Fall 2017 Newsletter
English at RIC
Department of English
Rhode Island College
Welcome (back) to RIC!
Fall term is well underway as I write this note, but many of us--both faculty members and students--are still trying to figure out whose office is where and exactly where they themselves are supposed to be at any given moment. Craig-Lee, the largest classroom building at RIC, is closed for renovations, and classes are being held in every possible space on campus, including the Student Union, the DDC, conference rooms, and auditoria. And, of course, the English Department has had to move out of our long-time home. There was no single space on campus big enough to house all of us, so English faculty members are in three different locations: Fogarty Life Science (department office is FLS 126), Building 30, and the Yellow Cottage. The English faculty webpage has each person's specific office number listed or you may check with Armande Aywas, the department secretary (456-8028 or aaywas@ric.edu or drop by FLS 126), if you need office hours and/or locations. We'll be in these temporary spaces for two years, assuming the renovation stays on track and the new Craig Lee opens in the fall of 2019. If you've been in the new Gaige, you know how nice the renovation is and I'm sure will agree that the current disruption is worth the promised payoff.
Just to make things more complicated, three English faculty members are on leave: Alison Shonkwiler for this term, emily danforth for the academic year, and Daniel Scott for this term. Stephen Brown and I are filling in for Dr. Scott as interim co-chairs. If you have a question that should go to the chair, please email both or either of us (sbrown@ric.edu and mreddy@ric.edu).
Despite these disruptions, I hope your fall term is off to a great start and that you have a truly excellent academic year.
--Maureen Reddy
Shoreline's first event of 2017-18 on September 27
Our literary magazine is hosting a reading by Kelly Grey Carlisle who will be reading from her memoir, We Are All Shipwrecks, on Wednesday, September 27 at 12:30 in the Rienhardt Room on the main floor of Adams Library. All welcome! Drinks and snacks will be served.
Grad Student/Faculty gathering
will be Wednesday, October 11, 5 pm in the FAS Dean's Conference Room (Gaige 130). A brief speaking program featuring Carrie Shipers and Joseph Zornado talking about their recent books and Russell Potter discussing his summer Arctic adventures will be followed by mingling and yummy refreshments. This annual event is always fun and gives grad students and faculty members a chance to meet each other and chat outside the classroom. Please come!
Congratulations!
Wow! English major Iain Krissiouk has published a piece he wrote for his ENGL 201 class, “Something Perversely Pure”: Foreshowing and Imagery in A View from the Bridge” as a Note in Arthur Miller Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, Fall, 2017, pp. 145-48.
OBOM event: don't miss it!
It's hard to imagine any book more pressingly relevant at this historical moment than the Open Books, Open Minds book for 2017-18: Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me. Among the many events scheduled in connection with this book is a panel discussion that is sure to be enlightening and powerful. The Forum on Race and Society will take place Wednesday, October 4, 2-4 pm in Alger 110. Panelists include Len Cabral, Rhode Island Storyteller; Victor Capellan, Superintendent of Central Falls Schools; Shawn Christian, Associate Provost and Professor of English at Wheaton College; Vanessa Flores-Moldanado, Campaign Coordinator for PrYSM; Judith McDonnell, Professor of Sociology at Bryant University; and Marco McWilliams, Swearer Center Junior Fellow and Practitioner in Residence at Brown University (and RIC alum). Be sure to come to what will definitely be an excellent event.
Recent Faculty Publications
Sue Abbotson’s latest book, Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1950s, will be released by Methuen in October, 2017. She also has essays in two recently published volumes, “Miller and Morath in Collaboration” in Arthur Miller’s Century, Essays Celebrating the 100th Birthday of America’s Great Playwright, edited by Stephen Marino, and “Arthur Miller as the Moral Voice of America” in Moral Approaches to Literature and Film, edited by Robert Evans
Mark Anderson has two poems, "Always Ask for Another Interpretation" and "Destination," in Crosswinds Poetry Journal (vol II, 2017)
Claudine Griggs has a story, "The Cold Waters of Europa," in Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up To No Good, a feminist anthology of dark fiction and darker knowledge, forthcoming in spring 2018
This spring, Dr. Michael Michaud published an autobiography, Notes of a Native Son: An Academic Memoir (Enculturation, 2017) which traces his history as an English student and professor and his long-term engagement with the University of New Hampshire English Department. The autobiography can be accessed at:
http://intermezzo.enculturation.net/04-michaud.htm.
Magdalena Ostas’s essay “The Aesthetics of Absorption” will appear later this year in a collection from Routledge on the art criticism of Michael Fried. Her essay is about the visual arts, subjectivity, and reflection, and it takes up paintings (Caspar David Friedrich) and contemporary photographs (Jeff Wall’s “After Invisible Man”)
Carrie Shipers’s poems have recently appeared in The Southern Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Nine Mile Magazine, and are forthcoming in The Antioch Review and bosque. Six of her poems have been added to the website for the Academy of American Poets (poets.org)
Joseph Zornado has three recent book publications. The first is a textbook, Professional Writing for the Criminal Justice System (co-authored with Jill Harrison from Sociology and Dan Weisman, emeritus from Social Work), that brings together all of the professional development work Dr. Zornado has done over the years around the teaching of writing and critical thinking. The second is the second edition of a textbook called Professional Writing for Social Work Practice, co-authored with Dan Weisman. The third is Disney and the Dialectic of Desire: Fantasy as Social Practice, out September 27 from Palgrave Macmillan.
Internships
English majors and minors can learn more about internship opportunities via the department’s Internship webpage,
http://www.ric.edu/english/Pages/Internships.aspx or by contacting Dr. Michael Michaud (mmichaud@ric.edu).
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