Matthew Zapruder Reading

On Wednesday, November 18, The California Writers Series hosted the poet Matthew Zapruder, who read from his poetry collections Come on All You Ghosts and Sun Bear and from a nonfiction manuscript-in-progress about how to approach and engage poetry.  The reading was a resounding success, with Zapruder following his poems by engaging in a question-and-answer session with the audience and signing copies of his books.

Many thanks to Matthew Zapruder for sharing his work with us, and thanks to Marit MacArthur for arranging the reading; Curt Asher and the Walter Stiern Library for hosting; Poets & Writers, Sigma Tau Delta, and the CSUB English Department for sponsoring; and Eileen Montoya and Milissa Ackerley for managing arrangements and publicity.

California Writers Series

On Wednesday, November 18 at 7:00 p.m., the California Writers Series and Walter Stiern Library will host a reading by the poet Matthew Zapruder.  Zapruder earned a BA in Russian literature at Amherst College, an MA in Slavic languages and literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  His honors include a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a 2008 May Sarton Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has taught at the New School; the University of California Riverside, Palm Desert; and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst’s Juniper Summer Writing Institute. He lives in San Francisco, where he teaches in the St. Mary's MFA program, works as Editor-at-Large for Wave Books, and rocks out as a guitarist in the band The Figments.

For more on Zapruder's work, vist his page at The Poetry Foundation, and visit Divedapper to read a great interview.

Lectures in Language and Linguistics

On Wednesday, November 4 at 7:30pm, Kristen Greer, Ph.D (Lecturer in Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles) will present her talk "How Many Is Many?: Quantities in Semantic Theory" in Science III Room 108.

Semantics is a notoriously tricky field within linguistics. Not only is it difficult to state exactly what words mean, but even more fundamentally, it’s hard to know what meanings even are. It is tempting to say that meanings are mental concepts--the ideas that are generated in our minds when we hear words like dogs, swim, happy, or frustration. But what are the mental concepts associated with words like every? some? two? many? hella? We might say that these mental concepts are quantities...but exactly what quantities? How many is many, after all? This talk explores these questions, arguing that in order to answer them, we need a theory of semantics that treats the meaning of a word not as the mental concept it evokes but as the way it points to objects in the world around us.

Kristen Greer received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from UC Davis in 2014. Before that, she completed a B.A. in Spanish and an M.A. in Spanish Linguistics, also at UC Davis. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at UCLA. Her research focuses on the meaning of quantity-denoting expressions (every, some, many, few, two/three and the like) in context. Her work has been published in the semantics journal Linguistics and Philosophy, and she has spoken at conferences at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, as well as to smaller audiences at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.

What's in the minds of our CSUB English Majors?

Anthony Jauregui

What made you want to major in English? A failed Computer Science route, along with an interest in the pragmatic and creative side to writing.

What has been your best experience as an English major here at CSUB? Winning 2nd place in the Betty Creative Writing Award for Drama, two years in a row. (Like the repetition? Let's hope for another next year.)

What do you plan to do after graduation? Travel the United States and explore life before (hopefully), settling into a Master's Program for Writing Dramatic Media. (Fingers crossed UNLV)

What is your favorite work of literature? Edward Albee's "The Goat or Who is Sylvia?"

Jacqueline Lucas

I decided to major in English about half way through general education at Bakersfield College. I hopped all over the place, testing out different majors to see what was fit for me. After a couple of trial and error courses, I took a British Literature class and really fell in love with the English major. The most rewarding experience as an English major at CSUB was learning Middle English in Dr. Troup's Chaucer course during my first quarter at CSUB. I remember being so intimidated by the material. I read the most hilarious stories from The Canterbury Tales, in an untranslated version of the book and I had to memorize the first 18 lines from The General Prologue. I can still recite them to this day. After graduation, I am going to graduate school for a Master's in English so I can become an English Professor. My favorite work of literature is The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco because it is absolutely hilarious yet completely alters the way we think about language and human interaction.

What We Accomplished, Summer 2015

Dr. Monica Ayuso attended the National Endowment for the Humanities [NEH] Institute entitled "What Is Gained in Translation: Learning How to Read Translated Texts" in Kent State University, June 7-27, 2015.  The institute, directed by Francoise Massarier-Kenney and Brian Baer, included 30 polyglot scholars in all stages of their professional careers who discussed translation theory and designed ways to draw awareness to the role of translations in their classes.  The institute offered an embarrassment of riches: lectures on Persian, Spanish, Latin American, Arabic, and Chinese translation and field trips to the well-known Cleveland "West-Side Market," to the Cleveland Museum (one of the top five art museums in the U.S.) and to the May 4 Memorial on the Kent State Campus.  (An interesting note: Dozens of spirited black squirrels pop up everywhere on the wooded campus.  They were imported from Ontario, Canada, fifty years ago and are the unofficial mascot of the university, which makes you wonder why the kit fox isn't our mascot!)

