Check Out the New Issue of Fiction Fix, Edited by Draper Alumna April Bacon

We recently profiled Draper alumna April Bacon, who for several years has been the editor-in-chief of Fiction Fix, an online literary journal founded by students, alumni, and faculty at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. We're now delighted to share Fiction Fix's newest 8th issue, which is available on their website or as a downloadable .pdf.

So when you need a break from the end of the semester craze, head over to Fiction Fix and take a break with some great new fiction.

Library of Congress Photo Finds of the Week: Famous Faces

A few images of famous personalities:

Billie Holiday, 1947
(William Gottlieb)


President Theodore Roosevelt with Reporters, 1912
(Bain News Service)

Actress Doris Day, 1946
(William Gottlieb)


Babe Ruth, Knocked Out by Pitch, 1924

Dec 15th Book Launch, NYU | Toilets: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing

Dear Students:

Please see below for more information about a book launch for Toilet: The Public Restroom and the Politics of Sharing, which was co-edited by Harvey Molotch, Draper's Master Teacher in The City.

Toilet Book Launch Party

Wednesday, 15 December 2010 | 6:00 p - 8:00 p
Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor

Harvey Molotch, Laura Norén and NYUPress are pleased to invite you to join them in celebrating the launch of their co-edited volume "Toilet: The public restroom and the politics of sharing". Although what happens in the toilet usually stays in the toilet, Molotch and Norén have brought together academics from architecture, sociology, archeology, urban studies, and the law to peel back layers of taboo, speak the unspeakable and reveal the lessons we can learn in the public restroom.

We will be joined by Rick Bell (Executive Director of the American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter) and Catharine Stimpson (Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at NYU) who will be offering brief remarks.

Wine and cheese will be on hand. Please RSVP along with your guests so that will know how many to expect.

This event is co-sponsored by the New York University's Departments of Social and Cultural Analysis and Sociology, NYUPress, and the Institute for Public Knowledge.

Time-Based Art: Comparative Lit Colloquium, 12/10

Please join us for the December installment of the Comparative Literature Colloquium next Friday, 12/10, from 1-3 p.m., in room 222 of 19 University Place.

(Note the earlier time, shifted due to the "Music, Language, Thought" event taking place later that afternoon.)

To close out this semester's programing, we are delighted to welcome:

Professor Boris Groys (Department of Russian and Slavic Studies)

With a presentation entitled: "Time-Based Art"

For more information: http://comparatorium.wordpress.com/

GSAS Master's College Program Board Event: Fall Study Break (12/16)

It’s the 125th Year of the Graduate School of Arts and Science. We are proud to dedicate all of our events this year to our milestone birthday. Come celebrate 125 years of academic excellence with The GSAS Master’s College.

The GSAS Master's College Fall Study Break
Thursday, December 16th
4:30 - 6:30 pm
The Grad Commons
Room 120 in the Silver Center

Take a break during finals with the GSAS Master's College Program Board. Meet with master's students from across the Graduate School and toast the end of the
semester. Wine and cheese.

RSVP today to gsas.masterscollege.rsvp@nyu.edu to reserve your spot today.

Message from Draper Student Emily Colucci Re: David Wojnarowicz and NYU

Draper student Emily Colucci has shared the following email with us in response to the recent censorship of David Wojnarowicz's piece "A Fire in My Belly" at the National Portrait Gallery. Emily would like to see this situation addressed directly within the NYU community (the artist's papers are housed in the Fales Collection in Bobst) and is seeking suggestions and feedback from the Draper community. Any suggestions and/or comments should be sent to Emily directly at esc255[at]nyu[dot]edu. Her message is below.

***

“To place an object or writing that contains what it invisible because of legislation or social taboo into an environment outside myself makes me feel not so alone; it keeps me company by virtue of its existence. It is kind of like a ventriloquist’s dummy—the only difference is that the work can speak for itself or act like that ‘magnet’ to attract others who carried this enforced silence. It also could act as a magnet for those with opposing frames of reference…”—David Wojnarowicz

On the night before World AIDS Day, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. removed a video entitled “A Fire in My Belly” by New York artist David Wojnarowicz from their exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” an exhibition on sexual difference in modern America, after pressure from the Catholic League and House Republicans John Boehner and Eric Cantor. The Catholic League and the House members took offense to an 11 second clip in the video, which depicts a small crucifix being crawled on by ants. Catholic League president William Donohue called the video “hate speech” and Rep. John Boehner decried it as a misuse of taxpayer money. Bowing to these criticisms and the threatening of their taxpayer funds, the National Portrait Gallery removed the film from their exhibition, closely mirroring the Robert Mapplethorpe controversy in 1989.

