Fall 2010 newsletter

A Letter From the Chair

Fall is a time to embrace change, and the department has seen some exciting ones. First, after many decades located at 406 Holmes, with its well‐used warren of rooms, the Main Office has moved! Although we’ve only traveled around the corner, to a suite in 405 Lake, the new space is freshly painted and carpeted, sunny, and welcoming. And the remodeling has just begun: There will be more reno‐

vated faculty offices in Lake, and the old depart‐ment and nearby rooms will be transformed into new offices and a brand new conference room. If you find yourself in the area, please stop by and see us in our new home!

In a less tangible but equally important move, the depart‐ment is now located in the new College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH), one of the three successors to the former College of Arts and Sciences. The founding Dean of the CSSH, Georges Van Den Abbeele, is also a new English Department colleague, holding joint appointment in the Departments of English and Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Dean Van Den Abbeele is a distinguished scholar of Modern (Romance) Languages and English Literature, a cultural theorist whose scholarship has focused on narra‐tives of tourism, travel, and nationality. He comes to Northeastern from the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also served as Dean of the Humanities Division.

In addition to Dean Van Den Abbeele, the department this year welcomes another distinguished colleague, Professor Lori Lefkovitz, Northeastern’s first Ruderman Chair of Jew‐ish Studies. Professor Lefkovitz’s scholarship and teaching span the areas of Jewish Studies, Feminist and Gender Studies, and the field in which she began her career, Victo‐rian Literature. Professor Lefkovitz comes to Northeastern most recently from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, where she was Sadie and Arlene Gottesman Kolot Chair in Gender and Judaism. Professor Lefkovitz has recently published In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities.

Finally, the department is proud to acknowledge two gen‐erous gifts from English Department alumni/ae. The Helen Stone Scholarship in the English department has been es‐tablished in the name of Ms. Stone, who received her Mas‐ter’s Degree in English here, to support the scholarly development of graduate students in the department. We are also grateful to Paul C. Krueger, who was the Director of the English Language Center before his death in 1995. Mr. Krueger established a fund to promote the education of international students and second language. In fulfillment of his ideal, next year the department will host the first Paul Charles Krueger Symposium for Teachers of Interna‐tional and Second Language Writers. I would be very happy to hear from anyone in our alumni/ae community who re‐members Mr. Krueger or Ms. Stone. Laura Green Department Chair

Department of English, 405 Lake Hall, (617) 373‐4540, www.english.neu.edu

English Department Alumni/ae e-Newsletter

Fall 2010

In This Issue:

ALUMNI/AE SPOTLIGHTS Kara Andersen (MA ’00) The Life Academic …….……………… Page 2 Rachel Stein (BA ’10) Let’s Hear It for New York ……..… Page 3

UNDERGRADUATE NEWS………………….….. Page 3

GRADUATE PROGRAMS UPDATE.…………. Page 4

EGSA NEWS ……………………………………...…. Page 4

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Teaching Women’s Biography….. Page 6

WRITING PROGRAM UPDATE …….……...... Page 7

ALUMNI/AE UPDATES ……………….……….… Page 8

DEPARTMENT EVENTS ……………………..….. Page 8

THE LIFE ACADEMIC: Kara Andersen (MA ’00)

Patrick Mullen received his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003. Joining the English department here in 2005, he teaches courses in British and Irish Modernism in both English and Cinema Studies. Kara An‐dersen, who received a Cinema Studies certificate along with her Master’s de‐gree at Northeastern in 2000, also got her doctorate at Pittsburgh in 2009, and is now Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Recently, Patrick caught up with Kara about her experiences at Northeastern and Pitt:

Prof. Mullen: When you studied at Northeastern, what did you concen‐trate in? Kara Andersen: I started out with an interest in American literature and then got drawn into the Cinema Studies program. I used the MA and Cinema Studies Certificate to apply to PhD programs in English and film. I ended up choosing the English Depart‐ment at the University of Pittsburgh, where the relationship between Eng‐lish and film is similar to Northeastern. My coursework and teaching was al‐most exclusively film after the first year, though.

