August 2011
2 posts
Martha Nell Smith to deliver 2011 Walter Harding...
This year’s Walter Harding Lecture will be delivered by Professor Martha Nell Smith.
The lecture, titled Digital Forensics: Texting Emily Dickinson, will be held on Thursday, September 29 at 4 p.m. in the SUNY Geneseo College Union Ballroom.
Martha Nell Smith is Professor of English and Founding Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the...
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Cori Winrock Joins English Department as Visiting...
Poet Cori Winrock has joined the SUNY Geneseo English department this year as Visiting Assistant Professor.
Winrock holds an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University (2007) and BA degrees in Creative Writing and Psychology from Oberlin College (2004). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a wide range of journals, including Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Denver Quarterly, Blackbird,...
July 2011
1 post
May 2011
3 posts
2011 Peace Poetry Contest Winners Read Their Poems
The winners of the 2011 Genesee Valley Peace Poetry Contest shared their poems at SUNY Geneseo’s Alice Austin Theater on May 12.
This year’s winning poems were selected from about 900 poems submitted by children in public and private schools of the Genesee valley in grades kindergarten through 8.
Click the play button in the control bar below to bring up the streaming video. If...
Geneseo students: It Gets Better
Senior English major Fiona Harvey, together with fellow students Margot Terc and Derek Weng, contributed the video below to the It Gets Better Project.
Harvey is this year’s winner of the English department’s Joseph O’Brien Memorial Award and will be delivering the senior oration at Geneseo’s 145th commencement on May 14.
Andrea Levy Reads from "The Long Song"
On April 29, award-winning novelist Andrea Levy spoke here, explaining the genesis of, and reading an excerpt from, her latest novel, The Long Song.
Click the play button in the control bar below to bring up the streaming video. If you can’t get it to play below, try going here.
April 2011
4 posts
2011 English department awards and scholarships
We’re pleased to announce this year’s winners of department awards and scholarships. We’ll be celebrating these formally in the Walter Harding Lounge, Welles 111, on May 4 at 2 p.m.
Writing Awards
Critical Essay
1st Place: William Porter, “Coleridge and Keats Look at a Nightingale”
2nd Place: Elizabeth Barber, “ ‘Command your price’: The Commodification of the Family...
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Prize-winning Author Andrea Levy Here April 29
Andrea Levy will read from her latest novel, The Long Song, on April 29 at 4 p.m. in Newton Hall 201. The event is free and open to the public.
The Long Song was shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2010 and was in contention for the Orange Prize in 2010. Set in Jamaica in the early 19th century, Levy’s novel explores the relationship between Great Britain and the Caribbean...
6th Annual Peace Poetry Contest May 12
The English department will host its 6th annual Genesee Valley Peace Poetry Contest Awards Ceremony on May 12 at 7 p.m. in Alice Austin Theater.
This year, students from over 30 local elementary and middle schools will take part in the event by reading their poetry for family, friends, and others.
Roughly 500 poems on the theme of peace are submitted for the contest each year, from which 70...
Another prize for Porter
English major Will Porter has racked up another prize - this one for an essay he delivered in Pittsburgh at the 2011 convention of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society (March 23-26).
Will’s essay on Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself took second place in the “Critical American Literature” category.
Back in November, Will won the Dante Prize for...
January 2011
2 posts
Stelzig book on Robinson wins Barricelli Prize
Back in June, we reported on the publication of Gene Stelzig’s Henry Crabb Robinson in Germany: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Life Writing by Bucknell University Press.
Stelzig’s book has now been awarded the 2010 Jean-Pierre Barricelli Book Prize for the year’s best book in Romanticism studies.
In communicating the award, Prof. Larry H. Peer, Executive Director of the...
New Course! Hum II in Thoreau Territory
This summer, SUNY Geneseo students can take Western Humanities II within walking distance of Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau went to “live deliberately,” an experience that inspired one of the most influential and important works of American literature, Walden.
Students will read and discuss the works on the Hum II syllabus - Walden included - in an area steeped in the...
November 2010
2 posts
Another Triumph for Molly Smith Metzler (English...
