Please join us for the final event of the Spring 2018 Hallie Ford Literary Series, a reading with Jennifer Cognard-Black this Tuesday, April 10th at 5:30 p.m. in the Hatfield Room (2nd floor of the Hatfield Library). This event is free and open to the public.

Jennifer Cognard-Black is a Professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her specialties are Anglo-American women novelists, fiction writing, and the literatures of food. A Fulbright scholar to Slovenia as well as the Norton T. Dodge Award for Creative and Scholarly Achievement, Cognard-Black’s books include Narrative in the Professional Age (Routledge 2004); Kindred Hands (Iowa UP 2006); a writing textbook, Advancing Rhetoric (Kendall/Hunt 2006); an anthology of food fictions, culinary poems, and recipe recollections, Books that Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal (NYUP 2014); and a collection of essays by women writers about their everyday contraptions, From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines (MSUP 2016).

Cognard-Black is a dynamic, accomplished writer of both scholarly and creative work. Of her process, she says, “When I write creatively, I put things together. I synthesize disparate parts of what constitutes the human: a salamander in the bathroom, the bouncy chorus of an overplayed song, loss, love, death, delight, or a broken bone at age three. Like the synthesis of an exquisite, yet simple, dish—that divine combination, say, of April asparagus, crispy fingerling potatoes, rosemary, olive oil, and an over-easy egg—a well-crafted short story or essay should become more than the sum of its parts. Such writing should be absolutely of this world yet also, always, otherworldly: a combination that defies easy explanation and that brings both pleasure and awe.”

Praise for the works of Jennifer Cognard-Black:

“The anthology From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines, features essays examining women’s relationships with a wide range of tools: from tractor to typewriter, sewing machine to microphone, radio to prosthetic leg. The book offers a timely focus, during an era when cell phones, laptops, and fitness trackers can feel like extensions of our very selves. Edited by Joyce Dyer, Jennifer Cognard-Black, and Elizabeth MacLeod Walls, the anthology focuses on machines in use from the early 20th century through today. It offers historical context for contemporary discussions about how today’s technologies shape our lives—the ways we think, the relationships we have, and the identities we adopt—and it provides insight into how these machines connect with the experiences of women, including daughters and mothers.” — Heather Mcentarfer, Literary Mama

“What is particularly innovative about Books that Cook is the way in which the book calls upon the reader to bring these recipes to life: “When a food is shared and eaten, the reader actually embodies the text . . . the reader’s own body is altered as a result of reading and eating this text. In a very real sense, then, a recipe reader becomes that recipe: she breathes it, her heart beats it, and thus the text is known both by the mind and by the body” (2). However, to “embody the text” does not require chronological linearity. Instead, the reader is encouraged to “sample” the poetics, prose, and recipes based on their unique position and ‘taste.’” –Lila A. Sharif, American Studies

“In Kindred Hands Jennifer Cognard-Black and Elizabeth MacLeod Walls have compiled an extraordinarily useful and lively collection of letters by major British and American literary women from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Jessie Redmon Fauset. Energetic, imaginative, analytic, and keenly committed to their art, all these authors muse on the muse—and often with vivid candor on their own experiences of art and life—in writings that will be fascinating not only to the professional scholar but also to what Virginia Woolf called ‘the common reader.’”—Sandra M. Gilbert, coeditor, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women

For more on Jennifer Cognard-Black, please visit her author’s site at http://www.jennifercognard-black.com

Questions about the event, please direct to: Danielle Deulen at dcdeulen@willamette.edu.

You’re invited to attend the 2018 Humanities Seminar lecture on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on Thursday, April 5th, at 4:30pm in the Hatfield Room.

Title: “Frankenstein’s Poetry”

Presenter: Dr. Forest Pyle (University of Oregon)

Abstract: Dr. Forest Pyle (University of Oregon) will deliver the 2018 Humanities Seminar lecture on Mary Shelley’s book entitled Frankenstein.  This talk will also commemorate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “hideous progeny.”

