A Supportive Bunch      Coming from an undergraduate program with fewer English majors than KU has English faculty, I was a bit intimidated when I began my graduate studies here.  English 800 only added to this sense of fear and inadequacy I experienced, and I clearly remember the warning we were given in that class.  Trust no one.      Our professor told us stories of egotistical, competitive graduate students who had sabotaged each other's final projects--beady-eyed scholars lurking in the library, moving books around so fellow classmates would not have the research they needed.  I looked around at the faces of those evil, self-obsessed colleagues who, just a minute before, had seemed nice enough.  Who would have suspected that Emily Donnelli, Kirby Fields, Jill Blanche and Paivi Hongisto all had such dark motives?      Well, of course none of us had dark motives, and we were all lucky to find the books we needed from the library, let a lone hunt down the books other people might want.  After the camaraderie of English 800, my fears were greatly eased and I felt competent and comfortable in the English program at KU.      I did not, however, realize the full extent of the supportive community here until this semester when I faced my MA exam.  It has been feared and dreaded since time immemorial, and I had put it off as long as possible.  The bad part was that my entire degree was resting on my ability to intelligently discuss over forty works of literature with three highly brilliant and knowledgeable professors.  The good part was that these brilliant and knowledgeable professors were also incredibly encouraging and supportive.  As were my other professors.  As were professors I never had in class.  As were random people walking down the hall.  As were all of my fellow graduate students.      Thank you all.  The people here make this a wonderful place to be.  I would encourage each of you to recognize the supportive community that surrounds you and to look to each other for support, comfort, and (much needed) comic relief in the stress-filled weeks ahead.   Joanna Harader

Winter 2001 Inside this issue: Unity in the English Department Interview with Kirby Fields Report from the GTA Union Dear Dr. and Holiday Limericks Message from the Graduate Coordinator _________________ Special thanks to our readers at the December SAGE Reading Series.  It was quite a success and a record turnout! Book Sale scheduled for march.  Please leave donations in SAGE computer lab! To help out with the Spring Colloquium contact Kirby Fields

Let's Stay United!      Although Guoyong Wang is a student in the political science department, he teaches English 101, and it is in the English department that he feels at home.  He has taken no classes in English, but he has had more personal interactions with English professors and students than he had with people in the political science department.  And others who have taken classes outside the department agree with him.  In general, the English department fosters strong interpersonal relationships among its faculty and students.      These relationships begin in the classroom, where the inherent openness of discussion-based classes provides for greater understanding and respect between faculty and students than the lecture styles favored in many other departments.  But ut goes beyond that.  English department faculty members have gone out of their way to create an environment of sociable but professional camaraderie, not simply between instructors and students or among instructors or among students, but truly among everyone.  Faculty generally work with their doors open, inviting students to just stop by, and at any given time a walk through the department will find English scholars laughing in the hallway.  Students study together, and GTAs cover for one another, often with only the briefest of advanced notices.      This is not to say that we are a wholly unified body.  Certain issues bring out the fractious attitudes that have splintered English departments everywhere in this country.  Hiring is particularly contentious, and when the issue arises, small enclaves that seemed purely social are revealed to be politically tight cadres, fighting for their survival, for any group that does not grow knows it will wither and die.  But any lingering resentments that come out of these spats are subsumed beneath the department's amiable surface in relatively short order.      There is, however, one area where I feel that the department falls short in professional and personal camaraderie.  Recently, I attended a lecture given by a faculty member in the Biology department.  The lecture was held in a 200-seat auditorium, and the auditorium was filled almost to capacity.  The speaker was not particularly inspired and his topic was not especially informative, even for someone as inexpert as myself on "The Interactions Between Ants and Jumping Spiders."  This did not seem to be a social event, and no one commented that they were impressed or surprised by the attendance.      The English department regularly sponsors lectures by faculty and by visiting scholars and writers, but I have to think of visits by particularly well-known scholars to come up with attendances matching that of this particularly mundane talk given by a regular faculty member in the Biology department.  While Biology has more faculty and students than English, it is still clear that most English department events are poorly attended.  Participation alone sustains the intellectual life of this department, and therefore I ask that everyone go out of their way to attend at least one department-related event even in these waning weeks of the semester, and try to attend several in the upcoming semester.  You will be helping not only the department and the speaker, but also yourself as well. Matthew Candelaria

