Congratulations! Fourteen Students passed the MA in English Exit exam this fall, and one earned a grade of Distinction. Please congratulate your colleagues!

With Distinction: Jeffrey Leathem

Pass: Adam Akin, Roxanne Brown, Christopher Gilchrist, Mustafa Duzdag, Audrey Hillyer, Leslie Leathem, Elayna Martino, Susan Michaelson, Erin Morrow, Carolyn Mulaney, Gregory Nault, Tom Stukel, and Lyndee Yamshon

Get proactive in your MA Program!
Voice your concerns! Discuss ways to improve the MA program here at DePaul! Join us for the first meeting of the English Graduate Student Association (EGSA)! Info

Fighting the Cold - Reflections of Summer As we near the cold days of winter, I thought it might be a good time to look back on some of the fun and educational experiences of this past summer.

Kelly Fust, Allison Tyndall, Casey Coin, and David Morris studied abroad at Cambridge this past summer. Kelly offers the following reflection on her time there, along with an itinerary of a sample day...

Although Cambridge University referred to the program I would be attending as the International Summer School in English Literature, I was concerned that my classes would be little more than extensions of my courses in the States—American students relocated to an alternate location. Of course, the prospect of such an occurrence was not enough to keep me from being excited about studying at Cambridge. For three intensive weeks, I would be learning everyday from Cambridge professors both in small classes of about 25 students and in daily group lectures of over 100 students. Classes, lectures and professors did not disappoint. I was exposed to new texts and fresh interpretations on books and poems I have read many times over. While I have been exposed to several dramas over the years, my Love in Literature course offered me the first chance to read (and watch) an opera—Verdi’s La Traviata (1853). In the same class, we discussed Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, a book that I have read half a dozen times, but this summer was the first time I learned about the significance of Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” to the character of Mr. Ramsey.

But as it turns out, the most gratifying aspect of my time in the program was the diversity of the students. Far from being the homogenous group I expected, my classes included students of all ages, from all over the world. My favorite example is Ursula, a tiny and talkative retired professor from San Paulo, Brazil, who has five masters’ degrees and has been coming to Cambridge’s summer program for twelve years. The final day of my Love in Literature class also revealed the rich makeup of the classroom; each student read a poem to the class in our native language; I heard the varying rhythms of love poetry in Japanese, Afrikaans, Chinese, Danish, French, and Swedish, among others.

When my three weeks in Cambridge were over, I expected to leave the lessons of the classroom behind me as I took off for a whirlwind ten days of traveling. But after leaving the university and going to travel throughout Paris, London, Edinburgh, and the English countryside, I found myself constantly reflecting upon my Literature of World War I course. Almost all of the historical sites I visited contained a memorial to the Great War, and my vast amount of reading both before and during the class filled me with an intense personal attachment to and knowledge of the individual lives behind these monuments. For many students I know, studying abroad is an exciting experience more for what happens outside the classroom rather than in it. Cambridge’s International Summer School made both aspects of my time in Europe a culturally enriching experience.

Sample day - Wednesday 4 August

9:15am- 10:45am Special Subject Courses: Group G

11:30am-12:30pm GH0 Gender, Sexuality and desire:
‘The Public Woman’: the actress-whore connection, 1660-1700
Dr. Sarah Burton, Lecturer at London University

2:00pm-3:30pm Special Subject Courses: Group H

8:00pm-9:00pm Joint Evening Lecture in Lady Mitchell Hall:
England, England! Englishness in recent British fiction
Adrian Barlow, Lecturer for the Institute of Continuing Education

8:45pm-10:00pm Ceilidh in Selwyn College Dining Room

Sample Weekend Excursions - Saturday 7 August

Stratford-upon-Avon (with tickets to see Hamlet)
Or
Houses of Parliament and Old Westminster Walk
Or
Medieval Lincoln

Conference Opportunity!

The Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media (MCLLM) is
hosting its annual graduate student conference on April 1 and 2, 2005. The conference will be held at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. First-time conference presenters are encouraged to apply on a wide range of topics!

The deadline for submissions is January 14, 2005. Please include a cover page with your name, school affiliation, mailing address, email address, and area of interest. Do not include any identifying information on the abstract itself other than the area of interest. Contributors will be notified via email. more info

Places to Explore and Things to do! Come on! Don't be shy, I know that there are many of you out there who are connoisseurs of Chicago dining and entertainment, if not at least aspiring amateurs. Your experiences are the stuff of valuable and fun advice for others, so fill us in! If you have recently been to a great restaurant, museum, club, etc., let us know and share the wealth with your peers!

Bring your appetite and a bottle of wine. One of the older restaurants on the bustling Southport Corridor, Tango Sur, is always packed with patrons and for good reason. My sister and I enjoyed an excellent and cheap dinner that filled us up while leaving leftovers for later. The Argentine cuisine specializes in meat dishes, ranging from filets to flank steak to breaded chicken and sausages. My sister and I shared a flank steak grill (they actually bring the meal out on a miniature grill) stewed in a savory sauce with capers and surrounded by sweet potatoes. It’s affordable, too. The dish we shared was under $30 and could have easily fed more than two people (judging from what we saw on other tables, we probably could have shared one of the "single" dishes). The cheap eats along with the BYOB policy (we were not charged a corking fee) made for a delicious and inexpensive meal. Most of the single dinners are priced well under $20 and shared meals are around $25. Tango Sur, 3763 N. Southport, 773-477-5466.

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”
—Luciano Pavarotti

News and Events!

See You When You Get There: Teaching for Change in Urban Schools - a new book by Greg Michie

Time: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 7:00 PM
Location: 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St

Gregory Michie's first bestseller, Holler If You Hear Me, put him on the map as a courageous and passionate voice in urban education. In his new book, Michie turns his attention to young teachers of color, and once again provides readers with a unique and penetrating look inside school classrooms. Featuring portraits of five young teachers (two African Americans, two Latinas, and one Asian American) who are 'working for change', Michie weaves the teachers' powerful voices with classroom vignettes and his own experiences. Along the way, he examines what motivates and sustains these teachers, as well as what they see as the challenges and possibilities of public education. For this appearance, Michie will be joined by Liz Kirby, Cynthia Nambo and Toni Billingsley, who are teachers featured in the book.

An exhibition of medieval art at The Art Institute of Chicago:

"Devotion and Splendor: Medieval Art at The Art Institute of Chicago"
Exhibition in Galleries 141/142, September 25, 2004 - January 2, 2005

This exhibition features thirty of the most important works of art from the Middle Ages in the Art Institute's permanent collection. For the first time in fifty years, medieval objects from the museum's various curatorial departments will be displayed side by side. These lavish works -- which include drawings, illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, panel paintings, prints, and sculpture -- will be on view in the Director's Choice Galleries, 141 and 142. Ranging in date from the sixth to the fifteenth century, they originally adorned cathedrals, monasteries, and private chapels in Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. More info

Looking for a PhD program in Rhetoric and Writing? The Bowling Green State University Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program seeks to prepare women and men to be scholar-teachers who understand the professional synergy of mastering knowledge, advancing it through their own inquiry, and sharing knowledge and habits of inquiry with students in the writing courses they teach and administer.

In pursuing this broad goal, students and faculty in the program utilize a range of the
intellectual approaches (rhetorical, cultural, empirical, political) that characterize the field of rhetoric and composition. For more information, check out the program's website

More News and Events!

Faculty News:

Meet the New Faculty and Staff in the English Department

Learn about the new GAs

More Faculty News?: Submit citations,works in progress