VOX POPULI

A message from the Amazing Aaron:

As you have probably heard, the English Grad Study Room in Firestone (B-9-J) has been undergoing renovation, and will soon be completed, rejuvenated and ready for your use. Thanks to the generous support of the English Dept, the Graduate Action Committee (GAC) and Firestone Library, we were able to repaint the walls, refinish the floor, afford new shelving and furniture, and reorganize the library books kept in the room. All of this should make this room a nice and productive space for our work. We owe a huge debt of thanks to Karen Mink and Kevin Mensch for acting as our liaison in our efforts — this literally could not have happened without their savvy and persistence.

The final installation of the shelves has occurred, and the majority of the furniture, including a new couch and armchairs, are already arranged and simply yearning to be sat upon. There’s a carpet, as well as a long table and a small desk for your convenience. The desk even has a selection of office supplies in the drawer for your use. A computer terminal will also be installed in the very near future.

There is a huge amount of shelf space, enough for everyone that doesn’t already have a carrel or office to use for their books. There is also will be a smaller shelf in the back left-hand corner that can be used for course reserve readings, so let your professors know it’s there.

There are a few things we can do to ensure the study room remains a clean and useful space:

First off, USE IT!!! Firestone has been looking at ways to reorganize space in the building, and has suggested that the study lounges be reassigned if they are not used by their departments. If you do not already have a key to access the room, please get one from the Access Office. It requires a $10 deposit and will get you into all of the study rooms in the library (except for the Classics Study Room on the 3rd floor).

Second, and related to the first. The room is intended for English Grad Student use only, so please help safeguard your colleagues’ property by keeping the door closed and locked. If you are ever locked out, find the Scrib attendant or the guard at the front desk.

Third, keep it clean. This is primarily our responsibility: please help our efforts to keep the room clean by doing your part to pick up after yourself and to make the jobs easier for the janitors. If the trash can or recycling cans are full, you can set them outside the door to indicate that they need to be emptied. If the room is unusually dirty or there is a big spill, you can fill out a form on the library’s web page to request janitorial services. Otherwise there will be some cleaning supplies on hand in the room for dusting or wiping up minor spills.

Fourth there is a tendency for a space like a study room to become a depository for flotsam and jetsam. Please do your share to throw your unwanted items away rather than leaving it for someone else to pick up. We all have our own junk and probably don’t want yours — no matter how nice it seems.

Fifth, having plants in a study room is a nice way to liven up the space and keep the air fresh. However, there is no library employee that is assigned to keep them alive. There is a watering can in the room, and we encourage its use. We are looking into plant options that require little water, such as cacti or other succulents, but they will still need our help in order to survive. Please give the plants a second of your attention if they seem to need it. There will be a white board near the can that should be used to record the last day they were watered.

Sixth, this our space, and it should be set up and equipped in such a way that will be useful to everyone. Please contact the GAC with suggestions of things to keep in there. As long as it does not violate library policy (such as a coffee maker), it is highly likely that what you need can be found and placed in the room. If you notice something missing or it has run out, then by taking a moment to refill or re-equip that item you will ensure that all of your fellow graduate students have what they need.

Thank you for your consideration and help in preserving the usefulness of our new study Lounge.

Best,

Aaron Hostetter

Gayle Salamon is completing her term as Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow here at Princeton and will join our department as an assistant professor in the fall. Gayle received her Ph.D. in Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley with a dissertation entitled “Assuming a Body: Transgenderism and Rhetorics of Materiality.” She is currently completing a manuscript based on that project, which combines psychoanalytic and phenomenological theories of embodiment in an analysis of transgenderism. Salamon held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Pembroke Center, Brown University, and taught a wide array of courses at the University of California-Berkeley on the topics of embodiment, gender, and LGBT studies. While at Princeton she has explored the function of transgender within lesbian, feminist and queer discourses, and has written about trans identity, feminism, and photography. Her articles have appeared in differences, GLQ, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. Most recently she offered a course entitled “What Is a Body?” in the departments of Comparative Literature, English, and the Program in Women and Gender.

