Reading Matters, Vol. 11, Issue 10

From (under) the Chair's Desk

I have news on a range of issues that might be worth sharing, even though everything seems to be still in process, with nothing fully resolved as yet.

First, on the budget. At a recent DEO meeting, Dean Maxson gave us some sense of the 06-07 budget, and I worry that this news anticipates the tenor of next year. At the moment, the university is still in negotiation with the state but, if you take an optimistic position and assume the governor gets what he is asking for, the university budget still looks somewhat problematic. Essentially, the projected budget will fund what we are currently doing, but the Provost is still speaking loudly about making faculty pay raises a priority, yet the new budget does not seem to have the money for doing that. The good news is that Dean Maxson is proceeding on the assumption that there will be money for faculty raises – hence the call for cvs (due to Cherie Rieskamp by Tuesday, February 14). The bad news is that Linda sees such raises getting financed through significant reallocation of funds within the College. This means that almost all non-faculty-salary budgets in the College will likely be shrinking. We may, in particular, have trouble getting as many visitor lines as we would like, while money for discretionary activity will be tight. And the prospect for new hires looks slight indeed.

Next to our searches. I presented to Dean Maxson the department’s desire to make three appointments in the African American literature and culture search and our considered reasons for doing so. Once she had finished laughing in my face and then lamenting that she has no budget, I’m pleased to say that she really has taken our request seriously, probing about the teaching they would take on (I could reassure her about our range of needs), and what this would do for the structure of our department (I could stress the versatility and capaciousness of our major and our ability to foster a new cluster). At the time of writing, I’m not sure that we will be able to make all three offers, but I am hopeful. More on this as it develops.

And then to grad. funding. Dean Curto has just released to us the allocation for Teaching Assistants in General Education Literature and the cut there is not as bad as we had feared. There will be a total reduction of two HTE positions, but this will be mostly absorbed by the scaling back of the African American World Studies program, which will no longer have graduate students in the program and so will not need the 1.67 HTEs that are currently allotted to them. Effectively, then, GenEdLit will be able to employ approximately the same number of graduate students from the various programs that feed into it as last year (less just one section). The same is true of the English Department’s own graduate TA budget, which mostly goes to Nonfiction Writing, and which is pegged at the same number as last year. We haven’t yet heard how Rhetoric has fared, but the only place where we are currently seeing a significant cut is in the Graduate College’s Block Allocation that funds Research Assistants. That budget has been cut this year by one third, as the Graduate College had earlier threatened. This is likely to significantly impact the availability of RAs to faculty, while it also risks diminishing the number of incoming Ph.D. students we can fund. Garrett Stewart, this year’s director of the admissions committee, has been sending in some stellar applications for Presidential Fellows and Dean’s Fellows from the incoming class, and it is to be hoped that these will partly make up for the shortfall in funding first-year graduate students, but we may well need to slightly shrink the incoming graduate class.

That’s the news as I currently know it. I’ll let you know of updates as they develop. And thanks, all, for your involvement in the searches and in the committees that allow us to pursue these initiatives.

News Matters

Latham Quoted In Story On Auto Industry Woes (The London Observer, Jan. 29)

A story detailing the seeming collapse of the U.S. auto industry suggests that America's love affair with cars ended in the 1970s with the Oil Shock. Suddenly America -- and its cars -- were vulnerable. Rob Latham, a popular culture expert at the University of Iowa, was given his first car at the same time. "It was a 1963 Chevy Malibu convertible. I was 16 years old, driving this huge gas guzzler right through the middle of the oil crisis when you were only allowed to buy petrol every other day. It was nuts," he said. "I later wrapped it around a telephone pole, but I loved that car." He now drives a Subaru. A version of the story also ran on the Websites AUTOBLOG in California and the MAIL & GUARDIAN ONLINE, South Africa.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1697517,00.html

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Gina Bloom and Doug Trevor both have articles (Bloom: "Words Made of Breath: Gender and Vocal Agency in King John"; Trevor: "Love, Humoralism, and “Soft” Psychoanalysis") appearing in the current issue of Shakespeare Studies.

