The Peripatetic Observer 2005

8/9/2019 The Peripatetic Observer 2005

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Senior English major Gregory Fair wasnamed one of this year’s Link Scholars onAugust 30, 2005. The scholarship is a one-

time award of $2,000 given yearly to threestudents who have completed at least 16credits at a SUNY campus and have anoverall GPA of at least 3.75. Recipientsmust show evidence of good character andservice to SUNY and the community.They must be full time (at least 12 credits)and demonstrate dedication to labor-unionvalues and to social justice.

We congratulate Greg on thisoutstanding achievement.

The Peripatetic Observer

The Geneseo Literary Forum continues itswork bringing contemporary writers to campus to givereadings from their work and to meet with students bothinformally and in workshop settings. Last year, inconjunction with the Dean of First-Year Students, Dr. CeliaEaston, and the Summer Reading Program, we broughtnovelist Deborah Larsen to Geneseo. Larsen’s historicalnovel The White is about Mary Jemison and was requiredreading for all incoming students. Larsen read to a largeaudience, signed copies of her book, and answered questionsabout her creative process. She spoke earlier that day to theAdvanced Fiction Writing Class about the challenges andrewards of writing historical fiction, a genre the class wasexploring as well.

In the Spring, poet Erika Meitner visited and readfrom her collection of poetry Inventory At the All-Night Drugstore which won the 2002 Anhinga Prize for Poetry.Meitner led a small workshop for student poets. Lisa Buckton(‘05) said the workshop was one of the best experiences of her years at Geneseo.

This year’s series began with Osage poet CarterRevard whose reading celebrated Geneseo’s new NativeAmerican Studies minor. He read from his work on October5th in Sturges Auditorium. Plans for the Spring include acreative nonfiction writer and a novelist.

The Peripatetic Observer Volume 8 SUNY College at Geneseo, Department of English Fall 2005

Walter Harding Lecture Series Continues to be Rewarding

The Department of English and the college community welcomedProfessor Ronald A. Bosco and Professor Jayne Gordon to celebrate the secondannual Walter Harding Memorial Lecture, September 15-16, 2005. A scholarlyand instructive highlight of the academic year, the lecture is endowed by theHarding family as a tribute to Walter Harding, a distinguished and widelyrecognized expert on the philosophy, writing, and life of Henry David Thoreau.Harding was a founding member of the Thoreau Society, and from 1956 to1983, was a member of the English faculty at Geneseo. He retired in 1983 asDistinguished Professor Emeritus of American Literature, and in 1984 hebecame SUNY’s first named Honorary Doctor of Letters. In 1983 Harding’sThe Days of Henry Thoreau was published to g reat regard.

In his evening address to a large audience in Newton Hall, Dr. Bosco,Distinguished University Professor of English and American Literature at theUniversity of Albany, reiterated Thoreau’s and Emerson’s understanding of Walden Pond as metaphor, literal place, and symbolic influence.

The following afternoon, September 16, Professor Bosco was joinedby Professor Jayne Gordon, Executive Director of the Thoreau Society, in anengaging and thoughtful conversation with students in Red Jacket Dining Hall.

The occasion provided students and faculty members of various disciplines theopportunity to exchange information and observations in a relaxed atmosphere,reaffirming Thoreau’s influence in contemporary life. The discussion wascentered on, but not limited to, Thoreau’s “Life Without Principle.”

The Department of English is honored to be indebted to Mrs. WalterHarding and her family for their generous and thoughtful support of thisexciting and enriching scholarly series.

Last year’s lecturer was Dr. Joel Myerson, University of SouthCarolina. Plans are already underway for next year’s presentation.

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT FORUMS:YOUR ONE-STOP SOURCE FOR NEWS,

ADVICE, AND AUDIO

The English Department Forums page athttp://english.geneseo.edu/bb/ is a great place to gowhen you have questions about courses or majorrequirements, need information about upcomingevents, want to hear recorded audio of specialevents you missed, or feel the urge to catch up withEnglish majors past and present. If you're an alum,please use the "News from Graduates" forum to letus know what you've been up to. To start using theForums, you'll need to register, but registration issimple and free. Send questions about the Forumspage to [email protected].

