NewPages Blog

Plan targets anti-Western lessons
Some fear loss of diversity in lawmaker’s education proposal
By Matthew Benson
The Arizona Republic
April 17, 2008

Arizona public schools would be barred from any teachings considered counter to democracy or Western civilization under a proposal endorsed Wednesday by a legislative panel.

Additionally, the measure would prohibit students of the state’s universities and community colleges from forming groups based in whole or part on the race of their members, such as the Black Business Students Association at Arizona State University or Native Americans United at Northern Arizona University. Those groups would be forbidden from operating on campus.

The brainchild of Rep. Russell Pearce, the measure appeared as an amendment to Senate Bill 1108, which originally would have made minor changes to the state’s Homeland Security advisory councils. The House Appropriations Committee approved the new proposal on a 9-6 vote.

Read the rest here.

From Benjamin Spencer, Executive Editor of Cadillac Cicatrix:

www.CADILLACCICATRIX.com is now www.CADILLACCICATRIX.org. This new address is live as of MARCH 29 2008. In honor of our new address, we are having a housewarming party. Designed around our second-annual April Tribute to Poetry, we will host 30 days of poetry and art, featuring 30 national poets and 5 NY photographers. Just look for the PoetryTribute icon on the home page.

If you are encouraged by our effort, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Our submissions guidelines are available online and we welcome queries about potential projects – writing and art, video and sound, film and movies.

Seton Hall University English Department one-year, Visiting Professor position in Creative Writing specializing in Poetry to begin September 2008. May 12, 2008.

SUNY Potsdam’s English and Communication Department is seeking applications for an Assistant Professor of English. This is a tenure-track position with primary responsibilities in teaching Creative Writing – Poetry. April 14, 2008.

Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts Lewis-Clark State College. May 15 (priority April 30), 2008.

From the Tupelo Press Newsletter: 2007 Dorset Prize Winner Announced

Tupelo Press is delighted to announce that C. D. Wright has selected G.C. Waldrep of Lewisburg, PA winner of the 2007 Dorset Prize for his outstanding manuscript Archicembalo. He will receive $10,000, and his book will be published in 2009 and distributed internationally by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Small Press Distribution, and Tupelo Press.

In addition to the Dorset Prize winner, Tupelo Press will offer publishing contracts to Marc Gaba of Sacred Heart, Philippines for his manuscript Have, and to Martha Zweig of Hardwick, VT for hers, Monkey Lightning. Our congratulations to G.C. Waldrep, Marc Gaba, Martha Zweig, and to all of the finalists.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who entered their work. Without your support of Tupelo Press, we simply could not do what we do.

For list of finalists, you can visit the Tupelo Press website.

Lynchburg College
Thornton Writer Residency

“Two 14 week residencies, including stipends of $12,000 each, at Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia are awarded annually to a fiction writer for the Fall term and a poet for the Spring term. Creative nonfiction writers, screenwriters, playwrights, and mixed-genre writers will also be considered either term. The writer-in-residence will teach a three-credit writing workshop, present a public reading, and visit a small number of classes. The residency includes housing, some meals, and round trip travel expenses. To apply, applicants should submit a cover letter, a published book(returned upon completion of review), evidence of successful teaching, a curriculum vita, and names and contact information for three references by May 15th for the Fall term and July 15th for the Spring term. There is no entry fee.”

If there are questions, please call 434-544-8267. Send complete applications to Thornton Writer Residency, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lynchburg College, 1501 Lakeside Drive, Lynchburg, Virginia 24501. Attn: Ms. Patty Irwin.

National Poetry Month brings us many wonderful resources. If you’re not familiar with the Poetry Map on Poets.org, check it out. Better still, make it a point to visit your state and help keep this map active and up to date:

“The National Poetry Map was launched during National Poetry Month in 2003 in the hopes of fostering local poetry communities. Relaunched in 2007, the Map has been updated with more photos, links, and dynamic content. You can also make suggestions for features and additions to state pages by sending an email to [email protected].”

