News Updates

Welcome back! 1st EGSO General Body Meeting Friday, 9/27/24
January from 11am-12pm in HU384 or on Zoom. See you there! 

New Year, New EGSO: Access to Website
As of January 2024, EGSO has access to edit this website again and will be leaving updates here. 

EGSO meeting Friday, 9/18/2016
@ 2:00 PM in HU 290. All graduate students welcome. A conference theme will be picked.

EGSO meeting Friday, 9/2/2016
@ 2:45 PM in HU 290. All graduate students welcome. Happy hour afterwards!

Crisis and Recovery
Explore the Conference section of the site for updated information on the EGSO's 14th Annual Graduate Student Conference, "Crisis and Recovery."


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Anthony Jarrells, "After Novels" lecture + open seminar

Please join the Eighteenth-Century Reading Group and the English Department for a talk by Professor Anthony Jarrells on Wednesday, October 3rd at 11:00 AM in HU-290. Professor Jarrells will give a paper titled “After Novels,” which examines some of the myriad forms of writing - journalistic texts, didactic essays, rhetorics of advice, romance, perspective narratives, private histories, and personal diaries – that early novels imitated and engaged. By tracking how these discourses developed and thrived after novels took their place in the busy market of eighteenth-century print, Jarrells argues that the novel itself inspired experimentation and mixing among non-novelistic forms even as these forms pushed the novel to refine and consolidate its own formal boundaries. There will be a Q & A session and refreshments after the talk.
     Professor Jarrells will also be hosting an open seminar in HU-354 at 5:00 PM on Wednesday, October 3rd. Reading materials (a few short articles) will be made available through the department website. All graduate students and faculty are encouraged to attend.
     Professor Jarrels is Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina, Columbia where he teaches courses in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Romanticism. He is the author of Britain's Bloodless Revolutions: 1688 and the Romantic Reform of Literature (2005), in which he explores the relationship of the emerging category of Literature to the emerging threat of popular violence after the Bloodless Revolution.

Cristobal Silva, "Geographies of Immunity" lecture and special session

The Americanist Reading Group will host a lecture by Cristobal Silva of Columbia University on Tuesday, May 8 at 4:15 PM in 110 University Hall.  Silva’s talk, “Geographies of Immunity: Imagining the Nation in the Age of Yellow Fever,” comes from a current book project titled Republic of Medicine: Epidemiology and the Atlantic Slave Trade.  His work proposes unique intersections for scholars of early American and/or transatlantic literature and the biopolitical. 
Silva’s recent book, Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative (Oxford UP, 2011), examines the way in which contagious disease—especially smallpox—influenced community formation in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England.  He argues that Colonial populations produced specific rhetorics (those both political and theological) through which to understand their varying levels of immunity to disease during the Colonial experience.      
In addition to his talk, Professor Silva has generously offered to meet with graduate students from 2:00-3:00 that afternoon, in order to discuss strategies for journal publication.  This meeting will also take place in 110 University Hall.  This is a unique opportunity for us, since he is current Editor of the journal The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (Penn Press)
Silva, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, is currently Editor of the journal The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (Penn Press).   He specializes in colonial and eighteenth-century American literature and culture and transatlantic literature.  
Please contact me with any questions ([email protected]).  I look forward to seeing many of you at what promises to be a compelling talk!

Last EGSO meeting of the semester

on Friday, May 4 @ 2:30 in HU290. All graduate students are welcome and encouraged to attend!

Trade School classes: Russian Avant Garde + How to Organize a Trade School

The Art Graduate Student Organization is hosting a pair of "Trade School" classes this Friday, April 27. The Trade School is a barter-based education group from NYC. They teach a class, and instead of paying for it, we bring an item from their wish list in exchange. For those of you who are interested in the concept itself, there is a class on starting your own trade school. There is also a class on Russian Avant Garde zines from the early decades of the 20th century. 
Friday, April 27th, Boor Sculpture Building
2-3:30pm: How to Organize a Trade School in Your Area 
4-5:30pm: Russian Avant-Garde Books - Early Zines

Russian Avant-Garde Books: Early Zines Made as Protest, Proclamation and Collaboration':
In this survey of the artist books of the Russian Avant-Garde we will discuss how the artist book culture developed in Russia (and the Soviet Union) between 1910 - 1934 as a form of cultural protest and disruption as well as a vehicle for political change and social design. The book format was a platform for collaborations between authors and artists in creative and idealistic conversation. Conscious of the poetic and artistic potential of word, page, line, form, graphic design and materials, artists and authors used these early "zines" as a slap in the face of public taste, to transform the world and to help build a new socialism. That is, until Socialist Realism became the required style...

