The Quill Newsletter 2013 by Scu English Dept

The Quill

Spring 2013

English Department Newsletter

S A N TA C L A R A U N I V E R S I T Y Creative Writing by Kirk Glaser and Ron Hansen

The Santa Clara Review published its 100th Volume this year with two beautiful issues in paper and ebook formats. The Review celebrated with publication events featuring California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera in February and former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize/National Book Award winner Robert Hass in May. Review Editor Stephen Layton and Production Editor Alec Molloy shared the University Handlery Prize for graduating seniors who contributed the most to a campus publication. In the fall Creative Writing hosted Bo Caldwell for a fiction reading from her China novel City of Tranquil Light. She was joined by Ron Hansen, her husband, reading from his new collection She Loves Me Not: New (Continued on page 8)

Department Professor Wins Prestigious Award for Writing

Michelle Burnham’s essay, “Trade, Time, and the Calculus of Risk in Early Pacific Travel Writing,” has been designated the winner of the Richard Beale Davis Prize by the Modern Language Association. The Davis Prize recognizes the best published essay in Early American Literature during a given time frame. For this competition, essays published in the journal in 2011 and 2012 were eligible for the prize. The following is the Prize Committee’s citation:

“‘Trade, Time, and the Calculus of Risk in Early Pacific Travel Writing’ (EAL 46.3) by Michelle Burnham, Professor of English at Santa Clara University, has been awarded the Richard Beale Davis prize for the best article published in Early American Literature during the past two years. Among a group of impressive essays, Burnham’s is remarkable for its path breaking orientation, archival richness, and theoretical subtlety. Succinctly put, Burnham makes a powerful case for the need to make a Pacific turn in early American literary studies.”

www.scu.edu/english

Graduating Seniors’ Next Steps by Michael Malone

Michael S. Malone has been overseeing many successful internships and writing programs for our students. For example, in the Spring term: • Liz Wassmann, who wrote for the San Jose Metro and the San Jose Mercury-News, landed an internship at Zuckerberg Productions in Menlo Park (that’s Mark’s sister) and is writing regular by-lined features – one of which, on laughter yoga, was picked up by the blogosphere and carried nationally. (Continued on page 2)

Table of Contents Graduating Seniors’ Next Steps................1, 2 The Writing Program..................................2, 8 Chair’s Corner................................................3 SCU Chapter of Sigma Tau Delta.................3 My first year as a Post-Doc............................4 Canterbury Fellowship Notes........................4 Academy Award Winner Tamara Verga..........4 Glad to be Dad..............................................5 Writing Award Winners and Honorees........5 Student, Alumni and Faculty Achievements...6 Stay Connected with the English Dept...........8

The Writing Program by Simone Billings

In 2012-13, Co-Chair Simone J. Billings, Director of Writing, and Jill Goodman-Gould, Assistant Director of Writing, oversaw new developments and continued familiar successes. New Happenings

Associate Professor Qian (Quincy) Wang from Chinese Agricultural University in Beijing, a writing specialist, was an excellent visiting foreign scholar in Fall 2012. She gave us insight into the Chinese university system and an outsider’s perspective on the way we conduct writing classes, such as surprise that we teach critical and independent thinking. She also eagerly gave several professional presentations to the University

community, to the Department, and to individual classes. In Stockton, at the Fall meeting of the Northern California-Nevada Affiliate of Writing Program Administrators, she proudly shared her students’ work with the faculty and administrators present. Professor Wang even ran an introductory Mandarin class for interested parties at noon on Mondays. We were sorry to see her return home in January, but some keep in touch with her. The spring meeting of the Northern California-Nevada Affiliate of Writing Program Administrators was hosted by the Department; Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs, Diane Jonte-Pace, and Associate Provost for Undergraduate Studies, Phyllis Brown, joined the group part of the time. Noel Radley, one of our writing instructors, and two of her students discussed the use of Learning Records and e-portfolios in their roundtable “5 Reasons to Consider PortfolioBased Assessment.”

Also new is the addition of another writing prize: the Multimodel Writing Prize Contest. Junior Alexander Nouaux’s winning entry, “Brick Lane iTour,” can be seen at http://blogs.scu.edu/anouauxitour/, and Avery Unterreiner’s honorable mention, “It’s Been One Year,” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H-q_Djvk3I. Judges were Noel Radley and Olin Bjork (the major movers behind starting this recognition of the new kind of writing students do), Denise Krane and Jefferson Dela Cruz.

