Author: English Department

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Sean Neill to present at major undergraduate conference

Sean Neill, a double major in English and French, will present his paper “Liquid Spectatorship and the Poetics of Immersion in Contemporary Documentary Film” at the third annual undergraduate conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, to be held at Smith College, April 24-25, 2015. It’s one of the most prestigious film studies conferences in the U.S.

From the SCMS website:

The Society for Cinema and Media Studies is the leading scholarly organization in the United States dedicated to promoting a broad understanding of film, television, and related media through research and teaching grounded in the contemporary humanities tradition.

SCMS encourages excellence in scholarship and pedagogy and fosters critical inquiry into the global, national, and local circulation of cinema, television, and other related media. SCMS scholars situate these media in various contexts, including historical, theoretical, cultural, industrial, social, artistic, and psychological.

Neill completed his ambitious and sophisticated essay in a directed study in Film Theory with Professor Jun Okada, who directs SUNY Geneseo’s interdisciplinary minor in film studies.

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Melanie Blood to direct reading of Civil War letters at Riviera Theater

Professor of English and Music Melanie Blood is the director of “Civil War Letters: Love and War,” which will be performed Friday, February 13, 8 p.m. at the newly renovated Riviera Theater in Geneseo.

From the Riviera’s Facebook page:

On FRIDAY FEBRUARY 13th, the Livingston County Historical Society will present a staged reading of a collection of Civil War love letters penned in 1862 by Colonel John Rorbach & his wife Elizabeth Vance Rorbach, from Geneseo, NY. Directed by Dr. Melanie Blood and performed by Noah Pfeiffer and Christina O’Shea, this program will be sure to make the Civil War, and a beautiful love story, come to life.

Thanks to the generous funding of the Rochester Area Community Foundation, Leicester Town Historian Tom Roffe, along with assistance from intern Rob Terreri, recently scanned and transcribed a collection of Civil War letters and photos owned by descendants of the Rorbach/ Vance family. A sampled reading of these letters, from the home front and from the battlefield, reveal a love story between a colonel and his beloved wife amidst a war of national significance.

The performance will take place at the recently renovated Riviera Theater, 4 Main Street, Geneseo, at 8:00pm. Those with patron tickets will be invited at 6:45pm prior to the performance to enjoy a wine and cheese tasting. Museum Administrator, Anna Kowalchuk promotes this event as the premier performance at the Riviera Theater. “Those who pay a patron ticket price will have preferred seating and a first glimpse at the amazing work completed by proprietor Don Livingston-all while enjoying a wine and cheese tasting in brand new community venue.”

General admission is $15.00 ($18 after 2/7/15) and patron tickets are $25 and are available on line at www.livingstoncountyhistoricalsociety.com or at local Geneseo Main Street Merchants, David Mann’s Jewelers or the Not Dot Shop. Public parking available and the theater is handicapped accessible.

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Sigma Tau Delta lecture series: Lytton Smith on poetry and (failed) teleportation

Poet and SUNY Geneseo Assistant Professor of English Lytton Smith will be the next speaker in the ongoing faculty lecture series sponsored by Geneseo’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society.

Prof. Smith’s title is “Poetry as (Failed) Teleportation: A Talk and Reading.” He’ll be talking (and reading) this coming Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. in Welles 128.

In the aftermath of natural disaster and political oppression, he’ll ask, where might we find poetry? What might poetry do for us, for others?

Tracing a line between Google Satellite imagery, obscure NFL rules, and 21st century Burma, Prof. Smith’s recent book of poems, While You Were Approaching the Spectacle But Before You Were Transformed by It (Nightboat, 2013) explores the role a poem might have in connecting us to far-off events and unfamiliar places. In Tuesday’s talk and reading, he’ll discuss his research and writing process and argue that poetry’s meaningful contribution to ethics and politics might be formal rather than emotional. Somewhere beyond Bertolt Brecht’s resistance to empathy and Martha Nussbaum’s argument for compassion, we might find an aesthetics in poetry that presents us with the dilemma of our own implication in distant happenings.

Followers of Prof. Smith’s work should also take note of his ongoing series of poems co-authored with poet Adam O. Davis; six of these poems, together with a jointly authored poetics statement, appear in the collaborative online magazine of poetry and poetics Likestarlings. A meditation on the unraveling and intertwining histories of the U.K. and the U.S., Davis and Smith’s poems are also an experiment that question the idea of authorship.

