The focus for the Fall 2009 Theory Colloquium is "What is Enlightnement?" Our first meeting will take place on Friday, September 11, from 3:00-5:00PM in Tawes 3132.

Below, please find a list of the reading for this first session:

"What is Enlightenment?"

• Johann Karl Möhsen, "What Is to Be Done toward the Enlightenment of the Citizenry?" (1783)

• Moses Mendelssohn, "On the Question: What is Enlightenment?" (1784)
• Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" (1784)
• Karl Leonhard Reinhold, "Thoughts on Enlightenment" (1784)
• James Schmidt, "Introduction: What is Enlightenment? A Question, Its Context, and Some Consequences," from What Is Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, ed. James Schmidt (U California P, 1996)
• Rüdger Bittner, "What is Enlightenment?" from What is Enlightenment

Students formally enrolled in the Theory Colloquium can download these readings from the Colloquium's Blackboard page. Others are asked to send a request for the readings to Tita Chico (tchico@umd.edu)

The Theory Colloquium is offered as part of the ARHU Graduate Critical Theory Certificate Program. The Colloquium is open to all members of the UMCP community regardless of official enrollment. For information about the Certificate Program, please see http://www.english.umd.edu/grad-degree-/certificate-programs/grad-degree-certif-ct or contact Tita Chico, the current program coordinator.

Second Annual Graduate English Alumni Lecture:
"Inventing America (Again)"

Professor Rodrigo Lazo -- Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean in the School of Humanities at the University of California Irvine

Friday, September 4th at 3:30PM
Tawes 0201

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Professor Lazo completed his PhD in English at the University of Maryland in 1998. His book, Writing to Cuba: Filibustering and Cuban Exiles in the United States American Literature (UNC Press, 2005), emerged from his dissertation research at UMCP; he has also published in numerous journals and collections including American Literary History. At UC Irvine, Professor Lazo teaches courses in Latino literature, nineteenth century U.S. literature, and hemispheric American literature. Before joining the faculty at UC  Irvine, Professor Lazo was a member of the English Department at Miami University in Ohio.

Professor Lazo's talk, "Inventing America (Again)," will consider recent efforts to develop hemispheric American Studies in light of the many conceptualizations of "America" beyond and before the nation. Professor Lazo's broad-ranging experience as a scholar, teacher, and administrator promises to make this talk of interest across fields.

Preceding this lecture, at 1:00PM, please join us for a beginning of the year kick off lunch in 2116 Tawes Hall. (Please rsvp to Michelle at UMenglishgrad@gmail.com -- affirmative responses only -- by no later that 31 August)

Special thanks to the Department chair, Kent Cartwright, for his support of this series.

The Local Americanists Lecture Series welcomes Joel Pfister (Wesleyan University) for a talk titled, "Reading American Literature as American Studies."

Friday, September 25, 2009 at 3:30PM - 1107 Tawes Hall

Sponsored by the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies

Staged readings by University of Maryland students, directed by Professor Michael Olmert.

Wednesday, Sept. 16th, 3:45-5:45, Ulrich Recital Hall, 1121 Tawes Hall

Sponsored by the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies

The "Reading the Lyric" Lecture Series welcomes James Longenbach (University of Rochester) for a talk titled, "Tone Poems: Poetic Sequence and Poetic Series."

Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 4:00PM - Ulrich Recital Hall - 1121 Tawes Hall

James Longenbach will give a lecture titled "Tone Poems: Poetic Sequence and Poetic Series." Longenbach is one of the nation’s most respected poetry critics and also an accomplished and admired poet. He holds the Joseph Henry Gilmore chair at Rochester and is the author of nine books. To quote from the University of Rochester website: “Longenbach is a poet and critic whose most recent book of poems, Draft of a Letter, is about the vicissitudes of belief—belief not in what is distant and strange but in what is close and familiar: our bodies, our words. His most recent critical work, The Art of the Poetic Line, is an account of the work of lineation in free-verse, syllabic, and metered poetry (ranging from Shakespeare to Ashbery). He has also written widely about modern and postmodern poetry, sometimes emphasizing the historicity of poetic language (Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things) but also exploring the ways in which poems resist their historical situation (The Resistance to Poetry).”

Sponsored by the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies

The English Department cordially invites you to attend the Tawes Hall Grand Opening Ceremony and Celebration on Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 3:30PM in Tawes Hall Lobby.

Tour the building, meet the architects, and enjoy light refreshments!

Poet Fady Joudah and fiction writer Anthony Doerr read from their work.

7:00PM, Ulrich Recital Hall, Tawes Hall

Please join us for a reception before the reading at 6:15PM at the Jiménez-Porter Writers' House, ground floor, Dorchester Hall. Free and open to the public.

