Undergraduate Courses: Spring 2017

Brooklyn Bridge

by George Eastman House.

No known copyright restrictions.

These course descriptions are provided by the professors teaching the courses.

For more information, write to them directly. Get English Department faculty contact info here.

English Majors — Before you register, make an appointment to meet with Wayne Berninger to review your outstanding requirements. Then register as early as possible to keep courses from being canceled.

Non-Majors — The writing and analytical skills gained in English courses are useful in a variety of professions. Any student may take these courses as general electives. A minor in English (four courses 100 or above) will satisfy the Distribution Requirement for any major. For more information, make an appointment to meet with Wayne Berninger.

Tina Barry: Award Nomination & Two Readings

We are pleased to report that a poem/story – “Come Back” – by Tina Barry (Creative Writing MFA, LIU Brooklyn, 2014) has been nominated for a Best of the Net award by the editors of Flash-Frontier.

Also, Barry will be reading twice in October, as follows.

Reading by writers whose work appears in The Best Small Fictions 2016.
Saturday, 10/22
7:00 PM
KGB Bar, the Red Room
85 East 4^th Street

Manhattan

Reading by poets whose work appears in RedSky: Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women.

Sunday, 10/23

7:00 PM

Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen Street

Manhattan

Jonathan Haynes: New Book

We are pleased to congratulate Professor Jonathan Haynes (English) on the publication of his book Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres (University of Chicago Press, 2016). 

More information about the book. 

Available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions. 

Patrick Horrigan: Reading at Virginia Museum of Fine Art

ART IN LITERATURE: AN UNDYING LOVE AFFAIR

Professor Patrick E. Horrigan (LIU Brooklyn English Department) will read from his recent novel, Portraits at an Exhibition (Lethe Press), winner of the 2016 Art in Literature Award, on Friday, October 14, 2016, at 6PM, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, Virginia. The reading is open to the public and all are welcome. Purchase tickets.

Art in Literature: The Mary Lynn Kotz Award, sponsored by the Library of Virginia along with the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, recognizes an outstanding book published in the previous year that is written primarily in response to a work (or works) of art while also showing the highest literary quality as a creative or scholarly work. This unique award, established in 2013, is named in honor of Mary Lynn Kotz, author of the award-winning biography Rauschenberg, A Life. The inaugural award recipient was The Innocence of Objects by Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk. The 2014 award winner was Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda for The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Last year's winner was Susan Vreeland for her novel Lisete's List.  

John High: Reading at Unnameable Books

Th 9/29 @ 8pm

Unnameable Books

An evening of readings with

John High, Nathan Austin, & Emily Wallis Hughes

+

surprise guests from LIU Brooklyn's Creative Writing MFA Program

+

Music by O.A.E

Readings will take place in the white rock stone garden or, in inclement weather, the comfortable book-lined basement.

600 Vanderbilt Avenue

near the corner of St. Marks

Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

11238

Jonathan Haynes: New Publications

Professor Jonathan Haynes (English) has two new publications.

“Ola Balogun’s Lost Classics Aiye and Orun Mooru" appears in the book The Magic of Nigeria: On the cinema of Ola Balogun (Filmkollektiv Frankfurt).

“Neoliberalism, Nollywood and Lagos” appears in the book Global Cinematic Cities: New landscapes of film and media (Wallflower Press / Columbia UP).

In addition, Professor Haynes writes informally about his contribution to Global Cinematic Cities in a special section of the online journal Mediapolis.

Barbara Henning, Lewis Warsh, & Jamey Jones: Readings, Workshops, & Interviews at the Pensacola Foo Foo Festival

Professor Barbara Henning and Professor Lewis Warsh (both English/Creative Writing, LIU Brooklyn) will each read and lead a workshop and then be interviewed together over brunch by Jamey Jones (MFA alum, LIU Brooklyn; Northwest Florida Poet Laureate) as part of the Pensacola Foo Foo Festival, November 10-13. 

More info.

