Linda Bolton and Public Arts Sculptor, Barbara Grygutis (Tucson, AZ), have been selected as one of four finalists in a national competition for the design of the North Carolina Freedom Monument. The purpose of the Freedom Monument is "to create and strengthen bonds between diverse people, to educate and enhance mutual understanding, and to serve as a model of cooperation, respect and common values" among the citizens of North Carolina. The Monument will also serve as the first public site, situated in the capital of Raleigh, to honor the legacy of the African American presence in North Carolina. Bolton and Grygutis are previous collaborators in the design and construction of the 1993 Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at Battle Garden in Columbia, Missouri--the second national monument to honor Dr. King's legacy.

Lori Branch's article "'As blood is forced out of flesh': Spontaneity and the Wounds of Exchange in Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim’s Progress" is forthcoming in ELH.  And the introduction to her book manuscript, "Spontaneity, Sentiment, and Secularism," was chosen for the Fourth Annual Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Studies Workshop, on “Custom, Ritual, Habit, Fetish: The Idols of the Eighteenth Century,” to be held in May.

Cheryl Herr will give the lead keynote at a conference on the topic "Genre and Irish Cinema," to be held March 14-16 at the University of British Columbia.  Her essay, "The Color of Schizophrenia" (about the diagnosis of mental illness in Irish and Afro-Caribbean communities) was just published in Postcolonial Whiteness:  A Critical Reader on Race and Empire, edited by our own Al López (SUNY Press, 2005). In January, Herr was a consultant on critical regionalism for Appalshop (media arts organization, Whitesburg, KY).

Tom Lutz is going to the Santa Fe Institute to speak at an interdisciplinary conference on deception that begins April 1^st (he hopes it’s not just a joke).  Other speakers include the linguist George Lakoff, philosopher Sissela Bok, anthropologist of garbage William Rathje, Mr. Facial Expression of Emotion Paul Ekman, and magician/actor/historian Ricky Jay.  He will also be speaking at Université Paris VII in April.

Thom Swiss will be hosting the Steering Committee of the Electronic Literature Organization for a two day meeting in Iowa City on March 11 and 12. On March 15th, Swiss will give at talk on "DJ Practices and Changing Technologies" at the University of Salford in Manchester, England. In April at Boston University, he'll give a keynote address on "Art and Language in New Media Environments" at the Boston CyberArts Festival, an international biennial festival of art and technology in all media.

Several English undergraduates were awarded scholarships for the 2005-2006 academic year through the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences annual Scholarship Competition. They included:

Kimberly Lynne Nelson, a Bill and John Fenton Scholarship
Kelly Ruth Anderson, a Alexander Kern Scholarship
Melissa L. Rupp, a Nadyne Harris Scholarships
Nicole Irene Guarino, a Velma Stuit Scholarship for women in Mathematics, Statistics, Chemistry, Physics, or other Sciences

Departmental Matters

As reported by the U of I Foundation:

"A $1 million gift commitment from University of Iowa graduate Barbara G. Bedell will benefit two key areas: the UI Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. The ophthalmology portion of the bequest was made in memory of Bedell's husband, R. Bruce Bedell, who received his medical degree from the UI in 1965 and completed his ophthalmology residency at the UI in 1970. He died in 2002.

"Barbara Bedell, of Deer Harbor, Wash., is a 1970 graduate of the UI Department of English. A major portion of her gift commitment will create the Dr. R. Bruce and Barbara G. Bedell Professorship and the Dr. R. Bruce and Barbara G. Bedell Graduate Fellowship in the Department of English. The professorship will support a teacher/scholar in the department, and the fellowship will support a graduate student who is completing a master's degree in nonfiction writing."

For more information, see the Foundation news release.