We will also be welcoming the following visitors to our graduate faculty in the fall.

Prof. Rey Chow (Theory), Brown University

Prof. Wayne Koestenbaum (Contemporary Poetry), CUNY Graduate Center

Prof. Rita Copeland (Medieval) of the University of Pennsylvania will be teaching a graduate course in the spring of 09.

In addition, Margaret Doody of Vanderbilt and the writer Colm Toibin will be teaching undergrads, but we look forward to bringing grads and visitors together once again next year in special events and seminars.

Yes, all’s been quiet on the blogging front, but we’re still here! I won’t be posting the usual digest of weekly events over the summer, but will continue to update the blog when “news” breaks or helpful information becomes available. In the meantime, have a wonderful summer and look for new blog features come fall! –Sarah

Thanks to all our lovely WGGI rep candidates, all of you who took the time to vote and to Emily Hyde for being an efficient, unbiased election monitor. The results for 2008-2009 are in:

GAC Co-presidents: Yaron Aronowicz and Sarah Wasserman

WGGI Reps: Roger Bellin, Michelle Coghlin, Lindsay Reckson

Infinite thanks to Starry for her amazing turn at DGS this semester. We truly appreciate her support, organization, and leadership over the past months. We’re looking forward to working with the incredible Bill Gleason, who will serve as the 2008-2009 DGS.

Additional thanks to Claudia Johnson and Jeff Dolven for their dedication to WGGI this year. It’s been a pleasure to work with them on the issues that matter to graduate students.

And in case you missed it, here’s the latest from Starry:

Dear Students,

Now that spring term is drawing to a close, I thought I’d provide you with an update on our departmental searches.

1) I am delighted to announce that Prof. Jill Dolan of the University of Texas at Austin will be joining the department next fall. Jill will teach her first graduate seminar at Princeton next spring, ENG 560 Special Studies in the Drama (also COM 568): Queer Theory and Performance. A profile of Jill can be found here:

http://www.finearts.utexas.edu/tad/people/Faculty_and_Staff/faculty/dolan.cfm

Those of you who are interested in theater and performance might also like to know that Prof. Stacy Wolf, also of the University of Texas at Austin, will be joining the Program in Theatre and Dance next fall as well. Here is Stacy’s profile:

http://www.finearts.utexas.edu/tad/people/Faculty_and_Staff/faculty/wolf.cfm

We will also be welcoming into our junior ranks Alexandra Vasquez, currently a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale. Her research and teaching interests include performance studies, Latino/a cultural studies, circum-Atlantic musical performance, transnational feminism and critical race theory. For more information, please see:

http://www.yale.edu/theaterstudies/people/vazquez.html

With the advent of Jill, Stacy and Alex, we look forward to a renaissance of activity in theater and performance. It is an exciting juncture for our department, and well-timed to coincide with the development of the new Lewis Center for the Arts.

2) Your avid and helpful participation in the Americanist search–from lectures to coffees to dinners and on to voicing your views — has been remarked by the entire faculty as well as by all three candidates. We are so grateful to you for taking time and care over this process and the department has asked me to convey how important your contribution has been to us.

I am happy to announce that we have voted to extend an offer to Prof. Jacqueline Goldsby of the University of Chicago, pending approval by the “Committee of Three.” Jackie has been made aware of our vote and will probably be visiting soon. Should you wish to congratulate/welcome her, feel free.

3) Less happily, our offer to Prof. Gayatri Spivak of Columbia, which we extended in 2006, has now been declined. I am glad that some of you had the privilege of working with her while she visited this spring. She has indicated a strong interest in following the progress of Princeton’s

plans for internationalizing the humanities, and we will be grateful for her ongoing collegiality once she returns to Columbia.

4) Regretfully, we say farewell and warm wishes to two esteemed members of our junior faculty, Prof. Kathleen Davis, who departs for the University of Rhode Island and Prof. Jennifer Greeson, who leaves us for the University of Virginia. We wish them both all the best in their new academic homes.

Starry