2017 Rutgers-Newark Commencement

Some of our MFA students before the Graduate
Hooding. I had the immense pleasure of having nearly
all of them in a workshop or literature class! 

It has been eons since I've blogged, I know, but this year so far has easily been my busiest in a while, perhaps ever. I've recited the litany so often I think friends and associates, and most certainly my colleagues, are tired of hearing it, but in addition to my departmental chair duties, teaching, mentoring graduate students (3 MFAs, 1 independent study, 1 TA, two different doctoral committees), undergraduates (2 honors students), multiple search committees, and university committees, as well as various non-university profession-related duties, I also spent a good portion of the semester traveling to continue promoting Counternarratives and my other books, and while I love doing so, the physical and psychic toll of travel, especially these days, is always steeper than I envision.

As the scant entries this year testify, my blogging has especially fallen by the wayside this year. This  saddens me because I enjoy writing on here, and I feel like there's a particular need for it now. (I can also recall how just a few years ago, we were told that Twitter was becoming irrelevant and that blogging would soon be joining the ranks of the dodo bird and the woolly mammoth.) My several entries on the current resident of the White House remain stubs, however, and every day--sometimes it feels like every hour--brings so many new political revelations, bombshells, and shocks that, as was the case during the George W. Bush years, if you miss a week, you might as well wait for the next cluster of horrors and outrages. I think you can reasonably describe the White House's attempted Muslim Bans, its health care bills, its assault on regulations, its draconian budget, and so on horrors and outrages, even for some of Donald Trump's supporters....

But my aim with this entry was not to talk about Trump, but rather to congratulate the Rutgers-Newark (and Rutgers more broadly) Classes of 2017, undergraduate and graduate, and by extension, all who graduated this spring and year.  I'm very glad the semester and academic year have come to a close, but I already miss the students I worked with this year. As I mentioned, I supervised three MFA fiction students, Soili Smith, Matt Weir (whom I'd taught when he was a beginning creative writing student at Northwestern!) and Magally "Maggie" Zelaya, all of whom successfully completed their theses this spring. In addition, Soili applied and was admitted to Rutgers-Newark's PhD program in American Studies.

I also supervised two honors undergraduate students, both of whom successfully submitted fiction theses, Secilia Flores and Madani Sheikh. Madani graduated summa cum laude, received a senior prize from the English department, and gained admission into Rutgers-Newark's MFA program. He even was recently the subject of a thoughtful profile on Rutgers-Newark's website, and had previously received coverage as part of a social entrepeneurship team that made it to the regional finalist stage when he was a freshman.

All of these students, as well as others I mentored and taught, were a joy to work with, and I will definitely miss them, though I'll get to see Soili and Madani this upcoming academic year. Congratulations to all of them and all of this year's graduates!

Below are a few photos from Rutgers-Newark's various end-of-the-academic-year and Commencement events. For the Graduate Hooding ceremony and the actual Prudential Center campus-wide commencement, I wore a purple robe (for my graduate degree from NYU), but a creative writing colleague told me that I need to get the fancier, final degree model, with the fancier hat. Will do!

The big shebang, at the Prudential Center! 

Yours truly, one of our talented MFA graduates,
Darise Jean-Baptiste, and my wonderful
colleague Tayari Jones, after Commencement

The MFA graduates, during their end-of-year
reading at the MFA house

Matt Weir, one of my MFA advisees,
reading from his hilarious thesis

Poet Jeremy Clark, with Matt at right 

Darise Jean-Baptiste, reading from
her fiction thesis

Leslie Jones, reading from her
fiction thesis--well, showing its cover
before reading from it 

Maggie Zelaya, sharing her cover before
reading from her thesis, which I saw take
shape over her time at Rutgers-Newark

Aarthi Monteiro, another student I finally
got to work with last fall, reading from
her fiction thesis

Soili Smith, one of my MFA advisees,
reading from her fiction thesis, Sasquatch,
which did not include the story featuring Sasquatch
(though I hope the full collection will)

Students in the book arts course,
with their art-text projects, which they
discussed before sharing a bit of work

The faculty and students listening to the readings

Faculty and students enjoying the readings

Semester's End & Congrats to the Graduates

The Rutgers-Newark full commencement
ceremonies, at the Prudential Center

UPDATED: Rutgers-Newark held its Commencement ceremonies on Wednesday, May 18, 2016. The Commencement speaker was journalist and author Soledad O'Brien, and the honorary degree recipient was human rights activist and diplomat Radhika Coomaraswamy. I've included a few photos from the event. Congratulations to all the graduates and their families!