Geneseo Freshman ScreenwriterFirst-year student Esther Fogel is the winner of the Young Filmmakers Short Screenplay Competition at the Austin Film Festival. First

written for a high school class during her junior year at Schreiber High School in Port Washington, Bending Light gained a full productionwith professional filmmakers prior to its premiere in Austin, Texas, during late October of this year. Set during the Holocaust, the filmexamines the ethical dilemma faced by a father who has the choice to save his son by sacrificing another child. You can see images from thefilm at http://www.austinfilmfestival.net/aff/new/bside.jsp?page=filmdetails&filmId=60

After winning the award, Fogel was flown to Austin by the film festival to accept her prize, make a speech, and begin participating inthe filming of her script. She did “probably 40 rewrites” of the initial draft and, later, worked with a professional screenwriting consultant toprepare the script for filming. Unlike Hollywood writers, Esther was able to maintain significant control over the filming, which was doneby professional directors, cinematographers, and actors. She is very pleased that the final version of the film realized her vision for the story.

Fogel has been interviewed by the New York Times and other media organizations in New York and Texas, including T.V. stations onLong Island. She hopes to be a professional screenwriter but is keeping her options open while she is currently taking courses in English andSpanish at Geneseo. The Austin production company that made the film is planning to enter it in the short films category at the AcademyAwards.

(Gregory Fair and parents)



In the summer of 2005, Dr. Alice

Rutkowski applied for and was awarded a grantfrom the State of New York/United UniversityProfessions for the purpose of developing a newcourse on Asian American literature. The course,ENGL237: American Visions: Asian AmericanLiterature, will be offered for the first time duringthe Spring 2006 semester. This marks the firsttime since the 1970s that such a course has beenoffered at Geneseo.

Asian American Literature

Woidat Awarded Drescher Leave

Caroline Woidat has been awardeda year-long leave through the Dr. NualaMcGann Drescher Affirmative Action/ Diversity Leave Program. She is using thetime away from teaching to work on tworelated book projects. In the book-lengthmonograph “The Indian in the Mirror:Women Writers, White Feminism, and theNative American Other,” she examines whitewomen authors’ intellectual, imaginative, andpolitical responses to Native Americans overseveral centuries. Woidat will also be editinga collection of texts by nineteenth-centuryfeminist writer Elizabeth Oakes Smith, whosewritings about Indians are currently availableonly in the microfilm holdings of certainlibraries. With “Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s TheWestern Captive and Other Indian Stories,”she hopes to recover these texts for studentsand scholars and to diversify studies of thisperiod and subject. The books both explorethe relationship between the development of middle-class feminism and the presence of Native American in white women’sconsciousness, a topic that has been of

interest in Woidat’s courses in literature,Native American studies, and women’sstudies.

N. Dr

Rob Doggett Joins English FacultyThe Department welcomes Dr. Rob Doggett as its newest faculty member. Dr. Doggett

completed his undergraduate degree at Gettysburg College and his doctoral work at the Universityof Maryland. Before accepting his position at Geneseo, he taught for three years at SUNY Potsdam.

Doggett’s interests center on twentieth-century British and Irish literature, with specialemphasis on poetry and W.B. Yeats. In 2002 he received the Adele Dalsimer Prize for aDistinguished Dissertation in Irish Studies, awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies.In 2006 The University of Notre Dame Press will publish his book Deep-Rooted Things: Empireand Nation in the Poetry and Drama of William Butler Yeats.

Dr. Doggett looks forward to teaching at Geneseo and hopes to lead small groups of students on trips to study in Ireland and England.

We wish him the best as he begins his work.

The Reader’s CornerEugene Stelzig recommends Immortality by Milan Kundera,

described by the reader as a brilliant novel of ideas. A few other“must reads” are: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole,The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven, and Europa,

Europa by Shlomo Perel.Graham Drake recently finished reading Guy Vanderhaeghe's

The Last Crossing. The novel tells the story of two British brothersin the late nineteenth century who set off to find their third brother,who is lost on the Great Plains. As is true of the title, they encounter

many crossings, between Brits and Americans, Canadians andAmericans, immigrants and "native-born" Americans, Indians andwhites, and even the rigid binary of male and female. Vanderhaegheallows his characters to narrate the story in a series of vignettes, andhis description of the prairie landscapes and badlands will break even the hearts of coastal die-hards.

