News, Events, and Conferences
Featured News
MALS Alumna Book Event
Lynette Yetter's (MALS '21) translation of Adela Zamudio: Selected Poetry & Prose is a finalist for the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. You can learn more about the project and purchase the book here.
MALS Alumnus and Professor Collaboration
This past Wednesday, Oct. 25: Josh Howe and Alex Lemons (MALS '19) gave a fascinating collaborative talk on their upcoming book, Warbody.
Congratulations to Josh and Alex on an excellent presentation!
Upcoming Publications
Susie Callahan will have a MALS seminar paper published in The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (The Johns Hopkins University Press) and her MALS Gateway paper published in Confluence (the journal of the AGLSP).
MALS Student AGLSP 2023 Presentations
Thor Madsen and Lynette Yetter (MALS '21) gave thoughtful, engaging, and fascinating presentations at the annual AGLSP conference in San Diego.
Congratulaions, Lynette and Thor!
MALS Alum Finalist for PEN Award
Lynette Yetter's (MALS '21) translation of Adela Zamudio: Selected Poetry & Prose is a finalist for the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. You can learn more about the project and purchase the book here.
Lynette's MALS thesis Domination and Justice in the Allegorical Story “La reunión de ayer” by Adela Zamudio (1854-1928), Bolivia explores themes in the work of Zamudio.
Congratulations, Lynette!
AGLSP Conference 2022
MALS students David Isaak and Thor Madsen delivered stellar presentations at the AGLSP conference in San Antonio, held October 10–12.
David Isaak's (pictured above) presentation, Ceding Control: A Genealogy of Bibliographic Data, is a winner of the AGLSP Student Presentation Award. David's presentation was adapted from a paper for Kris Cohen’s MALS course Approaches to Media Studies.
Thor Madsen (pictured above) presented Scripting the Unscriptable: Navigating Identity Between Two Worlds, also inspired in part from his research in Kris Cohen's Approaches to Media Studies and adapted from a paper for Kjersten Whittington’s Science and Social Difference course..
Congratulations, David and Thor!
Also at this year's conference, MALS program director Ashley Hudson was elected to the AGLSP Board of Directors, a three-year appointment.
Recent Publications
Confluence's Spring 2022 issue features MALS students Susie Callahan, David Isaak, Emma Holland, Josh Grgas, Emi Karydes, and Thor Madsen. Read their work following the links below.
COMMENTARY
Blue Notes in Bronzeville
Susan Callahan, Reed College
[text] [pdf]
ESSAY
Let’s Be Disinterested Together: Social Media, Personhood, and Control
Ben Read, David Isaak, Emma Holland, Josh Grgas, Emi Karydes, Soroa Lear, and Thor Madsen, Reed College
[text] [pdf]
Podcast Features MALS Alum
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Burn Your Draft podcast's episode 16 features Libby O'Neil (MALS '19) discussing her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies thesis "A Voice and Nothing More": Technological Embodiment and the Artificial Female Voice. |
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Events
MALS Presents: Johannes Lichtman Reading and Conversation with Peter C. Baker
Friday March 26, 6:00-7:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
Portland-based author Johannes Lichtman read from his critically-acclaimed novel Such Good Work. He was joined in conversation by author Peter C. Baker.
Watch a recording of this event
Johannes Lichtman was named a 5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation for his debut novel, Such Good Work (Simon & Schuster). His writing has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford American, and elsewhere, and he is a regular contributor to Travel + Leisure. He holds an MFA in creative writing from University of North Carolina Wilmington and an MA in literature, culture, and media from Lund University. He was born in Stockholm and currently lives in Portland.
About the novel:
Jonas Anderson wants a fresh start. He’s made plenty of bad decisions in his life, and at age twenty-eight he’s been fired from yet another teaching position after assigning homework like, Attend a stranger’s funeral. But, he’s sure a move to Sweden, the country of his mother’s birth, will be just the thing to kick-start a new and improved—and newly sober—Jonas.
When he arrives in Malmö in 2015, the city is struggling with the influx of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. Driven by an existential need to “do good,” Jonas begins volunteering with an organization that teaches Swedish to young migrants. The connections he makes there, and one student in particular, might send him down the right path toward fulfillment—if he could just get out of his own way.
“Such Good Work is, indeed, a bit Jonas-like: it’s wary of affectation or grandstanding; it works small, as if from a sense of modesty, a reluctance to presume; it cuts sincerity with the driest of humor” (The New Yorker). In his debut, Lichtman, “a remarkable thinker” (The New York Times), spins a darkly comic story, brought to life with wry observations and searing questions about our modern world, and told with equal measures of grace and wit.
What the critics are saying:
“Lichtman [is] a remarkable thinker and social satirist…Such Good Work introduces a writer who is willing to openly contradict himself, to stand corrected, to honor both men and women, to ask sincere questions and let them ring unanswered.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES
“A funny and thoughtful book…Such Good Work gets to the heart of what it means to have a conscience.”—THE ECONOMIST
“Such Good Work is one of the best — one of the most beautifully written, one of the most thoughtful — novels I’ve read in the past several years.” —GARTH GREENWELL, NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 CITATIONJohannes was joined in conversation by author Peter C. Baker
