UWL English Department's William J. and Yvonne Hyde Colloquium Series 2021-2022 presents:
"Using Contemplative Pedagogies to Deepen Reading" by Dr. Rebekah Fowler.
Our students are stressed and pressed for time. Using mindfulness or contemplative pedagogies provides a pause for our students that can also encourage deeper reading when used in the classroom. Contemplative pedagogies are experiential in nature, promoting recognition of how our senses and emotions influence our responses to learning and utilizing silence and reflection to connect more deeply with course content. This colloquium presentation will give participants the opportunity to experience two types of contemplative practices–lectio divina and beholding–in readings of literary texts. Lectio divina, or "divine reading," uses a four-step monastic/religious reading practice as a fruitful approach to reading a passage of text more deeply, while beholding makes the link between the written word and images, inviting readers to visualize text, find an image that approximates that vision, and then closely examine the image before reflecting on how that image connects to the text.
Participants will experience two types of contemplative practices: lectino divina and beholding.
ALL UWL INSTRUCTORS WELCOME!
Friday, Nov. 19
2:30-3:45 p.m.
3310 Student Union
The final presenter for this semester’s Futures in Writing Speaker Series will join us this Thursday (November 11th) at 5:30!
Brittany Maule is Communications & Research Specialist and Manager of Science & Standards at Green Seal.
Thursday, November 11, 2021
5:30 P.M. in Wing 102
Zoom link:
https://wisconsin-edu.zoom.us/my/uwlax1
For more information contact cmccracken(at)uwlax.edu
The second presenter for this semester’s Futures in Writing Speaker Series will join us this Wednesday (November 3rd) at 5:30!
Cat Daly is Communications Content Specialist at Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin.
Wed. November 3, 2021
5:30 P.M. in Wing 102
Zoom link:
https://wisconsin-edu.zoom.us/my/uwlax1
William J. and Yvonne Hyde Colloquium Series Presents:
"Trans as Risk: Risk Communication in Anti-Transgender Rhetoric" by Dr. Louise Zamparutti
In early 2020, Idaho introduced the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, banning transgender athletes from participating in sports. Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Florida soon followed with similar bills. This presentation analyzes the rise of anti-trans rhetoric in multiple forms of public discourse. Dr. Louise Zamparutti integrates stasis theory with Kenneth Burke's concept of piety to show how transgender personhood is negated as trans is abstracted into a nonhuman agent and communicated as a risk to cisgender individuals and to a cisgender worldview.
Dr. Zamparutti concludes by proposing Burke’s theory of Perspective by Incongruity and S. Scott Graham's Functional Stasis Theory as launching points for more equitable deliberation that would energize the action of change in language and concept-association, dislodging pieties from their fixed pillars and revealing human potential for transformation.
Friday, December 10, 2021
2:30-3:45pm
3310 Union
Also available on Zoom: https://wisconsin-edu.zoom.us/j/92861028299
The first presenter for this semester’s Futures in Writing Speaker Series will join us this Wednesday (October 27th) at 5:30!
Mary Purdy is a former UWL English major. She worked at Kohl’s corporate office as a Communications Specialist and is now pursuing a J.D. at Marquette Law School.
Wed. October 27, 2021
5:30 P.M. in Centennial 1404
Zoom link:
https://wisconsin-edu.zoom.us/my/uwlaxl
The first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground). She has published 14
books, produced seven award-winning albums, and earned countless awards and honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement
from The Poetry Foundation.
Sponsored by the Driftless Writing Center, the UWL English Department, the
College of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities and the Provost’s Office.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2021, 7 P.M.
CENTENNIAL HALL, ROOM 1400
The UWL Poetry Club is hosting a reading and discussion with Dr. Lalita Hogan, who will be reading from her book titled A Country Without Borders: Poems and Stories of Kashmir. Attendees are invited to bring a poem about their memories or experiences of "home" to share. Wednesday, April 24th, 7-8 pm, 3120 Union. Further Info: Marissa Davis (davis.marissa@uwlax.edu) or Mya Lonnebotn (lonnebot.mya@uwlax.edu).