My absence from this blog is testimony to many things, one of which is the very busy semester I just concluded. Chairing, even a small department, is no joke, but many good things have happened, so I'm glad to have played a part in facilitating them. But back to more immediate things: Let me begin by congratulating all of Rutgers-Newark's 2016 graduates! Yesterday I had the tremendous honor of serving as the hooder for all 12 of our MFA fiction students who walked in the Graduate School's ceremonies. Our campus-wide ceremony will take place next Wednesday!

Our MFA graduates lining up before
our procession into the Essex Room
at Robeson Campus Center, Rutgers-Newark

Congratulations to all of these fine fiction writers, including the three phenomenal authors whose theses I advised, Mustafa Gatollari, Mel King and Anisa Rahim, and to all our graduating poets! I am glad I had an opportunity to teach many of them in workshops either last year or this one, and certainly will miss them!

Our MFA graduates and faculty (acting director
Rigoberto González is in the back row, at center,
and Brenda Shaughnessy is standing to his left/
viewer's right)

Congratulations also to my English department honors student Angelíc Forde, who completed a marvelous collection of poems entitled Limestone on My Feet, drawing upon her experiences as an immigrant from Barbados. It was always a pleasure to turn to Angelíc's poems, which included poems written in traditional fixed forms and ones drawn from the Bajan and African American traditions. (At Commencement exercises on Wednesday, I learned that Angelíc graduated summa cum laude, so even more kudos to her for a stellar undergraduate career!)

Soledad O'Brien giving her
Commencement address

Congratulations also to Tasha Hawthorne, now Dr. Hawthorne, on whose committee I sat, and who successfully completed and submitted her dissertation on African American pulp fiction at the very end of last year. Tasha will receive her Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University this June! Congratulations, Tasha!

Soledad O'Brien on
the big screen

Graduation Photos

Here are a few photos from yesterday's Rutgers-Newark's 2014 Commencement, the first I've attended (I was out of town last spring), and the first ever held in the Prudential Center, where the New Jersey Devils ice hockey and other sports teams play. It also was the first Commencement that our new chancellor, Nancy Cantor, presided over.

It is always so inspiring and invigorating to see students graduating, and given the challenging journeys that many of my current students have made to get to and through school, I am so deeply proud of and happy for them. I saw a number of them as I marched in with the faculty, and got to congratulate them in person on receiving their degrees; I beamed and cheered as several received graduation honors.

As is widely known, there was considerable controversy surrounding the selection of former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, one of the architects of the disastrous Iraq War and a chief actor in the disgraced George W. Bush regime, as Rutgers' New Brunswick commencement speaker. She was to receive not just an honorary degree, but $30,000 as well. Student, faculty (including yours truly) and alumni petitions and protests over her selection and way she was selected, as well as the fee she was to receive, however, led her to withdraw.

At Rutgers-Newark, there thankfully was no brouhaha at all surrounding our commencement speaker, Don Katz, an noted author, former journalist and the CEO of Newark-based Audible, Inc., the largest global producer of downloadable audiobooks. (If you listen to any, you probably have an Audible, Inc. product flowing through your ears. And yes, it is an Amazon company....) He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Ironically because of the arena's audio situation, which created a doubling effect for certain speakers, including Katz, I could not make out much of what he said.

The ceremony itself went very long (degrees were conferred by school, with the names of students from every division, save the Law School, read aloud), but we received an assurance that this approach is thankfully under review.

