News of Note Week of November 3rd

Fall lingers at Ingersoll Hall, even as the first winter snow blows in. Image by Jill Salahub

• John Calderazzo will soon give a talk about science communication at the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins.
• Tobi Jacobi presented a workshop on historical documents from the 1920s New York State Training School for Girls at the Hudson Area Library in late October.
• Tobi Jacobi presented a critical paper on the popular Netflix series Orange is the New Black and women’s prison writing at the Western States Rhetoric and Literacy conference in Reno, NV in early November.
• Sasha Steensen and Martin Corless-Smith interviewed one another for The Conversant. You can read the discussion here: http://theconversant.org/?p=8495.
• Karen Montgomery Moore’s proposal “Reading the Dead Bodies on Bones” was accepted for presentation at the College of Liberal Arts Graduate Student Symposium with the theme “Constructing Humanity” at the University of Nevada-Reno in February. She adds, “They extended their proposal deadline to the 15th! I’d love company!”
• On Saturday, November 1st, eleven English department faculty members helped award $14,000 in scholarship money at the CSU Senior Scholarship Day. In conjunction with the Admissions Office, Dan Beachy-Quick, Tatiana Nekrasova-Beker, Ellen Brinks, Pam Coke, Ashley Davies, Katie Hoffman, Zach Hutchins, Tobi Jacobi, Ed Lessor, Sarah Sloane, and Leif Sorensen conducted writing workshops with and read timed essays from 91 Colorado high school seniors. We are thankful for their hard work!
• On October 10-11th, undergraduate and graduate students from the CSU English department attended the Colorado Language Arts Society Regional Conference at the School of Mines in Golden, CO.  Past NCTE@CSU President and current student teacher Tyler Arko served on two separate panels.  Pam Coke moderated one of these panels, and she presented a second session with CSU alum Steven Ray Parker, who is now a full-time English teacher at Kinard Core Knowledge School in Fort Collins.  Student attendees included current NCTE@CSU President Anton Gerth, NCTE@CSU Vice-President Belle Kraxberger, and NCTE@CSU member Jenna Franklin.  Louann Reid and Antero Garcia attended as well; Antero will be a featured presenter at next year’s conference.
• For English Department graduating undergraduates and MA graduate students: Thursday, November 13th, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m., Academic Village C141 (Engineering Hall). “Pursuing an MA or PhD in English: Everything You Wanted to Know.” This workshop will focus on the following: what advanced work in higher education entails; how to identify good graduate programs for your needs; what to expect from the application process and how to maximize your chances of success. After a presentation, faculty from various areas of English will be on hand to answer any questions you have and to speak personally about their own experiences.

Three English Faculty Who Take Teaching and Learning Beyond Eddy Hall

Eddy Hall is empty. “Where Did They Go?” banners direct students to the Writing Center in Johnson Hall and to the three buildings housing Philosophy and English faculty and staff: Clark, Behavioral Sciences, and Ingersoll Hall, where dorm rooms have become offices. Despite the relocations, English faculty continue to demonstrate that innovative teaching and learning are more about people than place. They are reaching beyond the traditional classroom in exciting ways. Here are just three examples.

From Dan Beachy-Quick:

On July 22-24, 2015 we’ll be hosting a 3-day interdisciplinary symposium organized around the theme of “Crisis & Creativity.” In an effort to find a useful dialogue between sciences and arts in relation to the pressing issues of the day, we’ll be looking at “crisis” in all its forms — from sociological definition of an event that affects every strata of society, to the political in which crisis reveals the underlying disorders that allow injustice of many sorts to persist, to “crisis” as a primary metaphor for those purposes and motions that result in the making of a work of art.

Poet and activist Brenda Hillman, artist and curator Michael Swaine, and a colleague (soon to be determined) from CSU’s own esteemed faculty on Environmental Sustainability, will lead a group of writers, artists, educators, archeologists, scientists drawn from near and far through morning workshops designed to foster engaged collaboration across disciplines too often at a distance from one another.

Each afternoon will include open house “maker’s spaces” in which the community will be invited to join the conversation and its larger hopes of creating work of many sorts that address those crises affecting us all. Each evening will conclude with a public event: round-table discussion, presentation of work, and a reading/presentation by those involed in the workshop. We’ll also have a website that invites all who visit it to join in the effort of the whole, be they here or afar — details in greater abundance are soon to come.