Matt Brown will give a talk titled “Franklin’s Beat” at the 20th annual DeBartolo Conference on Eighteenth-Century Studies, a meeting devoted this year to “The Book” and held in mid-February at the University of South Florida. He has been invited by Northwestern University’s Early Modern Colloquium and American Cultures Colloquium to discuss his recent PMLA article, at a joint meeting of the groups in March.

Congratulations to Barbara Eckstein on an International Programs Curriculum Development Grant for her course "Over There and Coming Home" on war and the veterans of foreign wars.

Carl Klaus's new book Letters to Kate: Life after Life will be published in March by the University of Iowa Press. Carl will be reading from the book at Live from Prairie Lights on March 28 (see calendar below for full details). From the presses website: "During his first year without Kate, Carl writes himself into the life that comes after the life he loved. From days of grief in the darkness of a midwestern winter, to springtime, with a return to life in the garden and a memorial service for Kate on a sunny afternoon, to fall, with a pilgrimage to their favorite vacation spot in Hawaii, Carl documents his year-long experience of remembering, meditating, and evolving a new life. Individually his letters provide the insights of a master diarist; collectively, they have the arc of a master essayist."

Congratulations to Bill Kupersmith, whose manuscript, English Imitations of Latin Verse Satire in the Earlier Eighteenth Century, has been accepted for publication by the University of Delaware Press.

Philological Matters

David Chioni Moore, associate professor of International Studies and English at Macalester College has been studying the history of “postcolonial” as a concept. He recently wrote the following to Peter Nazareth:

“The word ‘post-colonial’ as a neutral descriptive term goes back a century or more, referring to all manner of things from the early American republic to Latin America and more. But you may be interested to know that, as far as my research on the more-specific term ‘post-colonialism’ has revealed, you were the first person to put that word into print, in a letter to Transition 19 in 1965.”

Here is the relevant passage from that letter: “The review by M.M. Carlin of Weep Not, Child and the article by J.P. Clark, indeed the whole of Transition 18, give rise to that ever-nagging question: can the African writer in a period of colonialism, nationalism, and post-colonialism remain uncommitted? If so, is it desirable that he should remain uncommitted?”

Moore has written to the OED editors, in fact, wanting them to credit Peter for this early use of the term—and also letting them know that Peter, attributing the word to the Ugandan writers Pio Zirimu, used the word “orature” in print in an earlier instance than that list in the OED. The OED currently credits Jerry W. Ward with the first use of the term, while the Spring 1976 issue of Issue documents Peter's earlier use.

Moore cautions that the OED “does not trace the history of combination forms such as postcolonialism,” but perhaps Peter will be showing up in the online edition for “orature” before too long.

Montpellier Matters (from Barbara Eckstein)

Notre Madame à Montpellier écrit: Last Thursday L’Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (L’UNEF) launched a demonstration protesting the French government’s Contrat Première Embauche. Representing students of all institutions of higher learning in the country, L’UNEF asserts that this new Contract is an assault on the stability of young people’s lives. The Contrat, a measure meant to address high employment, especially among young people, tells employers that anyone under twenty-six years of age may be hired without benefits or notification of lay-off or any of the other necessities and amenities labor has fought for over time. As the L’UNEF sees it, this contract, pandering to the dictates of the European Union, drives a wedge between the generations and forces young people to be yet more dependent upon their parents for more years. This in addition to forcing upon them the role of hired hand.

On the campus of Université Paul-Valéry the demonstration took a familiar form. A young man spoke passionately through a bullhorn as his few supporters listened earnestly. A small number of other students stood at a distance, detached and passingly attentive. Most, however, hurried about their business with cellphones and cigarettes in hand.

Downtown in the Centre Ville it was another matter. A large contingent of students led a march of three thousand down the middle of the major arterial auto route around the old quarter, ending on the tracks of the tram in the central plaza. Behind the students were public employees of all ages, all with professionally made banners carefully unfurled for the occasion. (When the demonstration was over, I saw some of these same middle-aged public employees with their banners rewound, heading home, one at a time, back through the rush-hour pedestrian crowd, another day’s work done.)

Cars backed up from the center of the city in all directions, but I heard no honking horns. Tram riders like myself walked the line we usually ride. Without any audible or visible protest and little obvious confusion, elderly people, high school students, parents with children on their shoulders walked. Someone later suggested to me that the absence of complaint may be the result of living in a city long known for its leftist politics. I don’t know. I know that at Rives du Lez the trams began to reappear. People climbed aboard, unperturbed.

