Chair: Kent Baxter
Notes compiled by: Kate Haake
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Announcements
Welcome back to one and all. Here’s hoping your winter break provided a much needed rest, with some fun and family and holiday festivities, or whatever you most enjoy when we are on hiatus. Equally hoping you’re looking forward to another full spring semester, because it is now full upon us.
And to start things off on a positive note, the ever-inventive and inexhaustible Danielle Spratt is looking for faculty interested in holding interdisciplinary teaching and discussion sessions to explore with students how our work relates in socially minded ways across disciplines, across campus, and beyond the campus. The idea is that faculty who teach at similar times (for instance, a professor from Journalism and a professor from Religious Studies who both teach on Mondays/Wednesdays at 11 am) will coordinate a topic of discussion, and then students, plus any other interested participants, can attend and discuss an issue that’s relevant to both disciplines. Planning for space is beginning soon, and you can sign up at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TUeSdeENXzBRcD7XH-Hs75lQ0xxjHx1hSEGVUsQ0e28/edit?usp=sharing.
In a similar vein, the people who brought us together last November for a post-election campus conversation are convening a follow-up town hall where we will once again have the opportunity to reflect on the concerns expressed then, those that have arisen subsequently, and strategies we might use to maintain a sense of empowerment and hope as we move through these uncertain times. As a member of the CSUN campus community, what do you believe CSUN can do to address your concerns and move us closer together as a campus community? This town hall will be held next Tuesday, January 31st at 12 noon, in the USU Northridge Center.
The Search and Screen Committee for our Pre-Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture with emphasis in African American and/or Latino/a Literature position will be bringing finalists to campus on January 26, 31, and February 2. The three candidates will be presenting job talks in ST 703 on the following dates: Thursday, January 26, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m., Christine Montgomery; Tuesday, January 31, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m., Rafael Walker; and Thursday, February 2, 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m., John Garcia.
The Career Center is holding a Faculty and Staff Open House on Wednesday, February 1st, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., and is looking forward to showing off their updated career planning resources for students, as well as the customized information for faculty and staff within Pathways and SUNlink. The Career Center is in Bayramian Hall 413.
Tomorrow, Friday, January 27th, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In commemoration here, there will be a free screening of a CSUN senior film project about an orthodox Jewish couple in the midst of the holocaust. This 20-minute film project has screened at numerous film festivals, including the Cannes Film Festival and won various awards including being on the Finalist Shortlist of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Student Film Awards. A short Q & A with the director, Michael Canon (CSUN BA, 2015), will follow the screening. This event will take place at 4:00 p.m. in the Alan and Elaine Armer Screening Theater in Manzanita Hall.
The official release of Christopher Higgs‘ new book–an experimental memoir, As I Stand Living–will be held on Saturday, February 18, at the Poetic Research Bureau in Chinatown, with guests Brian Evenson and Zoe Ruiz. More details will be announced soon, but mark your calendars now!
Opportunities
Proposals for Fall 2017 Faculty Fellowship program are being invited now, with an impending deadline of February 24, which is considerably sooner than it may, at first, seem. These fellowships provide support for scholarly research or creative activities to full-time tenure track and tenured faculty in the form of ONE (but not both) of the following options: FACULTY FELLOWSHIP: Three-Units of Reassigned Time (i.e., a one-course reduction in teaching load); OR GRANT: Funding for a Student Assistant, OR for Research-Related Travel Involving a Specific Research Project or Creative Activity. Guidelines are available on the CoH webpage, here http://www.csun.edu/humanities/college-funded-activites-and-research.
Also available on that same link are application guidelines for Academic Programming Support. All full- and part-time faculty in the college are invited to submit proposals. This fund provides supplementary support for academically related activities and events only (e.g., guest lecturers, workshops, performances). Funding will not be allocated to support curriculum development, faculty stipends, faculty travel, faculty research or creative projects, materials for faculty or student training, fundraising events, and/or to hire student assistants.
This one is for your most promising students: University Communications is looking to hire a Student Assistant to work on content development and copy editing. The applicant must be enrolled as a full-time CSUN student, and have interest and experience in social media creation, news writing, magazine writing, and press release development. Interested students should send a resume and cover letter to jorge.martin@csun.edu. Students selected for interviews will also be asked to complete a short writing/editing test.
Achievements
Iswari P. Pandey has won the 2017 CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award for his book, South Asian in the Mid-South: Migrations of Literacies. This award honors an empirical research publication in the previous two years that most advances writing studies. From the press announcement: “The Award’s selection committee noted Pandey masterfully and effortlessly interweaves theory, primary research, and exegetical interpretation to explore the shifting literacy practices—the “word work”—of South Asian immigrants in a Mid-Southern city. His works show us how community members constantly recreate, recast, and represent themselves and their communities and that these community members’ literacies and languages—adapted and modified to serve cultural and individual needs—flow multi-directionally, both locally and transnationally. In addition, South Asian in the Mid-South clearly articulates a robust, viable and adaptable methodology to study literacy in motion.” And from all of us here: CONGRATULATIONS, Iswari! So well earned, and so well deserved!
Returning, now, to our more conventional alphabetical order, Kate Haake published an essay, “Diptych: Javalinas, Aliens,” in Drunken Boat. And you can read it here: http://www.drunkenboat.com/db24/nonfiction/katharine-haake.
Martin Pousson was a featured reader, along with Aimee Bender, for All Lit Up at Chevalier’s Books in December and for Shades & Shadows at The Mystic Museum in January. “Don’t Tread on Me,” his Trump-themed short story, was published in PEN Center USA’s print anthology, ONLY LIGHT CAN DO THAT, released in January. And “Return to Oz,” his Trump-themed essay, was just accepted by The Rumpus for publication this Spring.