From Camille Dungy:

This semester, in E479, Recent US Poetry, students have the chance to meet seven acclaimed contemporary poets. American Book Award winner Jericho Brown, Kingsley Tufts winner Matthea Harvey, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Adrian Matjeka, National Poetry series winning Julie Carr and Yale Younger Prize winning Eduardo Corral are among the esteemed poets who will visit the class either in person or via teleconference.

After having read a book by each author as well as selected accompanying poems that demonstrate the robustness of contemporary poetry, students have the opportunity to speak directly with each poet about his or her influences, poetics, and practice. We’re learning a lot, and we’re having fun, too!

From Antero Garcia:

Through a Creative Works Commercialization Award from CSU Ventures, Antero Garcia is currently developing The Educator’s Game Design Toolkit. Created in collaboration with a current high school teacher, this project is focused on developing a commercially viable product for teachers and teacher educators to increase the preparation of students’ 21st century learning. Building off of Antero’s research on game design within schools, this product will allow teachers to collaborate and create powerful gaming-centered opportunities in which youth can learn.

News of Note: Week of September 22nd

image by Jill Salahub

• Dan Beachy-Quick will be reading with Julie Carr and Mathias Svalina on Tuesday Sept. 30 from 7-9 p.m. at the Forge Publick House (232 Walnut Street, Fort Collins).
• Antero Garcia published a co-authored article in the journal Race, Ethnicity, and Education. It is called “Toward a teacher solidarity lens: former teachers of color (re)envisioning educational research” and can be accessed here: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13613324.2014.946494#.VCWEyUj3kqMNext week, Antero will be co-presenting at The Digital Shift conference – an online conference held for librarians. His presentation is called “Creating a Collective Culture of Education: Classroom/Library Partnerships that Support Students’ Academic and Civic Learning.” For the first time, registration is free and can be found here: http://www.thedigitalshift.com/tds/libraries-at-the-center/speakers/
• Kristin George Bagdanov’s manuscript “Being a Body” was a finalist in Cleveland State University’s First Book Contest. https://www.csuohio.edu/class/poetry-center/2014-first-book-and-open-book-competition-results

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Creative and Performing Arts Scholarship Competition Deadline: Friday, October 3rd by 4:00 p.m. Find out more about this scholarship here: https://englishcsu.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/creative-and-performing-arts-scholarship-competition-in-creative-writing/.

News of Note from the Week of April 28th

The Eddy Redbud tree is in bloom.

• There’s a podcast interview with Dan Beachy-Quick at Poetry Northwest.
• Leslee Becker won First Prize in the Boston Review’s 2014 Fiction Contest for her story, “Severance.”
• Basic Veterinary Immunology co-authored by Gerry Callahan and Robin Yates was published this month by University Press of Colorado, Boulder, Co.
• Antero Garcia is the featured guest on the Connect Learning Alliance Podcast today. I talk about “Making Learning Relevant.” The program can be streamed or downloaded here: http://clalliance.org/whatsnew-main/antero-garcia-podcast-making-learning-relevant/
• Tobi Jacobi gave a presentation on developing self-care strategies for volunteers working in jail/prison writing programs at recent workshop on “Innovations in Prison” sponsored by UCLA and the UK Economic and Social Research Council.
• Elise Yenne (CLC intern) won 1st place for her service-learning poster presentation for the 2014 CSU CURC competition.  She highlighted her work as an intern and writing workshop facilitator with the Larimer County Detention Center men’s writing group.
• Rachel Linnea Brown’s poem “Memento” has been selected for publication by Gulf Coast.  She has also accepted a position at University of Kansas as a PhD student of Nineteenth-Century American Literature.  Rachel will be attending KU with a research fellowship, a department fellowship, and a $5,000 Mary Elizabeth and Andrew P. Debicki Scholarship for graduate studies.  She is excited to begin her KU studies in the fall.
• Kristin George Bagdanov’s poems “Damage Body” and “Commodity Body” were accepted for publication in Word Riot.
• This year’s issue of the Greyrock Review is now available for purchase! Please stop by the English Department office, Eddy Building, Room 359. The Journal is $12 and T-Shirts, white with this year’s cover and green with the Greyrock logo are $20.00. Stickers are available in black & white and green & gold for $2 each.

