Department of English | Events

Creative Writing Reading Series ft. Mike Corrao & Valerie Hsiung

2022-10-05T14:52:10-04:00

Mike Corrao is the author of numerous works including Gut Text (11:11 Press), Rituals Performed in the Absence of Ganymede (11:11 Press), Desert Tiles (Equus Press), and Smut-Maker (Inside the Castle). As an artist and designer, his work has been featured in the catalogs of 11:11 Press, Fonograf Editions, Apocalypse Party, Inside the Castle, and other presses. His work often explores the haptic, architectural, and organismal qualities of the text-object. As an editor, he operates CLOAK.wtf.

Valerie Hsiung is a poet, interdisciplinary artist, and the author of several poetry and hybrid writing collections, including The only name we can call it now is not its only name (Counterpath, 2023), To love an artist (Essay Press, 2022), selected by Renee Gladman for the 2021 Essay Press Book Prize, outside voices, please (CSU), selected for the 2019 CSU Open Book Prize, Name Date of Birth Emergency Contact (The Gleaners), YOU & ME FOREVER (Action Books), and e f g (Action Books). Born in the Year of the Earth Snake and raised by Chinese-Taiwanese immigrants in Cincinnati, Ohio, she now lives in the mountains of Colorado where she teaches as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing & Poetics at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa.

Where: 232 Decio Commons
Start Time: Nov 02, 2022 07:00PM EDT
End Time: Nov 02, 2022 09:00PM EDT

The 2022 Laura Shannon Prize with Pamela Cheek: "The Literary ‘Me Too’ of the 18th Century: Women’s Writing and the Capital of Virtue"

2022-10-27T12:21:08-04:00

The Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame awarded the 2022 Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies to Pamela L. Cheek, professor of French and comparative literature at the University of New Mexico, for her book “Heroines and Local Girls: The Transnational Emergence of Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century,” published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

The Laura Shannon Prize, one of the preeminent prizes for European studies, is awarded each year to the best book that transcends a focus on any one country, state, or people to stimulate new ways of thinking about contemporary Europe as a whole. The next award cycle in the Humanities for 2024 is accepting nominations through February 15, 2023.

Professor Cheek will accept the award and deliver a public lecture titled "The Literary ‘Me Too’ of the 18th Century: Women’s Writing and the Capital of Virtue" on Thursday, November 3 at 5:30 p.m. in 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Halls while at the University of Notre Dame.

About the Lecture

How did eighteenth-century Western European literature explore and exploit sexual assault? And what happened when women wrote about it? This talk examines the literary innovation and the legacy for identity group formation in print culture that emerged from the eighteenth-century’s ‘me too’ moment.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Current and past prize-winning books from the Laura Shannon Prize will be available for purchase on-site.

Read the Full Press Release

Originally published at nanovic.nd.edu.

Where: 1050 Jenkins Nanovic Halls
Start Time: Nov 03, 2022 05:30PM EDT
End Time: Nov 03, 2022 07:00PM EDT

Ahead of the Game with Arts & Letters: "Of Abandonment and a Storm’s Wake: Puerto Rico, Collective Memory, and Speculating Futures"

2022-09-29T10:46:14-04:00

A different game plan for autumn weekends. You are invited to join in discussion with Notre Dame’s most engaging faculty on some of the most pressing and fascinating issues of our times. Each lecture and Q&A is presented on a home game Friday. Visit Ahead of the Game for a complete listing.

Xavier Navarro Aquino
Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing

Xavier Navarro Aquino’s celebrated 2022 novel Velorio addresses Hurricane Maria’s impact on a compelling cast of characters in Puerto Rico. Join the author as he draws from that work to discuss colonialism, migration, and the power of memory and storytelling in shaping our personal and collective futures.

All lectures are free and open to the public. No tickets required.

Originally published at al.nd.edu.

Where: LaBar Recital Hall within O'Neill Hall
Start Time: Nov 04, 2022 02:30PM EDT
End Time: Nov 04, 2022 03:30PM EDT

Publishing Your Research: Perspectives from Three Leading Academic Presses

2022-10-25T13:33:28-04:00

On November 9, ISLA will host a panel discussion and Q&A session about academic publishing open to all faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students. This event will provide a rare opportunity for scholars at Notre Dame to engage directly with editors from three leading academic publishers here on the Notre Dame campus.

Our guests will include:

Elizabeth Ault, Editor, Duke University Press

Timothy Mennel, Executive Editor, University of Chicago Press

Elizabeth Demers, Editorial Director, University of Michigan Press

Audience Q&A will follow a brief presentation from each of our guests. Join us 3:30 p.m to 5:00 p.m in Main Building Room 200.

