"A Taste of East Alabama"

The Domestic Violence Intervention Center (the domestic violence shelter for east Alabama) will hold a fundraiser -- "A Taste of East Alabama" -- featuring food from the area's finest restaurants, on Thursday, March 14, from 6:00-10:00 p.m. at the Opelika Holiday Inn on Hwy. 280 (Exit 62 from I-85).  Tickets are $15 from Tom O'Shea or at the door.  For more information, call the DVIC, 749-1515.

Haley Center Poetry Project

Sign up to read any published or unpublished poetry during the Haley Center Poetry Project (March 6 and 7 from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.).  If you are interested in participating as a reader, contact Jim Ryan at ryanjae@auburn.edu.  For more information about the Poetry Project, visit the web site at www.auburn.edu/english/events/hcpp.htm.

"Much Ado About Nothing" to Be Performed

UPC Fine Arts is sponsoring "Much Ado About Nothing," one of William Shakespeare's best loved romantic comedies. The only performance will be Sunday, March 3 at 2:00 p.m. in Telfair-Peet Theatre. This is a FREE event performed by the Olney National Players from Maryland. Seating is limited, and tickets will not be handed out ahead of time, so arrive at the theatre early. 

If you have any questions, please call the UPC office at 844-5292 or visit our web site at www.auburn.edu/~upc.

Congratulations to Lowell Lambert and Kaytreyus Pertillo for their success in the MTPC oral exams.

The English Department has recently launched its new graduate web pages, designed by Jeremy Downes.  To visit the new pages, link to www.auburn.edu/english/gs/

Posted on the wall outside Dr. Dykstal’s office (9092 Haley Center) and available in the English Department office (9030) is a current list of English majors and their advisors. Please check the list and, if no advisor is listed or if your name does not appear on the list, please see Dr. Dykstal. Students are encouraged to see their advisors for any and all advice concerning their concentration within the Department, where they stand in the major, and life beyond the major. (Minors, too, can benefit from good advising within the department.) They should also, in consultation with their advisor, complete a plan of study form and (through their advisor in the College of Liberal Arts) initiate a credit check by the first semester of their senior year.

Registration for Summer and Fall Begins March 1

It’s really important, to us as well as to you, that you register for the courses that you want on time. If you register early, there’s a better chance that the course you want will be available when you want it.

Occasionally, several of our required or more popular courses fill up before the end of the registration period. For such "oversubscribed" courses, the Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies (Dr. Dykstal) maintains a waiting list and will admit students from the waiting list as slots open in the courses after the beginning of the semester. Students are admitted on the basis of need, but it does help to get your name on the list early.

Please remember some of these basic facts about registration:

1. Students may add a course themselves on the first day of classes.
2. Students may drop a course themselves anytime up to mid-term.
3. The only person who can add you to an upper-division (3000- to 6000-level) English course after the first day of classes is the Coordinator of Undergraduate Studies, Dr. Dykstal.
4. Whether you can add a course after the first day of class depends on a variety of factors, including--but not limited to--your need for the course and the space available in the course. Even if there is space available, and even if you have a need . . .
5. For the good of the classroom experience, and out of fairness to all, it is unlikely that you will be added to a course after the second time the class meets.

Resume Help

Need help with your resume and letters of application?  The English Center is here to help.  For an appointment, come by  the Center located in 3183 Haley Center, or call for an appointment (844-5749). 

English Club Potluck Dinner

Fun and food for all - come meet some fellow majors and students interested in English at the English Club Potluck Dinner at 7:00 tonight Wednesday, February 27.  Upcoming events such as a fiction reading and planting a tree on Earth Day will be discussed.  Bring food and suggestions.  For more information contact Brooke at bullmbe@auburn.edu.

Beaux Arts Ball

All students of fine arts schools are invited to attend the Beaux Arts Ball. Traditionally the grand finale of Fine Arts Week at Auburn University, Beaux Arts Ball is sponsored by the AIAS (American Institute of Architecture Students). The Beaux Arts Ball is a formal event that will take place on March 16, on the riverboat and marina at Stone Mountain, Georgia.  There will be food and musical entertainment. The theme for the night will be "Days of Decadence" (the 1920s), though costumes are only limited to one's imagination.  Tickets will go on sale this week – look for a table in the Haley Center.

