California Writers Series

Lectures in Language and Linguistics

The Eighth Annual Gender Matters Symposium

California State University, Bakersfield's Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Club GEN (Gender Equality Now!) Present the Eighth Annual Gender Matters Symposium on Friday, May 13, 2016 in the Multipurpose Room, Student Union

Coffee & Welcome (8:30 am)

Dr. Debra Jackson (Philosophy, CSUB)

Artwork, Research Posters (9:00 am)

Moderator: Samantha DeLaCruz (Interdisciplinary Studies, CSUB)

• “My Body, My Dress” Chyna Parker (Psychology, CSUB)
• “Gender and Computer Mediated Communications: A Content Analysis of the Language Expressed in Twitch Broadcasts” Kristina Garibay (Sociology, CSUB)
• “Rape Empathy: Clinicians’ Attitudes Towards Sexual Offenders” Casey Harris (Psychology, CSUB)
• “Gender in Horror Films” Althea Martinez (English, CSUB)

Community Resource Fair (9:00 am)

CSUB Center for Career Education and Community Engagement,  CSUB Advocacy Services, CSUB Safe Zone, CSUB Title IX Advisory Board, Bakersfield PFLAG, Democratic Women of Kern

Gender & Sexuality in Religious Contexts (10:15 am)

Moderator: Jai Bornstein (Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies, CSUB)

• “On a Scale of Faith: Muslim American Attitudes towards Homosexuality” Hala Alnajar (Sociology & Religious Studies, CSUB)
• “Exclusively Male Gendered God-Language is Problematic: Why Religious Feminists are Proposing Change” Kait Kretsinger (Religious Studies, CSUB)

Keynote Address (11:30 am)

Moderator: Jennifer Valencia (Interdisciplinary Studies, CSUB)

“Glitter. Power. Love:A (Re)Introduction to Gender” by Jacob Tobia, GenderQueer Advocate

Gender in Literature (1:30 pm)

Moderator: Max Flint (Finance, CSUB)

• “Men and ‘Scribbling Women’: Changing Places in Captivity” Mallory DeGregori (English, CSUS)
• “The Gilded Cage of Feminine Beauty in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth” Jessica Flores (English, CSUB)
• “The Game of Marriage in David Fincher’s Gone Girl” Tiffany Dauner (English, CSUB)
• “Flight of a New Era and a New Woman” Jack Dodd (History, CSUB)

Negotiating Gender Roles (3:00 pm)

Moderator: Josh Lofy (Physics, CSUB)

• “To Ama, From Your Forgotten Daughter” Sylvia Brown (Political Science, CSUB)
• “Por que naci mujer? Why was I born a woman? How gender plays into the life of an immigrant woman” Delfina Duarte (Interdisciplinary Studies, CSUB)
• “Women in Buddhist Thailand” Ruby Castillo (Sociology, CSUB)

Walter Presents: Brian Evenson

On Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 7:00, The Walter Stiern Library presents the author Brian Evenson, the author of a dozen works of fiction.  The New Yorker published an insightful overview of his work titled "The Dark Fiction of an Ex-Mormon Writer," and you can read one of his stories, "Younger," by following the link.

2016 Betty Creative Writing Awards

Congratulations to the 2016 Stafford Betty Creative Writing Award Winners!

Poetry

First Place: Mateo Lara for "New Age and other poems"
Second Place: Chyna Jade Parker for "Drought Diaries"
Third Place: Laura F. Robbie for "Patient Notes"

Short Story

First Place: Shydel Villa for "Invisible People"
Second Place: Marlin Morales for "Dastaar"
Third Place: Jayme S. Reyna for "Chip"

Drama

First Place: Robert J. Vasquez for "Blue Hour"
Second Place: Anthony Jauregui for "Figment"
Third Place: Bailey Russell and Sidney Russell for "Five Renters, One Landlord, and the AC Unit"

2016 Li'i Pearl Prize Winners

Congratulations to Charles (Chaz) Lemley and Heather Simmons, our 2016 Li'i Pearl Prize Winners!

Chaz Lemley, who is close to finishing his MA, has been the sole tutor working in the Writing Center at the Antelope Valley campus, keeping that service available to AV students as many hours as humanly possible and budget-allowed. He designed GWAR preparation workshops, which he holds for AV students the day before their scheduled exams each quarter, and the GWAR pass rates for the AV students has continually increased to the point where last quarter, every AV student who took the exam earned a passing score. He is also currently in the TA program.

Heather Simmons came to CSUB from Bakersfield College in Fall 2015, having graduated Summa Cum Laude and having been published in BC’s online journal, The Roughneck Review (Spring 2015 issue). She was also a member of Phi Theta Kappa at BC (a community college honor society). As the following list of accomplishments will attest, Heather’s transition to CSUB has been smooth: her CSUB GPA is 3.95; she is a member of the University Singers; she was a reporter (named “Staff MVP”) for The Runner during Fall 2015 (and she still freelances); she is English Club Treasurer; she participates in a group that gives volunteer vocal performances at Tehachapi Senior Center; she appeared in CSUB’s Theatre of New Voices (February, 2016) and in “Gary Stu/Mary Sue” (produced by the CSUB Film Club, Winter 2016); she is on the Dean’s List (Fall 2015-Winter 2016); she is a member of the National Society of Leadership and Success and also of Alpha Chi Honor Society; and she is a founding member and the current president of Club Anchor for students with disabilities. One of her personal goals is to utilize her talents in representing and enhancing the lives of persons with disabilities.