Afterwards the MFA Program in Creative Writing held a party for this year's graduates, and all three of my wonderful thesis advisees, Adam Bowser, Craig Chanin and Serena Lin, and their families and friends, along with all the other MFA graduates I've had the opportunity to work with, were present, so although I had risen very early to get to the Prudential Center by 7 AM and had been flagging, I felt momentarily revived.

To the 2014 graduates and their families, congratulations again!

Lining up before the march in,
faculty at left, students at right

Students lined up (including
some I've taught!) 

The Prudential Center, before the students
and faculty enter

Procession of the schools
(led by my colleague Professor Rob Schneider,
head of the American Studies Program

Graduates on screen

A full arena! 

Don Katz, Audible, Inc. CEO
giving his commencement speech

At the MFA party, from left, Adam
Bowser, a friend of Serena Lin's,
 Serena's brother, and Serena 

Another photo of the MFA party,
with my colleague Alice Elliot Dark
in the foreground, and graduates
Jake Slovis (l) and Dana Jaye Cadman (r)

Serena, my colleague Tayari
Jones, and yours truly, in regalia
(and barely standing!)
Photo © Serena Lin

Semester's End

Congratulations and best wishes, Class of 2014!

It is mid-May, which means the end of the semester at Rutgers. Courses concluded last week, and exams today, with graduation to follow in Newark next Wednesday. Spring semesters (or quarters, as was the case at Northwestern) have always been my busiest terms, and this year's stretch, from January to now, has been no less so. Between my two courses, my supervision of my great MFA thesis students, all three of whom will be graduating and should very proud of their manuscripts, my work on other university-related projects which appear to be bearing fruition under our new Chancellor, the publication of the Hilda Hilst translation and promotional activities for it (which are ongoing--do pick it up), a number of conferences and similar events and gatherings, and my completion of a new fiction manuscript which has been accepted and will be published next year, I believe, things have not slowed down yet. I am set to present a paper on James Baldwin at the very beginning of next month, in Montpellier, France, so as I am marking up final papers and projects and entering grades, I also am rereading (at the fastest pace I can recall) Baldwin's mammoth final novel Just Above My Head (1979), the copy in my hands the very Dell paperback copy my mother bought right after it came out, as well as some recent queer theory. (It pays to teach undergraduate and graduate classes that push you intellectually; my LGBTQ literature since Stonewall class, one of my last two at Northwestern, provided an excellent opportunity to resurvey the basic theoretical literature from the late 1960s through today). I will be looking forward to the trip, of course but even more so to the garden of time from mid-June through September when I can mentally relax, catch up on reading, and continue work on another fictional project which is much closer than ever before to completion. Then, I hope, even more....

In terms of the two courses, both entailed a lot of new reading, which was both edifying and exhausting, but I am glad I taught both, not least because of the excellent students. In the undergraduate class, "History and Myth in Contemporary African Diasporic Fiction," which fell under the rubric of Topics in African and Caribbean literature, I tried both to frame the course in terms of the parallel themes of history and myth, within the larger conceptual firmament of the African diaspora, and to decenter the United States as a way of thinking about the topic, though it nevertheless kept creeping into the picture. In part because of the disruptions caused by the snow storms, the class felt a bit stitched together, and I learned that it probably is a good idea in the future to mix short and longer fictional works, and to limit the number of long novels, since they proved hard for all the students to finish in a timely manner. The novel several of them cited as their favorite and the most intellectually engaging was, unsurprisingly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2004), which explores the early post-independence era through the Biafran War in Nigeria. It struck me as quite salient and topical given the recent attention Nigeria has received because of Boko Haram's abduction of over 270 schoolgirls and other attacks on the government and society, and the students and I were able to see in Adichie's novel how colonialism, tribalisms, ethnocentrism, religious chauvinism, nationalism, poor federal leadership, unequal distribution of resources, and corruption from Nigeria's earliest days have set the stage for the terrorist group'srecent horrific actions that have shocked the globe. 