New York Post seeking a motivated journalist to help edit and coordinate book reviews and commentary pieces as well as writing short essays. Experience as a reporter (politics especially) required. E-mail a short cover letter and resume under the subject line “Editing job” to [email protected]; no phone calls please. May 6, 2008

University of North Carolina Wilmington Department of Creative Writing is seeking a Visiting Assistant Professor specializing in Creative Nonfiction for academic year 2008-09. Apply online by April 25, 2008.

McNeese State University Associate Professor of English in the Department of English and Foreign Languages: This is a full-time, 9 month, tenure-track, unclassified appointment. The appointment begins in August 2008. Dr. Jacob Blevins, Search Chair. April 18, 2008.

Director, The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Director, Writing Center, Casper College, Wyoming. April 22, 2008.

Director, Writing Center, Loras College, Iowa.

Spindle is proud to announce that Liz Dolan’s poem, “The House that Ruth Built”, has been chosen as the winner of the 2008 “Play Ball” writing contest by judges Guy LeCharles Gonzalez and Fish Vargas.

A Pushcart Prize nominee in poetry, fiction and non-fiction, Liz Dolan was born, braised and bronzed in The Bronx.

Ms. Dolan will receive a $50 honorarium and her poem will be featured in the “Play Ball” issue which will be published on Tuesday, April 8th at www.spindlezine.com, along with 5 honorable mentions from the contest and a selection of new and previously published content.

Spindle congratulates Ms. Dolan for her excellent work and thanks all of the contributors who entered the contest.

Floricanto Press offers university students online editing internships. These are unpaid internships for credits on the title page upon publication as full editor or co-editor of the titles under their purview. This internship involves co-editing manuscripts accepted for publication, working closely with our editors and authors, preparing compelling descriptions for the review media, finalizing manuscripts for printing. This opportunity provides the prospective intern with the opportunity to build from campus–without ever setting foot on our premises or commuting–a solid resume in preparation for graduate school, professional schools, or doctoral programs. Internships are 10 months, Sept. – June.

From the newest issue of In These Times, “Kenya’s Indy Media” by Michelle: Chen reports on how bloggers, cartoonists and guerrilla radio activists rock the East African mediascape.

“Some youth are amplifying their voices through a video collective called Slum-TV, led by Kenya-based media activists. By documenting everyday struggles in Mathare—a densely populated slum in the capital Nairobi—the project enables young people to produce homegrown media and, through local public screenings, fosters community dialogue. Following the outbreak of the post-election violence, Slum-TV has focused on current recovery efforts that bring together activists from different ethnic groups…As an ear to the ground in their communities, grassroots media activists have sometimes been ahead of the news.”

Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts
Stanford Humanities Center

The Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa) and the Stanford Humanities Center intend to offer one residential fellowship at Stanford for academic year 2008-09 to a practitioner who is also a writer, scholar, or critic pursuing a research project in the arts. This fellow will be the first in a pilot fellowship program bringing together the humanities and arts in a research and creative environment on Stanford campus.

The fellowship recipient will be in residence at the Stanford Humanities Center and will be part of an intellectual community of about 25 fellows working on projects in history, literature, philosophy, and other humanities fields. The fellow will be affiliated with one of the three SiCa centers: The Center for Arts, Science and Technology, The Center for Global Arts, and the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

This fellowship seeks to bridge the worlds of art practice, on the one hand, and writing and thinking about art, on the other. The successful applicant will be both an arts practitioner and a scholar or critic interested in entering into dialogue with scholars in a wide range of humanities disciplines.

Winners of the Glimmer Train Family Matters competition, a quarterly competition open to all writers, word count range 500-12,000, on the subject of family. Next deadline: April 30

First place: Carmiel Banasky of New York City wins $1200 for “Save.” Her story will be published in the Summer 2009 issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: Paul Michel of Seattle wins $500 for “Not the King of Prussia.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize to $700.

