Calendar of Events

2008-2009

• Fall: (TBA): The English Department will be holding a “ Book Launch.” Faculty members will be promoting and signing their new books. Those faculty who will be there with their books are: Branka Arsic, Passive Constitutions; Glyne Griffith, Color, Hair, and Bone: Race in the Twenty-First Century; Helene Scheck, Reform and Resístance: Formations of Female Subjectivity in Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Culture; Charles Shepherdson, Lacan and the Limits of Language; and Alifair Skebe, El Agua Es La Sangre De La Tierra.

September

• Sept. 11 (Thurs.): 4:00 p.m., HU354: The Professionalization Committee, directed by Bret Benjamin, with Professors Randy Craig and Lisa Thompson, will hold an introductory meeting for all graduate students who plan to apply for academic positions this year. At this meeting we will discuss the job application calendar, the necessary documents, and the expected level of progress towards the Ph.D. They will lay out a timeline of future professionalization meetings this semester that will cover specific aspects of the process including job letters, interviewing strategies, and so forth. In the coming months they plan to work intensively with all job seeking students, both as a group and through individualized tutorials. At this meeting, they will do their best to answer any questions about the process. This meeting is open to all graduate students who want to learn more about the academic job market in preparation for future years; however, it is essential for those students who plan to apply for academic jobs this Fall.

• Sept. 12 (Fri.): 6:30 p.m., JAWBONE, Upstate Artists Guild Gallery (UAG Gallery), 247 Lark Street (b/w Lancaster and Jay), Albany NY. Poetry at the UAG sponsored by Jawbone Reading Series, Albany Poets, and the Upstate Artists Guild free and open to the public: Tomás Noel and The Poet Essence.  

• Sept. 17 (Weds.): 7:00 p.m. (6:30-6:55 p.m. Steel Pan Musical Prelude), Campus Center Ballroom, University at Albany: The Department of Africana Studies is presenting professor Sir Kenneth O. Hall, ON, GCMG, OJ, Governor-General of Jamaica’s lecture entitled “Caribbean Development within the Global Economy.” There will be a Carnival Gala and other cultural performances. A reception follows the program. For further information please visit the department website: www.albany.edu/africana  

• Sept. 25 (Thurs.): 10:40 a.m., Assembly Hall Campus Center: Our new ENG faculty member Tomás Urayoán Noel will participate in a panel discussion entitled "Breaking Boundaries: Opening Pathways for New Ways of Learning." Contact Bret Benjamin (bret@albany.edu) for more information.   

• Sept. 26 (Fri.): 7:30 p.m. Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY: Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Observer and author of Wall Street and After the New Economy, will be presenting the capstone event for the Capital Region Social Forum, which will include film screenings, lectures by Lori Wallach and Steve Early, as well as a Global Fair Trade fair in conjunction with the launch of the Globalization Studies Major. Please note that new ENG faculty member Tomás Urayoán Noel will participate in a panel discussion on Thurs 9/25 at 10:40 a.m. entitled "Breaking Boundaries: Opening Pathways for New Ways of Learning." Contact Bret Benjamin (bret@albany.edu) for more information.  

• Sept. 26 (Fri.): 6:30 p.m., JAWBONE ,Upstate Artists Guild Gallery (UAG Gallery), 247 Lark Street (b/w Lancaster and Jay), Albany NY. Poetry at the UAG, free and open to the public, is sponsored by Jawbone Reading Series, Albany Poets, and the Upstate Artists Guild presents: Cara Benson and Cheryl A. Rice.
  

October

• Oct. 10 (Fri.): 6:30 p.m., JAWBONE, Upstate Artists Guild Gallery (UAG Gallery), 247 Lark Street (b/w Lancaster and Jay), Albany NY. Poetry at the UAG is free and open to the public sponsored by Jawbone Reading Series, Albany Poets, and the Upstate Artists Guild: Friday Night Open Mic.

• Oct. 14 (Tues.): 5:30 p.m., HU 354: English Department Fall Open House for English Majors (and intended majors.) The event will promote the Spring English Courses, Internship Program, Sigma Tau Delta, Honors Program, and the Writing Center.

• Oct. 24 (Fri.): 3:00 p.m., HU 290: Sherman Raskin, Chair of the English Dept. at Pace University will be speaking about "Publishing as a Career and the Master's Program in Publishing at Pace University." All are welcome.     

• Oct. 24 (Fri.): 6:30 p.m., JAWBONE, Upstate Artists Guild gallery (UAG Gallery), 247 Lark Street (b/w Lancaster and Jay), Albany, NY. Poetry at the UAG , free and open to the public, is sponsored by Jawbone Reading Series, Albany Poets, and the Upstate Artists Guild: Dan Nester and Dan Wilcox.

• Oct. 30 (Thurs.): 11:00 a.m., HU 354: SUNY Press Editorial visit.

November

• Nov. 14 (Fri.): 6:30 p.m., JAWBONE, Upstate Artists Guild gallery (UAG Gallery), 247 Lark Street (b/w Lancaster and Jay), Albany, NY. Poetry at the UAG, free and open to the public, is sponsored by Jawbone Reading Series, Albany Poets, and the Upstate Artists Guild: Chris Funkouser and Ed Rinaldi.


