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• Tobi Jacobi presented a workshop on historical documents from the 1920s New York State Training School for Girls at the Hudson Area Library in late October.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.

Study Abroad: Zambia, Summer 2015

English Department Students,

There’s talk about an exciting opportunity to go to the lovely and quiet town of Livingstone, Zambia, right next to the world-famous Victoria Falls…for three-weeks…and with the possibility of earning up to three undergraduate or graduate internship credits! Would you be interested in such a thing? If so, keep reading…

Dr. Ellen Brinks will be taking students to Livingstone, Zambia over Summer 2015 to do experiential learning and internships through our Colorado State University Study Abroad program (and African Impact).

“I don’t know. What would I be doing?!?”

The course would run for three weeks and center on a personalized project within the Livingstone community that fits your own interests. There are lots of internship projects – such as working one-on-one or in small groups with children in the classroom, leading a reading club, math club, or adult literacy club, helping with afterschool activities at school or at a youth community training center, as well as offering HIV education – that would be suitable for any concentration or area of study in English and for which you could gain three internship credits. Additional projects in the areas of health care, sports, community development, conservation, wildlife care, and reforestation initiatives are available, though you would not be eligible for English internship credit if you elected to design your stay in Zambia round these activities. (Click here to check out project descriptions.)

“Why would I want to go to Africa?”

This experiential course would count for E487 or E687 credit. It gives you a very unique international internship opportunity in a stable and beautiful country, Zambia. You will be residing and working in the town of Livingstone, right at Victoria Falls, a center of African eco-tourism and safari tours. (Livingstone is the size of Fort Collins). The program likely ties in to coursework you have done in the areas of world literature in English, literacy, and teacher training. And most of all, it enables you to use your skills to give back to underprivileged and wonderful children in this friendly and welcoming community.

“How much would it cost?”

Projected expenses run around $5000, which includes airfare, tuition, vaccinations, and a bunch of other stuff, for three weeks in Africa, including three internship credits. A real bargain!

“I think I’d be down for that!”

If this sounds like an important opportunity that you might want to take advantage of come summer 2015, please come to our informational meeting on Thursday, October 9^th, from 4-5pm in Lory Student Center 372. There will be time to address all your questions, along with a PowerPoint presentation with pictures of the program.

**NOTE: By coming to the October 9 meeting you are not committing yourself to taking part. If you’re at all curious or interested, come by simply for more information on this opportunity.**

Nancy Henke, English Department Internship Coordinator, Nancy.Henke@colostate.edu

 

 

Faculty Profile: Ellen Brinks

Associate Professor Ellen Brinks has a B.A. in Philosophy and German from Agnes Scott College, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. Professor Brinks teaches courses in British Romanticism, the Victorian period, literary theory, gothic literature and film, and colonial and postcolonial literatures.

Her research explores the cultural context of gender and sexuality and the tensions between individual and social expressions of identity. She has published numerous essays, including ones on women and 17th-century cartography, on the intersection of economics and sexuality in contemporary film, on the presence of the aesthetic in Winnicottian object relations theory, and on gothic representation and traumatic history.

Her first book, Gothic Masculinity, appeared in 2003. Her latest book, Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870–1920, was published in January 2013.

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Faculty Profile: Ellen Brinks
~by Brianna Wilkins

What brought you to CSU?
It was one of the jobs that year in my area of specialization. The [English] department was looking for someone who specialized in British Romanticism, and that was the area that I did my doctorate in; that’s what initially brought me to the institution itself. When I came here for a campus interview, I was so impressed with the faculty and the very warm and welcoming atmosphere. I love hiking and outdoor activities, so that was a big draw as well.

Why are the humanities important?
I think they give us the opportunity to think and feel about the things we care about most, and by that I mean things like love and desire, community and social life, separation and loss and death. We have very few opportunities to be together in a communal environment to talk about those things, or even to have personal time to think deeply about them. Because they invite us to reflect on these basic aspects of our lives, the humanities seem to me to be central to personal, social and cultural development. And, to top it off, they confront us in complex and fascinating and challenging ways.

What moment in the classroom has stood out as one of the most memorable?
Well in general just moments where something unexpected or creative happens in the classroom. One example is from my British Romanticism class. We were talking about poetry that is sound based, versus poetry that is image based; we decided to work together [as a class] to make an image based poem. As a group we wrote an imagistic poem, and it was really an amazing product at the end, and none of us expected something so good and remarkable. It’s lost to posterity because nobody wrote it down [laughs].

What advice would you give a CSU English Student?
Read with your mind turned on.

What do you find inspiring?
Great ideas. Colleagues who are excellent teachers. Unselfish and kind people. A great art exhibit, or dance or music performance; anything beautiful inspires me.

What might your colleagues not know about you?
They may not know that during my 20s, for a number of years, I lived on a biodynamic agricultural commune in eastern Pennsylvania. We grew things organically, and I was in charge of a big herb garden for the community; there were over 100 of us working there.

Do you have a favorite word?
Ocean. I like the word because it sounds like the fall of a wave breaking and the silence afterwards, and the ‘O’ to me suggests that moment of awe when you look at its vastness.

Exciting Experiential Internship in Zambia!

English Department Students,

There’s talk about an exciting opportunity to go to Africa… for three-weeks…and with the possibility of earning up to three undergraduate or graduate internship credits! Would you be interested in such a thing?

Dr. Ellen Brinks will be taking students to Livingstone, Zambia over Summer 2015 to do experiential learning and internships through African Impact, and she’d like to know how many English students might be interested in participating.

“I don’t know. What would I be doing?!?”

The course would run for three weeks and center on a personalized project within the Livingstone community that fits your own interests. There are lots of internship projects – such as teaching, leading a reading club, math club, or adult literacy club, helping with afterschool activities at school or at a youth community training center, as well as offering HIV education – that would be suitable for any concentration or area of study in English and for which you could gain up to three internship credits. Additional projects in the areas of health care, sports, community development, conservation, wildlife care, and reforestation initiatives are available, though you would not be eligible for English internship credit if you elected to design your stay in Zambia round these activities. (Click here to check out project descriptions.)

“Why would I want to go to Africa?”

This experiential course would likely count for E487 or E687 credit. It gives you a very unique international internship opportunity in a stable and beautiful country, Zambia. You will be residing and working in the town of Livingstone, right at Victoria Falls, a center of African eco-tourism and safari tours. (Livingstone is the size of Fort Collins). The program likely ties in to coursework you have done in the areas of world literature in English, literacy, and teacher training. And most of all, it enables you to use your skills to give back to others in this friendly and welcoming community.

“How much would it cost?”

Projected expenses run around $5000, which includes airfare, tuition, vaccinations, and a bunch of other stuff, for three weeks in Africa.

“I think I’d be down for that!”

For the sake of making this potentiality of going to Africa an actuality for English students, we don’t need to know if this is definitely something that you would do. We only want to know if this is something you would seriously consider doing.

If this sounds like an important opportunity that you want available to you come summer 2015, please send me a non-committal reply expressing your interest by May 2nd, 2014.

Mary Hickey, English Department Internship Coordinator
Mary.Hickey@colostate.edu