Alumni News: Kayann Short, PhD, (CSU, Alumna 1988) has received the following awards: for A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography:

• Sarton Memoir Award Finalist from Story Circle Network
• Nautilus Silver Award in Green Living & Sustainability

The Sarton Memoir Award is presented annually by Story Circle Network, an international network of women lifewriters. The award is named in honor of May Sarton (1912-1995), distinguished American poet, novelist, and author of twelve memoirs and journals.

Nautilus “Better Books for a Better World” Awards recognize exceptional literary contributions to spiritual growth, conscious living, high-level wellness, green values, responsible leadership and positive social change.

Published by Torrey House Press, A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography is a memoir of reunion with a family’s farming past and a call to action for farmland preservation through community supported agriculture today. These awards exemplify the way A Bushel’s Worth engages readers across generations and diverse backgrounds through stories that portray the relationship between food, farming, and the environment.

A retired award-winning teacher from the University of Colorado-Boulder, Short farms and teaches writing at Stonebridge Farm, the first community-supported agricultural farm (CSA) in Boulder County. Established in 1992, Stonebridge is committed to small-scale, organic farming and agricultural land preservation on the Front Range. Short offers writing workshops to community groups, libraries, and book clubs. She also teaches at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Oregon coast. She will offer a “food preservation stories” workshop September 18-19 at her farm outside Lyons, CO.

A Bushel’s Worth is a books-in-a-bag selection of the Longmont Public Library. More about A Bushel’s Worth, including a virtual book tour, press kit, links to reading videos and digital excerpts, and book group suggestions and discussion questions are available at http://abushelsworth.com

 

News of Note from the Week of March 24th

image by Jill Salahub

The sun is shining on Eddy Hall this Friday afternoon, and there are many other good things to celebrate as well. Such as,

• Dan Beachy-Quick will be presenting the Wittreich Lecture at University of Louisville. He’ll be reading an essay titled: “Poetic Geometries: Moby-Dick as Primer to Creative Crisis.” There’s a review of his book on John Keats up at The Philadelphia Review of Books: http://philadelphiareviewofbooks.com/2014/03/24/so-fair-a-form/ And a small collection of his poems from FREE POETRY is just out, titled Drone & Other Poems.

• John Calderazzo and SueEllen Campbell are giving the Atmospheric Science Department Colloquium on March 29, on the topic of “Talking to Non-Scientists.”

• SueEllen Campbell took part in a roundtable/workshop in Dallas this week with faculty and professionals in the fabric, textiles, and clothing industry, helping (as a climate change and sustainability educator) with a USDA-funded curriculum project for students in these fields.

• Matthew Cooperman’s had new poems accepted by New American Writing and The Literary Review. A new review of Imago for the Fallen World is up at Coldfront, http://coldfrontmag.com/reviews/imago-for-the-fallen-world/

• Antero Garcia has a new co-authored article in Educational Policy. The work is titled “Schooling Mobile Phones: Assumptions About Proximal Benefits, the Challenges of Shifting Meanings, and the Politics of Teaching” and can be accessed here: http://epx.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/26/0895904813518105.abstract

• The North American Review has invited Steven Schwartz to deliver the fiction keynote address at their bicentennial conference in June 2015.

• Leif Sorensen presented a paper “Sounds of the Post-Dictatorial City: Punk Mappings of Buenos Aires, Montevideo and São Paulo” in a seminar “Punk and the City” at the 2014 meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in New York City on March 21.

• Wastershed Review has accepted three of Jerrod Bohn’s poems for publication.

• Kristin George Bagdanov’s poem “Exchange Body” was given an honorable mention in the 2014 AWP Intro Journals Project competition. Her paper proposal “The Anthropocenic Lyric” was accepted for the 2015 MLA panel, “Anthropocene and Deep Time in Literary Studies,” which is co-sponsored by the divisions of 20th-Century American Literature and Literature and Science.

• Samantha Iacovetto will be an MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at The Ohio State University. She will be attending on a fellowship.

