literature.sdsu.edu, aka ECL, formerly ENGL Bulletin for October 9, 2023

From: Quentin Bailey, ECL Chair <qbailey@sdsu.edu>

Date: Mon, Oct 9, 2023 at 3:57 PM
Subject: Bulletin 10.9.23

Dear Colleagues, 

I imagine that, like me, you are shocked and saddened by this weekend’s attacks. As you may know, the department has hosted a number of award-winning Israeli screenwriters, scholars, and poets in recent years, including this semester, in partnership with the Murray Galinson-San Diego Israel Initiative. Our students have benefited from their expertise and kindness, and our thoughts are with them, their families, and all those affected in these difficult days.  

Reminders:  

A quick reminder that the NCSCL Grad Writing Group, which is open to all ECL faculty and staff, meets every Monday from October 9 until November 14 from 2:30pm to 4pm in AL-379. Feel free to drop in! You can contact Lashon at Ldaley@sdsu.edu to learn more. 

The department, through Humanities in Action, is hosting Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy this Wednesday, 11 October, at noon in the Shiley BioScience Center. He will speak about his book, The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson’s Idea of a University. I hope some of you will be able to make this event. 

Dates: 

10.11.23: Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, will discuss his recent work The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind at the Shiley Bioscience Center, 12 - 1 pm. 

10.18.23: RTP Committee meeting, AL 266. 

10.18.23: Tracy Badua will share excerpts from her recent novel, This Is Not a Personal Statement, at the Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading (LL 430, 7 pm). Find out more about Tracy here!

10.25.23: AC Meeting, AL 266 

10.25.23: Applications for ECL 220/ 280/ ISA positions due. 

10.26.23: Hal Jaffe reading and presentation (Love Library, 3 pm) 

10.30.23: Tools workshop–Twine and Visualizations–for Grad Students, 12-1:30 in Digital Humanities Center (lower level of Love Library). This event will be led by Dr. Pam Lach. For examples of what past students have done with Twine, take a look at Katie Chestnut's "Medusa’s Laughter" (2018), Adrian Belmes, "Recursion"(2018), or

Brenda Taulbee's "Sensational Silence: Against Erasure"  (2019)

11.6 & 11.7.23: Site visit by external reviewers 

11.23.23: Join NCSCL for the Global Renderings Research Luncheon featuring Quentin Bailey on Monday, November 27 at the Faculty Staff Club. Registration is required. To register, click here: https://forms.gle/D4Sq5NWYEpuT9rYx5. For more information, click here: https://childlit.sdsu.edu/global-renderings?utm_source=salesforce&utm_medium=email or email Lashon Daley at Ldaley@sdsu.edu.

As always, please let me know of any accomplishments or upcoming events.

All best,

Quentin

Last Bulletin of the Spring Semester, ECL 2023!

https://literature.sdsu.edu

Dear Colleagues,

We’ve made it to exam week! I know this will bring the extra strain of grading, etc. but I hope it’s also an opportunity to reflect on the successes of the past academic year. 

I hope many of you will be able to make it to the department’s pre-commencement ceremony at Scripps Cottage this coming Friday at 10 am. We’ll be recognizing the winners of this year’s outstanding essay awards as well as the outstanding graduating seniors and their most influential faculty members. A big thank you to Iris Quiroga for all her work organizing (and designing) this event. 

Congratulations to all who participated in the MFA Reading on Friday evening and particularly the MCs for the event, Stephen-Paul Martin and Blas Falconer. It was a lovely evening, and the students were clearly delighted to be able to share their work with friends, family, and mentors. A big thank you to Mary Garcia and Olivia Perez for their work making this evening such a success. 

Thank you, too, to all who attended the Graduate Student Celebration at Oggi’s last Monday, and particularly to Diana Leong, Mary, Iris, and Olivia for their organizational work. 

