Student News, Stanley Fish at DePaul, & an Essay Contest

REMINDER: Registration for Fall Quarter 2013 begins this week. Check Campus Connect to find out your exact registration date and time and to fill your course cart. English Graduate classes are posted on Ex Libris under Autumn 2013, and are being updated with course descriptions from the professors.

***

In Student News: Congratulations to MAWP student Lisa Applegate, whose piece, “Heartland Love Story: This Is What Your Government Would Tear Asunder,” was published as the cover story of this week’s Newcity magazine. Lisa originally wrote “Heartland Love Story” for Prof. Ted Anton’s Literature of Fact class in Winter 2013. In addition to reading Lisa’s work in Newcity online, you can also pick up physical copies of the magazine for free around the city, including at DePaul’s Richardson Library.

***

Fish 05-08-13The DePaul Humanities Center would like to invite the DePaul community to attend the next event in their Nostalgia and The Age of Enlightenment Series. On Wednesday, May 8th, 2013  at 6:00 p.m. in room 314 of the DePaul Student Center, (2250 N. Sheffield Avenue), prominent literary theorist and New York Times columnist Stanley Fish will present: What are the Humanities Worth?”

This talk considers two recent books in the ‘crisis of the humanities’ genre, and finds in them opposing attitudes toward what both authors see as the accelerating decline of the humanities. One author is trying to think up strategies for slowing down the decline; the other believes that the decline and eventual demise can’t happen fast enough. After drawing out these positions, Fish makes a distinction between the humanities in general and the academic study of the humanities, and then asks what would be lost if the latter were allowed to wither. In order to have an object before us as we think about the question, he will analyze two poems by George Herbert , “The Holdfast” and “The Forerunners.”

Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University, in Durham, N.C. Fish is the author of 10 books, including “How Milton Works,” “The Trouble With Principle”, “Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change” and “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too.” His essays and articles have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Atlantic and The New York Times.

This event is free and open to the public.

***

Notting Hill Editions is delighted to announce The William Hazlitt Essay Prize, a new annual literary prize for the best essay in the English language, published or unpublished, on any subject. The award is named in honour of William Hazlitt (1778-1830), great master of the miscellaneous essay.

The prize will be judged on the originality of the ideas, the quality of the prose and the ability to communicate to a wide audience. All entries for the competition must be between 2,000 and 8,000 words.

Award value: £15,000. Five runners-up will each receive £1000.
Judges: Harry Mount (chair), Gaby Wood, Adam Mars-Jones, Lady Antonia Fraser, David Shields.

Eligibility / Submissions:

  • Authors of any nationality are eligible, but submissions must have been written originally in English.
  • If already published, the essay must have appeared for the first time in periodical (print or online) rather than book form, between January 1st, 2012 and July 31st, 2013.
  • Submissions (one entry per author) may be made by author, publication or agent. Submission of an essay by a publisher or other third party will be taken as agreement by the author that he/she is willing for the submitted work to be considered. The judges reserve the right to call in any unsubmitted eligible essay.

Submissions deadline: August 1st, 2013.

Entries must include a cover letter and be uploaded to the NHE website using the link nottinghilleditions.com/essay-prize. Each entry must be paginated with the title of the essay on the top of each page. All entries must also be double-spaced. Please only include author name on the covering letter so that authors remain anonymous to the judges. There is an entry fee of £10 to cover administration payable via our website.

Complete terms and conditions can be found at: nottinghilleditions.com/essay-prize.

For further information contact Jessica Lawrence at essayprize@nottinghilleditions.com.