English Department News

On-Campus Events

An Interview With Sarah Bokich

By

By Keaton Gaughan

In anticipation of her up-coming campus reading, I sat down with poet and esteemed UP alum, Sarah Bokich, to learn a bit more about her, her newest chapbook, and life after UP. You can peruse our exchange below. Come hear Sarah read from her newest publication on Thursday, February 8th at 7:30pm in the Campus Bookstore. Hope to see you all there.

KG: Can you tell me a little bit about your recent collection of poems, The Rocking Chair at the End of the World?

SB: While a few of these poems were from an earlier period, the majority I wrote between 2012-2016. I had a lot going on during those years—I experienced a major loss, got married, and gave birth to my daughter. These experiences drastically changed my worldview and I wrote to process it all.

KG: Which works of literature have been particularly formative or moving for you as a poet? In a similar vein, was there a particular source from which you derived your inspiration for this chapbook?

SB: My favorite poet of all time is Philip Levine, who had such a genius for characterizing the subjects of his poems. I also like his use of plain language, with sudden brilliant and memorable lines interspersed. For this particular collection, I also drew a lot on Silvia Plath who so deeply experienced the complexities of motherhood.

KG: Prior to contacting you, I was reading some of the pieces you’ve had published in various publications. I really enjoyed the two-part series, “What Will Happen to the Men.” Both pieces are important and powerful, I was curious to know if there was an event perhaps (or a life full of events, possibly) that acted as the catalyst for such a series?

SB: There is a lot more anger and intensity in the poems I’ve written recently. Some of it comes from getting older and feeling more comfortable with expressing myself and pushing back against a male-dominated culture and workplace, and some of it is in reaction to our current political climate, where an anti-woman sentiment is so prevalent.

KG: Additionally, one of the poems that you graciously allowed us to preview from The Rocking Chair at the End of the World, titled “Trading the Animals” was really interesting. Tell me about writing that piece, your process and specific inspiration if there was any.

SB: This poem was based on a story I heard on NPR. A reporter did a piece about zoos and how they can’t buy and sell animals—they have to trade them. The trade of puffins for a Komodo dragon is a real thing from that story. I ended up taking on the persona of the zookeeper to write the poem.

KG: Being a successful UP graduate, is there any advice you can impart on the creatively inclined or potential future poets at UP?

SB: It is totally possible to integrate creative endeavors into your life after graduation! Poetry isn’t my profession—I’ve been in the tech industry for nearly a decade— but writing is a consistent part of my life that has afforded me some incredible experiences and friendships. Whether you take a workshop, read at a local open mic, or submit to one of our wonderful regional publications, there are a myriad of ways to participate in Portland’s rich literary community. I co-host an open mic at the Attic Institute on Hawthorne the first Friday of every month and would love to see some UP writers there!

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Be sure to catch Sarah Bokich this Thursday, February 8th at 7:30pm in the Campus Bookstore.

Spring 2018 Course Preview

By

 by Laura Misch 

Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Well, English majors, winter will soon be upon us, and registration for the spring semester has officially begun. The race is on to sign up for courses, and here’s hoping you get the schedule you want. But what exactly are you signing up for? I corresponded with each of our lovely professors and got the inside scoop on all of the upcoming, upper-division English courses. Here’s what I learned:  

ENG 303 – American Literature I (Beginnings to 1900) 

TR 2:30 Orr 

Welcome to one of the new and improved English surveys! Dr. Orr says students should get ready “to learn about the elemental material that provides a bedrock for understanding American literature and American culture.” The reading list will feature lesser-known writings, such as Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative and the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar. However, there will also be plenty of familiar faces, including Wheatley, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Whitman, Twain, James, Crane, Chestnutt, and Chopin. 

When asked why he loves this course, Dr. Orr responded, “[I love] introducing students to the essential materials that explain who we are as Americans. I don’t think you can understand our culture (and maybe even yourself!) without studying the early material. And there’s sex, violence, and weirdness galore!” 

(Pro-tip: To score brownie points with Dr. Orr, mention Moby-Dick and the amazing chapter in which Melville discusses the whiteness of the whale. He’ll jump for joy.)

 

ENG 311 – Advanced Writing  

TR 12:55 McDonald | TR 2:30 McDonald | MW 2:40 Hannon 

This course utilizes a workshop setting that gives students the opportunity to write in class and share their work within a supportive peer community. Students will find their voices while testing out different writing styles—ranging from narrative essays to flash non-fiction. Reading well-known essayists and other modern works also further supplements the course’s deep exploration into the writing process.  

In ENG 311, Fr. Hannon says, “We explore the ways in which the tools of narrative often utilized in fiction can be used in the shaping and writing of true stories. We also examine how we, as writers, tap into our own experiences, thinking, and imagination in making sense of and drawing meaning from the world we live in.”  

When asked what he likes about the course, Prof. McDonald says he “enjoy[s] talking about writing and seeing students develop over the semester.” 