The most exciting news for the Writing Program is that the successful tenure-track search for a Rhetoric and Composition specialist yielded both a new Assistant Professor and a PostDoctoral Scholar, both of whom will join us in the Fall. Julia Voss

with a doctorate from The Ohio State University will become our newest Assistant Professor; her dissertation is “Working in Networks, Groups, and Spaces: A Task-Based Study of Literacy Ecologies for Digital Composing.” Cruz Medina, with a doctorate from the University of Arizona (dissertation: “Poch[o] tec@: Rhetorical Strategies of a Chican@ Academic Identity”) will be our first writing specialist as a Post-Doctoral Scholar. A Constant: Faculty Development Workshops The Writing Advisory Group designed several different enrichment sessions for quarterly workshops for those who teach first-year writing (Critical Thinking and Writing) and advanced writing classes (various). Events attended by faculty both inside and outside the department ranged from re-socializing to SCU norms and meeting new hires and greeting returning col(Continued on page 8)

Graduating Seniors’ Next Steps (Continued from page 1)

• Fellow senior Eliza Lamson also was writing for the San Jose Metro, starting to write for Community Newspapers, and landed a job/internship at Diablo Magazine in Contra Costa County. • Gabrielle Jasinski landed a marketing job at a Los Altos publisher while continuing to write for Metro. • Stephen Layton wrote for Metro while editing the Santa Clara Review. He will be interning at Metro this summer. • Michael Rosa completed an internship with Warner Bros. and is now writing articles and catalog copy for the San Jose film festival, Cinequest. He recently sold his first story to Metro.

Four from the list above enjoyed the end of the term and academic year by seeing their work published: one of the first commercial books ever published by undergraduates in the school’s history. The book is Moving Out, published by ThinkAha! Publishers in Cupertino. It is a collection of tweet-length pieces of advice and wisdom about leaving home for the first time. The four authors are all graduating senior English majors: Eliza Lamson, Gabrielle Jasinski, Hannah Miller, and Liz Wassmann. They held a book signing at the campus bookstore in early June 2013. If any alumni wish to offer internship opportunities to our majors, please contact Mike Malone at msmalone@scu.edu.

Chair’s Corner by John Hawley

Two professors visited us this year, one from Princeton and the other from the University of Kentucky, to review our program. They began their report with very kind words: “The English department at SCU is filled with imaginative, committed, and innovative teacher/scholars. . . . We were mightily impressed with [student] enthusiasm. They were clearly inspired by their professors and courses, they deeply valued their study abroad experiences and internships, and they had a clear sense of how the English major had prepared them for life and work after graduation. Furthermore, we commend the members of the department, the chair, and the associate chair for their desire to cultivate the deep connections between the teaching of writing and the teaching of literary and cultural studies.” They recommended that we set about hiring a good number of tenure track faculty. Happily, in the course of the year we did hire an Assistant Professor, Julia Voss, who will join us in the Fall, along with post-doctoral fellows, Christine Montgomery, who has been with us all year (and will be here at least one more year), and Cruz Medina, who will join us in September. Secondly, they liked our proposed changes to the requirements for the English major, which will make it easier for students to pursue a double major. They asked us if it would make sense to work backward from the career aspirations the department imagines for students and then fashion the major around them? (For example, tracks could be organized to prepare them for futures as secondary school English teachers, graduate students in an area of English studies, professional writer/editors, attorneys, etc.) What do you think of that idea? Please write and let us know. They also took note of our location in the heart of Silicon Valley, and advised that we make the digital humanities “an interdisciplinary area of focus among several of the humanities departments whose activities might attract outside funding.” We are very excited by this idea, though it will take a good deal of planning, hiring, and funding, and all that takes time. If you would like to support our growth in these various areas, please do let us know. They also suggested that we build an “advisory board that would support departmental initiatives. Such a group could provide a way to involve alumni and/or other interested parties in the life of the department. This group could also be invited to raise funds to endow departmental priorities, such as a writers series that would support readings by Bay Area writers, a junior or senior professorship, faculty leaves, scholarships, and awards. As the department continues to develop the new major, this group could also help support internship opportunities.” If you’d like to help develop such a Friends of English group, please contact us.