Dr. Pyle’s work explores the problems and possibilities posed by aesthetic experience, particularly in the context of Romantic and post-Romantic literature. His first book examined the ideological workings and implications of the Romantic concept of the imagination from Wordsworth and Coleridge through George Eliot. He is presently completing a book manuscript on something he calls a “radical aestheticism,” the term that he believes best describes the nature of a recurring event in certain of the most powerful and resonant texts of the British Romantic literary tradition. He is interested in the various forms and effects of this aesthetic radicalization in a strain of Romanticism that extends from Percy Shelley and Keats through Dickinson, Hopkins, and Dante Rossetti through Wilde.

Contact Information

Name: Stephanie DeGooyer

Phone: 503-370-6248

Email: sdegooye@willamette.edu

Please join us this Thursday, March 22nd, at 4:15 p.m. for a talk in the Hatfield Room.

Presenter: Chris Adsit

Title: On PTSD & Its Affects on the Incarcerated

Abstract: Chris works with veterans at OSP, helping them to develop healthy strategies for coping.

You are all invited to a lecture by Tessa Conroy, an economist whose research is focused on women-owned businesses and other trends in entrepreneurship. Her work has been featured in both state and national media, including recently on Wisconsin Public Radio/Television.

Title: “Do as I Do: An Application of Discrete Choice with Social Interactions to Entrepreneurship”

Presenter: Dr. Tessa Conroy

Time & Location: Monday, March 19th, at 4:15pm in the Hatfield Room.

Abstract: Dr. Tessa Conroy is jointly appointed to the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Center for Community and Economic Development with University of Wisconsin-Extension. She earned her PhD in Economics from Colorado State University in 2014.  Her research and outreach focus on regional economic growth and development with particular emphasis on small business dynamics.   Her research on women-owned businesses, job creation, entrepreneurship, and labor market trends have been featured in both state and national media, including recently on Wisconsin Public Radio/Television.  Refreshments will be provided.

Sponsored by the Economics Department.

Contact Information

Name: Tabitha Knight

Phone: 503-370-6232

Email: knightt@willamette.edu

Please join us Wednesday, March 14th, at 5:30 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for the second event of the Spring 2018 Hallie Ford Literary Series, a reading, and publication celebration with our own Scott Nadelson.

Presenter: Scott Nadelson, Hallie Ford Chair in Writing

Title: Scott Nadelson Reading

Abstract: Nadelson’s new story collection, The Fourth Corner of the World, was published by Engine Books just a couple of weeks ago and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming his work into the world! This is collection about outcasts: characters who abandon their lands of origin, sever their roots, and distance themselves from the people they once were. These stories roam geographically and historically, featuring a would-be assassin in 1920s Paris, Jewish utopians in 1880s Oregon, and teenage girls seeking revenge in 1980s New Jersey among their casts of beautifully rendered outcasts and seekers.

Scott Nadelson is the author of four story collections, most recently The Fourth Corner of the World; a memoir, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress; and a novel, Between You and Me. His stories and essays have appeared in Harvard Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Alaska Quarterly Review, and have been cited as notable in both Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. Winner of an Oregon Book Award, the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, he teaches at Willamette University, where he is the Hallie Brown Ford Chair in Creative Writing.

If you have any further questions about the event, please direct them to me: Danielle Deulen at dcdeulen@willamette.edu.

Please join us Tuesday, March 20th, at 4:15 p.m. in the Hatfield Room for a guest lecture sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies.

Presenter: Tuong Vu, Professor of Political Science and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Oregon

Title: Vietnam Revolution & War

Abstract: Tuong Vu is a Professor of Political Science and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Oregon.  He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University and the National University of Singapore and has taught at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.  Vu’s research concerns the comparative politics of state formation, development, nationalism, and revolutions, with a particular focus on East Asia.

His latest book, Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge University Press, 2017), focuses on the evolving worldview of Vietnamese revolutionaries and shows the depth and resilience of the commitment to communist utopia in their foreign policy.  The book challenges the conventional understanding of the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese revolution.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies.  For more information contact Greg Felker (gfelker@willamette.edu).  This event is free and open to the public.  Refreshments are provided.

Please join the Center for Asian Studies for a lecture Friday, March 2nd, at 11:20 a.m. in the Hatfield Room.

Title: “Goodwill and the Alliance: U.S. Japan Cooperation during and after March 11th.”

