Department News
 Nature Writing Seminar
Students in Dr. Jim Aton’s American Nature Writing Seminar accompanied him to Arches National Park, November 2-4. On hikes in the Devil’s Garden and to Delicate Arch they discussed Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and various wilderness and national parks issues.
Petersen receives fiction award
Salt Lake City Weekly, second annual Utah arts awards, Sept. 13, 2007:
BEST LDS SHORT-STORY COLLECTION
Long After Dark by Todd Robert Petersen
The contemporary Mormon experience is rarely portrayed with the clear-eyed empathy conveyed in these 16 stories by Southern Utah University professor Petersen. Unafraid to allow his characters to stumble as they try to understand their faith—or their struggles with it—Petersen creates stories that inspire without ever feeling simplistic. This should be the model for LDS literature: compelling warts-and-all human stories in which there are more sublime happy endings than baptisms and temple weddings.
April 13, 2007
Ed McNicoll delivered his paper "Oedipal Triangles and Masculinity/Femininity in High Noon" at the Popular Culture Assoc./American Culture Assoc. Conference in Boston, April 5-7, 2007. Also delivering papers at this conference were Todd Petersen (“Anxiety of Semblance: Dopplegängers in the Source Text Systems of Batman Begins and Superman Returns”) and Bryce Christensen (“A Resurgence of Confucianism?: Why Many Asians are Turning Again to the Master Kung”).
Todd Petersen’s "The Train is Coming to Town," a visual short story collaboration with graphic designer Paula Sue Airth, was published in the March 2007 in Hobart (Issue 7).
Bryce Christensen’s essay “Awakened by a Dream: How the Theo-centric Eschatology of Quevedo’s Los Sueños Deconstructs Socio-centric Ideologies” was published in The International Journal of the Arts in Society 1.3 (2007): 15-22.
Todd Petersen’s short story collection Long After Dark - was published in November 2006 by Zarahemla Books.
Bryce Christensen presented his paper “A Perilous ‘New Bible’: Poetry and Power Politics in Thomas Carlyle’s Rule-Changing Religious Semiosis” at the Rocky Mountain Language Association Convention in Tucson, Arizona, Oct. 12, 2006.
Dr. Christensen presented “Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ as Verbicide: Reaffirming the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage that Once Made ‘Marriage’ a Word of Substance and Hope” at the Symposium on “What’s the Harm? How Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Harms Children, Families, Marriage and Society,” co-sponsored by the Marriage Law Project at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law and the BYU Law School Marriage and Family Law Research Project, Provo, Utah, Sept. 15, 2006.
At SUU’s Second Annual Grace C. Tanner Center Symposium on “Democracy and Culture,” held on January 19, 2006, Bryce Christensen presented his paper “’Utter[ing] the Word Democratic’: Popular Government.”
March 7, 2007
The Writing Center is now accepting submissions for the Spring 2007 Scriblerian essay contest. The deadline for submissions is April 5th at noon.
On March 28th the SUU Writing Center will host the third annual Writing for Life Conference for high school students.
Fundraising for the Kolob Canyon Review was very successful last spring, so the magazine is set for this year. Editors have made individual and general solicitations of material. The set launch date and gala for the 2007 issue will be Wed. April 18th, which will be held in the Artichoke Lounge in the basement of the Braithwaite Building.
October 6, 2006
Danielle Dubrasky and Todd Robert Petersen reading. City Arts Sponsored Reading at the Salt Lake City Main Library, September 13 at 7:00
S.S. Moorty, who retired in 2006, will serve as a Fulbright Scholar in American literature & Shakespeare, at Baku Slavic University, Azerbaijan, from February-July 2007. Before his retirement, Prof. Moorty published a chapbook of his poetry, gave four poetry readings, and received an award from the Multicultural Center at SUU.
Kolob Canyon Review, our student literary magazine, has received $500 for publication expenses from SUUSA.
March 6, 2005
Women & Peace Conference
Sat Lake City
Dr. Danielle Dubrasky has put together a program of poetry on women and peace at 3:00 p.m. on March 6 at the Salt Lake Public Library. The program will consist of original compositions by women. English creative writing student Kellie Jensen, composer Nancy Takacs, and Dr. Dubrasky will read their poetry as part of the program
Dec 4, 2004
English Department Literary Guild Receives SUUSA Funding
The SUUSA has granted $2,000 to the Literary Guild, which funds English Department Reading Series and the student written and produced Kolob Canyon Review. Professor Danielle Dubrasky continues to contribute the proceeds from her chapbook, Persephone Awakened to the Literary Guild, which now amounts to over $500.
Oct 1, 2004
Prof. Jim Aton's Nature Writing Class:
From October 1-3, Professor Jim Aton’s American Nature Writing seminar camped and hiked at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The eight-student group traveled there to see first hand what they had been reading by Powell Survey writers, John Wesley Powell and Clarence E. Dutton. The group hiked ten miles through a ponderosa pine forest to Widforss Point on the rim of the canyon. Along the way they discussed such topics as writing and painting’s role in the development of canyon country aesthetics, the geologic history of the canyon, fire ecology and fire policy on the Kaibab Plateau, exploration in the canyon, the evolution of the national park idea, Native American plant use and occupation, and tourism in the park. Seminar students Tim Coray, Wayde Henrie, Candice Kuhlmann, Melissa Nay, and Josh Olenslager participated, as did present and former English majors, Kelly Jensen and Austin Bringard, and SUU freshman, Tricia Nay.
Faculty Publications
October 6, 2006
Prof. Jim Aton Publication "Hank Stewart and Sand Wash," in Confluence: The Journal of the Colorado Plateau River Guides Winter 2006.