M. Ayuso and Seminar Colleagues

Charles MacQuarrie led a National Endowment for the Humanities [NEH] Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers titled "The Irish Sea Cultural Province:Crossroads of Medieval Literature and Languages" that took him to Belfast, Northern Ireland -- Douglas, Isle of Man --  and Glasgow, Scotland.  He led a survey investigating the extent and the significance of the linguistic, cultural, and physical multiplicity that characterized the conflicted relations between Briton, Saxon, Gaelic, Norse, and Latinate culture. Professor MacQuarrie also gave a series of lectures for Smithsonian titled "In the Wake of the Vikings on Le Boréal" on a cruise of Scottish Isles and Norwegian Fjords.  Through Smithsonian Journeys, he's planning a series on the Scottish mainland for summer 2016.

C. MacQuarrie and daughter

Rachel Duarte was the first from CSUB to win a NEH Seminar as a graduate student and was one of only two graduate students to earn participation in "The Legacy of Ancient Italy: The Etruscans and Early Roman City," a three week seminar that started at the University of Switzerland and into Italy, starting in Bologna, Orvieto and the Tarquinia tombs, Cortana, Florance, and ended in Rome; world-renown archeologists provided guest lectures and gave tours to excavated sites not open to the public. Ms. Duarte had the opportunity to study the Etruscans in depth. Most amazingly, she had the opportunity to utilize the library at the American Academy of Rome to continue her research tinto the Etruscan myth of Turan and Atunis in comparison to the Adonis myth mentioned in Sappho's fragment 59.

R. Duarte 

Milissa Ackerley was the site coordinator for the Irish Sea Cultural Province and handled logistics for the group of thirteen professors, three graduate students, and the two directors while they traveled through Ireland, Isle of Man, and Glasgow.  Meeting and getting to know our co-director,  Dr. Joseph Nagy from UCLA, world renowned Celtic Scholar, was one of the high points of the trip, but the entire group and experience was life-changing.  Ms. Ackerley made new friends from all over the United States with whom she is still in contact and plans to visit in the next year.  Besides visiting some amazing historical sites and taking many walks through the countryside, she left a tribute at the Fairy Bridge on the Isle of Man, toured Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, and met a direwolf from Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland.

M. Ackerley

Carol Dell'Amico traveled to Dublin to walk in the fictional footsteps of James Joyce's Leopold Bloom (Ulysses). She took some pictures at the Martello Tower, including of crazy people swimming in the cold and rain (never mind that it was “summer”). She will be teaching Ulysses in the spring (English 568).

Martello swimmers

Jeff Eagan, Kim Collins, and Jessica Wojtysiak presented their research study titled "Help I Need Somebody: An Investigation of Mandatory Tutoring in Composition Courses" at The Young Rhetoricians' Conference in Monterey, California.

Matthew Woodman had poems appear in the journals Hinchas de Poesia, Unsplendid, The Timberline Review, and Spillway.

Reading and Writing in the Common Core

The Kern Council of the California Association of Teachers of English (CATE) invites you to three days of workshops: "Reading & Writing in the Common Core." 

To register online, click here.  

CATE (California Association of Teachers of English) is a non-profit organization promoting communication, collaboration, and educational knowledge among all responsible for teaching English and the language arts. All California English teachers are encouraged to join.

Fall 2015 Welcome from the Chair

Dear English Students,

On behalf of the English faculty, welcome back for an exciting new year!  As many of you know, 2015-16 will be our last on the quarter system.  We will switch to semesters in Fall 2016.  Currently I am working with the dean's office on Individual Action Plans (IAPs) for all English majors.  These will let transitional students know exactly what courses they need to complete in order to graduate as soon as is reasonably possible.  If you have any questions about how the quarter-to-semester transition will affect you, please don't hesitate to come see me or your faculty advisor.

For those of you who will be graduating before we make the switch, don't feel left out!  We will be more than happy to discuss career plans with you or direct you toward exciting graduate and professional programs.

Good luck!

Andy Troup