Department of English

February 17, 2021

Wednesday, February 17th

5:30pm, Zoom

Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. The New York Times Book Review called her novel, Dominicana,"Lovely and Compelling" and NBC NEWS labeled it "one of the most evocative and empowering immigrant stories of our time." Cruz is founder and Editor-in-chief of Aster(ix).

Thursday, February 18th

4pm

Jonathan Flatley, English Department, Wayne State Univesity

"Black Leninism"

In the larger project from which this talk is drawn, Flatley examines "black group formation, those moments when black people come together as a group for whom collective action seems urgent, obvious, and vital, and when victory over the forces of white supremacy seems possible."

Sponsored by the Contemporaneity Group, Mandel Center for the Humanities

Thursday, March 4

4pm

Nasia Anam, English Department, University of Nevada, Reno

"Muslim Heterotopias"

Anam's current research "centers on the figure of the urban Muslim migrant from the postwar to the post-9/11 eras in global Anglophone and Francophone fiction."

Sponsored by the Contemporaneity Group, Mandel Center for the Humanities

March 9, 2021

Time: Tuesday, March 9th, 5:30-6:30 pm

Relations between African Americans and Jews in the United States are at a complicated and critical juncture, which brings some members of these groups closer together, while causing significant tensions in other quarters. The stories of many Jews of Color throughout the world also signal that Jewish identity and identity with communities of color are not mutually exclusive. This conversation will compare shared themes of diaspora and assimilation, as well as ideological perspectives on social and political empowerment, before asking: What are the best strategies for advancing freedom and equality in the United States?

Participants

• Amber Spry, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and Politics, Departments of African and African American Studies and Politics

• Alexander Kaye, Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Assistant Professor of Israel Studies, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies

Moderator

• David Sherman, Associate Professor of English, Department of English

Wednesday, March 10th

5:30pm, Zoom

“unfailing invention and virtuoso wordcraft... heady, bold, vivid, sexy, intensely envisioned, metaphorically brilliant" (Lenore Marshall Award citation for The Nerve Of It: Poems New and Selected). Lynn Emanuel is the author of five books of poetry. Her work has been featured in Best American Poetry numerous times and has been included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry and published in The New York Times. Lynn's reading will be hosted by Chen Chen.

Thursday, March 11th- Friday, March 12th

TBD

Thursday, March 18th

4pm

Margaret Ronda, English Department, University of California, Davis.

TBA

Ronda's work to date "attends to the ways American poets and poems dramatize an ever-clearer sense of planetary environmental crisis by reimagining poetic genres such as pastoral and elegy."

Sponsored by the Contemporaneity Group, Mandel Center for the Humanities

Wednesday, March 31 at 4:30 pm

Hanh Bui, Paige Eggebrecht, and Emiliano Gutierrez Popoca will present their work.

Thursday, April 8th

4pm

Tao Leigh Goffe, English Department, Cornell University

"The Abolition of Time"

Goffe's current research moves in two directions: "a book on the ecological poetics and entanglements of the Caribbean plantation and a manifesto on digital technology, black feminist praxis and DJ culture called Pon De Replay."

Sponsored by the Contemporaneity Group, Mandel Center for the Humanities

Wednesday, May 5th

5:30pm

Please join us for the annual reading by writers graduating with honors who will be sharing work from their fiction, poetry, and screenwriting projects and theses.