Interview with Kirby Fields:  Dramatist, Student, SAGE Prez By Alan Newton      Kirby Fields has been wearing several hats this fall, as he is not only SAGE president and a full-time graduate student/GTA but also a practicing playwright.  Kirby's first play, Mourning Glorie, was co-produced by English Alternative Theatre (EAT) and Cardtable Theatre back in October, and it was entered into Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival regional competition.  Mourning Glorie is among a select few productions being considered for the regional festival at the University of Nebraska in January.  The final decision will be announced in early December.  SAGE Advice sat down with Kirby to talk about the play and his life as a playwright.   Talk about the genesis of Mourning Glorie?  What was the basis for the play's ideas, and what inspired the actual writing? The idea for the play is probably eight or nine years old.  There was a time when I had to go to several funerals for friends, and my experience was that what the minister had to say about the deceased didn't always coincide with what I knew about the person.  Frequently there would be gatherings afterwards, and the kinds of conversations I had with friends about the person were far more revelatory.  At the time I was writing a lot of fiction, and I tried the ieda as a short story.  It didn't exactly work.  I didn't feel like the short story form could contain the idea, and I needed a bigger canvas, but I didn't have the skills at that time to do anything else with it.  When I got to KU, I saw some EAT shows and thought, I could do that.  I worked at the Final Four shows last March, and I thought that instead of stage managing, I could have a show up there. Describe the process of actually composing the play.  You say you started with a short story.  Where did you go from there? First I went back to the story and took out the dialogue, and then I changed the descriptions into scenery.  The story was much more realistic--gritty realism.  Descriptions of a lonely person in his apartment.  It became much more surreal as a play.  The play now, as preachy as it is, is quite different from the first draft, which was monologue after monologue.  For example, Paul Lim looked at the section about the elevator story and said, "This is prose."  And he was right, because it was written as prose.  So with each successive draft, the dialogue got sharper and more dramatic.  I wrote the first draft, probably fifty pages, over the five days of Spring Break.  I wrote very quickly and it was messy, sloppy--but the seeds were there.  Then I gave it to Paul, who was very encouraging.  We had some very nice but intensive  sit-downs.  We met probably three or four times on the way to the final product.  I have to admit that I was writing for a specific production with EAT--I knew their fall line-up wasn't set, and I thought that what I was writing could be as interesting as anything else.  Having EAT here, with the real prospects for production, was extremely encouraging. What were some highs and lows of the production process--of watching the play from tryouts to the final show? We rehearsed in a warehouse with a stone floor--mosquito infested.  When it rained one night the power went out.  The jump from that rehearsal space to the Lawrence Arts Center was a significant one.  And then every new rehearsal in the Arts Center was like seeing a new show.  All of a sudden they'd have the platforms down, then the props, then the costumes, then the risers, and the music.  Each new addition brought so much to the script--you saw it becoming a theatrical reality.  So it's the last week before you open that you go, "Oh, I see, this is actually a play!"  Hearing the dialogue spoken at the various stages is the most challenging thing.  At first, when the actors are with the script, it plays very nicely--they get the relationships down, the connections down.  Then, after three weeks or so, they suddenly get rid of the scripts and you take five steps back.  If they don't know lines, the relationships aren't there, the connections are lost.  The final weeks of rehearsal are tough--I wasn't really confident until the final Sunday show of the run. There are bound to be other graduate students who also have secret desires to experiment with playwriting.  Any words of wisdom? If students have creative ideas, those ideas are probably as important to their lives as their scholarship or their taeching.  I'd say find the time to pursue them.

