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Hello English undergrads! DESA now has a Twitter account and we want you to follow us! Here we'll post event updates, information, and quips. Join in on the conversation: http://twitter.com/McGillDESA

We hope you're having a lovely start to your summer.

Beer and Scrabble - Hosted by DESA - Thursday, Nov. 13th

DESA BEER & SCRABBLE!



On Thursday, November 13, from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM, DESA will host the first Beer & Scrabble of the year in conjunction with AUS Pub Night. Come down to the AUS Lounge (Leacock Basement), have a few beers and play a few games. There will be free pizza for English Students.

See you there!

Department of English Annual Symposium - "Performing Authorities" - THURSDAY, Oct 30th

The Department of English is hosting its symposium on "Performing Authorities" on this Thursday (October 30th) from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm in Leacock 232.

Come out and hear your professors speak outside of the classroom!

4:00pm
“Eliza Haywood and the Literary Marketplace:
Crafting and Managing a Public Persona”
HOLLY LUHNING

4:30pm
“Victorian Photography and Arctic Explorations”
MARIANNE STENBAEK

5:00pm
“Authority and Amnesia: Byron and Wellington in Hyde Park”
TOM MOLE

5:30pm
“From Russia with Love:
Senator McCarthy, Sir Palomydes, and Premodern Islamophobia”
SEBASTIAN SOBECKI

6:00pm
COFFEE BREAK

6:30pm
“Ghosting in the Memory Matrix: Siddons Terry Lady Macbeth”
DENIS SALTER

7:00pm
“Performing Marxism-Leninism: South Africans in the USSR”
MONICA POPESCU

7:30pm
“The ‘Cauldron’ and the ‘Sewer’:
Mapping New York in Late-Nineteenth-Century Slumming Literature”
THOMAS HEISE

8:00pm
RECEPTION

First film screening on Oct. 28th

Come join us this Tuesday for our first film screening of the semester, John Boorman's Point Blank. The screening will be hosted by Professor Thain and will be shown in Arts West 215 from 7-9. An informal discussion will also follow.

Synopsis: Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and assisted by Angie Dickinson, as he desperately searches for someone, anyone, who can just give him his money. But if Walker is an extreme incarnation of the revenge-driven noir antihero, the modern syndicate has been transformed into a world of paper jungles and corporate businessmen, an alienating concept to the two-fisted, gun-wielding gangster. Boorman creates a hard, austere look for the film and fragments the story with flashes of painful memory, grafting the New Wave onto old genres with confidence and style. Haunting and brutal, Point Blank remains one of the most distinctive crime thrillers ever made.

DESA's first event of the semester!

Come join fellow English students and professors this Friday at 5:30 in Arts 160 for DESA's first wine and cheese of the school year. Representatives from creative writing groups, theater groups, and various on campus journals will also be present to answer any questions for those looking to get involved.

Hope to see you there!

DISCOUNTS ON THEATRE TIX

...courtesy of TNC, which has taken a step further from last year to make the discounts (-$2 from the regular $6 price tag = $4) available by telephone. Just call TNC at 514-398-6600 and ask for the DESA discount. If phoning isn't your thing, drop by the DESA office and we'll request the discount for you. TNC has asked us to emphasize that THE DESA DISCOUNT WILL NOT BE GIVEN OUT AT THE DOOR. INTERESTED PARTIES HAVE TO PHONE IN THEMSELVES OR HAVE DESA PEOPLE PHONE IN FOR THEM. ALSO, THE DISCOUNT IS ONLY VALID FOR WEDNESDAY SHOWS

And that's that.

Need a Break from Writing Midterms/Papers? Check out the Werner Herzog Film Festival...

The Department of German Studies at McGill is hosting a Werner Herzog film festival this week. All screenings are at the McGill Cultural Studies Screening Room, 3475 Peel St. FREE ADMISSION. We can't promise it will be relaxing, but it will be provocative...and there's no writing/reading involved!!



GRIZZLY MAN - Monday, October 20th at 7 PM

AGUIRRE - Thursday, October 23rd at 7 PM

COBRA VERDE - Friday, October 24th at 7 PM

For more information, check out the facebook event, "Werner Herzog Film Festival."