David Wojnarowicz created “A Fire in My Belly” in 1987 in response to his lover and artistic mentor Peter Hujar’s death from AIDS-related illnesses and his own rage at the silence surrounding the AIDS crisis. Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS-related illnesses five years later in 1992, often worked with difficult or challenging images as a means to articulate his invisibility and the invisibility of other people with AIDS during the late 1980s and 1990s.

David Wojnarowicz’s archives are housed at Fales Library and Special Collections on the Third floor of Bobst Library at NYU and the full-length video, which the National Portrait Gallery cut for exhibition was on loan from Fales. With this connection to NYU and the issues it raises for queer politics, art history and other fields, I feel that something should be done at NYU to address these issues whether it be a reading of Wojnarowicz’s work, a lecture or a discussion about the issues such as freedom of expression, hate speech, and the memory and history of the AIDS crisis, raised by the censoring of this video.

Please let me know any suggestions you may have. I know it is a bad time coming at the end of the Fall semester but with the issues raised by this controversy, a discussion of David Wojnarowicz’s artistic and literary output seems necessary.

Some important links on the Wojnarowicz/National Portrait Gallery controversy:

-PPOW Gallery holds Wojnarowicz’s Estate and has provided the uncut “A Fire in My Belly” film:

http://vimeo.com/17457052

http://www.ppowgallery.com/index.php

-Articles on the National Portrait Gallery’s removal of “A Fire in My Belly”:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113006801.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/arts/design/02portrait.html

-Support Hide/Seek, a Facebook group with frequent updates and news about responses to this controversy:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/support.hide.seek

-David Wojnarowicz himself discussing art funding:

http://vimeo.com/14279625

Thanks and I look forward to hearing your suggestions.

Best,

Emily Colucci

esc255[at]nyu[dot]edu

Library of Congress Photo Finds of the Week: December

As we near the end of 2010, here are some photos that were found in the LoC Flickr page in a keyword search for 'December.'


These first three are by photographer Jack Delano:

Skating, vicinity of Brockton, MA: December, 1940



Street in Christiansted, St. Croix? Virgin Islands: December, 1941

C & NW RR, working on a locomotive at the 40th Street railroad shops, Chicago:
December, 1942

The last photo was taken by the Bains News Service:

Winter Bathing, New York: December, 1912

Robin Nagle, Talk at NYU (Dec 8): The Twist-Ties that Bind: Garbage, New York City and You

Draper's Director, Robin Nagle, will be giving a talk entitled "The Twist-Ties that Bind: Garbage, New York City and You" next Wednesday, December 8th. The talk will be right around the corner from Draper's office at 5 Washington Place. More information is below.

***

Freshkills Park Talks
The Twist-Ties that Bind: Garbage, New York City and You
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
7:00 p.m.–8:30 p.m.

Join Dr. Robin Nagle to learn (almost) everything you ever wanted to know about garbage in New York. Discover how profoundly it connects us to each other, to history, to politics, to infrastructure and technology. Hear stories and reflections from people who shoulder its burdens. Glimpse some of its surprising secrets. Consider why we need to ignore it, and ponder the consequences of its invisibility. The insights you glean might just change forever the way you see your city.

Dr. Nagle is the anthropologist-in-residence for the Department of Sanitation. She is also director of the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University, where she teaches anthropology and urban studies. Her book Picking Up, about what it is to be a sanitation worker in New York and why you should care, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the New York City Department of Sanitation and the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University.

NYU 5 Washington Place, Room 101
Manhattan

Location Details:
Enter on the corner of Mercer St & Washington Pl.
Nearest trains: R to 8th Street, 6 to Astor Place

For more information -- 212-788-8277 and/or doug.elliott@parks.nyc.gov

New MA in Literary Translation (French-English), NYU

A Message from NYU's French Department:

Dear Colleague:

We wish to call your attention to our new M.A. Program in Literary Translation (fiction, non-fiction, literary analysis, humanities and social science texts). Starting in Fall 2011, this one-year program (two semesters in New York, the following summer in Paris) will both train students in literary translation and put them in touch with representatives of the publishing industry in New York and Paris. Students will take courses in the theory of translation, in French literature and culture, as well as participating in workshops focusing on specific translating challenges (for example theatre or poetry). They will be encouraged to develop their own translating style. The final exercise for the M.A. degree will be an original translation, supervised by professionals in the field.

