English Department News

Fall 2017

Interview with Leni Zumas

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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 

Curriculum Changes: A Conversation with Dr. Larson

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Registration for the spring semester is fast-approaching, and the times they are a-changin’.  As you astute English majors have probably already noticed, the English department has undergone major curriculum changes. Graduation requirements along with the English courses themselves have been revised, and this leaves many students confused. That’s why I sat down with English Department Chair Dr. Lars Larson to talk about the new changes. Hopefully, this conversation answers some questions and explains why change can be a good thing.  

LM: As the new chair, you know a lot about the changes going on in the English department. The primary change is obviously the capstone, so can you describe the new spring capstone workshop and what it’s going to be like?  

LL: Capstone. It’s a challenging research project because students are largely on their own. The old model is independent study. We match you up with a professor—not always a student’s first choice unfortunately—but someone who has background in the field that the student is interested in. But it’s largely self-patrolled, so people can get lost in the process of researching.  We just find that peer networks are one of the best models for getting things done. Being in a group where everybody is doing a similar type of activity, [even if] the specific subject is different…just makes a lot more sense.  

We were drawing from other departments on campus that have this model. We wanted a better experience for students and a way to compensate professors for their time. In the old model, no one was getting any credit or compensation for their work with the students. So why not build it into a seminar? Have a professor of record in charge of it. They don’t need to be an expert on the subjects that the various students want to research, but they are expert in learning how to learn. That’s what I think was missing from the old model; there wasn’t enough provision of that learning how to learn. We assumed that the courses they had taken—especially the 400 levels—had geared them up, and I just think a 30-page paper is an entirely new kind of project. That scale is just a different beast.  

LM: And it’s probably helpful to just have peers give each other feedback as well.  

LL: Exactly. Peer review. We try to remind students that the audience for their papers is not their professors. It’s any given reader out there. That’s how you raise the stakes of your writing. Imagine an audience who’s anonymous. How do you pull them in? How do you interest them and get over the stilted prose that sometimes happens when you write for a professor?  

LM: The first time the new capstone is offered is this spring. Will it become the only option for English majors? 

LL: Eventually. Students who came in with the old requirements have the option to take it independently. In the next two or three years, it will be phased out. And we encourage even those who are grandfathered in on those old requirements to try this seminar style out, because I think it’s going to be a much better model.  

LM: Dr. Hiro is teaching the capstone this spring. Will you rotate who teaches it?   

LL: That’s right. She is going to develop the model, and others will build on it. 

LM: I remember when we were originally informed about the new capstone the idea was that you’d pick a paper you’d already written for an earlier course and expand on it. Is that still the case or can you come in with a new thesis? 

LL: I believe you have the option to come in with a new thesis. But, we were interested in that option of building on something you’ve worked on before and taking it through some transformations. That’s another one of the problems with the independent study model. A lot of students weren’t necessarily building on something that they’d worked with before, so it was totally new to them; and [they had to do it] in the space of what turns out to be less than a semester. It wasn’t enough time for people to get up to that level that we want. It would change if people already had a running head start. It will help get these papers up to a level of complexity that you just can’t get [in] your first go around.  

LM: It’s also nice in the sense that you write things and they often fall by the wayside. It’s nice to be able to fully integrate the time you’ve spent at UP.  

LL: Absolutely. We really wanted that continuity and to make students’ past classes feel like they are brought to bear on this current problem, which all papers are; they are an attempt at solving a problem. Sometimes, when you write a paper, it’s pretty simple, right? [When you return to it] a kind of interesting dialectical push-and-pull [is] there that can lead to a more complex thesis—something that goes beyond common sense and brings out the value. [It] allows you to struggle a bit more. 

LM: Aside from the capstone, there’s going to be changes coming in the form of new survey courses, right?  

LL: Well, they started this semester. The old model broke up the historical survey of say British literature into Anglo-Saxon to Medieval, Renaissance, 18th century, Romantic, Victorian, early 20th century, and later 20th century. So British literature alone had seven parts to it. American literature had four different parts. 

 As a different model, we are going to go a little more speedily. British literature is broken up into two sections. American into two sections as well. British literature splits after the 18th century, so Anglo-Saxon to 18th century—that 1000-year span—and then 19th and 20th century British. American [now] goes from origins to 1900 and [then] 1900 to present. It’s just a bit easier to cover, though we are sacrificing some of the fine-grained focus.  

LM: Yeah, I’m thinking about the course American Literature: 1900 to Present, which I’m currently taking from you. We aren’t really reading a lot of full books. 

LL: As you know, it is a pretty hasty survey, but it’s a birds-eye view. We wanted to give that intentional, birds-eye overview, because we go into a lot of depth and richness in our genre-based and topic-based courses. 

LM: Do you know how long the new curriculum will take to integrate? Is it already in full swing?  

LL: This is the model from here on out. As of Fall 2017, that’s the change; so incoming freshmen are pretty much the first people who are 100% on this new model. That means the sophomores, juniors, and seniors have the old standards, but they can incorporate [classes] from the [new] offerings we have.  

LM: Given the fact that surveys are now condensed, do you feel like that will be better in the long run at giving our department a better sense of cohesion?   

LL: The idea [is] that this simplified survey structure will give students more of a feeling of being in common with each other. For someone who has taken Anglo-Saxon, Contemporary British lit, and maybe an American lit course, it feels so disarticulated, as opposed to [taking] one of four classes. Your peers will have had very similar experiences. 

LM: Are there any other changes besides the ones we’ve discussed?  

LL: Starting next year [in Fall 2018], minors can take any upper-division English course to satisfy their requirements. Currently, it is to take five courses; two have to be 400 level[s]. We wanted to give a little more freedom to those minors to take what they want, to explore, to be a tourist. 

LM: So you won’t have to take a 400-level course anymore? 

LL: Nope, as of next fall. One of the complications is that you now need to have taken ENG 225 to be in a 400 level course. So that’s where things got complicated with the minors. It’s partly why we are dropping that requirement, because it means they’ll need that requirement [of ENG 225] to be waived. The reason we started clamping down is because we want that 400 level experience to have a different feel. Fewer people in the class for one. But number two, everybody is up to speed on the critical lenses that ENG 225 instilled. And that just raises the level of discourse—the level at which you can be talking about these texts. There’s not a whole lot of holding hands and taking people through the basics, as we try to do in, say, the surveys.  

Thanks to Dr. Larson for sitting down with me! Don’t forget that Spring registration officially begins next Monday. Happy course hunting, English majors! 

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

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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

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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

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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.