Vanderhaeghe is an award-winning Saskatchewan novelist (helives in Saskatoon) and is just one of Saskatchewan'sdisproportionately significant contributions to CanLit (as theCanadians risibly call their national literary product). Othernovelists to look out for from Saskatchewan include SandraBirdsell, Sharon Butala, and Rudy Wiebe.

Richard Finkelstein recommends “Middlesex” by J.Eugenides.

Walter Freed suggests the novels of Dashiell Hammett,specifically Red Harvest , The Dain Curse , and The Glass Key . Awriter of energy and period, he captures the extraordinary mayhemof convoluted plot and eccentric characters. Hammett takesambiguity into the realm of the inexplicable, presented as a puzzle,without solution. The read is a delight.

Rachel Hall’s recent finds include: Tender Hooks , poems byBeth Ann Fennelly; What You've Been Missing , stories by JanetDesaulniers; and First Desire , a novel (set in Buffalo from 1920-1950s), by Nancy Reisman.

Maria Lima recommends that you do not start Zadie Smith'slast novel, On Beauty (443 must-read pages), unless you are readyto stop everything else to get to the end--as she has done. Like E.M.Forster, Zadie Smith creates an intricately realistic world,impossible to resist.

Another “must read” is our own Rachel Hall’s explorationof motherhood and writing in the collection of essays titled Mamaphonic; Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts.Maria states “I read this during the break, and learned somethingabout both. Of course I was lucky to get a copy.”

The Peripatetic Observer Department of English Newsletter

Editor * Dr. Walter B. Freed Jr.Associate Editor * Michele E. Feeley

Visit us on the Web: http://english.geneseo.edu email us at: mailto:[email protected]



From the Chair….

It was exciting for me to return to your English Department this fall after a semester-long sabbatical. We continueto attract terrific students, including, by all measures, some of the best students at the college. We have had the largestnumber of students at the college elected to Phi Beta Kappa (joining the ranks of our instructors, themselves the biggestcontingent of faculty members in this most distinguished of national honor societies). We have had yet another student,Greg Fair, receive one of two statewide Eugene Link Scholarships, sponsored by United University Professions. JonSenchyne won this prize three years ago. And one of our first-year students, Esther Fogel, last summer won the Austin

Young Screenwriters Competition. As I write, a film of her screenplay is being readied for its festival debut (see thearticle on page 1). We have sent our graduates to some of the nation’s most distinguished professional and graduateschools, a sign of the increasing recognition that Geneseo and our department have received.

We have been listening hard to the needs of our students and the suggestions of our alumni. In turn, people seemto be telling us that we have heard them. Geneseo students have been “voting with their feet” in favor of their experiencein the department. The numbers of our majors have risen 30% in the last four years to a level not seen since the collegewas much bigger in the 1970s. That high figure doesn’t even take into account the proliferation of film minors and“concentrators.” And it also doesn’t include students now entering the first full year of our new Creative Writing major.We have for years heard from you, both as undergraduates and alumni, about the need for such a program. I’m thrilledthat we could be responsive to what we’ve heard. We are grateful for the hard work and dedication of the faculty, as wellas for the support of the Administration. Our unified effort has strengthened and diversified our programs.

Most of all, your own support and encouragement have made much of our work possible. Privately endowed

sponsorship has brought us the annual Walter Harding Lecture, which in September found an audience of over 150students to hear from Professor Ronald Bosco, a distinguished Harvard University Press editor of Emerson’s works.Recently we welcomed over 100 students to a reading given by the distinguished poet, Carter Revard, in honor of our newinterdisciplinary minor in native-American studies. The reading was in part sponsored by the Geneseo Literary Forum.You help maintain the health of the Literary Forum and of our annual student awards, student research, and the filmprogram. This year I would like to begin organizing an Alumni Council that would provide us with new perspectives onwhat we do, as well as ideas and support in the areas of visiting speakers and career connections. If you are interested inhelping us be still more responsive to student and alumni, please consider taking a role in this group. You can e-mail meabout your interest at [email protected] .

