Gerard Hauser Research Award: Deadline for Paper Submission is January 15

Graduate students! If your individual paper proposal was accepted for presentation at the RSA conference, then you are invited to submit your completed paper for consideration for a  Hauser Research Award. At least three awardees will receive a $100 travel award and free registration at the conference, and their presentations will be featured in the conference program.

To be considered for a Hauser award, send a complete version of your conference presentation as a .doc or .rtf document to Professor Amy Young, chair of the Hauser Award committee, at youngam@plu.edu by January 15. Winners will be notified by April 1.

The Georgia State University Department of English’s Rhetoric & Composition faculty invite applicants for our M.A. and Ph.D. programs for August 2016 admittance. Explore our website to learn more about our curriculum that encourages study in history and theory, as well as contemporary approaches to writing in both academic and non-academic settings.

We’ve graduated hundreds of M.A. and Ph.D. students over the past 20 years who consistently find work in academia, professional/technical writing, and academic administration. All of our recent M.A. and Ph.D. students have found full-time employment, including tenure-track academic and administrative positions at a wide range of national and international colleges and universities: Auburn University,  Boston College, Clayton Sate University, Dalton State University, East Carolina University, Georgia Gwinnett College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Kennesaw State University, Michigan State University, Nova Southeastern University, Stephen F. Austin State University, Union College, and the University of Sydney–to name a few. Several graduates have also received post-doctoral fellowships at Georgia Tech, Emory University, and the University of Arizona.

Graduate teaching assistants in our program have opportunities to teach 3000-level courses in our undergraduate Rhetoric and Composition major, in addition to teaching first-year composition, and can apply for graduate student administrator positions with the Writing Studio and Lower Division Studies.

Our faculty includes Beth Burmester, Lynée Lewis Gaillet, Baotong Gu, Michael Harker, Mary Hocks, Ashley Holmes, Elizabeth Lopez, Ben Miller, George Pullman, Malinda Snow, and Robin Wharton. Our eleven faculty members with broad research and teaching specializations make our program one of the largest Rhetoric & Composition programs in the Southeast. Every member of our faculty is recognized for scholarship, teaching excellence, and national service.

To apply, visit the English Department’s Graduate Admissions page or the Graduate Admissions page of the College of Arts & Sciences. Applications due January 15, 2016.

Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts is now accepting submissions for possible publication in the upcoming issues.

Spring 2016 Issue

Issue Theme: Signs of the Times

Submission Deadline: January 11, 2016

The world is changing rapidly. The Internet’s presence is progressively more pervasive. Digital literacy practices have become more self-directed, such as the use of Instagram, Snapchat and other instantaneous personal digital texting and smartphone literacies. There has been a greater emphasis in some school systems on teaching for “college and career readiness.” Civil rights issues have taken greater precedence in recent political discourse worldwide.  Have educational institutions kept up with such disruptive sociocultural changes? This issue of Ubiquity explores these and other recent “signs of the times” as they are addressed in literature, literacy, the arts and art education:

• What are the “signs of the times” in our communities, local and global, and how are they affecting literature, literacy, and the arts?
• What recent cultural developments affect how we read, write, communicate, and/or create?
• How have recently prominent social issues affected how we teach and how students learn?
• Which historically marginalized groups (minorities, women, the LGBT community, etc.) are gaining a greater voice and which are facing greater persecution? How are these groups educating others about their circumstances through literature, literacy, and the arts?
• How has technology changed the way we read literature and look at art?
• What are the affordances and challenges of online learning and social media communication as relevant to literature, literacy, and the arts?
• As high schools and universities struggle to be ever more inclusive of differing perspectives, and especially of differing groups, how has the struggle not to offend clashed with the desire for open and unrestrained artistic conversation?

Fall 2016 Issue

Issue Theme: Exploring Performative Arts

Submission Deadline: September 1, 2016

In this issue, we explore the full range of performative arts, including theater, dance, music, performance art, spoken word, and others. While we might think of “performative arts” as encompassing overtly staged performance, there is more to the idea of the “performative.” Think, for example, of Erving Goffman (1959), who wrote of human interaction as a kind of performance. There is a great deal to be said, then, for defining the term “performative” broadly, through these and related questions:

• Exactly what are the performative arts, beyond what might traditionally be labeled so?
• How is teaching an act of performative art, in the classroom, community, and elsewhere?
• How are multiple literacies engaged in the performative arts?
• What is performative about being a student?
• How are reading, writing, and visual arts performative, even when no one is watching?
• What is the role of the audience in experiencing the performative arts?
• How does the rapid growth of digital media change the nature of performance?
• What is the connection amongst the performative arts, language use, literacies, and identity formation?
• How are performative arts culturally situated? Do some performative arts exist in some cultures and not others? How can we introduce certain performative arts into cultures that had previously not known or enjoyed them?

Reference

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York, NY: Anchor.