Call for Papers

The Fantasy Matters Conference, set for November 16-18 at the University of Minnesota, is looking for paper, panel, and author reading submissions by June 15. This conference takes the position that fantasy literature plays an important role not only in popular culture, but also in the realm of literature itself. Scholars of fantasy literature at any level (fan, undergraduate, graduate, or professional) are invited to submit abstract proposals of 250 words. Keynote speakers will be Neil Gaiman, author of the Sandman series of graphic novels, and University of Minnesota professor Jack Zipes, noted scholar of fairy tales and folklore. The Name of the Wind author Patrick Rothfuss will be a featured reader, among others.

Sherlock Holmes Mini-Con

The May session class ENGL3020 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes presents student research projects on the final day of class, Thursday, June 7, from 10 am to noon. Instructor Kate Hannah's undergraduates have been investigating topics in the Sherlock Holmes Collection at Andersen Library. Among their featured findings: "The Women of the Sherlock Holmes Canon," "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and His Reading Public," and "Sherlock Holmes and Forensic Science." Interested parties are welcome to attend. Room 120B, Andersen Library. Meanwhile the University of Minnesota Showboat Players present Sherlock's Last Case from June 15 to August 25; and the University co-sponsors the Sherlock Holmes convention Victorian Secrets and Edwardian Enigmas here July 6-8.

Rebecca Krug Recognized for Teaching

Associate professor Rebecca Krug has won the College of Liberal Arts Arthur "Red" Motley Exemplary Teaching Award for 2006-07. She joins six active English professors with this distinction. The award recognizes faculty "who inspire and care, who make themselves approachable, who show an interest in individual students' well-being and in programs for the benefit of students generally, who give of themselves generously in advising, counseling, and directing projects, and who create an active classroom atmosphere." Krug is a medievalist who this past year taught The Story of King Arthur and Women in the Middle Ages. Congratulations Professor Krug!

Welcome Steven Winduo

The Department of English is proud to host poet, scholar and teacher Steven Winduo in 2007-08. Winduo lectures in literature and language at the University of Papua New Guinea. He has published two poetry collections: Lomo'ha I am, in Spirit's Voice I Call (1991) and Hembemba: Rivers of the Forest (2000). Windou is the founding editor of Savanna Flames: A Papua New Guinea Journal of Literature, Language, and Culture. For fall, he will teach the undergraduate classes Analysis of the English Language and Literacy and American Cultural Diversity.

Ivory Tower Launch

The Department of English undergraduate literary magazine Ivory Tower launched its 2007 issue with two readings at semester's end. The first, on April 27, brought a packed house to the Weisman Art Museum. After student contributors read, the Ivory Tower editors took the stage to announce the winning entries in each category. Becky Lang's "Cocoa Season" won for fiction; Luci Kandler's "History of a Lake at Night" won for creative nonfiction; Erica Niemiec's "Convergences and Crossings" won for poetry; and Angie Myhre's "Believer" won for art. Congratulations to the staff and all contributors!

Film Studies at Minnesota

The Department of English regularly offers courses in film studies. A website set up this spring by Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature for the first time rounds up current classes in cinema studies across the University. The website also profiles faculty with major research interests in film, including English professors Siobhan Craig, John Mowitt, Paula Rabinowitz, and Jani Scandura. The site lists University film collaboratives as well as online resources. This fall's English course offerings in cinema: Craig's The Western, Charles Sugnet's Fiction, Film, & Video from Emerging Nations and African Cinema, Jack Zipes' Fairy Tale Films and the Brothers Grimm and Transformations of the Fairy Tale, and Screenwriting.

Welcome Nabil Matar

Professor Matar, hired under the Presidential Initiative on Arts and Humanities, will call the Department of English home starting next fall. Matar's research and writing focus on 16th- and 17th-century interactions between Europe, especially England, and the world of Islam. He will be teaching the English graduate level course Britain & Islamic Mediterranean: 1588-1713, which will trace the intellectual and historical contacts between early modern England and the Muslim Mediterranean through drama, travel literature, captivity accounts and theological polemic. Among his numerous publications are Britain and Barbary: 1589-1689 (University Press of Florida, 2005) and Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (Columbia University Press, 1999). Matar received his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He was Professor of English at the Florida Institute of Technology.

Graduate Student Awards

Congratulations to Graduate Research Partnership Program awardees and their faculty mentors: Lauren Curtright (John Wright); Mitch Ogden (Jigna Desai); Ethan Rutherford (Julie Schumacher); and Lisa Trochmann (Paula Rabinowitz). . . . Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships were granted to Becky Peterson, Stoyan Tchaprazov, Elizabeth Weixel, and Maria Zavialova. . . . This year's Charles Christensen Library Acquisition Prize went to Lindsay Craig and Lucia Pawlowski. . . . Congratulations also to Arlene Kim and Emily Bright, recipients of the Academy of American Poets' James Wright Prize for Poetry.

Undergraduate Awards

Two English majors were selected for the 2007-08 Selmer Birkelo Scholarships, which honor 14 high achieving students in the College of Liberal Arts: Libby Issendorf, who is double majoring in English and Journalism, and Amanda Steepleton. Congratulations also to our other 2007-08 English scholarship and award winners.

Schumacher Wins Minnesota Book Award

Professor Julie Schumacher won a Minnesota Book Award for her young adult novel The Book of One Hundred Truths (Delacorte). Awards were announced May 5 in St. Paul. Other Creative Writing professors who have been honored with a Minnesota Book Award include Michael Dennis Browne (twice), Ray Gonzalez, Patricia Hampl, and David Treuer.

Hampl Elected to Academy

Regents professor Patricia Hampl was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hampl is one of only two new fellows elected for accomplishment in the writing of literature.

Academic Job Search Workshop

The workshop will interest all graduate students in literature programs who intend to pursue a career in academia. Broadly conceived, the workshop’s aim is two-fold: to outline the job search process and to suggest how students at all stages of graduate school can begin to prepare. Following the general workshop, there will be a meeting for all students entering the job market this fall. 2:30 pm, May 14, in Lind 207A.

MFA Alumna Awarded Fellowships

Poet and fiction writer Cheri Johnson (MFA 2005) was one of four Minnesotans granted $25,000 McKnight Artist Fellowships through the Loft Awards in Creative Prose. Novelist Jane Hamilton judged submissions for the 2007 fellowships. Johnson also has been awarded a seven-month fellowship (in fiction) to the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown for 2007-2008.

MFA Candidate Wins GLBTA Award

Emily August won a Steven J. Schochet GLBTA Studies Award for Excellence in Creativity and Scholarship, which is administered by the GLBTA Programs Office. August will be recognized at the Lavender Graduation Ceremony Thursday, May 3rd.