Housed in the Department of French at NYU, students will also benefit from the myriad lectures, conferences, visiting professors, and French- and Francophone-focused activities of the Department. The Paris component at New York University in Paris will feature encounters with French and Francophone writers and a course in creative writing taught by well-known Anglophone writers.

We hope you will bring this program to the attention of your colleagues and to those students who might be interested in learning more about translation, in translation as a career, and in enhancing their knowledge of the intricacies of the French language and the imbrication of language and culture.

For more details and contact addresses, please visit our website at:

www.french.as.nyu.edu/object/translationMA

Sincerely yours,

Denis Hollier, Chair

Emmanuelle Ertel, Director, M.A. in Literary Translation

We would, of course, also be most happy to have your students apply to our other graduate programs: the PhD in French Literature; the M.A. in Literature; the M.A. in Language and Culture; the M.A. in Teaching French. Please visit our website for specifics of these programs:

www.french.as.nyu.edu

Department of French

New York University

13-19 University Place

New York, NY 10003

Tel: 212 998 8700

Don't Forget! This Friday, Dec 3: DSO Fall Colloquium on Practice

DSO Fall Colloquium
Friday, December 3rd
7:00 PM in the Draper Map Room

with presentations by:

Greg Wersching
"A Discipline Divided: How Can Creative Writing Programs (Re)inform Literary Criticism?"

Lee Benjamin Huttner
"Theater in Praxis: On the Practical Turn in Understanding Dramatic Literature"

Benjamin Kampler
"De-structing Space: Anti-Gay Violence in Gay Bars"

Call for Papers: Comparative Philosophy conference at U. of Texas, Austin

Life, Death, and Liberation

A conference of comparative philosophy

9th Annual Philosophy Student Conference at the University of New Mexico

Keynote speaker: Professor Stephen Phillips (Philosophy, Asian Studies, U. of Texas at Austin)

Date: April 15-16, 2011

Submission deadline: January 10, 2011

(Notifications will be received by January 31)

Paper submissions: We welcome topics from the broadest range of philosophical and interdisciplinary traditions. Preference will be given to essays addressing the subtle and often problematic relations among living, dying, and liberation, as these have been explored in the last two-and-a-half centuries of Western philosophy—especially German Idealism, phenomenology, Marxism, and psychoanalytic philosophy—and in both ancient and contemporary Eastern philosophy. Treatments of points of contention within and across schools, traditions, and cultures, in theory and/or in practice, are of interest. We encourage critical perspectives, including those involving the attempt to define and distinguish concepts: “liberation,” “transformation,” “freedom,” “bondage,” “repression,” “knowledge,” “subject,” etc. We are also seeking original and creative applications of Asian, Indian, European, and American transformative philosophy. Submissions from both graduate and undergraduate students will be considered.

Format: Please prepare papers for blind review. Email complete papers (no longer than 3,500 words), preceded by an abstract, to UNMphilconf2011@gmail.com in Word or PDF format; include in the body of your email 1) title of paper, 2) author’s name, 3) university or institutional affiliation, 4) word count, and 5) contact details. Please refrain from providing any self-identifying information in either the paper or the abstract.

Possible themes:

*

Ways to Liberation: “Spiritual” vs. “material”?

*

Ego and Anātman: The liberative aims, methods, and effects of śila prajñā and psychoanalysis

*

From Hegel and Nietzsche to Žižek: Western critiques of Eastern traditions

*

Groundlessness, Śūnyatā, and Ethics: The notion of responsibility in existentialism and Buddhism

*

Karma, Causality, and Rebirth: The mechanics of enlightenment

*

Spectrality and Death in Derrida

*

Knowing Liberation: śruti, sṃṛti, reason, and experience

*

Yoga, Unity, Unions?: The (ir)reconcilability of individual and social transformation

*

Non-dualism East and West: Spinoza, Hegel, Deleuze, Advaita, Madhyamaka, Yogācāra

*

Phenomenology as Transformative Philosophy: Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger

*

Liberation from Life or Liberation in Life?: The problem of escapism

*

Eastern Philosophies in the West, Western Philosophies in the East

*

Philosophy and Soteriology: Truth vs. liberation?