I unfortunately had to snip one book, Zakes Mda's powerful novel Cion, from the syllabus, because of the lack of time, and I will think in the future about balancing texts even better to provide the best experience possible. The inner architectural thread of linked African spiritual practices managed to surprise me; that could easily have been the course's focus, so I may think about that for a future iteration. When we shifted from Ishmael Reed's invocation of the Loop Garoo Kid as a heroic figure to Edwidge Danticat's account, in "Nineteen Thirty-Seven," of a woman being denounced as a "Loup garou" for her heroism as a form of witchcraft, I wondered if I had assembled the readings not simply based on my knowledge of them and how they would work together but on some hidden, unrecognized frequency. Whatever it was, I think it worked. Another thing I have learned is that if you help to prepare students as best you can to do their best work, most will strive to do it. I usually now ask my undergraduate students to write their final papers but given the time constraints, they instead cleared their final topics and theses, and in some cases initial paragraphs, with me. This, coupled with their attentiveness to my marked up versions of their earlier papers--and their midterm exam--has meant much stronger final papers that are enjoyable to read. (And while it is difficult to do for many classes, making them combine unusual, less-commonly explored texts also cuts down on possible plagiarism.)

The graduate course, also a new preparation for me, was Writers at Newark II, the reading and discussion course that accompanies the semester-long reading series. Although I had not say in selecting the texts, one thing I did feel by the midpoint of the course was how well they worked together, and in some cases, as when we read Natasha Trethewey's Thrall and Edward P. Jones's The Known World together, or Matthea Harvey's Modern Life and George Saunders' The Tenth of December side by side, the conversations arising from pairings felt organic, as if the writers themselves had been in conversation with their peers. The students wrote reviews and short writeups of the books, posting the latter online, and in light of their status as creative writing students, I also invited them to produce new short works inspired by the visiting authors. Reading these at the midterm and now at the course's end has been a lot of fun, and I hope all of the students left with an even deeper appreciation not only for the texts we read and their authors, but also for their own deep capacity for insight, inventiveness, and collegiality. Like the undergraduates, these MFA students, some of whom I'd taught before and others I hadn't, were a joy to have in class, and I will miss the imminent graduates tremendously.

I'll end by thanking all of this year's students for another great experience, rounding out my second full year at Rutgers-Newark, and wishing all of them who are graduating, including the ones I taught earlier this year and last, the BA, BS, MA, and MFA recipients, the heartiest congratulations and every best wish for success and happiness in all they do in the future. Please also do stay in touch!

Bloomsday + Congrats to 2011 Grads!

It's Bloomsday!

I have in mind, as I begin this entry, the President's recent visit to his ancestral homeland (one of them), Eire, and Mrs. Obama's sipping of real Irish stout in Moneygall.  

SLÁINTE!

"Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightaway brought him a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of the deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.
    Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner born, that nectarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him that thirsted, the soul of chilvalry, in beauty akin to the immortals." --from James Joyce, Ulysses (corrected version), New York: Vintage, 1961, p. 299.

(As I wrote last year, you can find the entire, remarkable novel, Ulysses, one of the greatest ever written in the English or any other language, here.) You can hear Joyce himself reading from it here, at Bedeutung Blog.

The Irish Times on local Bloomsday events.

The Washington Post on local 2011 Bloomsday happenings.

The Huffington Post on global Bloomsday doings.

***

As I noted last week, the university's academic year was not yet over, but final grades are now in, and, though graduation doesn't occur until this weekend, but:

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THIS YEAR'S GRADUATES IN THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE CLASSES OF 2011!

Some of the graduating senior fiction undergraduates, after our bowling match

Senior Bowling!

Congratulations to everyone graduating this spring all over the country, and a special congratulations to Kortney Ziegler, who becomes the first doctoral graduate from the university's African American Studies Department PhD program!

Graduation Day + Birthday + Adeus Saramago + Adios (Old New) New York

Although I've already congratulated this year's graduates, since today is GRADUATION DAY, let me extend my deepest CONGRATULATIONS again!

∞∞∞

Yesterday was my birthday. C made a delicious pasta dish (penne con funghi), and baked one of his signature desserts, a coconut-lemon cake, which, as the photo below shows, we dove right into. I'm willing to turn 45 weekly if it results in that meal and one of these cakes!