Best wishes for the winter holiday season.

Richard [email protected]

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Return to: Department of English, SUNY Geneseo * 1 College Circle, Welles 226 * Geneseo, NY 14454



ELIZABETH TRAVER ADOPLHUS(1992) married David Adolphus in May of 1999. After spending nearly five years inBurlington, Vermont, working as theDirector of Communications for the LakeChamplain Regional Chamber of commerce, she moved to Bennington,Vermont, in December 2001 to be a part-time caregiver for her mother. She is alsoworking as the editor of a weekly

community newspaper, servingsouthwestern Vermont and surroundingareas in MA and NY. After many years of stalling, she has also begun workingseriously on writing fiction.

SUSAN J. ARCHER (2004) has beenworking at ABC News in NYC since earlyAugust. She was hired as a tapecoordinator/ production assistant for theweekday and weekend editions of “GoodMorning America.”

ANNA BALOK (2005) is teachingelementary school in Seoul and tryingto keep in mind bell hooks' teachingmantra: to start at where they are; in otherwords, first and most importantly to findout where the students are coming from,what they already know and don't know,what their needs, goals, strengths, andweaknesses are, and to work from there.She’s enjoying spending her spare timewith new and old friends and touring thecountryside on her new bike.

SAMANTHA BELL (2003) graduatedfrom SUNY Brockport with an M.A. inEnglish. She returned to the GeneseoEnglish Department to teach for a semesterbefore heading off to graduate school inKansas to study for a Ph.D. in English witha concentration in Creative Writing.

BRET BIRKINBINE (2003) worked atWROC in Rochester for 4 years whilegoing to school. He is now the 6amProducer at KTRK ABC-13 EyewitnessNews in Houston and quite happy to havelived through his first hurricane (Rita)!

HEIDI BOLLINGER (2003) is in hersecond year of graduate school at theUniversity of Colorado and teachingcourses there.

EMMA BOYER (2005)is studying for anM.A. in Literature at Carnege Melon.

LISA BUCKTON (2005) was chosen tohave her poem “merge” published in Lake

Affect magazine (vol. 27), and she plans topursue a graduate degree locally.

ANDREW CAMPBELL (2005) ispursuing an M.A. at Columbia University.

EMILY DeFRANKS (2002) received anM.A. in English from Syracuse Universityafter passing her Master’s dossier hearingwith distinction. She is currently working

as a copywriter for a design company inbeautiful Skaneateles, [email protected]

KATHRYN DRURY (1994) is an editorat Honolulu Magazine . She is planning awedding with 1993 University of Rochester graduate Brett Wagner.

MARIANNE (UPHAM) ERHARDT(2003) is one of six poets who started the

M.F.A. program at UW-Madison this Falland is a Teaching Assistant for creativewriting workshops.

ROSEANNE FARANO (1973) her book The Dove in Downward Flight has beenmet with a 4-star rating and named an“exceptional” book for 2002.

LINDA FORESHA (1986) resides inVirginia and is a math teacher at a schoolin Wilmington, DE.

THOMAS FORMICOLA (1985) runs aspeakers bureau at North Eastern andresides in a western suburb of Boston. Heand his partner of fourteen years, LennyGoldstein, were married more than threeyears ago by a rabbi in Boston.

KEVIN FRYLING (2003) is currentlyworking on an M.A. in English at theUniversity of Buffalo with a focus onVictorian Literature. He works part-timeas a correspondent with the Daily News inBatavia, NY, and as a graduate assistantwith the Department of News Services atthe University of Buffalo. He also writesfor the college’s in-house newspaper The

Reporter. (www.buffalo.com/reporter )

KATHERINE FUSCO (2003) is in hersecond year of graduate school atVanderbilt University and is teachingcourses there.

JENNIFER GARVEY (2003) wasactually a Business Administration majorwho partook in various English departmentofferings and is now a Public Relationsgraduate student at Syracuse University inthe MNO program (Magazine, Newspaper,and Online Journalism).

PAIGE GAYNOR (2004) is attending theUniversity of Colorado at Denver withplans to obtain an M.A. in EnglishEducation.

