University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Footnotes: The Department Newsletter

Volume 52 |February 4, 2008| Number 18

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.

Spring 2008 – Dates to Remember
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)

FROM THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES OFFICE

Rhetoric and AWP Advisors
The Division of Rhetoric is now accepting applications from TAs interested in becoming Rhetoric or AWP Advisors during the 2008-09 academic year. We encourage applications from all who are interested in helping new instructors get acclimated to the classroom and who would like to participate in running the programs. Advisors are responsible for planning and participating in orientation, training new instructors, and for the overall success of the Rhetoric and AWP programs. Advising is a 33 percent appointment for the year; advisors usually serve two one-year terms. Assistants to the Director of Rhetoric and AWP are usually chosen from the ranks of former advisors. To apply, please schedule an interview with Paul Prior (see Lauri in 294 EB). Submit a letter that specifies your reasons for applying, outlines your philosophy of writing instruction, and details your qualifications for the appointment. In your letter, please be sure to indicate whether you are interested in advising for Rhetoric or AWP. Letters should be received by Lauri Harden by February 15. Interviews will then be scheduled for the week of February 18 th.

PPW Advisors
Applications are now being accepted for the position of Program Coordinator for Programs in Professional Writing. Program Coordinators plan and participate in orientation, train new instructors and take meaningful part in the upkeep and development of PPW. The position is a one year 33% appointment beginning Fall 2008. Successful PC’s can renew for an additional year. Candidates should have taught in the program for two full semesters before applying. For further information, please contact Jim Frost; to apply, please submit a cover letter and see Lauri Harden to schedule an interview by February 15. Interviews will be scheduled for the week of February 18 th.

FELLOWSHIPS

Advertising Educational Foundation’s 2008 Visiting Professor Program (VPP)
A two-week summer fellowship for professors teaching in the liberal arts, advertising, marketing and communications. The VPP provides a forum for the exchange of ideas between academia and the industry.

Program dates for the 2008 VPP are July 14 th – July 25 th. You may fill out an application online by visiting the On-Campus section of our website, www.aef.com. All supporting materials (CV, letter of recommendation and statement) must be mailed and received in our office by February 15 th.

For more information see file in 213 EB (Journals Room).

COLLOQUIA

CWS Colloquia Series presents
EILEEN SCHELL
Professor of English
Syracuse University

“The Year of the Locavore: The Rhetoric of the Local Food Movement”

In this presentation, I analyze the rhetorical claims of the U.S. local food movement as manifested in two high-profile books by investigative journalist Michael Pollan “The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” and novelist Barbara Kingsolver “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.” Drawing on environmental rhetoric and critical literacy studies, I examine how Pollan and Kingsolver intervene in public discourses about food aesthetics, economics, ethics, and politics. In particular, I focus on how Pollan and Kingsolver promote a local food literacy even as the class politics in their books remain largely unexamined.

February 7, 2008
4:00-5:30 p.m.
Room 126 LIS

For more information, contact Teresa Bertram at 333-3251 (tbertram@uiuc.edu)

NATIONAL WRITING PROJECT SITE

National Writing Project Site: UIWP
In collaboration with the Center for Writing Studies and the College of Education, the Department of English has received a grant from the federal government to establish the University of Illinois Writing Project (UIWP). Our host organization, the National Writing Project (NWP), which was founded in 1974 at the University of California-Berkeley, has cultivated an impressive professional development network of writing teachers at all grade levels and in all subjects. Working primarily through the university, the NWP supports the teaching of writing in the nation’s schools and serves more than 100,000 teachers at approximately 200 sites here and abroad. This summer, the UIWP will serve members of the Urbana-Champaign community and beyond with its first Summer Institute. Gail Hawisher, UIWP Director, and Libbie Morley and Sarah McCarthey, Co-Directors, have already begun planning for this event. See the emerging website at http://www.uiwp.uiuc.edu/

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Tenth Annual Conference of the Marxist Reading Group
Whither Culture?: Toward Histories, Futures, Theories, and Productions of the Social

Keynote Speakers: Michael Denning, Paula Rabinowitz, Andrew Ross, and Sergio Vega

University of Florida
Gainesville , Florida
March 27-29, 2008

“Culture” is just as vexing today as it was in 1976 when Raymond Williams wrote that the term “is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.” Challenged by a disciplinary backlash in a literary field that turns from cultural orientations to aesthetics and formalism, in studies of history where the term is often perceived as ahistorical and reductive, in anthropology departments where it is frequently associated with Western biases, and in still other fields where it is perceived to be vague to the point of emptiness, “culture” now faces a future as uncertain as its definition is ambiguous.

The Tenth Annual Conference of the Marxist Reading Group investigates culture from a Marxist perspective and challenges Marxist scholars to clarify and explore such questions as: How might we, or do we want to, revive or refurbish “culture” after the turn away from it? How can we use cultural studies methodologies after the critique? What is the value of preserving “culture” in different disciplines? What are the consequences of mobilizing concepts of culture around discursive subjects? What are the limits of political agency in cultural productions?

