsoring a workshop for emerging writers and performing artists offered by Raquel Gutiérrez, a performance writer, playwright, and cultural organizer who has studied in university settings; performed in a variety of locations; and published widely in such venues as Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing and the Journal of Chicana/Latina Studies. The workshop will address such questions as: How do we invoke our truths in ways that create a dynamic cross-hatched narrative that straddles identity, politics, affect and community building; and how we do create a vernacular around the building of community and other senses of belonging? Using imagery work and a wide variety of experimental situations, participants will develop skills to communicate with text and the body and transform ideas into performance, with an emphasis on both solo and group explorations as well as performance process. The workshop will take place on Wednesday November 14th, from 4:30 to 6:45 p.m., in the Colleague’s Room (2nd floor of the Sierra Center). For more info contact denise.sandoval@csun.edu.
It’s English Honors Open House time again, which offers students a chance to talk about our Honors Option. It will take place on Monday, Nov. 26th, between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. in the Whitsett Room (Sierra Hall 451). Please feel free to come whenever you prefer for as long as your schedule allows!
A Post-Apocalypse Budget Update will be being help by Provost Harry Hellenbrand on Thursday, November 15, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., in the Music Recital Hall (Cypress Hall – CY158).
2. Reminders
The end of the semester is quickly approaching and as you may have noticed, we’re going right up to Christmas this year! (at least this is better than the year when grades were due after New Years!). Finals start on December 11. To facilitate getting the grades in and to ensure that the staff have plenty of time to do all the things that they need to do to finalize grades, please have your grades posted NO LATER THAN 4:30 p.m., Friday December 21st. Put it on your calendars, please! Then we can all enjoy the last weekend before Christmas and Christmas Eve. If you have any questions or concerns about this, contact Jackie.
And even though we’re busy, and always especially so at school, we should take care not to forget about the Department Amenities Fund. Years ago, this fund was established to pay for the holiday party, for retirement gifts and other acknowledgements of our colleagues, and for refreshments at department meetings. The donations requested are modest, but vital for the small things we enjoy as a department. For those of you who have not yet contributed, the suggested donations are the same as last year’s: Professors, $70; Associal Professors, $50; Assistant Professors, $40; and Lecturers, $10. All donations, in any amount, will be gladly accepted. Please make your check payable to “Amenities” and give it to Marlene Cooksey (ST 704). (And please do not leave cash in her mailbox.) And do it soon–the holidays will soon be upon us.
There will be no Department meeting this Friday, November 9, as previously scheduled. The Department having been efficient and productive and finding itself with no pressing matters, a Department Meeting Holiday has been declared.
But don’t forget the Graduate Reading Series still being held on Friday night at 7:00 p.m. in the LJN Reading Room (JR 319) and featuring the astonishing CSUN writers, Eric Barnhart (fiction), Raja Visweswaran (playwriting), and Robin Jewel Smith (poetry). Come out and support our graduate students.
Anyone thinking of FERP’ing? The deadline for the 2013/2014 academice year will be February 21, 2013. Tempting? Please see Jackie.
3. Opportunities
As of September 4, 2012, applications are accepted for the 2013 Ford Diversity Fellowships Program for Achieving Excellence in College and University Teaching. Full eligibility information and online applications are available on our website at: http://nationalacademies.org/ford. But do it soon–the deadlines are coming up (November 14 for Predoctoral, November 19 for Dissertation and Postdoctoral).
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Los Angeles office is looking for highly motivated, well informed college students with excellent writing and communication skills for internship positions with flexible hours for the winter, spring, and summer sessions. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, until all positions are filled. Interested students should follow the instructions given on the Intern Application, which can be found at http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/intern-program. Application material, including a cover letter, resume, three academic/professional references (with contact information), and one page writing sample of your choice, in addition to a completed application, should be emailed to internapp@feinstein.senate.gov. Please have one letter of recommendation emailed to that address as well. Only complete applications will be considered. For more information, please contact please contact Robert Oliver at robert_oliver@feinstein.senate.gov or at 310/914-7300.
A+ In Home Tutors is seeking an experienced tutor for a 10th grade girl in Tarzana. The ideal candidate will have a Bachelor’s degree or above and one to two years teaching or tutoring experience. Female applicants are preferred and the pay is $25.00 per hour. For more information, please see www.APlusInHomeTutors.com, or contact President Diane Lewis at 714/553-0308.
For all those creative writers among us, some of the journals that have written to solicit material include:
Foothill, a poetry journal that publishes work by current graduate students. If you are interested, see the journal at www.cgu.edu/foothill, or contact Brendan Babish at Brendan.Babish@cgu.edu.
Phoenix in the Jacuzzi Journal, a print literary journal. PJJ is currently accepting submissions of poetry and short fiction (submission guidelines can be found at PJJ‘s Web site: phoenixinthejacuzzi.tumblr.com).
Harpur Palate. HP welcomes unsolicited, previously unpublished reviews for the web review section of their blog. Reviews may be on recently published short story collections, novels, poetry full-lengths, or poetry chapbooks by emerging or established writers. In terms of length, brevity (2,000 words or less) is optimal, but they will consider reviews up to 5,000-words. Accepted reviews will be published on Harpur Palate’s blog, noted in the Harpur Palate journal, and promoted on Harpur Palate’s Facebook page. They may be submitted (with a brief cover letter) via our Submittable page. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable.
And just up in Ojai, a new online literary journal, The Fiction Week Literary Review, is published twice a year and looking for innovative work. For more information, see http://www.fictionweek.com/fwliteraryreview/fictionweekliteraryreview.html.
And finally, Cargoes literary magazine, of Hollins University, has announced its national undergraduate poetry and fiction competition. There is a $10 entry fee (make checks payable to Cargoes), and the winners of each genre receive a $200 cash prize as well as publication in this year’s Cargoes. Submissions must be from current undergraduate students at a university or college in the United States who may submit up to one (1) short story or three (3) poems by the January 6 deadline. Mail submissions along with a SASE envelope and entry fee to: Cargoes c/o C. Flerlage, Hollins University, P.O. Box 9274, Roanoke, VA 24020. And good luck to all.
4. Achievements
Here’s a spectacular achievement for all of us–we have made through ten weeks (going on eleven) of this semester, never mind yet another campaign season, and we are still smiling.