DEANNA KARCH (2005) is teachingtenth-grade reading in Lantana, Florida.She resides in North Palm Beach andspends her spare time coaching amulticultural dance team, “The Soul Jets.”

RITA J. KING (1996) was recentlyhonored with two first-place awards fromthe New York Press Association for in-depth reporting and spot news coverage of the nuclear industry, especially IndianPoint nuclear power plant in WestchesterCounty, NY. She also won a third-placeaward for her weekly newspaper column,

“Ruminations.” Her work has alsoappeared in The New York Times , The Village Voice (including a cover story, "Iwas an AOL Censor") and in variousnational magazines and newspapers. Oneof her stories (about eight brothers whowent to World War II and returned homeunharmed) appeared on MSNBC's "TheNews with Brian Williams."

CAITLIN LANGELIER (2005)continues at Geneseo studying for herM.A. in Education.

ERIN McCLURE (2003) is studying for an M.Ed. in Special Education at PeabodyCollege of Vanderbilt University inNashville, TN, in addition to working inNashville City Schools as part of aresearch assistantship through Peabody.

SHAWN McCONNELL (2000) has beenworking for the New York State Assemblyas a writer for Assemblyman N. Perry andwas accepted to graduate school at Albany.

CHARLOTTE McCORKEL (2005) ispursuing graduate studies in social work atColumbia.

EMILY McCORMICK (2005) is at UBstudying for a Master’s in Library Science.

MEGHAN McKENNA (2004) is living inBrooklyn and working at the imagingcompany Quad/Graphics which does all of the image retouching for Conde Nast andFairchild publications. She is an accountmanager for Vogue, Teen Vogue, and

Lucky magazines and enjoys seeing theindustry behind the scenes. Meghan’syounger brother started at Geneseo thisFall.

EDRIC MESMER (1999) completedstudies (with Distinction) at Manchesterthrough the Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture, with the M.A. thesisentitled “Gender, Sexuality, & Culture.”

COURTNEY MINNICK (2004) attendedthe Denver Publishing Institute duringSummer 2005.

JESSICA PURPLE (2005) is pursuing anM.A. in Children’s Literature throughPenn State. She and her husband are alsoexpecting their first child.

DENISE ROMANO (1989) is employedby the Hudson River Trust and feels luckyto work with such interesting, great people:Architects, Lawyers, government people,education people, Finance people, etc. Shehas three master’s degrees and is lookinginto psychology doctoral programs.

JENNIFER C. ROSSI (1995) received aPh.D. in American Studies with aconcentration in Women’s Studies fromSUNY Buffalo in Fall 2003 and has beenteaching several literature courses atEastern Michigan University.

[email protected]

Voices rom Past & Present……Alumni News



REGINA (D’ARCANGELIS) SEGUIN(2004) married her college boyfriend,Brian Seguin (Anthropology and Historymajor), on Aug. 6, 2005 on Long Island,where her family lives. Regina and Brianare now living in Florida, near Orlando.She spent the past year at the University of South Florida in Tampa working on aMaster’s in Library Science andcertification as a school media specialist.

JONATHAN SENCHYNE (2004) &ANA B. GUIMARAES (2004). Jon is agraduate student in English at SyracuseUniversity. He is also an instructor in theWriting Program there. In 2004 and 2005he revised and expanded his undergraduateHonors thesis (directed by Ed Gillin) intotwo conference presentations, anencyclopedia entry, and an article that willappear in the 2005 edition of h. Hedelivered papers at the 2005 NorthAmerican James Joyce Conference(Cornell University) and the 2005 WorkingClass Studies Conference (YoungstownState University). He also has writtenencyclopedia entries on Horatio Alger,Jacob Riis, Frederick Winslow Taylor, andDeindustrialization for Routledge andGreenwood Press. This year he is editingtwo volumes, one entitled “TeachingWorking-Class Studies” and another,“Class, Inequality, and Possible Futures.”Ana was an administrative assistant at theSyracuse office of Robert Half International, Inc., an award winning

office/accounting staffing firm. This fallAna is studying for the Master of LibraryScience degree in the School of Libraryand Information Science at SyracuseUniversity. She holds a graduateassistantship there. Ana also attended the2005 Conference of the Western NewYork/Ontario Chapter of the Associationof College and Research Libraries.