NYU's Colloquium in American Literature and Culture, Spring 2011 Call for Papers (1/7/11)

The Colloquium in American Literature and Culture

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Colloquium in American Literature and Culture (CALC) at New York University is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for our Spring 2011 events. CALC is a forum for the presentation and discussion of new Americanist scholarship by both junior and senior researchers. CALC encourages paper proposals by graduate students and faculty that focus on any subject or period relevant to American literature and culture.

A typical CALC event features two presentations of 20-25 minutes, followed by audience questions and discussion. All sessions are open to the public. Past speakers have presented on such diverse topics as early twentieth-century suffrage cookbooks, antebellum children's literature, and early American structures of feeling. Approaches have included single-author and comparative studies, media studies, as well as print and material culture studies. We invite the attendance of all faculty and graduate students, regardless of specialty, to CALC events. Please visit our website at: http://nyucalc.com/.

To submit your work for consideration, please email an abstract of your project to nyucalc@gmail.com by Friday, January 7th. CALC also encourages, but does not require, submitters to include a CV with the abstract.

New York Metro American Studies Association Conference on Dirt (Dec. 4)

The New York Metro American Studies Association (NYMASA) is delighted to announce our annual conference

DIRT

8:30am-6pm
December 4th, 2010
St. John's University in Lower Manhattan
41 Murray Street

Dirt is among the most material but also the most metaphorical and expressive of substances. This conference will explore how people imagine, define, and employ the various concepts and realities of dirt. What does it mean to call something dirty? How do we understand dirt and its supposed opposite, cleanliness? How do we explain the points at which we draw the line between clean and dirty, what we embrace and what we refuse to touch? Drawing on multiple disciplines we will uncover and foreground the (often unconscious) centrality of the metaphors and actualities of dirt to U.S. cultures, values, and lived experiences.

Registration forms can be found at www.nymasa.org. Registration is $20, $10 for students/unwaged. For more information contact nymasadirt@gmail.com.


Sarah E. Chinn
English Department
Hunter College, CUNY
695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065

sarah.chinn@hunter.cuny.edu
(212) 772-5178

Oral History in New York: Archives and Public History Brown Bag Lunch Discussion: Dec. 3

The NYU Archives and Public History Program first Friday brown bag lunch series presents:

- Oral History in New York: Planning, Implementation and Use -

Friday December 3, 12:00-2:00pm
King Juan Carlos Center (53 Washington Square South), Room 607

The Archives and Public History brown bag lunch series continues on Friday, December 3rd for a panel discussion featuring oral historians from the New York area. Speakers will discuss their recent and ongoing projects as well as the diverse uses of oral history in exhibits, research projects and education.

Please RSVP to Margaret Fraser at mfraser522@gmail.com by Wednesday, December 1.

Speakers include:

• Amy Starecheski, Columbia Oral History Research Office, recently worked on the Telling Lives Project in Chinatown and currently working with squatters
• Sady Sullivan, Director of Oral History at the Brooklyn Historical Society
  
• Nina Talbot, artist and oral historian, recently curated the exhibit "Painting Brooklyn Stories of Immigration and Survival" at the Brooklyn Historical Society

The Archives and Public History Program first Friday brown bag lunch series is organized in part by the NYU student chapter of the Society of American Archivists

Threesis Challenge!

The GSAS Threesis Academic Challenge

Saturday, April 9, 2011

The Threesis Challenge is an academic competition for GSAS master's students. Students present the work of their thesis or final project (eg. creative project, science experiment or research paper) to a panel of three faculty judges in accessible language a non-expert can understand in three minutes or less. Competitors are judged on how well they grasp the subject of their thesis, their ability to discuss the topic to non-experts and presentation skills. Students compete for a grand prize of $1,000 and other prizes while learning to organize ideas and speak about them persuasively in a fun, academic atmosphere. This competition is adopted from the Three Minute Thesis Challenge currently taking place in Australia and New Zealand. The Master's College is proud to bring this "American Idol" style academic competition to this hemisphere.

To request an application or get involved in this competition please emailgsas.threesis@nyu.edu

Eligibility

You must:
•Be a master's student in the Graduate School of Arts and Science
•Have a thesis advisor or final project advisor
•Have a working title for your thesis or final project

Students graduating in the 2010-2011 academic year are eligible to apply.

Library of Congress Photo Finds of the Week: Thanksgiving Maskers

Our Thanksgiving-themed weekly photo finds are all part of the LoC's George Grantham Bain Collection and feature "Thanksgiving Maskers." According to this article, Masking was a popular Thanksgiving tradition in the early 1900s. Per the article,

Before Halloween became the holiday it now is in the United States, children would dress up in masks on the final Thursday in November and go door to door for treats (think: fruit!), or scramble for pennies. The tradition was known as Thanksgiving Masking.