 

ENG 342 – Studies in Poetry 

MWF 12:30 Swidzinski  

While the course may be called “Studies in Poetry,” Dr. Swidzinski prefers to think of it as an “Introduction to Poetry and Poetics,” for students don’t have to be poetry experts in order to take the class. The reading extends from the Renaissance all the way to the 21st century with a diverse selection of Elizabethan sonnets, Romantic lyrics, modernist and post-modernist experiments, folk songs, rap, pop music, and even computer-generated poetry. Additionally, students will “be reading and thinking about the theories and mechanics of poetry, and how these have evolved over time and across history and cultures.” 

Dr. Swidzinski is excited to teach this course because “every day we’ll ask the same fundamental question—‘What is poetry?’—and every day, depending on what we’re reading, we’ll discover wildly different answers.” He also points out,  “Poems are short! Why spend hours slogging through a novel when you can get to the heart of things with a handful of well-chosen words?”  

 

ENG 352 – Film and Literature  

W 7:10 Larson 

According to Dr. Larson, the course’s full title is “Film and Literature: Adaptation in the Age of the Image.” In a time when “the visual increasingly competes with the verbal,” this course explores the two mediums and the complex relationship between them. Students will examine how “varied genres of written work (screenplay, play, short story, graphic narrative, novel, nonfiction essay) might be translated to the screen.” The literary works include Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. And a few of the films are Citizen Kane, Memento, and Adaptation.  

Dr. Larson hopes “students will come away from a course like this with a better appreciation for our era’s excitingly multiple platforms for storytelling.”  

 

ENG 363 – Environmental Literature  

W 4:10 Weiger  

Students will dive headfirst into exploring the relationship between writing and the natural world. In ENG 363, Dr. Weiger says students look at how “reading and writing [are] important ways of participating in environmental debates” and how “our thinking about race, class, gender, and sexuality affect our understanding of environmental problems.” Reading begins with Gilbert White’s natural history letters and journals, followed by the writing of famous transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, and then shifts to environmental writing from the 20th and 21st century, with pieces by Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Michael Pollan, and Rebecca Solnit.  

But, remember, you’re not a tree! (You’re just reading about them.) Dr. Weiger says, “This course involves a lot of reading and watching (we view some films), but it’s not a passive course. Students create presentations twice over the course of the semester, write their own natural history journals, and write their ways into a contemporary environmental debate. It’s a really interactive course!”  

 

ENG 370 – Studies in Women Writers 

MW 2:40 Brassard  

Students will embrace their inner feminist as well as their inner anglophile, as ENG 370 focuses on female, British writers and uses Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own as a critical lens through which to read the works of other women. Other texts in this discussion-based course include Woolf’s Orlando, Lively’s Moon Tiger, Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Smith’s NW, Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight, Mansfield’s short stories, and Ali Smith’s new book Autumn—arguably the first post-Brexit novel. Students will also examine the theories of feminist literary critics, like Adrienne Rich and Rita Felski.  

Dr. Brassard shares, “I love teaching this course because it often introduces students to authors they have heard about but never read, and also because, as an elective option for the Gender & Women’s Studies Minor, it attracts non-English majors who bring different and welcomed perspectives and questions to a literature classroom.” 

 

ENG 401 – Seminar in British Literature I  

M 4:10 Hersh 

If Geoffrey Chaucer doesn’t rock your world, he will by the end of this course. (Note: See Dr. Hersh’s office door.) This course focuses on just one text—The Canterbury Tales in its original Middle English. According to Dr. Hersh, “Chaucer tackles almost every issue imaginable (ok, maybe he doesn’t write about iPad use or Facebook) and we’ll be discussing issues such as gender, religion, politics, sexuality, economics, race, and take a self-reflexive look at the role of literature in the world.” While exploring a single text may seem boring, Dr. Hersh emphasizes that “each tale…is very different,” and he’s “deliciously ambiguous so it’s super fun analyzing his writing.” As a bonus, she adds, “If you like fart jokes, you will like The Canterbury Tales.”  

As someone who has taken a version of this course, all I can say is I hope “whan that Aprille” final exam rolls around, your understanding of Middle English “hath perced to the roote” of your mind! (This excessively corny joke will make sense once you start the class.) 

 

If you have yet to register for Spring 2018, here is a link to the online registration schedule.  

Interview with Leni Zumas

By

by Keaton Gaughan 

Leni Zumas, author of the upcoming fiction novel Red Clocks (selected for Publishers Weekly’s “Top 10 Literary Fiction” list), will be visiting campus later this month as part of the University of Portland’s 2017-2018 Readings and Lectures Series. Her reading will be November 15th at 7:30pm in the campus bookstore.  

Zumas teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Portland State University. She is also the author of the story collection Farewell Navigator, and the novel The Listeners, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. In her work, Zumas approaches and examines the female experience on both a deeply personal and a broader, more universal level. Her words, strung together with purpose and precision, flow effortlessly across the page. I had the pleasure of conducting an interview with Leni Zumas. You can read our exchange below. 

KG: To start, I’m interested to hear a bit about your new novel Red Clocks in your own words. Would you mind telling me about the novel? 

