All posts by Elizabeth Gleesing

EGO Stands in Solidarity with the People of Palestine

The graduate students of the English Department at Syracuse University unanimously stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and unequivocally condemn the relentless settler colonial violence against Palestinian lives by the U.S.-backed Israeli state. The Netanyahu-led Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces’ joint decision to engage in ruthless airstrikes and artillery fire on the Palestinian territory of Gaza is the latest assault by the Israeli state on the human rights and freedoms of the Palestinian people. We decry these disproportionately violent acts and grieve the loss of over 200 Palestinians, including over 60 children, whose lives were lost in the ongoing violence that began in the final days of the holy month of Ramadan and on Eid El-Fitr. Further, we see the bombing of the al-Jalaa Tower, which housed the offices of both The Associated Press and Al Jazeera news organizations, as a deliberate attempt on the part of the Israeli government to conceal the full scale of its blatant human rights abuses. These horrific acts are a direct continuation of the Israeli state’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the dispossession of Palestinians, which is manifested through the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the expulsion of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah and other neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. 

As members of a university that resides on the unceded land of the Onondaga Nation, we acknowledge both our complicity in settler colonial violence against Indigenous people on Turtle Island, and in U.S. imperialism’s role in fostering the Israeli state’s ability to enact these crimes against the Palestinian people. As scholars and educators who believe in the inherent worth of all peoples, we join our voices with those of organizations such as the Palestinian Feminist Collective and Jewish Voice for Peace in calling on the Biden administration to acknowledge the U.S. government’s long-standing complicity, both historical and current, in abetting the Israeli state’s ongoing violence against and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people. We demand that the U.S. government:

  1. end its conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism;
  2. hold Israel accountable for its persistent violations of international law and human rights obligations; and 
  3. cease its monetary and military support to the apartheid state of Israel. 

Lastly, we immediately and publicly affirm the right of the Palestinian people to safely return to their ancestral lands and to live fully, freely, and with dignity. None of us are free until all of us are free!

May EGO Meeting

Our final English Graduate Organization meeting is this Friday, starting at 2:30pm, on Zoom (check your email for the link).

We will hear officer reports, transition to new EGO officers for next year, and tackle any new business.

All English department graduate students are welcome and encouraged to join. Whether you’ve been to a hundred of these or this would be your first meeting, feel free to pop in!

Negotiations

For our Negotiations conference this year, we will have presentations over Zoom in the morning and then an in-person, outdoor get together in the afternoon.

Come to the Zoom presentations starting at 10am to support and hear from Morgan, Jeffrey, Dylan, and Maddie and provide them with some useful feedback. The Zoom link will be forthcoming!

After feasting on the intellectual delights of the Zoom presentations, join us for a casual, post-presentation get together starting at 1:30pm. Food will be provided and don’t forget to RSVP to Taylor to let him know you’re planning to attend (and so he can account for any dietary needs).

Visit Day Picnic

Howdy all! Prepare yourself for an in-person outdoor picnic to celebrate our new PhD admits. In a mere 9 days (!), there will be a picnic in Thornden Park, Saturday, 1pm. We will meet at the amphitheater and then find a fun location.

Feel free to bring blankets or towels to sit on and a mask, just to be prepared.

Food will be provided! Please let Natalie know if you have any dietary restrictions or special requests.

All are welcome (including partners, kids, dogs, and so on), though make sure to RSVP to Natalie so we can get an accurate count of those who plan to attend.

See you there!

March EGO Meeting

EGO MEETING FLIER

The March English Graduate Organization meeting will be happening this Friday, starting at 3pm, via Zoom (check your email for the link!).

We’ll have plenty of important issues to discuss from committee reports to the continued re-integration of the MFAs into EGO.

Please join us if you find yourself so inclined.

Medical Humanities: An Introductory and Research Panel Discussion

Friday, March 5, 2-3:30 p.m.
Haejoo Kim (Syracuse University)
Sarah Berry (SUNY Oswego)
Rebecca Garden (Upstate Medical)
Lois Agnew (Syracuse University)

Scholars working in the growing interdisciplinary field of medical humanities investigate the human experience of health and illness through an interdisciplinary lens at the intersection of social sciences, the humanities, the arts, biomedical sciences and caregiving disciplines.

The first of our Spring colloquia will be this Friday and will feature our very own Haejoo Kim! These colloquia meetings are required for everyone who is still in coursework (MAs and PhDs) and encourage for everyone else.

EGO Trivia Night!

EGO has set up a lovely end-of-semester event for English graduate students. In lieu of our Negotiations conference, we are having a trivia night!

*Updated* Event Flyer

Our trivia event will be hosted by Thomas Todd, who recently hosted one of these for the English Department. This will be held via Zoom on Thursday, December 17th, from 6:45pm to about 8:15pm EST. The Zoom link will be sent around via email prior to the event, so keep your eyes peeled. Everyone is welcome at this event, whether you’re a seasoned trivia pro or a relative fact-knowing novice!

If you’re involved in this year’s Secret Santa, we’ll be meeting at 6pm EST to exchange gifts over Zoom (via a different link!).

If you just want the trivia, no gifts or gift chatter, plan to come by at 6:45pm.

We tried to schedule this event to occur after people have submitted final papers, but if you’re still in the midst of writing and researching, why not come and give your brain a different kind of work out? If you’re not interested in trivia, you can always just pop into the Secret Santa exchange or the Trivia Event to say “howdy” and then pop out once we get started.

See you there!

Event Planning EGO Meeting

We are having a lovely EGO meeting this Friday, November 20th, starting at 4pm to discuss and plan for an end-of-the-semester event. Check your email for the Zoom link!

As you know, we have decided to pass on having our annual Negotiations this semester, but we would still like to have a fun virtual get together. To that end, we need to determine what type of event we are having, when we should have it, and how much money we should budget for it.

Right now, the thought is the throw an EGO trivia night, if you have thoughts (yea or nay) on this, you should come to the meeting! We will also be discussing such fraught topics as: what night is the best night to have a virtual event? And, should we try for food of some sort?

EVERYONE is welcome and encouraged to attend this nice, low key EGO meeting. You can attend whether you’ve ever been to an EGO meeting in the past or have hitherto shunned these meetings. If you just want to dip in and say “howdy,” that is fine too.