English

Good Fortune Uncovers the Latest “Unfortunate Series”

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Lemony Snicket Series
Photo by Joe Lederer/Netflix

Thank god for moms! Without them we wouldn’t have learned about the K connection to the new (or at least new for Netflix) series Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Joe Tracz ’04 is one of the writers on the new series, and his mom sent word about the release (in two days, on FRIDAY THE 13th!) to Ed Menta, the James A.B. Stone College Professor of Theatre.

Her note was not so much about her son as it was about wanting to inform current students of the infinite possibilities of a K education. “We all appreciate what the Kalamazoo College environment did/does to guide these possibilities,” wrote Deb Tracz.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is Netflix’s newest all-ages series drop, culling an eight-episode first season from the first four books in Snicket’s best-selling 1999-2006 children’s novel series. The story recounts the tragic tale of the Baudelaire orphans–Violet, Klaus, and Sunny–whose evil guardian Count Olaf will stop at nothing to get his hands on their inheritance. The siblings must outsmart Olaf at every turn, foiling his many devious plans and disguises, in order to discover clues to their parents’ mysterious death.

Neil Patrick Harris starts as the evil Count Olaf. Other actors featured in the series include Don Johnson, Patrick Warburton, Joan Cusack, Catherine O’Hara, Alfre Woodard, Usman Ally and Aaaif Mondvi. The executive producer is Emmy Award winner Barry Sonnenfeld.

Joe Tracz is a playwright, screenwriter and librettist. His work includes Poster Boy (with Craig Carnelia; Williamstown Theatre Festival); Be More Chill (with Joe Iconis; Two River Theater); and Song For a Future Generation (Williamstown, The Management). His adaptation of the first book in the Percy Jackson series, The Lightning Thief (with Rob Rokicki; Theatreworks USA) received a Lortel nomination for Outstanding Musical. His plays have been developed at Manhattan Theatre Club, Roundabout Theatre Company and Second Stage, and published in Best American Short Plays. At K Joe majored in English and studied abroad in London, England. Two of his plays, Alison Shields and Phenomenon of Decline were produced by Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College. Both received regional awards from the American College Theatre Festival.

Based on the 13-book series written under the pen name Lemony Snicket (a.k.a. Daniel Handler), A Series of Unfortunate Events has been printed in 41 different languages, with sixty-five million copies sold as of 2015.

Congratulations, Joe. And thank you, Deb.

K Professor Receives Lucasse Fellowship

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Kalamazoo College Professor Di SeussKalamazoo College announced today that Writer in Residence and Assistant Professor of English Diane Seuss ’78 will receive the 2017 Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship. It is the highest award bestowed by the Kalamazoo College faculty, and it honors the recipient’s contributions in creative work, research and publication. Seuss is the 28th person in the College’s history to receive the award.

Seuss was named one of two finalists for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, a first in the history of Kalamazoo College. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, most recently Four Legged Girl, and she has a fourth book of poems forthcoming from Graywolf Press. She is every bit as remarkable a teacher as she is a writer. She is a previous recipient of the Florence J. Lucasse Lectureship for Excellence in Teaching, and many of her students have been accepted into the most prestigious M.F.A. programs in the country. Poetry, she says, holds space for everybody. A ceremony to confer the fellowship for excellence in scholarship and creative work will occur in spring term, and at that event Di will give a presentation, more than likely a delightful hybrid of poetry, story and lecture. The author of this article can hardly wait.

Duo Completes Prestigious Internship

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Shawn Fair and Sara McKinney
Shawn Fair and Sara McKinney

Kalamazoo College senior Sara McKinney and junior Shawn Fair secured and completed Monroe-Brown internships this summer. Monroe-Brown internships are local opportunities that include at least 400 paid hours of work with a Kalamazoo area company, valuable networking, and scholarship funding upon completion.

The Monroe-Brown family (and, subsequently, The Monroe-Brown Foundation) has a long history of supporting Michigan students in higher education. McKinney’s internship focused on research into this legacy.