LZ: It’s a book that follows the interconnected lives of five women. One is an Arctic explorer in the 19th century; the others live on the Oregon coast, present day. I’m very interested in bonds among women—friendship, competition, romance, caregiving, mentorship, sex, political alliance—and I wanted to dig into the complexity of these bonds. The world of Red Clocks closely resembles our own, except that there’s a new Constitutional amendment that gives full human rights to embryos at the moment of conception, which means abortion is outlawed, as are certain types of fertility treatment.  

KG: Which works of literature have been particularly formative or moving for you as a writer? 

LZ: Virginia Woolf is the writer who has most fiercely and enduringly inspired me. I love her mind and her sentences, especially The Waves, To the Lighthouse, and A Writer’s Diary. Toni Morrison and William Faulkner were big influences. Anne Carson’s long poem “The Glass Essay” gave me structural ideas for my first novel, The Listeners. I’ve learned a lot from Grace Paley’s short stories and from W. G. Sebald’s essay–memoir–novel hybrids, particularly Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn. 

More recently, I’ve been awed by Fred Moten’s poems and essays; the nonfiction book Living a Feminist Life by British–Australian scholar Sara Ahmed; John Keene’s story collection Counternarratives; and the novella Why Is the Child Cooking the Polenta by Romanian–Swiss writer (and circus performer) Aglaja Veteranyi. 

KG: In a similar vein, was there a particular source from which you derived your inspiration for Red Clocks?    

LZ: Oh, lots of sources: my obsessions with polar exploration, witches, and all things nautical; a book on the criminal prosecution of animals; medicinal plants of the Pacific Northwest; and my experience of trying to have a baby on my own. I also researched laws proposed by actual politicians (including Mike Pence and Paul Ryan) to restrict abortion rights, adoption rights, and access to fertility treatments.  

KG: I commend you for taking on such a controversial topic like the abortion argument in times where this fundamental right is under attack. Have you experienced any sort of pushback regarding the arguably controversial topic choice?   

LZ: I wanted to explore the lived consequences and implications of an abortion ban, but I wasn’t aiming to deliver a verdict. What I love about fiction is that you can plunge into messy, complex, ambivalent situations without needing to decree right and wrong. The reader may ponder right and wrong; she may wonder how she’d choose to act in a situation the characters face; but she isn’t being told what to think. Fiction can dwell in uncertainty. As for pushback: not yet! But the book doesn’t come out until January. Maybe I’ll get some in January. Fingers crossed? 

KG: Do you have any advice for aspiring feminist writers? 

LZ: 

  1. Don’t try to be pleasing.  
  2. Don’t try to sound like anyone but yourself.  
  3. Be curious about texts outside the canon, texts in translation, texts of and about the margins. 
  4. Acquaint yourself with the writing of women on whose shoulders you stand, including (to name only a few) Angela Davis, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Kathy Acker, Sei Shōnagon, Grace Paley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Hélène Cixous, Zora Neale Hurston, Eileen Myles, Phillis Wheatley, Virginia Woolf, Susan Sontag, Ntosake Shange, [and] Simone de Beauvoir.  
  5. Put more energy into making your work than into selling it.  

Be sure to check out Leni Zumas’ reading in the UP Bookstore on November 15th at 7:30 pm.  

 

*Photo by Sophia Shalmiyev 

An Interview with Dr. Hill on the German novelist Julia Franck

By

by Monica Salazar 

Award-winning, contemporary German author Julia Franck will be visiting campus for the University of Portland’s Readings & Lectures Series this November. In her writing, Franck explores Germany’s dark, complex history and how major political events shaped the lives of everyday German citizens—especially women—during the twentieth century. I sat down with Dr. Alexandra Hill, a German professor here at UP who has written extensively about Franck in her academic publications, to ask her a bit about Franck’s work.   

MS: How did you come to know Julia Franck and her work? How did she influence your academic work? 

AH: I was a German major in college, and I studied abroad in Berlin in my junior year and bought her second book, called Lagerfeuer; the translation of the title in English would roughly be “The Love Servant.” It was the first book I bought in German to read for fun. I loved it. Then, when I was in graduate school, her next book came out; and I was in Berlin again, so I went to one of Julia Franck’s readings and had her sign the book.  

When I came back from that time in Berlin, it was getting [to be] time to write my dissertation, and I was coming up with all these ideas that I thought sounded nice and scholarly and academic. In the end my advisor said, “You love Julia Franck, why not write about her?” And I was like, “I can do that?!” I made another trip to Berlin just to meet with her. She was so nice, and I interviewed her over two days. We have kept [in] contact through e-mail since 2006; and since then, she has won the German Book Prize.  

In addition to my dissertation, I’ve published articles about her; a lot of my publications in general focus on her work, and in our e-mail correspondence, I ask her a lot about contemporary issues in German culture. Her books look at the daily lives of women and how these big political decisions that are usually made by men trickle down into the everyday lives of the people who have to experience the consequences of them. Her books on the one hand might seem like they are focused on everyday details, but at the same time, they are telling the history of an entire country. 

MS: What was the socio-political environment like in Germany when Franck was growing up? 