The Renaissance Reckonings Lecture Series welcomes Julia Schleck (University of Nebraska) for a talk titled, "Practicum on the Study of Travel Literature."

Friday, September 25th at 12:30PM
Tawes Hall 3136

Sponsored by the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies 

The Modernist Reading Group cordially invites you to join us for pizza and a viewing of The Hours on Wednesday, September 9th from 3:30 to 6:00PM (location TBA). This viewing and discussion is a kick-off for our for 2009-2010 event series focusing on "The Modernist Reader."

The Modernist Reading Group is an informal cohort of grad students and faculty who meet periodically to discuss modernist texts and issues current in the field of modernist studies. E-mail Porter Olsen (polsen@umd.edu) to join our mail list or join our Facebook group.

Digital Dialogues welcomes Rachel Donahue (iSchool) for a talk titled, "A Glance at the Current State of Videogame Preservation."

Tuesday, September 15th at 12:30PM.
MITH Conference Room
B0135 McKeldin Library, University of Maryland

Digital Dialogues welcomes Zita Nunes (Department of English) for a talk titled, "The Harlem Renaissance in Second Life."

Tuesday, September 29th at 12:30PM.
MITH Conference Room
B0135 McKeldin Library, University of Maryland

The Theory Reading Group will hold its first meeting to discuss Martin Heidegger's “The Origin of the Work of Art” on Wednesday, September 23, at 3:30 in the Graduate Studies conference room, Tawes 2123.  

Graduate students and faculty of all fields are invited to attend.  As one of our goals for the year will be to chart a course of study that cuts across our different fields and interests, the first meeting will also provide an opportunity to establish common points of inquiry that will help us begin formulating a list of readings for future meetings.

Electronic texts will be made available on ELMS.  If you have an interest in joining us this time around or in the future, please e-mail Ted Kaouk (tkaouk@umd.edu) with your UMD username (no passwords, please!), and we will add you to the UMD Theory organization list.

Working title:
"Tolstoy + Proust + Postmodern = ?
a case for reassessing John Fowles's novel 'Daniel Martin'"

Informal work-in-progress exchange
Led by Kelly Cresap
Thursday, Sept. 24, 2:00-3:30 p.m.
Tawes room number TBA

Contact Dr. Cresap for a copy of his five page introduction and summary at kcresap@umd.edu

Peace Corps Information Session
Wednesday, September 23rd
TWS 1105 from 4-5pm
Are you interested in learning a new language and living in a new culture, or gaining professional, global experience? Are you interested in teaching English to primary, secondary or university students? With a bachelor degree in any discipline you may be qualified to serve as an education volunteer or other volunteer position with Peace Corps. Come meet Chris Wagner, a returned Peace Corps volunteer from Thailand and Peace Corps recruiter, to learn more about how you can use your college degree and experience as a Peace Corps volunteer.

The Program in Creative Writing welcomes James Longenbach (University of Rochester) for a poetry reading to Michael Collier's English 243 class, Introduction to Poetry, in H.J. Patterson Hall Room 0226 from 12:00 to 12:50PM on Wednesday, September 30th.

Longenbach is the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English at the University of Rochester. He is the author of three poetry collections, Threshold (1998), Fleet River (2003), and Draft of a Letter (2007), all published by the University of Chicago Press. His critical works include The Art of the Poetic Line (Graywolf, 2007), The Resistance to Poetry (Chicago, 2004), Modern Poetry after Modernism (Oxford, 1997), Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things (Oxford, 1991), Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism (Oxford, 1998), and Modernist Poetics of History (Princeton, 1987).

THE MOCK TURTLE READING SERIES

Featuring the MFA Graduate Students
at University of Maryland

Please join us for the first event of the fall semester with readings
by the following writers:

POETRY: Glenn Hollar, Julia Leverone, Adam Pellegrini

FICTION: Joshua Ellis, Timothy Jerome, Justin Lohr, Heather Zadig

FRIDAY, September 25th
6:30PM TO 9:00PM

THE WONDERLAND BALLROOM
1101 Kenyon St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

DIRECTIONS:
>From Green Line's Columbia Heights Metro Station, walk 2 blocks east
on Irving St., turn left on 11th and walk one block north to Kenyon.
The Wonderland Ballroom is located on the northwest corner of 11th and
Kenyon, and the reading is held in the upstairs bar area. Free
off-street parking is available within 1 block, at the Tubman
Elementary School parking lot half a block west down Kenyon St.

Upcoming readings for the semester will take place on Friday, October
23 and Friday, November 20. We look forward to seeing you there!