One final thank you and apology: to Lashon Daley, whom I inadvertently omitted last week from the list of faculty who served on MA portfolios. Thank you, Lashon, for all your hard work for the department and its students. 

source

Wishing everyone a good summer,

Quentin Bailey

Latest News from ECL aka The Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University | May 1 2023 Edition

 Dear Colleagues, 

It’s the final week of classes, with all of the attendant excitement, anxiety, and hard work. I hope to see many of you at the celebratory events in the coming weeks – from the graduate mixer at Oggi’s this afternoon to the MFA reading (Friday 5 May at 7 pm) and the department pre-commencement ceremony (10 am, Friday 12 May). 

We had a good response to our call for submissions for the department’s essay awards. Thank you to all who promoted the competition. I’m delighted to announce that Leila Bitarafan and Lucy Breitwieser have jointly been awarded the ‘Outstanding Undergraduate Essay’ prize, and Dominic Shoopmann has won the ‘Outstanding Graduate Essay’ one. A special thanks to the scholarship committee (Laurie Champion, Clare Colquitt, and Joseph Thomas) for their hard work on this at such a busy time of year. 

Thank you, too, to all who participated in the MA Portfolio Defenses last week: Michael Borgstrom, Yetta Howard, Diana Leong, Bill Nericcio, Phillip Serrato, Jeanette Shumaker, and Joseph Thomas. Thank you, too, to Mary Garcia for her work scheduling and coordinating these.

If you have some time later this week, Yetta Howard will be one of the respondents at UCSD event on Thursday, 4 May, at 5 - 6.30 pm when Juana María Rodríguez, Professor of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley,  will discuss her latest book, Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex. Comunidad Room, Cross-Cultural Center, UCSD. In Puta Life, Juana María Rodríguez probes the figure of the puta—the whore, that phantasmatic figure of Latinized feminine excess to examine how visual tropes of racial and sexual deviance expose feminine subjects to misogyny and violence, attuning our gaze to how visual documentation shapes perceptions of sexual labor. Highlighting the criminalization and stigmatization that surrounds sex work, she lingers on those traces of felt possibility that might inspire more ethical forms of relation and care.

A few faculty have asked me about AT reports. Requests for these will be coming later this week. They’re another, unexpected casualty of the my.SDSU transition: the college has had to devise a new mechanism for collating this information. Thank you for your patience on this and so many related matters this semester. 

Good News: 

Carlos Kelly, a BA, MA, and MFA alum of ours and now a postdoctoral fellow in Latinx studies at the Humanities Research Center at Rice University, has a just published Ready Player Juan, with the University of Arizona Press: https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/ready-player-juan

The CSU Digital Humanities Consortium has received a Mellon-funded grant from the Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium to increase capacity for digital humanities scholarship and teaching within the CSU system. Jessica Pressman is a member of this initiative, as are Pamella Lach and Surishi Jayawardene. 

Dates: 

5/1 at 4 pm: MA/ MFA celebration at Oggi’s. 

5/5 at 7 pm: MFA reading at Scripps Cottage. 

5/12 at 10 am: Departmental pre-commencement celebration at Scripps Cottage. 

All best,

Quentin Bailey, Chair, ECL

Latest News from ECL aka The Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University | 24 April 2023 Edition

 

Dear Colleagues,

We are in the final two weeks of the semester, with the last scheduled day of classes next Thursday, 4 May. MA portfolio defenses are taking place this week; thank you to all participating in these important events.  

At its meeting last week, the AC decided that, since there is no pressing business, next week’s department meeting can be canceled. We hope, instead, you will be able to make it to the pre-commencement celebration at Scripps Cottage at 10 am on Friday 12 May. 

For those interested in curricular proposals, the university has just released an updated Curriculum Guide for the upcoming year: 

https://caa.sdsu.edu/_resources/files/curriculum/guide/curriculum_guide_04192023.pdf

Invitations: 

Lashon Daley and NCSCL Fellow Dani Nouriazad invite you to join their first-ever Social Media Symposium for ENGL 503 "#Kidlit for Researchers and Content Creators" on May 2 and May 4. The class meets in AH 1120 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. If you would like to learn more about the class and the student projects, click here: https://childlit.sdsu.edu/kidlit. Projects will also be available for viewing at the Annual DH Showcase on Friday, May 5 from 10:00 am to noon in the Digital Humanities Center. 

Diana Leong invites you to join her and the MA students for a celebration of thesis and portfolio projects at Oggi’s on Monday, 1 May, from 4 - 6 pm. 

