April 1999 News

Fraser Cocks, Assistant Editor, W.B. Yeats: Autobiographies, eds. William H. O'Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald. New York: Scribner, 1999.

Alain J.-J. Cohen, "La citation du Mépris dans Casino de Scorsese. Du détail iconophagique," La Licorne (Hors série VI) Le Cinéma en Détails (1999): 193-206.

Stephen Cox, The Titanic Story. Chicago: Open Court, 1999.

Michael Davidson, "'Skewed by Design': From Act to Speech Act in Language Writing," Artifice and Indeterminacy: An Anthology of New Poetics, ed. Christopher Beach. University of Alabama Press, 1999.

Susan Kalter, "The Path to Endless: Gary Snyder in the mid-1990s," Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 41.1 (Spring 1999): 16-46.

Donald Wesling
Preface (one page) to William H. Thornton, Cultural Prosaics: The Second Postmodern Turn. Research Institute for Comparative Literature, University of Alberta, 1998.
John Muir: To Yosemite and Beyond, co-ed. with Robert Engberg. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999. Reprint of book published by University of Wisconsin Press, 1980.

Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Wendy Arons has been appointed Assistant Professor (tenure track) in the Department of Film, Theatre, and Television at the University of Notre Dame. She will relocate to Indiana this coming July to begin her new position in August.

Eric Cazdyn has accepted an assistant professorship in the Departments of East Asian Studies, Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of Toronto.

Brian Gollnick has accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa.

Marcel Hénaff has received a UCSD Center for the Humanities 1999-2000 award in support of the conference, "Beyond Babel: Common Language, Common Differences, Common Ground." The conference, which Professor Hénaff is organizing, will take place at UCSD in October 1999 as part of the Western Humanities Alliance 18^th Annual Conference.

Grace Hong has accepted an assistant professorship in the Department of English and American Studies Program at Princeton University.

Milos Kokotovic is the recipient of a 1999-2000 UCSD Faculty Career Development Program grant to support research on his book project comparing both non-indigenous authors' and indigenous movements' cultural and political responses to modernization and globalization in the Andean and Maya regions.

Iñigo Sánchez-Llama has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Spanish at Purdue University at West Lafayette.

Shelley Streeby is the recipient of a 1999-2000 UCSD Faculty Career Development Program grant to support work on the revision of her manuscript, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture. Professor Streeby has also been awarded a UCSD Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship for 1999-2000.

Kristi Wilson has been awarded a UCSD Center for the Humanities Graduate Student Fellowship for the 1999-2000 academic year; and she has been accepted as a Visiting Researcher at the 1999 UC Berkeley Summer Research Seminar, "Politics and Kinship: Antigone for the Present," that will be led by Judith Butler.

Winifred Woodhull has been selected to receive a 1999-2000 UCSD Center for the Humanities Conference Attendance award.

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto received tenure at the University of Iowa where he holds an appointment in the Departments of East Asian Studies and Comparative Literature.

Exams and Defenses
The following graduate students successfully completed qualifying examinations, comprehensive examinations or defenses during Winter Quarter 1999:

• Helen Depta, Ph.D. Qualifying Examination
  
• Hassan Dhouti, Ph.D. Qualifying Examination
  
• Min-Jung Kim, Ph.D. Defense; Dissertation: "Renarrating the 'Private:' Gender, Family, and Race in Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison."

Our colleague, William Tay, has retired from UCSD effective at the end of the Winter Quarter 1999. A native of Hong Kong, Professor Tay was educated there and in Taipei, and received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from our department in 1977. He joined the UCSD Literature faculty in 1980, and has been a Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature since 1989. He has served our department as Director of Graduate Studies and Head of Comparative Literature, and has been Director of UCSD's Chinese Studies Program. During leaves from UCSD over the past two decades, he has also held teaching and administrative positions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a leading authority on modern and contemporary fiction, film, and literary culture in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora; and has also published extensively on comparative East-West topics in critical theory, poetry, and film. His assiduous work in a remarkable range of intellectual endeavors--as a critic and scholar, editor and translator, cultural commentator and facilitator of intercultural exchanges, academic administrator and adjudicator of research grants and literary and film prizes--is directed toward the goal of fostering a contemporary Chinese culture that bridges the ideological and geopolitical differences within the Chinese speaking world, and that makes available and accessible to that world the most significant cultural and intellectual productions of the modern and contemporary West. As he departs to take a new position in Hong Kong, we congratulate him and wish him well.

