523
Sweet—You forgot—but I remembered
Every time—for Two—
So that the Sum be never hindered
Through Decay of You—
Say if I erred? Accuse my Farthings—
Blame the little Hand
Happy it be for You—a Beggar's—
Seeking More—to spend—
Just to be Rich—to waste my Guineas
On so Best a Heart—
Just to be Poor—for Barefoot Vision
You—Sweet—Shut me out—
To coincide with my most recent review for Bookforum on the Noel Coward Reader (just out from Knopf), here's one of Coward's greatest songs, "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans." Composed in 1943 as a work of patriotic satire, the song was initially banned by the BBC for being too pro-German.
Don't let's be beastly to the Germans,
Now our victory is ultimately won.
Let us treat them very kindly,
As we would a valued friend.
We might them out some bishops,
As a form of lease and lend.
Let's be sweet to them
And day by day repeat to them
That sterilization simply isn't done.
Let's sweetly sympathize again,
And help the scum to rise again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.
We must be kind
And with an open mind,
We must endeavour to find a way
To let the Germans know
That now the war is over,
They are not the ones who have to pay.
We must be sweet
And tactful and discreet,
And now they've suffered defeat,
We mustn't let
Them feel upset,
Or ever get the feeling
That we're cross with them or hate them.
Our future policy must be to reinstate them.
Don't let's be beastuly to the Germans,
For they're civilized,
When all is said and done.
Though they gave us science, culture, art, and music, to excess,
They also gave us two world wars and Dr. Rudolph Hess.
Let's be meek to them
And turn the other cheek to them,
And try to arouse their latent sense of fun.
Let's give them full air parity,
And treat the rats with charity,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun!
Don't let's be beastly to the Germans.
You can't deprive a gangster of his gun!
Though they've been a little naughty
To the Czechs and Poles and Dutch,
I can't believe those countries
Really minded very much.
Let's be free with them
And share the BBC with them.
We mustn't prevent them basking in the sun!
Let's soften their defeat again,
And build their bloody fleet again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun!
Another great event happening at AUP…
The Department of Comparative Literature and English and the Division of Global Communications and Film at AUP invite you to a talk by John C. Hartsock entitled “The Relevance of Literary Journalism in the Age of Globalization.” On Tuesday, October 19, from 18:30-20:00 in the Grand Salon.
Hartsock's talk will examine the need for such study, as well as how the reasons that lead to the emergence of the American version of the genre have parallels elsewhere. In the U.S., “literary journalism” is defined as a journalism that reads like a novel or short story.
Hartsock is one of the leading authorities on both American and international literary journalism, and is a Professor of Communication Studies at the State University of New York at Cortland. He is the author of the critically acclaimed A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Modern Narrative Form (2000), which was the first history of the American genre, and the recipient of two distinguished awards for excellence in scholarship. Professor Hartsock has also published widely on the topic in such journals as Prose Studies, Genre: Forms of Culture and Discourse, DoubleTake, Journal of Communication Inquiry, and Critical Studies in Mass Communication. Moreover, he is the editor of Literary Journalism Studies, the official journal of the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies. Finally, he is the author of a soon-to-be released book, Seasons of a Finger Lakes Winery, published by Cornell University Press. The book follows the seasonal cycle of growing grapes and making wine at a small “mom-and-pop” winery in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York.
[I received this via the H-FRANCE listserv, and it seems important to pass on. Please do what you can to help us express our extreme indignation at the termination of major programs in the Humanities at SUNY Albany. Petition and other guidelines below.]
The World Within Reach?
An Open Letter Regarding the Termination of French, Italian, Russian, Classics, and Theater at SUNYAlbany
On October 1, 2010, the State University of New York at Albany announced the termination of all degree programs in French (BA, MA, PhD), Italian (BA), Russian (BA), Classics (BA), and Theater (BA) by presidential order. President George Philip has officially suspended new admissions to the all of above programs. A bill recommending the “deactivation” of these same programs is said to have been delivered to the Faculty Senate. The Senate’s vote on this matter is advisory only. President Philip has the power to enforce the deactivation order unilaterally.
The passage of “deactivation” would erase all courses in these disciplines from the curriculum of the university and result in the termination of 20 full-time teaching positions, 14 of which are held by tenured professors. There are currently 161 students enrolled in these degree programs as majors, 140 undergraduates and 21 graduate students. There are currently 240 declared minors in these degree programs. It should be added that the affected programs currently have a total of 2,038 students enrolled in their courses. All data are taken from the Peoplesoft tracking system used by the university registrar.
The Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education has informed declared undergraduate majors and minors that they have until May 2012 to complete their programs of study. Those who cannot are being encouraged to find a new program of study or to transfer credits and pursue their programs at another institution. Intended undergraduate majors who have formally declared that intent are being required to file individual appeals demonstrating that they expect to finish their majors by May 2012. At the graduate level there has been no timeline for completion established. Graduate students have been told only in general terms that there will be “opportunities for them to finish their degrees.” Affected undergraduate and graduate students were notified to this effect without faculty knowledge and in some cases convened to meetings without representation by their designated faculty advisor or program director.
