April 25, 2022 vol. 25
Short-Term Activities
for the Remainder of the Semester?
Jane Godiner has some ideas.
I, for one, never know what to do with that awkward, liminal, three-week period between now and the end of the end of classes. Certainly, we’ll all be busy during finals week, but how will we spend the time before that? We can’t do anything too time-consuming or demanding of a long-term commitment, but it also does not make sense to twiddle our thumbs until mid-May. Keep reading for a few suggestions on how to pass the time:
Paint by numbers
They aren’t just for kids anymore, you know. Indeed, during the pandemic, many of us have been trying our hand at more intricate and complex paint-by-number projects. On most arts-and-crafts retail websites, you can find paint-by-number canvasses of every style, from Van Gogh to Warhol. If you’re feeling extra sentimental, you can convert your own photos into a paint-by-numbers canvas for a premium price.
Upcycle clothing
Pay our local Goodwill a visit (or spring for an Amtrak ticket to Portland), and pick up some reasonably-priced clothing with potential. Then, scour amazon for anything that you think might enhance the garment(s)—patches, lace, leather, and whatever else you can think of. Not only will you have an engaging project on your hand, but you can even try your hand at turning a profit on websites like Depop or Ebay.
Organize a gift exchange with your friends
It doesn’t need to be the holidays to organize an anonymous gift exchange! There is a reason why elfster.com is available year-round. Get a group of your nearest and dearest together, set a price limit, assemble your wishlists, and get to gifting!
Try your hand at freelancing
If you are on this email list, you are almost certainly a fantastic writer—why not get paid for it? Find your niche and try submitting your pitches, drafts, or fully-finished pieces of writing to culture publications around the country and the world. Whether they are accepted or rejected, their responses are most often prompt, and practice makes perfect! Best case scenario, you walk away with a byline and some extra money in your pocket.
Alpha Delta Phi Society
Visiting Writers Series
An Evening with Nicole Chung
Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 7:00 PM
Click here to register
Join us for an evening with writer Nicole Chung. Chung is the author of the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know. Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Library Journal, and many other outlets, All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, an Indies Choice Honor Book, and an official Junior Library Guild Selection. Chung’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, GQ, TIME, and Vulture, among others, and she also writes a weekly advice column for Slate. Her next books are forthcoming from Ecco Books and HarperTeen.
Hosted by the Asian Students Alliance with support from the Alpha Delta Phi Society Visiting Writers Fund for AAPI Month
Photo courtesy EMT Agency
Nicole Chung will hold an informal conversation about navigating the literary world as an Asian American woman writer. Hosted by the Asian Students Alliance.
Reading Rape Capaciously:
Sexually Violent Systems in
Nineteenth-Century England
with Erin Spampinato
Thursday, April 28 at 4:30 PM
VAC Beam Classroom
Erin Spampinato specializes in Anglophone literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and gender and sexuality studies. Her scholarship has appeared in PMLA, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Studies in the Novel and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her first book, Awful Nearness: A Literary and Cultural History of Rape, 1740-1900, which explores how representations of rape shaped the early British novel, as well as the ways in which novelistic representations of rape shaped public perceptions of sexual violence. Additionally, she is co-editing a book which theorizes new approaches to sexual violence studies, currently under contract with SUNY University Press, entitled New Rape Studies: Humanistic Interventions. Her talk today is drawn from her book project, which is supported by a 2021-22 American Council of Learned Societies publication fellowship. She is currently an adjunct professor at Colby College.
Hosted by the English Department with support from Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies; Sexuality, Women, and Gender Center; and the Office of Gender Violence Prevention and Education
Content warning: this talk contains discussions of rape and sexual violence
Holocaust Commemorative Lecture: Holocaust survivor Rudy Horowitz discusses his memoir Avoiding the Cracks, in the context of today’s war in Ukraine.
Thursday, April 28 at 4:30 PM
Lancaster Lounge
Photo courtesy Bowdoin Orient
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Faculty, Major,
and Alumni Profiles
Harrison King McCann
Professor of English;
Director of Gender, Sexuality,
and Women's Studies Program
Marilyn Reizbaum
Photo courtesy Bowdoin College
Reizbaum works in the area of modernist studies and will be teaching Modernism/Modernity and Mean Women Writers during Fall 2022.
When asked to define modernism, Reizbaum explains. “Modernism is an artistic aesthetic movement from the first part of the 20th century connected to other aesthetic movements, like symbolism and images, and really sort of deriving from there,” she says.
Emerging out of the modernist movement, Reizbaum says, is the form that has departed from the traditional ways of telling stories, like the form in James Joyce’s works that challenges the conventional understanding of a beginning and ending of a story and Picasso’s puzzling abstract art form.
“Of course, people like Picasso and people like Joyce would say, ‘Why is your convention more realistic than [our forms]’, you know?,” she says.
Reizbaum points out that there is also an interlink between her two fall classes, Modernism/Modernity and Mean Women Writers. The latter, in the same way that modernism challenges conventions, challenges “a gendered perception of certain kinds of writing” which are considered harsh if done by women yet lauded if done by men. In addition, Reizbaum highlights perhaps an unexpected definition of the word “mean”, drawing from Joyce: “Mean” as in very compressed, sharp and stingy in the use of words.
“It's the kind of writing where you have to pay attention to every single word,” Reizbaum says, “And then you understand that that's always true. In good writing, every word counts.”
In both of her classes, Reizbaum hopes that her students will develop, among various skills, an understanding of the way they read, a critical sensibility for the primary texts and an attentiveness to aesthetics and form.
English Major
Gianna Turk '24
Photo courtesy Bowdoin College
While Gianna Turk ’24 has been developing a passion for English since high school, she began realizing its use as a backdrop for her other majors and interests—classics and theater—during her first year at Bowdoin.
“When I came to college, I found a passion for classics, for which, of course, there is much literature,” Turk says. “They kind of go hand in hand, as well as English and theater, with playwriting and all of the kinds of context of theater that goes behind it.”
Outside of the classroom, you might find Turk at her work study program for theater, training to be a writing assistant in the fall, or discussing literature with her friends.
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