Dates

4/26 at 7 pm in LL 430: Rick Barot will read from his most recent publications, including The Galleons, which has been described as “…significant, the work of a poet at the height of his powers.”

5/1 from 4 - 6 pm at Oggi’s: MA celebration event. Join Diana Leong and MA students to celebrate the completion of their portfolio and thesis projects. 

5/1: Deadline for nominations to CAL committees. See below for details. 

5/2 & 5/4 at 11 pm in AH 1120: Social Media Symposium for ENGL 503 "#Kidlit for Researchers and Content Creators." 

5/2 at 12.30 pm in HH 222 or via zoom: Paterson Joseph will read from and discuss his first historical novel, about eighteenth-century writer, abolitionist, and composer Ignatius Sancho. https://SDSU.zoom.us/j/744799561. Registration is not required.

5/5 at 7 pm: MFA reading at Scripps Cottage. 

5/12 at 10 am: Departmental pre-commencement celebration at Scripps Cottage. 

Good news

A piece of flash fiction by our former student Candace Hartsuyker, “When You’re The Contortionist,” will be published in The Best Microfiction 2023 anthology, published by Pelekinisis Press. https://www.bestmicrofiction.com/; https://www.cleavermagazine.com/when-youre-the-contortionist-by-candace-hartsuyker/. Candace will complete her SDICCCA internship this May. 

CAL committees

Below is the list of anticipated CAL committee vacancies for academic year 2022-23.

Research Committee: 3 vacancies

Professional Leaves Committee: 1 vacancy

Curriculum Committee: 4 vacancies

AP&P Committee: 3 vacancies

International Programs Committee: 4 vacancies

Teaching Committee: 3 vacancies

Diversity Committee: 5 vacancies

 

Service on the AP&P Committee is for three years. Service on all other CAL committees is for two years. Committee nominations can only be submitted by CAL chairs and directors. If you are interested in serving on one of these committees, please let me know. If you have questions about any of these committees, additional information can be found in the CAL Policy File: https://sdsuedu.sharepoint.com/sites/arts-and-letters. Nominations will be accepted through Monday, May 1. 

All best,

Quentin

Quentin Bailey, DPhil

Associate Professor and Chair

Department of English and Comparative Literature 

San Diego State University 

qbailey@sdsu.edu

619 594 5271

Pronouns: he/ him/ his

Indigenous residence: Kumeyaay

Latest News from ECL @ SDSU aka literature.sdsu.edu | 17 April 2023

Dear Colleagues,

We are entering the final weeks of the semester and, indeed, of the academic year. There will be several opportunities to celebrate our successes in the coming weeks – at commencement ceremonies, portfolio defenses, and MFA readings – and I hope you will have the opportunity to participate. 

In the spirit of such celebrations, congratulations to: 

Brianna Blashill (English) and Andres Negrete (Comparative Literature) who have been selected as the department’s Outstanding Graduating Seniors. Brianna has chosen Clare Colquitt as her Most Influential Faculty member and Andres Diana Leong. Congratulations Clare and Diana! All four will be celebrated at the department’s pre-commencement ceremony at Scripps Cottage on Friday 12 May at 10 am and, later that same day, at the CAL Commencement Ceremony.  

Diana Leong and Lashon Daley who have, separately, been awarded CAL IRC (Interdisciplinary Research Cluster) grants. Diana’s project focuses on the creation of an Environmental Humanities Lab,  while Lashon’s addresses Global Renderings of Childhood and Its Literature. 

Kendell Wilkerson, who has been chosen as the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature Fellow for AY 2023-2024. 

Jessica Pressman, who gave an invited talk on Friday, April 14, for PhD students and junior faculty at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, about scholarly writing and publishing and the importance of Digital Humanities scholarly practices.

Undergraduate student Nandi Maunder, who has been awarded a Fulbright to pursue a project in South Africa. Nandi’s project will be based at the University of Venda, in Limpopo province, and will engage with the ways in which race impacts childhood. 

Dates

4/18: Due date for Humanities in Action finding requests. A fillable pdf is available on the department’s sharepoint page, under ‘Funding Request Forms’ > ‘Spring 2023 forms’. 

