FINAL THURSDAY READING SERIES

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Featured Reader: Catherine A. F. MacGillivray

Catherine A.F. MacGillivray is an Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at UNI.  She has translated several works by French author Helene Cixous including Manna for the Mandelstams for the Mandelas and FirstDays of the Year (University of Minnesota Press).  Her reading will draw from her translation-in-progress of The Psycholanalyst, by contemporary French author Leslie Kaplan. This 500-page experimental novel explores the current practice of psychoanalysis and its relation to language, desire, social class, and Kafka. A sample of MacGillivray's work can be found below.

Before MacGillivray’s reading, the Cedar Valley’s longest running creative writing open mic kicks off its fourth year. Signup for the open mic begins @ 7 p.m. on a first come, first served basis.  Limited slots are available, so readers are encouraged to sign up early and read your best five minutes of poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction.  Singer-songwriters are also welcome.  The open mic begins at 7:30 p.m.  The featured reader, Catherine A.F. MacGillivray, takes the stage between 8:00 and 8:30 (depending on how many open mic readers there are).

Read Work by Some of

Our Past Featured Readers

Scott Cawelti

Karris Golden

Vince Gotera

Paul Hedeen

Harvey Hess

Dave Hoing

Kathleen Kelly

Jerry Klinkowitz

Nate McKeen

Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure

James P. Roberts

Susan Rochette-Crawley

Ron Sandvik

Ann Struthers

Jonathan Stull

John Wilson Swope

Grant Tracey

Ray A. Young Bear

Now Available from Final Thursday Press

Kyrie

Poetry by Jonathan Stull

Ghost Wars

Poetry by Vince Gotera

***Winner of the 2004 Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry***

Laugh.  Damnit.

Poetry by Ahkos

Bad Men

Microfiction by Jim O'Loughlin

  Vibe is located at 909 W. 23rd St. in Cedar Falls on the second floor of Bought again Books.  Persons needing access accommodation should call 266-7115 by the day before the event.  For more information, contact Jim O'Loughlin.

from “Deciding on Writing...”

by Catherine A.F. MacGillivray

in Homo Narrans: Texts and Essays in Honor of Jerome Klinkowitz

When I was a first semester, first-year student at Barnard College in New York City, I took a Humanities course called the Art of Autobiography.  In this course, I read the first volume of Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography, entitled—in English translation—Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter; it changed my life.

I changed my life because it gave me an identity category, a class; it told me who my people were, my ilk, my familiars: we were intellectuals.  I was an intellectual, and this was not a profession but rather a bent, a mindset.  So that’s what I was!  I would pursue a life of the mind.  So that’s how I was to live!

And then: I learned French; I moved to France; I studied with some of the great French intellectuals of our time (Kristeva, Derrida, Cixous, Deleuze); I haunted de Beauvoir’s youthful haunts (the Boulevard Montparnasse, the Café Flor); I experienced life as an intellectual in one of the countries where Presidents are lauded and elected, nor for being Hollywood celebrities, but published poets, where for years one of the most important shows on television was an intellectual talk show) where the intellectual class are accorded a social status and a civic place outside of the university.  And let us also note: even when a French intellectual is also an academic, the latter is not an all-encompassing identity.  Just as the University of Paris is a disparate set  of programs and “schools,” lacking a center and with no real campuses or campus life to speak of, so the life of the intellectual in France may include an academic component, but is not limited to or organized around it.