Professor Rachel Hall’s collection of linked stories, Heirlooms, has been selected by acclaimed poet and novelist Marge Piercy for the 2015 BkMk Press G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize. The book will be published in 2016. Stories from the collection have appeared in Bellingham Review, Fifth Wednesday, Gettysburg Review, and Water~Stone Review.
New Okada book on Asian-American film and video out from Rutgers
Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies Jun Okada’s book Making Asian American Film and Video: History, Institutions, Movements was published this spring by Rutgers University Press.
From the Rutgers website:
Making Asian American Film and Video explores how the genre has served as a flashpoint for debates about what constitutes Asian American identity. Tracing a history of how Asian American film was initially conceived as a form of public-interest media, part of a broader effort to give voice to underrepresented American minorities, Okada shows why this seemingly well-intentioned project inspired deeply ambivalent responses. In addition, she considers a number of Asian American filmmakers who have opted out of producing state-funded films, from Wayne Wang to Gregg Araki to Justin Lin.
Okada gives us a unique behind-the-scenes look at the various institutions that have bankrolled and distributed Asian American films, revealing the dynamic interplay between commercial and state-run media. More than just a history of Asian Americans in film, Making Asian American Film and Video is an insightful meditation on both the achievements and the limitations of institutionalized multiculturalism.
The SUNY Geneseo Lamron published an interview with Prof. Okada in April.
Spend Mother’s Day at the tenth annual Peace Poetry Reading
The tenth annual Genesee Valley Peace Poetry Reading will be held this Sunday, May 10, at 2 p.m. in Wadsworth Auditorium on the campus of SUNY Geneseo. Over 1,500 area students in grades K-8 submitted poems on the theme of peace for this year’s Peace Poetry contest, and over 60 of those students were selected as winners. They’ll read their poems on stage and receive prizes. Cuteness is guaranteed.
The event is free and open to the public.
According to English professor Dr. Rob Doggett who has run the Geneseo contest since its inception, “The goal of the contest is to give students the opportunity to reflect creatively on the theme of peace at a time when so much of what they encounter in the media is dominated by images of violence.”
Professor Doggett, aided by student judges and organizers at SUNY Geneseo, has grown this event into a major feature of the community calendar within the Genesee Valley: a Mother’s Day celebration at which contest winners read their poems to an audience that includes family, teachers, and area residents.
“I honestly feel that this contest can help change the lives of students because it helps them to discover a talent that they didn’t know they had,” says Doggett. The contest has helped thousands of young people explore, reflect on and communicate about large ideas that shape their daily lives: What does peace mean to them? What brings them peace in their lives? How might young people help to create a more peaceful world? At times the students’ poems deal with domestic strife, or loved ones in war zones; at times they elegize hunting trips or calm moments with friends. The Peace Poetry Contest sparks conversations on all these topics, with the presentation chapbook a memorial for students to take home—and an inspiration to their peers.
2015 English department scholarships and graduating senior awards
Our previous post listed winners of the 2015 writing awards in English and Africana/Black Studies.
We’re also pleased to announce this year’s winners of the English department’s scholarships and graduating senior awards:
Scholarships
- Natalie Selser Freed Memorial Scholarship: Meghan Barrett
- Rita K. Gollin Senior Year Scholarship for Excellence in American Literature: Jeremy Jackson
- Rita K. Gollin Junior Year Scholarship for Excellence in American Literature: Thomas McCarthy
- Hans Gottschalk Award: KiayaRose Dilsner-Lopez
- Joseph M. O’Brien Transfer Scholarship: Sarah Smith
- Don Watt Memorial Scholarship: Kristen Druse
Graduating Senior Awards
- William T. Beauchamp Literature Award: Christina Mortellaro
- Patricia Conrad Lindsay Memorial Award: Sean Neill
- Calvin Israel Award in the Humanities: Rebecca Miller and Liam Cody
- Joseph M. O’Brien Memorial Award: Harrison Dole
We’ll be celebrating winners of scholarships, graduating senior awards, and writing awards today at 2:30 p.m. today in the Walter Harding Room, Welles 111.
2015 English department writing awards
Congratulations to the SUNY Geneseo students who took first, second, and third place this year in the categories of critical essay, diversity studies, first-year critical writing, research, creative non-fiction, literary fiction, and poetry. Congratulations as well to the students who won in each of three categories for work in Africana/Black studies.
John H. Parry Award: Critical Essay
- Sean Neill, “Towards a Theory of Auto Horror”
- Sarah Simon, “Erupt/Endure”
- Liam Cody, “Repurposing Bodies in ‘The Grauballe Man'” and Zachary Muhlbauer, “Tom Wolfe’s Never-Never Land (What?)”