Click here to register.

Originally published at isla.nd.edu.

Where: Main Building Room 200
Start Time: Nov 09, 2022 03:30PM EST
End Time: Nov 09, 2022 05:00PM EST

Rev. Bernie Clark, C.S.C., Lecture with Clint Smith: "Race, Memory, and Public History"

2022-10-27T12:24:44-04:00

The annual Rev. Bernie Clark, C.S.C., Lecture was created by the Center for Social Concerns in 2009 in order to highlight justice issues and themes affecting the common good. This fall event honors Fr. Bernie who died young but influenced students with the life lesson of a “Theory of Enough." Past speakers have included scholars and practitioners working to create a more just future for all.

2022 Annual Rev. Bernie Clark, C.S.C., Lecture

featuring Clint Smith, Ph.D.

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times Bestseller and a 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner for Nonfiction, and the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review and elsewhere.

Partners for this event include the Department of Africana Studies, Department of American Studies, Department of History, and the Initiative for Race and Resilience.

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Where: Morris Inn, Smith Ballroom
Start Time: Nov 09, 2022 05:00PM EST
End Time: Nov 09, 2022 06:30PM EST

An evening with Natasha Trethewey

2022-10-18T12:30:03-04:00

Pulitzer Prize winner, former U.S. Poet Laureate, and Initiative on Race and Resilience artist-in-residence for 2022–23

7:30–9 p.m. poetry reading
9–10 p.m. reception and book signing

Books will be available for purchase before and after the reading.

Please RSVP

This event will also be livestreamed here.

Presented by the Initiative on Race and Resilience

Co-sponsored by
Creative Writing Program
Department of Africana Studies
Department of American Studies
Department of English
Gender Studies Program

Originally published at raceandresilience.nd.edu.

Where: McKenna Hall Auditorium
Start Time: Nov 09, 2022 07:30PM EST
End Time: Nov 09, 2022 10:00PM EST

Michael Gorra: "The Saddest Words: William Faulkner and the Landscape of Memory"

2022-10-25T09:09:26-04:00

Where: 232 English Commons
Start Time: Nov 11, 2022 12:00PM EST
End Time: Nov 11, 2022 01:30PM EST

Location: 232 English Commons

Michael Gorra is the Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English at Smith College and the author of The Bells in Their Silence, Travels through German, Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War…

MFA Reading Series ft. Rose Darline Darbouze, Chibuike Ogbonnaya, & Taylor Thomas

2022-10-13T11:24:41-04:00

Come listen to the second MFA reading of the semester on Wednesday, November 16th. Readers include Rose Darline Darbouze, Chibuike Ogbonnaya, & Taylor Thomas

Rose Darline Darbouze is from Béraud, Haiti. She received a BFA in Interior Design at the New York School of Interior Design and is an MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Notre Dame.

Chibuike Ogbonnaya writes stories that explore humanity, gender and sexuality. They obtained combined honors in English and Literary Studies and History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Their unpublished collection of thematically linked short stories featuring women, feminine gay men, and gender queer was a finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review First Book Prize. Chibuike is an alumni of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Green Mountains Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Taint Taint Taint Magazine, Stellium, Akuko Magazine, Black Femme Co, and elsewhere.

Taylor Thomas is a biracial & bisexual emerging writer from Indiana. Her work has been published in Bayou Magazine, So to Speak Journal, The Indianapolis Review, root and branch, Wingless Dreamer, and Indianapolis New Voices. Her piece "Consequences Often Unheard Of" will be published by Salt Hill Journal in 2022. She was selected as a Hurston/Wright Fellow in 2022 and she received the Outstanding Literary Essay award from Voices of Diversity in 2021. She lives in South Bend, Indiana with her husband, Herschel, and her dogs, Bella & Buster.

Where: Riley Hall Gallery 214
Start Time: Nov 16, 2022 07:00PM EST
End Time: Nov 16, 2022 09:00PM EST

To Exorcise the Fear of War: Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin in conversation with Sinan Antoon

2022-10-28T09:35:58-04:00

Register Here

Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin is one of Sudan's most prominent and popular authors. He was born in 1963 in Kassala, East Sudan; his family is originally from Darfur. He studied business administration in Assiut, Egypt. Upon returning to Sudan, he worked as a secondary school teacher, and, from 2000 to 2007, for the NGO Plan International Sudan. Sakin has written many novels and collections of short stories, including al-Jango (2010), which won the al-Tayyib Salih prize and was, shortly after, banned by the Sudanese government. In 2012, his books, including Woman from Campo Kadis (2004), were confiscated from the Khartoum book fair and banned. In 2012, Baraka Sakin left Sudan, seeking exile in Austria, where he has lived since. He publishes his books in Cairo.

Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, translator, and scholar. He was born and raised in Baghdad where he finished a B.A in English at Baghdad University in 1990. He left to the United States after the 1991 Gulf War. He was educated at Georgetown and Harvard where he obtained a doctorate in Arabic Literature in 2006. Antoon has published three collections of poetry and four novels in Arabic. His work has been widely translated, and he is the translator of works by Mahmoud Darwish, Saadi Youssef, and Ibtisam Azem. Antoon is an Associate Professor at New York University's Gallatin School and co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya.

This conversation will be held primarily in the Arabic language, with English language interpretation provided by Asmaa Abady, a linguist with over seventeen years of experience within language based roles. Asmaa Abady's working languages are Arabic and English. She has worked as an interpreter with the International Criminal Court, Al-Araby TV Network, and The Ministry of Justice, UK.

Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance, launched by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, is a research collective and lecture series co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and housed at the newly launched Initiative on Race and Resilience, directed by Mark Sanders, Professor of English and Africana Studies. The series focuses on contemporary literature, film, and visual art that has been shaped by revolutionary and resistance movements, decolonization, migration, class and economic warfare, communal and state-sanctioned violence, and human rights violations. We aim to theorize new modes of contemporary literary and artistic resistance across national borders and to amplify the voices of scholars, artists, and writers of color whose lived experience is instrumental in forging new alliances across formal, linguistic and national boundaries.

Originally published at litofexile.nd.edu.

Where: Live on Zoom
Start Time: Nov 18, 2022 12:00PM EST
End Time: Nov 18, 2022 01:30PM EST

MVP Fridays | Elizabeth Bruenig: How do we find the truth?

2022-10-27T12:26:30-04:00

Join the Center for Social Concerns for Friday afternoons on home football weekends for lectures by national leaders, journalists, and writers on questions of meaning, values, and purpose. Each lecture will be followed by a reception.

How do we find the truth?

Elizabeth Bruenig, staff writer, The Atlantic

A Marshall Scholar with an MPhil in Christian theology, Elizabeth Bruenig joined The New Republic in 2015, where she worked until early 2016, when she joined The Washington Post as an assistant editor. Liz spent the next several years conceiving of essays for the Post’s Outlook section and children for herself and her husband, Matt. In 2018, Liz joined the Post’s Opinion section as a columnist, and in 2019, she was named a Pulitzer finalist in feature writing for her investigation of a gang rape that had taken place during her time as a Texan high school student. Liz accepted a role with The New York Times as an opinion writer, in 2020, and in 2021, after an exciting year with the Times, came aboard as a staff writer with The Atlantic, where she publishes columns, essays, reported features, and undertakes a number of multimedia projects. Liz’s reporting focuses on violence in America and its aftermath, with particular focus on capital punishment.

Liz lives in Connecticut with her husband and two daughters and two cats.

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Where: Stinson-Remick Hall of Engineering Atrium
Start Time: Nov 18, 2022 04:00PM EST
End Time: Nov 18, 2022 06:00PM EST

From South Bend to Vacca Vale: A Conversation with Tess Gunty

2022-10-25T13:28:54-04:00

Tess Gunty's debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, was recently published by Knopf (North America) and Oneworld (UK & Commonwealth). In August, Booksellers across the UK awarded The Rabbit Hutch the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, voting it the best debut novel of 2022. The Rabbit Hutch is a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick of the Month and an IndieNext Pick. Tess has an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Granta, Literary Hub, Joyland, Freeman's, the Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, Flash, and elsewhere. She was raised in South Bend, Indiana, and lives in Los Angeles.

Co-sponsored by Notre Dame Magazine

Where: 232 Decio Commons
Start Time: Nov 30, 2022 07:00PM EST
End Time: Nov 30, 2022 08:30PM EST

An Evening with Tess Gunty: The Rabbit Hutch

2022-11-02T17:28:03-04:00

Join us as we welcome Tess Gunty back to South Bend for a reading and discussion of her recently released and critically acclaimed novel, The Rabbit Hutch.

In her debut novel, Tess Gunty chronicles life in an all too familiar rustbelt city, Vacca Vale. Set across one week and culminating in a shocking act, The Rabbit Hutch chronicles a town on the brink, desperate for rebirth. How far will its residents go to achieve it?

Co-sponsored by Notre Dame Magazine

Where: St. Joseph County Public LIbrary (Community Learning Center, Ballroom)
Start Time: Dec 01, 2022 06:00PM EST
End Time: Dec 01, 2022 08:00PM EST