Graduating senior Mari Sweetman will present part of her honors thesis “Transcorporeality and Eco-theory: A New Understanding of the Body” on Tuesday, April 23 at 11:00-11:25 in the Student Union, Room 3314.
“What is a body? Is it a mind, a soul, a physical form? The limits of the body are difficult to define. Experiences physical, mental, and emotional form a complex sensory existence, muddling what we understand to be a part of us. These are important to examine, for so much of what we do not only impacts us but all that is around us. Transcorporeality, a theory in which the body does not end with the physical or mental self but extends beyond, can help us grapple with this. In transcorporeality, the body becomes porous, ending not with the physical or mental, but with the actions, thoughts, feelings, and impacts of one’s actions. In this beings (both human and nonhuman) and matter are intermeshed within a web of consciousness and existence beyond human-centric thought. In response to a world damaged by this human-centric thought and action (i.e., human-driven climate change), I am compelled by the possibilities that an understanding of transcorporeality could bring to human understanding of human and nonhuman bodies, and the environment. In my oral presentation, I will address the connectedness between transcorporeality and the environment in through an exploration of both theoretical texts (including Alaimo, Barad, and Haraway) and environmental literature (including Williams and Erdrich), with the aim of helping us go beyond our human-centric understanding of our own bodies in their interactions with the environment and in the marginalization of the bodies of others.”
Dr. Peter Olson will present “Robert Pirsig and Wallace Stegner: Crossing to Safety” on Friday, April 19 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. in Wimberly 104.
Robert Pirsig, the writer who transformed a startlingly original Chautauqua delving into the metaphysics of quality was also a reformer at the nexus of technology and art; Wallace Stegner, a writer raised on the plains of Saskatchewan, became the founder of Stanford’s creative writing program. Stegner divided his creative energies between didactic environmental writing and imaginative literature. Pirsig sought a reconciliation, perhaps futilely, between Western metaphysics and nominalist psychology. Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance traces a complex narrative that combines travel journalism, nature writing, rhetorical exhortation, and the implications of an “undifferentiated aesthetic continuum,” through the development of his alter ego Phaedrus. Pirsig’s narrative is a chiasmus, a crossing that witnesses failure and reversal. Stegner explores human relationships that survive by means of trust and empathy even as his perspective remains critical and ironic of human potentialities that appear to be incapable of transcendence. Stegner’s environmental writing attributes human action to the willful harm done to the natural environment. Both authors recognize their own sense of contingency with respect to place—the West—and to American cultural dilemmas precipitated by late capitalism. Both authors attempt to address their contingency through a movement of return, a crossing to safety through their ability to translate their experience into art. Their connections to the landscape and commitments to direct and original seeing ultimately illuminate what Lawrence Buell terms the “environmental imagination.”
UWL English Department presents the Spring 2019 Professional & Technical Writing Speaker Series
UWL English alumni and other professionals will share their perspectives on professional and technical writing, offer job market advice, and discuss important skills for contemporary workplaces. All UWL students are welcome!
Mary Purdy
Marketing - Loyalty Coordinator
Kohl's Department Store
APRIL 11
6:00-7:30
WING 102
Peyton Bentley
Lead Information Developer
Kaplan Professional Education
APRIL 17
6:00-7:30
UNION 3314
Fue Yang
Community Trainer
Independent Living Resources
APRIL 23
6:00-7:30
UNION 3130
Eric King
Technical Writer
Illumina Manufacturing
MAY 1
6:00-7:30
UNION 3314
Questions? Contact Dr. Chris McCracken - cmccracken(at)uwlax.edu
Our final public La Crosse Reads 2019 event is on Tuesday, April 9th, at 5:30pm, beginning at the corner of King/5th Street in Cameron Park. We have collaborated with Hear, Here to offer a specialized tour focusing on stories of Hmoob immigration, developed by Associate Director of Hear, Here and Associate Archives Librarian at the La Crosse Public Library, Jenny DeRocher. The tour will highlight local stories and histories that resonate with Kao Kalia Yang’s The Latehomecomer, elevating those voices from our community that join the novel in weaving a rich and varied tapestry of the Hmoob experience in the upper Midwest.
Questions and accommodations: Dr. Natalie Eschenbaum, Associate Professor and Chair of English, neschenbaum(at)uwlax.edu