Reading Matters, Vol. 10, Issue 13, May 4, 2005

In Memoriam

The Department recently learned that Elizabeth Dietz died on April 20th in Houston, Texas.  Elizabeth received an M.F.A. in poetry from the Writers Workshop in 1988 and a Ph.D. in English from Iowa in 2000.  She taught courses in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature at Iowa as a Visiting Assistant Professor before taking a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of English at Rice University.  The department has established a memorial fund in Elizabeth's honor.  Donations can be made in her name to the English Department Gift Fund and sent to the University of Iowa Foundation. A memorial service will be held on June 18th in Iowa City.

 

 


Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Lori Branch's article, "The Rejection of Liturgy, the Rise of Free Prayer, and Modern Religious Subjectivity" will appear in the Spring 2005 issue of the journal of late-seventeenth-century studies, Restoration.  She has also been selected to attend the National Humanities Center Summer Institute in Literary Studies' seminar on Tristram Shandy, to be led in July by Deidre Lynch.  At the recent national meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in Las Vegas, she headed two consecutive panels on "Religion, Secularism and Modernity: Connections, Conflicts, Conversations" and presented a paper titled "New Directions and Challenges for Religion, Secularism and Eighteenth-Century Studies."  At the MLA in December, she read "Violating God: Secular Contours of Sentimental Fantasy in Clarissa," a paper drawn from her second book project, at a panel she organized on "Desire and Devotion: Clarissa, Secularism, and Psychoanalysis."

In June, Barbara Eckstein will participate in the conference of the progressive Planners Network. The conference topic is "Justice by Design," and her session addresses the relation of memory, public art, and sustainability.

Eric Gidal has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Initiative grant for research at the Huntington and Clark Libraries in Los Angeles, the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, and the British Library in London.  He will be researching literary and pictorial representations of "civic melancholy" in English, French, and American arts and letters from the eighteenth century.

Photographs from the 2005 Faculty Honors Celebration have been put on the web.


Departmental Matters   

At the start of May, Dean Maxson announced that Jon Wilcox will become the next DEO of the Department of English.  His term will run from August 2005 through July 2008.  He will be replacing Brooks Landon who has been chair for the past six years. Many thanks to Brooks for everything he has done for the department, and a warm welcome to Jon.

Graduate Matters

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT GRADUATE AWARDS, 2005-06

BALLARD/SEASHORE AWARD WINNERS
Michael Germana, “Standards of Value: U.S. Monetary Policy and the Negotiation of Racial Difference in American Literature, 1834-1952” (dir. Diffley).

Wes Kisting, “Authority and Inwardness: The Politics of Conscience in Early Modern England” (dir. Diehl).


SEELY DISTINGUISHED DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIP
Keith Wilhite, “Suburban Trespasses: Reading Transgression in the Literature of the American Suburbs” (dir. Eckstein and Lutz)


DEPARTMENTAL DISSERTATION SCHOLARSHIPS

Prairie Lights/Sherman Paul diss. scholarship: (contemporary)
Established through the generosity of the Prairie Lights Bookstore,
Amy Spellacy (dir. Eckstein and Fox)

Frederick P. W. McDowell diss. scholarship: (1850-1950)
Established through the generosity of the students and colleagues of Professor Emeritus McDowell,
Jeff Swenson (dir. Rigal)

Freda Dixon Malone diss. scholarship: (1500-1850)
Established through the generosity of the sister of Ms. Malone, who received her M.A. in English from the University of Iowa in 1929
not awarded this year

Valerie Lagorio diss. scholarship: (medieval)
Established through the generosity of the students of Professor Emerita Valerie Lagorio,
John Pendell (dir. Wilcox)

Edwin Ford Piper Memorial scholarship: (women’s causes)
Established by Janet Pressley Piper in memory of her husband, who was a faculty member in the Iowa English Department
Kim Cohen (dir. Adams)

BEST ESSAY PRIZE
Shared between two winners:

Michael Germana, “Real Change: George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes and the Crime of ’73,” Arizona Quarterly forthcoming [accepted May 2004] and

Keith Wilhite, “His Mind Was Full of Absences: Whitman at the Scene of Writing,” ELH 71 (2004): 921-48

TEACHING AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS, and SCHOLARSHIPS

Congratulations to Doug Dowland, Scott Nowka, Rebecca Sheir, and Dory Weiss. They have been selected by the Council on Teaching to receive Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards in recognition of their excellent work for the General Education Literature Program.

The following students were successful in winning a Graduate College Summer Foreign Language tuition scholarship:

Andy Douglas of the Non-Fiction Writing Program has been awarded a Marcus Bach Fellowship for Graduate Students in the Humanities to help him complete his memoir of life as a monk in Asia after a childhood in the U.S.

Ben Otto, also of the Non-Fiction Writing Program has been awarded a T. Anne Clearly International Dissertation Research Fellowship. Once details have been placed on the web, a link will be included here.

INCOMING STUDENTS, FALL 2006

We have 20 students entering the Ph.D. program next year, as listed below. Three are winners of Presidential Fellowships and three are winners of Dean's Fellowships (which used to be called Graduate Merit Fellowships). Congratulations to Barbara Eckstein and the graduate admissions committee (Bluford Adams, Kevin Kopelson, Alvin Snider, Thom Swiss, Doug Trevor, and Doris Witt) for selecting such a strong class and to Claire Sponsler for working on funding them all.

The new MA/PhD Students for 2006 are:

Upcoming Events

Fri., May 6, 4 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Lori Branch and Doug Trevor will present a Faculty Colloquium.

Future Issues

Reading Matters will appear again in the fall of 2005. If you have questions or comments before then, please contact Carolyn Jacobson at carolyn-jacobson@uiowa.edu. Thanks to everyone for their contributions this year.