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The Chronicle of Higher Ed has some advice “Conference Rookies: Preparing to attend your first big academic convention? Here’s what you need to consider,” by Julie Miller Vick, senior associate director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jennifer S. Furlong, associate director of graduate-student career development at Columbia University’s Center for Career Education.

Stepping Out: Academics, Civic Engagement, and Activism

Miami’s English Graduate and Adjunct Association’s Symposium
The sixth annual symposium will be held Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

In a time of war and economic crisis, when people are suffering both locally and globally, what is the role of the academic and of higher education? The academy at large has been accused of living an insular existence, speaking only within disciplinary boundaries and rarely reaching the minds and bodies of those not admitted to higher education’s spaces. With this call, we hope to challenge the claim that the academy exists only for the academy’s sake as well as encourage collaboration and community-building across disciplinary and geographic divides that artificially mark sites of education.

CFP – See website. Deadline: Feb 15

Waiting Time
New York University
Department of Comparative Literature
Graduate Student Conference
April 17-19, 2009

Keynote Speaker: Marshall Berman

What are we waiting for? What awaits us? While often dismissed as a period of wastefulness or lost time, waiting may also intensify experience and become a condition in which to consider questions of modernity, aesthetic process, politics, erotics and the tempos of everyday life.

Amid other theorizations of time, history and eventfulness, waiting offers a thematic axis around which conversation among scholars from a wide range of disciplines and critical perspectives can emerge. How can we unsettle the received divide between waiting and action? Or given this divide, how can we re-think the relationship between the two? Beyond (in)activity, how might waiting also be conceived of as a mode of attention or practice?

CFP
Possible paper topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

-Messianism & eschatology
-Event & revolution
-Fidelity & trust
-Designing patience: waiting rooms, drawing rooms, prisons, train stations
-Style and technique: the pause (in music and beyond), rest, suspense, seriality
-Waiting Faster: technologies of convenience, speed, acceleration
-Bureaucracy: legal process, immigration, the post, (un)employment, drudgery
-Sickness & convalescence
-Ennui, anxiety, boredom, killing time
-Erotics of waiting: desire and deferral, chastity, courtly love, chivalric romance, sexual suspense
-Gestation, inspiration, latency
-Hope, fate, & inevitability
-Progress, process, & telos
-Revenge & ressentiment
-Waiting nations: birth, belatedness, & modernization
-Military strategy: ambush attack
-Immigration & exile

Please send a 300-word paper abstracts due January 20, 2009 via email to WaitingTime.Spring2009_at_gmail.com.

Message from Kris Bigalk@Normandale CC:

I wanted to let you know about three positions that are opening up at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minnesota this year, in the event that you or someone you know is looking for a full-time teaching position. We are hiring a Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing (a one-year appointment) and three unlimited full-time English generalist positions.

Our AFA in Creative Writing program is growing, and we are adding a Certificate in Creative Writing program this spring; currently, we offer at least one section of five or more different creative writing courses each semester,including Intro to Creative Writing, Poetry Writing, Fiction Writing, Play and Screen Writing, and Memoir/Creative Nonfiction Writing, and serve over 400 students per year in creative writing courses alone. Our other English offerings are also robust, and include several levels of composition, as well as a variety of literature courses. Normandale’s enrollment is around 10,000 students per year.

For more information on necessary qualifications, please see the links below. The application deadline is January 15, so act fast. Feel free to forward this to others, or to e-mail Kris with any questions – Kris.Bigalk-at-normandale.edu

Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing

Three Unlimited Full-time English Positions

Navigating the Body
Spaces, Mapping, and Embodiment
University of Virginia Department of English
Graduate-Student Conference
March 20-22, 2009

The Graduate English Student Association at the University of Virginia is hosting a Spring conference on “Spaces, Mapping, and Embodiment.” This conference is intended to cross several periods and disciplines within the humanities, and to engage with recently opened critical conversations on such issues as: theories and forms of cultural, literary and literary-historical mapping; history and historiography; sexuality and gender; the designation and re-designation of national, political, and cultural spaces; and embodied and performative modes of history and memory.