The English department at SCU is filled with imaginative, committed, and innovative teacher/scholars. . .

www.scu.edu/english

SCU Chapter of Sigma Tau Delta at the Portland Oregon convention – March 2013

Gabriela Solis, Lindsey Nguyen, and Joanne Santomauro represented Santa Clara well, Gaby and Joanne delivering papers at the convention (Joanne‘s was “The Necessity of Grammar and SelfExpression” and Gaby’s was “Leave the Women Alone! Ma Joad as a Realistic Character”). All were great ambassadors for SCU and our chapter with every interaction with members from other chapters. Also, Lindsey and Joanne (and Hallie McKnight, even though she didn’t attend the convention) chose to submit blog posts to the Far Western Region competition, blogs which could be submitted on three different topics: region and literature, book and film review, and open topic. The first place award for region and literature was $100. The first place prize for the other two topics was $50. Individual blogs were judged on creativity, usability of design, and content – and each of our submitting people won! Lindsey Nguyen - 1st place Open Topic Joanne Santomauro - 2nd place Region Hallie McKnight - 3rd place Review We also found out at the awards ceremony that alumna Tanya Schmidt has received a monetary award for graduate school study! She is currently playing volleyball for a Belgium team, but when she starts at NYU in the Fall, she will have that scholarship to help her with her tuition. On campus AY 2012-13 The chapter continues to thrive as a whole. The chapter officers were wonderful in helping out with preview days for potential students and with keeping the chapter’s sponsors apprised of their work. 17 new members were inducted during the year, and plans with the new officers are beginning for submitting to and attending the 2014 convention in Savannah GA. Co-sponsors Michael Lasley and Simone J. Billings

My first year as a Post-Doc by Christine Montgomery

The Inclusive Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow has been an exceptional opportunity to continue my teaching and research. As an alumna of Santa Clara University (class of 2002), it has been delightful to return to the close-knit learning environment to teach in the English Department. I have tried to emulate the style of teaching I had here as an undergrad by encouraging my students to engage critically with American literatures as citizens of a decidedly diverse world, and to understand the questions provoked by the literature in their contexts (and the individuals, cultures, and particular moments that produced them), our own experiences, and the SCU

mission to promote “leaders of competence, conscience, and compassion, and cultivate knowledge and faith to build a more humane, just, and sustainable world.” I have been impressed by the amount of knowledge, curiosity, and compassion my students have brought to the classroom, from lively in-class conferences, collaborative group presentations, enthusiastic discussions, and insightful analytical essays. Receiving my PhD in Literature in June 2012 from UC Santa Cruz, where I specialized in nineteenthand twentieth-century American, African-American, and contemporary Anglophone Caribbean literature, I have also developed new courses, such as “Haiti and the American Imagination” which examines the long history behind Haiti’s role in America’s cultural consciousness, and how this Caribbean island nation has been

in recovering Arna Bontemps as an important figure in both the Harlem Renaissance and in the archiving and reconstructing of slave revolt in the African Diaspora. From this book project, one article is under submission at the African American Review and I am currently working on a second article. In March, I presented two papers on time and gender, respectively, at the 27th Annual MELUS conference in Pittsburgh on Bontemps’ Black Thunder. In My current book project is titled August, I will chair a panel Anachronistic Prophecies: Arna “Circuits of Violence: Racial Bontemps and the Neo-Slave Movement and Time-Travel in the Narrative. There is no original African Diaspora” at the Triennial scholarship that examines Arna ACLALS conference in St. Lucia Bontemps’ intellectual biography in where I will also present a paper relation to his two historical novels on the tangled temporality of Black Thunder (1936) and Drums racialized violence in Octavia at Dusk (1938) which, in their reButler’s Kindred. In January imaginings of slavery, are quite rare 2014, I look forward to giving a in the realm of African American lit- paper at the MLA in Chicago on erature during the 1930s. This anachronism, prophecy, and the manuscript therefore fills a lacuna slave’s southern archive.

Canterbury Fellowship Notes

Academy Award Winner Tamara Verga

by Robert Michalski

by Victoria Isabel Yap

The Senior Awards Dinner this Spring marked milestones for two groups of Canterbury Fellowship recipients. The current year’s fellows presented portions of their fellowship projects to faculty and fellow students, and next year’s fellows were introduced to the English Department.

