sdsuliterature

Thursday, April 30, 2009

SDSU MALAS and literature.sdsu.edu Collaborate on a Cool Summer Class!

Joanna Brooks, our award-winning*, fab Americanist, is teaching a new class for graduate students into literature and cultural studies at SDSU--the course is inter-disciplinary and open to all majors! Click the image above to get the scoop! This is the first of hopefully many cross-pollenizations between literature.sdsu.edu and SDSU's MALAS program.

*American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures, William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association, 2004

Apply for the 2nd Annual Joe Gillis Internship in Hollywood Competition!

More information appears below the clickable image here:

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Our 2009 Cool Summer Schedule is now ONLINE!

Click the image below to be instantly teleported to the literature.sdsu.edu mothership! Hit the beachball on the top of the page and you'll be looking at our Summer menu of literati delights!

CCC, NCCL & literature.sdsu.edu host GENE YANG @ SDSU, Wed. May 6, 2009

Stop the presses! Stop the presses! Gene Yang, comic book superstar extraordinaire, is coming to SDSU on Wednesday, May 6, 2009; hats off to Professor June Cummins-Lewis and the rest of the SDSU Children's Literature cohort for making this happen. Hit this image for all the details {more below}:

For more on Yang and his work, go here.

ps: you may have heard we are going to have a Comics/Graphic Narrative class at literature.sdsu.edu this Fall 2009--it will be led by our cool, indy-film prof Neil Kendricks!

English and Comparative Literature Chair Invades the SDSU Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Wednesday, April 29, 2009

When not alligator-wrestling colleagues over departmental politics, Bill Nericcio tries to keep himself busy being a scholar and cultural studies writer. He's been invited by the generous graduate students in Spanish and Portuguese at SDSU to share his latest findings filed under the salacious working working title Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race--his follow-up book with UT Press to Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America. Go to Professor Nericcio's blog or click the image opposite for more details.

Logo Prototype | literature.sdsu.edu

Friday, April 24, 2009

Jericho Brown Reads and Talks to Students @ SDSU's literature.sdsu.edu

Crisis Carnival Recap

Now that two weeks have passed since this year's SDSU English Department sponsored graduate student conference, allow me to supply a rundown of the day's proceedings. As organizer of this year's event, I was pleased by the quality and contrast of the presentations, and was glad to see so many people turn out in support.

The title of the conference, "The Ecstasy of Speed," was selected due to its relevancy to current issues of study, and allowed for an array of presentation topics ranging from from crank addict surfers to Craigslist ad surfers; we saw Corpus Christi Pageants and Facebook fanatics, and had analyses on everything from Doctorow's Ragtime to Danielewski's Only Revolutions. Since the panels were set up thematically in an attempt to simulate the debilitating effects of escalating speed, it came as no shock when the unexpected ending left many in attendance craving more.

The event ended after keynote speaker Derek Pell captivated the crowd with anecdotes and satirical readings of his work ranging from "deconstructing" art to tips on how to write a successful suicide note, ending with a clip from his reworking of Plan 9 From Outer Space, aptly titled Plan 9b From Outer Space.

In a comment to a rousing presentation by Larry McCaffery, MFA graduate and author Kimball Taylor may have summed up the overall feeling of the day when by saying that the most dangerous effect of speed is not the acceleration but coming to a quick stop.

As a result of my own confusion with the unexpected ending, I failed to thank the people I had meant to (besides Pam Fox Kuhlken for supplying us all Cracker Jacks), so allow me to use this space to thank everyone whose hard work went into making this conference happen:

Thank you Gaelan Gilbert for all your help in co-organizing the event; Bill Nericcio for running the Crisis Carnival website and basically guiding us through the whole process; Nathan Leaman for helping in the transitioning from last year's amazing conference; Larry McCaffery for all the arrangements with the keynote; Derek Pell for acting as keynote; Mark Young, Quentin Bailey, Joanna Brooks, and the other respondents already mentioned for giving your time; Annie Foral for reserving rooms; Adam Pike and everyone at Ponce's for supplying our lunch; Megan E. Gilbert for displaying her artwork; Charlie Yi of The Latent Print for help with the flier (see above); and thank you again to all of the panelists for sharing their work under the rigorous pressures of an academic conference.

I enjoyed the entire experience and look forward to seeing what comes of next year's conference after I pass the torch on to the next unsuspecting grad student. Any volunteers?

Kevin Gossett

Carey Wall in Mississippi Quarterly

Our congratulations go out to Carey Wall, an SDSU professor and former department chair whose article "`The Burning' : Extreme Reversal to Meet Life's Obligations" will appear in this month's Eudora Welty Centennial Supplement. For subscription information click here.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Jericho Brown Reading from PLEASE this Thursday Morning @ 8am, West Commons 220! Free

Jericho Brown is in the house @ SDSU this coming Thursday morning to dazzle listeners in Professor Bill Nericcio's Sex in Film and Lit class with readings from his jaw-droppingly compelling new collection, PLEASE. The talk begins at 8am (yikes!), Thursday, April 23, 2009 in SDSU's WEST COMMONS 220; admission is

FREE, but seating is limited, so make sure to get there early to secure your ringside seat. Brown's liable to burn the house down with his searing, lyric musings, so brace yourself for incoming! Here's a cool interview with Jericho Brown.

Music, classic R & B music, rules the pages of this slim, potent volume with cameos by Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack, and Marvin Gaye rolling in and out of its pages. Here's a classic taste of Marvin Gaye to set the vibe for Thurday's reading: