THE MARION L. BRITTAIN FELLOWS PROGRAM

 

Article by Head Appears in Chronicle of Higher Education
(Published: 24 Jun 2008)

Head, who is graduate-communication coordinator at CETL as well as a special adviser to the writing and communication program in LCC, writes about the problems graduate students have communicating with their advisors. The Essay appeared in the June 27 issue.

 

Brittain Fellow Farmer Wins Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award
(Published: 11 Mar 2008)

With no life goals, a disappointed father, and a major crush on an Oregon native, Daryl Farmer set out 20 years ago on a bicycle ride that would alter his life forever. In Bicycling beyond the Divide, a wiser Farmer retraces his journey of self-discovery, always remembering advice his brother gave on his first journey: “Keep your eyes on the road and your nose off the pavement.”

After returning from his initial trip, this former college drop-out graduated from college and went on to the University of Nebraska to receive both an MA and a PhD in English and Creative Writing. Farmer admits, “If I had never dropped out of college, I would have never gotten a PhD.” This realization propelled him to focus his doctoral dissertation on the journey that helped him build self-confidence and find new direction in life.

Farmer’s dissertation was so poignant that his Nebraska professors encouraged him to revise it and publish it as a book, which received the Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers program earlier this year.

Farmer encourages students and everyone around him to be observant and take advantage of all opportunities available, no matter how unconventional they appear. He continues to write short stories and reviews. He shares the deeply personal story of Bicycling beyond the Divide in hope that others will discover how, as the book’s cover suggests, “the natural world and personal character are inextricably linked.”

 

Head Receives Editor's Choice Book Award
(Published: 11 Feb 2008)

Karen Head's poetry collection, My Paris Year, receives first annual Editor's Choice Book Award for excellence in poetry. The volume will be published in mid-September.

 

Second Life Augmented Reality Group to Visit Banff New Media Institute
(Published: 14 Jan 2008)

LCC professors Jay Bolter and Michael Nitsche, Brittain Post-Doctoral Fellow, Kathryn Farley and COC professor Blair MacIntyre have been invited to visit the Banff Center for the Arts' New Media Institute March 19-23.

The Tech group will tour the Advanced Research Labs, meet with resident artists, and deliver a lecture about their project.

Bringing together creative practitioners, industry experts, and university-based researchers, the Banff New Media Institute explores the art and science of emerging technologies. An overview of The Second Life Augmented Reality Project can be found at Second Life .

 

Book Published by Former Britt, Jason Mosser
(Published: 11 Dec 2007)

Four New Journalists: Style, Persona, and Protest (writers include Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson and Michael Herr) will be published by Edwin Mellen Press by the end of 2008.

Mosser is currently an Associate Professor at Georgia Gwinett College.

 

LCC Faculty Contribute to Electronic Book Review
(Published: 26 Nov 2007)

the backwardS Spear of poetry is a new gathering of 19 essays assembled by Brittain Fellow, Lori Emerson, on the electronic book review. See electronic book review . The collection features essays that relish the "thingness" of language across media, essays that work with us to renegotiate the boundaries of what counts as poetry, and essays that experiment with how to engage with new poetry in humanities research. Essays in the collection include the "Introduction: ceci n'est pas un texte" by Emerson and "Biopoetics; or, a Pilot Plan for a Concrete Poetry" written by Eugene Thacker. Emerson introduces a gathering of nineteen electro-poetic essays. This gathering brings together both critics and creators of electronic poetry; as is usually the case in ebr, the 'electronic' does not exclude, but helps us to reconfigure and revalue poetic works in print as well as define what works in digital environments. Thacker resituates the work of Eduardo Kac, not as art applied to the life sciences, but as a form of bio-poetics, consistent with the electro-poetics that has been a longtime focus of critical writing in ebr. Rather than reduce the work to its material (in life-forms, or in text, or in code), Thacker identifies ways that language, form, and life intersect in works of bio-art.

 

Brittain Fellow to Present at International Media Arts Histories Conference
(Published: 6 Nov 2007)

Kathryn Farley, a first-year Britt specializing in digital performance studies, will travel to Germany to present at Re:place 2007: the Second International Conference on the Histories of Media, Art, Science and Technology (Berlin, November 15-18). The conference, a project of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt, is an international forum for the presentation and discussion of exemplary approaches to the rapport between art, media, science and technology.

Kathryn's project, funded by a researcher-in-residence grant by the Daniel Langlois Foundation of Montreal, Canada, charts the history of the Generative Systems, a groundbreaking instructional program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and traces its seminal impact on the development of technological arts education at the post-secondary level.

Information about the conference and Kathryn's research can be found at Conference

 

Bolter Honored at GVU 15th Anniversary Celebration and Symposium
(Published: 26 Oct 2007)

The Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center (GVU) at Georgia Tech recently honored Professor Jay Bolter for his significant contribution to graphics and visualization research, particularly in the area of Augmented Reality design.

GVU aims to elevate the disciplines of graphics and visualization, by serving as a campus-wide resource to foster creativity and support related academic programs.

Details about the award and information about Professor Bolter's research activities can be found on the Center's site, located at GVU .

 

Brittain Fellow Emerson Publishes Edited Volume
(Published: 16 Oct 2007)

The Alphabet Game: a bpNichol Reader, edited by Darren Wershler-Henry and Lori Emerson was recently published by Coach House Press 2007. bpNichol was one of Canada's most innovative, eclectic, and enigmatic poets, making startling interventions in the development of poetry and profoundly influencing both his own and subsequent generations. The Alphabet Game: A bpNichol Reader amasses key texts from the broad spectrum of Nichol's work, including both classic favourites andmore obscure treasures. From the early typewriter poetry of Konfessions of an Elizabethan Fan Dancer and the life-long poem TheMartyrology to the heartbreaking prose of Journal and the whimsicalautobiography of Selected Organs, The Alphabet Game traces the trajectory of this wildly imaginative and prolific poet. Coach House Press . Emerson's book is reviewed at Book Forum . Read an interview with Lori at blogTO .

 

Brittain Alumni Publishes Negotiating Motherhood (Routledge 2007)
(Published: 7 Sep 2007)

Mary Wearn published Negotiating Motherhood as part of Routledge's series on American literature. The volume is described as follows: Returning to a foundational moment in the history of the American family, "Negotiating Motherhood in Nineteenth-Century American Literature" explores how various authors of the period represented the maternal role—an office that came to a new, social prominence at the end of the eighteenth century. By examining maternal figures in the works of diverse authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Sarah Piatt, this book exposes the contentious but fruitful negotiations that took place in the heart of the American sentimental era—negotiations about the cultural meanings of family, womanhood, and motherhood. This book, then, challenges critical constructions that figure American sentimentalism as a coherent, monolithic project, tied strictly to the forces of cultural conservatism.