Below are some shots of a Thanksgiving Masking celebrationaround 1910:

Thanksgiving Maskers, ca. 1910

Scramble for Pennies, Thanksgiving, ca. 1910

Thanksgiving Maskers, ca. 1910

Call For Papers – Race, Space and Nature

Call For Papers

Race, Space and Nature: A One-day Symposium

April 27, 2011

This conference aims to open up dialogue among graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, faculty, and independent scholars who critically engage with analytics of race/racialization and ‘the environment’, broadly conceived. We are interested in understanding how scholars understand the experiences, practices, creativities, political economies and subjectivities of racialized groups in relationship to the spaces that they move through and create: the environment, nature and cities. In what ways do racialized experiences and identities come to structure narratives, practices, and politics in relationship to built and “natural” environments? If racialization occurs in and through places, how are these processes sedimented or resisted by people? How do racial constructs connect to spatial/environmental ones and vice versa – and why does it matter?

Interdisciplinary scholars have developed a large body of literature that considers the role of race/racialization in the context of spatial inequality, marginalization and oppression. Increasingly, scholars have interrogated the roles of agency and innovation in environmental practice among various racial groups, including the forms through which racial analytics help to shape those interactions. This one-day conference will critically engage these questions in order to ask: How do issues of race and racialization intersect with spatial/environmental/territorializing practices, discourses, and politics in the contemporary moment? We seek papers from a variety of theoretical, disciplinary, and methodological perspectives. This includes but is not limited to topics such as:

· racialized access to resources;

· the role of race in global environmental discourses and politics;

· activist practice;

· social movements;

· international development;

· intersectional engagements with race, gender, sexuality and class;

· political ecolog(ies) of race, space, and urban environmental practice;

· the rise and fall of cities;

· environmental and climate justice;

· critical food studies.

The symposium will include a working lunch where we will match scholars with others in their fields. The event is open to the public, free, and includes lunch with registration, as funds allow. We will conclude with a keynote from UC Berkeley Assistant Professor Carolyn Finney (ESPM).

To participate, please submit a 250 word abstract by January 15 to conference organizers Rachel Brahinsky, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, and Jade Sasser at race.conference.berkeley@gmail.com. Please include, in the body of the email: your name, affiliation, contact information, and abstract. We will respond to submissions in early February. Once accepted, final papers must be submitted two weeks before the symposium.

Boston Environmental History Seminar with Prof. Steven Moga (The City): 12/14

Massachusetts Historical Society
Boston Environmental History Seminar
Tuesday, December 14, 2010, 5:15 p.m.
                                     
Steven T. Moga, New York University and MIT

"Flattening the City: Zoning, Topography, and Nature in the American
City"


Comment: Karl Haglund, Massachusetts Department of Conservation and
Recreation

All seminars take place at the Society, 1154 Boylston St., Boston, MA,
and commence at 5:15 p.m. Each seminar consists of a discussion of a
pre-circulated paper provided to our subscribers. (Papers will be
available at the event for those who choose not to subscribe.)
Afterwards the Society will provide a light buffet supper.

All seminars are free and open to the public. As in the past, we are
making the essays available to subscribers as .pdfs through the
seminar's webpage, http://www.masshist.org/events/behs.cfm. Subscribe to
the 2010-2011 series online via this page. A $25 subscription will
entitle you to the full series of papers. Questions? Contact Kate Viens
at 617-646-0568 or kviens@masshist.org.

RSVP so we know how many will attend. To respond, email
seminars@masshist.org or call 617-646-0568. You may also write, e-mail,
or phone if you wish to be removed from this mailing list.

We look forward to seeing you at the seminars!

Kate Viens
Research Coordinator
Massachusetts Historical Society
1154 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02215
617-646-0568

Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU: Historian's Eye with M. Frye Jacobson, Dec. 1

HISTORIAN'S EYE
Matthew Frye Jacobson (Yale University)

“The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”

—Barack Obama, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 1, 2010

4:00-6:00 PM

Dept. of Social & Cultural Analysis

20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor

New York, NY 10003

Beginning as a modest effort in early 2009 to capture the historic moment of our first black president’s inauguration in photographs and interviews, the “Our Better History” project and the Historian’s Eye website have evolved into an expansive collection of some 1300+ photographs and an audio archive addressing Obama’s first term in office, the ’08 economic collapse and its fallout, two wars, the raucous politics of healthcare reform, the emergence of a new right-wing formation in opposition to Obama, the politics of immigration, Wall Street reform, street protests of every stripe, the BP oil spill, and the escalation of anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide. In addition to catching this moment like a firefly in a mason jar, the project seeks to encourage a new relationship to history itself—a mental habit of apprehending the past in the present and history-in-the-making.