Here is a list of items they would like to barter with us:
Dried Fruits | House plant | Toasted Almonds | Favorite Condiment Illustrated Instructions for Something You Know How To Do | Your Own Zine Simple Instructions on How to Build an Indexhibit website | Something fascinating you’ve recently discovered or learned
More info:
http://sunyartmfa.wordpress.com/   
 

Open meeting with incoming Chair

Meeting with Bret B. and Randy Craig on Monday, April 23 @1:30 in HU354. All grad students are welcome and encouraged to attend!

EGSO meeting Friday the 13th

HU290 @ 2:30. All graduate students are welcome!

Thomas Dechand on Coleridge

The Americanist Graduate Student Group and the English Department Present:
“A Medium Between Literal and Metaphorical: Tautegory and the Romantic Symbol"
Thomas Dechand of the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center
April 6th at 4:00 PM in Humanities 354 Thomas Dechand, a doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center, has published on Wallace Stevens, Charles Sanders Peirce, Thomas Pynchon and questions pertaining to the intersections between literature, science and philosophy. His talk will take up Coleridge's infamous argument concerning the Symbol and press it in new directions to show that despite of years of critical attention Coleridge's theory of the Symbol continues to be misunderstood today. This talk should be of interest to folks interested in Transatlantic Romanticism, Literary Theory, and American Literature. This event is free and open to the public. Time will be provided at the end of the lecture for questions and discussion.

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Books for prisoners

From James Searle on behalf of the EGSO outreach committee:  
Next week we will be holding another mass mailing of books to prisoners. Last year we had great success and managed to send out hundreds of books to prisoners thanks to generous donations from many folks in the department. Our hope is that this year we can really step it up, the GSO has given us a few hundred dollars to that end, and what we need more than anything is money for shipping and supplies (think amazon book boxes, larger envelopes, labels, and tape). We still have a hundred or so books ready for shipping but ran out of money last year and have a few hundred more books all set for packaging to get out next week. Any amount of money you can spare is greatly appreciated (3 dollars can get a few books to a single prisoner) and if you are willing to part with some of your hard earned money you can leave it in my mailbox or contact me directly. I am sure the outreach committee will send out details on the time and location for next Monday and all are welcome to come a write to a prisoner. This year we will be once again targeting prisoners in Texas where there are more African American men in prison than there are in universities and colleges most of whom are non-violent offenders charged with drug related offences. Giving a book to a prisoner along with a letter is an exceedingly meaningful way to help people behind bars and it is an amazingly low intensity form of activism, I encourage you all to help us out if possible.Thanks so much,James Searle   
    

Post-conference report

The 10th Annual EGSO Graduate Conference was a great success! 
Those who deserve thanks: The English Department, University Auxiliary Services and the GSO for generous financial support; panel respondents Paul Stasi, Rick Barney, Ineke Murakami, Kir Kuiken, Bret Benjamin, and Derik Smith; administrative support from Lynn Bearup, Brenda Miller, Connie Barrett, and Liz Lauenstein; conference organizers Kaitlin Albertson, Sara Alotaibi, Michael Amrozowicz, Kate Cove, Tony Delgado, Harry Garrott, Christopher Jacques, Luke Martin, Amy Mallory-Kani, Joel Sodano, and Jared Young; the keynote speaker Thierry Bardini; and, of course, all the the graduate presenters. 
Gratitude!

Thierry Bardini Seminar

As part of the 10th Annual Graduate Student Conference, in addition to his keynote lecture on Friday evening, Thierry Bardini will be leading a seminar on Saturday, 3/31 @3:45 in Husted Hall 204. The content of the seminar will focus on Chapter 4 of Junkware. A pdf of this chapter is linked below. From the Introduction: 
"Chapter 4, "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind,” discusses the metaphysics and ethics of posthumanity. It starts from an extended discussion and an update of Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. I claim that our societies are moving out of control (as they had previously moved away from discipline), and into what I dubbed the era of the machine of the fourth kind, genetic capitalism. Sequences, genes, cells, and organs are becoming the new commodities, embodying a bright future for the extension of the market. If today’s global economy is under the spell of “One Market under God” (Thomas Frank), gene sequences and other living codes will be its junk bonds, objects of the new risky and high-reward markets of genetic cap- italism. The French legislative invention of “the crime against the species” and several other contemporary phenomena, all dealing with biotechnological and biopolitical innovations, beg for an extension of the Deleuzo-Guattarian framework, revisiting the central metaphysical notions of “common nature” and individuation. By that I also mean that Deleuze and Guattari’s work, and especially their Anti-Oedipus, is a part of cyberculture qua junk culture: a cul- ture that sees cyberartists of all kinds quote “The postscript on societies of control” as much as Benjamin’s “Work of art in the age of mechanical repro- duction” or Duchamp’s Grand verre; a culture where everybody is taking care of his or her very own body without organs; a culture that elevates the ritour- nelle to the status of most envied commodity, and finds rhizomes everywhere it looks. Junk is the fabric of this proliferating rhizome, and as much the stuff of their molecular unconscious as of a molar appareil de capture." 