She compiled a family tree; cataloged birth, death, and marriage certificates; interviewed family members; read biographies and news articles; and much more. Much of the work was conducted independently.
The end goal is a book for the Monroe-Brown grandchildren. “I’ve really enjoyed the research aspect of it,” McKinney says. “The project has really helped me develop self-accountability and has helped me learn how to seek out information and contacts in the Kalamazoo community.”

McKinney is majoring in English (with an emphasis in creative writing) and earning a minor in psychology. This fall she will complete a collection of short stories for her Senior Individualized Project.

For his internship Fair worked in the marketing internship at Fabri-Kal, an industry leader in product packaging. He analyzed the branding, marketing and advertising of the company’s environmentally friendly Greenware line.

Fair used the opportunity to evaluate what he’d learned in the classroom about leadership. He observed the leadership styles of his coworkers, managers and company executives, and determined that, to be a relational leader, “You have to be trustworthy, dependable, supportive, and willing to devote time to getting to know each of your team members.”

Fair is majoring in business and earning a minor in Chinese. He is already applying the practical lessons of his internship by launching his own mobile application production company, Simple Fix, LLC.

K students like Fair and McKinney have been well represented in the Monroe-Brown Internship Program for the last several years. Since 2012, 13 students have interned with local companies including Eaton, BASIC, AVB, Parker Hannifin, LKF Marketing, Imperial Beverage, Abraxas, and Schupan & Sons, Inc.

Text and Photo by McKenna Bramble ’16, Post Baccalaureate Summer Intern, Center for Career and Professional Development

Senior Presents SIP in Paris

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Justin Danzy Presents SIP in ParisJustin Danzy ’16 always believed in himself and his writing; he just wasn’t sure others would feel the same way. When he began to work on his Senior Individualized Project (SIP) at Kalamazoo College, he had one thing in mind: authenticity.

His senior project seeks to understand authenticity in various forms of expression, and he decided to focus on works by James Baldwin and Rapper J. Cole.

The music of the latter nudged him to incorporate Baldwin into the SIP, which he titled “On the Question of Authenticity: Rethinking Black Male Identity through James Baldwin and Contemporary Hip Hop.”

“It was striking to me listening to J. Cole’s ‘Forrest Hills’ album and how similar it was to Baldwin’s story ‘Sonny’s Blues,’” said Justin.  “Baldwin and Cole faced questions of their authenticity throughout their careers,” he added. “For Cole, being a rapper from the suburbs speaking on his struggles, and for Baldwin being an educated black author writing about race. Both men used speech to show how artists are more than their labels and both believed authenticity is not measured by those labels.”

As Justin explored the work of the two artists and concentrated on the meaning of authenticity, he often found himself questioning how authentic would people perceive his work.  He wondered as well whether others had an interest into understanding authenticity and its nuances.

Turns out he needn’t have worried. His SIP supervisor, Associate Professor of English and Writer in Residence Diane Seuss encouraged him to enter his SIP into an open research paper contest.

And he won, which meant presenting his work during the three-day International James Baldwin Conference at the American University of Paris (France). He was the only undergraduate presenter. The trip to Paris was his first time out of the country.  Having the opportunity to attend the conference, he said, awakened a new confidence in himself and his scholarly work—the sense that his own ideas can be useful and significant.

“If I put in the time and effort and have a team to push me in the right direction, my ideas can add to the world,” said Justin.

Justin graduated in June and is spending two months in Uganda conducting research (the English major also earned a concentration in African studies).  “I know I am capable of bridging the gap between where I am and where I want to be,” he said. “That knowledge gives meaning to the hard work of the process.”

Story by Bianca Anderson

Blind Date

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Kalamazoo College Professor Di SeussDI SEUSS NAMED one of two finalists for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry! A first in the history of Kalamazoo College to have one of her own so honored. Di is an alumna (class of 1978) and Di is our writer-in-residence and Di is an assistant professor of English. “Di is” is the roiling wellspring and outflow of her remarkable books, most particularly Four-Legged Girl, which the Pulitzer jurors describe as “A richly improvisational poetry collection that leads readers through a gallery of incisive and beguiling portraits and landscapes.”