CFP Deadline: Jan 23

Summer Literary Seminars is now accepting applications for their new programs in Italy (May 15-30, 2009) and Lithuania (July 20 – August 4, 2009). Academic credit is available through Concordia University. SLS produces a blended program of workshops, lectures and unique cultural experiences. Deadline: April 15, 2009.

For students interested in attending the AWP in Chicago (February 11-14, 2009) who are also trying to save some cash, volunteer for one four-hour shift in exchange for your reg fee. For more info, click here – soon, while shifts are still available.

Black Mountain offers nine-month fellowships to published writers and public intellectuals. The program accepts applications from novelists, poets, playwrights, historians, political scientists, independent scholars, and anyone else whose work is meant for a general, educated lay audience. Black Mountain awards three to five fellowships each year to outstanding writers who have published at least one critically acclaimed book before the time of application. Foreign nationals conversant in English are welcome to apply. There are no degree requirements. Fellows receive a $50,000 stipend, an office, a computer, and access to UNLV’s Lied Library. They remain in residence at BMI for the duration of the fellowship term (approximately August 24, 2009 to May 14, 2010) and work daily at the BMI offices. Application deadline: February 1, 2009.

For the ninth consecutive year, the Terra Foundation for American Art is offering ten summer fellowships to artists and scholars from the United States and Europe. These fellowships are awarded to doctoral students engaged in research on American art and to artists who have completed their studies at masters level (or the equivalent). Each Terra Summer Fellow is provided with lodging and study or studio space, daily lunches and a program consisting of independent study, meetings and seminars. During their eight-week stay, senior artists and scholars are in residence to mentor the fellows and to pursue their own work. As Giverny is located less than an hour from Paris, fellows have easy access to the limitless cultural and academic resources of the French capital. Deadline January 15, 2009.

The Hambidge Residency Program provides setting, solitude and time for creative individuals working in a wide variety of creative disciplines: visual arts, design, music, dance, writing. Fellowships are offered for two to eight week residencies, year round, except for the month of January. Fellows enjoy the gift of life without every-day distractions, in individual cottage/studios. These sanctuaries are scattered across our 600 acre setting of mountain forests, streams, waterfalls, hiking trails and wildflower meadows in Rabun Gap, Georgia.

Application Deadlines:
January 15, 2009 for May thru August
April 15, 2009 for September thru November
September 15, 2009 for December thru April, 2010

Funny how in the span of a week, I can post a video of Alexie receiving a National Book Award and now this article about the removal of his book from a high school curriculum. I think a letter of concern would be a good holiday gift to send a few people involved:

Jeff Landaker is the board chair who, it is reported, despite the complainants not following proper procedure by first talking with the teacher and going instead directly to the board, supports the ban.
[email protected]

Jim Golden is the Principal of the school. Golden was reportedly opposed to banning the book.
[email protected]

Rich Shultz is the superintendent of the schools.
[email protected]

Crook County removes book from schools after parent complains
by Helen Jung
Thursday December 11, 2008
The Oregonian

Sherman Alexie’s book has raised some concerns in the Crook County school district. The Crook County School District has temporarily removed a book from classrooms after one parent complained to the school board that the National Book Award winner was “trashy” and “inappropriate.”

Written by Sherman Alexie, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” which is based on Alexie’s own experiences, follows a boy who leaves the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white school “where the only other Indian is the school mascot” according to the book jacket description…[read the rest here]

One-year appointment for emerging writer lecturer at Gettysburg College beginning August 2009, for a creative writer who plans a career that involves college-level teaching, to teach three courses per semester, including Introduction to Creative Writing and an advanced course in the writer’s genre, as well as to assist with departmental writing activities. Jan 30.

Emory University Two-year Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry in lively undergraduate English/Creative Writing Program, beginning fall 2009. Feb 2.