Undergraduate Research Fellowships Deadline March 8

If you were doing research in a chemistry lab, you’d devise an experiment that hadn’t been conducted before, hypothesize the way it ought to turn out, run it, and--if successful--write up the results. Your write-up would be heavily dependent on experiments that had been run in the past: your own research would add another brick to that wall. But what counts as research in the humanities, where the "facts" are often less tangible than those in the hard sciences? Research in the humanities, or at least in literature, devises new ways of interpreting texts. Sometimes that can be a new way of looking at an "old," canonical text, either by applying a new theory to it, or by discovering some previously uncovered fact about the circumstances of its composition, the author’s motive in writing it, the various ways that it has been read in the past, or the uses to which it was put by the society that produced it. Sometimes that new way of reading actually involves discovering texts by writers who have been forgotten. Either way, research in the humanities, while it traffics more in interpretation than in facts, builds on that which has come before, just as does research in the sciences.

Perhaps you know this already. Perhaps you’d like to know more. What you should know is that Auburn University supports research by undergraduates with real bucks. 2002 marks the fourth year of the Undergraduate Research Awards, a program designed to encourage undergraduate students to participate actively in research. Twenty year-long and two semester-long fellowships for research with Auburn faculty are available. The year-long research fellowships will begin Summer 2002; semester research fellowships will be applicable during any one semester.

English Department undergraduates have had great success in this competition: last year, Jessica Hames and Keisha Oldacre were winners. Applications, which are available on the web at http://www.auburn.edu/research/vpr/internalfund.htm, are due Friday, March 8.

If you wrote a paper last year for an upper-division English class that you’d like to take further, or if there’s some new problem or nagging question that you just can’t get out of your head, or even if your professor said something about her own research in class that interested you, please think about applying for one of these awards.

Internship Opportunity

The Office of Information Technology is offering 1-3 internships for the summer, and they are available during any of the terms. Assistants will have the opportunity to work with faculty members as they design instructional technology modules for classes. As interns they will have the opportunity to (1) assist faculty with the use of Instructional Technology tools, which they will have been trained to use (2) create pieces of the modules with the faculty and (3) present perspectives. Pre-academy training classes are part of the internship and are required. Interns will be expected to keep a log or journal of their experiences and to write an evaluation of the academy. The internship is worth three credits. For more information, write to Dr. Dykstal at dykstti@auburn.edu.

Contests, Competitions, Awards . . .

Literary Contest

The Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Association is sponsoring its fourteenth annual literary contest.  Winners will receive plaques and monetary rewards:  $150 for the College first place winners, and $75 for the College second place winners.  Essays should be on any personal or literary topic.  Subject matter for the short story category is completely open.  Mail your entry to:  Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Association Literary Contest, PO Box 64, Montgomery, AL  36101-0064.  The deadline is April 1, 2002.

You can find the hard-copy announcements of contests, competitions, and awards on the bulletin board outside the English Department office, 9030 Haley Center. 

Send your undergraduate news items to Brooke Bullman, the Undergraduate Student Editor for The English Channel, at bullmbe@auburn.edu.

If you would like to include an item in the "Professional Notes" section of The English Channel, please submit your note to Betsy Smith.

 

If you would like to include an item in the "Personal Notes" section of The English Channel, please submit your note to Betsy Smith.

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Please submit items and direct all questions or comments about The English Channel, to Betsy Smith who currently maintains this site.

To include an item in The English Channel, submit text items by Tuesday at 11:40 a.m. for publication the following Wednesday. Graphic images are due by the preceding Friday at 11:40 a.m. Submit items by using my email link or by putting a note or disk in my mailbox (disks will be returned). If you submit an image on disk, please make sure that it can be edited to fit and be read clearly on the page. Items over fifty words in length should be submitted on disk or sent by email. Please check your submission for accuracy and completion--all calendar items and meeting announcements must include the date, time, and location of the event. Please omit all unusual formatting.