AH: She was born in East Germany in 1970, and then in 1978, her mother took her and her sister to West Germany. So they actually—even though they were Germans—had to spend nine months in a refugee camp. That experience, I think, had a really strong impact on her. It informed her writing in a lot of ways. She is also interested in Germany’s history in World War II and Germany’s history with National Socialism—in part because of [the] ways that [these events] affected her own family history.  

In [her novel] The Blindness of the Heart, she follows a young woman who grows up between the two World Wars and lives through Germany’s Nazi rise to power and exposes how these political events affected the lives of everyday individuals, especially women. There is also a personal connection in her writing because she has taken some moments of her family history and has used them as a starting point in her fiction. Her books aren’t autobiographical, but in a lot of ways, she draws on experiences of people who are close to her. In The Blindness of the Heart, she asks the question, “What was it like to be a woman raising a son in World War II all alone?”  

MS: How does Franck portray women differently, and how does she challenge traditional female roles? 

AH: When I interviewed her the first time, I asked her why all of her mother characters were negative. Franck thought about my question for a long time and responded that they are not negative; they are just people, complicated people. And the point is [that] we try to idolize mothers; we make them into these abstract symbols of love and childhood and safety and all of these beautiful, glorified, feminine ideals, but her point is that mothers are people also. They have anger and selfishness, and they don’t necessarily live for their children. The negative response readers have to these women says more about their assumptions of motherhood than it does about her books. We think these women are cruel because we are bringing our own idealized versions of motherhood to these texts, and when these don’t line up, we get frustrated. Some people have gone so far as to think that she is anti-feminist because of her portrayal of women, but I disagree. I think it’s much more interesting and much more truthful to let female characters be a whole range of things. There are all of these masculine roles where the man can be a jerk, and he is cooler for it. Then, the fact [is] that we expect female characters to always be positive; that’s creating expectations that are just too narrow.  

MS: Which book would you want your fellow faculty members and UP students to read? 

AH: I would say The Blindness of the Heart is probably the best place to start because it has this amazing scope; it’s telling the whole story of Germany from 1910 to [the] 1960s, and I love how she captures those moments in history. Also, I think the complexity of the characters and the heartbreaking story are other big reasons I would suggest this book.  

Julia Franck will be reading in Franz 120 on November 2nd, at 7:30 pm.  

 

*Photo by Thorsten Greve CC BY-SA 3.0 de 

An Interview with O. Alan Weltzien

By

by Elizabeth Barker

As students at the University of Portland, we are fortunate to have many amazing artists share their work with us. Recently, UP alumni Kunal Nayyar, from the primetime TV show The Big Bang Theory, came to share some wisdom at a Q and A before midterms. O. Alan Weltzien is going to join this list of speakers, and you definitely do not want to miss this one. 

Weltzien, a current English professor at University of Montana Western, will be sharing his passion for the outdoors and literature with us at his reading. Weltzien has already tackled the trifecta of English study: being a “confirmed bookworm by age ten,” a published author, and a distinguished professor. Fully immersed in literature and nature alike, he uses these passions to carve out a space for eco-literature in Dillon, Montana.   

This combination of space and literature is no new venture for Pacific Northwest literature fanatics, but Weltzien is also quick to pay homage. He gushes about this bursting genre, saying, “The personal or social relationship between the self and a given topography or two represents an abiding, fascinating, endlessly new and variable genre for people like me. I love writing, whether [it’s] called eco-fiction or eco-poetry or some other label, that foregrounds physical setting.” This concept should not be that new for students of Professor Larson’s Pacific Northwest Literature class, which is centered around the theory of literature relative to space. How lucky we are to be in a place where literature and the outdoors collide so beautifully.  

Weltzien is the well-known editor of The Norman Maclean Reader. However, his own contribution to literature is just as notable and important as his work preserving the writings of others. For true insight into Weltzien’s own work, check out his book Exceptional Mountains: A Cultural History of the Pacific Northwest Volcanoes. He says that the aim of his work is for readers “to be grabbed, to feel moved or at least piqued or amused, in some fashion. I want them to remember some of what they’ve encountered when they read my stuff. I hope it makes a difference, however slight, in the reader’s world or view of the world.” When reading literature in regards to space, what more could one want? To feel the cold mountain creek, hear the grizzly bear splash, and smell wild huckleberries sweet and tart in the air—without getting on a plane to Dillon—can only be achieved through literature.  

Through the design of the brick-clad buildings and the grand sequoias lining the pathways of our university, there lies a screaming idea that roots us in academia and study. Weltzien says to enjoy the constructed environment, but make sure to escape every now and then. “I’ve been taken with [Gary Snyder’s] Buddhist notion of hiking as a form of walking prayer. I think outdoors time, whether day hiking or backpacking or technical climbing, can bring us to ourselves as no other experience can. I think time away from the built environment can teach us about ourselves in ways that no inside domain can. Certainly higher altitudes brings me a kind of fierce joy I’ve not known elsewhere in my life.” Study hard, walk harder! 

For some parting advice, Professor Weltzien urges students, “Don’t be afraid of experimentation; of learning how a given image or memory or subject might variably turn itself into a poem, an essay, or a story. I’d like to try a novel and have had a specific subject and treatment for one in mind for a decade, and I have to get other projects out of the way and commit to it! The more you write and rewrite, the more you learn your particular strengths—and weaknesses.” 

