by Gabriela Valenzuela '15
English
English MA
04/27/2015
The English Department and the English Graduate Student Association hosted its annual graduate conference, Significations, on Friday, April 24, 2015. Significations explores various fields of inquiry including literature, linguistics, composition and rhetoric, writing, cultural studies, critical theory, film, gender studies, philosophy, the social sciences and visual & performing arts. Graduate students from CSU East Bay, Cal Poly Pomona, LSU, and Stanford joined Cal State LA graduate students in an intellectually stimulating day, helping celebrate the conference’s 20th anniversary!
This year's keynote speaker was Dr. Jennifer Doyle. Dr. Jennifer Doyle received her Ph.D. from Duke University and teaches in the English Department at UC Riverside. Her most recent book, Campus Sex/Campus Security will be published with Semiotext(e)’s interventions series this coming fall. In 2013, she published Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (Duke University Press), which explores the idea of difficulty in art, ideologies of emotion, and how emotion circulates in and around art in flows that are directed by histories both personal and political. Her current project, Art v Sport, uses art to explore the raced and gendered structures of sports structures. She has been blogging about sports since 2007 (at From a Left Wing, and more recently, The Sport Spectacle). Her writing on sports has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Foxsoccer.com, Deadspin as well as in Social Text, Cabinet, and World Literature Today.
Department Chair, Dr. Garrett, during the Significations address.
Dr. Jennifer Doyle during her keynote talk: "Campus Security and the Vulnerable Body"
Wonderful scholars from CSU East Bay.
Cal State LA English Graduate students Jonathan Lee, William Cooper, Emily Yasonia Marsh, Christina Mills, and Salvador Ayala.
Graduate Students Amanda Kong and Gabriela Valenzuela have been accepted to present their work at this year’s Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association’s (RMMLA) conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico in November. Amanda will present her work on Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, while Gabriela will present her work on Mary Antin’s The Promised Land.
Graduate students Anni Aslanian, Jonathan Lee, and Carol Bryan, joined Dr. Michael Calabrese in this year’s Medieval Association of the Pacific 49th annual conference in Reno, Nevada. Presenting in the panel presided by Dr. Calabrese, “Revolt and Reform in Piers Plowman,” the three graduate students presented work analyzing sin, education, religion, and revolt in Piers Plowman.
Link to the conference schedule below: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/545c1c8be4b0ca233d387158/t/55198f69e4b05ec98fe884e1/1427738473349/MAP2015Program_Final.pdf
03/05/2015
After teaching a fruitful graduate seminar on Chican@ Literature in Fall 2014, Dr. Greenberg has encouraged students to join her in an Ethnic Literature Reading Group. Focusing on books outside the literary canon, the group hopes to meet once a week, beginning in March, to discuss books focusing on both Asian American and Latin@ culture.
Dr. Andrew Knighton, currently on sabbatical, recently spent a week in archives in Minnesota and North Dakota. He is doing research on the poet Thomas McGrath, who taught at Cal State LA in the 1950s. Dr. Knighton also recently participated in the the Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference.
Congratulations are in order for MA student Anni Aslanian! She has recently been accepted to Southwestern Law School and SUNY Buffalo Law School. After completing her undergraduate career as an English major at Cal State LA, Anni entered the Master’s program in Fall 2013. She is currently beginning work on her thesis.
William Cooper, who recently graduated from the MA program in December 2014, just published an article in The Explicator. The article, titled “A Rhetorical Reading of Smith’s book in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” originated as a seminar paper, which he later revised for his culminating journal-article thesis. William is currently revising two more seminar papers in hopes that they might also be eventually published. Additionally, he is volunteering at 826LA as a tutor in the TNT program, which involves helping high school students with their homework, college applications, scholarships, and personal statements. His ultimate goal, William says, is to return to Cal State LA as a composition and rhetoric instructor.
After working as a high school teacher for many years, Carrie Arcos enrolled in the English Department’s M.A. program and graduated in 2007. She published her first novel, Out of Reach, in 2012. Upon its release, it was nominated for the California Book Award for Young Adults and the National Book Award for Young People. The novel has since won multiple awards, including the IRA Young Adult Honor Book of 2013, the CLC Peggy Miller Award of 2013, and was named a Bankstreet Best of 2013. Carrie says that she writes books for Young Adults and loves the genre. Currently, she is working on a third novel that’s scheduled for publication with Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Efren Lopez previously completed both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Cal State LA’s English department. He is currently a doctoral student in UCLA’s English Department, where he recently finished his coursework with a 3.97 GPA. A Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellow, Efren is also a participant in UCLA’s Americanist Research Colloquium (ARC). At the moment, he is preparing for field exams, expanding his knowledge in 19th and 20th century American, Latina, and Chican@ liteterature. Efren cites Cal State LA’s English department as essential to his growth, commending it and its “outstanding level of scholarship and mentorship.”
After completing the graduating from Cal State LA with a Master of Arts in Spring 2013, Gretta Whalen became the Communications Manager for Hadley Impact Consulting. The firm provides consulting, fundraising, and management services for social impact campaigns. She has also penned blogs that have appeared in the Huffington Post and the African-American Observer. Gretta says, "Whether I'm editing, writing copy, or advising clients, every day I use the skills I learned as a graduate student at CSULA," and credits the university as the place where she learned social responsibility and critical thinking.