University of Arkansas at Little Rock

The Shakespeare Scene Festival is a UALR event sponsored by the Departments of English and Theatre Arts and Dance. It takes place in March in the UALR Center for the Performing Arts (University Theater). Its main purpose is to provide teachers and students a venue for the performance of Shakespeare’s plays. A description of the SSF, its history, and pictures of past performances show that the SSF is also a great way to have fun. A registration form is available online: http://ualr.edu/shakespeare/index.php/home/registration/

The next Shakespeare Scene Festival is scheduled for March 13-14, 2012 in the University Theater at UALR. Please register early to secure a spot on the schedule.

UALR’s Departments of English and Rhetoric and Writing will sponsor a reading by Kevin Brockmeier, author of “The Illumination,” “The Brief History of the Dead,” and “The Truth about Celia,” from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 20, in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Building.

A book signing will follow in Gallery I. The event is free and open to the public.

Brockmeier, a writer of fantasy and literary fiction, lives in Little Rock where he was born and raised. His other works include two novels for younger readers, “City of Names” and “Grooves: A Kind of Mystery,” and two story collections – “Things That Fall From the Sky” and “The View From the Seventh Layer.”

Brockmeier’s work has been translated into 15 languages and his short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, Tin House, the Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South.

Brockmeier has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards, the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. Recently, he was named one of Granta Magazine’s “Best Young American Novelists.”

For more information about Brockmeier’s lecture, contact the Department of English at 501-569-3191 or at hlphilpotts@ualr.edu or the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at 501-569-3160 or at ghjensen@ualr.edu.

Please join the English Department in its first kickball game! The game will be played on Thursday, June 2, at 2:30 pm, at Pinnacle Mountain State Park (the big field by the playground area). We’ll see you there.

All English Majors and faculty are invited.

Prof. Thomas Leitch, University of Delaware, will give a talk titled “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change: Revising the Classics” in Donaghey Student Center, Room C, on April 4 at 7 pm. The talk looks at adaptations of classic written texts.

Prof. Leitch’s visit and lecture topic are in conjunction with the UALR Cooper Honors Program in English special seminar, “Twicetold Tales.”Prof. Leitch is a literary critic and film studies specialist. Ho obtained his PhD from Yale and is now director of the concentration in Film Studies at the University of Delaware. He teaches courses in American film, as well as  literary and cultural theory. Since 1989 he has reviewed mystery and suspense novels for Kirkus Reviews, where he is Senior Editor. He has published articles on Dickens, Henry James, Donald Barthelme, and Hollywood genres from musicals to whodunits to slasher films. His books include What Stories Are: Narrative Theory and Interpretation, Find the Director and Other Hitchcock Games, The Encyclopedia of Alfred Hitchcock, Crime Films, and Perry Mason, and Film Adaptation and Its Discontents. He is a past president of the Literature/Film Association.

The talk is free and open to the public. A reception follows the talk.

At this meeting of the Adolescent Book Club, Rob Bruno and Suzi Garcia will lead a discussion of Eric Puchner’s Neon Tetra and Junot Diaz’s How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie). Copies of the two short stories may be picked up in the English Department (Stabler 501). They are on the table directly to the right as you enter.

The meeting will be held at 7 pm on Tuesday, March 29.

For more information, please contact Sam Brown at scbrown@ualr.edu or Lindsey Ditzig at lindseyditzig@yahoo.com.

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will be the site of the Shakespeare Scene Festival sponsored by the Departments of English and Theatre Arts and Dance. The dates are Monday, March 14, and Tuesday, March 15, 2011. The place is University Theatre (colloquially known as “the black box”), which offers exciting possibilities to students and teachers in conceiving a show that takes advantages of surround-space. Because of the two-day calendar, registration will have to be even more stringently on a first-come, first-serve basis. Participants are encouraged to submit registration forms locking in a date, even if none of the other details of performance are settled yet.

The Shakespeare Scene Festival brings together classes of students from schools in central Arkansas to perform scenes from Shakespeare’s plays for one another. The festival sponsors believe that playing Shakespeare is a crucial activity for students today. Being a part of a performance of a scene from one of Shakespeare’s plays combines two basic elements of education: the study of a master of the English language, and participation in a creative group activity that requires discipline and cooperation.

For more information, including performance schedules and registration, please visit http://www.ualr.edu/shakespeare/

ABC TEXT TO DISCUSS:  Sold by Patricia McCormick

Date/time:     Thursday, February 10 @ 7:00 PM

Location:        Cooper Lounge, Stabler Hall 501

For more information, please contact: 

Sam Brown (scbrown@ualr.edu) or Lindsey Ditzig (lindseyditzig@yahoo.com)

Updated 1.24.2011

UALR’s Adolescent Book Club will hold a critical viewing of the 1983 film adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s movie Rumble Fish, starring Matt Dillon as “Rusty James,” Mickey Rourke as “The Motorcycle Boy,” and Diane Lane as “Patty.”The movie will be shown on Friday, November 19 at 5:00, in Stabler Hall, Room 401.For more information, please contact: Sam Brown scbrown@ualr.edu

Sigma Tau Delta’s first major social event of the semester will be taking place on October 22nd. We will be going to the Market Street Cinema to see the film Never Let Me Go, based on the Kazuo Ishiguro novel of the same name. Showtimes have not yet been announced, but we are planning on going to the showing that starts at around 7:00 or 7:30 P.M.  This will be followed by a dinner at The Pantry, a nearby restaurant.

You must be a member of Sigma Tau Delta. Please feel free to bring a friend or significant other to this event! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Here is a link to the Pantry’s menu for anyone that might be interested: http://www.littlerockpantry.com/menu/

This promises to be an entertaining night! Please come out and join us!

Come and meet noted author and editor Ben Farmer, when he discusses his new novel Evangeline, a novelization of Henry Wadsworth Longfellows’s epic poem “Evangeline, A Tale of Arcadie.”

Ben Farmer will appear at

• October 18, Pedagogy Workshop: 6-9 pm (SUA 102-0)
• October 19, UALR Adolescent Book Club: 4:30-5:30 pm (Stabler Hall 407)
• October 22, Writers’ Workshop, 9-10 am (Stabler Hall 501)
• October 22, Reading and Book Signing, 4-5 pm (WordsWorth Books and Co.; located at 5920 R Street in the Heights)