In his e-mail and web announcement of the terminations, President Philip stated that they are necessitated by large budget cuts suffered by the university over the last several years. He adds that "this decision was based on an extensive consultative process with faculty, and in recognition that there are comparatively fewer students enrolled in these degree programs." [ http://www.albany.edu/news/9902.php?WT.svl=news] The phrases "extensive consultative process with faculty" and “comparatively fewer students” are open to interpretation. It is crucial to clarify exactly to what extent faculty in the terminated programs were consulted, as well as how enrollments in the terminated programs compare to those in other degree programs.
Affected faculty attended large “Town Hall” meetings that addressed in very general terms the ongoing budget crisis, the necessity of making cuts across the university, and the principles that would guide these cuts. Within the College of Arts & Sciences (CAS), home to all the terminated programs, there were also meetings of all the CAS department chairs convened by the CAS Dean. At this level the discussions were also general, emphasizing the necessity of cuts and identifying general principles for making them. In none of these collective meetings was the idea of eliminating degree programs discussed. However, on April 28, 2010 chairs were asked to submit individual recommendations to this effect on a confidential basis, as noted in the minutes of the Council of Chairs meeting. [ http://www.albany.edu/cas/chair_council_minutes.shtml] To date the results of this polling have not been made public.
The next phase of consultation consisted of three ad-hoc committees, known as Budget Advisory Groups (BAGs). These groups were composed of faculty members whose participation was solicited individually by the CAS and the University Provost. No members of the eliminated language programs received invitations to participate in any of the BAGs. In its public meetings, none of the BAGs recommended program terminations. [ https://portal.itsli.albany.edu/myuadocs/EP-BAG3-Report-Final-Report-for-campus.pdf ] Please note that this is a password-protected document restricted to UAlbany faculty by logging into “My UAlbany.”
At no point between April 28 and October 1, 2010, was any member of the terminated programs consulted regarding the administration’s plans. On October 1 the faculty of each terminated program were summoned to separate meetings with the CAS Dean and University Provost, who presented them with the accomplished fact. The faculty’s first knowledge of the program eliminations came at separate meetings with the CAS Dean and University Provost. Despite the fact that French, Italian, and Russian are all housed in a single administrative unit, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the chair of that department (a professor of French Studies) was not invited to the meetings with Italian or Russian faculty.
With regard to the timing of the terminations, it should be noted that they were announced only days after the university formally received a renewal of its accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the unit of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools that accredits colleges and universities in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. [www.msche.org] The existence of a broad array of humanities degree programs, particularly foreign-language programs, is a crucial requirement for accreditation, which would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, had the terminations taken place earlier.
As to the claim that these terminations are justified by “comparatively” lower enrollments, it is worth noting that there are five other undergraduate degree programs in CAS with lower ratios of majors to full-time faculty (that is, tenured, tenure-track, and lecturers) than the five terminated programs. This information is verifiable on the Peoplesoft tracking system used by the university registrar.
The terminations will have serious, long-term consequences not only for students enrolled in the affected degree programs, but also for students across the university, the SUNY system, and high schools in New York State. The disappearance of French, Italian, and Russian in particular will make our graduates in all disciplines less competitive in a globalized economy, especially international business. It will deprive Franco-American, Italian-American, and Russian-American students of the chance to enrich and maintain a crucial element of their cultural heritage. It will significantly restrict the languages available for undergraduates to complete their two-semester foreign language General Education requirement, and put huge enrollment pressure on those languages retained.
The terminations will impact even those students who have no immediate interest in foreign-language or theater classes. All the terminated programs offer a range of courses in English that fulfill multiple General Education requirements (especially Humanities, Arts, Europe, Regions Beyond Europe, Writing Intensive, Oral Discourse) for all students. Many students already have trouble finishing their degrees on time because of limited General Education offerings, and this decision will restrict student choice even more, extend the time it takes to get their degrees, and cost them more in tuition.
Each semester faculty in French, Russian, and Italian teach courses in both English and the target languages that fulfill degree requirements in the Honors College, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Linguistics, Women’s Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and English. The program terminations will cripple the new undergraduate Globalization Studies major, which requires at least four semesters of foreign language study, and the undergraduate Film Studies minor. The terminated programs offer 11 of the courses that count for Globalization Studies, and 12 of the courses that count for Film Studies.
At the graduate level, these terminations will deprive students in the School of Education of opportunities to satisfy the New York State-mandated requirements for K-12 teacher certification. The terminations will also effectively end the University in the High School (UHS) programs in French, Italian, Russian, and Latin, thereby depriving the university of significant revenue, preventing high-school students from earning credits for later transfer to the university, and depriving the university of a key tool for recruiting the best high-school students in New York.
In addition, the terminations will set a dangerous precedent for dealing with future budget cuts on this campus and across the SUNY system comprising twenty-two four-year colleges and universities. All the SUNY schools have suffered devastating budget cuts in recent years, yet ours is the only campus to deal with these cuts by eliminating entire degree programs by presidential directive.