Dramatist and Geneseo English alum Molly Smith Metzler, who launched her playwriting career in Geneseo’s Black Box Theater, has had a play selected for main stage production in the 2011 Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky. Metzler’s Elemeno Pea was one of six plays selected from over 1,000 entries for the country’s largest and most prestigious competition for...
Geneseo English major wins prestigious Dante Prize
The Dante Society of America has awarded its annual Dante Prize for the “best essay submitted by an undergraduate in any American or Canadian college or university” to William Porter, a junior English major at SUNY Geneseo and a participant in Geneseo’s Edgar Fellows program.
Porter’s winning essay, entitled “‘L’arco de lo essilio’: The Nexus of...
October 2010
5 posts
Join us at the fall Advisement Mixer
The English department’s fall Advisement Mixer is this Wednesday, October 20, at 2:30 p.m. in the Harding Room (Welles 111).
English majors, minors, and concentrators are welcome to join us for pizza and beverages. Faculty will be mingling and will be glad to answer any questions you may have about their spring, 2011 courses.
You can read descriptions of our spring course offerings here.
Geneseo English profs win award for digital...
The National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) has awarded its October 2010 Community Contribution Award to two projects: The Early Novels Database at Swarthmore College and English 170: The Practice of Criticism at SUNY Geneseo.
English 170: The Practice of Criticism is a collaboration among four Geneseo professors — Schacht, Doggett, Woidat, and Paku — teaching...
Creative writing application deadline is 10/28
Students seeking admission to spring, 2011 workshops in creative writing, or to the English major writing track, must apply by 4 p.m. on October 28. To apply, download this form, attach it to a sample of your prose or poetry (as explained on the form), and bring the form and sample to the English department main office, Welles 226. Applicants will be notified of the result by mail shortly after...
Ghostly reunion
The Geneseo English department was well represented at the Fall 2010 meeting of the Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers Study Group, October 1-2, at Cornell University. The theme of the meeting was “Ghost Stories.” Study Group members were invited to a lecture by Dana Luciano on “Touching, Clinging, Haunting, Worlding: On the Spirit Photograph,” and discussed ghostly...
English faculty win advancement, honors
Congratulations to three English department faculty who received professional advancement this fall. Rachel Hall and Graham Drake were both promoted to the rank of Professor. Alice Rutkowski was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor.
And congratulations to Assistant Professor Jun Okada, who was awarded leave for spring, 2011 under the United University Professions’ Dr. Nuala...
September 2010
2 posts
Huston Diehl, 1948-2010
Huston Diehl, a member of the SUNY Geneseo English department from 1975 to 1979, died in Iowa City, Iowa on September 8 at age 61. At the University of Iowa, Diehl was Professor of English and CLAS Collegiate Fellow and a specialist in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature.
From today’s obituary in the Iowa City Press-Citizen:
Huston published widely on the theatrical,...
Caleb Crain to deliver 2010 Harding Lecture
This year’s Walter Harding Lecture at SUNY Geneseo will be delivered by Caleb Crain.
The lecture, titled “Melville’s Secrets,” will be held Thursday, September 23, at 4 p.m. in the SUNY Geneseo College Union Ballroom. The event is free and open to the public.
Crain is the author of American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation (Yale University...
June 2010
3 posts
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New book by Stelzig on Robinson the life-writer
Distinguished Teaching Professor Gene Stelzig has added another monograph to his list of important scholarly publications in nineteenth-century literature. Though less well known than William Wordsworth, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Herman Hesse, or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - subjects of previous books by Stelzig - Henry Crabb Robinson (1775-1867) is noteworthy for his reminiscences of key figures in...
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English Department Website Goes Live
The English department has redesigned its website to make it easier for you to learn more about who we are and what we’re doing. New elements of the website include live updates from our Twitter page and links to stories in this spanking-new English department blog. The blog will broadcast important news for majors and chronicle the latest exploits of students, faculty, and staff.
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English Department Alums on Facebook
Wondering what Geneseo alums who majored in English are doing these days? Interested in catching up with someone you shared a class with decades ago but haven’t seen or heard from since? Want to vent about what’s missing from the [newly redesigned English department website? You can do all these things and more by joining the SUNY Geneseo English Department Alumni group on Facebook....