This conference seeks papers that investigate “culture” from a Marxist perspective.

Michael Denning is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American Studies at Yale University. His 1996 book, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, argues for the centrality of the Popular Front in twentieth-century American culture. His most recent book, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds, studies the prominence of the culture concept as a symptom of the Cold War years. In addition to his scholarship and teaching, Denning works as a labor activist.

Paula Rabinowitz is the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Art’s Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities. Her department affiliations include English, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, American Studies, and Feminist Studies departments. Her research and teaching interests consistently combine film, literature, painting and photography. Rabinowitz’s Labor and Desire: Women’s Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America reconsiders the role and production of women during an era famous for its male actors in the radical left. Her current projects include an analysis of pulp fiction and American modernism, modernist women painters, and women’s time-based art since the 1970s.

Andrew Ross chairs the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. His work on popular culture and technology has established him as one of the leading figures in cultural studies in the U.S. More recently, his work has focused on class and labor in the context of globalization, notably in No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs (2002); Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor (2004); and Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade—Lessons from Shanghai (2006).

Sergio Vega received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1996. He has been a professor at the University of Florida since 1999, and currently teaches in the photography and sculpture departments. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 51st Biennale di Venezia, the 5th Biennal de Lyon, Soonsbeek 9, Arnhem, the 5th Gwangju Biennial, the 1st Yokohama Triennale, and the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale. Vega's artistic project involves a range of media, including text, photographs, videos, sculpture-objects, dioramas, scale models and installations.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

Histories and theories of the culture wars
Culture and globalization
Culture and commodities
Appropriation of radical culture by the mainstream publics
Interdisciplinarity after the backlash against cultural studies
Disciplinarity and boundaries of “culture”
Culture in the context of literature, film, and other media
Culture and new media
Immigration, migration, and culture
National identity and culture
The politics of cultural actors
Studies of popular culture
Studies of subculture
The culture industry in the age of globalization
Rhetoric of culture in electoral politics
The Subversive
Hegemony and culture
Academic cultures

Please submit a 250-word abstract (and some key words) for a 20-minute presentation along with a short bio and contact information at the link below by February 15, 2008. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by February 18, 2008.

Below you will find the full CFP, which you can also view at the conference website: http://grove.ufl.edu/~gsg/bwwc/index.php?cf=5

More information on the Marxist Reading Group and our previous conferences can be found here: http://www.english.ufl.edu/mrg. Questions about the conference may be directed to 2007mrg@gmail.com. Questions about this site may be directed to Michael Mayne at mayne@ufl.edu.