DANIELLE SICARI (1996) lives inFlushing, NY and is working at aninsurance defense firm in BrooklynHeights as an insurance defense attorney.

BRYNN SPEER (2004) began graduateschool this Fall at SUNY Albany in theLibrary Science Program.

VALERIE SPRAGUE (2005) is at UBstudying for an M.L.S.

AARON STRAHL (2005) recently joinedthe team at Guiliani Capital Advisors.

TRACY STRAUSS (1996) was recentlypromoted to co-head of the writing centerat Boston University and had a criticalessay accepted into The HopkinsQuarterly .

JENNIFER THOMPSON received herM.A. in Humanities and Social Thoughtfrom NYU and has decided to pursue aPh.D. in literature and dedicate her life toteaching.

JULIE M WALINSKI (2002) finishedher M.A. in English at the University of

Rochester and has been teaching Englishcomposition and humanities at MonroeCommunity College. She is planning aDecember 2005 wedding to Professor Jeff Johannes.

ROBYN WALKER (1999) is currentlyliving in Buffalo, NY, and is a Ph.D.candidate at the University of Toronto.She has presented such papers as“Christianity & Literature” in NewOrleans, LA, and “Feminist Traditions” inSavannah, GA.

MIKE WALSH (1970) will soon becompleting thirty years of employmentwith Social Security. He has worked inOeonta, NY, South Florida, and SouthCarolina. He attended graduate school atBrockport State and Cortland State andtaught middle school English atSkaneateles High for one year. He looksforward to retirement and perhaps takingsome more graduate courses. His wifePaula was an opera/voice major in collegeand is a music and liturgy director at achurch. [email protected]

CHERYL WILSON (2000) is enjoyingher work as an assistant professor atIndiana University of Pennsylvania. Shehas a graduate research assistant (!), isteaching two sections of composition thisterm, and will teach a graduate course in19 th-century literature in the Spring.

MATT ZAMBITO (1998) currently livesin Columbus, Ohio. His poem R.I.P . wasrecently published in Ascent, and he is adrummer for Cropchecker.

Alumni News Is No News Without You…. Tell us about yourself; we’d like to know.Name: _________________________________________ Date graduated: _________________ Email: ______________________________ May we share your email with other Alumni? ________ Home address: __________________________________________________________________ Employment & title: ______________________________________________________________

My news is: _____________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________

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Would you be interested in mentoring a current English major? ______________________________ If yes, how would you prefer to be contacted:

By Department or Student: ____________________________________________________ Preferred method of contact (mail, phone, email, etc.): ________________________________ Other information: __________________________________________________________

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Return to: De artment of En lish, SUNY Geneseo * 1 Colle e Circle, Welles 226 * Geneseo, NY 14454



2005 English Department Honors and Awards

Scholarships

The William Cook/Walter Herzman Memorial Scholarship Duncan Carranza

The Hans Gottschalk AwardClass of 2006: Greg Fair Class of 2007: Maria Gigante Class of 2007: Katie Owens

The Natalie Selser Freed Memorial Scholarship Ian Todd

The Joseph O’Brien Transfer ScholarshipChristine Biermann

The Don Watt Memorial Scholarshi

Annual Writing Awards

The Jérôme de Romanet Award in African American StudiesFirst place: Kate A. Steinnagel Second place: Lauren Whaley

The Creative Non-Fiction AwardFirst place: Whitney Crispell Second place: Bradley Kerr Third place (co-winners): Anna Balok & Michael Yagnow

The John H. Parry Award in Critical EssayFirst place: Caitlin Langelier Second place: Kate A. Steinnagel Third place: Ian Todd

The C. Agnes Rigney Award in Drama Michael Yagnow

The Lucy Harmon Award in FictionFirst place: Ashley Pankratz Second place: Bradley Kerr Third place: Monica Wendel

The J. Irene Smith Award in Freshman WritingFirst place: Alex Egan Second place: Lisa Marie Parisio

The Mary A. Thomas Award in PoetryFirst place: Lisa M. Buckton Second place: John DiSarro Third place: Alaina Maggio

Graduating Senior Awards

The William T. Beauchamp Literature AwardWhitney Crispell

The Patricia Conrad Lindsay Memorial AwardColleen Butler

The Rosalind R. Fisher Award for Student Teaching in English Andrew Campbell The Walter Harding American Studies Award

Janine Giordano The Calvin Israel Award in the Humanities

Laura Miller The Joseph M. O’Brien Memorial Award

Charlotte McCorkel



Study Abroad with English Department Faculty I once had a philosophy professor who had never ventured

east of Kingston, Ontario, or west of Regina, Saskatchewan. Hetook eccentric pride in never having beheld the ocean andenlisted an admirable train of his philosophical brethren tobolster his argument that travel teaches us nothing.

Perhaps travel teaches some people nothing. One can crosshalf the globe yet never see past one’s own iPod. But if I had achance to speak to him now, I would probably remind my

former professor that he had barely tested his thesis on himself.Travel can and should be, I would argue, an empiricalimmersion in the Other—helping us to recognize how muchwe, ourselves, are really the Other, decentering our self-satisfaction.

Here at Geneseo we do believe travel teaches us• that (North) America is not the only place that

has every existed• that we, too, are foreigners anywhere but here• that some of the roots of our history happened

elsewhere and that we can observe its materialremains and its impact on the various places ourancestors left behind.

Our own department continues to promote these lessons and more in several Study Abroad Programs.Gene Stelzig will be teaching Western Humanities II in July 2006 in our New College, Oxford program. New College isn't really new; it

was founded in 1379 and contains a number of original buildings, plus part of the old city wall of Oxford that predates the College by severalcenturies. Over the past decade or so, a number of English Department faculty have taught this course, including Gene, Ken Asher, and GrahamDrake. All of them can testify to a superb experience—pleasant food, decent accommodations close to large gardens and quadrangles, and a highstandard of good work (and good fun) among students who participate. The program includes side-trips to Coventry, Stratford-upon-Avon, andLondon (though last year’s group visited Exeter, Torquay, and Tintagel Castle after Geneseo decided to cancel any official college-related travelto London).

For students who may be interested in other cities, the College also offers Western Humanities I in Rome, Athens, and Paris. Some studentsopt to join both the “Continental” Humanities I and the “Insular” Humanities II.

Also in Britain, Graham Drake and Kathryn DeZur of SUNY Delhi are offering “Literature and Early London” (English 250), a course inMedieval and Renaissance literature. Students will read Chaucer, Arthurian literature, Shakespeare, and Sidney while visiting museums andhistorical sites in London, Oxford, Winchester, Durham, Penshurst, and Stratford-upon-Avon. The course will run in the second half of June2006.

Also in London (18 June-10 July), Maria Lima will be teaching ENGL 218 Contemporary British Literature, at Goldsmith'sCollege/University of London (on the south side of the Thames). Maria will be focusing again this year on her specialty, Black British writers.

Across the Irish Sea, the annual Spring Break course, Literary Dublin, continues this coming March. Our own Tom Greenfield normallyteaches this class, but he will be traveling instead to Oxford in July to serve as Gene Stelzig’s Program Director. Instead, Jennifer Rogalsky(Geography Department; [email protected]) and Kim Davies (College Libraries; [email protected]) will be leading this class. Studentswill take in important literary sites in Dublin and the Irish countryside.

These are just some of the growing selection of study abroad courses offered by Geneseo alone. For more information, seehttp://studyabroad.geneseo.edu/ . The Study Abroad Office in Erwin can also give advice about financial aid and other essential matters forforeign travel.

Other SUNY colleges offer a veritable smorgasbord of study abroad courses. Two of interest to our majors include SUNY Binghamton’sinternship program in London and SUNY Brockport’s semester-abroad studying literature in Oxford and at numerous Australian universities..These, among many others, appear on SUNY’s own study abroad website at http://www.studyabroad.com/suny/ .

We invite our students to cross oceans, continents, and cultures—to make new friends, to learn a new culture, discover career opportunities,and to gain fresh perspectives on a complex world. This is a way to live in more of the world than the way we live now. (And maybe we canprove my former professor wrong while we’re at it.)