Lisa Lowe, Chair
Department of Literature

John Herschel, Lecturer
Assistant Director, Warren College Writing Program, UCSD; poet, playwright, and director; has taught playwriting and fiction courses at UC Santa Cruz and UCSD.
LTWR 100--Short Fiction: Dramatic Writing

Karen A. Hollis, Lecturer
Ph.D., English Literature, UCSD; specialist in 18^th century English literature and culture; has taught English literature at SDSU and UCSD.
LTEN 120E--Women in the 18^th Century: Resisting Romance in 18^th Century fiction.

Fredric R. Jameson, Visiting Professor
Professor, Literature Program, Duke University; cultural theorist and literary critic of world renown.
LTTH 297--Directed Studies Reading Course: Allegory and Dialectics (two unit mini-seminar; see "Graduate Program Announcements," below).

Sunny Jung, Lecturer
Ed.D. , U.S. International University; has taught Korean language and literature at USC, UC Irvine, and UCSD. LTEA 150--Korean Literature in Translation: Poetry and Short Stories
LTKO 1C--First-Year Korean: Fundamentals of Korean.

Jean-Louis Morhange, Lecturer
Ph.D., French Literature, UCSD; teaching interests include late 19^th and 20^th century French literature, French civilization and culture, and North African Francophone literature; has taught courses in French literature at UCSD.
LTFR 143--Major Authors: 20^th Century Autobiography.

Thomas A. Nelson, Visiting Professor
Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, SDSU; teaches screen writing, literary analysis, and film studies.
LTWR 110--Screen Writing.

Chandan Reddy, Lecturer
Ph.D. student and University President's Fellow in English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University; his teaching interests include Asian American and postcolonial literature.
LTEN 181--Asian American Literature: Urban Contexts--Representations of the City in Asian American Cultural Texts.

Gina Valdés, Lecturer
Accomplished Chicana poet and writer of narrative; has taught at the University of Washington, UC Davis, UCLA, and UCSD.
LTEN 180--Chicano Literature in English: Chicana Fiction and Poetry.

Kathleen M. Vernon, Visiting Associate Professor
Associate Professor, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, SUNY Stony Brook; has numerous publications on Spanish culture, film, and modern literature, with an emphasis on the post-Civil War period. LTSP 129--20^th Century Prose: New Historical Novel and Film
LTSP 252--Modern Hispanic Literature and Culture: Women's Cinema in Spain and Latin America.

Wendy W. Walters, Lecturer
Ph.D., English and American Literature, UCSD; has taught African American literature at UCSD; interests also include diaspora studies, Caribbean literature, and feminist studies.
LTEN 183--Afro-American Prose: "Living for the City"--African American Urban Literature.

Richard T. Wang, Lecturer
Ph.D., Chinese History, University of Virginia; Chinese Studies Librarian and Adjunct Faculty Member in Chinese Studies, UCSD; has published numerous articles on modern Chinese historical and cultural issues.
TWS 23--Third World Literatures: Chinese Literature.

Kristi Wilson, Associate in Literature
Doctoral candidate, Comparative Literature, UCSD, completing her dissertation on "Eurpideanism: Euripides, Orientalism and the Dislocation of the Western Self."
LTWL 4M--Fiction and Film in 20^th Century Societies: Neorealism--Radical Fantasy.

REGENTS' LECTURER PRATIBHA PARMAR
Internationally acclaimed British-Indian filmmaker Pratibha Parmar will visit UCSD as a Regents' Lecturer from April 6 through 9, 1999. Ms. Parmar has produced and directed numerous films, including "The Righteous Babes" (a documentary about popular culture, feminism and rock music), "Brimful of Asia" (a documentary about the explosion of second generation Asian talent in the U.K.), and "Warrior Marks" (in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Alice Walker). She has received awards from film groups as diverse as San Francisco's gay and lesbian distributor Frameline, the National Black Programming Consortium, and the Paris Lesbian Film Festival.

