University of New England

Newsletter - Spring/Summer 2008

English students, faculty get awards

Alissa Ehmke and Patrick Hayes receive the 2008 Department of English Awards for their work and promise.

Congratulations!

Ingrid Strange displays the 2008 Debra J. Summers Memorial Award For Teaching Excellence.

A wonderful testament to her dedication to students.

Congratulations!

***

Susan McHugh has been awarded a fellowship from the Animals and Society Institute (ASI) to serve as a Peer Fellow to a Pennsylvania State University graduate student working on a critique of Enviropig™, the first animal genetically modified specifically to solve an environmental problem, in this case, phosphorus pollution from swine feeding operations.  As part of the fellowship, McHugh traveled to Michigan State University to present her research project “Movie Meat: Pigs and Social Agency in the Agri/culture Industry” as part of the July 7-10 ASI symposium.  

Professor Emeritus Norman Beaupré was decorated with the Medal of the Order of Arts and Literature, Grade Officier by the French Ministry of Culture and Communications. With celebrities from Céline Dion and George Clooney to William Faulkner and Rudolf Nureyev having also received this award, Beaupré is in good company. The Consul General of France in Boston, Monsieur François Gauthier, presented the medal to Beaupré at this year's La Kermesse celebration on June 29, an appropriate venue, as Beaupré was the festival’s first president.

Having taught Francophone and World Literature at the University of New England for 30 years, Beaupré spent two sabbaticals in Europe where he got the inspiration for several of his books. He has written nine books thus far, with several of them drawing on the Franco-American experience. In March 2007, Beaupre was inducted in Maine's Franco-American Hall of Fame by the Maine Legislature during Francophone Week.
 
Beaupré’s most recent work is the sequel to his successful play La Souillonne, a one-woman story about the Franco-American experience. La Souillone, Deusse, Monologue sur Scène was published this spring by LLumina Press of Florida.

Beaupré decided to write the sequel after having seen the original play performed at the Franco-American Heritage Center in Lewiston and this past summer in Lamèque, New Brunswick to a sell-out crowd. La Souillone, Deusse focuses on vignettes about the Acadian way of life and is written entirely in the Franco-American dialect, the “language of the people,” a challenge for Beaupré since this dialect is essentially an oral language and he had to replicate the sounds into written form.
 
Beaupré is already at work on his tenth project, a novel based on the artistic life of Vincent Van Gogh in Arles. For more information about Norman Beaupré and his writings, view www.nrbeaupre.com.

Anouar Majid participated in a high-level, historic encounter between Christians and Muslims in Washington, D.C. titled “Dialogue on the Future of Our Planet,” hosted by the World Bank June 18-21, 2008. This first-ever dialogue on creation care between Muslims and Evangelical Christians brought together American Evangelical leaders led by the Rev. Richard Cizik and six Moroccan leaders from a variety of backgrounds. Majid shared his impressions of this event in a June 19th op-ed that appeared online in the Washington Post.

Anouar Majid was the featured speaker at the annual business meeting of Citizens Offering New Alternatives (CONA). He spoke on Saturday, June 14 at 1:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall at the Second Congregational Church in Newcastle, Maine

As board member and Director of the Globalization Committee of the American Moroccan Institute, a think tank dedicated to the promotion of cultural, academic and economic relations between the United States and the Kingdom of Morocco, Anouar Majid was invited to attend a number of high-profile series of panels on Moroccan human rights, democratic reforms, and civil society led by Ahmed Herzenni, president of the Advisory Council on Human Rights in Morocco and Fatiha Layadi, member of the Moroccan parliament at the US Congress, Brookings Institution, National Press Club, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.  Receptions were also held in honor of the two speakers. The two-day event took place from June 4 to 6.

Anouar Majid was the subject of an interview by the online magazine Religion Dispatches, which  was published on June 4, 2008. The title of the interview was "10 Questions for Anouar Majid on A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America."  Asked what's the most important take-home message for readers of his latest book, Majid answers: "Creative work, the work that matters, always happens in the margins—it is from margins that one has a better view of the center. Critical thinking here is of the essence. Orthodoxies can be implacably coercive, demanding total obedience and conformity, even if the status quo they uphold is leading everyone to destruction and perdition."

Hugh Hennedy, former Professor of English literature and writing at Saint Francis College and University of New England, published a new poetry collection entitled: "Variations on a Natural Theme: A Loon Year," published by Hobblebush Books hobblebush@charter.net.

