Here is the article in the New Yorker magazine describing the Dickens Universe in Santa Cruz. Of interest to all who might consider going next year.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7NXH20selA5OWYwODRjY2YtMTUxMi00NzgwLTk5MTMtYzk4OTMyZDRkNWJh&hl=en_US
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
The Dickens Universe Project, Santa Cruz
http://dickens.ucsc.edu/universe/universe.html
I just came back from the week-long Dickens Universe proj
ect at the University of Santa Cruz where I co-taught a graduate workshop with Elsie Michie from Rice University. The Universe is an annual event, supported by an academic consortium, of which TAU is a member. Each year a Dickens novel is chosen and a slew of lectures, talks, workshops and events is organized around it. This year the novel was "Great Expectations" and the details of the program can be found at the link attached.
My general impression is that the Universe is trying too hard to be all things to all people. The audience is very mixed: academic, semi-academic (high school teachers and students), and non-academic (Dickens lovers, mostly retirees). It is inevitable that some events, such as the daily Victorian tea and the Grand Ball, cater to the non-academics who pay the bills. In fact, this makes for a fun atmosphere. But the plenary lectures suffer from trying to be both accessible and scholarly and sometimes being neither.
This said, the workshop I taught was very exciting. The graduate students, from several universities in the US, were good (almost as good as our own!). And I also participated in a professional workshop on Victorian science, which was renamed an "intellectual spa" in the spirit of the Universe.
Santa Cruz itself is caught in a time warp, with a bunch of superannuated hippies preaching universal love and smoking organic pot. But the coffee-shops are good and the boutiques even better.
The novel for next year is "Bleak House", my favorite. So I suppose I could put up with more Victorian teas.
I just came back from the week-long Dickens Universe proj
ect at the University of Santa Cruz where I co-taught a graduate workshop with Elsie Michie from Rice University. The Universe is an annual event, supported by an academic consortium, of which TAU is a member. Each year a Dickens novel is chosen and a slew of lectures, talks, workshops and events is organized around it. This year the novel was "Great Expectations" and the details of the program can be found at the link attached.
My general impression is that the Universe is trying too hard to be all things to all people. The audience is very mixed: academic, semi-academic (high school teachers and students), and non-academic (Dickens lovers, mostly retirees). It is inevitable that some events, such as the daily Victorian tea and the Grand Ball, cater to the non-academics who pay the bills. In fact, this makes for a fun atmosphere. But the plenary lectures suffer from trying to be both accessible and scholarly and sometimes being neither.
This said, the workshop I taught was very exciting. The graduate students, from several universities in the US, were good (almost as good as our own!). And I also participated in a professional workshop on Victorian science, which was renamed an "intellectual spa" in the spirit of the Universe.
Santa Cruz itself is caught in a time warp, with a bunch of superannuated hippies preaching universal love and smoking organic pot. But the coffee-shops are good and the boutiques even better.
The novel for next year is "Bleak House", my favorite. So I suppose I could put up with more Victorian teas.
Monday, August 8, 2011
CFP for NeMLA - Apocalyptic Projections
I think this might be interesting
CFP
NeMLA March 15-18, 2012, Rochester, NY, U.S.A.
Apocalyptic Projections in Sci-Fi and/or Fantasy Literature for 2012 and Beyond
This panel provides an opportunity to explore the ramifications of the 2012 doomsday prophesiers on cultural behavior as witnessed within the genre of science fiction literature and cinema. The term apocalyptic may include any means of total or near-total destruction, whether it is caused by humans, aliens or Nature. Papers analyzing the role apocalyptic sci-fi and/or fantasy have played and continue to play in literature, cinema, theater and other aspects of culture will be the main emphasis of this panel. Focus can be on apocalyptic visual arts and cinema, but written literature is also appropriate.
Please send e-mail abstracts of 250-300 words in MS Word to Annette M. Magid, SUNY Erie Community College.
Deadline: September 30, 2011
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Proposed title for your paper
E-mail address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)
Visit the website at Http://www.nemla.org/convention/2012/
CFP
NeMLA March 15-18, 2012, Rochester, NY, U.S.A.
Apocalyptic Projections in Sci-Fi and/or Fantasy Literature for 2012 and Beyond
This panel provides an opportunity to explore the ramifications of the 2012 doomsday prophesiers on cultural behavior as witnessed within the genre of science fiction literature and cinema. The term apocalyptic may include any means of total or near-total destruction, whether it is caused by humans, aliens or Nature. Papers analyzing the role apocalyptic sci-fi and/or fantasy have played and continue to play in literature, cinema, theater and other aspects of culture will be the main emphasis of this panel. Focus can be on apocalyptic visual arts and cinema, but written literature is also appropriate.