I like to think of each Di’s books as a glimpse (part dark, part light, and both motion) of a journey into “Di Seuss named,” a good name for a vast, strange and absolutely singular land at the margins of the world.

Graywolf Press commissioned Di to write an essay on Myrtle Corbin, the four-legged girl and Di’s muse for part of her recent collection. You can see Myrtle–or a portion of her–on the cover of Di’s book. Di’s essay, writes her publisher, is “something dark, weird, and beautiful.” It calls forth the poet Emily Dickinson and (at least for me, albeit less explicitly) another hero, another “Di,” the photographer Diane Arbus.

“When born with two vaginas, what is a girl to do?” writes Di Seuss in her essay, “Wear white, collect plants by moonlight and construct an herbarium, become a recluse, write poems? Or take the other route: join the circus, become, as Myrtle did at thirteen, a live exhibit. Without the economic privilege a poetic genius freak like Dickinson was born into, the Four-Legged Girl went for the paycheck. She dressed all four of her appendages in striped socks and black boots and pulled up her skirt to reveal the four knots of her knees. She wore fringe and silk and a hair bow. Her bangs were plastered to her forehead in spit curls with whatever they used for styling gel in those days. Oh yeah. spit.”Four Legged Girl Book Cover

Arbus once wrote, “Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot….There’s a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks are born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.”

Later in her remarkable essay about her remarkable book’s namesake, Di Seuss writes, “I believe my association with her predecessor paved the way. My first love was the taxidermied two-headed lamb in my little hometown museum. He was John the Baptist to Myrtle’s Jesus. In his two soft heads and four sweet eyes I discovered the vulnerability and genius of marginality, the burden and the gift of originality….I love and lust after Myrtle Corbin because she is queered and empowered by her idiosyncrasy…dizzied by the realization of her absolute singularity. I experience my own body as a spectacle, an exhibit, a performance, and a condition. My legs are exponential….

“Our whole guise,” echoes Arbus, “is like giving a sign to the world to think of us in a certain way but there’s a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can’t help people knowing about you….I mean if you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic. You know it really is totally fantastic…. Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It’s what I’ve never seen before that I recognize.”

Di’s poems (and prose) take me to what I’ve never seen before.

Pro Voice: “You are not in her shoes.”

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Throughout Winter Quarter 2016, students in the Kalamazoo College “Feminist Psychology of Women” course have interviewed a range of individuals associated with Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan. “ProVoice: The Abortion Monologues — You Are Not in Her Shoes,” a presentation in Dewing 103, Thursday March 3 at 7:00 p.m., is the result.

Directed by Lindsay Worthington ’17, ProVoice features K students presenting monologues based on their interviews with Planned Parenthood patients, advocates, and health care professionals. A “talk back” panel discussion will follow the presentation and feature K students, plus representatives from K faculty and Planned Parenthood. A reception follows the panel discussion.

The event is held in partnership with the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, Planned Parenthood of Mid and South Michigan, and the Kalamazoo College departments of Psychology, English, and Women, Gender and Sexuality.

Colloquium About Blackness to Occur at Kalamazoo College

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Colloquium About Blackness at KKalamazoo College will present the Physics of Blackness Colloquium on March 31 and April 1. March 31 features a lecture (7 p.m. in Dalton Theatre) by Michelle M. Wright, Professor of African American Studies and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University, and author of The Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology. Wright’s lecture is titled “Blackness by Other Names: Beyond Linear Histories.” On the next day (April 1, 5 p.m. in the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership) will follow an interactive event developed by the Beyond the Middle Passage Organizers. That group includes Justin Berry, assistant professor of political science; Nakeya Boyles ’16; Quincy Crosby ’17; Reid Gómez, the Mellon visiting assistant professor of ethnic studies; Allia Howard ’17; Bruce Mills, professor of English; and Shanna Salinas, assistant professor of English. “Wright looks at the argument of race, particularly Blackness, and the ways that argument plays out in economic, political and physically embodied ways,” says Gómez. “Her work will help us look at differences within difference and move beyond thinking in categories.”

