This evening at the IPRH Building from 8-10 p.m., there will be a graduate student panel, “Technology in Theory and Practice,” presented by the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory.
Speakers will include:
Poet and essayist Toi Derricotte will be reading at the Author’s Corner at Illini Union Bookstore this Wednesday, April 4th, at 4:30 p.m., as part of the Carr Reading Series.
Derricotte is the author of five books of poems and a memoir, The Black Notebooks. Her most recent book is The Undertaker’s Daughter. Derricotte is also known for co-founding Cave Canem, a workshop/retreat for African American poets.
Toi Derricotte’s website is here, and the Poetry Foundation has an extensive biographical overview.
Adrienne Rich, one of the most acclaimed figures of contemporary poetry, died on Tuesday. Rich’s diverse body of work spanned the course of decades, ranging from the relatively formal verse of early works such as A Change of World (which won the Yale Younger Poets Award for 1951) to the politically-charged poetry and prose of her later career.
Over the course of her career, Rich wrote over 20 books of poetry, in addition to prose works dealing with feminism and political life. Some of her most acclaimed works include Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, Diving into the Wreck (with its famous title poem), The School Among the Ruins, the essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” and Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. Rich’s most recent work was last year’s collection Tonight No Poetry Will Serve. UIUC’s Libraries hold many works by Rich as well as criticism dealing with her work.
Poetry has the capacity to remind us of something we are forbidden to see. A forgotten future: a still uncreated site whose moral architecture is founded not on ownership and dispossession, the subjection of women, outcast and tribe, but on the continuous redefining of freedom – that word now held under house arrest by the rhetoric of the “free” market. This on-going future, written-off over and over, is still within view. All over the world its paths are being rediscovered and reinvented.
Some other resources on Rich and the legacies of her poetry:
UIUC’s School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics has announced the schedule for this spring’s Intensive Foreign Language Instruction Program. IFLIP is an opportunity for intensive language learning, introducing you to basic grammar, conversational skills and common vocabulary.
Languages offered by IFLIP include several Romance languages, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Greek, and Latin.
Classes will take place May 14-25, 9 a.m.-noon (unless otherwise indicated)
Participation in the program costs $100 for UIUC students, $125 for faculty, staff, and retirees, and $150 for members of the public.
You can read more about the program, view a list of languages offered, and register at the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics’ IFLIP page.
"Kindle 3" by kodomut. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kodomut/5145390611/ (Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic.)
To what extent is reading on a Kindle or other tablet platform similar to traditional print reading? What are the major advantages and disadvantages? A couple of New York Times reporters have weighed in on the issue. The authors note that whereas reading a print novel or on a basic black and white Kindle is direct and absorbing, reading on a internet-ready tablet offers a host of 21st century distractions while reading. Given such distractions, what is the future of reading, readers, and literacy? Will reading decline as a leisure activity, or will e-readers and tablets enhance the convenience of reading, thus boosting reading as a leisure activity? Read the full article below and form your predictions!
–Finding Your Book Interrupted…By the Tablet You Read It On
Here are some alternative opinions in the debate:
-A high school librarian from Boston weighs in on reading and distractions – why, regardless of platforms, she considers herself a constantly distracted reader (and why that’s not a problem).
-Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic also critiques the NYTimes article and explains reader distraction as normal, regardless of format.
The judges for this year's Orange Prize are Joanna Trollope, Lisa Appignanesi, Victoria Derbyshire, Natalie Haynes, and Natasha Kaplinsky.
The longlist for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction has been announced – a diverse range of works, including five first novels. You can read the complete longlist (along with synopses of the novels and short biographies of the writers) at the Orange Prize homepage, or view shortlists and prize-winners from previous years.
Established in 1996, the Orange Prize is awarded to female writers of novels. Prize-winners receive £30,000 and a bronze sculpture called the “Bessie.” The shortlist for this year’s Orange Prize will be announced on April 17th, and the winner will be announced May 30th.