Third place: Elizabeth Kadetsky of New York City wins $300 for “Dermagraphia.”

Rethinking the University: Labor, Knowledge, Value
April 11th – April 13th, 2008
A Conference at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities

This conference has been collectively organized by graduate students to bring together thinkers from across the campus community and national academic community to address the “crisis” of the university as it had continually been transformed by neoliberal forces. The recent AFSCME strike at the University of Minnesota and other academic labor struggles continue to expose the university in crisis, yet we need to further develop both our intellectual and organizational capacities to effectively address these crises.

This conference will focus generally on questions of neoliberalization and corporatization of higher education and the casualization of academic labor, and questions of alternatives, including campus labor organizing, radical pedagogy, and other strategies of resistance.

Please see the conference program for more information.

Please note that this is a FREE and OPEN conference. Funding has been generously provided by many sponsors.

Japanese poetry endures in South Korea
International Herald Tribune
By Choe Sang-Hun
March 25, 2008

SEOUL: When Son Ho Yun published her poetry, South Korean writers denounced her as unpatriotic.

When Rhee Han Soo wrote his poems, he avoided discussing them with friends because he was certain he would get the same negative response.

Although they never met, Son and Rhee shared a passion for more than six decades: They each wrote traditional Japanese poetry in South Korea, where animosities rooted in Japan’s colonial rule still run deep and people of their generation considered such literary pursuits little short of sacrilegious.

“Here, people look up to you if you write poetry in English and publish it in America or England,” said Rhee, an 82-year-old retired dentist. “But if you write Japanese poems, they despise you or dismiss you as a fool.”

Read the rest here.

Grinnell College 2-year leave replacement position in English, with possible renewal for a third year, with a specialty in creative writing (fiction and possibly non-fiction) and the ability to teach departmental literature courses. Professor Erik Simpson, Chair, Department of English.

Central State University, Wilberforce, OH, Department of Humanities seeks to fill a full-time (tenure track) position in English at the assistant professor level, with a demonstrated commitment to helping students attain mastery of college composition and creative writing.

Mt. San Jacinto Community College District seeks a Learning Center Coordinator to coordinate and oversee activities in the Learning Center, a facility that houses a Writing Center, Learning Center, and Math Center. April 25

Director Borough of Manhattan Community College‘s Writing Center.

James Madison University seeks candidates for a 10-month full-time instructional faculty appointment in the University Writing Center (an element of Learning Resource Centers).

The Creative Writing Program at Princeton University is seeking distinguished writers for openings in fiction, poetry, translation, autobiography/biography. (PT/Lecturer/BA).

A Winning Argument
Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp’s “War Made Easy”
Reviewed by Michael Joshua Rowin
March 9, 2008

“Though the early to mid-aughts documentary boom has recently died down, it’s still difficult to believe there hasn’t been a serious nonfiction indictment of the collusion between the government and the media in selling the invasion of Iraq to the American public. This accounts for a somewhat shameful omission in the ever-growing Iraq War doc catalogue–the sheer amount of lies, distortions, and fear-mongering titillations on display in a typical CNN or Fox News broadcast circa 2002 (and today) would offer enough evidence on the sorry state of our national media for a book-length study, let alone a feature film. Columnist, critic, and antiwar notable Norman Solomon has now, remarkably, provided both: his 2005 volume “War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” has been adapted into an explosive, compact 73-minute documentary by filmmakers Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp. If a few years ago Solomon was a lonely voice in the wilderness, with this film he has a major stage from which to educate a potentially greater audience…”

Read the rest on indieWIRE.

Lambda Literary Awards

Over 80 judges – writers, journalists, booksellers, librarians, professors – chose 107 finalists in 21 categories, and the winners will be announced at the 20th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, Thursday, May 29, in West Hollywood, CA.

The complete list of finalists.

The complete list of nominated books.

Lambda Literary Foundation, the country’s leading organization for LGBT literature. Our mission is to celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians – the whole literary community.