Higher Education Report from the GTA Union      The cultural climate of the nation has shifted in the ten weeks since the September 11th attacks of terror, and the United States is at war.  Now is a time when there are many social and political concerns affecting all aspects of life, including the field of higher education.  Nevertheless, the complexity of our current historical moment does not excuse anyone from the responsibilities of democracy and fair practice.  We cannot ignore the ongoing need for justice locally and globally.  As members of the academic community, we should participate in the exchange of ideas and the decisions about policies affecting university life.      Teachers have been a stalwart support for students needing stability and guidance in a time of crisis.  Academic workers need to continue incorporating new knowledge and experiences into the operations of the university and the content of the academic curriculum.  Furthermore, actual and perceived restrictions on travel, actions, and speech have influenced many members of the university community by raising impediments to the work of such groups as international faculty and students, progressive advocates, and cultural critics.  Many people have felt pressure to abandon social causes while the nation has been at war, coupled with financial exigencies due to economic recession.  However, promoting good education and social justice must not be diminished, and the university is still responsible for its teaching mission.      One dominant concern today involves the corporatization of higher education.  The bureaucratic aspects of U.S. schools have been expanding since the early nineteenth century, resulting in an increase of administrative tasks and the creation of educational policies based more on fiscal convenience than sound pedagogy.  Concrete results of the corporatization of higher education include overcrowded classrooms, pedagogically unsound procedures, and over-reliance on and exploitation of part-time teaching faculty and staff.  Educators at all grade levels have expressed concerns about how business interests affect classroom learning.  In the corporate milieu, recent decades reveal the compensation of chief executive officers skyrocketing exponentially, while workers' salaries improve but marginally.  Similarly, at the University of  Kansas, certain administrators receive twenty times the salary of a graduate teacher.       The organization of full- and part-time faculty labor is one productive way by which academic workers have responded to corporatization and the imbalance of power.  The aim of such unions, which play a key role in higher education, is to

improve teaching and learning conditions.  Academics should not lose sight of the larger principles represented by collective bargaining, for unions can be a corrective and progressive force working for positive changes.  In North America, graduate employee unionization has been hailed as the most significant labor movement of the 1990s.      The KU Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition (GTAC) won recognition as a union in 1995.  GTAC was the eleventh graduate employee union in the U.S.;  and there are now over thirty-five such unions.  With strength in union, KU's graduate teachers are empowered to use their voices, scholarly abilities, and time to be active in the community and to direct the future of higher education.      Among the currently contested issues are the respect and compensation which graduate teachers deserve from their employer.  GTAC has been engaged in its second contract negotiations with the KU administration since September of 2000.  (Visit www.kugtac.org for more information.)  The KU administration has become infamous for its $7,000 minimum salary proposal for the next academic year and for its ability to fund new administrative positions, while full-time faculty lines go unfilled, and part-time teaching faculty are exploited.  Classroom learning is inadequately funded at this time.      Furthermore, on the nineteenth of November, 2001, the administration declared its intention to halt contract negotiations by going to "impasse," although the union wanted to continue.  More action will be taken on the matter on the third of December.  To local labor activists, the KU administration was extending the ominous shadow cast earlier in the month by the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, which voted to extend tax abatements to companies without any provision for a workers' living wage.      While Kansas may be a difficult state for unions and workers' rights, GTAC has been strengthened by the commitment of its membership, the earnest support from most parts of the KU community, and the solidarity of the nationwide academic labor movement.  GTAC's present work will benefit future graduate teachers, the undergraduates they instruct, and the university community as a whole.  Involvements in the graduate teachers' union is one valuable avenue by which academics at the University of Kansas are promoting social justice and educational needs.  GTAC is glad to hear from anyone at 785-843-9022, 1116 Louisiana St., Lawrence, KS 66045, gtac@kugtac.orgwww.kugtac.org. Amy Cummins (Cummins teaches English 211 and serves as the 2001 GTAC President.)