• Vani Kannan’s article “Model Minority or Potential Terrorist? Affective Economies, Rhetorics of Silence & the Murder of Sunando Sen” appears in the March 2014 issue of Studies on Asia and can be accessed online here: http://studiesonasia.illinoisstate.edu/seriesIV/vol4-1.shtml

• Karen Montgomery Moore presented her paper “The Unrealized Potential of Metaphor in Relation to Cancer” this weekend at the “Undoing Health: States of Body and Mind” graduate student interdisciplinary conference at Indiana University-Bloomington. Grateful thanks to Debby Thompson and Katie Adkison for their critical feedback on this work.

• Tanya Mykhaylychenko (MA in Literature, Summer 2009) has been, since graduating, an OWL tutor for a major publishing and education company, a full-time proposal writer for a small IT staffing agency, and is currently a freelance writing consultant. Following her long-time interest in film theory and history, she was recently admitted to a graduate program in film studies at Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University (Montreal) and awarded a two-year fellowship.

Faculty Profile: Antero Garcia

Antero Garcia is an Assistant Professor in the English department at Colorado State University. Antero’s research focuses on developing critical literacies and civic identity through the use of mobile media and game play in formal learning environments. Prior to moving to Colorado, Antero was a teacher at a public high school in South Central Los Angeles. Antero received his Ph.D. in the Urban Schooling division of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles,

In 2008 Antero co-developed the Black Cloud Game. A Digital Media and Learning Competition award recipient, the Black Cloud provoked students to take real time assessment of air quality in their community. Using custom-developed sensors that measure and send data about air quality, students critically analyzed the role pollution played in their daily lives and presented recommendations to their community.

Antero is a 2010-2011 U.S. Department of Education Teaching Ambassador Fellow, providing teacher input and feedback on national education policy initiatives.

Antero’s numerous publications and conference presentations address technology, educational equity, youth participatory action research, and critical media literacy. Updates about Antero’s work can be found on his blog, The American Crawl.

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Faculty Profile: Antero Garcia
~by Brianna Wilkins

Antero Garcia hasn’t taught at CSU for long, but he’s definitely made an impact on the English department. With his quirky sense of humor, and down to earth personality, I forgot that I was talking to a professor and felt as if I were having a regular conversation with one of my peers. From discussing his thoughts about academia, to us both professing our disdain for the cold weather, I was able to find out some interesting things that you might not know about Professor Garcia.

What brought you to CSU?

I honestly came to CSU because it seemed like such a great place to work. I feel like there is such a familial atmosphere in the department. Being in the English department is exciting is because the person next door is an amazing poet, and across from me is an amazing nonfictional environmental writer; as a result I really like this kind of space.

What inspired you to pursue a degree in English?

What I like about literature is being able to engage and talk to people about it, and being able to build something as a community, and I think that’s what made me want to become a teacher.

Who has had the greatest influence on you?

Probably Whitney Houston [laughs]. I’m just playing, but could you still put that in there; she did believe that the children were our future [laughs again], but it would probably have to be my parents. My mom was an English teacher, and I really resisted becoming an English teacher because she was one. My father was an educator and a musician as well; a lot of the work I do is inspired by him, and I do it in his honor.

What special projects are you working on right now?

I recently just finished editing an EBook that’s coming out in March; it looks at how we’re transforming the possibilities of what happens in classroom spaces. Other CSU professors and student have contributed parts to it as well. I’m also currently researching and looking at role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Once a week I go play Dungeons & Dragons, and at first it was really fun, but some days it feels more like work since I have to take notes on it all of the time.

What has been your favorite class to teach at CSU?

I taught four different classes, but the class I’ve had most fun with is the Composition 301B, which is the writing in the disciplines for education. It consists of all English education students doing different types of writing concerning education practices. I think it’s a fun class because of the possibilities we create of what we can do with different genres of writing.

What do you do during your free time?

I like to go to concerts and I like music a lot; I’m actually a huge Kanye West fan. When I’m not teaching I’m in charge of taking care of my dog; we go on long walks, and she loves chasing down rabbits.

What’s been your favorite classroom memory here at CSU?

My first semester teaching here, students from my Comp 301 class dressed up like me for Halloween. All of the students were late, and I was sad because I thought no one was going to come to class because it was Halloween. A few minutes later the students suddenly came in together and were dressed in ties and golfer hats; it was pretty cool.

