Department of English Events 2023
Movies on the House (ongoing)
Movies on the House (MOTH) is a free film series featuring screenings at UNF and MOCA. Visit MOTH's website for our current schedule and archive of past screenings.
Tsai Ming-Liang's The Night with Nicholas de Villiers (June 7)
Join us in the MOCA Theater during Art Walk for a screening of Taiwan filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang’s The Night (2021, runtime 19 minutes) introduced by UNF English & Film Professor Nicholas de Villiers and followed by a discussion.
- Time: 7PM
- Location: MOCA Jacksonville
Dreamboat Poetry Series (May 21)
Dreamboat Poetry Series presents Craig Beaven & Sandra Simonds w/ musical guest Tim Albro.
- Time: 7PM
- Location: Friday Musicale
The Doc Show 2023 (May 3)
AfterImage Documentary at UNF presents The Doc Show 2023, a program of original short documentary films produced by students in Dr. Jillian Smith's Documentary Production course. Admission is free as part of First Wednesday Art Walk.
- Time: 6 PM
- Location: MOCA Jacksonville
Musical Theatre Showcase (Apr 30)
Join us for an evening of songs from classic and modern musical theatre, including In the Heights, Chicago, Spring Awakening, Once on this Island, Mean Girls, Beauty and the Beast, The Addams Family, Disney's The Lion King, Godspell, Funny Girl, The Wild Party, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
This show is organized and performed by Dr. Maureen McCluskey’s spring Musical Theatre I class.
- Time: 7 PM
- Location MOCA Jacksonville
Wainright Award Winners Reading + Talon Review Open Mic (Apr 18)
Winners of the 2023 Amy R. Wainright Awards in Creative Writing will read from their work, followed by an open mic hosted by the Talon Review literary journal. Open mic sign-up begins at 6 PM.
- Time: 6:30 PM
- Location: UNF Gallery of Art 2-1001
P.S. Burn this Letter Please (Apr 10)
The 2020 documentary film, P.S. Burn this Letter Please, will be screened with introduction and discussion by Dr. Nicholas de Villiers. Presented by the Department of English and LGBTQ Center.
- Time: 6:30 PM
- Location: 14A-1312
Zombie Studies Panel (Mar 31)
The Department of English presents a panel on "Zombie Studies," featuring Dr. David Bering-Porter and Dr. Andrea Gaytán Cuesta, moderated by Dr. Nicholas de Villiers.
David Bering-Porter: "The Uncanny Vitality of the Zombie." Bering-Porter is Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at The New School. He has lectured, taught, and published on zombie movies and other forms of Black horror. He teaches regularly on generative media, horror films and zombie movies, and the history of race, science, and subjectivity. His current book project, Undead Labor, is a study of the ways that race, labor, and value come together in the mediated body of the zombie.
Andrea Gaytán Guesta: "Do you fear the Mexican Walking Dead? Zombies in Contemporary Mexican Narratives." Gaytán Cuesta is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of North Florida. Her research includes 20th and 21st Latin American literature, film, and other cultural productions that draw from interdisciplinary studies like Disaster and Catastrophe Studies, Science Fiction, and Border and Urban Studies. Her work interrogates the representations of Mexican and Latin American cultural artifacts that derive from social, indigenous and environmental movements, illuminating and exploring the trauma, fear and anxieties created by satire and horror in apocalyptic imaginaries. Her recent publications include “From Narcozombies to Aztec Cannibals: The (Re)Invention of the Zombie in Contemporary Mexican Narratives" in An-Other Zombie (upcoming).
- Time: 1-2PM
- Location: UNF Gallery of Art (2-1001)
2023 Roberts-Wainright Author: Michael J. Seidlinger (Mar 28)
The Roberts-Wainright Creative Writing Endowment presents a reading and discussion with Michael J. Seidlinger, author of the acclaimed 2022 novel Anybody Home?. Hosted by Mark Ari.
- Time: 6:30-8:30pm
- Location: UNF Gallery of Art (2-1001)
UNF Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing (Mar 25 - Apr 23)
UNF Shakespeare presents its spring production of Much Ado About Nothing.
- March 25 Jacksonville Arboretum 10:30AM *
- March 30 & 31 Friday Musicale 7PM
- April 1 Crosswater Hall Nocatee 7PM
- April 2 UNF Coxwell Amphitheater 5:30PM
- April 12 UNF Lazzara Performance Hall 8:30PM (dress rehearsal followed by Q&A with cast and crew)
- April 13 UNF Lazzara Performance Hall 10:30AM
- April 14 Fleet Landing 6:30PM *
- April 17 Mayo Clinic noon *
- April 23 UNF Carpenter Library 2PM (followed by Q&A with cast and crew) *
Asterisked performances are “scenes from” rather than full performances.
All performances are free and open to the public.
The Making of Americans: A Public Reading (Mar 20-24)
- Time: 10:00am - 4:00pm
- Location: Outside of the UNF Gallery of Art (2-1001)
A Conversation with Marc Kudisch (Mar 3)
UNF Theater presents a conversation with actor Marc Kudisch of Broadway, opera, television, and film. Moderated by Maureen McCluskey, Janson Cobiella, Zachary Coughlin, Hannah Geary, Dawn King, and Christine Vu.
- Time: 5:30-6:30 PM
- Location: Fine Arts Center, Room 1414
Word by Word Reading Series: Dorsey Craft & Jennie Ziegler (Mar 2)
Word by Word Reading Series presents a reading and discussion with Dorsey Craft and Jennie Ziegler. Craft is the author of Plunder (winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize) and an Assistant Poetry Editor at Agni. Ziegler's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published in The Normal School, Essay Daily, Appalachian Review, Luna Luna Magazine, Atlas and Alice, and Consilience.
- Time: 6:30-8 PM
- Location: Department of English Commons (Lassiter Hall / Bldg. 8)
Dreamboat Poetry Series (Feb 17)
Dreamboat Poetry Series presents an evening of poetry and music featuring poets Laura Jaramillo, Liz Robbins, and Andres Rojas, and flamenco guitarist Brian Luckett.
- Time: 6-8 PM
- Location: Friday Musicale Jacksonville
The Teaching Archive: A New History for Literary Study with Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan (Feb 3)
Please join the Department of English and UNF community for a scholarly presentation by Laura Heffernan (UNF) and Rachel Sagner Buurma (Swarthmore College) on their award-winning book, The Teaching Archive: A New History for Literary Study (University of Chicago Press).
Hailed as a “remarkably well-researched, beautifully written, wise, and moving study that offers the discipline of English literary studies a new account of its twentieth-century history,” The Teaching Archive has won the Modernist Studies Association book prize and the UNF prize for Best Scholarly Monograph. Buurma and Heffernan’s presentation will be followed by responses from English faculty members Nicholas de Villiers and Jennifer Lieberman. Refreshments will be served.
- Time: 3:30-5:00 PM
- Location: UNF Gallery of Art (2-1001)
Word by Word Reading Series: Marcus Pactor (Jan 31)
Marcus Pactor will read from his new book Begat Who Begat Who Begat, followed by a discussion and book signing. Pactor's first book, Vs. Death Noises, won the 2011 Subito Press Prize for Fiction. His story “Megaberry Crunch” was selected for Best Small Fictions 2021. His work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Always Crashing, 3:AM Magazine, Harsh, and Juked.
- Time: 6:30-8 PM
- Location: UNF Gallery of Art (2-1001)