Make sure to come see O. Alan Weltzien speak at the University Bookstore on Tuesday, October 24th at 7:30 pm! 

Fall 2017 Course Preview

By

Welcome back from break, English majors! We hope you had fun adventuring, resting, and maybe even reading (Moby Dick, anyone?).

Now we’re back in the throes of Spring semester and need to think about next Fall! That’s right, it’s time for registration. Get ready for new classes and the return of our beloved Dr. Hersh and Dr. Weiger!

This preview of Fall’s Upper Division English courses isn’t any old course catalog; it has bonus insider info from professors about topics, perspectives, reading lists, and more. Check it out –

ENG 301 – British Literature
MWF  9:15  Swidzinski
Study over a thousand years of British literature – from its origins in Anglo-Saxon poetry to the development of the novel in the eighteenth century – looking at the social, political, and material contexts of literary form and genre. Readings include Beowulf, the Lais of Marie de France, More’s Utopia, Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Behn’s Oroonoko, Haywood’s Fantomina, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and Equiano’s Interesting Narrative.
Dr. Swidzinski says this course “offers a great opportunity to study how the literary forms that we know and love emerged and evolved historically. Another important feature of the course will be what we might call its globalism… I’ve selected texts that highlight the ways in which English literature developed through its contacts (both real and imagined) with other cultures, languages, and traditions. So we’ll be reading “English” texts that span the globe and we’ll try to map (yes, literally ) the interconnected world they create.”

ENG 304 – American Literature: 1900 to present
MW  4:10  Larson
Take a close look at 20th century American literature in the context of historical, political, and cultural developments. This course is a new version of two previous survey classes: American Modernisms and Contemporary American Literature. 
Dr. Larson is excited that this class is a “new opportunity to find connections between the past century’s literature and the problems we still haven’t solved today, from the legacies of violence (Claude McKay’s “The Lynching”) to the cult of celebrity (Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust), to our uneasy relationship with righteousness (Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”), to our quarrel with the universe (Thomas Pynchon’s “Entropy”).” 

ENG 309 – Fiction Workshop
M  7:10  TBA
Discover the principles and techniques necessary to developing your own original short stories, and analyze professional fiction for insights. Ask why we write fiction and in what ways we write it, thinking deeply about the role of fiction. Take risks by using classic elements of story to reach different ends. TBA’s can be risky, but this class will be worth it!
Juniors & seniors only. Pre-req: 300-level English/American course. 

ENG 311 – Advanced Writing
TR  2:30  Hannon  |  TR  4:10  McDonald
Develop your skills for writing and editing expository essays in a workshop setting, and examine the writing process by reading fine essays.
Dr. McDonald shares, “I really enjoy the Advanced Writing workshop. We have students from all different disciplines writing personal narratives and voicing their views on various subjects. As a student, you will learn a lot about your own writing.”
Fr. Pat says, “I love encouraging my students to see themselves as writers with distinct voices ready to make their mark in words and sentences… It’s all about going to those dark places (meaning: unfamiliar, tantalizing, surprising) in our thinking and in our imaginations to see what such spelunking reveals and prompts us to write.” Three essays he looks forward to reading in this class: Baldwin’s “Notes on a Native Son,” Woolf’s “Death of a Moth,” and Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant.”

ENG 317 – Composition Theory & Practice
M  4:10  Hersh
Combine theory and practice to discover how to best teach the writing process, including composition, rhetoric, and linguistics. 
Dr. Hersh previously said, “We not only discuss the qualities of effective writing, but explore the best ways to inspire effective writing in others… I love the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the course. Students who take English 317 come from every nook of UP’s academic world and are really invested in good writing. We all thus work together and share best practices for teaching writing.
Training for Writing Assistants. Pre-req: 3.0 GPA in writing courses.

ENG 337 & 337H – Modern/Contemporary Arabic Literature
MWF  1:35  McDonald
Read several modern Arabic literary works, emphasizing historical and cultural contexts, post-colonialism, forced migration, the Bildungsroman, Bedouin culture, and women in Arab cultures.
Dr. McDonald says, “It’s been a few years since I have been able to offer Arabic literature… the class usually ends up being populated by multiple majors. A new addition the class is Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra, which was banned in many Arab countries after its publication in 1986.”

ENG 339 – Studies in Fiction
MW  2:40  Brassard
Focus on ‘being and becoming human’ in a study of representative novels from the British tradition. Readings will be entirely British literature from the 19th century to present; you’re guaranteed to encounter Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Hardy, and Woolf – bookended by Shelley’s Frankenstein and Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.
Dr. Brassard promises, “Students should be expecting lots of reading but also engaging plots, exciting ideas, and inventive prose. Anglophiles are especially welcome, and anyone else intrigued by the intricacies of the British class system, the seemingly timeless battle of the sexes, and the pleasures of sinking into satisfying fictional universes.”