I tell you stories because they are easier than saying you make the sun rise up in me, you make me want to rise: ocean ebbing away, a country by the sea, a river forder’s yellow teeth glinting as he sings about iridescent fish, their scales pooling in the moonlight – stories to distract you, lest the truth curl over me and break in one resounding wave, the way it has been every night, or only last night; every day I’ve counted backwards to knowing you. Your nails on my knee are like the shifting surface of the sea, the gritty sand that sinks beneath your palms, how you move like a thing with a shell, pandering across my thighs. Like that stretch of water between two islands, you are too warm, too apparent. Let me keep on describing a siren song, because I still don’t know why your touch dissolves me into a pile of pearls, stones, oyster spit. What can I do when all I hear is the rushing of the tide, the wild keening of something beautiful, something agonized, calling your name.

Hallie McKnight, who completes her fellowship this Spring under the mentorship of Professor Myers, read several examples of her flash fiction stories for young adults, and Joanne Santomauro, who worked with Professors Gould and Zorn, presented a précis of her research on the debate concerning the tracking of students in secondary education. The Canterbury Fellowship recipients for the 2013-14 academic year will work on projects that represent an interesting range of topics. Marissa Minnick, working with Professor Elrod, will work on a project exploring Italian-American women writers. Michael Savignano, with the guidance of Professor Garavel, will write a critical study of James Joyces. Amy Thomas will be mentored by Professors Burnham and McIsaac in her project of writing a series of short stories inspired by the work of Ernest Hemingway.

repeatedly represented in literature as a counterpoint to the United States. Attending several “technology trainings” offered by SCU, I am excited to integrate technology, primarily blogs, podcasts, and web essays, into my 2013 courses, in order to extend discussions beyond the classroom and engage students to think creatively, take risks, and discover new questions, problems, or solutions in the multimedia we analyze.

Glad to Be Dad by Tim Myers

My Glad to Be Dad: A Call to Fatherhood (Familius) is a realistic look at parenting and marriage, so it’s filled with stories and humor; as crazy as family life can be, it’s often hilarious. Like the time my young sons snuck into the house, smeared chip dip all over the arm of the couch, then sat there blithely dipping fritos in it for a snack. (Well, okay--hilarious in retrospect). But the book has a deeper purpose too. The general circumstances of our family life have been just what, from many indications, most American families continue to face, and which the American family in general has been facing for decades now. The basic problem? There simply isn’t enough time and energy to go around. (Money, of course, also plays its customary role). The tug-of-war between work and family has many if not most parents worried, frustrated, and physically wiped out. Add to this the other, less publicized

The tug-of-war between work and family has many if not most parents worried, frustrated, and physically wiped out. conflict parents inevitably face in balancing their own needs and desires with those of their children. And measure in the ominous news, based on a University of Michigan study reported in the New York Times, that “the time squeeze felt by parents trying to juggle the demands of work and family is increasingly being transferred into their children’s lives.” Well, maybe the word “parents” is only partially accurate here. The truth is that in many cases it’s women who bear the full brunt of this. Many of us believe that some of the old ways just aren’t working any more. And the strain is showing in lots of marriages. The mainstream American family is, obviously, under stress. And the most logical resource to help deal with all of this remains largely untapped: men. We need more than time-worn images of fatherhood that focus only on taking kids fishing, or teaching them how to play catch, or baking the occasional casserole. We need more than humorous, self-deprecating admissions of non-involvement and domestic ignorance. We have to go to the depths of the thing—because that’s where we find purpose and a guiding vision as to the real breadth of what fatherhood can be. But there’s great good news here too! Because when fathers are more domestically committed, everyone gains--especially the men themselves. And that’s a huge part of my book too. It seems this is a timely message. The book made #5 on the Amazon “Hot New Releases in Fatherhood,” won the Ben Franklin Digital Award, and was featured in Publishers Weekly and on the Parents Magazine website. It’s also being quoted on Disney’s BabyZone website, and I’ve been asked to write for Parents Magazine.

