NEWS West Virginia University at Parkersburg
300 Campus Drive Parkersburg WV 26104
Phone: 304-424-8203 | Fax: 304-424-8315
WVU Parkersburg Humanities Speakers Series to feature two guest presenters in April.
CONTACT: Nancy Nanney, chair of Humanities Division, 304-424-8361.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEWest Virginia University at Parkersburg's Humanities Speakers Series will host two guest presenters in April.
Each program is free and open to the public and will be followed by a question and answer session.
Dr. Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf, associate professor of English from International Islamic University Malaysia, will present two talks at WVU Parkersburg. On Thursday, April 5th, at 7:30 p.m., she will deliver a talk on “Bridging the Gap: A Comparative Study of Two Muslim Poets—Razali Abdullah from Malaysia and Abdal Hayy Moore from the United States.” The presentation will be held in the campus Community Room (Room 1300).
On April 6th, at 10:30 a.m. in Room 2318, she will speak on “Malaysian Literature in English: Reality and Challenge.”
The presentations will also give her an opportunity to share her own creative writing with the audience. She completed her bachelor's degree at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, her master's at the University of Liverpool in the UK, and her doctorate at The Flinders University in Australia. Her areas of interest are women’s writing, world literature in English, Malaysian and Singaporean literature, the English Renaissance and literary theory and criticism. She has published widely in these fields, including the co-authored study entitled "Colonial to Global: Malaysian Women’s Writing in English, 1940s-1990s," and she has spoken on diverse topics, such as “The Image of Islam in Western Literature, Including Shakespeare’s Plays.” She is currently conducting literary research at Cornell University, as a Fulbright recipient. Her presentations at WVU Parkersburg are funded in part by a Fulbright travel grant.
On April 11 at 7:30 p.m., James Harms, professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at West Virginia University, will present a poetry reading in the College Theatre (Room 1305).
Harms is the author of five books of poetry, all from Carnegie Mellon University Press: "Modern Ocean," "The Joy Addict," "Quarters," "Freeways and Aqueducts," and the forthcoming "After West," which will appear in 2008. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in "Poetry," "The American Poetry Review," "The Kenyon Review," "TriQuarterly," "The North American Review," "The New England Review," "The Antioch Review," "The Gettysburg Review," "Oxford American," "Ploughshares," "Crazyhorse," "The Chicago Review," "The Missouri Review," "Denver Quarterly," "Kestrel" and many other literary magazines.
He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the John Ciardi Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, two Pushcart Prizes, Fellowships in Creative Writing from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Academy of American Poets Prize, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. In 1999, he was named both Outstanding Teacher and Outstanding Researcher by the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at WVU (he also received the Outstanding Researcher Award in 2004), as well as the WVU Foundation Outstanding Teacher. He was also the 1999 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching/CASE United States Professor of the Year for West Virginia, and recipient of the Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award for 1999-2000 from WVU.
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For additional information, contact:
Connie Dziagwa
WVU Parkersburg
Executive Director
Institutional Advancement
(304-424-8203)
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