ENG 372 – Multi-Ethnic American Literature
TR  2:30  Hiro
Compare representative works by American writers of African, Asian, Latin American, American Indian, and Jewish descent, situated within historical issues of cultural continuity, immigration, assimilation, civil rights, and citizenship.
Dr. Hiro says, “Multi-ethnic American Lit is exciting but also overwhelming, because there’s just a ton to choose from in the rich traditions of writings by African Americans, Asian Americans, American Indians, Latino/Latina Americans, and Jewish Americans… We read a good amout of literature that voices a broader or intersectional identity… I’m always especially excited to teach Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (both Pulitzer Prize winners, incidentally!)”

ENG 403 – Literature & Posthumanism
W  4:10  Weiger
Challenge yourself to imagine the world beyond/outside the “human,” attempting to understand what is meant by concepts like human, animal, subjectivity, agency, sympathy, and affect. Readings will include Haraway’s When Species Meet, Berger’s King: A Street Story, and Kapil’s Humanimal; plus films Grizzly Man and, new for this year, Arrival.
Dr. Weiger says, “Challenging ourselves to think about the ways in which being human is conditioned by what we believe to be inhuman, nonhuman, or posthuman is usually fun, but also comes with a good dose of what Haraway might call intellectual “indigestion:” an inability to sit comfortably with ourselves and our happenings. This is, nevertheless, what being a thinking animal requires. Come join us as we sit at the table with our nonhuman companions! The experience is sure to be as odd as Alice’s at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.”

Fall Online Registration is March 21st – 30th.

Life After The English Major

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            Listen. Listen closely. Can you hear it? It’s that ever-looming question of “English major? English… What are you planning on doing with that?” However, you don’t have to feel your stomach drop every time this question is asked, because the English Department is here to help. This coming Monday, February 6th, the UP English department is hosting its annual “Life after the English Major” event. With a panel featuring four different alumni with a combined experience of 22 years in the outside world, the event will give first year students and soon to be graduates alike a taste of what the future might hold.

            One of the alumni to attend is Alex Dickinson, who graduated in 2013. Now working as a writer for Instrument, a digital creative here in Portland that generates content for companies, Dickinson credits the English program with giving him the ability to see potential in his writing, as well as the tools to strive for growth. In his testimonial on the English Department Alumni page, Dickinson explained how his English degree prepared him for life after school: “The patience acquired from taking my time with my own writing in school, scrutinizing every word, to meet the high standards set by my instructors, showed me what it takes to make the best piece of writing possible. And that’s what’s required of a professional writer.”

            Sarah Bokich, Class of ’06, took a different path and now works as a Service Marketing Manager for FEI Company, a microscopy company in Hillsboro that uses hardware and software to take imrockingchairages of the incredibly tiny partials that make up the natural world. Although not working in a career devoted to writing, Bokich continued to pursue her passion for poetry after graduating from the University of Portland. Recently her chapbook of poems, Rocking Chair at the End of the World, was accepted by Finishing Line Press and will be released in February of this year.                         

            Alex Foy, Class of ’14, and Kelsey Fleharty, Class of ’10, will also be in attendance. Foy now works as a Brand Manager for OJ Skateboard Wheels, a company in Portland that specializes in rolling you towards the best skateboard wheels on the market. Fleharty, after graduation, attended law school at the University of Oregon and now works as an Associate Attorney at a firm in Portland. Offering a wide range of experience in a number of fields, these four alumni will bolster the hope you need to inform the doubters that yes, reading Emily Dickinson will help you after graduation, and yes, a humanities degree is giving you the best skills to enter into the wide, wide world of postgrad life. Or, at the very least, there will be cookies.

The Life After The English Major event will be held in Franz 015 on Monday, Feb. 6 at 5:45 pm.

Why You Should Submit to NUCL 2017

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NUCL Logo

As you finish up those last few final papers or theses, you’ve probably heard about submitting those papers to NUCL, and that the submission deadline is quickly approaching. And that’s all well and good if you know what NUCL actually is.

But if you don’t, here is everything you need to know about NUCL and why you should really consider submitting – take it from someone who presented last year!

NUCL stands for Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature. NUCL is held at UP each spring and invites students from all over the greater Northwest (and, more recently, the entire U.S.) to present their academic papers to an audience in a conference setting. All submissions are read and chosen by a panel of UP’s esteemed English faculty and NUCL interns, and particularly compelling essays can win prizes during the conference. Not too thrilled with your academic essays? NUCL also has personal essay and poetry panels! There are special awards for these categories, too.

So why should you submit? I had the same question last January, when I was just a plucky freshman eager to be involved. I was encouraged by my English professor to submit my final essay to NUCL. I was surprised, but very flattered. I decided to go ahead and submit, even though I wasn’t sure if it would be accepted. But I was happily surprised that my paper was selected for a panel!

Then came the day of the conference. I am not someone who is particularly wild about public speaking, let alone reading something I wrote in front of a lot of strangers. Fortunately, everyone else at NUCL is in roughly the same boat. The environment is hugely welcoming and encouraging, and I quickly got over my stage fright during my presentation. The audience is engaged and respectful, and answering questions about my paper afterwards really increased a sense of legitimacy. Everyone takes the presenters’ work seriously, like we’re researchers and not just students.