Matthew Frye Jacobson is professor of American Studies, History, and African American Studies at Yale and author of five books in the areas of immigration, race, empire, and US political culture.

Oral History, Labors of Waste, and the Value of Knowledge (Taught by Robin Nagle)

Dear Students-

There are a lot of interesting 'Topics' seminars on offer at Draper next semester, so we'll be highlighting these over the next few weeks. First on our list is "Topics in the City: Topics in The City: Oral History, Labors of Waste, and Values of Knowledge" which will be taught by Draper's director, Robin Nagle. The course description is below; if you're interested in enrolling, please contact Robin directly at robin[dot]nagle[at]nyu[dot]edu.

***

Oral History, Labors of Waste, and the Value of Knowledge

This class uses oral history to consider the role of unappreciated labor and invisible knowledge in an urban setting. Working in collaboration with current and former members of New York City’s Department of Sanitation to, we will explore the dynamics of a historically significant work force to consider some overlooked elements of the city’s past and to become acquainted with the complexities of a vital but largely hidden infrastructure.

Oral history, both as a discipline and as a practice, serves many functions. It can be an investigatory and documentary technique, a fact-finding strategy, a professional tool, a casual practice, or a personal reflection. Methods of oral history are useful to historians, anthropologists, museum curators, educators, journalists, playwrights, and novelists, among others. Some who use oral history are quite self-conscious about the larger intellectual conversations in which it fits, while others simply find it a helpful way to learn details about particular events, individuals, or moments in time.

Within the academy, these many understandings and uses of oral history are considered through a variety of theoretical frameworks that ask questions about truth (who claims it, and who contests it), perspective (whose voice is heard, whose is ignored, by whom, in what contexts), relevance (who cares? why or why not?), bias (of everyone involved), access (to the stories, to the people telling the stories) and power (woven through the entire enterprise, but not always easy to measure). We will delve into these and related concerns throughout the semester.

At the same time, we will give equal attention to practicalities, including interview skills, research techniques, equipment choices, and transcription software and protocols.

Students will complete two life-history interviews, including transcriptions finished to deposit standards. Assignments will include journal articles, book excerpts, and examples of oral histories. Students will also be responsible for a series of reflective and analytical writing assignments as well as research outside class that will be necessary preparation for the interviews themselves.

By the end of the semester, students will have learned basic oral history methods and theories, and will be able to “read” the city with more nuance and insight. The interviews that the class gathers will become permanent records within the Sanitation Oral History Archive, a joint NYU/DSNY venture.

Addictive Fiction: April Bacon on Fiction Fix

Although Draper alumna April Bacon calls New York City home, that hasn’t prevented her from becoming the editor-in-chief of Fiction Fix, an online literary journal founded on the “premise of fiction as an addictive experience,” which is produced by faculty, current students, and alumni of the University of North Florida (UNF). An alumna of UNF herself, April moved to New York in 2008, with the intention of enrolling in NYU’s Creative Writing Program. Instead, she was accepted to Draper, where she spent the next few years investigating intersections of science and literature.

It was during her time at Draper that April got involved with her alma mater’s literary journal, an entirely volunteer-maintained collaboration. “Everything is done online,” April explains. “It seems like it would be restrictive, but it really isn’t.” Fiction Fix, she says, has cultivated a strong community for people who want to “talk about stories.” The journal has gone through some major changes since April’s arrival as editor, most notably its transition from being a print magazine to an entirely online publication. But although April would like the journal to be published in print format once again, she sees this development as being a very positive one for Fiction Fix. “It’s always been our goal to have a strong online presence,” she says, explaining that this shift has vastly increased the journal’s readership, not to mention the number of subscriptions that it receives each cycle. “We receive five times as many submissions as we did before.” And where Fiction Fix used to only receive submissions from writers in Florida, it now attracts submissions from all over the United States and even other countries.