Reading the Drought

Orpheus

Orpheus, an annual literary journal produced by the English Department at California State University, Bakersfield, is currently seeking submissions. You are cordially invited to submit your short stories, poems, paintings, and other creative works for publication in the 2015/2016 edition.

Closing Date for Submission for the 2015/2016 edition is APRIL15, 2016.

Please submit works to:
Milissa Ackerley (Faculty Towers 202C)
c/o Department of English
(661) 65402144
mackerley@csub.edu

Submission Guidelines: All submissions must be typed, double-spaced, on 8 1/2" x 11" paper. There are no restrictions on subject matter, length, or theme; however, poems over one hundred lines are rarely published. Please contact the English Department for further instructions concerning submissions of visual art.

Copies are available in the English Department Office, Faculty Towers 202C.

Visiting Artist Series: Gabriela Jauregui

Visiting Artist Lecture Series, The Dorothy Florence Zaninovich Fund, Todd Madigan Gallery & CSUB Department of Art present Gabriela Jauregui, April 5 Visual Arts Building, Room 103 at 4 p.m.

Gabriela Jauregui is the author of Leash Seeks Lost Bitch (The Song Cave/Sexto Piso, 2015), Controlled Decay (Akashic Books/Black Goat Press, 2008), a short story collection, La memoria de las cosas (Sexto Piso, 2015), and co-author of Taller de taquimecanografía (Tumbona ediciones, 2012). She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside, and an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Riverside. Her creative and critical works as well as her translations have been published in journals, magazines and anthologies in the UK the US and Australia, as well as Mexico. She works as a correspondent for various cultural publications including the BBC World Service's Cultural Frontline, Witte de With's Review, Art Forum, Art Review and others. She is a founding member and editor of the sur+ publishing collective.

This event is free and open to the public.
For more information contact: jcaesar@csub.edu or tmgcsub@gmail.com
CSU Bakersfield 9001 Stockdale Highway, Bakersfield, CA 93311

The Passing of Dr. Solomon Iyasere

Dr. Solomon Iyasere spent a distinguished 44-year career at CSUB. He joined the CSUB faculty in the fall of 1972, having just earned a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. He earned an MS in Education from SUNY New Paltz, New Paltz, New York in 1968 just one year after earning a BA with honors in English from SUNY. Solomon was hired as an assistant professor to teach Shakespeare and literary criticism at a fledgling, two-year-old “CSB” campus. Two years later in 1974, he received early tenure and promotion to associate professor and became a full professor in 1978. He received the Millie Ablin Excellence Award in Teaching in 1985-86; the Exceptional Merit Award for Excellence in Teaching in numerous years; was a Wang Award nominee; a Professor of the Year award nominee; and was one of 50 professors selected nationwide by the American Association for Higher Education, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching for extraordinary leadership in teaching, scholarship, and service.

Solomon developed and taught more than 35 different courses here at CSUB. In addition to Shakespeare and literary criticism, his areas of specialization included creative writing, world literature, non-western literature, African literature, and African-American literature. He wrote extensively on the oral tradition in African and African American literature, which encompasses the use of proverbs, folk tales, myths, fables, and repetition. He was widely known as a scholar of African literature, a rhetorical critic, and essayist who distinguished Eurocentric and Afrocentric forms of literary criticism and the importance of employing both, “cultural formalism,” an analytical approach he pioneered, to validly analyze African and African-American literature. Of this need for cultural sensitivity he wrote, “To assess a work by foreign standards leads to a mutilation of the message and robs the communication of its vitality.”

His scholarship included literary critical analyses of Othello and Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Sula (with his wife, Dr. Marla Iyasere, CSUB’s Founding Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor of English Emerita). His essay, “Narrative Techniques in Things Fall Apart,” has been reprinted four times and is considered a definitive analysis of the most widely read and studied English language African novel. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Shakespeare in Africa. His conference presentations included “Racial Issues in Shakespeare’s Othello”; “Race Matters: Approaches to Shakespeare’s Othello”; “Teaching Shakespeare’s Othello to a Group of Multi-Racial Students”; and “Pardon Me, Professor, Why Do I have to Read Othello?”

In addition to his teaching and scholarship, Solomon’s record of service to the University is extensive. As the founding Director of Diversity Services (1988-92), he laid the groundwork for inclusive excellence, one of the core values that guides us and a pillar of our vision statement. He collaborated to establish effective diversity policies and strategic guidelines resulting in the hiring of diverse faculty and staff. He helped revise the GE curriculum to include multicultural and international dimensions, and designed the English Single Subject Teacher Preparation program to incorporate multiculturalism. He developed the MA in Teaching of English, which is now the cornerstone for educating community college writing teachers in the CSUB service region. He served as Chair of the Department of English and Communications (1992-97), co-founded the Career Beginnings Program and the Ernest Williams, Jr. Scholarship Fund, and served on numerous departmental and university-wide committees.

