During the summer months, it might seem like things are quiet here. But we’ve been plenty busy with “backstage” work to make sure the rest of the year goes smoothly. Usually it’s not the sort of work that makes for interesting reading, but this lighthearted bit of email exchange about office moves was so delightful that we thought we’d share (with permission, of course).

On an office move from the basement of Soc. Sci. to temporary lodgings elsewhere…
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… June 4 your bunker will be invaded by uniformed men with strange accents and rolling carts. they will pack and remove everything. do nothing to stop them. change is inevitable. should you return to said bunker after this date, it will be as though you never existed there. you have thus been forewarned.
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strange to say, whenever I’m there, in the shadowy cavern beneath the auditorium, my office, across the hall from and not to be confused with what can only be the most desolate men’s room in the state of North Carolina, which is what I have for a view, the men’s room door, to the extent that I can see it, given the quality of light in the room, spilling in from the drainage gate at the top of the cement cylinder that the window looks out on, if looks is what it does, if window is what it is, now and then a shadow passes by, maybe a student who’s been lost for decades, looking for the office hours of some long dead prof, somebody who everybody thinks retired to Costa Rica but in fact died and turned to dust in one of the other offices, strange to say, there in my office, with my bright little notepad before me, I already feel like I never existed, I’m either not there when I’m there, or anywhere else I am, I’m also there, only there, in my office, my bunker, my home, home at last!!! O joy! How can I bear to leave it?

May 21 – 24, the English Department hosted the 17th Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR). For four days, over 250 participants from all over the U.S. Canada and Europe gathered at the Washington Duke Inn. The theme of this year’s conference was Romanticism and Modernity, and many scholars presented work engaged in furthering our understanding of the connections and discontinuities between this relatively short period and the larger cultural formations of European Modernity.

Prof. Thomas Pfau and Prof. Robert Mitchell confronted the mathematically sublime task of organizing such a large conference with inexhaustible energy. By all accounts, the conference was a great success. The organizers had the help of a few resourceful graduate students who found the time to put in many hours of work. Among the most essential were Lindsey Andrews and Nathan Hensley from the English Department and Lisa Klarr and Abraham Geil from the Department of Literature.

- Kevin Modestino

Read the article from This Month at Duke.

conference website

NASSR

The English Department and Duke University celebrated Reynolds Price in February 2008.
A series of events around the theme “A Long and Happy Life” brought students, alumni, scholars, writers, friends and family together for three days at Duke. Highlights included talks from notable distinguished scholars and writers reflecting on Price’s life and work, a new documentary film about his teaching career, a reading by Toni Morrison, a staged reading of one of Price’s plays (with actress Annabeth Gish), and an interview with Charlie Rose. In connection with the event, Jubilee guests Richard Ford and Josephine Humphries held masterclasses for English students, and Perkins Library constructed a stunning display about Price’s literary career thus far.

Recordings of the events are freely available through Itunes U.
If you’ve not yet tried this resource, this is an opportunity not to be missed. Browse for the event on the ITunes site or go directly to the recordings of Jubilee events at Duke’s Alumnni site.

Emeritus professor Ron Butters and graduate student Phillip Carter presented a paper which they co-authored with Tyler Kendall at the Law and Society Association in Berlin in July 2007: “Perverted Justice: The Instant Messages of Some Convicted ‘Sexual Predators’.”

Prof. Butters also was an invited speaker at a one-day conference, “Trademark Dilution: Theoretical and Empirical Inquiries.” at the High Tech Law Institute of the Santa Clara Law School, Santa Clara, California, October 5, 2007. His paper was entitled, “A Linguistic Look at Trademark Dilution.” He was elected to a two-year term as vice president of the International Association of Forensic Linguists at the society’s meeting in Seattle in July. He will move on into the presidency of the Association for 2009-11. He was appointed co-editor of the International Journal of Speech, Language, and the Law (the journal of the International Association of Forensic Linguists).