So don’t wait until someone pokes you in the back – if you’ve got a paper, poem, or personal essay that you’re particularly proud of, why not take this incredible opportunity to share it? In addition to reading your work in front of an audience, you will get the opportunity to meet a ton of like-minded students from around the country who share your enthusiasm for the written word.

NUCL 2017 submissions are due by January 17th. The conference will be on March 25th.

An Interview with Peter Rock

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Peter Rock

Award-winning novelist Peter Rock is a University of Portland Schoenfeldt Distinguished Writer and our final guest in the Fall Readings and Lectures series.

Rock received his BA in English from Yale and has won numerous awards and fellowships for his writing, including Stanford’s Wallace Stegner Fellowship. He lives and writes in Portland, and teaches writing at Reed College. His most recently published book, Klickitat, is set in Portland and is about two sisters, one of whom mysteriously disappears. His next book, Spells, will be out in April 2017.

Rock’s fiction tends to place the reader into the minds of people often overlooked: outsiders, people living on the fringes of society, nomads in body or spirit. His books are often described as unique and intriguing, must-reads and can’t-be-put-downs. This comes from his skill and his writing process, which basically is Rock trying to answer his own burning questions about people, places, and life.

 Thanks for making time for this—I know you’re incredibly busy with your own students and your work. I was wondering if you were one of those child writers, growing up with your notebook under your arm at all times. When did you fall in love with writing? 
I’d say I was one of those children who was obsessed with reading. I mean, it started with my dad reading Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea to us; but then I was also really fascinated by the natural world.  I used to have a lot of these “Golden Nature Guides,” these little books—Mammals, Reptiles, etc—that were like little field guides, and I carried them everywhere with me.
My path to actually writing things is a little windy—which is to say that it forked and circled, not that it was governed by weather and turbulence (though that, too); I think I did some writing in high school and saw how I got attention for it, and then I kind of adolescently became infatuated with being a writer, as a sort of lifestyle, and that was probably influenced by writers I read at that time (Brautigan, Kerouac).  So I followed my education in such a way that I had very few marketable skills and then had to write…  And I fell in love with it, fall in love with it, differently all the time; when I realized how much it was about sitting by myself and daydreaming, not exactly a lifestyle or identity…

So maybe that’s how you come up with your ideas—just kind of follow your curiosity in those daydreams? I recently finished your book My Abandonment, and I really loved how you fleshed out the story of the father and daughter found living in Forest Park. I’d known about that true part before, and was kind of haunted by it. Your book has me feeling a sense of closure, although I know it’s fiction; it helps just to have the follow-up fully imagined out. Were you kind of haunted by that story as well, and did that drive you to write My Abandonment?
Trusting curiosity is a big part of the process, especially early.  Those things that draw us are pulling at something on our insides.  With My Abandonment (thanks for reading it), I was writing another novel (The Bewildered) where there was action in Forest Park, and while I was working on that book I was reading the newspaper articles about the girl and her father.  In the first article, they were found and relocated into a more civilized life; in the second, they’d disappeared; I kept waiting for that third article explaining where they’d went.  At first I tried to fold that story into The Bewildered, but that girl was a distraction, too interesting, just watching (in My Abandonment you witness various things—say, the kids on the water tank—that take place in the earlier book), so I took her out.  But then there never was a third newspaper article and my mind, the mind of a fiction writer, kept insistently asking, “What could have happened to those two?  How did they live like that for four years?  Where did they come from?  Where would their momentum take them?”

That’s just amazing, how trusting your curiosity about what could have been led you to creating a whole work of literature, which then helped satisfy my own (and I’m sure many others) curiosity about the girl and her father. My own backyard connects to Forest Park, so I really enjoyed reading about these places and trails just right outside. 
I think you were able to capture something about the Pacific Northwest in the way Caroline (the girl in My Abandonment) is bonded to the land, almost as if it’s part of her family. And in the end of My Abandonment, (which I’m not going to give away because everyone should read it for themselves) I found comfort in knowing Caroline would always have that special connection to the PNW land.  I’m really glad you gave her life instead of having her just being a side note in The Bewildered… I think My Abandonment was a great text for reading through a spatial lens, and I’m curious about if your research involved a lot of time in Forest Park just being with the land you were writing about. 
Ah, that’s sweet.  Thanks again for reading it.  Well, back then when I was writing My Abandonment I did spend a lot of time in Forest Park—both to find where the girl/father had lived, but also to just imagine how it would be [as] a girl who lived there.  And so I spent much time climbing trees, daydreaming, imagining that I was her, taking notes.  When I started actually writing that book I was down at Caldera, near Sisters, where I’d wander around and never have to talk to another person; one reason that central Oregon landscape becomes important in my book is because that’s where I was writing and being Caroline. 

