English Department News

            

January 19, 2000

          

Volume 2, No. 10


January 19

  

Professorial Faculty meeting, HC 3104, 3:10 p.m.

January 20

  

Joint Meeting of Graduate Studies Committee, Department Head, and Program Coordinators (of programs that employ GTAs), HC 3170, 3:00 p.m.

January 24

  

Littleton-Franklin Lectures, Roger Penrose, Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center, 4:00 p.m.

January 24-28

  

Spring Quarter Advising open for Seniors, Graduate Students, and Priority Students (Honors, Disabilities, Co-Op, Athletes)

January 24-February 18

  

Spring Quarter Advising open for UNLA Freshmen opens in the Dean's Office (Note: Advising for freshmen with declared majors occurs in departments February 14-18)

January 28-30

  

Spring Quarter Registration open for Seniors and Graduate Students only

January 31

  

English Hour, Pat Morrow, "Being Black at the Bottom of the World in New Zealand and Australia," HC 3104, 4:00 p.m. Please note room change.

January 31-February 3

  

Spring quarter Registration open for Seniors, Graduate Students, and Priority Students (Honors, Disabilities, Co-Op, Athletes)

January 31-February 4

  

Spring quarter Advising open for Juniors

February 2

  

Gender Studies and Great Books Reading Group, 719 Burke Place, 7:00 p.m.

February 4-10

  

Spring quarter Registration open for Juniors

February 7

  

Littleton-Franklin Lectures, Margaret Wertheim, Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center, 4:00 p.m.

February 7-11

  

Spring quarter Advising open for Sophomores

February 8

  

Mid-quarter

February 11-17

  

Spring quarter Registration open for Sophomores

February 14

  

Littleton-Franklin Lectures, Richard Leakey, Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center, 4:00 p.m. This lecture has been cancelled.

February 14-18

  

Spring quarter Advising for Freshmen opens in the departments. Freshmen with declared majors should meet with faculty advisor. (Advising for UNLA freshmen in the Dean's Office opened from January 24-February 18).

February 18-27

  

Spring quarter Registration open for Freshmen

February 28

  

English Hour, Roundtable Discussion on Teaching Nineteenth-Century Poetry in Great Books II, HC 3104, 4:00 p.m. Please note room change.

February 28-March 28

  

Spring quarter Late Registration/Schedule Adjustment period: All students may register during this period.

March 9

  

Last day of classes

March 10

  

Dead Day

March 11, 13-16

  

Final examinations

March 18

  

Graduation

April 24

  

Littleton-Franklin Lectures, Helen Thomas, Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center, 4:00 p.m.

May 5

  

Benson Lecture and Undergraduate Awards Ceremony, Susan D. Gubar, 213 Foy Union, 3:00 p.m.

May 18

  

Littleton-Franklin Lectures, William Phillips, Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center, 4:00 p.m.


Special Meeting Scheduled to Discuss SACS Compliance

There will be a special joint meeting of the Graduate Studies Committee, the Department Head, and the Coordinators of departmental programs that employ GTAs, on Thursday, January 20, at 3:00 p.m. in HC 3170. The purpose of the meeting is to start discussion on how the English Department should comply with the SACS rule that prohibits first-year GTAs from having primary responsibility for teaching a course. All interested faculty and students are welcome to attend. Background information on this issue is available in HC 9022 in a folder marked "SACS/GTAs."


Reading Group to Discuss Mississippi Memoir

The Gender Studies and Great Books reading group will discuss a memoir by the Mississippi writer Ellen Douglas, Truth: Four Stories I Am Finally Old Enough to Tell, at its next meeting: February 2, 2000 at 7:00 p.m., at the home of Joyce Rothschild, 719 Burke Place (off Annalue Drive).
The Gender Studies and Great Books reading group is an informal and congenial group that meets about once a month through the academic year. Everyone is welcome.
Truth: Four Stories I Am Finally Old Enough to Tell is available in paperback at the Auburn University bookstore. You may have to ask for the "reading groups" section, which is unmarked.


Is That Your Final Answer?

The English Club/Sigma Tau Delta, hopping on the quiz-show bandwagon, challenges all takers to a "cultural trivia" contest. We propose to field one or more teams of undergraduates against a team of professors and a team of graduate students (perhaps more than one of each) in a game of skill and daring. Right now, we're just trying to assess interest in such an event, so the exact format has yet to be determined, but the game will probably involve an impartial moderator asking questions of teams from the Y2K version of Trivial Pursuit, and points being awarded for the fastest correct answer.
We are tentatively scheduling the game for February 21, 2000 at Pebble Hill (time to be announced). Refreshments will be served.
If you are interested in fielding a team, or in being assigned to one, please contact Tim Dykstal, the faculty advisor to the English Club.

Two books, Reflections on Biography, a study of the decisions biographers make, and Revising Women: Eighteenth-Century "Women's Fiction" and Social Engagement, a collection of essays, by Paula Backscheider were published in December. Her essay, "Reflections on the Importance of Romantic Drama," has just appeared as the lead article in a special edition of Texas Studies in Literature and Language. She has recently completed seven entries for the new Dictionary of National Biography, including the Daniel DeFoe and Eliza Haywood entries.
Lou Caton's article, "The Old, the New, the American Canon: Reputation, History, Form" is in the current (inaugural) issue of Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory. Caton delivered his paper, "Multicultural Communities and Modernist Aesthetics: The Example of Luis Rodriguez's Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.," at the M.L.A. conference in December. Caton also chaired the panel called "Multiculturalism and Aesthetics: An Analysis of the Philosophical, Political, and Social Foundations."
Kelly Gerald presented a paper called "Materialism and the Function of Women in Cormac McCarthy's The Border Trilogy" at the Cormac McCarthy Conference in San Antonio, November 11-14, 1999

Margaret Schwindler's bone marrow transplant was apparently a success, but she went back into the hospital around Christmas with other serious problems and is there still. She says that she sleeps a lot of the time. A big change for her is that her parents, who had been staying in Birmingham, have moved back to Carolina, so she's alone there in Birmingham. Margaret Smith hopes to drive up there to see her on Saturday or Sunday (January 22nd or 23rd), and would be glad to take any messages or other deliveries (when Margaret Smith talked to her on January 19th, Margaret Schwindler said that she was hungry because nothing the nurses had offered her to eat that night appealed to her.) She intends to move out into an apartment near the hospital when she can.
The number for patient information is (205) 934-4322.
Margaret's address is UAB Hospital, West Pavillion, Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, 619 South 19th St., Birmingham, AL 35249.

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