Pernal Attends VAAS Conference
From the GMC Journal
Week of November 23, 2009
Prof. Mary Pernal (English & writing) and Prof. Jen Powers (education) attended the annual Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences Conference November 7 at Marlboro College. The topic of the conference was the G.I. Bill, and a panel presented a chronological history of its influence, particularly in the realm of higher education. Both Powers and Pernal sit on the VAAS board of trustees, and this year's induction of Fellows into the VAAS included playwright and poet David Budbill, Marlboro College President Ellen Lovell, and founder of the Bread and Puppet Theater, Peter Schumann.
Christensen Featured in Lecture Series
From the GMC Journal
Week of September 21, 2009
Prof. Laird Christensen (English & environmental studies) delivered an address at the New Voices, New Visions Arts and Humanities Lecture Series at Keene State College on September 15. The topic was "Field Work: The Evolutions of Environmental Literature," and Laird was joined by Dr. Mark Long, one of his co-editors on Teaching North American Environmental Literature. Laird also discussed the bioregional pedagogy that informs GMC's Master of Science in Environmental Studies program, and described some of the place-based teaching experiments that are featured in his 2008 collection of essays, Teaching About Place: Learning from the Land , co-edited with Dr. Hal Crimmel.
Christensen Leads Writing Workshop, Chairs Panel
From the GMC Journal
Week of August 31, 2009
On June 3, Prof. Laird Christensen (English and Environmental Studies) led a workshop in place-based pedagogy at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. This workshop—one of several that preceded the Eighth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment--drew participants from around the world. At the conference, Laird chaired a panel on creative nonfiction, entitled “Facing the Forest." He also gave a reading from his essay, “The Other Side of the Clearcut,” which was based on his experience as Writer-in-Residence at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the spring of 2008.
Pernal to Attend Seminar on Buddhism
From the GMC Journal
Week of April 6, 2009
Prof. Mary Pernal (English & writing) has been accepted to the National Endowment on the Humanities (NEH) summer seminar on “Buddhist Traditions of Tibet and the Himalayas.” It will be held from June 22 – July 10 at the College of the Holy Cross. The seminar brings together leading scholars for an in-depth survey of Buddhist traditions, with special emphasis on how Buddhism has been a lived religion that affected Himalayan societies.
Forest Log Publishes Essay from Christensen
From the GMC Journal
Week of March 16, 2009
Prof. Laird Christensen (English & Environmental Studies) has published his essay, "The Other Side of the Clearcut," in the Forest Log of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Forest Log is an ongoing project designed to collect 200 years worth of reflections produced by environmental writers who have been invited to visit the Andrews Forest, a long-term ecological research site in the Oregon Cascades. This interdisciplinary project, which runs from 2003 to 2203, is sponsored by the Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research Group; the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word at Oregon State University; and the U.S. Forest Service. Laird was writer in residence at the Andrews Forest in May of 2008. Click here to read his essay.
LesCarbeau Publishes Poem in Literary Journal
From the GMC Journal
Week of February 2, 2009
Prof. Mitchell LesCarbeau (English) recently had a new poem accepted in The Bryant Review. The poem is titled "Lyme Tick."
LesCarbeau Poem Earns Pushcart Nomination
From the GMC Journal
Week of November 24, 2008
Prof. Mitchell LesCarbeau (English) has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his poem "Cycladic Solstice," by the journal Illuminations.
Author & Writing Instructor to Visit GMC October 30
From the GMC Journal
Week of October 27, 2008
Maralys Wills, author of Damn the Rejections, Full Speed Ahead, visits Green Mountain College on Thursday, October 30. Her talk begins at 7 p.m. in the East Room of Withey Hall. Wills is the author of twelve books spanning a range of genres including romance novel, thriller and memoir. Her recent memoir, A Circus Without Elephants, was published by Ivy House, and a year later earned a national award from Writer"s Digest. In the spring of 2008, Stephens Press published the sequel, A Clown in the Trunk. Damn the Rejections, Full Speed Ahead, a book about writing, was published in August 2008. Her visit is sponsored by the GMC English Department.
East Room to Host Poetry Reading
From the GMC Journal
Week of October 15, 2008
Tom Chandler, poet laureate of Rhode Island emeritus, visits Green Mountain College for a reading today at 7 p.m. in the East Room of Withey Hall.
Chandler has been named Phi Beta Kappa Poet at Brown University and has been a featured poet at the Robert Frost homestead. His poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on National Public Radio on several occasions. His newest book of poems is Toy Firing Squad. Chandler’s visit is sponsored by the GMC English & Communications Department.
Christensen Publishes Essay Collection
From the GMC Journal
Week of September 29, 2008
Prof. Laird Christensen (English and Environmental Studies) has published a new collection of essays, Teaching North American Environmental Literature, which he co-edited with Mark C. Long of Keene State College and Fred Waage of East Tennessee State University. As the latest in the Modern Language Association’s Options for Teaching series, this volume gathers together essays that provide a fundamental context for teaching interdisciplinary courses in literature and environment, as well as descriptions of a range of such courses from more than twenty leading figures in the field.
Laird’s essay introduces the portion of the book devoted to teaching approaches, describing the enormous growth in variety and sophistication of such courses since they began to appear in the early 1980s. Drawing on the ASLE Collection of Syllabi in Literature and the Environment, which he compiled and edited with Peter Blakemore in 1996, Laird traces the evolution of such courses past a pioneer stage of survey courses and tentative interdisciplinary adventures, observing that contemporary teaching in this field is typically characterized by a resistance to canonization, greater theoretical sophistication, and attempts to engage literature students with their own physical environments.