Mullen: What are you doing now? An‐dersen: I am currently an assistant professor of film studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY. I’m officially the digital cinema specialist, but my current re‐search ranges from live‐action film to animation to video games. I’m also guest‐editing a special edition of Ani‐

mation Journal, focusing on video game animation – I’m still looking for

submissions if any of the current grad students are working in that area! http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/38742

Mullen: What was the most impor‐tant part of your experience as a graduate student at NU? Andersen: It was the combination of a few things that made NU work for me: The professors who not only encour‐aged me in class, but pointed me to publishing and conference presenta‐tion opportunities, the academic re‐sources of Boston, and both working and socializing with the other mem‐bers of my cohort. I remember one occasion Kathy Howlett arranged for a few undergrad and grad students to go see a production of King Lear starring Kelsey Grammer playing locally. The performance was kind of wretched, but that sort of collegiality became the model for how I try to get my own stu‐dents involved with learning outside the classroom as well as in it.

Mullen: What advice do you have for graduate students at NU? Andersen: If you’re planning an academic career, don’t neglect professionalization. The NU English department and my PhD program offered a lot of workshops on things like how to construct a teaching portfolio, how to apply for fellowships and grants, how to get your work pub‐lished in journals, and so on, and these can be immensely helpful in showing you how to maneuver yourself into the kind of job you want.

Of course, it’s just as important to have a life outside of school and work. When I started working on my disser‐tation I also started training for a tri‐athlon. It required some careful time management, but it kept me from go‐ing stir‐crazy sitting in front of a desk all the time. It doesn’t have to be as

extreme as a triathlon, though. While working on my MA at Northeastern a group of us used to walk over to Cop‐ley every Friday to see a movie. Mullen: If you came back to NU as a Visiting Faculty member, what gradu‐ate course would you like to teach? Andersen: Recently I’ve been working on developing animation studies courses for my undergraduates, and I’ve had some ideas that work better for a graduate class. One course I’ve been wanting to teach for a while is on discourses of realism in hybrid live‐action/animation films, like The Life Aquatic, WALL‐E, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There has been a lot of great scholarship recently questioning the primacy of indexical realism in film theory, and I think it’s a good time to go back and rethink the history of film studies through the history of ani‐mated film in general.

Contributed by Professor Patrick Mullen and Kara Andersen

Kara Andersen (MA ’00, PhD ’09 University of Pittsburgh) teaches film studies at

Brooklyn College, CUNY.

See page 5 for alumnus Tony Trigilio’s (PhD ’97) review of the 2010 movie Howl.


LET’S HEAR IT FOR NEW YORK Rachel Stein, BA ’10 For Rachel Stein, a 2010 graduate, a career in the entertainment industry has begun with a postgraduate, paid internship with New York magazine, a position which builds on her personal interests and former co‐op experi‐ences. She writes:

I'm currently an online editorial intern at New York magazine. My day‐to‐day tasks include uploading slideshows, moderating comments, and building pages on the site. Every week, I'll be assigned to, say, style cupcakes for a photo shoot, research/write an article with a byline, or go to a fancy cocktail party to interview a few celebrities.

I got my first internship at Diet.com after meeting my boss at a career fair. It was there that I started to create my writing voice and learned about social media. Those skills impressed Fuse.tv, where I was hired for my first co‐op. By the end of that internship, I was blogging for the site and got to inter‐view David Byrne, Elvis Costello and Steven Van Zandt. When it was time for my next co‐op, NBC was impressed with my writing/interviewing experi‐

ence and I got an internship writing about TV, movies, and celebrities at TelevisionWithout‐Pity.com.

New York seemed to be impressed at both the quantity and quality of my experience. They saw that I knew the ins and outs of working for the web, and that at a moment's notice, I could go from organizing a database to re‐porting from the Red Carpet.