Jérome de Rômanet de Beaune Award: Diversity Studies
- Meghan Kearns, “No Magic Here: Archival Violence and the Body”
- Kyle Parnell, “Disability as Metaphor in Curricular Literature: A Case Study on Of Mice and Men“
- Emily Ercolano, “Kramer vs. Kramer: The Subversion and Affirmation of Masculine Hegemony in the Male Mother”
Irene E. Smith Award: First-Year Critical Writing
- Noah Chichester, “We Shall Overcome: Ferguson and the History of Black Protest in America”
- Sophie Boka, “Destabilizing Definitions”
- Halee Finn, “Optimism Can Influence Perspective”
Research Paper Award
- Harrison Hartsough, “Constitutional Rights as an Unfunded Mandate: The Problems with the Implementation of Gideon v. Wainwright in New York State”
- Connor Valvo, “The Place of Theory of Mind in The Catcher in the Rye“
- Sean Fischer and Benjamin Wach, “United We Stand: An Ethical Framework for Literary Criticism, A Case Study Analysis”
Creative Non-Fiction Award
- Erin Koehler, “The Phototroph”
- Kathryn Waring, “Open Diary”
- Lara Elmayan, “Scavengers”
Lucy Harmon Award: Literary Fiction
- Katie Soares, “Kill the Carrier”
- Sophie Boka, “To Know One”
- Marissa Canarelli, “The Magpie”
Mary Thomas Award: Poetry
- Chrissy Montelli, “Aftermath of: Twin Mental Health Evaluations”
- Lara Elmayan, “Last Prayer to Mack Wolford”
- Codie Hazen, “[Unspecified Endocrine Disorder]”
Africana/Black Studies Award
- Best Critical/Analytical Essay: Sean Neill
- Best Research Paper: Cassandra Nicol
- Best Creative Writing: Devon Poniatowski
Poet M. NourbeSe Philip to perform here April 28 at 7 p.m.
Afro-Canadian poet, writer, and activist M. NourbeSe Philip will perform from her recent book, Zong!, a radical collection of poetry that tries to come to terms with the 1781 tragedy of the slave-ship Zong, from which ship over 150 African men, women, and children were thrown overboard as part of an insurance claim. 
No one was ever tried for their murder, and all that survives recording the incident is a two-page legal decision, Gregson v. Gilbert, named for and concerned with the ship’s owners and insurers, not the Africans onboard. It has been described by Juliana Spahr as “exceptional and uniquely moving.”
Philip’s performance will be accompanied by an original musical composition by SUNY Geneseo’s Glenn McClure.
The event, which will be held at Doty Hall on the SUNY Geneseo campus, is free and open to the public; books will be available for purchase.
M. NourbeSe Philip is the acclaimed author of four books of poetry, two collections of essays, a play, a novel, several short stories, and other writings; her work features in the Norton Anthology of English Literature. The recipient of many illustrious international awards, including the Casa de las Americas prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a McDowell Fellowship, a Chalmers Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation residency, Philip has read and performed her work internationally, including as writer-in-residence at the University of the West Indies and as part of The Scream Literary Festival. She lives and writes in Toronto, where she has previously been the writer-in-residence at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore.
Lytton Smith and Jón Gnarr at UR bookstore April 23
Update (April 20, 2015 at 7:17 a.m.): Dr. Smith’s translation of The Indian has been praised as “beautifully translated” and “hypnotic and heartbreaking” in a pre-publication review by Michael Schaub of NPR Books. You can read an excerpt of The Indian here.
Professor Lytton Smith will appear at the University of Rochester bookstore this Thursday, April 23, at 6 p.m. with Jón Gnarr, former punk rocker, mayor of Reykjavík, sitcom star, and author of The Indian, which Smith has translated into English for publisher Deep Vellum.
There will be a conversation between Smith and Gnarr, a reading from the book, and a chance to ask questions. The event is free and open to the public.
The Indian is a novel/memoir of Gnarr’s uncomfortable childhood, telling in black humor his isolation and his misdiagnosis as backwards because of his severe dyslexia and ADHD. Subjected to constant bullying, young Gnarr sets his bedroom on fire (accidentally), tries to fit in by self-piercing his ears at a Grease-themed school dance, and attempts to sail across the Reykjavík bay, almost washed out into the ocean.
The Indian is the first novel in a trilogy on Gnarr’s youth, and resonates with young readers as much as with parents of children with emotional and learning issues; The Indian is taught in schools throughout Iceland, resonating with readers of all ages. The Indian is out May 5th and Deep Vellum will publish the full trilogy throughout 2015-2016.