LesCarbeau Publishes in SeaStories
From the GMC Journal
Week of September 8, 2008
Prof. Mitchell LesCarbeau (English) had a poem accepted in SeaStories, an online publication put out by the Blue Ocean Institute. Its title is "The Poet who Mistook the Sea for a Mirror." Last year he had a prose piece about sailing accepted, entitled "End of Summer."
World Literature Today Features
Christensen Article
From the GMC Journal
Week of September 8, 2008
Prof. Laird Christensen (English and Environmental Studies) published an article entitled “Writing Home in a Global Age” in the July/August issue of World Literature Today. Laird's article, which introduced the journal's special issue on "Literature Goes Green," explores the persistence of local and bioregional writing in a time increasingly defined by the forces of globalization. Developing a bioregional intimacy with the places we live, he writes, can help us understand how a global economy obscures the impacts that our daily choices have on someone else's habitat.
Denise Hill, reviewing the issue for NewPages.com, writes that, "This essay, as well as the whole issue, would be a powerful addition to any curriculum that includes nature, environmental, or place-based writing."
Artist & Author to Visit Green Mountain College
From the GMC Journal
Week of September 2, 2008
Clare Walker Leslie, an artist and author nationally renowned for her work teaching nature journaling, will present "The Artist's Perception of Nature Throughout Art History" on Thursday, September 25, at 6:30 p.m. in the Gorge. Leslie, the author of eight books, was the 2004 winner of the John Burroughs Award for Nature Literature for Young Readers.
Her presentation is sponsored by the GMC English Department, the ELA program and the GMC Speakers Bureau.
Hidden Oak to Publish Poems
From the GMC Journal
Week of May 5, 2008
Prof. Mitchell LesCarbeau (English) recently had several poems accepted for publication in Hidden Oak. They are titled “Hot Night," "Narragansett Bay," "God Will Save Me, if He Exists," and "Temporarily Jejune in June."
Mitchell LesCarbeau to Publish Poems
From the GMC Journal
Week of April 21, 2008
Prof. Mitchell LesCarbeau (English) has had two poems accepted for publication in Timber Creek Review. They are titled “Sketches of Jazz” and “Penelope Alone.”
Mitch LesCarbeau has two poems accepted for publication
From the GMC Journal
Week of April 30, 2007
Prof. Mitch LesCarbeau (English) had two poems recently accepted for publication: "Athena," in Albatross, and "The Northern Renaissance," in The Iconoclast. Both will come out in the next few months.
Paul Stuewe published in Canadian Notes & Queries
From the GMC Journal
Week of April 23, 2007
Prof. Paul Stuewe (English) has had reviews of two new biographies of Canadian literary stalwarts published in Canadian Notes & Queries. While waxing enthusiastic over Ormond and Barbara Mitchell's W.O. Mitchell: The Years of Fame, 1948-1998, Stuewe was far more severe with Robert Thacker's Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, even suggesting that if the publisher had "paid to have this book copyedited, it should ask for its money back."
Visual Writer Marjorie Ryerson Gives Reading
From the GMC Journal
Week of March 5, 2007
Photographer, poet, journalist, and author Marjorie Ryerson will give a reading from her works on Thursday, March 8 at 7:30 p.m. in the East Room of Withey Hall. Ryerson, who will be a visiting writer at Green Mountain College in 2007-08, is the author of Water Music and Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying. Marjorie Ryerson is an award-winning professor, photographer, poet and journalist. Her photographs have appeared in such diverse publications as Vermont Life, The Boston Globe, Yankee, Country Living, and the photography books, The Vermont Experience, Vermont for Every Season and Water Music. As an art photographer, Ryerson has had numerous one-woman shows of her work. Her feature stories, news stories, photography and poetry have been published by magazines and newspapers across the Northeast for the past 25 years.
Ryerson taught writing and photography at Castleton State College from 1991 until 2005. She was selected as the Vermont State Colleges Faculty Fellow for the academic year 2000-2001, the highest honor awarded to a professor in the Vermont State College system.
Transgendered Author Jennifer Finney Boylan to Speak
From the GMC Journal
Week of Jan. 22, 2007
Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of the bestselling memoir She's Not There, gave a talk entitled "A Life in Two Genders" on Thursday, Feb. 1 in The Gorge of Withey Hall. The public was invited to attend this free event.
Boylan is a widely praised author and professor at Colby College in Maine. She's Not There; published by Doubleday in 2003, was the first bestselling work by a transgendered American. Her writing has been described by Edward Albee as "observed carefully and with love, and her levitating wit is wisely tethered to a humane concern." Boylan has been a frequent guest on national television and radio programs, including three visits to the Oprah Winfrey Show. She has also appeared on the Larry King Show, The Today Show and been the subject of a documentary on CBS' 48 Hours. She has also appeared on NPR's Marketplace and the Diane Rehm Show.
Slam Poet, Mike McGee Performs
From the GMC Journal
Week of Jan. 22, 2007
"Mighty" Mike McGee, an international spoken word artist, writer, performer, speaker, slam poet and comic, performed in the Gorge of Withey Hall on Wednesday, January 24. In 2006, Mike was crowned the 2006 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion, besting over 70 of the world's best-ranked slam poets. McGee’s performance was free and open to the public.
Paul Stuewe publishes review in Magill's Literary Annual
From the GMC Journal
Week of Dec. 4, 2006
Prof. Paul Stuewe (English) had his review of a new collection of writings by Roland Barthes, "The Neutral," published in the 2006 edition of Magill's Literary Annual. Stuewe notes that Barthes, one of the major figures in contemporary literary theory, supplies a useful antidote to deconstructive excesses in his engagement "with what had in effect become a kind of tyranny of the binary opposition, as he returns to his earlier interest in searching for signs that there are in-between, unappropriated, and essentially neutral places that have escaped the domination of discourse by dichotomous thinking."