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bardinijunkwarechapter4.pdf
File Size:	1322 kb
File Type:	pdf

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WASTE tentative schedule updated on Conference page

Will be updating regularly in the weeks and days leading up to the conference.

Sophie Gee visit + talk + seminar March 20

Please join the Eighteenth-Century Reading Group and the English Department for a talk by Professor Sophie Gee on Tuesday, March 20th at 1:00 PM in HU 354. Professor Gee will be presenting a paper that connects Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey to questions of faith and belief in eighteenth-century novels. There will be a Q & A session and refreshments after the talk.     
There will also be an open seminar with Professor Gee on Tuesday, March 20th from 7:00PM - 9:00PM in HU 354. Topics/readings to be discussed TBA.
Professor Gee is Associate Professor in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Studies at Princeton University, and her first book, Making Waste: Leftovers and the Eighteenth-Century Imagination, is published by Princeton University Press.  In 2007 she published her first novel, The Scandal of the Season, a comedy of manners set in eighteenth-century London and a retelling of Alexander Pope’s "The Rape of the Lock."  The novel was named one of the Best Books of 2007 by the Washington Post and the Economist and is published in 13 countries.

Spring 2012 Conference: WASTE

Deadline for submissions: February 15th
Keynote speaker: Thierry Bardini
see the conference pages for more info

Mark your calendars! Meeting Schedule for the Spring 2012 semester:

Fri, Jan 27; 2:30-4:00pm
Fri, Feb 17; 2:30-4:00pm
Fri, March 9; 2:30-4:00pm
Fri, March 23; 2:30-4:00pm
Fri, April 13; 2:30-4:00pm
Fri, May 4; 2:30-4:00pm

EGSO Meeting, 11/11, @1:30, in HU290

Be there or be square.

EGSO Meeting, 10/7, @ 2:30, in HU290

Note the room change. We'll be meeting in 290, on the second floor of the Humanities building. Hope to see you there!

Meeting of the Themes

Each spring, the egso organizes a conference for graduate students locally, nationally, and internationally to present their research and writing.  In spring 2012, the egso will host its 10th Annual Graduate Student Conference and for our decennary conference (as in previous years) we need the help of our MA + PhD students to determine the theme. Any ideas, well-formed or ungainly, are welcome. Whether you have a theme to share or not, please come participate in the discussion. Hope to see you there!

Friday, September 23, at 1:00pm in HU354

 (Can’t make the meeting but have a theme to propose? Please email: [email protected])

First EGSO Meeting of the Semester

Friday, Sept. 9
@ 2:30 in HU 354
All English MA + PhD students are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Meeting agenda:
Event/Activity planning for the 2011-12.
Come help us plan our social, outreach, and academic event calendar for the upcoming semesters!

GSO Welcome Picnic

This was a blast last year (15 on 15 volleyball anyone?). Great opportunity to meet and mingle with grad students from our department and around the University. From the GSO: "It's that time of year again...
GSO's Welcome Back Picnic! Come spend a lovely summer afternoon with your fellow UA graduate students and meet the new 2011-2012 E-Board and Office Managers! Welcome announcements given by President Philip and Dean Williams! FREE for all graduate students, new and returning alike!

Time: Friday, September 2 · 3:00pm - 7:00pm.
Location: The green space between Social Sciences building and the Library.

We'll have all your favorite picnic foods, free raffle give aways, volleyball, bouncy joust, music spun by a fun, local DJ, and so much more!"

What's new?

Several presentations from the EGSO's 8th Annual Graduate Student Conference (April 16-17, 2010) have been published by York University's online journal, e-topia. Please visit the work of our presenters here:     http://startrek.ccs.yorku.ca/~topia/issues.html
Contents include:

Cultivated Tragedy: Art, Aesthetics and Terrorism in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man
Jennifer Bartlett, McGill University

Aesthetic Freedom in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and The Critique of the Power of Judgment
Thomas Cook, University at Albany

Human Rights and the 18th Century Mind: or, Conjectural Savages, Fictional Humans and the Performance of Rights
Joel P. Sodano Jr., University at Albany

The Right Thing or a Human Right: Rights, LIberties and Healthcare Reform
April Pierce and Lisa Backman, New York University and Oxford University 

Where have all the Revolutionaries Gone? Human Rights and the Reinvention of Revolution in Rebiya Kadeer's Dragon Fighter
Katharine Lu, New York University

The Neglect of the Author in New Historicism
Patricia Ana Marquez, CUNY Brooklyn College

"We are the World": The Flight from Impotence in the Society of the Spectacle
Matt McGregor, University at Albany

The Illusion of Corporate Social Responsibility: Coca Cola and Corporate Citizenship
Jackie Hayes, University at Albany

Now Accepting Submissions for 2025: