Of Note

• (May 16, 2013) Congratulations to Marcie Bianco who has been named a Lambda Literary Fellow and will be participating in the 2013 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices this summer.  Yay Marcie!

• (May 16, 2013) Congratulations to Bettina Carbonell and Jonathan Gray, recipients of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities.  The theme of the 2013-2014 Mellon Seminar in the Humanities will be “Images and Information” - perfect for these two!

• (May 7, 2013) Al Coppola co-authored a review for a scholarly journal with a student, Jessica Paiz. Ms. Paiz went with Al's summer 2012 LIT 373 class to see a production of Aphra Behn's The Rover in Riverside Park, and then she and Professor Coppola wrote the review together. The review appears in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research (vol 27, no 1) summer 2012.  Go Al!

• (April 22, 2013) John Matteson’s biography of Margaret Fuller has been nominated for a new award, the Plutarch Award for best biography.  He's in excellent company and whether he wins or not, we know it is an honor to have been nominated.  Congratulations John!

• (April 19, 2013) Amanda Freeman just wrote a series of three stories for Newsweek's Women in the World Foundation, trying to shine a spotlight on the link between women and poverty in America. Check them out: The Face of American Poverty Today, Life on the Brink¸ and Poverty Doesn’t Have to Be Permanent.

• (April 10, 2013) Congratulations to Veronica Hendrick who received one of the college's prestigious Faculty Scholarly Excellence Awards for exceptional scholarship in the previous three calendar  year.  Veronica's book Servants, Slaves, and Savages: Reflections of Law in American Literature came out in 2012, she is a Fullbright Scholar in Shanghai, China this spring, and her second book, Toni Morrison: Life, Liberty and Literature, is due out next year.  Congratulations Veronica!

• (April 9, 2013) Congratulations to Richard Perez for winning a Distinguished Teaching Award!  Confirming my claim that curricular innovators make great teachers, Richard, along with Belinda Rincon, has created seven new courses for the U.S. Latino/a Literature minor and is constantly finding ways to make Latino/a literature vital to the intellectual lives of his students.  He has done more independent studies than any one of us (well, Toy Tung is giving him a run for his money) and for many students he is a life changer.  As one student wrote in his nomination: "Professor Perez does not operate through the conventional teacher/student model; he lifts his students to the intellectual plain where he abides and makes a home for them."  Congratulations Richard!

• (April 8, 2013) Congratulations to Mark McBeth for winning a Distinguished Teaching Award!  We know that his innovative curriculum is award-winning - the CCCC's told us that - but, not surprisingly, good curriculum and good teaching go together!  You've seen Mark in his office with groups of students holding weekly tutorials - that's just part of the picture of how he finds ways to engage students and hold them accountable to high standards.  Congratulations Mark on a well-deserved award. 

• (April 3, 2013) Please join me in congratulating Alexa Capeloto for winning the Distinguished Service to Students Award this year.  Talk about good work being recognized.  If you haven't noticed Alexa's incredible work with students -- teaching four days a week for years in order to reach all students, staying with them in the newsroom for hours on end, paying out of pocket for expenses not covered by the school, and always challenging our student journalists to become the best they can be -- then you haven't been paying enough attention to your deserving colleague.  This woman works hard!

• (April 1, 2013) Note that our own Jonathan Gray will be on CUNY TV's "Study with the Best" talking about how the comics industry has blossomed into a billion-dollar industry. 

• (March 30, 2013) Baz Dreisinger is spending her sabbatical year travelling in Africa to research her book on prisons, but she's also doing what she always does well, pieces for NPR on Caribbean-based music.  Listen to this great piece on Weekend Edition about South Africa's reggae scene.  

• (March 29, 2013) Adam McKible is quoted in a Washington Post article on literary Washington DC talking about When Washington Was in Vogue. For those of you who joined the party late: that's the Harlem Renaissance novel Adam discovered in his periodical research and had published a few years ago. He and the book are very cool.

• (March 20, 2013) Today the college recognized a series of milestones for faculty and staff at the college, and English featured prominently, as it always does.  In addition to celebrating the tenure of Jonathan Gray, Toy-Fung Tung, Devin Harner, Veronica Hendrick, Alexander Long and Caroline Reitz, we noted the promotions of Devin, Veronica, Alexander, Caroline, and Allison Pease.  What's more, the college recognized the many years of service of some of our colleagues and we were able to applaud Adam Berlin and Marc Dolan's 20 years at the college, Michael Blitz's 25 years, Peggy Escher's 30 years, Livia Katz’s 35 years, and Marny Tabb's whopping 40 years as a professor and sometime chair at the college. 

• (March 8, 2013) Congratulations to Richard Perez and Belinda Rincón, conference organizers of Haciendo Caminos: Mapping the Futures of U.S. Latino/a Literatures. This is the nation's first-ever conference dedicated solely to U.S. Latino/a Literature, and in being so is an event of historic importance.  Richard and Belinda have brought together about 200 U.S. Latino/a literature scholars and writers from all over the country who together are forging a field of intellectual inquiry of tremendous importance for the future of literary and latino/a studies.  John Jay should be very proud to be part of this historical moment, and to be able to claim these intellectual leaders, Richard Perez and Belinda Rincon, as its own.