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Footnotes Directory	Footnotes: The Department Newsletter Volume 52 \|February 4, 2008\| Number 18 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. Spring 2008 – Dates to Remember 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) FROM THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES OFFICE Rhetoric and AWP Advisors The Division of Rhetoric is now accepting applications from TAs interested in becoming Rhetoric or AWP Advisors during the 2008-09 academic year. We encourage applications from all who are interested in helping new instructors get acclimated to the classroom and who would like to participate in running the programs. Advisors are responsible for planning and participating in orientation, training new instructors, and for the overall success of the Rhetoric and AWP programs. Advising is a 33 percent appointment for the year; advisors usually serve two one-year terms. Assistants to the Director of Rhetoric and AWP are usually chosen from the ranks of former advisors. To apply, please schedule an interview with Paul Prior (see Lauri in 294 EB). Submit a letter that specifies your reasons for applying, outlines your philosophy of writing instruction, and details your qualifications for the appointment. In your letter, please be sure to indicate whether you are interested in advising for Rhetoric or AWP. Letters should be received by Lauri Harden by February 15. Interviews will then be scheduled for the week of February 18 th. PPW Advisors Applications are now being accepted for the position of Program Coordinator for Programs in Professional Writing. Program Coordinators plan and participate in orientation, train new instructors and take meaningful part in the upkeep and development of PPW. The position is a one year 33% appointment beginning Fall 2008. Successful PC’s can renew for an additional year. Candidates should have taught in the program for two full semesters before applying. For further information, please contact Jim Frost; to apply, please submit a cover letter and see Lauri Harden to schedule an interview by February 15. Interviews will be scheduled for the week of February 18 th. FELLOWSHIPS Advertising Educational Foundation’s 2008 Visiting Professor Program (VPP) A two-week summer fellowship for professors teaching in the liberal arts, advertising, marketing and communications. The VPP provides a forum for the exchange of ideas between academia and the industry. Program dates for the 2008 VPP are July 14 th – July 25 th. You may fill out an application online by visiting the On-Campus section of our website, www.aef.com. All supporting materials (CV, letter of recommendation and statement) must be mailed and received in our office by February 15 th. For more information see file in 213 EB (Journals Room). COLLOQUIA CWS Colloquia Series presents EILEEN SCHELL Professor of English Syracuse University “The Year of the Locavore: The Rhetoric of the Local Food Movement” In this presentation, I analyze the rhetorical claims of the U.S. local food movement as manifested in two high-profile books by investigative journalist Michael Pollan “The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” and novelist Barbara Kingsolver “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.” Drawing on environmental rhetoric and critical literacy studies, I examine how Pollan and Kingsolver intervene in public discourses about food aesthetics, economics, ethics, and politics. In particular, I focus on how Pollan and Kingsolver promote a local food literacy even as the class politics in their books remain largely unexamined. February 7, 2008 4:00-5:30 p.m. Room 126 LIS For more information, contact Teresa Bertram at 333-3251 (tbertram@uiuc.edu) NATIONAL WRITING PROJECT SITE National Writing Project Site: UIWP In collaboration with the Center for Writing Studies and the College of Education, the Department of English has received a grant from the federal government to establish the University of Illinois Writing Project (UIWP). Our host organization, the National Writing Project (NWP), which was founded in 1974 at the University of California-Berkeley, has cultivated an impressive professional development network of writing teachers at all grade levels and in all subjects. Working primarily through the university, the NWP supports the teaching of writing in the nation’s schools and serves more than 100,000 teachers at approximately 200 sites here and abroad. This summer, the UIWP will serve members of the Urbana-Champaign community and beyond with its first Summer Institute. Gail Hawisher, UIWP Director, and Libbie Morley and Sarah McCarthey, Co-Directors, have already begun planning for this event. See the emerging website at http://www.uiwp.uiuc.edu/ CALL FOR PAPERS The Tenth Annual Conference of the Marxist Reading Group Whither Culture?: Toward Histories, Futures, Theories, and Productions of the Social Keynote Speakers: Michael Denning, Paula Rabinowitz, Andrew Ross, and Sergio Vega University of Florida Gainesville , Florida March 27-29, 2008 “Culture” is just as vexing today as it was in 1976 when Raymond Williams wrote that the term “is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.” Challenged by a disciplinary backlash in a literary field that turns from cultural orientations to aesthetics and formalism, in studies of history where the term is often perceived as ahistorical and reductive, in anthropology departments where it is frequently associated with Western biases, and in still other fields where it is perceived to be vague to the point of emptiness, “culture” now faces a future as uncertain as its definition is ambiguous. The Tenth Annual Conference of the Marxist Reading Group investigates culture from a Marxist perspective and challenges Marxist scholars to clarify and explore such questions as: How might we, or do we want to, revive or refurbish “culture” after the turn away from it? How can we use cultural studies methodologies after the critique? What is the value of preserving “culture” in different disciplines? What are the consequences of mobilizing concepts of culture around discursive subjects? What are the limits of political agency in cultural productions? This conference seeks papers that investigate “culture” from a Marxist perspective. Michael Denning is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American Studies at Yale University. His 1996 book, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, argues for the centrality of the Popular Front in twentieth-century American culture. His most recent book, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds, studies the prominence of the culture concept as a symptom of the Cold War years. In addition to his scholarship and teaching, Denning works as a labor activist. Paula Rabinowitz is the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Art’s Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities. Her department affiliations include English, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, American Studies, and Feminist Studies departments. Her research and teaching interests consistently combine film, literature, painting and photography. Rabinowitz’s Labor and Desire: Women’s Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America reconsiders the role and production of women during an era famous for its male actors in the radical left. Her current projects include an analysis of pulp fiction and American modernism, modernist women painters, and women’s time-based art since the 1970s. Andrew Ross chairs the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. His work on popular culture and technology has established him as one of the leading figures in cultural studies in the U.S. More recently, his work has focused on class and labor in the context of globalization, notably in No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs (2002); Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor (2004); and Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade—Lessons from Shanghai (2006). Sergio Vega received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1996. He has been a professor at the University of Florida since 1999, and currently teaches in the photography and sculpture departments. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 51st Biennale di Venezia, the 5th Biennal de Lyon, Soonsbeek 9, Arnhem, the 5th Gwangju Biennial, the 1st Yokohama Triennale, and the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale. Vega's artistic project involves a range of media, including text, photographs, videos, sculpture-objects, dioramas, scale models and installations. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following: Histories and theories of the culture wars Culture and globalization Culture and commodities Appropriation of radical culture by the mainstream publics Interdisciplinarity after the backlash against cultural studies Disciplinarity and boundaries of “culture” Culture in the context of literature, film, and other media Culture and new media Immigration, migration, and culture National identity and culture The politics of cultural actors Studies of popular culture Studies of subculture The culture industry in the age of globalization Rhetoric of culture in electoral politics The Subversive Hegemony and culture Academic cultures Please submit a 250-word abstract (and some key words) for a 20-minute presentation along with a short bio and contact information at the link below by February 15, 2008. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by February 18, 2008. Below you will find the full CFP, which you can also view at the conference website: http://grove.ufl.edu/~gsg/bwwc/index.php?cf=5 More information on the Marxist Reading Group and our previous conferences can be found here: http://www.english.ufl.edu/mrg. Questions about the conference may be directed to 2007mrg@gmail.com. Questions about this site may be directed to Michael Mayne at mayne@ufl.edu.

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