UW-L English Studies Blog

Alpha Nu Upsilon

WHAT: UW-L's chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society.  Alpha Nu Upsilon is also affectionately referred to as ANY.
WHO: English majors or minors with at least sophomore status and a 3.0 GPA.
WHEN: ANY meets every other Thurs. from 8-9PM in room 326 Cartwright.  Upcoming meeting dates: October 12*, October 19, November 2, November 16, November 30, December 7*
                *October 12 we will be meeting at 6:30PM to work with the English Club to prepare for                        the picnic social on October 13.
                *December 7 is off of the normal "every other Thursday" schedule to avoid interferring
                  with finals' week.  This will be our last meeting of 1st semester.
WHY: (1) Meet new people (2) Get more involved in your English major or minor program (3) Involvement on a regional, national, and international scale through publication, scholarship, and conference opportunities (4) Resume booster

CURRENT PROJECTS:
1) Implementing a high school honor society in one of the local high schools. 
2) Preparing for the student/faculty social.
3) Book club

REMEMBER:
1) The Sigma Tau Delta Midwest Convention is coming up on October 20th and 21st in Eau Claire.  Registration is $15 and forms are available at www.english.org (follow the Midwest Convention links).  Transportation is available if necessary.  Contact Erin Vollmer at alpha_nu_upsilon@yahoo.com with questions.
2) The deadline to submit for the National Convention in Pittsburgh, PA is November 30, 2006.  The convention will be held from March 28-31.  The theme is "confluence."  See www.english.org for more information.

Memoirist to Give Reading

Simi Linton will read from her 2005 memoir MY BODY POLITIC in Graff Main Hall Auditorium at 7pm on Tuesday, October 24.

While hitchhiking from Boston to Washington, D.C. in 1971 to protest the war in Vietnam, Simi Linton was involved in a car accident that paralyzed her legs and took the lives of her young husband and her best friend. Her memoir begins with her struggle to regain physical and emotional strength and to resume her life in the world. Then Linton takes us on the road she traveled (with stops in Berkeley, Paris, Havana) and back to her home in Manhattan, as she learns what it means to be a disabled person in America.

Linton eventually completed a Ph.D., remarried, and began teaching at Hunter College. Along the way she became deeply committed to the disability rights movement and to the people she joined forces with. The stories in MY BODY POLITIC are populated with richly drawn portraits of Linton's disabled comrades, people of conviction and lusty exhuberance who dance, play, and organize with passion and commitment.

Beginning amidst the turmoil over Vietnam, the book concludes with a meditation on the U.S. involvement in the current war in Iraq and the war's wounded veterans. While it is a memoir of the author's gradual political awakening, MY BODY POLITIC is filled with adventure, celebration, and rock and roll: Salvador Dali, James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix all make cameo appearances.

The book has been praised by Kirkus Reviews as presenting "the struggles, joys, and political awakening of a firecracker of a narrator [ . . . ]. Wholly enjoyable."

SIMI LINTON is a prominent activist and author of numerous articles about disability. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from New York University, is the author of CLAIMING DISABILITY: KNOWLEDGE AND IDENTITY (NYU Press, 1998), and is the founder of DISABILITY/ARTS, an organization that works with artists and cultural institutions to help shape the presentation of disability in the arts and to increase the representation of works by disabled artists.

Why Do We Teach & Read Literature?

Here's Susan Vreeland's answer:

". . . art allows us to imagine, and how precious the imagination is not just to ourselves as writers but to our culture. Without imagination, we cannot live lives beyond our own; we cannot put ourselves in other people’s skin. And when that happens, we cannot learn compassion. But each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another through art and literature, it’s a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race.

Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving kindness, human understanding, and respect all shrivel. Individuals become isolated; the isolated turns cruel; and the tragic hovers in the form of holocaust and terrorism. Art and literature are antidotes to that.

That is why the decline of reading literature in America ought to be a vital concern for all."
— from Susan Vreeland’s acceptance speech for the 2006 Theodor Geisel Award

And here's the excerpt Mary Davidson sent around from D.H. Lawrence's essay, "Why the Novel Matters"

"The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble. Which is more than poetry, philosophy, science, or any other book-tremulation can do. The novel is the book of life. In this sense, the Bible is a great confused novel. You may say it is about God. But it is really about man alive. Adam, Eve, Sarai, Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Bath-Sheba, Ruth, Esther, Solomon, Job, Isaiah, Jesus, Mark, Judas, Paul, Peter: what is it but man alive, from start to finish?
. . .What we mean by living is, of course, just as indescribable as what we mean by being. Men get ideas into their heads of what they mean by Life, and they proceed to cut life out to pattern. Sometimes they go into the desert to seek God, sometimes they go into the desert to seek cash, sometimes it is wine, woman, and song, and again it is water, political reform, and votes. You never know what it will be next: from killing your neighbor with hideous bombs and gas that tears the lungs to supporting a Foundlings Home and preaching infinite Love, and being co-respondent in a divorce.
. . .To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you.
. . .Only in the novel are ALL things given full play, or at least, they may be given full play, when we realize that life itself, and not inert safety, is the reason for living."

Bob Treu at the Pump House

BOB TREU will be the featured author at the Pump House Reading Series on Thursday, October 19, at 7:00 p.m.  (Suggested $2 donation)  An open mic session will follow. 

The Pump House Reading Series is held monthly on third Thursdays. 

Pump House Regional Arts Center

119 King Street

La Crosse, WI 54601

608.785.1434

www.thepumphouse.org

Kickball Social

• What: 
  • Potluck– Bring a dish to share or just come enjoy!
  • Kickball– Students vs. Professors
  • Literature Readings by Dead Poets– Interested?  Bring a book and dress up like an important figure in literary history!
  • Lit Quote Game-PRIZES!!
• Where:  Myrick Park Small Gun Shelter
• When: October 13, 2006 at 5PM
• FREE FOOD!
• ALL are invited to attend!

Download kickballsocial.pdf