Barbara Henning: Reading at University of Houston--Victoria

Professor Barbara Henning (English) will be reading in the Downtown Arts Series at the University of Houston--Victoria.

October 15, 2016
7PM
UHV Center for the Arts
204 North Main Street
Victoria, TX

More info.

Howard Pflanzer: Reading at Bowery Poetry Club

Howard Pflanzer, formerly an adjunct professor in the English Department, and a longtime contributor to Downtown Brooklyn, the literary magazine of the English Department, will be reading/performing DEAD BIRDS or AVIAN BLUES.

Sunday, September 18, 2016 6 PM - 7:30 PM

Bowery Poetry Club 308 Bowery, New York, New York 10012 Show Map www.brownpapertickets.com

A two part program featuring readings/performances by Howard Pflanzer and Zoe Anastassiou of DEAD BIRDS or AVIAN BLUES, by Howard Pflanzer, edgy dramatic-poetic commentaries on the human condition by Howard Pflanzer, and a reading by Zoe Anastassiou of Luigi Pirandello’s short story, Set Fire to the Straw, dealing metaphorically with freedom, choices and imprisoned birds taking flight.

$10 online, $15 at the door

Howard Pflanzer is a poet, playwright, and fiction writer. Dead Birds or Avian Blues was published by Fly By Night Press (2011). Recent publications include Nebula Rift, FIVE Poetry and Downtown Brooklyn. He was the prizewinning November 2013 Poet of the Month of The Poetry Company. His hybrid performance piece, Walt Whitman Opera, adapted from Whitman’s poetry with music by Constance Cooper, was presented at the undergroundzero festival in New York (2014). He has read/performed his work at KGB, LaMaMa, Theaterlab, The Living Theatre, The Cornelia Street Cafe, Medicine Show, A Gathering of the Tribes, The Bowery Poetry Club, Brownstone Poets, Sweet Briar College and San Diego Writers Ink. 

With equally wonderful, vivid and fanciful illustrations by Juliane Pieper to match his wildly mythical texts, much in the vain of the Brothers Grimm, Maurice Sendak and Dr. Seuss, though a bit scarier and meant more for “grownups”, Howard Pflanzer’s collection of poems and plays has created a world which to some may seem simple on the surface but which actually takes us through our own prejudices, likes, loves, hates and cravings, running deep through the souls of man and beast alike. 

The short interlocking plays of the book’s first ½, using birds and beasts as metaphors, are surreal realities about survival, co-existence and in many cases inevitable collision and collapse. They, like the poems that follow, deal as equally with ecology as they do with the inter-dependence of species, are here examined through love and appetite, each play a little rhyming fable … Pflanzer’s is a journey that will keep you riveted always stirring up your cravings for more. (Steve Dalachinsky)

Zoe Anastassiou is a GABliA…Greek Aussie Brit living in America! Zoe was last seen as Hippolyta in The Drilling Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as past of their Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, and can be next seen as Shaw’s Major Barbara in November. She recently co-founded and became Associate Artistic Director of Helluva Theatre Company that is presenting a yearlong festival in 2017 commemorating Pirandello, his work and influence called Pirandello150. See more of that at www.pirandello150.org and see more of Zoe at www.zoeanastassiou.com

Set Fire to the Straw is a powerful short story from Tales of Madness by the influential Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello best known for his play Six Characters in Search of an Author. The issues in this story of two friends are intensely human. It embodies the expansive theme of freedom inspired by madness when hundreds of imprisoned birds are released into the sky. These birds are a striking metaphor for our constant striving for survival and renewal. Excerpts of this short story will be read by Zoe Anastassiou to highlight just how strong an artistic voice Pirandello has and why she co-founded a festival Pirandello150 featuring his work and its relevance for our times.

Mary Kennan Herbert: Poems in Cantos

Professor Mary Kennan Herbert (English Department) has four new poems in the 2016 issues of Cantos: A Literary and Arts Journal (Missouri Baptist University).

Read the issue here.