I notice that there are more and more jobs popping up every day in this field, especially with start‐ups and growing websites, and the funny thing is, I've found that a lot of people my age have no idea what it means to work in digi‐tal media. If you like pop culture, use Twitter and Facebook, and know how to write, there's no reason you can't be doing this. As newspapers and magazines die out, web content is only getting stronger and more lucrative. It's not about lowering your standards, just finding a new space so that you can still do what you love.

We always assume, in Co‐op Land (as one of my students once called it), that co‐op experience helps graduates. If you are a “post‐graduation co‐op inspired success story”, please share! As always, I can be reached at

[email protected]. Contributed by Pam Goodale, Co-Op Advisor, and Rachel Stein, BA ’10

Undergraduate News

On Thursday, September 23, the English Department hosted the an‐nual fall reception for English majors. Over fifty majors attended the event, at which they met their peers, as well as members of the faculty, and learned about Spectrum, Northeast‐ern’s literary and arts magazine

(http://www.spectrum.neu.edu/). Perhaps it was the change of the catering menu, which was a bit more eclectic than it had been in recent years, but there was abundant spirit in evi‐dence throughout the get together, and no more so than during the holding of elections for the officers of the English Majors’ Club. Three of the four elections were contested, and in each of the contested races—for president, vice president, and secretary—the candidates spoke feelingly of their qualifications and their plans for this year. The slate of officers for 2010‐11 includes Robert Gewirtz, President; Anna Siembor, Vice President; Nicholas Decoulos, Secretary; and Ali Ailport, Treasurer. Aided by Head Advisor Stuart Peter‐freund and a robust email messaging capability, the Majors’ Club has al‐ready begun planning a year’s worth of inclusive and interesting activi‐ties.

Contributed by Professor Stuart Peterfreund, Head Advisor for Undergraduate Majors

Rachel Stein (left) with Bravo TV's Millionaire Matchmaker, Patti Stanger


We look forward to hearing from you! Submit your update at:

http://www.english.neu.edu/alumni/drop_us_a_line/

Were you in the English Majors’ Club? Share your

memories with us via the link at the bottom of this page.

English Graduate Student Association: Mining for “Raw Material”

The EGSA is off to a busy and exciting start this year, welcom‐

ing incoming students and holding well attended meetings. The group has been mentoring new stu‐dents and has also formed a committee to host and welcome prospective graduate students. The EGSA has compiled a Graduate Student Directory complete with students’ academic and teaching interests for the perusal of current and prospective students, as well as faculty and alumni. The group is also organizing out‐ings to events at the Harvard Book Store, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and art exhibits in the Bos‐ton area. We encourage alumni to visit our Facebook page (search “Northeastern EGSA”) to see all the events that we have planned and participate in our discussions about topics such as examinations, confer‐ences, and even the best restaurants in the area.

The EGSA would like to send a special invitation to alumni to attend this year’s graduate student confer‐ence. This year’s conference, titled “Raw Material,”

will take place on March 19‐20 and will include a keynote by Ann Laura Stoler, the Willy Brandt Distin‐guished Professor of Anthropology and His‐torical Studies at The New School for Social Research. Her work in colonial cultures; criti‐cal race theory; gen‐

der studies; political economy; historical methodolo‐gies is widely influential in literary studies and her in‐terdisciplinary work should broaden the scope of the conference in interesting ways.

This year’s conference will be more interdisciplinary than in previous years, and we plan to circulate our CFP to schools throughout the country.

Contributed by Emily Artiano, EGSA President

Graduate Program Update

While Elizabeth Dillon is in residence at the American Anti‐quarian Society on a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, I’ve stepped in as the Graduate Coordinator and have greatly enjoyed working with colleagues and the EGSA leadership in supporting our graduate students. This semes‐ter, Professor Laura Green is teaching our new “Proseminar” course, required of all incoming graduate students who don’t already have a Master’s degree. The proseminar introduces students to the historical arc and scholarly practices of the disciplines of English Studies and offers an interdisciplinary and integrated representation of the field(s) of English. We have been busy this fall with a series of workshops: one for Master’s students considering careers in and beyond acade‐mia, and others for doctoral students beginning to strategize their fields for their comprehensive exams and for doctoral students entering the academic job market.

