scu english the quill'09_nl_fnl

8/9/2019 SCU English the Quill'09_NL_FNL

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Creative Writing

Updates

by Rebecca Black

As the new Director of Creative

Writing, I have enjoyed getting to

know our creative writing student

minors. Currently we have

minors, with majors majoring in

every discipline from Philosophy

to Engineering. This fall, the

program sponsored the visit of

former Alice James Press editor

April Ossmann, who spoke to

students about her thirty years in

the editing. She read from her

first collection of poems,Anxious

Music. In February, five Santa

Clara Review students received

support to attend the Associated

Writing Programs annual confer-ence in Chicago. Ron Hansen

closely in programming with

new Cinema Studies program

well as the Justice and the A

initiative, the student writing

the Womens and Gender

Studies program, and the

Environmental Studies Institu

The program would like to th

our student assistant, Lauren

Silk, for her work on planning

events this year. We are grat

for the support of the Office

Multicultural Learning, and th

Center for Student Leadersh

Members of the current crea

writing program committee a

professors Diane Dreher, Ro

Hansen, Claudia McIsaac, K

Glaser, and Jeremy Townley.

and Juan Velasco also attended

the conference. They talked to

hundreds of poets and writers at

their Santa Clara Review booth,

and attended panels on a multi-

tude of topics. While we were in

Chicago, Jeremy Townley and

student Lauren Backes recruited

new minors at the major/minor fair.

Also in February, our writer-in-

residence, poet Forrest Hamer,

gave a reading, an interview,

visited classes, and met individu-

ally with several aspiring student

poets. Hamer is the author of

three books of poetry, Call and

Response, Middle Ear, and Rift.

He spoke at length about his

experiences in listening and emo-

tional exploration as a practicingpsychotherapist in the East Bay.

This spring, biographer and

fiction writer Catherine Brady will

visit campus. She has recently

completed a biography of

Elizabeth Blackburn, a molecular

biologist and leader in stem-cell

research. Bradys new book of

fiction, The Mechanics of Falling,

was published this spring.

Next year, we hope the program

will continue to flourish as we

develop a new web presence,

seek program donors, and

continue to create opportunities

for students to work closely with

visiting writers. Our new classes,

like Claudia McIsaacs Creative

Writing and Social Justice

course, continue to offer innova-

tive connections to the new corecurriculum. We hope to work

From Book To Blog

The response to Marc Bousquets 2008 book How The

University Works has kept him pretty busy. During the spring

term, hell make several appearances, including at UNC-Chapel

Hill, Yale, NYU, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University

of Florida. He was also invited to join the Brainstorm group

blog at The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he publishes

text and video: http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm . Inthe excerpt below, he talks about blogging and the way

electronic media is changing academic writing. The complete

interview with Jeffrey Williams appears in theminnesota review.

Williams Besides your book, you have developed other ave-

nues to talk about the university, notably your blog and your

series of video interviews. The blog has become a sort of

clearinghouse for progressive issues in higher ed. What do you

see as the function of your blog? What are you doing with it?

Bousquet While I understood blogging intellectually, I personal-

ly was in the habit of writing very long things. And I still had this

romantic idea of writing that you bring it to your cave and laborand come out with an incredibly contorted finished product, so

I wasnt at all sure that I was ready for the short form and all

the characteristics of bloggingrapid response, finish your

thought quicklythat were at variance with my personal habits

as a writer. Im grateful to have had the chance to be at The

Chronicle of Higher Education, in part because they imposed a

certain discipline on me. They expected me to post at a certain

rate, and without a little bit of editorial pushing I would be one

of those people who posts every day for three weeks and then

not at all for three months.

Williams In a way it clearly follows your interest is participatory

culture. Where do you see it going?

Bousquet Because it connects to elements of my teaching and

research, it has become an opportunity for me to practice what

I preach. If Im asking my students to compose activist video,

then it becomes an opportunity for me to figure out what it is

Im asking them to do and how can I guide them best. I dont

say, Well, they are young people, therefore they know all about

Facebook and YouTube. I see it as an opportunity to get

involved and make my own judgments about the best ways to

frame pedagogy and help them to achieve their goals in using

social media.

