REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

Registration is now available for the "Revolution and Rebirth in English Studies" conference this spring: http://www.utb.edu/vpaa/cla/eng/Pages/ConferenceRegistration.aspx

February 14, 2013 -March 1, 2013
(late registration will be available after March 1)

2013 Conference "Revolution and Rebirth in English Studies" News: Proposal Submission Deadline Extended to January 1, 2013. 

All proposals must be sent as an email attachment to ruth.garza37@utb.edu and egadsconference@gmail.com. 

Visit our website for more information on proposal submissions to the 2013 conference "Revolution and Rebirth in English Studies."

EGADS! 2013 Conference

CFP: EGADS! 2013 Conference

The English Graduate Advancement & Development Society is now welcoming paper and panel proposals for its third academic conference fitting the theme:

"Revolution and Rebirth in English Studies" 

March 9, 2013 

The UTB campus is located at 80 Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas, a short 30 minute drive from South Padre Island beach. The area offers many attractions that conference participants and out of town visitors can enjoy during their Spring Break vacations.

Proposal Submission Deadline: Saturday, December 15, 2012

Click here for our general conference CFP.

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Indianapolis Opens Museum to Honor Its Literary Native Son

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Cat’s Cradle,” the narrator meets a woman on a plane who is delighted to discover that he is from Indiana. Holding his arm tightly, she tells him, “We Hoosiers got to stick together.”


Read more about the Vonnegut museum at the New York Times.

When You Forget What You Read

By Steven J. Dubner, co-author of "Freakonomics"

Very interesting essay by James Collins (this one, not that one) in the New York Times Book Review about forgetting what you read.

I have just realized something terrible about myself: I don’t remember the books I read. I chose Perjury as an example at random, and its neighbors on my bookshelf, Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (on the right) and Anka Muhlstein’s Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine (on the left), could have served just as well. These are books I loved, but as with Perjury, all I associate with them is an atmosphere and a stray image or two, like memories of trips I took as a child.

This is of interest to me because I read a lot and seem to forget nearly as much. From what I can tell, I tend to remember non-fiction better than fiction; for non-fiction, I tend to remember journalism better than books (at least when it comes to factual details).

Read more at the New York Times.

This article refers to a previous article, "The Plot Escapes Me," by James Collins and also at the New York Times.

Lawsuits That Kill Books

Litigious billionaires and foreign courts are as much a threat as book-banning fundamentalists
By Laura Miller

Last week was Banned Books Week, a worthy institution calling attention to efforts to remove books from public libraries and school curricula. This annual event has become so successful that, although the American Library Association reported "460 recorded attempts to remove materials from libraries in 2009," a close examination suggests that many of these amounted to mere "challenges" -- written objections submitted to librarians or teachers by isolated crackpots or control freak parents with minimal chances of seeing their censorious desires fulfilled.

Read more at Salon.com.

Chicano poet alurista at UT Pan American Monday, Oct. 11

alurista will be at UTPA on October 11 as the 2010 speaker in UTPA Library’s Innovative Voices Series. He will also be part of the “alurista Tunaluna Texas Book Tour” organized by his book publisher.

He will be guest of honor at a Merienda/Plática at the Library Faculty Lounge from 4:00-5:30 p.m. Then he will give a formal address that evening at 6:00-7:00 p.m. in the Student Union Theater. Students, faculty, staff as well as the general public will have a chance to meet alurista and purchase his latest book, Tunaluna. The UTPA Bookstore will be selling the books as soon as they arrive and at these events.

alurista (real name Alberto Urista) is one of the seminal and most influential voices in the history of Chicano Literature. A pioneering poet of the Chicano Movement in the late 60s and 70s, he broke down barriers in the publishing world with his use of bilingual and multilingual writings in Spanish, English, Nahuatl and Maya. A scholar, activist, editor, organizer and philosopher, he holds a Ph.D in Spanish and Latin American Literature from the University of California in San Diego and is the author of ten books including Floricanto en Aztlán (1971), Timespace Huracán (1976), Spik in Glyph? (1981) and Z Eros (1995). His book, Et Tú Raza?, won the Before Columbus Foundation National Book Award in Poetry in 1996. Author of “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán,” he is a key figure in the reclaiming of the MeXicano cultural identity, history and heritage through his integration of American Indian language, symbols and spirituality in his writings. (Source: Juan Tejeda, publisher/editor of Aztlan Libre Press, publisher of Tunaluna, alurista’s tenth book of poetry and first publication in ten years).

In the introduction to the book Tunaluna Tejeda writes: “alurista is a Xicano poet for the ages and a chronicler of la Nueva Raza Cózmica. With Tunalunahe trumpets the return of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered-serpent of Aztec and Mayan prophecy, and helps to lead us out of war and into the dawn of a new consciousness and sun, el Sexto Sol, nahuicoatl, cuatro serpiente, sun of justice.”

For more information on the “alurista Tunaluna Texas Book Tour,” go towww.aztlanlibrepress.com or call 210-531-9505.

For more information about alurista’s visit to UTPA, contact Virginia Haynie Gause, Media and Marketing Librarian at vgause@utpa.edu or call 956-665-2303.

Ven a oir alurista!

Celebrate Banned Book Week

This is Banned Book Week, September 25-October 2; sponsored by the American Library Association in conjunction with several other organization, Banned Book Week is meant to call attention to our freedom to read what we want and the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Celebrate Banned Book Week by reading a book or part of a book that's been banned, either recently or one of the classics that's been frequently banned.

For a list of the top 100 banned and/or challenged books of the 20th century, go here: ALA top 100 banned books of 20th century

For more about Banned Book Week and the ALA's efforts to combat censorship, go here: ALA Banned Book Week

Explore the ALA site for more information about libraries, books, and advocacy/issues sponsored by the ALA.