As part of the Dialogue-on-Diversity Spring Lecture Series, Dr. Amritjit Singh presented his lecture title, Migration and Citizenship: African American and Asian American Stories. The talk was given at the Rhode Island College and is available on Youtube.

In this lecture Dr. Singh explores the internal migration patterns of African Americans from the South and the hurdles that Asian immigrants from various locations faced in their search for home and citizenship during the years from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s. In this examination of the immigrant and non-immigrant movements of population that have shaped the United States, he makes an argument for a fresh understanding of JJcitizenship" and JJrace."

Dr. Amritjit Singh is a Rhode Island College Professor Emeritus of English and a Langston Hughes Professor of English Ohio University. His research and teaching interests include African American Studies, Modernism (with a focus on the Harlem Renaissance), 20th Century American and Postcolonial Fiction, Richard Wright, South Asian cultures and literatures, and Migration Studies. Currently he is working on a documentary history of South Asians in North America. He is committed to exploring inter-ethnic paradigms, particularly in relation to the parallels between the patterns of internal migrations within the Americas and immigration to the U.S and Canada from Europe and Asia. He is a series editor of MELA (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas) from Rutgers University Press.

On Thursday, May 17 at 3:00 pm in Baker Hall, room 231, Dr. Charles Scruggs will present “The Only Light We’ve Got in All This Darkness”: James Baldwin’s Use of the Triptych in Going to Meet the Man.

Charles Scruggs is a distinguished Professor at the University of Arizona and scholar of African American literature, history, and culture. His also the co-author of Jean Toomer and the Terrors of American History. Professor Scruggs will speak about James Baldwin’s short story collection Going to Meet the Man. The talk will focus on the two triptychs in the text, addressing how the stories were published separately and at different times. Reading the stories linearly suggests a progressive movement toward a positive conclusion, whereas if one reads the collection with the focus on “Sonny’s Blues” as the central panel (first triptych), the focus is on the suffering Christ or, in this case, the suffering artist (Sonny) whose music helps both himself and others to endure, and survive in, the earthly city. Professor Scruggs argues that one could read the collection in two ways—the triptych that highlights the central panel, the triptych that highlights the last panel—because Baldwin, living in Europe and knowing the art objects in Chartres and other cathedrals, knew the artistic tradition of the triptych and especially that of the Eisenheim Altarpiece.

This is event is free to the public and is sponsored by the Department of English in partnership with the Departments of African American Studies, History, as well as the Kennedy Lecture Committee.

From Lauren Hutchison, University College PACE Publications Editor, "Established by the University Academic Advising Council, Ohio University recognizes academic advising to be a central element of the educational experience of its undergraduate students. The Chapman/Clapp Outstanding Advisor Award was created in honor of Laura Chapman, University College’s assistant dean for student services, and Lora Clapp, University College’s assistant dean for first-year programs. University College Dean David Descutner endowed the award to celebrate Chapman and Clapp’s combined 50 years of caring, student-centered advising and to answer Faculty Senate’s worthy call to find ways to elevate the visibility of advising and to recognize outstanding advisors."

Ohio University instructor Kristin LeMay has published her eessay "Not Celebrating Holy Week" in The Cresset, a magazine both in print and online from Valparaiso University.

Kristin LeMay teaches writing at Ohio University. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Harvard Theological Review, Alimentum, and other magazines. Her book, Because She Cannot Pray: Finding God with Emily Dickinson, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Ph.D. student Geri Lipschultz was awarded the 2012 Fiction Prize from the journal So to Speak. Her short story "Slow Dance of the Heart" will appear in the fall issue.

So to Speak: a feminist journal of language and art publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art that lives up to a high standard of language, form, and meaning.The journal was founded in 1993 by an editorial collective of women MFA candidates at George Mason University.

This year's Spring Literary Festival is May 9th through the 11th and will feature writers Denise Duhamel, Terrance Hayes, Amy Hempel, Richard Rodriguez, and Susan Orlean.

Since 1986, The Spring Literary Festival has featured some of the world's finest, most distinguished writers of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. The three-day festival is held in May on the Ohio University campus in Athens, Ohio. It is sponsored by the Program in Creative Writing of the Department of English and is generously funded by the College of Arts and Sciences. All readings and lectures are free and open to the public. We invite you to join us.

The five visiting writers will be present throughout the festival, lecturing and reading from their work, and books by the authors will be available for purchase after each program and at Little Professor Book Center. For more information, contact David Wanczyk, Spring Literary Festival Coordinator, at davidwanczyk@gmail.com.

The English Department is proud to announce the first spring faculty colloquium. On Friday, May 4th at 4pm in Ellis 203, Department Chair and Professor Dr. Marsha Dutton will present on "Spiritual Friendship as Rational Love: The Voice of Aelred of Rievaulx in Roman de la Rose."

From the abstract, "In a lengthy passage in Jean de Meun's portion of the 13th-century French romance _Roman de la Rose_, Lady Reason suggests to the Lover that he should abandon his sworn loyalty to the God of Love, and his desperate search for the Rose, in favor of a more noble love. The lengthy passage in which she makes her case comes from _Spiritual Friendship_, by the twelfth-century English monk Aelred of Rievaulx. My paper examines how Lady Reason changes Aelred's depiction of friendship as something created by God in Paradise into a purely rational relationship, having nothing to do with God--perhaps even an early example of secular humanism."

The colloquium will be about an hour and a half. All faculty are invited to join the colloquium table.

The English Department at Ohio University is proud to recognize Bailey Shoemaker Richards, Alumnus and member of the activist group SPARK, who met with LEGO executives to discuss the gendering of their new "Friends" product line of building blocks. Her activism was recently featured in the articles by Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times and Tracey Connor of New York Daily News.

LEGO has been celebrated for its gender-neutral figurines. But the new line contains figurines with accented busts and curves that, the group argues, portray a narrow sense of feminine identity. “I’d played with Legos my whole life...I saw this, and I wasn’t thrilled,” says Bailey. In response the activists placed post-it notes on the products in stores in New York. These notes asked questions about the such tropes as the "science nerd " and "party planner" as identities for the figurines, as well as the choice of placeing the figures in playsets such as a hot tub, beauty parlor, and pool. LEGO responded by arranging a meeting with SPARK to hear their concerns. According to the executive director of SPARK, Dana Edell, LEGO was very responsive, “They said we will see some changes in the next couple of years,” says Edell, "They absolutely listened to us."

Bailey Shoemaker Richards is also a writer for the SPARK blog, where she writes from her own experience and questions portryals of women in pop culture.