1. Announcements
The AGSE annual conference will take place this Saturday, March 14, from 9:00-4:30 p.m., in the University Student Union. This year’s conference will feature 40 academic papers and presentations by CSUN graduate students and undergraduate students, as well as scholars from CSU Fullerton, CSU Dominguez Hills, and the Otis College of Art and Design. There will also be a panel of CSUN freshmen. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Viet Thanh Nguyen, Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Southern California. A well-known and respected theorist in the areas of Asian American literature and culture, ethnic studies, and transnationalism, Professor Nguyen is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (2002) and the novel The Sympathizer (forthcoming from Grove Atlantic). A program for the conference is located outside the mailroom for your perusal. The conference website can be accessed at https://agsevoyages.wordpress.com/conference-program/.
The Northridge Creative Writing Circle will host a reading and talk by celebrated poet Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen, named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the LA Times Book Award. Citizen has generated much media buzz, and the NCWC is thrilled to host Rankine at CSUN, in partnership with Sigma Tau Delta, Associated Graduate Students of English, and the Critical Theories Club. The reading is scheduled for Tuesday, March 24, 4:30-6:30 p.m., and is free and open to all.
The Careers in English speaker series continues this month with speakers on writing and publishing. On Monday, March 9, Olivia Herstein spoke about organizational communications and the explosive growth of custom magazine publishing; on Wednesday, March 18 and Wednesday, March 25, we welcome two more speakers from the field of publishing. Watch for flyers and save the dates! All sessions will be in JR319 from 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Professor Dorothy Barresi presents a reading by award-winning SoCal poets, Judith Taylor, Patty Seyburn, and Kim Young. The poetry reading will take place on Thursday, March 12 at 7:00 p.m. in JR319 (Linda Joseph Nichols Room). It is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Department of English and the Northridge Creative Writing Circle.
CSUN and Moorpark College professor and esteemed literary scholar Jeff Baker will discuss the complex and dynamic politics in the novels of Thomas Pynchon. See more at: http://ciapps.csuci.edu/events/Event/Details/143871#sthash.x0SFGVFB.dpuf.
2. Reminders
It’s time to Apply for a Beck Grant! Pitch your innovative learning-centered instructional project and receive funding up to $6000. Proposals for the 2015-16 Judge Julian Beck Learning-Centered Instructional Projects (aka, Beck Grants) are due March 13, 2015 at 4:00 p.m. and can be submitted to UGS in UN 215 or emailed to facdev@csun.edu. Click here for more information.
The due date for the College of Humanities Faculty Fellowship and Grant Program for Fall 2015 is tomorrow (Friday, March 13, 5:00 p.m.). For more information, see http://www.csun.edu/humanities/college-funded-activites-and-research.
Faculty Development is designing a campus-wide workshop in April to discuss academic integrity on our campus. This is especially important if you teach larger classes and online or hybrid courses. How can CSUN encourage a culture of integrity amongst our students? How can you design higher-level thinking questions to discourage cheating? Consider attending the half-day workshop on Academic Integrity. Faculty Development will pay a small stipend of $100 for your time. Date: April 17, 2015. Time: 9:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. Place: Oviatt Library Presentation Room. Space is limited. Please RSVP your willingness to attend to facdev@csun.edu or click here for more information.
3. Opportunities
The John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage and the Department of American Studies, Brown University, seek a postdoctoral fellow in the Digital Public Humanities. Digital humanities often results in projects open to the public, and public humanities work increasingly takes advantage of digital tools to reach and interact with broad audiences. The Center seeks a postdoctoral fellow to help explore the connections between the two fields. This postdoctoral fellowship is a full-time salaried appointment ($50,000) with excellent benefits and research/project support funds each year. It is open only to recent Ph.D. recipients; the fellow must have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. by September 2015 and no earlier than June 2011. The appointment will be for two years. Please submit a C.V., three letters of recommendation, a sample of public work, and a dissertation chapter before March 13. Here’s the link:
The SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) Summer 2015 Student Writer Scholarship is now open. Please share this invaluable opportunity with your students. Each year the SCBWI sponsors two student writer scholarships to the Summer and Winter Conferences for full-time university students in an English or Creative Writing program. This is an invaluable opportunity for young writers! SCBWI is now accepting applications for the 2015 SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles, July 31-Aug. 3. Deadline: April 15, 2015. Visit http://www.scbwi.org/awards/grants/student-writer-scholarship/ for the application process.
The Academy of American Poets Prize Competition is now accepting submissions for the 2015 award. The winner will receive a cash prize from the Academy of American Poets and publication in the Northridge Review. One Honorable Mention will also be awarded. Important: the AAP is pleased to announce the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank Most Promising Young Poet Award. Students 23 years-old or younger who have won the AAP prize will be considered for an additional $1000 award. For more information please contact Leilani Hall at (818) 677-3428, leilani.hall@csun.edu or Dorothy Barresi at (818) 677-0911, dorothy.barresi@csun.edu.
Dear Service Learning Faculty: the grant cycle for service learning grants is opened. All part time and full time faculty may apply for a grant for the 2015-16 AY. The due date for the completed application is April 3, 2015. There are two new grants for this year: 1) Course development grant Summer Institute ($1,000). This grant will be designed as a 2-day summer workshop to revise a current course into a service learning course. Summer Institute is scheduled for June 2nd and 3rd. 2) Discipline Based Grant ($4,000). This grant has been redesigned to include course redesign at the Summer Institute in June 2-3 ($1,000). For more information, see http://www.csun.edu/undergraduate-studies/community-engagement/grant-opportunities.
4. Achievements
Cheryl Spector gave an invited lecture titled “Investigation, Imagination, and Invisibility: Longbourn and Nickel and Dimed” at the Santa Monica Public Library on March 3, 2015. The lecture was part of the spring program for Santa Monica Reads 2015. For more info see http://smpl.org/Longbourn2015.aspx and / or http://www.smgov.net/Main/News_Tab/2015_Santa_Monica_READS_features_Longbourn_by_Jo_Baker.aspx.