Caldera is an artists’ residency, isn’t it? So you were able to just be alone like Caroline—that must have been perfect for this specific book. It might have been hard to write about like, Paris society or something, from that environment.
That’s so interesting, how you were “being Caroline.” Do you always enter into your characters that way? I’m picturing method acting, but maybe it’s not so extreme. Does it make you think differently the whole time, or just a few hours per day you devote to entering into that? 
There are probably parallels to method acting, but more than dressing as a girl (I did not) or speaking in a different voice (didn’t—though one benefit about being out at Caldera—yes a residency—was that I had days and weeks where I didn’t talk to anyone), it’s a question of figuring out the concerns and voice of a character, especially if she’s the narrator.  So the things (Randy the horse, the encyclopedias, etc.) that were present in her daily life were present in mine, the concerns about what she needed and wanted, and the way she talked/wrote (e.g. the refusal to use semi-colons, which are a particular weakness of mine), the small conversations she had with her father, the schedule and strategy of her days—all of that took a long time to build up and understand, but when I understood it I could slip in and out for hours at a time; and then I just followed it.

This has been fascinating. Thanks for making time for us, and for letting us into your head a bit about how you got into writing, and  how you continue to fall in love with it in different ways. I just have one more question: which of your own books is your personal  favorite—the one you’d like to read for fun if you hadn’t written it?
Ah, the personal favorite question is pretty impossible.  I imagine it’s a little like children—it feels wrong to choose, and my relationship to each is different, similarly conflicted.  One easy answer is that whatever I’m working on now is my favorite—right now I’m working on a novel called The Weather, which is about 1994, open water swimming, and floating in isolation tanks, ex-girlfriends, etc.  And Spells, which comes out in April and from which I’ll read.
The actually published ones?  I don’t know.  They’re so different, and many feel as if they were written by someone else, a distant relative.  It’s strange because some of them are being re-released this year; when I read from The Unsettling earlier this fall, when it came out (ten years after it was published), it was kind of uncanny.  I do like that book, as a collection of stories [it] shows so many different decisions, narratively and in terms of sensibility.
Like children, there may be one—My Abandonment—that gets more than her share of attention (e.g. questions, film being shot this spring so much back and forth with director/screenwriter, etc.) and that makes me want to say, “Well, you should meet The Shelter Cycle, which is more ambitious and connected, which I wrote after MA, and which cost me much more, taught me much more.”  But in the end, you know, I don’t have nor want that kind of control. The books just fly on out of me and my opinion or understanding of them is beyond vestigial.  Authors are the worst!

Peter Rock will be reading in Franz 120 on December 1, 2016, at 7:00 p.m.

 

*Photo by Ida Rock.

An Interview with Willy Vlautin

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Willy Vlautin

Novelist Willy Vlautin is the next guest in our Autumn Readings & Lectures series hosted by the University of Portland’s English Department.  He has published four novels: The Motel Life (2007), Northline (2008), Lean on Pete (2010), and The Free (2014).  

For all the violence and tragedy that fuels the characters and storylines of his works, Willy Vlautin is one hell of a friendly guy. His band, alt-country quartet Richmond Fontaine, just recently back from their final European tour, have been playing the Portland scene for over twenty years. His novels—The Free being the most recently published—recall John Steinbeck and John Updike in their intimate portrait of day-to-day survival and mundane tragedy in the lives of ordinary people.

It’s easy to assume the people who rarely have their stories told don’t have a story to tell. The people who inhabit Vlautin’s stories are burdened by their choices. They’re burdened by their need and, often, their inability to escape. These are people who want to change, who believe change may be the only thing that can save their lives, and yet they do not. This is the magic of Willy Vlautin’s writing. It’s a sleight of hand, to show us we don’t know the people we think we know.

Between your records and novels, you’ve created enough fascinating (and tragic) characters to populate an entire seen-better-times logging town. How do you build these characters, and would you say it’s the characters that inform the stories and songs?
I think of things in stories first. A broad idea of story from start to finish. Inside that initial idea are the themes I’m interested in. From there I’ll get the characters. I’ll run into the first few and then they meet people after that and so on. Usually I write the first draft and then develop the characters more after each edit. Like getting to know someone, it takes a while. It takes time and interest and desire.

Living in the wake of Bob Dylan’s Nobel prize, it seems a lot of people are trying to to redraw the lines between literature and music as distinct modes of storytelling. As an artist working in both mediums, sometimes at the same time, as with Northline, do you see any real divisions? How has being a novelist informed your songwriting and how has songwriting informed you as a novelist?
They are much different crafts that’s for sure. Writing takes much more time in the nuts and bolts sorta way. You have to put down the pages. You have to get a character from Mexico City to Toronto and he’s driving. A lot of days pass, a lot of things happen along the way. Songs are like dreams, they have more mystery. Where the hell did that melody come from? How come when you add harmonies the song suddenly makes you want to cry? Music has magic, I really think it does. They are different mediums but they are both crafts and they both can transport you into a different world.

Earlier this year you just put out your last record with Richmond Fontaine (for the foreseeable future?), what do you see yourself working on in the near future? Will music take a backseat to writing, or do you have other projects in mind?
You’re right, RF just finished its last big tour. Next year I’ll start work on my new band The Delines. I’ll probably do that band and stay at home more and try and work on my novels.

Willy Vlautin will be reading at the UP Bookstore on Monday, November 28th at 7:30 pm.

 

*Photo by Dan Eccles, from the New York Times Sunday Book Review.