Mark Tjarks at the PlayBuilders' New Play Festival on February 19th
Three short plays by Mark Tjarks (Associate Professor Of English) are being presented by PlayBuilders at the TAG Theatre next Tuesday, Feb. 19 at 7:30. This will be the kickoff for PlayBuilders' New Play Festival, which will take place over 5 Tuesdays. These are staged readings, which means that the actors will be performing on stage, but some may be using scripts and narrators may "read" certain directions instead of light or sound cues. Reservations are encouraged. Call 722-6941. Dr. Tjarks has just returned from New York where one of the plays, “The Heroine, ” was staged for four performances at the 2013 Winter One Act Competition at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre. 
For additional information, see official Playbuilders website.
English Faculty Awarded NEH Challenge Grants for 2013
In 1995. HPU was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Challenge Grant in the amount of $575,000, the highest amount given that year. This grant required the University to match those federal funds at a ratio of three to one, ultimately adding more than $2.5 million to the HPU endowment. Each year the grant supports the purchase of additions to the humanities collections in the University libraries and research and faculty development activities for the university’s humanities faculty. In 2013 the grant will primarily be used to support research and faculty development activities related to Literature. Eight English faculty members received awards last December for scholarly pursuits in 2013.
English Faculty to Present at Variety of Conferences this Spring
Attending conferences allows English department faculty to stay current with scholarship, network with colleagues, and share their research. In cities like Las Vegas, Toronto, Charleston and Lisbon, as well as here in Honolulu, faculty will be presenting their research and purusing scholarship in such venues as the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Hawaii International Humanities Conference and the American Comparative Literature Association Conference to name a few. Read more about their projects.
Introducing Dr. Williams
Congratulations to Dr. Christy Williams instructor of English who successfully defended her dissertation Re-Conceptualizing Gender through Narrative Play in Fairy-Tale Retellings last summer and was awarded her Ph.D. from the University of Hawai’i in December 2013.