∞∞∞

Yesterday around the time that Reggie H. sent me the link I saw online that José Saramago (1922-2010) had passed. He was, without a doubt, one of the major writers in contemporary world literature, and one of Portugal's greatest novelists.  I must confess that although I can read Portuguese (to some extent), I've only read his novels in English; years ago, when after teaching myself the rudiments of Portuguese I realized I couldn't speak the language, so I engaged an Azorean tutor-conversationalist in Cambridge who had me read selections from the works of Fernando Namora, Jorge de Sena, José Cardoso Pires, Augustina Bessa-Luís, and several other major 20th century Portuguese (but never Brazilian) writers, including some whom she wasn't so fond of, like Antonio Lobo-Antunes. But Saramago was, I recall, "too difficult" for a beginner. By this, I later gathered as I read his work in English, his formally experimental prose, often comprising long, paratactic and sometimes hypotactic sentences, broken up mainly by commas and few periods, and shifting at times abruptly between points of view and perspectives, while interspersed with direct authorial commentary and philosophizing, certainly would have proved a challenge. Yet I've found that in English at least, Saramago's works, once you engage the prose's rhythms, aren't as narratively difficult in the way that William Faulkner's, Juan Goytisolo's, Claude Simon's, or  are. Nor are they philosophically demanding in the way that superficially more formally simple novels of Clarice Lispector are, or linguistically as impenetrable as Julián Ríos or João Guimarães Rosa (i.e., untranslatable). Saramago is very interested in the traditions not just of the novel but of storytelling, and stories, sometimes remarkable ones, often allegorical and symbolic, his novels do tell. Saramago attributed this deep devotion to story to his illiterate grandparents, great storytellers thesmselves, who reared him when his parents left the small Santarém district village of Azinhaga, where he was born, to look for work in Lisbon.

Bloomsday + Congrats to the Grads + Buffett's Giveaway + Krugman/Cassandra

It's Bloomsday! "STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air..." and you know, or know of, the rest. (If not, you can find the entire, remarkable novel, Ulysses, one of the greatest ever written in the English or any other language, here.) You can hear Joyce himself reading from it here, at Bedeutung Blog.

To commemorate today there's the annual Lilac Bloomsday Run, as well as the Bloomsday Festival in Dublin and elsewhere. Apple, steadily gaining a reputation for prudery regarding its iPhone and iPad applications (and the anti-porn comments of its founder-guru), has decided to reinstate Throwaway House's Ulysses Seen app, created by which it had previously censored because of its depiction of partial nudity (an imagined goddess's breasts, Buck Mulligan's penis, egads!)

I haven't seen this app, but given how the entire novel ends, I wonder if that was bowdlerized too. To Apple's credit, they also reinstated a graphic novel version of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which features a strip of a male couple kissing, after having heavily censored it.  Something tells me neither Joyce nor Wilde would have been surprised.

^^^

The university's graduation doesn't officially occur until this weekend, but final grades are posted, so I think I can post without caution:

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THIS YEAR'S GRADUATES IN THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE CLASSES OF 2010!

Some of the seniors (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and lit scholars writers all) at the annual Bowling challenge (fiction won, creative nonfiction finished second, and I bowled with poetry this year). Congratulations to all the graduating senior major and minors, and to the other undergraduate students finishing up this week that I taught (including those in the Conceptual Art/Writing class--you were great!), advised or worked with over the last few years!

Congratulations also to one of my graduate fiction thesis advisees, Roya Khatiblou, whose magnificent manuscript received a 2009-10 Distinguished Thesis Award! It was exciting to work with Roya, and with the other graduating fiction students I advised this year, whom I'd also taught in the past, Jennifer Companik and Wendy Schoua Musto.

Lastly, to all the students in the novella class (The Theory and Practice of Fiction, Winter-Spring), congratulations on finishing your novellas! It was a huge, speeded up, often stressful undertaking, and you accomplished in 4 1/2 months what it takes many writers a year or more do but you've all completed your little books, and deserve praise for having done so!