Dear Dr. (Ph.D. not M.D.) Dearest Dr. I am crushed.  I keep receiving rejection letters from the publishers whom I hoped would embrace my latest creative/critical work.  What ever shall I do? Sincerely, Unrequited *********************** Dear Unrequited, Do you know I recently spoke with a professor who said he received at least 30 rejections before his last book of poetry was published?  He remained confident, however, and finally found a publisher for his fine work.  The question is:  how do you retain confidence when rejection slips are flying at you from all sides?  First, keep a running tally of where your work is going and what has been returned.  You might just be sending your stuff to the wrong places!  If you are just starting out, it might not be wise to send your most cherished story to the Iowa Review or the Atlantic Monthly.  Sure, shoot for the moon, but be realistic.  And look for a journal that publishes just the type of work you are likely to create.  For help in locating these journals and their submission guidelines, try the International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses.  Also, the MLA Directory of Periodicals lists journals and periodicals that publish humanities work, from critical to creative.  Beware of simultaneous submissions.  Usually, most journals are good at getting your work back to you in a timely manner, but if it had taken them six months, and you would like to send the work elsewhere, go ahead.

Also, some journals don't mind simultaneous submissions at all.  Just check their submission guidelines, and you're good to go.  Remember that sometimes a rejection is a result of an oversight as simple as forgetting to enclose an SASE with your manuscript.  Publishing your work is a lot like gambling.  You have to roll high to win.  Keep sending your work all over, because that way you'll increase your chances of receiving a pearl in the midst of the oyster shells of rejection we all face.  Respectfully, Dr.     _____________________________     Some Holiday Limericks from the Peanut Gallery St. Nick wasn't feeling too cheery And decided to promulgate theory. Beneath ribbons and bows He left Marx and Foucault, So all of the kids woke up weary. Alan Newton   Said a hungry young TA from SAGE "This treatment has me in a rage. Those who teach masses Of undergrad classes Should be paid a respectable wage." James Gunn

From the Graduate Coordinator... I often tell entering graduate students that the first semester is the most disorienting, and I hope this bit of gnomic wisdom applies to Graduate Coordinators as well.  My first semester in this position had not actually been beset by any unusual problems, but it did begin very unexpectedly and unfortunately with the sudden departure of former Graduate Secretary Donna Bonnell.  After an almost six-week long search and interview process we were fortunate enough to bring on board a wonderful new Graduate Secretary in the person of Lydia Ash.  Lydia is a KU graduate in Religious Studies who comes to us with a great deal of computer expertise and office know-how, and a sense of humor adequate to the demands of the English Department.  She has already prepared a new and improved departmental webpage design that should be up and running at the beginning of the Spring 2002 semester, and further webpage improvements will not be far behind.  Please drop by and introduce yourself if you haven't already. In Fall 2001, among other issues, the graduate committee has begun work on a revision of the current Master's Exam reading list.  The exam subcommittee's revisions, which will be finalized in Spring 2002, will involved changes on all four exam lists, offering a wider range of options in literature lists A and B and a substantial updating of theory lists C (Criticism) and D (Language and Composition).  We plan to bring these changes before the department during the Spring semester.  One significant question that arose during Fall 2001 enrollment concerns our seminar requirements for both the M.A. and Ph.D. programs.  Please note that our current seminar requirements are as follows:  M.A. students not writing a thesis are required to take ONE seminar as part of their thirty hours of coursework.  Ph.D. students are required to take TWO seminars as part of their twenty-four hours of coursework.  Unfortunately, neither our current graduate student handbook (which says two seminars are required in both programs) NOR the Graduate School Catalog, 2001-2003, (which says one seminar is required on both programs) lists our requirements accurately.  If you have any questions regarding this requirement or whether you have fulfilled it, please let me know. Finally, I want to encourage all graduate students to take advantage of a special opportunity next summer to work with one of the top Americanist scholars in the country.  Our visiting scholar for the Summer 2002 Holmes Institute will be Professor Dana Nelson, from the University of Kentucky.  Professor Nelson is the author most recently of National Manhood:  capitalist citizenship and the imagined fraternity of white men (Duke UP, 1998) and has done influential work on a range of issues concerning the cultural politics of American literature from the Revolution to the Civil War.  Like our earlier Holmes Institutes, this is an excellent opportunity for any graduate student in American literature to work with and benefit from a top scholar in the field.  Please contact me as soon as possible if you would like to take advantage of this opportunity.  --Philip Barnard (philipb@ku.edu)

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