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Next Up: Joan Anim-Addo

Writer and Professor of Caribbean Literatures and Cultures Joan Anim-Addo will lecture on “Lesssons from Imoinda: Black British Writing at the (21st C) Margins” in Doty 300 on Wednesday, October 22 at 2:30 p.m.  At Goldsmiths, University of London,  Professor Anim-Addo has been the Director of the Centre for Caribbean Studies since 1998. Her publications include the libretto Imoinda (2008); the poetry collections Haunted by History (1998) and  Janie Cricketing Lady (2006); and the literary history Touching the Body: History, Language and African-Caribbean Women’s Writing (2007). Her co-edited books include Interculturality and Gender (2009), Caribbean-Scottish Relations: Colonial and Contemporary Inscriptions in History, Language and Literature (2007), and I am Black, White, Yellow: An Introduction to the Black Body in Europe (2007). She is co-editor of two Feminist Review Special Issues, ‘Affect and Creolisation’ (2013) and ‘Black British Feminisms’ (2014).

For more information:
www.gold.ac.uk/caribbean
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SUNY Geneseo at Rochester Pub Fair

NewPubFairTile2This Saturday, September 13, The Rochester Visual Studies Workshop will host the second annual Pub Fair from noon to 7 p.m. in the VSW Auditorium at 31 Prince St. in Rochester.

Rochester Writers and Books will present Litsplosion at the Pub Fair, bringing together award-winning writers, emerging voices, regional talents, and local beer in its celebration of book arts.

smithljNew SUNY Geneseo English faculty member Lytton Smith will read from his poetry at 4:40 p.m., wrapping up a series of 10-minute readings that will begin at 2:00 p.m. with a reading by Gail Hosking and will include readings by Jon Palzer, Kitty Jospe, Ralph Black, Nick Alezza, Stevie Edwards, Nick Falck, Charlie Cote, Jacob Rakovan, Rachel McKibbens, Tom Fugalli, Kathryn Cowles, James Logenbach, and Christopher Kennedy.

SUNY Geneseo’s journal of SUNY-wide peer-reviewed creative writing, Gandy Dancer, will have a booth at Pub Fair. Hope to see you there!

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New publication by Lytton Smith

smithljThe latest issue of international digital poetry magazine Rattapallax contains a feature on British poetry by new assistant professor of English Lytton Smith.

Introducing five emerging British poets, Prof. Smith argues that “The dynamism and excitement of British poetry emerges from its internationalism, its reckoning with a world beyond (and, strikingly, inside) its shores.”

Rattapallax #22 is available as a download from the iTunes store. You can read Prof. Smith’s introduction to the feature here.

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English department welcomes new faculty

Lytton Smith

smithljPoet, critic, scholar, playwright, and translator Dr. Lytton Smith joins the department as Assistant Professor. He comes to us from the University of Hertfordshire, where he was Lecturer in Creative Writing. At Columbia University, he was awarded M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in English and Comparative Literature, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. He holds a B.A. in English from University College, London.

Professor Smith is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently While You Were Approaching the Spectacle and Before You Were Transformed By It (2013). His poetry has appeared in such places as The Atlantic, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Greensboro Review, Laurel Review, and Tin House. His collection The All-Purpose Magical Tent won the Nightboat Prize in 2008.

Professor Smith’s critical writings focus on citizenship as well as poetry; he has an essay forthcoming in the volume In the Air: The Poetry of Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan University Press) and writes a monthly column for the Los Angeles Review of Books. He has authored two plays, and he wrote and co-produced the 2007 film Howard’s Way, a documentary about the poet Richard Howard.

Professor Smith’s translations from Icelandic include Kristin Ómarsdóttir’s Children in Reindeer Woods (2012), Bragi Ólafsson’s The Ambassador (2010), and poems by Magnús Sigur∂sson.

At SUNY Geneseo, Professor Smith will teach classes on general creative writing, the writing of poetry, literature, and humanities.

Jess Fenn

fenn Dr. Jess R. Fenn joins the department as Lecturer. She was most recently Visiting Assistant Professor in Medieval Literature and Culture at Birkbeck College, School of Arts, University of London. She holds M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where she specialized in the literature of late medieval England. She also holds an M.A.T. from Hollins University and a B.A. from Swarthmore College.

Professor Fenn has published scholarly work on Geoffrey Chaucer in Studies in Philology (2013). Her short fiction has appeared in such places as Versal, PANK Magazine, and Flash: The International Short-Story Magazine. Her nonfiction work “Where We Went and What We Did There” won the Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction in 2013.

At SUNY Geneseo, Professor Fenn will teach courses on general creative writing, first-year writing, and literature. She will also direct the college’s interdisciplinary program in Medieval Studies.

Steve West

westsjStephen J. West (SUNY Geneseo ’02) joins the department as Lecturer. Professor West was most recently Instructor in English at West Virginia University. He holds M.A. and M.F.A. degrees in English from the University of Iowa. He graduated magna cum laude from Geneseo with B.A. degrees in English and Art Studio.

Professor West’s creative work has appeared in such places as Fugue, Wag’s Revue,, Spittoon, The Baltimore Review, PANK, and Prime Number Magazine. He has served as editor and columnist for THIS Literary Magazine

At SUNY Geneseo, Professor West will teach courses in general creative writing and literature. In addition, he will help oversee the department’s new requirement in self-reflective advising.

Irene Belyakov

Irene Belyakov has been Lecturer and Coordinator of the English as a Second Language program at SUNY Geneseo since 2000. As a new member of the English department, she will continue in these responsibilities.

Professor Belyakov teaches courses on ESOL and offers workshops through Geneseo’s Teaching and Learning Center to educate faculty and staff about second language development. As we recently reported, she is the recipient of the Harter Endowment for Faculty Mentoring Award.

Christopher Guyol

Dr. Christopher Guyol joins the department as Adjunct Lecturer in English. He holds B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History, as well as a B.A. in Mathematics, from the University of Rochester, and an M.A. in Medieval History from the University of York. At SUNY Geneseo, Professor Guyol will teach courses in humanities.

Christopher Anderson

Christopher Anderson is a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He holds M.A. and M.Div. degrees from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a B.A. from Grove City College. At SUNY Geneseo, he will teach courses in first-year writing.

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English department faculty garner awards and recognition

These members of the English department were recognized for their outstanding contributions at SUNY Geneseo’s 2014-15 opening convocation.

Maria Lima

limaProf. Lima was appointed James and Julia Lockhart Supported Professor for Research and Creative Activity, 2014-2017. Prof. Lima’s scholarship has been fundamental in establishing Black British Literature as an internationally recognized academic field, and she is well-respected nationally and internationally for her work. Her essay “The Choice of Opera for a Revisionist History: Joan Anim-Addo’s Imoinda as a Neo-Slave Narrative” appeared in the 2013 volume of Caribbean Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (selected Proceedings of the “Islands-in-between Conference,” Grenada 2011). She was recently asked to join the British Arts and Humanities Research Council project on Translating Cultures – a three-year endeavor at the Goldsmiths, University of London. The Lockhart professorship carries a grant from the Geneseo Foundation for each of the three years it is held. Supported professors have the privilege of designing and teaching a course of their choosing and the responsibility of delivering a campus-wide lecture on a topic of their choice.

Gillian Paku

Paku_03Prof. Gillian Paku has been granted continuing appointment (tenure) in the English department and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Paku’s research and teaching are in British literature of the eighteenth century, disability studies, writing, and writing pedagogy. In spring 2014 she taught an innovative course in which English majors preparing for careers as 7-12 English teachers collaborated with English teachers in the York school district and blogged about their experience.In fall 2014, Paku was the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2012, she was named a winner of the Innovative Course Design Competition organized by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies for her course “What’s In a Name?” Among her recent publications are two forthcoming essays: a comprehensive article on “anonymity” commissioned by Oxford University Press for their online handbook series and an entry on “Pseudonymous and Anonymous Publishing” for Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of British Literature, 1660-1789.

Wes Kennison

kennisonProf. Kennison, Lecturer and Fellow in the Office of International Programs, received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching. Prof. Kennison, Geneseo class of ’79, has taught courses at his alma mater since 1986. His recent courses have included Humanities I and II (both here and in El Sauce, Nicaragua) and Latin. He also co-teaches seminars for the Edgar Fellows program and is extensively involved as a workshop leader for the GOLD program.

Glenn McClure

GlennMcClure-JohnBrownDays-225x300Prof. McClure, Lecturer in English and Humanities, received the Joseph O’Brien Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching. Prof. McClure, a Geneseo alumnus with both a BA in Music History and an MA in Multicultural Education, teaches Humanities and INTD 105, and has been a study abroad coordinator and instructor in Italy, Ghana, Haiti, Greece, and Nicaragua. McClure is also an independent composer and arts integration consultant whose oratorio “The Starry Messenger” was featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

Irene Belyakov

Prof. Belyakov, Coordinator of English for Speakers of Other Languages, received the Harter Endowment for Faculty Mentoring Award. Since arriving at SUNY Geneseo nearly 15 years ago, Belyakov has made the campus a more welcoming place for students with diverse backgrounds and especially those for whom English is a second language. She has served as a mentor, supporter, advocate, and sometimes therapist for dozens of international students. She also mentors School of Education majors and other students whose future careers may involve working with individuals from different cultural backgrounds. In addition, Belyakov has offered workshops through the Geneseo’s Teaching and Learning Center to educate her colleagues about second language development and the kind of oral and written product one might expect from an ESOL student. Belyakov has dedicated herself to supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students. She has been the faculty advisor for Pride Alliance and Hillel, and she has co-chaired the SUNY Geneseo Presidents Commission on Diversity and Community.