Ms. Parmar will present a screening of "The Righteous Babes" (50 minutes) and "Brimful of Asia" (24 minutes), followed by a question and answer session, Thursday, April 8, 4:00 p.m., at the Visual Arts Facility Performance Space. The event is free and open to the public. While at UCSD, she will also make a classroom visit, conduct critiques of graduate student work, and hold office hours (Wednesday, April 7, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., Room 3440, Literature Building). Ms. Parmar's visit is sponsored by the Department of Literature with the assistance of the Department of Visual Arts. For additional information, please call (619) 534-4618.

LITERATURE COLLOQUIUM "COMPARATIVE EUROPEAN STUDIES"
with Susan Kirkpatrick, Todd Kontje, and Winifred Woodhull
Tuesday, April 13, 4:15 - 6:00 p.m.
deCerteau Room, 155 Literature Building

M. JACQUI ALEXANDER will visit the Department of Literature Tuesday, April 20 through Friday, April 23, and is scheduled to give a presentation, "The Heterosexual State and the Meaning of Feminist Politics," Wednesday, April 21, 4:00 p.m., in the deCerteau Room, 155 Literature Building. Professor Alexander is Director of Women's Studies at the University of Connecticut and coauthor, with Chandra Talpade Mohanty, of Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (Routledge, 1997).

DAVID PALUMBO-LIU, Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University, will give a lecture titled "Embodying Modernity: Asians and the New American Nation," Monday, April 26, 4:00 p.m., at HSS 4025. His presentation will be preceded by a reception at 3:30 at HSS 3005. Professor Palumbo-Liu's visit is sponsored by the Science Studies Program and the Department of Literature.

DIPESH CHAKRABARTY will visit the Department of Literature Tuesday, April 27 to Sunday, May 2, and is scheduled to give a presentation, "Witness to Suffering: Domestic Cruelty and the Birth of the Subject in Modern Bengal," Thursday, April 29, 4:00 p.m., in the deCerteau Room, 155 Literature Building. Professor Chakrabarty teaches in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. He is a founding member of the Subaltern Studies Group, and the author of Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940 (Princeton UP, 1989), and the forthcoming Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference.

FREDRIC R. JAMESON, Professor, The Literature Program, Duke University, and Visiting Professor, Department of Literature, UCSD, will present his annual public lecture, this year titled "Myths of Modernity," Wednesday, April 28, 4:30 p.m., at the Cross-Cultural Center. Professor Jameson is a literary critic of world renown. His work on critical theory, on European and American literature, and on film, architecture, and popular culture has had an enormous impact on the current shape of studies in the humanities and social sciences in the U.S. and abroad.

JEAN FRANCO, ROBERT C. ELLIOTT MEMORIAL LECTURE
Jean Franco, Professor Emerita of Spanish, Columbia University, will present the Department of Literature's annual Robert C. Elliott Memorial Lecture in the Deutz Conference Room, Copely International Conference Center, Institute of the Americas Building Complex, Thursday, May 13, 7:00 p.m. The Elliott Memorial Lecture series was established in the honor of Robert C. Elliott, a founding member of the Department of Literature who died in 1981. The Department of Literature is grateful to the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies for their assistance with the organization of this year's event.

LITERATURE COLLOQUIUM "THE HUMANITIES AT CENTURY'S BEGINNING"
with Robert Cancel, Michael Davidson, Anthony Edwards, Lisa Lowe, Don Wayne, and Kristi Wilson.
Tuesday, June 1, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
deCerteau Room, 155 Literature Building

NEW WRITING SERIES

• Mervyn Taylor, April 7: Mervyn Taylor, who divides his time between New York and his native Trinidad, has published two books of poems, An Island of His Own and The Goat, both from Junction Press. He teaches high-school English in Harlem and creative writing at the New School for Social Research.
  
• Leslie Scalapino, April 14: Author of numerous books of poetry, prose, drama, and criticism, Leslie Scalapino's recent publications include Green and Black: Selected Writings (Talisman House, 1996) and a collaboration with Lyn Hejinian, Sight (Edge, 1999). She edits and publishes O Books.
  
• Aldon Nielsen, April 21: Aldon Nielsen is the author of four volumes of poetry, most recently Vext, and four books of literary/cultural criticism, including C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction and Black Chant: Languages of African-American Post-modernism.
  
• Michael Davidson, April 28: Long-time UCSD professor Michael Davidson is an internationally celebrated poet and critic. His most recent book-length publications are The Arcades (O Books, 1999) and Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material Word (U. of California, 1997).
  
  
• Kit Robinson, May 5: The author of numerous books of poetry, including the recently published Democracy Boulevard (Roof Books, 1998), Kit Robinson has been called by Kevin Killian "one of the most accomplished poets working in America today." He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  
• Charles Bernstein, May 12: (A lecture and reading taking place at the Seuss Room, Geisel Library, at 4:30 p.m.) Author of over two dozen books of poetry and criticism, Charles Bernstein is the 1999 recipient of the Roy Harvey Pearce/ Archive for New Poetry Prize - awarded biennially to an American poet/scholar. Among his recent publications is My Way: Speeches and Poems (U. of Chicago, 1999).
  
• Lewis Warsh, May 19: Editor and publisher of United Artists Books, Lewis Warsh is the author of two novels, A Free Man and Agnes & Sally, a book of stories, Money Under the Table, and numerous books of poems, including Information from the Surface of Venus and Avenue of Escape.
  
• In Memoriam ~ Armand Schwerner, May 26: A celebration of the life and work of the poet and performance artist Armand Schwerner, with a filmed performance of Schwerner reading from his master-work The Tablets. Guest appearances by David Antin, Eleanor Antin, Jerome Rothenberg, Quincy Troupe, Mark Weiss, and others.
  

All readings, except for that by Charles Bernstein, are on Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. in the Visual Arts Facility Performance Space.

POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION AND AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
San Diego Marriott and Marina Hotel
March 31-April 3, 1999
Chicano/a Experiences of the Viet Nam War
Readings by authors Norma Elia Cantú, Leroy Quintana, Gina Valdés, and Daniel Cano
Chair, Jorge Mariscal
Saturday, April 3, 10:30 a.m.
For conference information, call (419) 372-7861.

ANCIENT UTOPIAS
University of California, San Diego
May 8, 1999
This one-day conference, presented by the Program in Classics and the Department of Literature at UCSD, will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., in the deCerteau Room, 155 Literature Building.

• Diskin Clay (Duke University), "The Island Utopias of the Hellenistic Age: Euhemeros' Panchaia and Iamboulos' Islands of the Sun"
  
  
• Leslie Edwards (UCSD), "Isocrates' Athens: from Utopia to Dystopia"
  
  
• Debora Shugar (UCLA), "The Rebel Codpiece of the State: Plato's Laws and the Politics of Sexual Repression"
  
  
• Giulia Sissa (Johns Hopkins), "Anesthetic Utopias"

The conference is free and open to the public. For further information, contact William Fitzgerald.

UC Multicampus Research Groups in the Humanities
The UC Office of the President announces the availability of funds to support up to three new Multicampus Research Groups (MRGs) that promote and advance humanistic research and study and foster inquiry from multiple perspectives and disciplines. MRGs draw together faculty from different UC campuses to form a critical mass of scholars in a given field or subfield. Three MRGs are currently supported by the OP: the All UC Group in Economic History, the Dickens Project, and the Shakespeare Forum. Academic Senate faculty are eligible to apply, and at least four campuses must have significant faculty involvement. Awards will be up to $35,000 per year for a five-year period (from September 1, 1999 to June 30, 2004) with the possibility of renewal. Details and application procedures are available from Barbara Saxon. Proposals must be submitted to Dean Deak's office by no later than May 21, 1999.

Fredric R. Jameson Spring Quarter 1999 Mini-Seminar
Professor Jameson's two-unit mini-seminar (LTTH 297) on "Allegory and Dialectics" is scheduled for Thursday, April 29, Tuesday, May 4, and Thursday, May 6, 12:45 - 3:35 p.m., in the deCerteau Room, 155 Literature Building. A reading list and enrollment information are available in the Graduate Program Office.

Commencement
The 1999 Graduate Studies Commencement will be held on Sunday, June 13, 12:00 noon, in the Price Center Ballroom.