Writing Award Winners and Honorees from 2012-2013 Kaitlyn Baker Winner of the Katherine Woodall Prize for her essay: “The Fracture of Friendship: Battle between Idealism and Deceit in William Earle’s Obi” William Usdin Winner of the Christiaan Lievestro Prize for his essay “Ethical Uncertainty and Humanist Faith Adaptive Outlooks in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden”, “On Commonwealth Literature”, and “Voicing the Subaltern: Leonora Sansay’s New Model of Creole Autonomy in Secret History” Navjot Grewal Honorable Mention of the Christiaan Lievestro Prize for the essays: “Weaponizing God in Beowulf: The Discovery of Odin through Arms,” Words of the Wise” Sarah McClammy Winner of the Shipsey Poetry Prize for her poem: “Helix of Nothingness” Sarah McClammy Winner of the McCann Short Story Contest for her short story: “Conversations with Henry” Victoria Isabel Yap Winner of the Academy of American Poets Tamara Verga Prize for her poem: “Deceptions” Alexander Nouaux Winner of the Multimodal Writing Prize: “Brick Lane iTour” Avery Unterreiner Honorable Mention of the Multimodal Writing Prize: “It’s Been One Year” Marissa Minnick, Amy Thomas and Michael Savignano Canterbury Scholars 2013-2014 Stephen Layton (2012-2013) Amy Thomas (2013-2014) Editors of the Santa Clara Review

So if you’ve got a couch and kids who might smear dip on it, you might want to give Glad to Be Dad a look-see. And if it isn’t already obvious, I should add that it’s for wives as well as husbands!

www.scu.edu/english

Student, Alumni and Faculty Achievements Matt Mason, class of 1990, has a second book of poetry, The Baby That Ate Cincinnati. He also won a Pushcart Prize. Transitions. Charley Phipps, S.J., has been named Emeritus Professor, Andy Garavel, S.J. has achieved tenured and been promoted to Associate Professor and Cynthia Mahamdi and Tim Myers have been promoted to Senior Lecturer. Sharon Merritt has been hired as Assistant Professor of Education, and Director of the Masters in Teaching Program at Fresno Pacific University. Olin Bjork accepted an offer for a tenure track assistant professor position at the University of HoustonDowntown. Michelle Burnham will be moving from the associate editor to the editor position of the scholarly journal Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture beginning July 1st. For some years now, various students at the University have benefitted from the Lucile D. Phipps scholarship, named in honor of Charles Phipps’s mother. To honor Charley on his retirement, that scholarship has been renamed the Lucile D. Phipps and Charles T. Phipps S.J. Endowed Scholarship. It will be awarded annually to one Senior English major, who will be selected by the English department. The department will make a contribution to this newly purposed fund. Anyone who would care to honor Fr. Phipps on his retirement by contributing to the scholarship are encouraged to contact Marie Brancati in the Dean’s office (mbrancati@scu. edu, 408 554-2301).

Olin Bjork’s chapter “Digital Humanities and the First-Year Writing Course” appeared in Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles, and Politics, a collection edited by Brett D. Hirsch. Rebekah Bloyd was writer-onfoot as part of the group who set out to “Walk Across California” last June! In a course developed and led by David Popalisky (Dance), students and artist advisors hoofed it from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley in twelve days, keeping aesthetic reflection journals all the while. Simone Billings was invited to facilitate a teacher-training workshop on the use of a common textbook in first-year writing classes for Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, Florida. Billings also gave a talk, “Demons of the Classroom: Using Visuals as Assignment Prompts,” which focused on the ethical uses of visuals as assignment prompts as part of helping students read critically, at a conference in Asheville NC in November 2012. The Department of English was represented in the SCU Iron Bronco Triathlon by a few teams in early May: Olin Bjork and Jefferson Dela Cruz; Michael Lasley and Simone Billings; All finished their part of the 26.2 mile run, 112 mile bike, and 2.4 mi le swim. (Two weeks for completion) Phyllis Brown participated in the Aspen Undergraduate Business Education Consortium, and has published: “Hrotsvit’s Apostolic

Mission: Prefaces, Dedications, and Other Addresses to Readers.” A Companion to Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (fl. 960): Contextual and Interpretive Approaches. Michelle Burnham delivered the keynote address at the Captivity Writing Unbound Conference at the University of South Alabama, and gave an additional talk previous to the conference on “Transoceanic Studies and Globalizing American Literary History.” She also co-organized a session for the American Studies Association convention in November. She and James Freitas (English, ‘15) gave a paper titled “The Female American, the Problem of Mastery, and the Lost Literary History of Castaway Fiction,” at the American Literature Association Convention, May 23-26, in Boston. James was awarded a University Undergraduate Research Travel grant to support his travel to and participation in the conference. Michelle also chaired a session at the American Society for 18thCentury Studies conference. Stephen Carroll has received an additional $80,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation to support assessment studies. Juliana Chang’s new book, Inhuman Citizenship has been published by University of Minnesota Press. She served as an external reviewer for the Asian Pacific American Studies Program at Loyola Marymount University. She is the incoming president of the University’s Faculty Senate.

