The Literature and Language Arts Division is proud to be affiliated with several exciting programs designed to assist and involve the MJC community. Below are short description of these programs:
The Cooperative Association of States for Scholarships.
For the past 26 years, Literature and Language Arts and the Arts, Humanities and Communications divisions have offered The Celebration of the Humanities, an annual contest for artists of all kinds. Click the link above for contest rules and deadlines.
Lit Bits is a program that offers the general public an opportunity to attend a series of lectures on a wide variety of literary topics. Please visit our website for current schedule.
Puente is a writing program that incorporates the Mexican-American/Latino experience in which students progress from pre-transfer level writing through English 101 within one year. Puente is a transfer program; the goal is to motivate and prepare students to transfer to the University of California or the California State University systems.
"Established in 2000, QR has quickly become a prominent literary arts journal, publishing numerous nationally recognized, award-winning authors and artists from around the world. Additionally, QR continues to discover new and emerging voices in fiction and poetry. However, our main goal is simply to publish the best work we can find," says founding and chief editor, Sam Pierstorff.
The Shakespeare Academy at Modesto Junior College, Modesto, CA was founded 2/23/99 as a full partnership of two Divisions: Literature & Language and Arts, Humanities & Communications.
The central focus of the academy is to raise, significantly, the level of achievement of our students and faculty, in all of our area high schools and colleges, in the fields of ENGLISH, SPEECH & DRAMA.
"Simply stated, a poetry slam is an event in which poets perform their work and are judged by members of the audience. Typically, the host or another organizer randomly selects the judges from the audience. They are then instructed to give numerical scores (on a 0-10 scale) based on the poet's content and performance." --taken from SlamOnRye.com
If at a poetry slam, poetry is indeed "slammed," at Word Break, poems are more gently "placed" in front of our listeners. The venue is small (Little Theatre: 93 seats) and there will be no judging or scoring of readings. Although we have had performance art, angry political poems, and guitar accompaniment, readers are not expected to "perform." Presenters may sit, stand, kneel, pace, loll; it is the words that matter. Come to Word Break to read or say poetry or prose, your own work or that of another favorite author, or just to listen.
