Photos from recent events

Into the Teeth of the Wind staff members putting up a poster next to a "pre-dental meeting" poster:

Teeth is currently accepting poetry for its 10th anniversary issue (no particular deadline - see website for details), and Spectrum is accepting writing and art until February 11. Both CCS publications are open to submissions from non-UCSB students.

Part of the crowd at Lit Collab's Scrabble evening on Friday:

See more pictures on Facebook. The top scorer was a biochemistry major, but that's OK. We'll have another rematch next quarter.

What the college would like us to know

As part of our series of posts learning about Mudrick (see these five descriptions and an alumna's perspective), here's a description of him from the Spring 2008 Literature Symposium announcements, probably written by John Wilson or Caroline Allen [paragraph breaks mine]:

Marvin Mudrick founded the College of Creative Studies in 1967. The existence and survival of CCS have depended on the ideas for education that Mudrick set down after Chancellor Cheadle asked him to "work up an academic plan for this campus." After the Regents approved it, Mudrick ran CCS as its Provost for nearly twenty years. Moreover he taught a literature class and a class in the writing of narrative prose every quarter. 

His classes were exciting, funny, and unlike anybody else's. Besides being a teacher and administrator, Mudrick was a brilliant and prolific writer. He published essays quarterly in The Hudson Review without missing a deadline for over twenty-five years, and most of these essays are collected in his books. But as good as his writing was, his talk was even better. He had the gift of gab and used it. In the classroom, according to Max Schott, Mudrick "took delight in arguing, loved hyperbole, had a propensity for intellectual provocation and irreverence and blasphemy, took pleasure in kicking against the pricks, and was convinced and tried to convince others that talk and the thinking in it (even about serious things, or especially about them) could and should be entertaining." 

Mudrick spoke in this way in a number of CCS symposia: starting with certain notions and improvising as he went along with a lot of wit and a lot of enthusiasm, trying to ignite a feeling for literature and music in others. One of these, an Art Symposium called "Am I Enjoying Myself Yet?" was videotaped in 1985. It will be shown for this symposium.

I enjoyed watching that videotape; it was helpful to hear him speak in his own words.

Also check out the only mention of Mudrick on the college website right now, this dull page titled History of the College of Creative Studies [paragraph breaks mine]:

Planning for the college began in 1965 when Chancellor Vernon I. Cheadle commissioned Dr. Marvin Mudrick, Professor of English, to serve as Academic Planner for the UCSB campus during the academic year 1965–1966. He was asked to propose a long-range academic plan for this campus’ growth. Chancellor Cheadle informed Dr. Mudrick early in their discussions that he was interested in the possibility of a special small college that would serve a part of the student population for which the University, at that time, made no provision.

Dr. Mudrick, who himself entered college at 15, formulated several proposals. Among them was the suggestion for a separate college, independently staffed and administered, with a specially selected and identifiable student body: students who, in addition to meeting UC entrance requirements, demonstrate “talent for original work in an art or science” (CCS Proposal, p. 1). The proposal was approved by the Regents in February 1967 and the College opened in Fall 1967 with an enrollment of 50 students. The College was originally housed in a cramped Marine barracks building next to the library — a relic of WWII when the seaside campus was a military base. The College moved to its present site, still a former Marine barrack, but a larger one, in the fall of 1975.

Literature showing up in sneaky places

Genre fiction in literature classes

In our meeting on January 7 we talked a little bit about genre fiction and its relationship to literary fiction, so here are a few related links that people may find interesting:

Science Fiction Authors That Lit Geeks Think It's Cool To Read — people who blur those boundaries.

Beautiful Sci-Fi covers — about an experiment in non-cheesy covers for science fiction books.

Thoughts on Genre — a quote from Joyce Carol Oates on "a tacit contract between [genre readers] and the writer."

Formula, Convention, and Cliche: Repetition in Genre Fiction — slightly more formal than the above posts.

Literature classes on Facebook

In our meeting today I talked about my dad's Facebook groups for the classes he's teaching at USC in American Studies (he's an English professor):

ARLT101.Spring2009, "Los Angeles: The Fiction"

AMST301.Spring2009, "America, the Frontier, and the New West"

Check out the "discussions" for his lecture notes. They're kind of silly but good, including lecture notes and a "YouTube Bibliography". He's told me that his students like to check Facebook during his classes anyway, so why not put the class there as well?

There's one UCSB English class that I know of with a Facebook page: ENGL 122NW: Narratives of War.