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  • Virtual Tuesday Night Book Club: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

    Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack and Michael Thomas, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion!

    This month’s novel is Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then unknown author, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The book’s nameless narrator describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of “the Brotherhood”, before retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.

    When you register you will be provided the meeting link to join the conversation. GET MORE INFORMATION ON HOW TO USE ZOOM

  • Virtual Tuesday Night Book Club: Raymond Carver’s What We Talk about When We Talk about Love

    Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack and Michael Thomas, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion!

    This month’s book is Raymond Carver’s What We Talk about When We Talk about Love. In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.

    When you register you will be provided the meeting link to join the conversation. GET MORE INFORMATION ON HOW TO USE ZOOM

  • The Intersection Faculty Book Club Summer Book Selection Discussion

    Banner Advertisement for the Intersection Faculty Book Club discussion on September 11, 2020

    Save the Date to Discuss The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy on Friday, September 11 at 4:30 p.m.

    Now more than ever it is important for us to stay connected and find comfort in togetherness. We will gather together via Zoom to discuss the novel. Zoom invite will be sent closer to the event. Please feel free to “bring” your own refreshments.

    Dr. Abha Sood will serve as our discussion leader. She is an African American and Postcolonial Literature Scholars. Dr. Sood has provided the thought questions below to help you reflect on the book.

    1. How do the troubled relationships–parent-child, inter-caste, intergenerational, inter-religious, intercultural–inform the plot?
    2. How do thwarted or unfulfilled desires affect personality and behavior?
    3. The political environment in Kera la and its impact on social relationships (challenge to feudal structures?).
    4. The conflict between the native language (Malayalam) and the borrowed language (English).
    5. The landscape and its influence on the narrative.
    6. Comparisons to other narratives informed by (or narrated by) a child’s view (in retrospect).

    This event celebrates the interconnections between the Program in Gender and lntersectionality Studies and the Institute for Global Understanding, and is co-hosted with the English Department and the Library.

    This program is designed for faculty and academic administrators. The Zoom link will be distributed by MU email on Wednesday, September 9. For questions, please send email to Dr. Lisa M. Dinella at ldinella@monmouth.edu.

    About the Intersection Faculty Book Club

    New York Times Bestseller
    The Intersection Faculty Book Club features a thought-provoking novel each break. The books selected highlight equity, gender and diversity topics. An MU scholar hosts the discussion, bringing an interdisciplinary perspective and inspiring deeper discussion. This book club is a joint venture of the Program in Gender and lntersectionality Studies, the Guggenheim Memorial Library, and the English Department.

  • Virtual Tuesday Night Book Club: Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow

    Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack and Michael Thomas, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion!

    This month’s novel is Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow and joining the conversation will be the special guest host Anika Chapin. A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

    When you register you will be provided the meeting link to join the conversation. GET MORE INFORMATION ON HOW TO USE ZOOM

  • Virtual Tuesday Night Book Club: Clare Beams’ The Illness Lesson

    Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack and Michael Thomas, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion!

    This month’s novel is Clare Beams’ The Illness Lesson.  Written in intensely vivid prose and brimming with psychological insight, The Illness Lesson is a powerful exploration of women’s bodies, women’s minds, and the time-honored tradition of doubting both.

    When you register you will be provided the meeting link to join the conversation. GET MORE INFORMATION ON HOW TO USE ZOOM

  • Cancelled: Lives of the ‘Brows’: Autobiography, Taste, Ethics

    Photo of Dr. Max Cavitch, Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
    Dr. Max Cavitch, Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

    Please join us for a guest lecture by Dr. Max Cavitch, Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also an affiliated faculty member of the programs in Cinema Studies, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and Psychoanalytic Studies.

    Dr. Cavitch will be discussing literary taste and value in relation to autobiography—one of the world’s most popular and widely practiced genres. From “highbrow” triumphs of artistic intention to “middlebrow” narratives of historical significance to “lowbrow” tell-alls of gossipy celebrity, there are autobiographies to suit every taste. But what is “taste,” anyway? What does it have to do with “literary value”? And, moreover, what do either taste or literary value have to do with the question of whose lives and life-stories matter?

