Footnotes: The Department Newsletter

Volume 52 | January 22, 2008| Number 16

FROM THE GRADUATE STUDIES OFFICE 

Conference Travel Grants
Applications for Spring 2008 Conference Travel Grants have been placed in mailboxes. If you did not receive an application please stop by the Grad Studies Office. Applications are due in 210 EB on February 18.

Dissertation Travel Grants
Information regarding Graduate College Dissertation Travel Grants has been distributed to mailboxes. If you did not receive the information but feel that you should have, please see Stephanie in 210 EB. Applications are due February 26.

Student Fellowships for 2008-09
Instructions for applying for 2008-09 fellowships were emailed on Friday, January 18.  If you would like a paper copy of these instructions please see Stephanie Shockey.  Applications are due in 210 EB on March 7, 2008.

Fellowship Payment
Graduate students on fellowship for the Spring semester (1/16/08-5/15/08), will receive their first fellowship payment on 2/16/08 and their last payment on 5/16/08.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Congratulations!

*Melissa Bailes successfully passed her Bender and natural History: 1750-1830 (Underwood, Ch.; Murison, Markley, Wood) on 12/7/07.

*T. J. Boynton successfully passed his Special Field exam with Distinction on British and Irish Literature, 1885-1945 ( Valente, Ch.; Goodlad, Esty, Hansen) on 12/17/07.

*Tara Lyons successfully passed her Special Field exam on English Renaissance Literature (Neely, Ch.; Perry, Lesser, L. Newcomb) on 1/17/08.

Spring 2008 – Dates to Remember
January 25: Last day to add name to May degree list using Web Self-Service
January 28: Last day to add/drop a semester course on Web Self-Service
January 28: Last day to add a first-half session course
February 22: Last day to add a semester course at OAR without department approval
February 22: Last day to elect or change credit/no-credit option for a first half-session course
February 22: Last day to drop a first half-session course
March 10: Second half-session courses begin
March 15-23: Spring Break
March 14: Instruction resumes
April 4: Last day to add a second half-session course
April 4: Last day to add name to May degree list
April 11: Last day to withdraw from a current term without a grade of W
April 11: Last day to elect/change credit/no-credit option for a semester course
April 11: Last day for student to drop a semester course without a grade of W (without
approval)
April 11: Last day to take final exam for May doctoral degree
April 25: Last day to elect/change credit/no-credit option for a second half-session course
April 25: Last day to drop a second half-session course
April 25: Last day to deposit May master’s theses
April 30: Last day of instruction
May 1: Reading Day
May 1: Last day to add or drop a semester course with approval (a W is recorded)
May 1: Last day to remove an I grade from fall 2007 to prevent F by rule
May 2-9: Final examination period
May 2 : Last day to deposit May doctoral dissertations
May 11: May degree conferral (Commencement)

 

REMINDER TO FACULTY AND GRADUATE STUDENTS

It is our department’s policy to keep on file syllabi for each section of all English Department courses (Literature, Rhetoric, Creative Writing and BTW). Please submit a copy of your syllabus for each class you are teaching this semester to Maureen in room 200 or mailbox # 92.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

 This is a call for papers for an upcoming graduate student forum sponsored by the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory: Megacities: Agglomerating Culture, Media, and Infrastructures

With rising global populations increasingly concentrating in metropolitan areas, the megacity (metropolitan areas with populations of 10,000,000 or higher) has become a prominent figure not only in geopolitics and corporate economics, but also in the fields of ecology, history, literature, communications, and urban planning, to name but a few. This forum will concentrate on how a vast but related field of individuals, urban infrastructures, ecosystems, communications technologies, histories, and cultural identities respond to and inhabit these new urban spaces. If the megacity is a trend that will continue to grow, what specific changes will it bring about? What profound changes has it already produced? What are the cultural and political implications of megacities? How can critics, theorists, artists, and urbanists address these implications?

The Unit is looking for graduate student presenters from any department, though faculty and students are welcome to attend. The event is open to the general public and will take place Monday, April 14th at the Levis Faculty Center, and will be part of the Unit for Criticism's Spring Colloquium Series.

Please submit proposals for ten minute presentations to Michael Simeone (mpsimeon@uiuc.edu). Proposals are not to exceed 300 words and are due Monday, February 11th.

EVENT

MILLERCOMM2008
Audrey Niffenegger, Author, The Time Traveler’s Wife and MFA Program in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts, Columbia College, Chicago.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008
4:00 p.m.
Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum
600 South Gregory Street , Urbana
University of Illinois

See file in 213 EB (Journals Room).

 

NEW ONLINE JOURNAL

A new online journal dedicated to rural issues is now accepting papers for peer review. The Online Journal of Rural Research & Policy will begin publishing these peer-reviewed articles in January 2008. Subject areas span the academic field, from Anthropology to Vet Medicine. If you do research that deals with rural places or events, this is your journal.

For the last year the journal has focused on invited works by such well-known authors as Cornelia Flora and Frank and Deborah Popper. We are looking for qualitative, historical, legal, and quantitative research that deals with the particularly unique challenges and changes occurring in small communities.

We would also like to invite your graduate students who have presented rural research at a conference, and have not already been published, to submit their papers for archive on our website. Senior theses regarding rural research and policy would also be considered for archive.

Please consider the Online Journal of Rural Research Policy for your articles. Our publication policies and editorial board at can be found at http://www.ojrrp.org.

Thank you.
Dr. Thomas HP Gould
Associate Professor
Kansas State University
tgould@ksu.edu

 

FACULTY ACTIVITIES AND PUBLICATIONS

Philip Graham
--Organizer and panelist, for the panel “Travel Writing: To Simmer Or Not To Simmer?” at the Non-Fiction Now 2007 Conference, University of Iowa. November 2, 2007.

--“8:46,” a short story (adapted from 11 short chapters from the novel-in-progress Dreaming the Towers), in The Los Angeles Review, #4, 2007. Grenada Hills, California.

--“We Capture the Castle,” dispatch from Lisbon #14, in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, December 14, 2007. http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/philipgraham/index.html

--review of J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Diary of a Bad Year, in The New Leader, November/ December 2007, pp. 23-25. Columbia University, New York, New York.
http://www.thenewleader.com/