Professor Tom Greenfield and senior Erin Carlo are co-authors of a 3000-word essay that’s been accepted by The Arthur Miller Journal (Penn State University Press) for publication in Fall 2017. “Strange Stage Fellows: Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter” grew out of discussions that occurred over the course of a year during which Carlo took two classes with Greenfield: The Legacy and Influence of Arthur Miller (ENGL 203) and Anglo–Irish Absurdist Drama (ENGL 486). Their essay identifies a recent trend in comparative scholarship between the two playwrights, moving from early hard-edged contrasts toward later nuanced explorations of artistic similarities in their work.
Author and activist Bill McKibben to deliver 2017 Walter Harding lecture September 30
Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben will deliver The 2017 Walter Harding Lecture on Saturday, September 30 at 4 p.m. in Wadsworth Auditorium on the SUNY Geneseo campus.
[Download the 11 x 17 poster here.]
McKibben is the founder of 350.org, an environmental advocacy group that uses grassroots organizing and mass mobilization to oppose new coal, oil, and gas projects; limit climate-warming emissions; support sustainable energy solutions at the community level; and educate governmental leaders and the general public.
McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including The End of Nature, widely regarded as the first book about climate change written for a general audience, and Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist. He writes frequently for such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone.
The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont, McKibben is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Award and honored by the Thomas Merton Center with its yearly prize recognizing “activists who work on national and international issues that transform our world.”
McKibben’s annotated edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden gratefully acknowledges its “comprehensive and illuminating” predecessor, Walden: An Annotated Edition (1995), edited by Geneseo’s late SUNY Distinguished Professor of English Walter Harding. Harding’s annotations are available in an online edition of Walden from Digital Thoreau.
You can learn more about Bill McKibben on his personal website.
English Department Announces Annual Scholarship Winners
The English Department recognized outstanding students in the English major with memorial scholarships and graduating awards for seniors. Award winners were recognized at the annual Department ceremony held on Study Day.
Junior and Senior Scholarship Recipients:
English Department Announces 2017 Writing Contest Winners
The English Department announced the winners of the annual Writing Contest for analytical and creative writing. Winners of the Writing Contest were recognized at the Department’s annual award ceremony held on Study Day. The Writing Contest is college-wide and students from all majors are encouraged to submit their analytical and creative writing for recognition.
Continue reading “English Department Announces 2017 Writing Contest Winners”
Kenneth Asher Publishes Book on Ethical Criticism with Cambridge University Press
Dr. Kenneth Asher, who is jointly appointed in English and Philosophy departments at Geneseo, recently published a book on literary criticism titled Literature, Ethics and the Emotions with Cambridge University Press. His monograph examines the longstanding connection between literature and our interpersonal ethical understanding of emotions. According to Cambridge University Press, “Asher argues that literary scholars should locate this question in the long and various history of moral philosophy. On the basis of his own reading of this history, Asher contends for the centrality of emotions in our ethical lives and shows how literature – novels, poetry, and drama – can each contribute to crucial emotional understanding.” Asher’s analysis is supplemented by chapters on T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and George Bernard Shaw to provide a detailed exploration as to how modernist authors approach the issue of ethical understanding and formation of self. You can find more information on Asher’s publication here.
Professor Asher has been a member of the English department since 1986. His previous publications include T.S. Eliot and Ideology (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and “Emotions and the Ethical Life in D.H. Lawrence” (Cambridge Quarterly, 2011).
Zach Muhlbauer Selected For Phi Beta Kappa Writing Internship
Recent Geneseo graduate Zachary Muhlbauer (’17) has been awarded a six month writing internship with the national office of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honors society. As part of the internship, Zach will be writing articles for The Key Reporter, an integrative online newsletter run by Phi Beta Kappa.
During his time at Geneseo, Zach served as a Writing Learning Center tutor, a Writing Course Fellow, and president of Sigma Tau Delta. He graduated magna cum laude in May 2017 with a double major in English Literature and Philosophy.
