Faculty Brown Bag: Post-“Nature” Projections: Ecological Media Teaching and Research

Facilitator:  Andy Hageman, ACM-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in English and Environmental Studies

Tuesday, February 14, 11:30 am-12:30 pm
Mott Room – Dahl Centennial Union
No limit on registration, but participants must sign up by Monday, February 13, 12:00 noon

When Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, intervened in public debate about Global Climate Change, it joined a genealogy of ecology-engaged films that preceded and have followed it (Soylent Green, Koyaanisqatsi, The Day After Tomorrow, Wall-E, Avatar, King Corn to name but a few). This talk/discussion will outline the growing field of Ecocinema Studies, discuss pedagogical possibilities based on Andy’s 2012 J-Term seminar, and provide a forum for thinking together how ecocinema can play a part in interdisciplinary courses and across the disciplines. The event aims to be a workshop in which participants leave with a sense of the field AND ideas about how each of us can bring ecology-engaged film into our classrooms and/or research. Please join us and bring your lunch. The Luther College Dean’s Office will provide beverages and cookies.  Read more...

Faculty Poetry Reading:  Carol Gilbertson
Thursday, March 8, 2012, 7:00 p.m.
Center for Faith and Life Recital Hall (CRH)

Professor Emerita of English Carol Gilbertson will read from her new chapbook, From a Distance, Dancing (Finishing Line, 2011) on Thursday, March 8, 2012, 7:00 p.m. in the Center for Faith and Life Recital Hall.  A reception will follow the reading, and books will be available for purchase and author signing.

The poet Robert Cording calls Carol’s poems “smart, witty, honest, and passionately intelligent, . . .her word play always in the service of helping us find the connections between life and death, between living with and without succor.”  The poet Andrew Hudgins suggests that the poems demonstrate “a tough-minded compassion that is all the more compassionate—more heartbreaking, more enthralling—for the thought behind it.”  And Minnesota’s Poet Laureate, Joyce Sutphen, praises Carol’s description of prairie nightfall, calling it “one of the most perfect descriptions of rural life I have ever read . . . Wordsworth or Frost couldn’t have written this; only someone who has seen those farmyards at twilight would know what to say.”  Read more...

Guest Fiction Reading:  Benjamin Percy
April 19, 2012

 A teacher of fiction and nonfiction writing in Iowa State University’s MFA program in Literature and the Environment, Ben Percy has also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and Marquette University. He also teaches in the Low-Residency MFA program at Pacific University.

Percy is the author of two novels, Red Moon (forthcoming from Grand Central / Hachette in 2012), The Wilding (Graywolf, 2010), and two books of short stories, Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf, 2007) and The Language of Elk (Carnegie Mellon, 2006).  Read more...

Poem In Your Pocket Day
April 26, 2012

Watch across campus for our local celebration of national Poem In Your Pocket Day, sponsored by the Luther College English Department April 26, 2012! 

This celebration, an initiative of the Academy of American Poets as part of National Poetry Month activities during April each year, highlights the power of poems to connect people around the beauty of words and ideas.  The idea is simple: select a poem you love on April 26 and then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends.  Share the joy, and feel the power of gathering together around the profound hush of a poem. 

You can select a favorite poem, use one of your own original compositions, or—at Luther—grab a set of poems from the baskets set out in offices and public places around campus.  Students in English classes will get copies handed out in classes, and more are available in the English Department (6^th floor, Main Building). 

Take a poem, stuff it in your pocket, and share it with a friend, a teacher, a lab partner, a custodian, or send one to a family member.  Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores across the nation.  Read more...