Graham N. Drake

English Club

The English Club continues to be busy:

! Revival of the Talent Show on Thursday, December 1 st will include faculty (Ron Herzman, Tom Greenfield, Eugene Stlezig,and Shawn Adamson) and students (Geneseo’s Juggling Club, students from Graham Drake’s British Literature class).

! The student-run magazine OPUS continues to grow. Submissions include poetry, fiction, and artwork.! A successful Open-Mic was held in October with a several students performing.! Through the Volunteer Center the Club has adopted a family for the holidays. We have collected children’s books, clothes,

gift cards, etc. from students and faculty members.! The club sold English Club tee-shirts with a catchy slogan suggested by Tom Greenfield. As more people wear them, more

are requesting them. We will have another sale in the Spring with a new design/slogan available for purchase to majors,faculty and alum.

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Alan Lutkus, who passed away in the summer of 2004 after a courageous struggle with cancer, joinedGeneseo's English Department as a full-time faculty member in 1973. Alan, who is fondly remembered by hisstudents and colleagues as a dedicated teacher and scholar, came to us by way of Harvard (B.A.) and IndianaUniversity/Bloomington (Ph.D.) and a stint as an instructor at Northern Illinois University. He was hiredprincipally for his expertise in linguistics and Renaissance literature, but when in his first decade here theEnglish Department lost its full-time film position, Alan s tepped forward enthusiastically when his Chair asked

him to take up the teaching of the subject. Although Alan continued offering a variety of courses, including boththe history and structure of the English language as well as composition and Shakespeare, film studies became his

main pedagogic and scholarly gig for the remainder of his long career at the College. As Ron Herzman, a longtimefriend of his has observed, Alan accumulated thousands of films and devoted himself to his new field with a vengeance: "When hewent into something, he went into it pretty fanatically." A fitting culmination of Lutkus' teaching film courses to generations of Geneseo students is the implementation of the Film Studies minor introduced in 2002, and toward which Alan had worked for overtwo decades.

In addition to his academic interests, Alan was also a very accomplished musician who played the piano, the saxophone,and the accordion. His talents as a satirical songwriter were on display for the English Department many years ago when he andEllen Herzman co-wrote a musical comedy spoof of Shakespeare's Othello, punningly titled, "For He's a Jolly Othello" that wasperformed to great acclaim as the after-dinner entertainment of the annual English Department banquet. Alan's musical talentswere already on display in college, where he was a member of the Harvard marching band, then under the direction of Geneseo'sJames Walker, Professor of Music. Walker recalls one amusing incident in which Alan turned in the wrong direction on the fieldand marched off according to his own saxophone, and away from the band, in front of thousands of spectators. Lutkus was also a

member of Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club, "whose legendary, irreverent humor," according to Geneseo President ChristopherDahl, “coincided perfectly with Alan's own."Alan's sparkling wit was a striking and endearing trait of his that stood out for his many colleagues and friends at

Geneseo. In the best tradition of Shakespeare, it was devilishly punning as well as eccentrically allusive and elusive: many of us(including this writer) felt themselves at times so many Sir Andrew Aguecheeks left in the wake of his Mercutio-like sallies,accompanied--of course--by an irrepressible Puckish grin. His irreverent humor was on display in his office as well as in his home,where he and his wife Anne (the two had met as graduate students in Bloomington) would frequently host a large circle of friendsfrom Geneseo and the greater Rochester area for dinners and other get-togethers. Their annual Christmas day brunches that ranwell into the evening have become something of a Geneseo legend.

When I think of Alan, as I often do, the image that immediately comes to mind is his roguish, witty, ironic, and knowingyet delighted smile. And the fact that he was so tall that he had to stoop to talk to me.

Gene Stelzig

NO N-PROFIT ORG.U.S. PO STAGE

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Geneseo, NY 14454Perm it No. 1

SUNY Geneseo Department of English 1 College Circle, Welles Hall 226 Geneseo, NY 14454

In Loving Memory of Dr. Alan Lutkus

Documents

The Peripatetic Observer 2005