Completely lifted from Jason Sanford’s blog:

Final days for Million Writers Award nominations
We’re nearing the deadline for reader and editor nominations for the 2008 Million Writers Award for best online short story. Remember, nominations need to be submitted by the end of the day on March 31st. Editor nominations can be made here, while reader nominations go on this page. As always, a big thanks goes to the Edit Red Writing Community for sponsoring the contest, which means there is a $300 prize for the overall winner.

On March 25, 2008, Bob Harris, on New York Times “Paper Cuts: A Blog About Books” posted his contribution, “Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing.”

Before listing his words and explaining their “deadliness” he comments: “Like all professions book reviewing has a lingo. Out of laziness, haste or a misguided effort to sound ‘literary,’ reviewers use some words with startling predictability. Each of these seven entries is a perfectly good word (well, maybe not eschew), but they crop up in book reviews with wearying regularity. To little avail, admonitions abound. ‘The best critics,’ Follett writes, ‘are those who use the plainest words and who make their taste rational by describing actions rather than by reporting or imputing feelings.'”

Better still, in the five days the post has been available, over 100 readers have commented with their own contributions to the list. Some offer explanations, some don’t need to. It’s a rollicking good read. Oh, wait, that’s on the list…

Poetry Foundation Director, Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute.

Kansas State University Department of English invites applications for a visiting assistant professor serving as a one-year replacement in fiction writing beginning August 10, 2008. Karin Westman, Head, Eng. Dept. April 14.

University of Missouri – St. Louis. The MFA Program at the University of Missouri St. Louis seeks a distinguished visiting fiction writer for the spring semester of 2009. Mary Troy, MFA Program Director. April 11.

Assistant Professor in Creative Writing and Contemporary Fiction and Theory
Institution: Pace University (Pleasantville, NY). April 15.

Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Hollins University, one-year leave replacement position for a writer with book publication in fiction or creative nonfiction and some publication in a second genre (poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction), to teach multi-genre creative writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as possible literature courses. Ph.D. or creative writing master’s with scholarly content required. Open until filled.

Assistant Professors of English: Creative Writing-Fiction; Creative Writing-Fiction/Nonfiction, plus Composition; Creative Writing-Poetry. University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Open until filled.

Assistant Professor of English, Central State University, Ohio, teach creative w, prose (fiction and creative nonfiction), as well as composition. Open until filled.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing -Fiction/Nonfiction/Composition. Eureka College, Illinois. Open until filled.

Assistant professor or instructor, one-year term position; specialty in journalism; M.A. Department fo English, Northern Michigan University. May 2.

OUTFEST
The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
July 10 – 21, 2008

“More than just a FILM FESTIVAL, it’s a full-on HAPPENING.” – Los Angeles Times

Outfest is the oldest continuous film festival in Southern California. Since its founding in 1982, Outfest has presented more than 4,200 films and videos for audiences of over half a million people.

The twentieth anniversary reissue of one of my graduate class texts has brought a surge of new discussion on an issue that never really quite found a quiet place for itself. Recently reviewed in The Nation (March 11, 2008), William Deresiewicz writes:

“Graff’s new preface reaffirms his belief that the answer to the mutual isolation of competing critical schools is to ‘teach the conflicts,’ but it doesn’t tell us what’s happened in the past twenty years (which happen to be the twenty years since I decided to go to graduate school). Broadly speaking, the past two decades have seen a move back toward historicism from the purely rhetorical realms of deconstruction: postcolonialism, New Historicism, cultural studies, history of the book. But the uniqueness of Graff’s study was its attempt to offer, in the words of its subtitle, an ‘institutional history,’ not merely a chronology of intellectual trends. What’s been going on there, at the more fundamental level of institutional structure and practice?”

Two points he mentions which make the commentary worth a look: “the profession’s intellectual agenda is being set by teenagers” and “the real story of academic literary criticism today is that the profession is, however slowly, dying.”

Graff, Round Two – Ding! Ding!