Another change that April brought about when she joined as editor was to adjust each issue’s focus. Fiction Fix now alternates between its usual fiction issues (which feature a wide variety of traditional and experimental pieces) and “special issues,” which highlight a particular literary genre. “We introduced ‘the special issue,’” April explains, “because, unlike the fiction issue, it is entirely malleable based on what connections and fun we might take advantage of at any moment –because of this, for example, we are incredibly grateful that Mark Ari, an author and UNF faculty member, has agreed to guest edit the Spring 2011 special issue—a Creative Nonfiction issue. And issue 7 allowed us to explore the many and potent forms of ‘the short short.’ We also hope that by diversifying this way, we will reach an even greater reader- and author-ship, which is always partially the goal... We hope that writers and readers know that they can count on Fiction Fix not only for an excellent full fiction issue each year, but also for something unexpected.”

While much of April’s creative attention goes toward editing Fiction Fix, she’s also a writer herself. She’s published work in Deadpaper and Outsider Ink, as well as in Draper’s own journal, Anamesa, where her essay "Exquisite Patterns and Sympathies: Anthropomorphism in Darwinian Thought" will be featured in the forthcoming spring issue.

April recently also published a short story entitled “When the Sun is Glorious” in a young literary journal called Prick of the Spindle. The story, which imagines the first hot air balloon flight, draws on her interest in science—and more particularly, technology—in literature, and stems from a reading that she encountered in Daniel Thurs’ “Thinking About Tomorrow” class in 2008. “I have a bit of ‘science envy,’” she admits. “Scientists do such cool, tangible things.”

We asked April to highlight some notable fiction in recent Fiction Fix issues. Below are some of the more remarkable pieces that she thinks you may enjoy (she also mentions that the journal features great original artwork in many of its issues).

From the short short issue (issue 7)

*"Empty" by Harmony Neal describes the irremediable loss one feels on giving up the demon after an exorcism.

*"The Wheelchair Pusher" by Malcolm Murray follows the tale of "Mr. Z" a hospital volunteer who remembers a tragic mistake from his young life.

*"Paper Wait" by Travis Wildes envisions the future post-"ThinkWrite," an AppleSoft word processing program that taps into the minds of humans to write stories better than they ever knew they could.

Forthcoming in issue 8:

*"[ ]" by Thomas Karst. Imagines a boy in the age of cave paintings, making his mark in a timeless space. [ ] is an experimental piece of fiction. On one page, words are worked into the shape of a hand-print -- a pictorial reference to what was, the words seem to try to squeeze out of that tiny space in the same way human beings try desperately to make a permanent voice across ages.

*"Death of a Fat Man" by Scott Neuffer chronicles the last days of a young and morbidly obese man, and the reactions of his wispy and shrinking girlfriend.

*Through the eyes of a writer, "His Malaise" by Anthony Bell scrutinizes the all-too-familiar "Process of Rejection." A notable metaphorical moment: the narrator gets "mooned" by a literary journal.

Fiction Fix's forthcoming fiction issue will be available on the website in early December.

Event Planning and Development Intern: Scenarios USA

Event Planning and Development Intern

Location: Brooklyn, New York, 11217, United States
Organization: Scenarios USA
Language(s): English
Start date: Early January 2011
End date: Early May 2011
Last day to apply: December 8, 2010

Summary:

The Event Planning and Development Intern will work under the supervision of and in close partnership with the Director of Development and the Database Manager. The Event Planning and Development Intern will assist in achieving major development department goals: assist in the management of 2011 REAL DEAL Awards and Gala logistics and work with the Database Manager to develop the resources in Convio Common Ground including input and tracking for the event and foundations/corporations cultivation as well as other database tasks.

The Event Planning and Development Intern is a leading contributor to Scenarios USA program
development and Scenarios USA seeks a passionate and persuasive representative of the organization
and its mission. Scenarios USA is a small but very accomplished organization. This position will
provide a great deal of experience in event planning and development to a responsible and ambitious
candidate.