According to Gómez, the colloquium will stress three themes, all of which relate to one another: horizontal connections instead of vertical frameworks; the inability of temporally linear progress narratives (which often structure the notion of Blackness) alone to realize the broad and complicated truth and meaningfulness of Blackness; and a “See Me-Hear Me” approach during the colloquium that will ask participants to enter each others’ lives in meaningful ways. Wright’s book uses concepts from physics to expand thinking and discussion beyond linearity that makes “it difficult to understand or accept people, places, or event that do not easily fit inside a single narrative,” explains Gómez. Toward that end Gómez has helped facilitate “The Physics of Blackness at Kalamazoo College,” a blog in the form of a mosaic that makes approaching the subject of Blackness nonlinear and dynamic.

Nonlinearity is the true nature of the physical universe, wrote Gómez in a summary of Wright’s book. Such nonlinearity doesn’t preclude all cause and effect, but instead complicates it. Gómez writes that Wright “cautions against cause and effect laws that make history solely the consequence of oppression, where Blackness only appears in terms of resistance to, or the direct result of, that oppression.” The ability to think and discuss freed from such overly narrow restrictions allows us to “reimagine choice and agency in relationship to Blackness,” says Gómez, “the choice to ’notice and wonder’ at what is left out of linear progress narratives, and to conceive of self outside those terms.”

The Beyond the Middle Passage Organizers group invites colloquium participants to help one another prepare for the event by sharing talking points, images and points of entry into Wright’s theory via Instagram _bmp._ and Twitter @_bmpo_.

Morowa Yejidé ’92, author of “Time of the Locust,” will give a reading at Kalamazoo College on Feb. 16

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orowa Yejide_2
Morowa Yejidé ’92 reads from her work at 7 p.m. Tue., Feb. 16 in the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

The Kalamazoo College Department of English will host a reading and discussion with author Morowa Yejidé ’92 at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 16 in the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, 205 Monroe Street, on the K campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Yejidé’s novel “Time of the Locust” was a 2012 finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize. Her short stories have appeared in Adirondack Review, Istanbul Review, and other literary publications. Her short story “Tokyo Chocolate” was a 2009 Pushcart Prize nominee that was also anthologized by Britain’s “Best of the Willesden Herald Series” and praised by the Japan Times. Yejidé was also a 2015 NAACP Image Award nominee and is currently a PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools author.

Time of the Locust, her debut novel, is described as a deeply imaginative journey into the heart and mind of seven-year-old Sephiri, an autistic boy who can draw scientifically accurate renderings of prehistoric locusts but never speaks, makes eye contact, or smiles. The book explores the themes of a mother’s devotion, a father’s punishment, and the power of love.

orowa Yejide Cover_PRINT FINAL_April 17 2014Morowa Yejidé (pronounced: Moe-roe-wah Yay-gee-day) earned her B.A. degree from Kalamazoo College in international area studies and her M.F.A. degree in creative writing from Wilkes University, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She is a research faculty member at Georgia Institute of Technology and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and three sons.

During her visit to K, Morowa will also meet with students in the African American Literature class taught by Professor of English Bruce Mills, Ph.D., and the Intermediate Fiction Workshop taught by Professor of English Andy Mozina, Ph.D.

Read more about Morowa Yejidé and her work on her website (http://morowayejide.com) and on the Michigan Colleges Alliance “Alum of the Day” webpage (http://wearetheindependents.com/alumni/morowa-yejide) where she reveals her favorite place to hang out on the K campus.

Welcome back to campus, Morowa. (The library is even better than when you were a student!)