At another level, Im very interested in different ways of framing

scholarship. Im very concerned about the future of academicwriting, of academic discourse in the context of the electronic

mediation of textuality. What would it mean for scholarship to

acknowledge the possibilities and engage more fully the possi-

bilities of having scholarship literally interwoven with an archive?

People have been exploring just how that would work, but

those practices have yet to pervade the profession.


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What is Your Vocation?

by Diane Dreher

What should I do with my life? Where do I find

joy and meaning? For the past few years, Ive

examined these questions, exploring the concept

of vocation which flourished during the

Renaissance. In what psychologists call the self-

fulfilling prophecy, our expectations dramatically

shape our experience. Because they believed that

God had given them a unique set of gifts and a

personal call to vocation, Renaissance men and

women made unprecedented contributions to

science, religion, politics, and the arts. In a remark-

able parallel, todays psychological research has

found that not only do we each have a unique set

of strengths but that using them can make our lives

happier, healthier, and more successful. (You can

identify your own strengths with the free VIA-IS

survey on www.authentichappiness.org .)

ach major challenge or change offers us new opportunities to discern our vocations

nd renew our lives, as Ive found by conducting empirical studies of people from their

ate teens through retirement and examining over 100 Renaissance livesfrom Queen

lizabeth I, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Galileo, and Michelangelo, to St. Ignatius, St.

Teresa of Avila, and Sor Juana Inz de la Cruz. My findings have appeared in academic

ournals and conferences on Renaissance studies, lifelong learning, and clinical

sychology. Combining insights from Renaissance lives with research in psychology and

euroscience, my new book, Your Personal Renaissance (Da Capo, 2008), shows how

we can discern our vocations throughout the changing seasons of our lives.

ince 2003, Santa Clara has affirmed the Ignatian call to vocation in our DISCOVER

rogram. Funded by a Lilly Endowment grant, DISCOVER offers a series of talks,

eflection groups, retreats, immersions, and classes to support ongoing vocationaliscernment in students, faculty, and staff. As DISCOVER Curriculum Director, Ive

ncorporated vocation into my freshman composition courses and senior seminar,

eveloped a new English/Religious Studies course on vocation, and helped faculty

evelop new courses on vocation in English, Theatre, Communication, Religious

tudies, Philosophy, Economics, Sociology, and Law. In our new 2009 University

Core Curriculum, students may choose a Vocation Pathway, a series of four courses

hat help them reflect on this essential theme. The Pathway will offer courses from

2 departments, including writing and literature courses from English Professors

imone Billings, Rebecca Black, Diane Dreher, Judy Dunbar, Claudia McIsaac, and

uan Velasco.

Ongoing vocational discernment holds great promise for us today. Im convinced

hat our greatest natural resources are our hearts and minds, our personal gifts andreativity. As English majors, we know how creativity brings hope in times of crisis, for

weve often found consolation in writing and in reading great works of literature. By

ffirming our own creativity, by renewing our sense of vocation as we confront todays

hallenges, we can move forward into a new Renaissance of hope, discovering new

ossibilities to heal and transform our world.

www.scu.edu/english

Writing Awards: Winners

from 2009

Sarah Graham

Winner of the Katherine Woodall Prize for her

essay: Desire for Laurie, Jo and the Reader

in Little Women

Krystal WuWinner of the Christiaan Lievestro Prize for

her essay Not so Black and White: The

Construction of White Womanhood in

Uncle Toms Cabin

Rachel Wilde

Winner of the Shipsey Poetry Prize for her

poem: Rachel Weeping

Nicholas Sanchez

Winner of the Academy of American Poets

Tamara Verga Poetry Prize for his poems:

Patter, Sales (Fever), and enumerate

Randall Holaday

Winner of the McCann Short Story Contest

for his short story: Welcome

Khanh Le Vu Trinh

First-Year Composition Competition for

her essay Holding onto an Identity in a

New Homeland

Suggested Reading

Buddhas Wife, by Gabriel Constans

The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga

Forgiveness, by Paula Huston

Bread and Fire: Jewish Women Find God

in the Everyday, edited by Rivkah Slonim.

Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan

Grace, Eventually, by Anne Lamott

The Omnivores Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

As a Friend: A Novel, by Forrest GanderThe Stone Gods, by Jeanette Winterson

2666, by Roberto Bolao

Indignation, by Philip Roth

Leaving Tangier:A Novel, by Tahar Ben Jelloun


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Faculty Achievements

Simone Billings will be a Fulbright

cholar at the University of the West

ndies in the Fall.

Rebecca Black has won a fellowship

om the National Endowment for the Arts

or $25,000.

Sherry Booth presented a paper on

ustainability education in Britain.

Phyllis Brown gave a paper at the annual

meeting of the Medieval Association of

he Pacific on Hrotsvit of Gandersheims

nd presented a paper on Hrotsvit at a

onference in Cologne, Germany.

Stephen Carroll published an essay on

The Rhetoric of Teaching (Art History) with

Technology, and another jointly with Andreaappas and Dolores LaGuardia, titled,

Angel in the Architecture: Course

Management Software and Collaborative

Teaching. Over the past three years he

as done a lot of work on the Student

Assessment of their Learning Gains project.

uliana Chang and Linda Garber were

o-editors ofThe Aunt Lute Anthology

f US Women Writers, Volume Two: The

0th Century. Julie gave a talk on mentoring

t a Women of Color Network event

nd was a discussant for a panel onHeteronormativity and Racialization in

ransnational Asian/America.

Diane Dreher published her new book,

Your Personal Renaissance.

Marilyn Edelstein has published a chapter

nApproaches to Teaching Lolita, another

n Nabokov, and a chapter in Critical

Perspectives on bell hooks.

ileen Elrod attended a conference on

The Indian Ocean and Arab Slave Tradest Yale University.

ohn Farnsworth has been appointed to

erve on a task force to develop a common

et of student learning outcomes to guide-

urriculum development associated with

sustainability issues. He presented papers

on related topics in Vancouver and Raleigh,

and traveled to El Salvador this quarter to

observe SCU student participation in Casa

de Solidaridad. He will be directing the SCU

Study Abroad program at University of

Stirling this summer.

Andy Garavel gave a paper on LandReform and Irish Writing at the University of

Washington, and received a grant of $3800

from the National Endowment for the

Humanities to attend their summer seminar

for college and university teachers at the

University of Notre Dame to study Anglo-

Irish Identities.

Kirk Glaser has had two poems nominated

for a Pushcart Prize, and has edited the

script for Hands Left Behind, a dance/

theater production in Santa Cruz.

Jill Gould gave a talk about her class on

Holocaust Memoirs at the Oral History

Association Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.

In May she spoke on Bringing Oral History

into the Digital Classroom at Jagiellonian

University in Krakow, Poland.

Ron Hansen gave fiction readings at

Virginia Commonwealth, Eastern Michigan,

Georgetown, St. Marys College in

Minnesota, the University of Portland, the

University of Binghamton, Creighton

University, and St. Johns University. In

March he gave the talk, What Would Jesus

View? for a series on Religious Themes in

Film at the University of Southern California,

and he spoke at Regis University in Denver

on The Catholic Imagination and Film. A

play based on his novel Mariette in Ecstasy

collected boffo reviews in its run from

February 13th to April 5th at Lifeline Theatre

in Chicago. This July he will be teaching at

the Tin House Writers Conference at Reed

College in Portland.

John Hawley published a three-volume

encyclopedia on LGBTQ America Today,

with 250 contributors (Linda Garber among

them), and guest edited the annual creative

writing issue of the South Asian Review. He

was a plenary speaker at a conference on

Migration, Border, and the Nation State at

Texas Tech, chaired a session at a

Transgender conference at the Sorbonne,

and presented a paper at the University

of Cordoba.