Happily, we have good news on the job front and I’m de‐lighted to announce the following new positions taken by re‐cent graduates: Laurel Kornhiser (PhD ’10) has accepted a tenure‐track teaching position at Quincy College. Kurt Moel‐lering (PhD ’10) has taken a job with The Carroll School in Lin‐coln, MA, where he is developing curriculum for the literature and writing program for the school's new ninth grade. Kurt is also the new editor of The Thoreau Society Bulletin. Grad stu‐dents and faculty members who have a Thoreau article (scholarly or not) or a book review on a Thoreauvian or more broadly transcendentally‐themed book may send submissions to [email protected]. Amy Kaufman (PhD ’06) has accepted an assistant professor position in the Department of English at Middle Tennessee State University. Amy has also just edited a collection of essays, The Year’s Work in Medievalism, 2009, drawn from work presented at the 2008 International Conference on Me‐dievalism at Wesleyan College. Alexander Moffett (PhD ’06) accepted an assistant professor position in the De‐partment of English at Providence College, and will be specializing in Modern British and Irish fiction.

I continue to be impressed how well our former students do despite a difficult market. Just last week in Austin at a confer‐ence, one of the conference organizers introduced herself to me and passed on greetings from her new colleague, a former MA student of ours who went on to get a PhD at Tufts and was recently hired at Southern Illinois University as a Victori‐anist. Don’t make us travel to hear your good news! (I’m talking to you, Helena Gurfinkel! Congratulations!) Just drop us a line and stay in touch. continued on page 5


The EGSA encourages interested alumni to attend all events re‐lated to the conference and to participate in panel discussions. As always, alumni are welcome to submit abstracts. So, mark your calendars and visit our website

for the CFP: http://www.english.neu.edu/graduate_studies/egsa/.

Graduate Program Update continued from page 4

As our “bookshelf” demonstrates, our graduates are impressively active scholars. Among them are two former NU graduate students with new books. Pegeen Rei‐chert Powell (MA ’95; PhD Miami Univer‐sity, Oxford, OH), teaches at Columbia College in Chicago, has coedited a collec‐tion of essays with Jocelyn Fenton Stitt, Mothers Who Deliver: Feminist Interventions in Public and Interpersonal Discourse, published by SUNY Press. Carmen Haydée Rivera (PhD ’01), who teaches at the University of Puerto Rico’s Rio Piedras Campus, has published a mono‐graph, Border Crossings and Beyond: The Life and Works of Sandra Cisneros (Praeger Press).

Contributed by Professor Marina Leslie, Graduate Coordinator

Review of Howl (dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman) by Tony Trigilio, PhD Poet Tony Trigilio (PhD ’97), Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) and Associate Chair‐person of the English Depart‐ment at Columbia College, Chi‐cago, is also a Beat Generation

scholar who has written frequently on Allen Ginsberg. We asked him for his reaction to the recent film of Ginsberg’s famous poem “Howl” (dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Fried‐man), starring James Franco:

I’ve learned to keep my expectations low when Allen Gins‐berg’s work is translated into film. John Turturro’s inter‐pretation of “Howl” from The Source (1999), for example, overemphasizes the poem’s anger, screeching the lines while grabbing a chain‐link fence as if it were the bars of a prison (I kept waiting for him to rattle a tin cup against the fence and shout “Guard! Guard!” instead of “Moloch! Mo‐loch!”).

What a treat, then, to discover that Howl allows the poem to do most of the talking. The film’s center of gravity is the famous 1957 “Howl” obscenity trial. The risk, of course, is that one of the most important obscenity cases of the twentieth century could be reduced to the antidramatic courtroom narrative of a typical Law and Order episode. But the courtroom scenes incorporate the actual trial tran‐script, and, true to historical accounts of the trial, these scenes unfold as if they were taking place in a literary methods classroom and not a court of law.