Prof. Aton spent a month traveling around Spain, visiting locations in Hemingway's work in preparation for my Hemingway seminar this spring.
Kyle Bishop is pursuing a Ph.D. in literature at the University of Arizona, where he has been awarded a graduate teaching associate position and an additional teaching fellowship. His essay "Artistic Schizophrenia: How Fight Club’s Message Is Subverted by Its Own Nature" was published in the October 2006 issue of Studies in Popular Culture.
Prof. Bryce Christensen - Nine poems (At a Nieces Burial, Relativity, Old Photo, English 101, 1492, Division of Labor, The Spot, John Von Neumann and Vigil) appeared in The Conservative Poets, an anthology edited by poet William Baer and published by the University of Evansville Press.
Todd Petersen's Short story collection LONG AFTER DARK to be released this November by Zarahemla Books. The collection has a foreword by O Henry Award-winning writer and Chair of Creative Writing Department at Brown University, Brian Evenson.
Petersen's satire work to be collected and published in THE MORMON TABERNACLE INQUIRER. Publishers Weekly's review of the "Inquirer" can be found online.
September 18, 2006
Faculty Member Danielle Dubrasky has received notice that she has won FIRST PLACE in the Utah Arts Council Manuscript Competition for her collection of poetry, "To Live Elsewhere."
March 1, 2006
Ecotone, a journal out of University of North Carolina at Wilmington, will publish "Southern Utah Storms" by J.D. Olenslager and "Driving I-15" by Jill Talbot in their third issue. Both brief essays were written and submitted as part of Dr. Talbot's Maymester English 4030 class.
Feburary 24, 2006
The Art of Friction: Where (Non) Fictions Come Together, edited by Dr. Jill Talbot of the English Department and Charles Blackstone, author of The Week You Weren't Here (Low Fidelity Press 2005), will be published by the University of Texas Press. The anthology seeks to provide, via stories and essays, some insight into the creative non-fiction vs. fiction debate, one which has been a healthy component of writing and rhetoric conversations long before the recent Oprah controversy. The book is scheduled for release in Winter 2008.
Faculty Presentations
Oct. 6, 2006
Todd Petersen, with the Director of Honors and SUU honors students, to present the results of our experiential arts and sciences course called Maymester Gone Wild. National Honors Society conference
August 18, 2006
Prof. Bryce Christensen presented a paper ("Awakened by a Dream: How the Theo-centric Eschatology of Quevedos 'Los sueños' Deconstructs Socio-centric Ideologies") on August 18th, at the International Conference on the Arts in Society, held at the University of Edinburgh.
Aug 5, 2005
Bryce Christensen
"The Science of the 21st Century: Utopian Promise of De-Humanizing Threat?"
Third International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities:
Cambridge, England Uk
June 2, 2005
Jessica Tvordi
Paper: “Banishing Ganymede at Whitehall: Jove’s ‘loathsome staines’ and Fictions of Britain in Thomas Carew’s Coelum Britannicum”
Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
April 9 , 2005
Danielle Dubrasky
reading at Rocky Mountain Poetry Festival
Pocatello, Idaho
April 2, 2005
Todd Petersen will present "Narratology and the New 'Rhetoric of
Fiction'" on April 2nd at the Associated Writing Programs (AWP)
conference in Vancouver BC. The panel will explore the pedagogical uses
of structuralist and post-structuralist literary theory in creative
writing workshops.
March 18, 2005
Bryce Christensen: "Speaking in Chorus with Ninety-Nine Spirits: Empowering International ESL Students as Cultural Critics."
CCCC, San Francisco, CA
February 4-6, 2005
Todd Petersen and Kyle Bishop present at Far West Popular and American Culture Associations
Las Vegas, Nevada
Todd Petersen's paper: "No Honor Among Thieves"
Kyle Bishop's paper: "The Rise and Fall... and Rise of Zombie Cinema"
January 13-16, 2005
Kurt Harris
Paper - "Scars & the Memory of Skin in Thackeray's Henry Esmond
Hawai'i International Conference on Arts & Humanities
Honolulu, Hawai'i
November 12-15, 2004
Danielle Dubrasky
Invited poetry reader
Yuki Teikei Haiku Society
Pacific Grove, California
October 19, 2004:
Kyle Bishop
Presenting at SUU's Lunch Bytes
"Fight Club and the Culture Industry: The Problems of Socially Conscious Cinema"
October 2, 2004:
Todd Petersen
Paper - Western Literature Association Annual Conference
"Avant Noir": Crime & Hipsterism in Pacific Northwest Film & TV
Big Sky, Montana
October 1, 2004:
Kay Cook
SUU Theatre Arts and Dance "Perspectives" Panelist
Dr. Cook will discuss the element of farce in Theatre Arts and Dance's current production See How They Run.
September 25, 2004:
Kyle Bishop
Presenting at the annual meeting for the Pop Culture Association of the South
"Artistic Schizophrenia: How Fight Club's Message is Subverted by Its Own Nature"
New Orleans, Lousiana
July 20-August 1, 2004:
Professor Kay K. Cook
Presentation on collaborative theatre
"Speak to Me, Annie"
Association for Theatre in Higher Education
Toronto, Ontario
July 12-15, 2004:
Professor Bryce Christensen
Paper - British Comparative Literature Association
"Between Times Square and the Frozen Void: The Problematics of a Social Constructivist Approach to Science"
Leeds, England
June 2004:
Professor S.S. Moorty
Paper - F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference
Vevey, Switzerland
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