CONTRARY MOTION Hits the Right Note

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Andy Mozina
Andy Mozina

On a musical instrument, contrary motion refers to a melodic motion in which one series of notes rises in pitch while opposing notes descend. In his debut novel, Contrary Motion, English professor Andy Mozina moves his 38-year-old character, Matthew Grzbc, in opposite directions in most every aspect of his life.

As a harpist living in Chicago, Matthew hopes to land a chair position in a symphony orchestra—but his every day has him playing on demand to dying patients at a hospice and to the sounds of chewing at hotel brunches.

As a just-divorced man, he dates a woman with whom he suffers erectile dysfunction—even while he can’t stop lusting for his ex-wife who is about to become engaged to another man. He’s a devoted and attentive father to his six-year-old daughter—but the girl teeters on the verge of a breakdown after witnessing her father “in flagrante delicto” with her mother while Mom’s boyfriend is out of the house. Adding drama, Matthew’s father suffers a fatal heart attack while listening to a relaxing meditation CD—leaving his son questioning his sanity as well as his mortality. Contrary Motion by Andy Mozina

When a longed-for audition for a harpist in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra opens career possibilities for Matthew (if only his harp would stop buzzing and twanging), he is pulled once again in opposing directions. To audition or not to audition? And, should he be offered the chair, to move or not to move away from his girlfriend, his ex-wife, his daughter, his life in Chicago?

Matthew’s saving grace, the glue to keep his life from splitting down the middle with all that contrary motion, is his sense of humor. It’s hard not to root for the guy between chuckles. He is as perfectly imperfect as are we all on those days when we take an honest look in the mirror. He is riddled with anxiety when most of his fears are never realized. By end of novel, all that anxiety becomes a tad exhausting—-get it right, Matt! Do it, dude!—-and then he does that, too, hitting the perfect note, humanly well.

Andy Mozina has taught English at Kalamazoo College since 1999. He is the author of the short story collections, The Women Were Leaving the Men, which won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and Quality Snacks, a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, and he has received special citations in Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the Midwest. Mozina is also the author of a book of literary criticism called, Joseph Conrad and the Art of Sacrifice.

Kalamazoo College alumni Annie Gough ’15 and Eric Silverstein ’14 selected as Challenge Detroit Fellows

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Kalamazoo College alumna Annie Gough
Annie Gough ’15

Kalamazoo College alumni, Annie Gough ’15 and Eric Silverstein ’14 have been selected as two of 30 Fellows to participate in Challenge Detroit, an urban revitalization program focused on attracting and retaining talent in Detroit in an effort to spur revitalization. Gough and Silverstein were chosen from hundreds of applicants to collaborate with individuals from all over the country and live, work, play, give, and lead in Detroit.

Challenge Detroit is a one-year fellowship program that provides the opportunity for tomorrow’s leaders to work at top regional companies, while spending one day a week collaborating with area nonprofits to address regional challenges and opportunities, including multi-modal transportation, homelessness, and community development.

During their year with Challenge Detroit, Annie will work with partnering host company Beaumont Health System, while Eric will work with partnering host General Motors.

Annie graduated from Grosse Pointe (Mich.) South High School and earned a B.A. degree in English at K. During her time at K, she also studied abroad at University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Kalamazoo College alumnus Eric Silverstein
Eric Silverstein ’14

“Growing up right next door to the city, I have always fostered a fondness for Detroit’s complex culture and history,” said Annie. “Now, I am eager to understand and identify with the city on a more intimate level by being fully immersed through living, working, playing and giving here.”

Eric is a Troy (Mich.) High School grad who earned a B.A. degree in psychology from K. He studied abroad at Universidad Antonio de Nebrija in Spain during his time at K.

“I have always welcomed adversity, so I guess you could say we have mutual interests,” said Eric.

During their year in Detroit, Annie and Eric will share their stories through regular blogging, video logging, and social media updates. For more information on Challenge Detroit and see videos with Annie and Eric talking about their upcoming experiences, visit www.challengedetroit.org/the-fellows.