Presenter: Ambassador James P. Zumwalt

Abstract: On March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan off the coast of Tohoku followed by a devastating tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people including two Americans. It was the largest earthquake on record to hit Japan and triggered the meltdown of two nuclear reactors in Fukushima. In the days and weeks following the disaster, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo mobilized U.S. government operations and resources provided to the Japanese government while the U.S. military coordinated massive humanitarian aid and disaster relief operations dubbed, Operation Tomodachi (i.e. “friend” in Japanese). This support has generated significant goodwill between the two countries and reinforced the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance.

As part of its newest outreach series on U.S.-Japan relations, The Alliance Working in America, Sasakawa USA is co-sponsoring a special lecture at Willamette University to discuss U.S.-Japan cooperation in the aftermath of Japan’s March 11 Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. The lecture will feature Sasakawa USA CEO, Ambassador James P. Zumwalt, who was the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo at the time of the crisis. He will discuss his role and the U.S. government’s response following the disaster, the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance to American interests, and the future of U.S.-Japan cooperation.

About Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA
Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA is an independent American non-profit, non-partisan institution in Washington, D.C. devoted to research, analysis, and better understanding of U.S.-Japan relations. Through research and education programs, Sasakawa USA facilitates people-to-people exchange and dialogue between American and Japanese policymakers, influential citizens, and the broader public.

Contact Information:
Name: Miho Fujiwara
Phone: 503-370-6015
Email: mfujiwar@willamette.edu

Please join us for the first event of the Spring 2018 Hallie Ford and Teppola Literary Series, a poetry reading by Samiya Bashir. The reading will take place on Monday, February 12th at 7:30 p.m. in the Hatfield Room (2nd floor of Hatfield Library) and is free and open to the public.

PLEASE NOTE: The event date has changed. Previously, Professor Bashir was slated to read this Thursday. Due to a scheduling conflict, the event has been changed to next Monday, February 12th. So mark your calendars!

Samiya Bashir is the author of three books of poetry: Field Theories; Gospel; and Where the Apple Falls, which were both Lambda Literary Award finalists. Her poetry, stories, articles and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications most recently including Poetry, World Literature Today, Ecotone, HOAX, The Offing, and Poet Lore among many others. Sometimes she makes poems of dirt. Sometimes zeros and ones. Sometimes variously rendered text. Sometimes light. Bashir has collaborated with a number of visual and media artists on projects such as M A P S :: a cartography in progress, with Roland Dahwen Wu, Coronagraphy with Tracy Schlapp, and “Breach,” with Alison Saar, currently on exhibition at L.A. Louver. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches creative writing at Reed College.

About Field Theories:
“In verse, Bashir considers multiple realities through the lens of race and class, questioning dominant narratives. ‘Starting with her title, Field Theories, Samiya Bashir challenges the vocabulary of science,’ Durand writes, ‘finding inflections and echoes within that vocabulary of the long and brutal history of race and racially based economic exploitation in the U.S.A.’

“When used within the respective sciences of physics, psychology and social science, the term “field theory” (singular) has specific meanings. “Unified field theory,” in particular, coined by Albert Einstein, refers to the attempt to find a single framework behind all that exists (gravity, however, continues to escape this effort). But by changing “theory” to “theories,” (plural) Bashir subverts that idea of a singular framework to reveal the multiplicity of reality: where there is one reality there will be other realities told in various forms, splitting the dominant narrative into a prism of narratives. In contrasts and convergences, she questions history (histories) and how it is (they are) articulated in even the most objective of “fields.” In fact, “field” itself is a loaded word within slavery’s context, indicating enforced agricultural labor.” (Hyperallergic, Marcella Durand)

“Field Theories pivots around this central theme, that the black body—scientifically speaking—is an idealized physical body that absorbs (my italics) electromagnetic radiation, while a white body reflects (my italics) all rays completely and uniformly in all directions. It’s how Bashir renders that theme which makes this collection worth reading. She has taken science and folklore and emphasized the interactions between the individual and his or her environment with a lyrical adeptness that excites the poem/s. There is an intuitive force and a soul to this collection, but there is also the shadow. The mind versus the body, light versus darkness, the individual versus society, and how we measure them all —all of which are very alive throughout each section, either through her exploration of properties or characteristics, “life space,” and the behaving selves.” (The Poetry Foundation, Harriet Staff)