The film moves freely among three other threads, each of which offers a unique trajectory into the poem. The film re‐enacts interviews with Ginsberg, re‐creates some of the earliest public readings of the poem, and recasts the poem in animated sequences by graphic artist Erik Drooker.

In both the interviews and readings, Franco channels an uncannily pitch‐perfect Ginsberg (you could close your eyes and think it’s a recording of the poet). While Drooker’s ani‐mated “Howl” reinforces the poem’s visionary impulse—its color scheme alone calls to mind the poem’s apocalyptic tone and content—the animated sequences are too literal‐ist in their response to the poem. The animated sequences suggest, unfortunately, that the imagination cannot recre‐ate the poem’s basic dramatic situation without the outside help of special effects.

In a 1949 letter to his former professor, Mark Van Doren, the 22‐year‐old Ginsberg described himself as a literary “novitiate of the lowest order.” I’m still waiting for the film that gives us this Ginsberg, the studious individual dedi‐cated to sustaining the same literary tradition he attacked. Howl is not that film. But it’s an important film, all the same, and, unlike the typical Beat Generation biopic, it nar‐rates the biography of a poem—and how it shaped, and was shaped by, its historical moment—rather than a heroic account of the growth of a poet’s mind.

Contributed by Tony Trigilio

Check out the Graduate Alumni Bookshelf at: http://www.english.neu.edu/graduate_studies/alumni/books/


Teaching Women’s Biography

This Spring, the department’s Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature, Carla Kaplan, will cross the Charles to MIT to co‐teach a course titled “U.S. Women’s Biogra‐phy: Lives/History/Feminist Theory,” along with biographer Susan Ware, who has written about Amelia Earhart and Billie Jean King, among other women.

The course is offered through the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies (GCWS, http://web.mit.edu/gcws/), to which Northeastern belongs along with eight other Boston graduate‐degree granting institutions. Co‐taught by faculty members from different institutions and disciplines, GCWS classes showcase the interdisciplinarity and variety of Women’s Studies. They offer enrich‐ing opportunities for graduate stu‐dents in the English department who are pursuing NU’s Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies (http://www.northeastern.edu/womensstudies/) or who are interested in or curious about Women’s and Gender Studies.

Professor Kaplan is currently complet‐ing Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance (forthcoming from HarperCollins) and is the author of Zora Neal Hurston: A Life in Letters (HarperCollins, 2002), among other works. Her next book is a biography of the writer and activist Jessica Mitford.

In an interview, she spoke about what she values about the opportunity to teach in the GCWS: “Both the opportunity to co‐teach with a col‐league from another discipline and the

opportunity to bring together feminist graduate students who would not otherwise know one another. I also appreciated the planning process, which included extensive feedback from the GCWS board—professors almost never get feedback from col‐leagues on a syllabus so that was es‐pecially nice.”

This class will bring together not only cross‐disciplinary faculty and students but also the “double lens” of biography and feminist theory. As Kaplan says, “My work in biography is heavily inflected by theories of iden‐tity, feminist theories of private/public spheres, feminist theories of perfor‐mativity, and by decades of debate about the value and meaning of ‘experience.’ The long history of de‐bates in feminist circles over ‘identity politics’ are especially central to my current book. Influencing the design of this course is a long feminist history of debates about the notion that ‘the personal is political.’ We are extend‐ing that idea here to the ‘personal is theoretical’—thinking about how bi‐ography illumi‐nates theory, and not just the other way around.”

For students, Kaplan suggests, GCWS classes offer the oppor‐tunity “not only to learn from fac‐ulty in different disciplines, but also to see how they interact with one another and, especially, to see the different kinds of questions that they raise

and the different methodologies they bring to bear.”

The experience of current Northeast‐ern doctoral student Kate Simpkins underlines that opportunity. This Fall, Simpkins is taking “Contesting Gender and Sexuality, Making Early Christian‐ity,” taught by Professors Bernadette J. Brooten of Brandeis University and Karen L. King of the Harvard University Divinity School. Simpkins finds that the unfamiliar material “really stretches my brain in terms of figuring out my interests.” She says that “doing a presentation on the forma‐tion of early Christian communities in relationship to the regulation of sex via Paul, Clement, Tatian, Philo of Al‐exandria, and other first‐ and second‐century patristic writers” is “amazing for me because I have never taken a class in ancient literature.”