Beth McCoy And Eight Geneseo Alumni Co-Authored Article Accepted For Publication
Accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Genders is “’There is No Magic Here’: Saidiya Hartman, Percival Everett’s Zulus, and Slavery’s Archive,” an essay coauthored by Distinguished Teaching Professor Beth A. McCoy and Geneseo alumni Gregory J. Palermo (English/Literature, Physics), Jeremy A. Jackson (English/Literature), Danielle M. Ward (English, Geological Sciences), Timothy Moriarty (English/Creative Writing), Christina Broomfield (English/Literature, Art History), Melissa Ann Smith (Childhood/Special Education), Matt Huben (English/Literature), and Justin M. Turner (English/Literature).
The essay emerged from the collaborative final project in McCoy’s Fall 2013 ENGL 394 Black Apocalyptic Fiction seminar. You can view the full essay here.
Geneseo Students Present at Annual Sigma Tau Delta Convention
Eight Geneseo students represented the English Department in March in Louisville, KY at the annual convention for Sigma Tau Delta, the international English Honors society. The students—Marissa Bellusci, Kate Collis, Zach Muhlbauer, Amanda Saladino, Kristen Seaman, Veronica Taglia, Amanda Wentworth, and Melissa Whyman—were accompanied by Dr. Gillian Paku, who serves as faculty sponsor to the Geneseo chapter.
During the convention, students presented their critical essays or creative pieces as part of a panel of related topics (for instance, Gender and Drama in Oscar Wilde, or Cultural Theory in American Television), followed by a dialogue between the panelists and audience. The convention offered many opportunities for students to attend panels or workshops that caught their interest and to engage in conversation with fellow English majors from across the country, plus allowing some free time to explore the attractions of Louisville. Geneseo students were also able to attend a talk given by the convention’s featured speaker, the Booker prize-winning author Marlon James, whose fiction spans across several genres to explore Jamaican history and mythology.
At the convention’s student meeting, Geneseo’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta was awarded a prize in recognition of the chapter’s involvement in the society for 45 years.
All students who are members of Sigma Tau Delta are eligible to submit to the convention: for the 2017-2018 academic year, it will be held from March 21-24 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Submissions are usually due at the end of October, and the Sigma Tau Delta student e-board is always happy to help students prepare essays to continue Geneseo’s longstanding involvement with this valuable event.
Evan Goldstein wins SUNY arts award
Graduating senior Evan Goldstein has been awarded the SUNY-wide Patricia Kerr Ross Award, administered by the New York Foundation on the Arts, for his poetry, photography, and his work with social justice/arts organizations such as Guerrilla, an on-campus arts group Evan founded which aims to put poetry in public spaces while working with under-represented groups. A recently-begun project involves outreach with the Geneseo Migrant Center.
The Patricia Ross Kerr Award helps bridge study at The State University of New York and first-time entry into a professional career in the creative or performing arts: namely music, theatre, dance, film and video, creative writing, and the visual arts. This award of $1,000 is given annually to an individual (or divided among two exceptional applicants) according to excellence, originality, and promise, and helps the recipient begin to make a career in the arts.
Lytton Smith collaborates on essay exploring poetry in translation
Assistant Professor of English Dr. Lytton Smith has just published a collaboratively-authored essay, written with Dr. Katherine Baxter, on the poetry of Chamoru poet Craig Santos Perez and Maori poet Robert Sullivan.
“Writing in Translation: Robert Sullivan’s Star Waka and Craig Santos Perez’s from unincorporated territory” is the first comparative study of these poets’ works, and it makes an argument for translation as a “kinetic space” defined not by a movement from “source” to “target” language but as a means for allowing “multiple idioms and registers to co-exist, displaying a range of power structures and social hierarchies simultaneously.”
The article appears in Vol 2.2 of Literary Geographies, an interdisciplinary open-access e-journal that provides a forum for new research and collaboration in the field of literary/geographical studies.