Aparajita Nanda presented a paper on

Nawal El Saadawi in Salzburg.

Myisha Priest got some wonderful newsshe received the very competitive Schomburg

Scholars in Residence Fellowship, which

comes with a hefty stipend of $30,000! This

will take her to New York for some portion of

next academic year, to work on a fascinating

new project: Focusing on African American

communities of the antebellum waterways,

the book will function as a corrective (and

completing) addition to the metaphor of the

Underground Railroad.

Roseanne Giannini Quinn gave a talk called

The Faces of Domestic Violence at Saint

Marys College and two papers at the MLAs

annual meeting.

Don Riccomini published two review essays

in Technical Communications, and a critical

essay in theJournal of Religion and Film.

Avantika Rohatgi presented a paper on

The Transformative Power of Terror at the

University of Washington.

Jeremy Townley published a review in

Harvard Review.

Priya Venkatesan presented a paper at the

Semiotic Society of America in Houston, and

another in Charlotte, NC on Nanoselves.

Her article, Making Science Accessible

was recently published in Biosemiotics. An

article on Julia Kristeva appears in the Spring

issue ofLesprit createur.

Fred White has published two books:

Approaching Emily Dickinson: Critical

Currents and Crosscurrents since 1960,

and The Daily Writer: 366 Meditations

To Cultivate a Productive and Meaningful

Writing Life.

Fred White has been promoted to

Full Professor.

www.scu.edu/english


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English Department

Santa Clara University

500 El Camino Real

Santa Clara, CA 95053-1500

www scu edu/english

Gender Studies in

the Department

In the Introduction to his new

three-volume encyclopedia,LGBTQ America Today, editor

John Hawley writes that his

classmates in seventh grade told

him that boys who wrote with

their left hand or wore green and

yellow on Thursdays were

homos. He didnt know what

that was, but since he did both,

he figured he was already in

trouble and would have to do a

lot of pretending. That, as it turns

out, was the inspiration for his

latest publication, in which he

has orchestrated 250 writersfrom around the country to

describe the sexual revolution

of the last 60 years, particularly

as it has shaped, and been

shaped by, the lesbian, gay,

bisexual, transgender, and queer

communities. Part of the over-

arching theme of the three

volumes is the plural nature of

those communities, in whichthere are many competing

voices, some alliances, and

some broad disagreements.

Entries range from androgyny

to queer youth groups, from

prominent individuals in the vari-

ous movements, to organizations

that have supported the

expansion of LGBTQ rights, to

marriage, to pride parades, to

outing, and on and on. Many

entries are biographies of well-

known or still-to-be-discoveredpoets, playwrights, musicians,

entrepreneurs, etc. Others are

studies of the history of oppression

in this country, easily forgotten now

that many rights have come to be

expected. But the encyclopedia

makes obvious those issues

that are still unresolved, such

as marriage, adoption, hate

laws, the role of trangendere

individuals in the work place

Hawley has published earlier

related books, including

Postcolonial, Queer: Theoret

Intersections, which studies

impact of western notion of

gayness in the emerging wo

This latest work is less theor

and more historical, with pho

and illustrations of some of t

memorable events in this im

tant component of the expan

of human rights in the UnitedStates. As an encyclopedia,

it is less likely something an

individual would purchase, a

more likely to be found in sc

and communities libraries.

vote a least one-third of the

assroom cinema itself. Though there

ould be possible a production compo-

nt the primary emphasis would be on

udies of film and video as literary,

ltural, and historical texts.

ofessors Diane Dreher and John

wley of the English Department, and

ul Soukup, S.J. and Michael Whalen

Communications, will be members

the Cinema Studies Committee.

ofessor Ron Hansen will be the

ogram director.

A New Minor in

Cinema Studies

ontinued from page 1)

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