Contributed by Professor Laura Green, Department Chair

NU’s English Department was represented by a great team at the 2010 Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. PhD student Genie

Giaimo (center, front) organized this year’s runners. Photo provided by Professor Patricia Sullivan.


NU’s Writing Program Joins Coalition for ePortfolio Research

In 2009, the Writing Program launched a pilot program to explore how electronic portfolios of student writing could support teaching and learning in the program. Electronic portfolios, or eportfolios, are digital collections of work assembled and presented by writers to offer a broad view of their writing across various media and genres. The pilot, which benefited from the assistance of Northeastern’s Educational Technol‐ogy Center, featured an inquiry group of several Writing Program instruc‐tors and resulted in nearly 300 stu‐dents completing electronic portfo‐lios in their First‐Year Writing or Ad‐vanced Writing in the Disciplines courses. This work was the basis of a presentation this summer at the an‐nual Association for Authentic, Expe‐riential and Evidence‐Based Learning Conference, held this year in Boston. The NU presenters discussed the ways in which our work together, using eportfolios as a touchstone, helped us rethink familiar concepts and practices in writing instruction, including purpose, audience, reflec‐tion, and feedback. (To learn more about this work, please visit our pro‐ject website:

http://nuweb9.neu.edu/writingeportfolios/.)

Hoping to continue expanding our eportfolio work, we applied this sum‐mer to join the prestigious Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Port‐

folio Research (http://ncepr.org/). This organization brings together practi‐tioners to research the impact of eportfolios on teaching and learning. Each year, it solicits applications from institutions around the globe to join a

10‐institution research cohort. This year, this cohort focus is on using eportfolios for writing assessment. Happily, Northeastern’s application was selected, along with the Univer‐sity of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Virginia Military Institute, Curtin University in Australia, among others. We are now beginning a three‐year research and assessment process using eportfolios, and we look forward to learning from and contributing to the work of our re‐search colleagues around the world.

Contributed by Professor Chris Gallagher, Director of the Writing Program


Snell Library Opens Alumni Reading Room

In October 2010, Snell Library opened the beautiful Anna & Eugene M. Rep‐pucci Alumni Reading Room. Constuc‐tion of the new space was funded by a generous gift from Anna and Eugene’s son, Eugene M. Reppucci, Jr. (E'60, MEd'65, Hon.'95).

NU alumni are invited to read and re‐lax there when on campus, conduct personal research, network with other alumni, and attend events. Laptops and iPads are available for alumni use, via the circulation desk. For more in‐formation about the Alumni Reading Room, visit the library’s website at: http://www.lib.neu.edu/services/rooms_and_spaces/. Help Support the

Department of English

The Department of English is com‐mitted to providing a rich educa‐tional experience for undergradu‐ate and graduate students. These goals would not be possible with‐out the sustained generosity of alumni and other important mem‐bers of the Northeastern commu‐nity. Please consider making a gift, contribution, or bequest to the de‐partment. Doing so can make a huge impact on students and fac‐ulty, passing on the traditions of learning and discovery to future cohorts.

For information about gifts and giv‐ing, please contact Brian Denning, College of Social Sciences and Hu‐

manities, at [email protected] or (617) 373‐5081.

We look forward

to hearing from you! Submit your update at:

http://www.english.neu.edu/alumni/drop_us_a_line/

Stacie Burroughs (BA ’07) has been admitted to the MA in English Litera‐ture program at The City College of New York and to the study abroad por‐tion of the program. She will be living and studying in Austria in Fall 2011.