Please send e-mail abstracts of 250-300 words in MS Word to Annette M. Magid, SUNY Erie Community College
Deadline: September 30, 2011
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Proposed title for your paper
E-mail address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)
Visit the website at Http://www.nemla.org/convention/2012/
Stanford's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Course
Okay, this is just too cool not to share. Standford is offering a free, internet-based course on Artificial Intelligence: http://www.ai-class.com/
Have a great summer everyone!
Have a great summer everyone!
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Conference: Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/cyber/visions-of-humanity/
This was a rather extraordinary conference in Oxford Dassi Elber and myself attended in July. Since all the papers presented will be eventually published as an e-book, I won't spend too much time describing our contributions. But the conference clearly attempted to do something else than merely bringing together a lot of hurried researchers, uninterested in anybody's talks but their own. The organisers (the project called InterDisciplinary Net) made sure that everybody stayed in the same place (beautiful Mansfield College in Oxford), ate the same meals (served in the Harry Potter-like setting of the college's dining hall), and talked about the same subjects. There were no parallel sessions, time limits were rigorously enforced, Q&A sessions were long enough to actually have interesting questions and detailed answers, and everybody was treated equally, whether a tenured professor or a graduate student. Since this conference is only a small part of the InterDisciplinary Net's project, I encourage everybody, and especially students, to check their website and to consider applying to one of their conferences. One thing is certain: I have been to very many conferences but seldom have I had this much fun!
This was a rather extraordinary conference in Oxford Dassi Elber and myself attended in July. Since all the papers presented will be eventually published as an e-book, I won't spend too much time describing our contributions. But the conference clearly attempted to do something else than merely bringing together a lot of hurried researchers, uninterested in anybody's talks but their own. The organisers (the project called InterDisciplinary Net) made sure that everybody stayed in the same place (beautiful Mansfield College in Oxford), ate the same meals (served in the Harry Potter-like setting of the college's dining hall), and talked about the same subjects. There were no parallel sessions, time limits were rigorously enforced, Q&A sessions were long enough to actually have interesting questions and detailed answers, and everybody was treated equally, whether a tenured professor or a graduate student. Since this conference is only a small part of the InterDisciplinary Net's project, I encourage everybody, and especially students, to check their website and to consider applying to one of their conferences. One thing is certain: I have been to very many conferences but seldom have I had this much fun!
Thursday, July 21, 2011
An End of the Year Celebration - A quick review
On Saturday evening, The Mad Poets struck once again, this time celebrating the end of the academic year at the Temple Bar, Glilot.
There was plenty of beer, music and quirky amusement. The highlights of the event began with the screening of the movie "The Seven Corridors of TAU's English Dept.," an epic poem read by students and staff members.
After the screening we had a short and highly entertaining poetry reading, and this was followed by a wonderful acoustic performance from Dana Loterman (we managed to sneak a low-quality recording of her John Donne cover).
It was great to see such a high level of participation, both students and faculty
members, and it showed us that the Department of English and American Studies really does know how to let its hair down!
It has been an extremely busy year filled with excellent extra-mural activities and enlightening lectures. Thank you all for joining us in making the film and the party so successful, and a special thank you to Yafit, Omri and Gerda for organizing a fantastic evening!
THE END.
Until the fall.
There was plenty of beer, music and quirky amusement. The highlights of the event began with the screening of the movie "The Seven Corridors of TAU's English Dept.," an epic poem read by students and staff members.
After the screening we had a short and highly entertaining poetry reading, and this was followed by a wonderful acoustic performance from Dana Loterman (we managed to sneak a low-quality recording of her John Donne cover).
It was great to see such a high level of participation, both students and faculty
members, and it showed us that the Department of English and American Studies really does know how to let its hair down!
It has been an extremely busy year filled with excellent extra-mural activities and enlightening lectures. Thank you all for joining us in making the film and the party so successful, and a special thank you to Yafit, Omri and Gerda for organizing a fantastic evening!
THE END.
Until the fall.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
History and Responsibility: Hebrew Literature and 1948
This is a conference currently taking place at Stanford under the auspices of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Since so many familiar faces are here (Mickey Gluzman, Anita Shapira, Dan Miron, Hannan Hever), I thought it would be interesting if I shared some of my impressions.
The level of discussion was very high (and often heated, as befits a controversial subject). The panelists were a mixture of literary scholars and historians, and it is this aspect which I found most stimulating. I think that interdisciplinary dialog is the way of the future in the humanities. So the debates of what actually happened in 1948 (the responsibility of the yishuv for the Naqba; the weight of the Holocaust; the culpability of the Palestinian leadership) meshed with the discussions of the poetics of trauma, Benjamin's messianic time, and Agnon's spatial imagination. If this meshing was a little rough at times, it was also exciting.
Strangely enough, what I found missing was politics. Surely as the Arab Spring (or is it already the heated summer?) is going on and as Syria is slaughtering its dissidents, you'd expect a little more of a global perspective than the neverending debate of who did what to whom 63 years ago.
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