• Nov. 20 (Thurs.): 3:00 p.m., Initiatives in Teaching Workshop in Humanities 290. Please join us next Thursday, November 20, for the first Initiatives in Teaching workshop of the year. For this workshop, Tomás Urayoán Noel and Christopher Rizzo will discuss issues they have grappled with in the creative writing classroom. The audience will be an integral part of the workshop. We anticipate a lively and productive discussion, and We hope many of you will be able to attend.
  

December

• Dec. 4 (Thurs.) (time TBA), HU345: Theory Conference on Class and Critique.
     
• Dec. 8 (Mon.): Last day of classes for Fall 2008 semester.

• Dec. 11 (Thurs.): 1:00-3:00 p.m. (location TBA): "Dance of Death," a multimedia performance. This modern revival of a medieval and early modern form of social critique will draw on the collaborative critical, creative, and research abilities of students from four separate classes in English and Theater departments. Ineke Murakami and Helene Scheck received an Instructional Innovation Grant from ITLAL in support of this performance project. Using a team-based learning approach, the project endeavors to test some of the boundaries commonly erected between historical periods, academic disciplines, scholarly vs. creative writing, and "literary" vs. mass cultural modes of expression. Karen Williams (English), Eszter Szalczer (Theater), Daniel Gremmler (Humanistic Studies/Classics), and Ione Beauchamp (Theater/Dance) are the other instructors involved in this project. Open to the public.

Coming Spring 2009...

• Feb. (TBA): Rick Barney and Helene Scheck are co-organizing a two-day multidisciplinary symposium entitled "Rhetorics of Plague: Early/Modern Trajectories of Biohazard." The Symposium will generate discussion on larger social, philosophical, cultural issues relating to biohazard in the pre- and early modern period, considering, for example, what early manifestations of and attitudes toward plague might tell us about what we know/think now (phobic as well as reasoned responses); or, conversely, what current work tells us about early paradigms of biohazard. By soliciting papers and panels that forge connections between 21st-century contexts and pre- and early modern periods (up to ca. 1820), we aim to create a symposium that will generate lively and important cross-talk that will cultivate rather than simply showcase ideas. Details TBA.

• Mar. 27 (TBA): Artist in Residence: Composer Petr Kotik, Open talk at the UA English Department, and a performance of experimental literature at the UA Art Museum co-sponsored by the Department of English.
  Related Events: Mar. 26 (Thurs.): Petr will present an Open lecture/rehearsal in the UA Music Department. Mar. 28 (Sat.): Concert at the Performing Arts Center with works by Petr Kotik, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Phill Niblock, and Morton Feldman.

• Mar. 30 & 31, (Mon. & Tues.) (TBA): A presentation and a reading by the Algerian poet novelist & sociologist Habib Tengour on "The current situation of literature in North Africa" organized in collaboration with the LLC & the Writers Institute. He will also be present at the graduate seminar on translation. Habib Tengour, writer and ethnologist, born in Mostaganem (Algeria) in 1947, lives and works between Constantine and Paris. Considered as "one of the Maghreb's most forceful and visionary poetic voices of the post-colonial era" (Pierre Joris), Tengour, who authored a "Manifesto of Maghrebian Surrealism" in 1981, explores the Algerian cultural space in all its ramifications : the oral and hagiographic traditions, the popular imagination and the founding myths, collective memory, raï music and the lived experiences of exile. Core to this work (at times referred to as “soufialism”) are the Algerian cultural identity and memory as they are being mestizoed and woven between Orient and Occident, especially under the impact of the experiences of exile and migration. See for example L'Epreuve de l'Arc (1990), his "maqamât-novel," Gens de Mosta (1997), his novel composed of short stories, Ce Tatar-là (1999), his poem set in the working class suburbs. The double vision of poet and ethnologist achieves surprising symbioses, for Tengour, the cynical observer of his society, proposes through his narratives a fragmented chronicle of post-colonial Algeria under the dismal light of History or of myth. (Regina Keil-Sagawe)

• Apr. (TBA): A reading and afternoon discussion will be presented by Pierre Guyotat organized in collaboration with the LLC & the Writers Institute. A former French soldier in the Algerian war, Pierre Guyotat will be on a reading tour of select American universities to mark the occasion of the newest English edition of Eden, Eden, Eden (1970)—brilliant book that earned both critical accolades and notoriety when the French government banned it for a period of eleven years, under a law meant to "protect the youth." Michel Foucault stated that "Guyotat has written a book in a language of startling innovation; no-one has ever spoken as he speaks here." Roland Barthes saw Eden as "a new landmark and a starting-point for new writing." Eden is a violent, sexual, hallucinatory novel that is openly critical of French colonialism in Algeria.

• Apr. (TBA): Rodrigo Toscano, author of To Leveling Swerve (Kruspkaya Books, 2005), Platform (Atelos, 2004), The Disparities (Green Integer, 2002), and Partisans (O Books, 1999), will be presenting for the English Department. His new book, Collapsible Poetics Theater, was a National Poetry Series 2007 winner. It will be published in 2008 by Fence Books. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 2004, and he was a 2005 recipient of a New York State Fellowship in Poetry. He was poetry co-coordinator for "The Social Mark" symposium (Slought Foundation), and is also the artistic director and writer for the Collapsible Poetics Theater (CPT). His polyvocalic pieces, poetics plays, and body-movement poems have been performed nationwide. Toscano is originally from Southern California. He works in Manhattan at the Labor Institute and lives in Brooklyn. Rodrigo’s author page from the Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY Buffalo can be found on this web link: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Toscano.html