    Refreshments will be served. Students, faculty, and interested members of the public are warmly invited to attend.

    Free and open to the public.
    Sponsored by the Wayne D. McMurray Endowed Chair in the Humanities, Dr. Kristin Bluemel

  • Toni Morrison Day

    Photo of author Toni Morrison with one of her more famous quotes: This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

    Join us for a celebration of the life and works of Toni Morrison: author, activist, academic, and Nobel Laureate.

    These events are free and open to the public. For questions or additional information, please contact Professor Linda Sacks at lsacks@monmouth.edu.

    Sponsored by the Department of English, the Guggenheim Memorial Library and the Honors School.

    Schedule of Events

    Library 101

    10:00 – 11:25 a.m. | Dr. Courtney Werner – Welcome; Professor Beth Sara Swanson – Opening remarks; Dr. Walter Greason – Keynote address

    11:40 a.m. – 4:10 p.m. | Sigma Tau Delta: marathon reading of Sula, read in its entirety by student and faculty volunteers

    4:30 – 5:50 p.m. |  Dr. Anwar Uhuru: “Finding Self Regard in the Works of Toni Morrison,” followed by discussion

    6:00 – 8:00 p.m. | Screening: Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019), sponsored by the Honors School

    Library 102

    10:05 a.m. – 4:10 p.m. | Visit the Toni Morrison Gallery – enjoy food and refreshments

    Faculty Symposium

    Magill 107

    11:40 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. | Pedagogy Panel: “Teaching Toni Morrison”

    1:15 – 2:35 p.m. | Scholarship Roundtable: “Morrison: History, Themes, and Craft”

    Wilson 104

    10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. | Open Room: Student & Faculty maker/creator space

    10:00 – 11:00 a.m. | Collage Workshop with Professor Linh Dao, Department of Art and Design

    2:00 – 3:00 p.m. |  Collage Workshop with Professor Linh Dao (video)

    Photo of Event Schedule Flyer - click to download schedule of events
    Click Image to Download Event Schedule

     

  • Graduate English Meet-Up

    Image shows drawings of Halloween pumpkins

    A goosebump inducing evening of perfect readings for the season. Enjoy spooky readings of the season from faculty members and students. Meet and mingle with other Graduate students.

    For more information, contact Michele McBride at mmcbride@monmouth.edu.

  • Ink & Electricity Lecture Series

    This annual lecture series brings top scholars in the fields of digital humanities, media studies, the history of the book, print culture, and children’s literature to Monmouth University every fall.

    STRANGER THAN FICTION:
    THE NOVEL IN WEB 2.0

    A Talk by Dr. Priya Joshi
    Professor of English
    Temple University

    Fan sites, new writing platforms, and new markets for the novel are now produced and curated by readers on Web 2.0 platforms. This talk reviews the story of “literature” in the age of digital production with particular attention to the future of literary theory.

    This event is free and open to the public and refreshments will be served.

    Ink and Electricity is sponsored by the Wayne D. McMurray-Helen Bennett Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Monmouth University, Dr. Kristin Bluemel, professor of English. She can be reached at kbluemel@monmouth.edu or 732-571-3622.

  • Annual Graduate Symposium (English Dept.)

    Call for Papers

    The Graduate Symposium presents students with the unique opportunity to not only present their work before their peers, but also to hone their speaking skills while simultaneously building their resume.

    All English Graduate students are welcome to submit papers and presentation proposals to Jennifer Broman (jennifer.l.broman@monmouth.edu).

    Threesis Competition

    What is the Threesis? Consider it an elevator pitch for your thesis (or any research you’ve done). Present a 3-minute long, non-jargon prose description of your thesis or research paper, and compete against your fellow Grad students for $25 Barnes & Noble gift card!