May 2003 News

Alain J.-J. Cohen
"Blade Runner. Una critica cinematografica del giudizio postmoderno." Lo Sguardo degli Angeli. Intorno e oltre Blade Runner, ed. P. Bertetti & C. Scolari. Torino: Testo & Immagine, 2OO2: 3-3O. [Note: Alain's contribution was the lead article in this volume published to celebrate the 2Oth anniversary of the release of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.]

Michael Davidson
"Phantom Limbs: Film Noir and the Disabled Body." GLQ 9:1-2 (2003): 57-78.

Arthur Droge

• Review essay on Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God (Stanford Univ. Press 1999) in History of Religions 42 (2002): 175-180.
• "'The Lying Pen of the Scribes': Of Holy Books and Pious Frauds," Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 15 (2003): 117-147.

Bill Mohr

• "Good Work, If You Can Get It" (poem). Ribot 8 (2003): 64-65.
• "How to Play Ping-Pong with a Mirror" (poem). Poetry Motel 30 (2003): 2922.
• "Peripheral Outlaws: Beyond Baroque and the Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance" in The Sons and Daughters of Los: Culture and Community in L.A. ed. David E. James. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003: 15-38.

Congratulations to José de Piérola, who has been honored by the Academic Senate with a 2003 Barbara D. and Paul J. Saltman Excellent Teaching Award

Erin Gayton is presenting a paper entitled "'Love and bread and butter': Fanny Fern and the Literary Wife" at the American Literature Association, which is being held in Cambridge, MA, May 22-25, 2003.

First-year graduate student Leslie Hammer will also be presenting a paper at the American Literature Association Conference. Her presentation is entitled "Desiring Economic Independence: Remodeling the 'Home Office' in Hannah Lee's Elinor Fulton."

Hellen Lee will be giving a presentation entitled “Sex (Work) and the Single Girl: Reading for Women’s Work in Bret Harte’s ‘Miggles’ and Ambrose Bierce’s ‘The Haunted Valley’” at the AAAS (Association for Asian American Studies) in San Francisco on May 10, 2002.

Lisa Lowe has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the University of California Humanities Research Institute for the academic year 2003-04.

Bill Mohr delivered a paper entitled “The Wheelbarrow in Question: Ideology and the Radical Pellucidity of William Carlos Williams” at the American Literature Association Symposium on 20th Century Poetry, Long Beach, California, on March 15, 2003.

On March 21, 2003 he was the featured reader at the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, Venice, California. Beyond Baroque recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

Shelley Streeby has been chosen as the Assembly Delegate for the 19th Century American Literature Division of the MLA.

Priya Venkatesan was awarded the Summer Research Internship position at Johnson and Johnson in La Jolla for this summer. She will be working on genomics.

The Lincoln Center is doing a full workshop of a play based on Sherley Anne Williams’ Dessa Rose May 19 – June 8, 2003. This is the first step toward a full Lincoln Center production.

Dissertation Fellowships
One-quarter dissertation fellowships awarded to:

Yu-Fang Cho
Adrienne Eastwood
Hellen Lee
Sangeeta Mediratta
Yajaira Padilla
Eliza Slavet
Chong Smith

"Across the Line/Al otro lado"
a bilingual poetry reading
with Baja California poets

Elizabeth Algrávez - Víctor Hugo Limón - Heriberto Yépez - and poet and translator Mark Weiss - translator Harry Polkinhorn

Thursday, May 8, 5:00 pm
Visual Arts Performance Space, UCSD
Sponsor: The Department of Literature. Contact: Max Parra

Donald Wesling "Love, Grief, Anger, Joy, Surprise!—Emotion Studies Now" Tuesday, May 13, 7:30 pm Solis 104 Professor Wesling will speak and Professor Dana Nelkin of Philosophy will reply in the last UCSD Center for the Humanities dialogue of the academic year. Donald Wesling writes: The lecture tries to answer why there are suddenly so many important books on emotion, and whether our field has something to say within this new interdisciplinary study. My main example is BLACK WATER, a novel by Joyce Carol Oates.

Donna Haraway
"The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness"

Monday, May 12, 3:00 pm
Cross-Cultural Center

"The Companion Species Manifesto," writes Haraway, “is about the implosion of nature and culture in the relentlessly historically specific, joint lives of dogs and people, who are bonded in significant otherness. This is a story told by a student of the sciences and a feminist of a certain generation who has gone utterly to the dogs, literally.”

Donna J. Haraway is the author of numerous books and articles on science, technology, gender, and race, including Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. Femaleman©_Meets_ Oncomouse : Feminism and Technoscience (1997), which received the 1999 Ludwig Fleck prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Her other works include The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003), and Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Re-Invention of Nature (1991).

In 2000, Haraway received the J. D. Bernal Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of science and technology studies. She is currently working on a book on dog naturecultures, called tentatively The Birth of the Kennel, and on a popular book on the sport of dog agility called Notes of a Sports Writer's Daughter. She teaches in the Department of History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Professor Haraway was invited by Department of Literature graduate students with funding provided by a UCSD Center for the Humanities grant.

Sponsors: UCSD Center for the Humanities
Department of Literature
Contact: Jake Mattox

David Brin Thursday, May 15, 6:30 – 7:50 pm CSB 001 Stephen Potts invites visitors to his Science Fiction class (LTWL 124) on May 15 for a guest lecture by award-winning science fiction writer David Brin. Brin, who received his PhD in Astrophysics from UCSD in 1981, will be discussing trends in science and society. His novel Earth (1990) is an assigned reading for the class; his most recent novel, Kiln People, has been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Visiting Professor Joseph Roach
Professor of Theater & English, Yale University

Free Public Lecture: “ ‘The Great (W)hole of History’: Performing the National Mall ”
Thursday, May 15, 7:30 pm
Cross-Cultural Center

Seminar: Writing Performance History
May 16, 20, & 22, 1:00 – 3:50 pm
deCerteau Room, 155 Literature Building

Joseph Roach, Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater and English at Yale University, has chaired the Department of Performing Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre at Northwestern University, and the Department of Performance Studies at NYU.

His books and articles include Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (Columbia, 1996), which won the James Russell Lowell Prize from MLA and the Calloway Prize from NYU, The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Michigan, 1993), which won the Barnard Hewitt Award in Theatre History, and essays in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, The Drama Review, Theatre History Studies, Discourse, Theater, Text, and Performance Quarterly, and others.

“BY HOOK OR BY CROOK” Film Screening and Dialogue with Directors Harry Dodge and Silas Howard Friday, May 16, 5:30 pm Visual Arts Performance Space Two grifters--"Shy" (Silas Howard) and "Valentine" (Harry Dodge)--forge a relationship and embark on a rowdy adventure. An official selection of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, By Hook or By Crook has been honored with juried prizes at Outfest L.A., the Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and the Seattle Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. Harriet "Harry" Dodge is a writer, director, visual artist and an award-winning solo performer who wrote and directed a critically acclaimed series of experimental theater pieces. Silas Howard, writer, director and rockstar, has been performing nationally and internationally with her band, Tribe 8, since 1991. After the film (95 minutes), Judith Halberstam, Eileen Myles, and Jordana Rosenberg will lead a discussion with the filmmakers. Sponsor: UCSD Center for the Humanities. Contact: Judith Halberstam

“Who is a Muslim? An Indian Writer's Report on Violence and Poverty"
Amitava Kumar
Associate Professor of English
Penn State University

Monday, May 19, 6:00 – 7:30 pm
deCerteau Room, 155 Literature Building

Amitava Kumar is the author of Bombay-London-New York (2002) and Passport Photos (2000). He is the editor of several collections, including, most recently, World Bank Literature (2002). Kumar is also the script-writer and narrator of a prize-winning documentary, "Pure Chutney." His writings have appeared in publications like The Nation, New Statesman, Transition, American Prospect, and Kenyon Review.

Sponsors: Department of Ethnic Studies and Department of Literature. Contact: Rosemary George

Spring Celebration of the Arts Student Reading and Reception Wednesday, May 21, 3 pm de Certeau Room, Literature Building 155 The winners of the Stewart Prize in Poetry and the Milton Saier Award for Fiction will be announced at this annual celebration recognizing the talents of Department of Literature undergraduates. The Stewart Prize was established in recognition of John L. Stewart, Founding Provost of John Muir College. Each year, students in the Arts are awarded a monetary prize. The prize is administered by the Council of Provosts and has increased this year from $200 to $500. John Stewart was a Literature professor as well as provost of the second college, and his move to UCSD from Dartmouth opened the way for the UCSD/Dartmouth Exchange Program. The Dr. Milton H. Saier, Sr. Memorial Awards Fund was established at UCSD to support an annual awards program for the Departments of Music, Theatre and Dance, Literature, and Biology. Each year, the Department of Literature is given funds for an award to acknowledge “outstanding creative writing by an undergraduate student to be selected by the Chair of the Department of Literature in consultation with the faculty.” Entry deadline: Friday, May 2.

NEW WRITING SERIES. Spring 2003
Visual Arts Performance Space, 4:30 pm

May 14 - JEROME ROTHENBERG
Jerome Rothenberg’s most recent book of poems, A Book of Witness, his twelfth from New Directions, has just been published. He is the author of over seventy books of poetry and groundbreaking anthologies of experimental and traditional poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred and Poems for the Millennium. In 2002 he won his fourth PEN
USA award for Antilyrik, his translation of Czech modernist poet Vitezslav Nezval. Charles Bernstein writes of him: “The significance of Jerome Rothenberg’s animating spirit looms larger every year…(He) is the ultimate ‘hyphenated’ poet: critic-anthropologist-editor-anthologist-performer-teacher-translator, to each of which he brings an unbridled exuberance and an innovator’s insistence on transforming a given state of affairs.”