Actors from Ireland’s Curlew Theatre Company to perform J. M. Synge adaptation on April 10
Tegolin Knowland and Sean Coyne of the Curlew Theatre, Tullycross, Ireland will perform Eamon Grennan’s adaptation of John Millinton Synge’s The Aran Islands: A Dramatic Recital for Two Voices on Friday, April 10, 2015 at 7 p.m. in the Geneseo Riviera theater. The event, which is free and open to the pubic, is sponsored by the departments of English and History at SUNY Geneseo.
Between May 1898 and October 1901, John Millington Synge, a Dubliner, spent just under four months (accumulated over four separate visits) on Inishmaan, the middle island of the three Aran Islands lying off the West Coast of Ireland. From the diary and notebooks he kept while there, he composed his travel book, The Aran Islands. Eamon Grennan (well known Irish poet) has taken a number of fairly representative moments from The Aran Islands and turned them into a kind of collage to represent as much as possible what the book is like and something of its flavor. It is partly a romantic lyrical evocation of this wild place, partly a series of anecdotes, partly an almost anthropological study of the people’s lives, their habits, their folk-tales and so on. First performed at the Clifden Arts Festival in Western Ireland, this dramatic recital offers American audiences a rare opportunity to experience the fine work of Ireland’s Curlew Theatre Company.
Geneseo Sigma Tau Delta students take top honors at annual conference
Seventeen members of Geneseo’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society, attended this year’s conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, accompanied by Prof. Caroline Woidat and adviser Prof. Gillian Paku. They were Amy Bishop, Liam Cody, Jennie Conway, Sean Fischer, Meghan Kearns, Erin Koehler, Lucia Lotempio, Ellie MacWilliam, Rebecca Miller, Christina Mortellaro, Michelle Mundt, Sean Neill, John Panus, Katie Silvestri, Ben Wach, Katie Waring, and Jo-Ann Wong.
For many of the students who attended this year’s convention, titled “Borderlands and Enchantments,” it was their first time participating in a conference where they were allowed to interact with critical and creative writing from college students around the world. The experience allowed students “to gain valuable connections throughout the conference, [and become involved in] discussion with other panelists, who brought new ideas and theories to our conversations,” said Senior Ellie MacWilliam. Students attended a variety of panels and roundtables on topics such as post-colonial literatures, Modernism, Transgender and Bisexuality in Young Adult Literature, critical theory in film and television, and XML text encoding in music and literature. 
For junior Michelle Mundt, being involved in panels surrounded by her college peers gave her the opportunity to learn “a lot on how to present a paper and question my motives in writing. I also enjoyed being able to listen to other students’ presentations and gleaning from their knowledge on different subjects.” Attendees also listened to presentations from acclaimed authors such as Simon Ortiz and Leslie Marmon Silko. Senior Rebecca Miller found Silko’s reading “the most memorable part about the conference. . . . The conference was educational and expansive, and overall a great way to spend spring break.”
The Geneseo students were awarded two first place honors, along with the Best Convention Paper. Senior Ben Wach won the Critical Essays in Theory category and Katie Waring won the Creative Non-Fiction category, with Katie’s essay, “Transdifferentiating Cells,” ultimately named top piece at the convention. Throughout the conference, the students supported each other at the panel presentations. Senior Lucia LoTempio said, “It was definitely enlightening to make new connections with my peers and to experience the fruits of their work at Geneseo. I was consistently (though not unexpectedly) impressed with the insightfulness and intellectual difficulty of each Geneseo student’s work, whether it was critical or creative. It made me especially proud to call myself a member of the Geneseo community!” Students in the Creative Writing and Literature tracks were able to come together: “It was an honor to be able to have presented both a critical paper and a collection of poetry at the conference an experience that I was extremely lucky to have had,” said Senior Erin Koehler.
The Geneseo English attendees at this year’s convention unanimously agreed on the value of taking advantage of the opportunity that Sigma Tau Delta offers students. This convention allows students to expand their knowledge of other work happening in both critical and creative fields across the world. As Senior Sean Fischer noted, “Hopefully more students can see how successful the group that attended this year’s conference was and begin working on their own research projects or creative writing collections to submit for next year’s conference!”
Connor Valvo presents at literacy conference
On March 28, Connor Valvo, a senior English major and pre-service Adolescence Education student, presented at the Literacy Essentials professional conference in Connecticut. Connor presented both a defense of harnessing non-academic literacies in the high school classroom and a worked example of mapping his ninth-grade students’ fluency in arguing about hunting onto arguing about Renaissance artists. Connor’s argument gains urgency from its application to York Central High School, where the poverty rate is twice the national average and many students have particular difficulty imagining the relevance of academic work. Connor gained his experience at York while participating in ENGL 488: The Practice of Writing, a SUNY Geneseo course taught by Prof. Gillian Paku and funded by a SUNY C-TEN grant with the goal of engaging Education students with their local communities.