With graduation—or at least finals—looming, it’s easy to get so buried in our studies that we forget how enjoyable and integral it is to our sense of community to commemorate one another for all the hard work we do.
Portland State is home to many talented student writers of all genres, and the upcoming 49th annual Nina Mae Kellogg Awards ceremony on May 13 will be an opportunity to join the PSU Department of English in celebrating some of the diverse writing that emerges from our classrooms every year.
Both undergraduate and graduate English department students will receive scholarships and awards, which include the John Redman Freshman Writing Award, the Tom Bates awards for nonfiction writing, the Tom Doulis Graduate Fiction Writing awards and the Shelley Reece Award in Poetry.
This year’s master of ceremonies will be professor A.B. Paulson, who teaches fiction writing and American literature at PSU. The ceremony and lecture are organized by the Department of English Events and Outreach Committee.
The awards are funded by various donors and sponsors, and were founded by PSU English professor Carl Dahlstrom. Dahlstrom, who died in 1981, named the ceremony after his wife.
“We call it the Kellogg Awards after Nina Mae Kellogg, and that’s also the name of one of our major awards,” said Hildy Miller, a PSU English professor and EOC member. “But we have many writing awards, in all sorts of areas, including creative writing and academic [or] scholarly writing.
“This year we have two new awards that we’re really excited about,” she said. “ One is the
Duncan Carter Writing Award. [Carter] is retiring this year, and this award will be for the best writing in a composition course.”
Carter teaches in the English department and is also the associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at PSU.
The other new award this year is the Dennis Stovall First Edition Award. Stovall founded the graduate book publishing program and taught at PSU for more than a decade. The award will go to a student who exemplifies the publishing program’s mission.
“We’re really excited about these two new awards, but we have many that recognize all the brilliant student writing we have in the English department,” Miller said. “Some of these awards even go beyond the English department, so that [non-English-major] students who are taking English courses, or in some cases courses in University Studies, can also compete.”
And what English department get-together would be complete without an exciting literary discussion? This year’s ceremony is co-sponsored by the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program, and its visiting speaker is author and contemporary gender- and queer-theorist Jack Halberstam.
Halberstam is a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity and gender studies at the University of Southern California. His most recent book is Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal, and his PSU lecture is titled “No Church in the Wild: Queer Anarchy and Gaga Feminism.” (That’s right: a fantastic Watch the Throne/Lady Gaga mash-up.)
“It is a talk about new forms of anarchy and looks closely at queer art and aesthetics and the use of performance within new modes of protest and contestation,” Halberstam said in an email.
The 49th annual Nina Mae Kellogg Awards ceremony, featuring Jack Halberstam
Monday, May 13, 7–9 p.m.
Smith Memorial Student Union, room 335
Ceremony open to PSU students, faculty and staff
Lecture open to the public
“[Halberstam’s lecture is] based on his new book, and he’s practicing a kind of low theory that is using examples from popular culture, like the work of Lady Gaga,” Miller said. “He’s especially taken with her video [for] ‘Telephone’ because it shows all the possibilities for gender flexibility and getting beyond binaries such as man/woman, gay/straight; in the video she’s doing it all.
“[Lady Gaga]’s performing gender in all sorts of anarchic ways, and that’s what Halberstam is calling for in this book,” Miller continued. “He’s saying we’ve come to the end of some of the conventional arrangements for relationships and conventional performances of gender, and that we need to go gaga.
“It’s time to think of all the possibilities for non-normative performances of gender and non-normative relationships of all sorts,” Miller said. “So that’s what’s inspiring both the interesting title and the talk itself.”
The territory explored in Halberstam’s work should make for a very interesting lecture, even for those who are new to queer and gender theory. Halberstam’s appearance will also include a question-and-answer session, discussion and book signing.
“He is one of the most vital and engaging speakers I’ve ever heard,” Miller said. “His talks are always lively and intellectually stimulating, often with wonderful visuals, and always provocative.”