Ted Buswick (MA ’75) has several new publications: a book he coauthored, What Poetry Brings to Business, with Clare Morgan and Kirsten Lange (University of Michigan, 2010); a spe‐cial issue of the Journal of Business Strategy he coedited with Harvey Seifter, “Creatively Intelligent Compa‐nies and Leaders: Arts‐based Learning for Business,” which includes an article he coauthored with Anu M. Mitra and Yen Hsieh, “Learning How to Look: Developing Leadership through Inten‐tional Observation”; and a book re‐view of Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ‘N’ Roll Pioneers by John Broven in The Oral History Review (Vol. 37, Issue 2).

Shane Fulton (BA ’10) started law school at Tulane University in New Orleans this Fall.

Stephanie Jones (BA ’09) is receiving her MSc in The Evolution of Language and Cognition from the University of Edinburgh.

Samantha (Warnakulasooriya) Kulatilake (BA '97, MA '00) completed her doctorate in education, specializ‐ing in language development, at Bos‐ton University in January ’09. She is currently an Associate Professor of English at a transfer university in Sri Lanka.

Jason J. Marchi (BA ’83) was em‐ployed with the McGraw‐Hill Compa‐nies working his way up from cus‐tomer/sales service to facilities/administrative services management. After 16 years with McGraw‐Hill, Jason started a not‐for‐profit educational writing organization. Eight years later he returned to one of his great loves‐‐journalism. In the last two years, Jason earned three Excellence in Journalism Awards from the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Professional Journal‐ists. He has written several books, which will be published in coming months.

Lolly Ockerstrom (PhD ’97) is now Associate Professor of English at Park University and Managing Editor of Center for Teaching and Learning’s CETL Insight: A Journal of Faculty Scholarship.

Joshua Olejarz (BA ’10) is working as a Production Assistant at Penguin Group in NYC.

Esma Yucel (BA ’07) is working toward a MA in Publishing and Communica‐tions at the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia. She plans on becoming an editor. After graduating in ’07, Esma moved to Melbourne with her family and started working as a part‐time teacher. She's currently teaching a high school elective class that's based on communications, and she has continued her mentoring pro‐grams with university and high school girls. Esma was a speaker in the two pre‐ Parliament of World Religions events, the Annual Victoria Police iftar dinner, and a multitude of other inter‐faith events.


More Alumni/ae Updates

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010 Barrs Lecture Series 2010‐11

Christina Sharpe, Tufts University “Monstrous Intimacies:

Making Post‐Slavery Subjects “ 4:00‐5:30 PM

Barrs Room/472 Holmes Hall

Co‐Sponsored by the Department of African American Studies

THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 2011 Barrs Lecture Series 2010‐11

Lori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Chair of Jewish Studies, Northeastern University

“Tevye in the New World: The Changing Character of the Jewish Father”

3:00‐4:30 PM Barrs Room/472 Holmes Hall

THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2011 Barrs Lecture Series 2010‐11

Gordon Hutner, University of Illinois “21st Century American

Novel and the Fiction of Prestige” 5:30‐7:00 PM Location: TBD

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2011 2011 Peter Burton Hanson Lecture David Damrosch, Harvard University

“The End of the Book? ‐ Literary Studies in a Post‐Literary Age”

4:30 PM (Reception preceding talk at 3:30 PM)

Raytheon Amphitheater, Egan Research Center

March 19‐20, 2011 EGSA Graduate Student Conference

“Raw Material” More information on Page 4 and online at

http://www.english.neu.edu/graduate_studies/egsa/

For more alumni/ae news, visit http://www.english.neu.edu/alumni/.

Join Us! Department Events

Special thanks go out to Kara Andersen, Emily Artiano, Chris Gallagher, Pam Goodale, Laura Green, Carla Kaplan, Marina Leslie, Stuart Peterfreund, Guy Rotella, Tony Trigilio, Patrick Mullen, Kate Simpkins, Rachel

Stein, and Patricia Sullivan for contributing articles, interviews, and images to the Fall 2010 Alumni e‐Newsletter. If you would like to

contribute to a future edition of the e‐Newsletter, please contact Melissa Daigle at [email protected].

Acknowledgments

Fall 2010 newsletter

Documents

Transcript of Fall 2010 newsletter