MSU Mankato English/Creative Writing – Fiction, Assistant Professor. Jan 23.

American University Department of Literature in the College of Arts & Sciences invites applications for two tenure-track positions in Creative Writing/Fiction & Creative Non-fiction beginning fall 2009. Jonathan Loesberg, Chair, Department of Literature. Until filled. Interviews AWP

Wichita State University Distinguished Writer-in-Residence. Temporary one-month position for a writer of fiction to teach a tutorial course to approximately 15 graduate & advanced undergraduate fiction writing students. Margaret Dawe, Chair, Department of English. Feb 15.

California Institute of the Arts MFA Writing Program, based in the School of Critical Studies, invites applications for a regular faculty position (two courses per semester) in fiction and/or creative non-fiction. Jan 5.

Lyon College seeks a distinguished writer of fiction for its 4th biennial Visiting Fellowship in Creative Writing (fiction), a semester-long residency scheduled during the autumn 2009 semester. April 1.

Wichita State University Distinguished Poet-in-Residence. Temporary one-month position for a writer of poetry to teach a tutorial course to approximately 15 graduate & advanced undergraduate poetry writing students. Margaret Dawe, Chair, Department of English. Feb 15.

Grinnel College two-year leave replacement position in the English Department in Fiction Writing. Professor Ralph Savarese, Department of English. Jan 16.

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

10 Stories Behind Dr. Seuss Stories
by Stacy Conradt
Mental Floss
November 16, 200

Okay, I’ll give away number one, but fans of Horton and Cat, visit the site:

1. The Lorax. In case you haven’t read The Lorax, it’s widely recognized as Dr. Seuss’ take on environmentalism and how humans are destroying nature. The logging industry was so upset about the book that some groups within the industry sponsored The Truax, a similar book—but from the logging point of view. Another interesting fact: the book used to contain the line, “I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie,” but 14 years after the book was published, the Ohio Sea Grant Program wrote to Seuss and told him how much the conditions had improved and implored him to take the line out. Dr. Seuss agreed and said that it wouldn’t be in future editions. [Sorry Seuss, but we need the line back for those bastards…]

Video conversation of NYT Book Review Editor Sam Tanenhaus with Toni Morrison – about her new novel and the election of Barack Obama.

One of my all-time favorite writers and human beings in general: Thomas Lynch – given the “Stray Questions” by Gregory Cowles on the NYT Paper Cuts blog.

How much time — if any — do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?

“The Web is like having my favorite haunts — library and post office, theater and gallery, newsroom, museum and archives — all in the same stone’s throw. No less the mall, casino and bawdy house; but those are dissipations I’ve, for the most part, avoided. For pure pleasure, an hour’s mousing around dictionary.com is hard to better.”

Read the rest here.

The Department of English at the American University of Sharjah is seeking a full-time faculty member. Dec 28. Dean William H Heidcamp: cashr-at-aus.edu

Indiana State University tenure-track assistant professor. Dec 1 until filled.

Northwestern University Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professorship in fiction. Mary Kinzie, Director of Creative Writing, Department of English.

Georgia College & State University Limited Term Temporary Creative Writer. Mary Kinzie, Director of Creative Writing, Department of English. Dec 15.

Columbia College Chicago visiting poet for the Elma Stuckey Liberal Arts and Sciences Emerging Poet-in-Residence. Feb 15 deadline.

Concordia College-Moorhead Fiction Writing Assistant Professor, tenure-track. Dec 10 until filled.

Visiting Poet at the University of Missouri-St. Louis MFA Program for the spring semester of 2010. Karen Bartoni, Department of English. Jan 9.

Western State College of Colorado invites applications for a Creative Writing tenure-track position in English starting August 2009. Jan 26.

Bowdoin College Department of English invites applications for a tenure-track/tenured position in creative writing (fiction & creative non-fiction). Elizabeth Muther, Chair, Department of English. Dec 15 until filled.