What does it mean to be a public intellectual in 21st century America? And to what extent does the often intensely private work of an academic speak to larger issues in today’s world?
Aaron Bady blogs at zunguzungu.wordpress.com.
Two fifth-year English PhD candidates, Aaron Bady and Paul Kerschen, think often about these questions. Both Aaron and Paul are active bloggers – though with somewhat divergent styles and objectives – and they see the forum of the blog as a way to redefine the border between the private work of the academic and the public role of the intellectual.Aaron’s blogging practices seem to exhibit this redefinition of boundaries most explicitly. He is present online in three different venues: his personal blog, the history [...]
Every Wednesday, we’ll post a round-up of links which may be of interest to the larger Berkeley English community. Let us know if you see anything you think we should pass along!
The great Sudanese writer, Tayeb Salih, passed away late last Tuesday. He’s best known for his 1966 novel Season of Migration to the North, which Edward Said called “among the six finest novels to be written in modern Arabic literature.” I want to know what the other five on that list were; it’s a remarkable novel, and one that only gets better and more interesting with re-readings. Obituaries in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Sudan Tribune. And Mustapha Marrouchi writes a more personal remembrance in [...]
In the past year, Professors Ian Duncan and C. S. Giscombe were each awarded prizes for their recent books. Duncan’s Scott’s Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh won the The National Library of Scotland Saltire Research Book of the Year, while Giscombe’s book of poetry Prairie Style received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Two graduate students, third-year Alex Covalciuc and first-year Rebecca Gaydos, have put together some reflections on the significance of these books, which, though different in scope and genre, share a deep and abiding interest in the influence of place.Taking as its subject post-Enlightenment Edinburgh (a period stretching roughly from 1802, the year the Edinburgh Review was founded, to 1832 with the passing of [...]
The Berkeley Poetry Review publishes poetry by UC Berkeley faculty, students, staff, and alumni. The deadline for the 40th issue is March 1.
Those interested can submit up to four poems to berkeleypoetryreview at yahoo.com or leave them in our mailbox in 322 Wheeler. Detailed instructions can be found here.
In what follows, second-year graduate student Monica Huerta describes the inauguration of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows Program at Berkeley. A Mellon Fellow herself, Huerta playfully profiles two undergraduate English majors, Cecilia Caballero (who also focuses on Chicano Studies) and Teresa Jimenez, who are part of the first cohort of Berkeley Fellows.
***In Arts and Humanities Graduate Diversity Program Director Josephine Moreno’s words, there is “something very special” about the five students chosen to inaugurate the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows (MMUF) Program at Berkeley. Founded in 1988 to address the shortage of faculty of color in higher education, the MMUF “targets students with exceptional academic promise and potential for careers that will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in the academy. [...]
This past November, Professor Kathleen Donegan was asked by a student of hers who was serving as the President of the Prytanean Women’s Honor Society to speak to the society on finding a balance between life and work as a female academic. Speaking at the Gender Equity Resource Center, Professor Donegan designed her talk as a continuation of the thread of the conversations she had had with the students in her course on early American women writers. Thinking about the forces that shaped the narratives which these early American women told about their lives, she contributed a story of her own, the narrative of the poignant intersection of her life as both an English professor and as a woman and [...]