Alan Clinton’s new book, Intuitions In Literature, Technology, and Politics: Parabilities, was published by Palgrave Macmillan. Clinton will receive an honorarium to give a paper and two lectures at Uppsala University (Sweden). Diane Dreher has a forthcoming chapter, “Abnormal Psychology in the Renaissance,” in the volume, Abnormal Psychology across the Ages, and continues to blog for Psychology Today and share a blog with Juan Velasco on writing as spiritual practice. Judith Dunbar has written a Foreword to Robert McAfee Brown: Spiritual and Prophetic Writings, Selected with an Introduction by Paul Crowley, published by Orbis Books in the Modern Spiritual Masters Series. Marilyn Edelstein presented a paper on “Imagining Cross-Racial and Cross-Cultural Empathy in Short Fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri and Sandra Cisneros” and moderated a session on “Religion and Ethnicity.” John Espinoza had five poems published in ZYZZYVA, RED WHEELBARROW, and NEW LETTERS. John’s 2012 published work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In February, he attended the Associated Writing Programs conference held in Boston where he participated on a panel entitled, “NewBorder: Contemporary Voices from the U.S./Mexico Border.” Eileen Elrod published, “Gender, Genre and Slavery: The Other Rowson, Rowson’s Others” in the new issue of Studies in American Fiction.

Gina Firenzi won a Teacher of the Year Award at San Jose State, where she also teaches. Susan Frisbie was awarded the Dr. John B. Drahmann Advising Award for her extraordinary dedication to student advising and mentoring. For many years she has been the main pre-Law advisor in the college. Andy Garavel gave a paper titled “’The Shoulder of Shasta:’ Bram Stoker’s California Romance” at the Bram Stoker Centenary Conference held at Trinity College, Dublin. (A number of Stoker’s descendants were present and were not frightening at all.) His article on JW Croker has been accepted by the journal Eighteenth Century Ireland. Kirk Glaser celebrated publication of New California Writing 2013, Heyday/California Legacy, which he co-edited, at a reading on April 11 at the California Historical Society in San Francisco. Juan Velasco, a contributor, read his poem as well. He was invited to participate in the Fourth Annual Poetry Invitational at the San Jose Museum of Art on Sat., April 27. Jill Gould and Gail Gradowski, gave a talk on Sept. 4-7, at the International Oral History Conference in Buenos Aires: “Using Online Video Oral History in University Courses across the Curriculum.” On their panel were scholars from Brazil, Argentina, Canada, The United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Gail and Jill were invited to speak at the University of Oregon on “Using Online Video Oral Histories across Disciplines.” Ron Hansen The national television channel FX is planning a six-

hour miniseries based on Ron Hansen’s first novel, Desperadoes, with actor Ed Harris directing and starring. Ron spoke to a PBS weekly show about how his faith infuses and is reflected in the content of his novels. Several public television stations carried the spot. His short story, “The Governess” – a reworking of “The Turn of the Screw” – was published in the online journal Narrative in June. And his review of Junot Diaz’s collection of stories, This is How You Lose Her, appeared in the Washington Post. His introduction to Los Tejanos and Lost Cause by Jack Jackson was published in December. His essay on theologian George Tyrrell, “A Collision of Systems and Tendencies,” has just been published in Catherine Wolff, ed. Not Less Than Everything (HarperOne). He also delivered the George Nixon Memorial Lecture at Mary Hardin-Baylor University in Texas. Ron received the “Evil Companion Literary Award” from the Denver Public Library in recognition of his fiction about the American West. John Hawley’s essay, “’I Enter Into Its Burning’: Yvonne Vera’s Beautiful Cauldron of Violence,” has been published in Emerging Perspectives on Yvonne Vera, and his essay, “Black Britain and Its Antecedents,” appeared in Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literatures. He chaired two sessions on race hatred at the South Asian Literary Association conference, and organized and chaired one session on “Queer Theory in a Postcolonial World” at the MLA annual convention. He presented a paper on social media and the Arab Spring at the University of Rome. His chapter, “The Gods Who Speak in Many Voices, and in None: African