Speaker Series (Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life): Buffy Hamilton

Buffy Hamilton spoke on February 11th as part of the English Department’s Speaker Series, “Literacies of Contemporary Civic Life.” The title of her talk was “Metanarratives of Literacy Practices: Libraries as Sponsors of Literacies,” described this way,

How might libraries deconstruct the ideas and power relations that influence the ways they reinforce and distribute specific literacies and literacy practices to better understand their role as sponsors of literacy in their communities in a more nuanced and robust way? By using Deborah Brandt’s concept of sponsors of literacy, libraries can situate and contextualize their work to frame their work as co-learners in a participatory community of learning who can collaboratively construct the possibilities of print, digital, information, and new literacies – rather than being a paternalistic sponsor that deliberately and/or unintentionally marginalizes the experiences and literacy histories of the people libraries serve.

This first presentation was streamed live via Google On Air Hangouts. Buffy Hamilton’s talk “Metanarratives of Literacy Practices: Libraries as Sponsors of Literacies” can be viewed here: http://www.theamericancrawl.com/?p=1341

Antero Garcia had this to say about the presentation, “As I mention in the introduction to this series, I am hoping attendees (and viewers) will consider the dialogue that unfolds across these five different speakers. What intersections can we imagine in the work we do with and for young people across the U.S. today? Kicking off our CSU speaker series this week, Buffy Hamilton’s presentation ‘Metanarratives of Literacy Practices: Libraries as Sponsors of Literacies’ helped us challenge our notions of what’s possible in libraries and how these spaces should be thought of critically as ‘Sponsors of Literacies’ – building off of research by Deborah Brandt. It’s been a true pleasure getting to learn from Buffy (even if it means she’s been stranded in Fort Collins longer than she planned due to an insane season of weather). If you aren’t already reading The Unquiet Librarian, what’s wrong with you?”

English Department Communications Intern Brianna Wilkins attended the presentation, and has this to share:

“Come on in,” she said; a middle aged woman with a southern twang waved at me from inside of the room, and I immediately felt welcome amidst the crowd of unfamiliar faces. Surrounded by nothing but professors and English education majors, I had no clue what to expect from the first Speaker Series of the semester. After about five minutes the speaker was introduced by CSU’s own Professor Antero Garcia; it turned out that the nice lady who greeted me was the speaker for the evening —  Buffy J. Hamilton, a librarian at an Atlanta, Georgia high school who spoke on the topic of libraries as sponsors of literacy.

Hamilton began by using Debra Brandt’s (an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) ideas on sponsors of literacy, focusing on how literacy for individuals is related to the economics of literacy. Hamilton mentioned that although many students are able to use their tech savvy gadgets to download apps and be active social media users, a lot of them don’t know how to upload an email attachment. Her main objective was to get the audience to understand that students, elementary through high school, need ways in which they are actually excited to participate in gaining knowledge inside and outside of the classroom.

It was interesting to see all of the activities she used to encourage students grades K – 12^th, activities that not only kept their interest but kept them learning as well. One of the neat ideas she presented was YOUmedia; a program for middle school and high school students at some of the Chicago Public Library’s. YOUmedia allows students to have access to thousands of books, laptops and desktop computers, and software programs, which increases their digital media skills. This along with other programs nationwide increase students’ involvement in educational activities that promote learning while having fun doing it.

As I mentioned earlier, there was an abundance of English education majors in attendance, but the information that was given is beneficial to anyone interested in the well-being of our youth’s education.

We were all once children who had the opportunity to go to our school library and gain access to the many resources that it had to offer, but a lot of the school library programs across the country are being cut. It is up to people like us, those who are invested in education, to step up and involve ourselves in promoting fun ways to learn so that more students are likely to engage themselves and succeed in their education.

Buffy Hamilton and Antero Garcia

Hamilton left me with a better understanding of how important the presence of a library is to student’s education, especially when it comes to reading and writing. I left their more knowledgeable than when I came. Plus the cupcakes and fresh fruit that were offered was also nice, and after her talk they were devoured by almost everyone in attendance.

If you’re interested in learning more on the topic, please visit Hamilton’s blog at http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/.

~Brianna Wilkins

More about this series: Throughout the spring semester the department will host nationally recognized literacies-based researchers and educators to discuss how literacy and youth civic participation intersect from varying, interdisciplinary perspectives. The speakers will be presenting their work and engaging in dialogue from 5:30-6:30, followed by a brief reception. These events are free and open to the public. All of the speakers will be presenting at the CSU campus in Clark A 205.