May 20 (a Tuesday) - SAMUEL R. DELANY (This event will be at 8:00pm in 115 Center Hall.)
The New York Times Book Review calls Nebula Award-winning author Samuel R. Delany “The most interesting writer of science fiction writing in English today.” His novels include The Mad Man, Babel-17, and Nova, about which Galaxy Magazine says, “As of this book Samuel R. Delany is the best science fiction writer in the world.” Aye, and Gomorrah is forthcoming this spring. Delany is also known for his nonfiction. His Times Square Red/Times Square Blue is a provocative collection of essays on the gentrification of Times Square.

May 28 - THAD ZIOLKOWSKI
Thad Ziolkowski’s most recent book is the memoir On A Wave. Writing in The New Yorker, William Finnegan calls it “more than an account of a sport mastered. It’s a sharp, self-conscious portrait of the artist as a young grommet.” (“Grommet” is slang for novice surfer.) Kirkus Review says “words come fresh as a daisy from Ziolkowski’s pen…in shorn, unhurried sentences that bite.” Ziolkowski’s collection of poems, Our Son the Arson, came out in 1996. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Village Voice, Art Forum, Index, and Travel and Leisure. He currently directs the writing program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Sponsored by the Department of Literature and the University Events Office.  Contact: Rae Armantrout

Rome and the Hellenistic East: Reception and Appropriation A 0ne-Day Conference at the University of California at San Diego Sponsored by the UCSD Division of Arts and Humanities, the UCSD Center for the Humanities, the Program in Classical Studies, the Department of Literature, the Department of History Saturday, May 31 at 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. de Certeau Room (155) of the Literature Building Speakers: Erich Gruen, UCB, "Rome and the Myth of Alexander the Great." Daniel Selden, UCSC , "Holy Wandering: Historicizing Roman Imperial Romance." Ann Kuttner, the University of Pennsylvania, "Narrative Imperialism and Nation-building: 'Greek' Story in Roman Representation." Sheldon Nodelman, UCSD, "The First Generation of Hellenistic Portraiture in Rome." A buffet lunch will be served. No registration is necessary for this conference. If you plan to attend, however, notification will aid in planning the lunch. That and any questions can be directed to Tony Edwards.For directions to the UCSD campus, see http://maps.ucsd.edu/

Colored (Black and White): Filipinos in American Popular Media, 1896-1907
An exhibit curated by Abe Ignacio, Jr., Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen Toribio

April 5 – May 31, 2003
Springfield Community Art Gallery
5348 University Avenue, Suite 119

Contact: Jody Blanco

Publishing Granary Books: A Conversation in the Margins April 26-June 27, 2003 Mandeville Department of Special Collections Geisel Library Granary Books has been bringing together writers, artists, and bookmakers to investigate verbal/visual relations in the time-honored spirit of independent publishing for nearly twenty years. Granary’s mission—to produce, promote, document, and theorize new works exploring the intersection of word, image, and page—has earned them a reputation as one of the most unique and significant small publishers operating today. Their 119 books are on exhibit.

OPPORTUNITIES

FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR PROGRAM OFFERS GRANTS IN 140 COUNTRIES

The Fulbright Scholar Program is offering lecturing/research awards in some 140 countries for the 2004-2005 academic year. Traditional Fulbright awards are available from two months to an academic year or longer. A new short-term grants program—the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program— offers two-to-six-week grants in a variety of disciplines and fields. While foreign language skills are needed in some countries, most Fulbright lecturing assignments are in English. Some 80 percent of the awards are for lecturing.

Application deadlines for 2004-2005 awards are:

August 1, 2003 for Fulbright traditional lecturing and research grants worldwide

Rolling deadline for Fulbright Senior Specialists Program

For information, contact the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) at 3007 Tilden Street, NW, Suite 5L, Washington, DC 20008-3009. Telephone: 202-686-7877. Information and an online application are also available at http://www.cies.org.

Academic Senate Committee on Research The final deadline of this academic year for submission of Travel to a Scholarly Meeting Applications is June 13, 2003 . Please remember only one trip per fiscal year for any Senate member will be awarded. UCSD's fiscal year begins July 1 and ends June 30. Academic Senate research and travel grant support are updated on a continuous basis at http://www-senate.ucsd.edu/cor.htm APPLICATION FORMS are available at http://www-senate.ucsd.edu/cor/applications/corapps.htm

CONFERENCES

Memory, Material, and Meaning

WESTERN HUMANITIES ALLIANCE
22nd Annual Conference
October 16, 17, 18, 2003
University of Utah, Salt Lake City

The Western Humanities Alliance invites proposals for participation in the 22nd Annual Western Humanities Conference on the theme of "Memory, Material, and Meaning." Paper Abstracts (250 words, max.) must be postmarked on or before April 22, 2003—deadline has been extended to May 5.

Please submit proposals to:
WHA Conference Committee, Tanner Humanities Center
University of Utah, 380 S. 1400 E.,
Room 201 C Hall,
Salt Lake City UT 84112
Tel (801) 581-7127 Fax (801) 585-3510 http://www.hum.utah.edu/humcntr/