AWP 2018 Schedule

Next week I’ll be attending the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Tampa, Florida. Follow me on Twitter (@moodyjenni), and I’ll tweet photos and panel news when I can.

I’m super excited to participate in my first AWP panel, especially since it focuses on an issue close to my heart — crossovers between composition and creative writing pedagogies and identities. Interested? Here’s more information:

“Creative Writers, Composition Teachers” S241

Saturday, March 10, 2018   3:00 – 4:15pm

Marriott Waterside, 2nd Floor, Mtg Rm 4

Panelists: Shane Seely, Rachael Stewart, Jenni Moody, Jonathan Udelson, Tina Shen

Panel Description: Most creative writers who teach will, at some point in their careers, find themselves in the composition classroom. For many, first-year writing provides the first teaching experience. This panel explores the strengths that creative writers bring to the composition classroom, the struggles they inevitably face, and lessons from this teaching that can serve them throughout their teaching and writing careers.

cream city review Bookfair Booth #1735

Do you write fiction? Would you like to submit your fiction to cream city review? I’m currently a fiction editor for the journal and would love to meet you! I’ll be at the booth during these times:

Thursday, March 8 — 12:45 – 3:00

Friday, March 9 — 8:30 – 10:30 and 3:00 – 5:15

Saturday, March 10 — 10:30 – 12:45

Hope to see you in Tampa!

A Weekend on Washington Island

Last weekend my friend and I took our canine companions for a road trip to Washington Island in northern Wisconsin. To get there, we drove along the peninsula, then took a ferry.

Abe loves the water, and he was happy to have access to quiet beaches and an expanse of forest.

 

We watched a large thunderstorm roll in from People’s Park, and one day when we were walking in the garden, we heard a large crash at the edge of the forest. It was a tree, the leaves still green, it’s inside soft.

I spent my last evening on the island exploring, visiting Jackson Harbor, Stavkirke, and climbing the many steps to Mountain Park.

Reflections on Surrealism & Revolution

Throughout this course, I’ve gained an appreciation for and an awareness of the importance of the collective in artistic action. Mixed in with these observations, however, is the realization that academic communities are in a constant state of flux. Each year new friendships are strengthened, and then in the spring with graduation or fellowships, those friendships become long-distance connections. Year by year the community changes. I think, then, it becomes important to form friendships with incoming students and to branch out beyond the university to become part of non-academic communities.

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UWM Spring Awards

HoffmanAwardDuring the last week of classes, the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee holds an awards ceremony recognizing undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty for their writing and teaching.

This year I am honored to receive the Frederick J. Hoffman Award for my essay on Angela Carter’s short story “The Company of Wolves,” which I wrote in Professor José Lanter’s Magical Realism & Fabulism literature course in the Fall 2016 semester. As a creative writer, I’m thankful to have the opportunity to study with UWM’s wonderful literature faculty. I’m very grateful to receive this award and the support of the academic community at UWM; both mean a great deal to me as I finish my coursework and head into facing my preliminary exam.

Rehearsing Revolution

In our first blog posts, we were asked to respond to the question “Can art be subversive? Can it have real political impact?”

For me, the answer was always yes. But reading Yates McKee’s “Occupy and the End of Socially Engaged Art,” John Berger’s “The Nature of Mass Demonstrations,” and watching the documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry helped me visualize the pathways from art to activism.

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Mapping the Lovers’ Derive

“I’m your audience, and you’re mine” (Bernstein 96).

In All the King’s Horses, Michele Bernstein portrays an open marriage between Genevieve and Gilles. They meet a young woman, Carole, whom they are both attracted to, and Gilles enters into a relationship with her.

The balance of power shifts when Gilles falls in love with Carole. Genevieve acknowledges this change, and the potential dangers: “For the first time, perhaps, he wasn’t sharing things with me” (43). Genevieve is blocked out of Gilles’ relationship on two levels. This sharing is both of information, and the physical act of sharing Carole.

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Invitations and Infiltrations

In my research on Fluxus, I found that the movement had two main goals: (1) to challenge elite art institutions and to (2) meld art and life so that they are inseparable. In order to blur these boundaries, they experimented with form through “intermedia” – creating genres of art that crossed traditional categories, like visual poetry. The enactment of art was another way to reach for this goal. Performance and the actions of the viewer became important ways to change the dynamics of space. The audience was no longer separate from art, required to stand at a distance so as to protect the integrity of a piece.

“Fluxus art involved the viewer, relying on the element of chance to shape the ultimate outcome of the piece.” – The Art Story

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