Solomon’s legacy includes his founding of Orpheus, the annual student literary journal. Since its establishment in 1973, the journal has published the work of more than 2,500 students, several of whom have become national award-winning writers and playwrights. The journal invites the submission of short stories, poems, paintings, and other creative works for publication in the 2015/2016 edition.

(from President Horace Mitchell's Memorandum to the Campus Community)

CSUB's Dr. Strangelove

The B-Side, CSUB Communications Department's blog, has a profile of our English Department's own Charles MacQuarrie, also known as--apparently-- Dr. Strangelove.

2016 Betty Creative Writing Awards

2016 Betty Creative Writing Awards Contest Rules

Through the generosity of Dr. Stafford Betty, the 2016 Betty Creative Writing Awards are presented annually to honor the creative work of students at the undergraduate and graduate levels at California State University, Bakersfield and California State University, Bakersfield – Antelope Valley Campus. Awards in three categories will be presented:

Poetry

1st Place - $500

 2nd Place - $300

3rd Place - $200

Short Story

1st Place - $500

2nd Place - $300

3rd Place - $200

Drama

1st Place - $500

2nd Place - $300

3rd Place - $200

Application Deadline: April 4, 2016

Submission Guidelines

• Applications must be filled out completely to be considered for an award.
• Only complete entries received by 5 p.m. on April 4, 2016 will be considered.
• Submissions should include a completed application, plus three hard copies of the work.
• Each entry should be given an original title, which must be included on the application and at the top of the first page of the entry.
• Each of the three hard copies must have the original title of the entry on the first page, but should contain no other identifying information such as author’s name.
• Submission forms can be found here. 
• Submissions must have been written by a student who is an undergraduate or graduate student at CSUB and CSUB-AV during the current school year.
• Submissions must not have been published previously and must be the original work of the submitter.
• Only one entry per contestant may be submitted per category.

Eligible categories are:

• Poetry – Poetry may be one poem or a sequence of poems but must be between 40 and 80 lines in length; entries should be printed in a standard font (Times New Roman 12 point) on white paper.
• Short Story – Short stories must be a minimum of 8 typed pages and a maximum of 25 typed, double-spaced pages in length and printed in a standard font (Times New Roman 12 point) on white paper.
• Drama – Drama may be for radio, stage, or screen; entries must be a minimum of 8 typed pages and a maximum of 25 typed, double-spaced pages in length and printed in a standard font (Times New Roman 12 point) on white paper.

Entries that do not conform to these standards will not be considered for an award.

• Awards will be presented at the Annual Sigma Tau Delta Induction and Awards Ceremony on April 28th, 2016. Award winners do not need to be present to win.
• There are no entry fees or payments to enter or win the Betty Creative Writing Awards.
• As a co-sponsor of this contest, Sigma Tau Delta will be responsible for assembling and managing the awards screening committee, which will consist of CSUB faculty and staff.
• Sigma Tau Delta/The Betty Creative Writing Awards reserves the right not to name a winner in any or all of the categories if insufficient entries are submitted.

Submit directly to –
      Dr. Emerson Case
      Faculty Towers 204B

Or mail to –
     Dr. Emerson Case
     Department of English
     California State University, Bakersfield
     10F
     9001 Stockdale Hwy.
     Bakersfield, CA 93311

Building Bridges 2016

For more information, visit the Building Bridges homepage.

Lectures in Language and Linguistics

Writing Color

As part of an interdisciplinary improvisation, Matthew Rich had his art students collaborate with Matthew Woodman's creative writing students to work on the interplay between visual and verbal arts.  Woodman's students wrote poems for Rich's art students to illustrate as blocks of color, and then they reversed the process and had Woodman's students respond to colors Rich's students generated.  The whole endeavour was a worthwhile exercise in inspiration, connotation, and collaboration.  At the end, thanks again to Matthew Rich, a gallery space on campus exhibited the results.

Theatrefest

Congratulations to Jacob Brown, Susannah Vera, Mateo Lara, English minors Chyna Parker and Greg Bolanos, and English major Anthony Jauregui for having their plays chosen as part of Theatrefest!

CSUB Theatrefest Presents The Theatre of New Voices written and directed by CSUB students.

This is a biennial festival of student-written, student-directed one-acts. Seven short plays were selected through a competition held last spring.

Thursday-Saturday, February 25, 26, 27 at 8PM
Saturday-Sunday, February 27 & 28 at  2PM
Doré Arena Theatre

Limited seating; reservations strongly recommended as this production normally sells out: (661) 654-3150. Reservations taken starting February 15th.

Note: latecomers cannot be seated

$10 General Admission
$8 Seniors (60+)/CSUB Faculty & Staff
$5 Students with Identification

Box Office opens one hour prior to each performance and takes cash and checks only. We do not take credit cards. For a reservation, call (661) 654-3150.