Responsibilities:

Event Planning (75%)
• Assist with production of event journal
• Prepare correspondence: edits, proofreads, and formats reports, documents, etc.
• Research topics as needed for gala
• Assist in the planning and execution of logistics surrounding our annual gala (April 12, 2011)
• Create, organize and maintain program and event files as needed
• Field telephone calls and emails about gala as needed
• Ensure that internal follow-up is completed; assist with follow-up to donors and volunteers
• Enter information into and help manage database

General Development/Database Maintenance (25%)
• Assist in the tracking and entering of event donor information
• Keep track of event donations
• Make copies, collate, and distribute materials
• Organize information in electronic and hard copy files

Reports to: Director of Development
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Start Date: Early January 2011
End Date: Early May 2011
Hours: 3 days per week – hours flexible
Compensation: lunch and transportation reimbursed

Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s degree
• Superior organizational skills, attention to detail
• Excellent interpersonal and communications skills; ability to interact effectively with a range of
stakeholders.
• Fluent English
• Experience in a professional environment
• Experience in supporting program, conference, and/or event planning preferred
• Demonstrated proficiency in word processing, spreadsheets, internet research, email, and file
management (prefer Microsoft Office Suite); experience with Constant Contact and/or
fundraising software preferred
• Commitment to the mission of Scenarios USA

To apply:

Send cover letter and resume by December 8, 2010, no calls please.
By email: alex@scenariosusa.org
Subject line: Event Planning and Development Intern
By mail: Event Planning and Development Intern Search
Scenarios USA
80 Hanson Place, Suite 305
Brooklyn, New York 11217

Scenarios USA seeks to hire staff who reflects the diversity of the communities we serve.

Equal Opportunity Employer: This position will be filled without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

About Scenarios USA:

Scenarios USA believes that by valuing youth and investing in their stories, we can strengthen academic achievement, promote civic engagement, and support young people in becoming responsible and
healthy individuals. Every aspect of the Scenarios USA program – from the classroom discussion and
reflection to the script-writing contest, to the film production, to the public speaking engagements – is a two-way street that gives young people the power to work as full partners with teachers, professional filmmakers, and community and youth advocates. This formula has been proven effective in our program evaluation, and we are proud that The Ford Foundation, our top funder, continues to cite Scenarios USA as a model in the fields of education, youth development and adolescent health.

For more information: http://www.scenariosusa.org

Shift: Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture

Press release for third issue of Shift: Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture

We are pleased to announce the launch of the third issue of Shift: Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture on 01 October 2010. Shift is an online journal created in 2008 by graduate students at Queen’s University. Shift is dedicated to providing a platform for current and original scholarly research by graduate students. This work must aspire to the highest quality, reflecting excellence of content and expression, as well as innovation. The papers in this third issue represent a broad range of topics and approaches to the field of visual and material culture, and reflect the journal’s commitment to fostering cross-disciplinary exchange between students and scholars from different institutions in Canada and the United States.

As well, the launch for this third issue marks the beginning of the transition of the journal into a mobile publication, with its editorial and administrative components moving between host institutions every three years. As of the start of work on the fourth issue, Shift will be hosted by both Queen’s University and the University of Western Ontario. This mobility facilitates the atmosphere of inclusivity and flexibility that Shift seeks to foster as a scholarly publication.

To find out more about Shift and to access these articles, please visit our website at
http://shiftjournal.org.

Library of Congress Photo Finds of the Week

Your Draper staff is quite enamored with the Library of Congress' digital historic photo collection on Flickr. We'll be posting great finds from their collections weekly. We hope you enjoy--let us know if you find any particularly interesting gems that you'd like to have posted here as well.

Selections from "Photochrom Travel Views" Collection

Stabur Bygdo, Christiania, Norway, Photochrom ca. 1890

Fantoft Church, Bergen, Norway, Photochrom ca. 1890

General view, Copenhagen, Denmark, Photochrom, ca. 1890

Save the Date! DSO Colloquium on Practice: Friday, December 3

DSO Fall Colloquium
Friday, December 3rd
7:00 PM in the Draper Map Room

with presentations by:

Greg Wersching
"A Discipline Divided: How Can Creative Writing Programs (Re)inform Literary Criticism?"

Lee Benjamin Huttner
"Theater in Praxis: On the Practical Turn in Understanding Dramatic Literature"

Benjamin Kampler
"De-structing Space: Anti-Gay Violence in Gay Bars"

Translating Classical Arabic Literature: 12/2

Translating Classical Arabic Literature

December 2, 2010 | 6:30 - 8:00 PM

Location: 19 Washington Square North

The lecture is sponsored by the Library of Arabic Literature, directed by Philip Kennedy, Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature, NYU, and Faculty Director of the NYUAD Institute's public programs and conferences. The project is commissioning translations and publishing a library of classic works of Arabic literature and culture in English and Arabic parallel-text editions.

Michael D. Cooperson Professor of Arabic, the University of California, Los Angeles

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Space is limited. Please RSVP to 19wsn.rsvp@nyu.edu.

Visit NYUAD Events for more information.

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