Dr. Gary Konas will give a presentation, "Touched by an iPod: Using podcasts and iTunesU in the classroom."
This is part of the UW–L English Department’s 2007–2008 William J. and Yvonne Hyde Colloquium Series. The event takes place Friday November 16, Room 207 Wimberly Hall, 2:30pm-3:30pm. *All are welcome to attend.
Hi, everyone,
The English department is featured prominently in events taking place this week across campus. Sharon Jessee will be presenting her paper, “The Heteroglossia of 
Green: American Ecology from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Toni Morrison,” as one of four UWL Scholars celebrating Chancellor Gow’s Inauguration. The scholars’ presentations will take place Thursday, October 18th, at the Cleary Center. A reception for the scholars’ presentations will begin at 3PM, followed by the presentations, beginning at 4PM.
That same afternoon (Th 10/18), Brian Turner will read from his Iraq war poetry collection, Here, Bullet, in the Port O’ Call Lounge at Cartwright Center, beginning at 5:30. Mr. Turner’s reading, and related class activities Wednesday and Thursday, have been organized by Matt Cashion.
Both events have been widely publicized, in the Campus Connection, in the Raquet, on our English Department web page blog, and in the La Crosse Tribune. I hope many of you will be able to find the time to support our colleagues’ activities, and to remind interested students to try to attend.
Finally, thanks to all of the faculty and students who made our 3rd semi-annual kickball social and cookout celebration a success. The faculty once again prevailed in kickball (with only a minimum amount of cheating). And a good time was had by all.
Dick Sullivan
Greetings!
If any of you, or your students, would like to attend a class visit by Brian Turner, our guest poet, he will be speaking to my Forms of Poetry class at 5:00 in Room 338 on Wednesday, October 17th. You are welcome to attend!!!
Mary V. Davidson
P.S. More information about his visit should be posted soon!
Please click to enlarge.
Greetings, everyone:
I thought I would point out to everyone the updated English Department Faculty Colloquia sign-up sheet, which is pinned to the cork board outside the Department office. The sheet indicates the following dates and speakers for the remainder of the 2006-2007 Series. All meetings run from
Please mark your calendars.
Ciao,
David Wood
Greetings,
March 27-29, Zelda Lockhart--a novelist and community activist from North Carolina--will be visiting campus. Her trip is funded primarily through a Visiting Artist of Color Grant.
Zelda’s itinerary is still a work in progress; at this point she has spare time to offer should 
anyone be interested in having her visit a class or participate in other activities. Currently, her only commitments are (1) a public reading, Wednesday, March 28, at 7 p.m. (140 Cowley Hall), and (2) a visit to my creative writing class, Thursday, March 29, 2:15-3:40 (Wimberly 125). The remainder of that Wednesday and Thursday are free. I know her to be friendly, engaging, and accessible. She's excited about her visit, and she's eager to do as much as she can while she's here.
One copy of her latest novel, Cold Running Creek, is available in the department mailroom; other copies are en route. Additional information about her and her novel should be in faculty mailboxes (written as a promotional packet by the publisher), but here's a brief plot summary, taken from
“During one of the most tumultuous times for the North American continent (pre and post Civil War) three generations of women both Native American and African American, struggle to be free. Cold Running Creek is enlightening in its untold historical truths, and relevant to all time with its soul-stirring revelations. With a chorus of swamps, voodoo, floods, creeks and rivers, Cold Running Creek is rich, passionate, and leaves the reader breathless. "
And here's a blurb:
"…Cold Running Creek brings the twin horrors of removal and slavery in close orbit with one another....As Lockhart freely imagines the pathos and potentialities of Native and African American crossings, she tells a tale that will set a generation of readers in search of more stories—both fictional and real—of southern Black/Indian experience.” –Sharon P. Holland and Tiya Miles, co-editors of Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country (Duke University Press 2006).
If you have any questions or ideas, please don't hesitate to share.
yours,
Matt Cashion
+ Click image to enlarge.
DECEMBER 15th
Students in the English department's creative writing program will read from their work from 7-9 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 5, in the Ward Room, Cartwright Center. Selections will include poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The public is invited. Refreshments will be served. The event is being held to honor the current work of students in all of the English department's creative writing classes.
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.
