We’ve rescheduled Cook the Books.

It’s time once again for an evening of delightful, delicious, edible literary puns! Cook the Books, the Graduate English Department’s Annual Literary Potluck, will be taking place on Friday, March 1st from 5 to 8pm in JHB Room 719. Bring a dish or stop by to socialize and enjoy the puns!

If you are planning to contribute a food item, please bring your own serving implements, and make sure to provide a list of ingredients. We are also asking that dishes contain no nuts.

This year’s potluck will also feature a silent talent auction to raise money for the GEA’s Karma Travel Fund. If you have a talent you would like to auction, please email elisa.tersigni at mail.utoronto dot ca. Items that will be up for auction include:

• Dinner at a local restaurant with Alan Bewell. Offered by: Alan Bewell
• A custom knit shawl. Offered by: Chris Pugh
• A 90-minute Thai yoga massage. Offered by: Kathleen Ogden
• A tour of the new Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library exhibition, “From No Where: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of our Past, Present, and Future.” Offered by: Curator Chris Young
• A signed, first-edition copy of Heather Jessup’s The Lightning Field. Offered by: Heather Jessup
• Composition and recording of a song, on the topic of your choice. Offered by: Dave Ritter
• Consultation on Pedadigigogy I: Harnessing technologies to stay human in today’s oversized humanities classroom. Offered by: Peter Latka
• Consultation on Pedadigigogy II: Ready to upgrade your in-class operating system? How digital media helps undergraduate students engage black marks on white pages. Offered by: Peter Latka
• A night in at Robertson Davies’ collection of 19th century printing presses for up to 6 people. Offered by: Elisa Tersigni
• 25 copies of a custom-set card, printed in 19th century letterpress. Offered by: Elisa Tersigni
• A custom bookmarklet that allows you to replace any term or name with any other term or name, all at the click of a button! Just one tap on this bookmarklet, and you can transform “Justin Bieber” into “Friedrich Kittler.” Offered by: Matt Schneider

Hope to see lots of you there!

Throughout January and into February we have job talks and coffee hours scheduled with the candidates for the eight open positions on the English Department faculty. We encourage all grad students to attend as many of these as you can. Check the GEA calendar on this page for dates and times.

The coffee hours are for just for grad students and the candidates. It’s a chance to meet the prospective new members of the department and chat about their work, life at U of T, and what the job search process is like. The job talks, open to the whole department, are a chance to hear about the candidates’ research. We’ve also been asked by the search committee chairs for our feedback on the candidates. So after meeting them, if you have thoughts, concerns, or endorsements, please email those to the respective chairs.

The end of semester GEA meeting is Friday, 7 December, 4–6pm in the multipurpose room (JHB 719).

Then we’ll be heading out for drinks at the Massey College JCR. First round is on the GEA.

The Staff and Students Relations Committee invites you to the annual Research Roundtable! Designed to foster conversation across fields and research areas, the Research Roundtable provides an opportunity for faculty and graduate students to share their work with each other and highlights the range of research being pursued within the Department of English. We hope that you will be able to join us for what promises to be a stimulating discussion!

Event Date: November 9, 2012, from 1:30 PM-4:15 PM.
Location: JHB 616
A wine and cheese reception at 4:30 will conclude the day.
Please find the schedule of presenters below.

Session One (1:30-2:45 PM)

Speakers:

• Professor Jeremy Lopez, “Bad Literature: Does it Exist?”
• Morgan Vanek, PhD candidate, “Under the Weather: Environmental Influence in Travel Writing about North America, 1700-1795”
• Professor Ato Quayson, “Spatial Practices and Performative Streetscapes: On Oxford St., Accra”
• Andrea Day, PhD candidate, “Leonora Blanche Lang and the Fairy Books”

Coffee and Dessert Break (2:45-3:00)

Session Two (3:00-4:15)

Speakers:

• Professor Jenny Kerber, “Writing and Rewriting Boundaries along the St. Lawrence Seaway”
• Talia Regan Palmer, PhD candidate, “The Sound and the Fury of Esquire’s Readers: Langston Hughes, Esquire, and the Literary Marketplace”
• Professor Simon Stern,”Legal Fictions and Literary Plots”
• Peter Latka, PhD candidate, “roges and ronnawayes: British Aborigines and the Tudor Historical Imaginary”

4:30 PM Wine and Cheese Reception

The annual student-faculty softball game is scheduled for 22 September, 2–4 pm, at Trinity Bellwoods Park. All are welcome to either play or watch. (Hopefully play.)

Wednesday, September 5th is orientation day, and this is just a reminder of what’s going on.

Orientation for incoming MA and MA/Creative Writing students is at 10 am in Jackman Humanities Building (JHB) 100A. (That’s on the right as you walk into JHB.)

Orientation for incoming PhD students begins at 11:30 am, also in JHB 100A.

In between, the GEA is hosting an informal reception, 11:15 am –1:30 pm in the multi-purpose room, JHB 719. We hope that as many returning students as possible can drop in and meet some of the new faces.

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And on Thursday, September 6th, we have our GEA Siblings Meet & Greet, where incoming students can meet their “siblings,” starting at 11 am in JHB 719.

The Meet & Greet will be followed by campus and library tours for new students. We’ll meet up at 1 pm in *the lobby of the JHB* for the first set of tours, and then at 2:30 pm in the lobby for the second set. See you there!

The full schedule for the upcoming Graduate Student Colloquium is available online now.

Don’t forget that there are two Brown Bag Lunch events left for this academic year:

This Thursday, March 22nd, students from the first year of the MA-Creative Writing program will be presenting their work in the MA-CW Showcase. In the first hour, students in the first year of the MA Creative Writing program will read stories, excerpts, or poems which they are currently working on. The second hour will include a Q&A and a reception with snacks and coffee. Please join us for what is sure to be a wonderful event!

Next Thursday, March 29th, Professor Larry Switzky will be giving a talk entitled “Bad Beckett?”: This talk examines Samuel Beckett’s reputation as a bad theatrical collaborator and his later plays as a calculated refusal of the stage director and the twentieth-century division of theatrical labour more broadly. By harvesting music, painting, sculpture, and the (relatively) new media of radio, film, and television as models for dramatic notation, Beckett launched a radical inquiry into what a play-text is and who gets to author its sensuous materialization.  Examples from orchestration, the visual arts, and the history of opera will situate the recalcitrant inventiveness of Beckett’s scenic writing.

Both of these events will begin at 12 p.m. in JHB 719. We hope to see lots of you there!

The deadline for submissions to the First Annual Graduate Student Colloquium has been extended to April 2nd, 2012. A copy of the revised CFP is below. MA and first-year PhD students are especially encouraged to apply. Please contact Rachel McArthur (rachel.mcarthur@utoronto.ca) with any questions.

ENG GRAD CFP Extended Deadline