www.scu.edu/english

Novelists on Indigenous and Colonial Religion,” has appeared in Literary Expressions of African Spirituality. Cynthia Mahamdi served as producer and researcher for a documentary on the plight of small family dairies in California, “The Last Farm in the City.” Mike Malone is cited as a key source for a new PBS documentary on Silicon Valley, in a story in the Wall Street Journal blog Digits. His student Liz Wassmann had an op-ed published in the San Jose Mercury News about the value of hands-on teaching. The February 28, 2013 Spoken Word competition was a great success! 15 students competed, performing original spoken word poetry on topics as diverse as love, racism, relationships with parents, exploitation of coal miners, and–being an English major. Over 100 students were in the audience, and the room sizzled with excitement about language and literature. Great music, too, from Jackie Gage and Chris Main. Awards went to Cameron Coulter for Best Performance, Isabel Yap for Best Poem, and Joanne Santomauro for Best Overall. Professor Tim Myers and student Hannah Miller did a terrific job co-hosting the event. Robin Tremblay-McGaw organized a plenary panel at the Poetry and Poetics of the 1980s Conference hosted by the National Poetry Foundation at the University of Maine. Then, for the month of August, Robin taught in the Language & Thinking Program at Bard College. Tim Myers just got a full-length poetry book accepted. His ebook, Glad to Be Dad, has just

come out in a print version. He was interviewed by Michael Dresser on “Dresser After Dark,” a web radio podcast. For his many creative publications he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Third Flatiron Publishing. The editors at Parents Magazine have asked Tim Myers to write pieces for them. He has also been invited to submit a blog to “Motherlode,” a blog for The New York Times. Aparajita Nanda is editing a book, The Strangled Cry: The Communication and Experience of Trauma, IDP, Oxford, UK (forthcoming 2013). She presented a paper in Prague, Czech Republic. Her article entitled “Power, Politics, and Domestic Desire in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood” has been accepted for publication in Callaloo. Also an article entitled “Re-living Motherhood: Vocalising Grief, Trauma and Loss” is forthcoming in an e-book. Loring Pfeiffer spent a week in August, doing research at the Huntington and William Andrews Clark libraries in Los Angeles, courtesy of a grant she received from the Arts and Sciences Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Noel Radley defended her dissertation on April 24th, 2013: “Embodied Mind and SixteenthCentury Poetry: Wyatt, Vaughan Lock, and Shakespeare.” Juan Velasco gave an official presentation of his latest book of poetry, Massacre of the Dreamers/La masacre de los soñadores at the University Autonoma of Nuevo Leon (UANL) in Monterrey, Mexico.

English Department Santa Clara University 500 El Camino Real Santa Clara, CA 95053-1500

Creative Writing

The Writing Program

by Kirk Glaser and Ron Hansen

by Simone Billings

(Continued from page 1)

& Selected Stories. In the winter quarter Ron introduced and interviewed bestselling novelist Amy Tan who was visiting Santa Clara as part of the President’s Lecture Series. And in the spring Diane Dreher, Claudia Mon Pere McIsaac, Cynthia Mahamdi, and Michael Malone partnered with invited literary agents and editors for a panel that focused on the changing face of publishing. Diane Dreher will be Director of Creative Writing next year while Ron is on sabbatical.

(Continued from page 2)

Stay Connected with the English Department @SCU – Sharing the latest

leagues, to a social check-in on how things were going at Round Table pizza parlor, to practical discussions on the use of e-portfolios for both classes and faculty’s own professional work and on response to (not grading) student writing. Sessions on information literacy session and the distinction between writing courses and writing intensive courses were well attended, too. Especially invigorating was discussion of research on writing transfer after we’d read some pieces from Composition Forum 26, whose Fall 2012 issue was devoted solely to writing and transfer. All these sessions gave those who attended ideas to re-consider and re-tool courses and syllabi besides helping them to keep current in the field. In 2013-14, when Co-Chair Billings continues as Director of Writing and Don Riccomini steps in as Assistant Director of Writing, the move to new major requirements and the new faculty joining us will further re-build and re-shape the Writing Program in forward-moving ways.

The English Department is on the move! We are now on Facebook, Twitter, Shelfari, and YouTube.

www.facebook.com/scuenglish

www.twitter.com/scuenglish

www.shelfari.com/scuenglish

www.youtube.com/scuenglish

Go green and receive The Quill by email. Send us (english@scu.edu) your email address and we’ll make sure you receive every issue.

FL-070113 7/13 1,400