The New Writing Series, Spring 2012

New Writing Series programming has always been guided the principles of innovation, collaboration, interdisciplinary, and diversity. From the start we have also worked hard to maximize the impact of real-time events within the rapidly-changing new media context. For example, the NWS blog has received more than 55,500 page views since its creation in fall2006 (up from 38,000 this time last year). Our Facebook group, created in the fall of 2007, has more than 140 members and reaches many more people with event and Series information. The Flickr page on which we document events has received roughly 44,700 views to date. And we have been making NWS content (sound and video files) available both through our blog and through UMaine\u27s iTunes U since April of 2003. (A list of the URLs for these projects is appended to this application.) The real time event in front of a live audience remains our Series\u27 anchor point, but using the web to extend brief visits into lasting on-line presences is an effective way of maximizing the return on the investment it takes to bring people to campus

The New Writing Series Fall 2011

write to request the Committee\u27s support for the fall 2011 New Writing Series, an innovative literary arts program sponsored since 1999 by the English Department and the National Poetry Foundation. The amount we request, $5,000, is less than one-half of the projected operating budget for the fall Series of$13,338. The majority of the financial support for the Series will be provided by the English Department through its Elliott and Ellis Funds. I am happy to report that the Honors College has renewed its collaborative agreement with the Series for another academic year, promising $1000 per semester to support the Series; in renewing the arrangement Dean Slavin spoke appreciatively of the work the Series does to to enrich the atmosphere of UMaine. We\u27re grateful for the vote of confidence. The detailed budget appended to this letter provides an overview of projected expenses and revenue sources. Per the Committee\u27s recent request, I have adopted the standard budget form and supplemented it with a spreadsheet that itemizes projected expenses. The Fall 2011 line-up will feature nine writers-seven poets and two fiction writers-in CADLS-supported events. Two of the poets-Ken Irby and Piene Joris-are being carried forward from the spring 2011 schedule, when a bereavement in Joris\u27s family forced us to postpone the event after their plane travel had already been arranged and paid for. There will be some costs associated with rebooking those flights, but the honoraria and other expenses related to the spring visit will not be drawn against already committed CA/DLS funding (Wanda Madden-Carr and I are in communication about this)

The New Writing Series Fall 2012

The fall 2012 line-up will feature ten writers-seven poets and three fiction writers-in CADLS-supported events. This is one of the most ambitious, diverse, and exciting lineups we\u27ve offered in some time and is, I would like to believe, evidence of the continued vitality of the Series as it enters its twelfth consecutive year

Reading the Bible in the 21st century: Some hermeneutical principles: Part 1

Many books and articles have been published over several decades on ‘biblical hermeneutics’ to capture the epistemology of biblical hermeneutics and the phenomenology of interpretation, communication and language in order to direct the Bible reader how to read the ancient texts, assembled in the Bible, sensibly. The first part of this essay looks briefly into the history of biblical hermeneutics of the past century in order to generate an orientation of how ‘biblical hermeneutics’ was regarded and applied as well as to constitute an environment for the investigation to follow in the rest of this essay and in a succeeding essay. In the second part of this essay, a few hermeneutical approaches are analysed in order to recommend a way forward for the dynamic analysis and interpretation (ἑρμηνεία) of biblical texts. This prepares the stage for the recommendation of two extra textures or aspects to be incorporated in the hermeneutical process, to be investigated in a succeeding essay.Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiolog

Poetry

tr.; 23c