Anouar Majid and his novel, Si Yussef, first published in 1992 and reissued in paperback in 2005, were the subject of a book chapter in Representing Minorities: Studies in Literature and Criticism.  The study, authored by Dr. Chourouq Nasri, is titled “Tangier: a Place Reinvented, Made and Unmade by Anouar Majid in Si Yussef.” Another study of Si Yussef and its comparison to Paul Bowles’s novel Let It Come Down has been authored by Professor Mohamed Elkouche and is published online.  More papers on Si Yussef were presented at an international conference in Tangier this month.

Anouar Majid and his latest book, A Call for Heresy, were the subject of "State of Affairs," an award-winning program of Louisville's National Pubic Radio Wednesday, January 30, 2008. He also gave a talk titled “Speaking Against the Present:  How Jews and Muslims Can Talk to Each Other” at the Etz Chaim Synagogue in Portland on Friday, February 8, 2008.   Majid’s talk is part of a series including appearances by Steven Rowe, Attorney General for the State of Maine and Michael Brennan, Democratic Candidate for Maine’s 1st District in Congress. On Monday, Feb. 25, he gave a talk titled “The Age of Terror” for the University of Minnesota’s American Studies’ program colloquium series on “The War on Terror.”  He was also invited to join a university-wide committee to help organize an international conference in September 2009. On Tuesday, he gave a public lecture titled “Being Muslim in America” at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.  Throughout his stay, Majid was hosted by faculty, staff, students, and leaders of the local Muslim community. He was interviewed by Minnesota’s All Things Considered and by a local PBS program. The following month, Majid was a guest at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.  He met with students and faculty and lectured in several English and Political Sciences classes, visited one of the world’s top four collections of William Faulkner’s books and documents, and gave a public lecture titled “Dialogue of Heretics.”  He was also interviewed by historian Chris Schnell for Going Public, a program of Southeast Public Radio, KRCU.

Cathrine Frank, Ph.D., assistant professor of English, presented on Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities in Berkeley, CA. Her paper, called "Prying Eyes: Inside the Victorian Criminal Character," considered the "strange case" as a legal case that raises questions about the relationship between literary and legal narratives about character: individual character, professional character, and changing concepts of agency and responsibility at the end of the Victorian era.

Susan McHugh has published an essay in Literature and Medicine, a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal devoted to exploring connections between literary and medical knowledge and understanding.  McHugh’s essay “Flora, Not Fauna: GM Culture and Agriculture” analyzes narratives of genetically modified potatoes in contemporary American fiction. The article appears in a special issue that focuses on genomics in literature, visual arts, and culture.

Anouar Majid and his latest book, A Call for Heresy, were the subject of "State of Affairs," an award-winning program of Louisville's National Pubic Radio Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008. He also gave a talk titled “Speaking Against the Present:  How Jews and Muslims Can Talk to Each Other” at the Etz Chaim Synagogue in Portland on Friday, February 8, 2008.   Majid’s talk is part of a series including appearances by Steven Rowe, Attorney General for the State of Maine and Michael Brennan, Democratic Candidate for Maine’s 1st District in Congress. On Monday, Feb. 25, he gave a talk titled “The Age of Terror” for the University of Minnesota’s American Studies’ program colloquium series on “The War on Terror.”  He was also invited to join a university-wide committee to help organize an international conference in September 2009. On Tuesday, he gave a public lecture titled “Being Muslim in America” at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.  Throughout his stay, Majid was hosted by faculty, staff, students, and leaders of the local Muslim community. He was interviewed by Minnesota’s All Things Considered and by a local PBS program. The following month, Majid was a guest at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.  He met with students and faculty and lectured in several English and Political Sciences classes, visited one of the world’s top four collections of William Faulkner’s books and documents, and gave a public lecture titled “Dialogue of Heretics.”  He was also interviewed by historian Chris Schnell for Going Public, a program of Southeast Public Radio, KRCU.

“The Postcolonial Bubble,” a slightly modified version of a chapter in Anouar Majid’s latest book, A Call for Heresy, was recently published in The Postcolonial and the Global, an edited volume bringing together prominent scholars in the humanities and social sciences.  Majid’s chapter highlights the devastating effects of capitalism on global cultures and why Islamic extremism alone doesn’t explain the rise of violence worldwide. Majid is professor and chair of the English Department.

Anouar Majid gave a lecture titled "Dangerous Monologues: Islam and Its Others," at Florida Atlantic University. The event was hosted by the Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Holocaust Studies in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. His essay, “Educating Ourselves into Coexistence,” first published by the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2002 and republished as the lead article in the September 2002 edition of Education Digest as well as in college textbooks, was reissued as the lead article in the Winter 2008 issue of Diversity & Democracy, a periodical published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. 

Fall 2007 Newsletter