4/19 at 12 noon in AL 266: Advisory Committee meeting

4/26 at 7 pm in LL 430: Rick Barot will read from his most recent publications, including The Galleons, which has been described as “…significant, the work of a poet at the height of his powers.”

5/5 at 7 pm: MFA reading at Scripps Cottage. 

5/12 at 10 am: Departmental pre-commencement celebration at Scripps Cottage. 

As always, please let me know details of good news or upcoming events. 

All best,

Quentin

Quentin Bailey, DPhil

Associate Professor and Chair

Department of English and Comparative Literature 

San Diego State University 

qbailey@sdsu.edu

619 594 5271

Pronouns: he/ him/ his

Indigenous residence: Kumeyaay

Latest Update from ECL, the Department of English and Comparative Literature at SDSU | 4.10.23 Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Thanks to all who attended last week’s meeting. As a gentle reminder, please encourage students who wrote outstanding essays in your classes to submit them to Iris (iquiroga@sdsu.edu) by the end of the week. The winning essays will be recognized at the department’s pre-commencement celebration at Scripps Cottage on Friday 12 May at 10 am. I hope you will be able to attend this event where we celebrate the achievements of our students (and enjoy a variety of cookies and brownies from Caked). 

There’s a new policy from the Research Foundation that might be of interest to those who work with individual service providers. Before we can request any payments for services, an Independent Contractor Pre-Selection Checklist needs to be completed and returned to Bart Chafe in the Dean’s Office. If a service is performed prior to the checklist being reviewed by the Research Foundation, payment for the service with Foundation funds may not be approved.

Dates

4/12 at 12 noon in AL 266: Graduate Committee meeting

4/12 at 7 pm, via Zoom: The Laurie Okuma Memorial Reading featuring Poet and Editor, Naoko Fujimoto! Her poetry collections are "We Face The Tremendous Meat On The Teppan", winner of C&R Press Summer Tide Pool Chapbook Award by C&R Press (2022), "Where I Was Born", winner of the editor's choice by Willow Books (2019), "Glyph: Graphic Poetry=Trans. Sensory" by Tupelo Press (2021), and four chapbooks. She is a RHINO associate & translation editor and Tupelo Quarterly translation editor. Register in advance for this event:

https://SDSU.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIlde-ppzsjE9UA5Rc3XlI7Atr-k4a_Pyqj

4/14: Due date for Outstanding Essay Award submissions. 

4/15, 9 - 2: Clare Colquitt and I will be meeting prospective students at Explore SDSU. Anyone interested in helping staff our booth is welcome. 

4/17: Due date for IRA applications. 

4/18: Due date for Humanities in Action finding requests. A fillable pdf is available on the department’s sharepoint page, under ‘Funding Request Forms’ > ‘Spring 2023 forms’. 

4/26 at 7 pm in LL 430: Rick Barot will read from his most recent publications, including The Galleons, which has been described as “…significant, the work of a poet at the height of his powers.”

5/5 at 7 pm: MFA reading at Scripps Cottage. 

5/12 at 10 am: Departmental pre-commencement celebration at Scripps Cottage. 

Congratulations: 

Lashon Daley was the keynote speaker at last weekend's 16th Annual Armistead Colloquium at UC Davis. She presented a chapter draft from her book project, Coming of (R)age: Charting Black Girl Lit Studies. 

The second edition of Corinne Goria’s book, Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy was released by Haymarket Books last week. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a compelling message about the plight of labor workers worldwide.” Click here for some further info about the book.  

Imelda Hernandez-Villa, who is graduating this spring with her English major and children's literature certificate, is featured in a recent PSFA publication about her and her daughter’s time at SDSU:

https://psfa.sdsu.edu/news/2023/mother-daughter-duo-attend-sdsu

As always, please let me know details of good news or upcoming events. 

All best,

Quentin

Quentin Bailey, DPhil

Associate Professor and Chair

Department of English and Comparative Literature 

San Diego State University 

qbailey@sdsu.edu

619 594 5271

Pronouns: he/ him/ his

Indigenous residence: Kumeyaay