In honor of Women’s History Month, a selection of online resources are offering free access for the month of March! They include:
Women Writers Online: A database created from the Brown Women Writers Project, this database contains 320 browsable, TEI-encoded texts by women writers published between 1526 and 1850. Our Library has a subscription, but now everyone can explore the WWO database!
Orlando: This is another rich database of women’s writing throughout history, and it is free to use for the month of March. From the publisher’s blurb:
Orlando is a comprehensive electronic database relating to women’s writing in the British Isles, from the earliest times to present. It offers a wealth of biographical and critical information ton more than 1,250 British women writers (including over 24,000 bibliographical listings), together with related entries on literary and historical events, male writers, and non-British women writers. Orlando also includes entries on living writers, and is updated at regular intervals with new information relation to past and present events.
Contact English and Digital Humanities Librarian Harriett Green to get the login and password for accessing Orlando for free.
Other resources to explore:
British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries (UIUC users only)
Emily Dickinson Electronic Archives
Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts
Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period (UIUC users only)
Victorian Women Writers Project
Women and Social Movements in the United States (UIUC users only)
Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress
Publisher Barney Rosset, of Grove Press, has died at 89. Rosset bought the fledgling Grove Press in 1951 and turned the company into one of the most influential American publishing houses.
As a 2008 profile states: “The story of Rosset’s life is essentially one of creative destruction. He found writers who wanted to break new paths, and then he picked up a sledgehammer to help them whale away at the existing order.” Grove Press was responsible for publishing a wide variety of titles that ranged from classic works of literary fiction by the likes of Henry James and Samuel Beckett to more controversial titles: authors represented in Grove’s catalog include Henry Miller, Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, John Rechy, the Marquis de Sade, and Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Grove also published a variety of works of world literature (including works by writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Kenzaburo Oe, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Amos Tutuola) and works of social importance that included The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.
During its early years, Grove faced censorship battles for its publication of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. Grove later partnered with the Atlantic Monthly Press, and is now part of Grove/Atlantic. Grove also published the Evergreen Review and distributed films; some of their more prominent films included I Am Curious (Yellow) and I Am Curious (Blue) and films by Nagisa Oshima and Jean-Luc Godard and the Dziga Vertov Group.
The New York Times offers an overview of Internet coverage of Rosset’s passing and tributes to his stature as a publisher, and a 2008 documentary, Obscene: a Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press, chronicles Rosset’s influence and legacy. At the time of his death, Rosset was working on his autobiography, The Subject Was Left-Handed, which Algonquin Books plans to publish this year.
Translator Susan Bernofsky has been announced as the recipient of 2012’s Calwer Hermann-Hesse-Preis, a German literary prize awarded both to German-language literary magazines and to translators of the works of Hermann Hesse.
In addition to her translation of Hesse’s Siddhartha, Bernofsky is known for her translations of several prominent German-language writers, including Robert Walser, Jenny Erpenbeck, Gregor von Rezzori, and Yoko Tawada.
The prize is given biennially (2010’s recipient was the literary magazine Poet) and carries an award of €15,000.
At Bernofsky’s homepage, she discusses new and upcoming translations, as well as workshops she teaches and other events at which she speaks. Bernofsky also blogs at Translationista.
Local news services in San Antonio, Texas reported back in November that internationally renowned author Sandra Cisneros is planning to sell her home and move. The community’s mournful response has sparked lively online discussions about her work as an author, philanthropist, and San Antonio community member.
Cisneros is most well-known for her books The House on Mango Street, Caramelo, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, and Loose Woman.
You can read some of the news stories:
–SA Current has recently put out an extensive story on Cisnero’s local fame and relations to the San Antonio community.
–My SA offers a large selection of photos of Cisneros over the years as well as information about her King Williams home that’s for sale.
–The Texas Observer also reported on the topic.
For overviews of her life and work, check out the following resources:
–About Sandra Cisneros – biographical information from her official website.
–The University of Minnesota: Voices from the Gaps site offers a short biography, list of works and selection of internet resources about Cisneros.