As entire programs disappear one by one, our university will quickly cease to be a comprehensive, liberal arts university. It will no longer be able to fulfill its mission as a designated SUNY "research center" alongside Buffalo, Stony Brook, and Binghamton. UAlbany has long had a reputation as the leading institution of higher education in the Capital region. As a result of the administration’s actions, the university’s national and international reputation has suffered a major blow.
We ask that you join us in protesting these terminations, asking the UAlbany administration to reverse its decision, and opening a campus-wide discussion about how to balance the budget without eliminating entire degree programs. On by doing so will the university be able to accomplish its stated mission as “internationally recognized public research institution that brings ‘The World Within Reach’ to nearly 18,000 students.” [ http://www.albany.edu/about.php]
There is a web petition that can be signed [ http://www.petitiononline.com/SUNY/petition.html], as well as a Facebook web site [ http://www.facebook.com/?sk=2361831622#!/group.php?gid=108346255894946 ]. Our administrators can be contacted directly at the following addresses: George Philip, President: presmail@uamail.albany.edu ; Catherine Herman, Vice-President: cherman@uamail.albany.edu ; Susan Phillips, Provost: provost@uamail.albany.edu; Edelgard Wulfert, Dean of Arts & Sciences: ewulfert@uamail.albany.edu . Paper mail may be sent to their attention at University Administration Building, State University of New York, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222.
Brett Bowles, Associate Professor of French bbowles@albany.edu
Susan Blood, Associate Professor of French
Jean-François Brière, Professor of French
Eloise Brière, Associate Professor of French
Cynthia Fox, Associate Professor of French
David Wills, Professor of French
Mary Beth Winn, Professor of French
[cross-posting from the NYU blog. this stuff is just so awesome I had to share it here, too.]
In one of the classes I'm teaching this semester, we're reading the Scottish writer Hope Mirrlees's poem "Paris" (1919), a little-known masterpiece of Modernist poetry that was first published in a small print run by Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press, and which Mirrlees later tried to prevent being reprinted because she had by then converted to Catholicism and found her earlier work blasphemous. No doubt Mirrlees's poem had a big impact on TS Eliot's 1922 work "The Wasteland" (although Mirrlees does seem to have been inspired by Eliot's 1917 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock").
Part of what I'll concentrate on with my students is the influence of French Symbolist and Cubist art and poetry on Mirrlees's poem, most particularly the way Mirrlees draws on the way Mallarmé and Apollinaire use the space on the page to produce meaning in their poems as well as language itself. In the visual arts, Severini and Delaunay achieve a similarly dynamic effect of images on their canvases.
The idea for these writers and artists was to "transcend the limitations, the stasis of plastic form or writen language, by reaching out to embrace the whole of experience, sights and sounds, thought and language, song and dance" (Briggs, 263). Mirrlees absorbs all of this and integrates it into her work, which you can download a "dodgy scan" of here.
Gino Severini, Le Nord-Sud (1912)
Robert Delaunay, 1911 (backdated by the artist to 1910)
Guillaume Apollinaire « Salut monde dont je suis la langue éloquente que sa bouche Ô Paris tire et tirera toujours aux allemands » (Calligrammes, 1918)
Mallarmé, "Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard," (1897)
I've been meaning to mention that there are a couple of Paris writing contests afoot at the moment, whose deadlines draw near.
Shakespeare and Company is having a novella contest, open to all unpublished writers; the deadline is December 1, 2010:
There are three awards: the award for the best Novella and two runner-up awards.
The 2011 Paris Literary Prize award is 10,000€ and a weekend stay in Paris, France. The winner will also read from his or her work at a special event at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop in Paris.
The Paris Literary Prize Runner-up awards:
There will be two runner-up awards. These awardees will receive a weekend stay in Paris and an opportunity to read from their work at a special event at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop in Paris.
There's kind of a steep submission fee– 50€– but I guess you gotta gamble sometimes, right?
Then there's the Paris Short Stories contest, run by Laurel Zuckerman; details here. Deadline November 30th; submission fee 10€. Judges include Nicola Keegan, Penelope Fletcher, owner of the Red Wheelbarrow, Diane Johnson, and Cara Black. (Yours truly was invited, but due to massive dissertation-related time constraints, respectfully declined.)
So if you've got a novella or a "delightful short story about Paris" just sitting on your hard drive doing absolutely nothing for you… send it in, send it in. To not dare is to lose oneself. See, even Kierkegaard wants you to submit.
Meryl Atman has a terrific review of the new translation of The Second Sex, at the Women's Review of Books:
Different translations have different audiences and different purposes. When I work with classical texts, I use the Loeb editions, which have the Greek on one page and an English version on the facing page that sticks closely to the original. Borde and Malovany-Chevallier have produced something like the English half of a Loeb Beauvoir. Parshley was doing something different: trying to turn Beauvoir’s text into one ordinary Americans would buy. An accurate, word-by-word account, though, is what scholars and students have urgently needed. We may not agree with everything we read in it, but at least we’ll know we’re disagreeing with Beauvoir, not her translator.
Any crack shot Lacanians out there amongst my distinguished readers? I need a consult on Seminar XI.
Thanks,
Maîtresse