I have seen one other strike in my month here and that for only two hours. Tram drivers stopped work one afternoon following an attack on one of the drivers the previous night. The assault seemed to be duly noted, and then tram traffic continued.

The risk to the young people here is not the only one abroad and far from resolved, as best I can make out. At the North African market on Saturday morning a man handed me another flyer accompanied by an impassioned explanation too quick for my feeble French ear. From the flyer I take it that young people are not the only ones threatened by concurrence libre (free enterprise). The local vintners of Languedoc have been told by the government that thousands of hectares of vineyards will be uprooted. The reasons for this are not spelled out in my flyer. What it does say is that 1000 signatures of protest were collected at the meeting of regional vintners, they have the support of various local elected officials from Narbonne to Avignon, and they are marching on Paris on February 15th with the students and their supporters.

au revoir!
Barbara

Jan. 27 (Fri.) - deadline for applying for Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professorships Program 2006-07 (http://www.uiowa.edu/~provost/idabeam/)

Feb. 6 (Wed.), 7:30 p.m., Aliber/Hillel Jewish Student Center, 122 E. Market St. (corner of Market and Dubuque) - Klezmer Concert in memory of Robert Paredes (1948-2005) featuring the Iowa Klezmer Band—Oleg Timofeyev (guitar) and Natalia Timoveyeva (cello)—and New York musicians Yale Strom (violin) and Norbert Stachel (clarinet)

Feb. 7 (Tue.) – Feb. 11 (Sat.) Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Shirley Brice Heath, the Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic Literature at Stanford University, will be visiting campus. More details and some of her articles are available here.

Feb. 8 (Wed.), 4:30-6:00, Jones Common, College of Education – Shirley Brice Heath will give a talk on language and learning, specifically the linguistic components of apprenticeship models of learning titled “Sustaining Learning and Language: Forgotten in Education?” Reception to follow. More information available here.

Feb. 9 (Thr.), 4:30-5:15 p.m., Art Museum – Showing of Shirley Brice Heath’s documentary film ArtShow, a prize-winning documentary that describes 4 youth-based arts organizations in the United States. More information available here.

Feb. 9 (Thr.), 5:30-6:30 p.m., Art Museum – Lecture by Shirley Brice Heath: “Art and Science: Companions in Learning for Society.” Reception to follow. More information available here.

Feb. 10 (Fri.), 5:00-7:00 – Radio interview of Shirley Brice Heath by Joan Kjaer of Know the Score. Also featured on this program will be Miriam Gilbert, talking about the current University production of Love's Labours Lost. Listen on KSUI 91.7FM or attend the event at the University of Iowa Museum of Art.

Feb. 11 (Sat.), 10:00 a.m.-noon, Jones Common, College of Education – Final debriefing with Shirley Brice Heath, who will “engage the audience in an interactive discussion of her impressions of strengths and possible areas for further development in university/community learning collaborations in the Iowa City area.” More information available here.

Feb. 17 (Fri.), 4 p.m., Shambaugh House (corner of Clinton and Fairchild) - Poet Dean Young will launch the new Iowa Writers' Workshop Faculty Lecture Series with a presentation about "Surrealism."

Feb. 20 (Mon.) - submission deadline for the Spring Iowa Research Experiences for Undergraduates (IREU) competition (http://research.uiowa.edu/ifi/)

Feb. 23 (Thr.),1-5 p.m., Northwestern Room (No. 345), Iowa Memorial Union - Publishing a Scholarly Book seminar

Feb. 27 (Mon.), 12-1:30 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss Gina Bloom’s "'Boy Eternal': Aging, Games, and Early Modern English Masculinity." Gina’s paper will be available for photocopying in 308 EPB or by emailing her at gina-bloom@uiowa.edu.

Mar. 2 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Promotion and Review Meeting: DCG Meeting to discuss 3rd-year review of Lara Trubowitz

Mar. 2 (Thr.), 5-6 p.m., Art Building E109 - Talk by Tom Gretton, Professor of Art History at University College London: “Aftermath and New Dawn: The Role of the Artist in the Graphic Work of J.-L. David and N.T. Charlet, 1815 – 1830." This talk is part of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Colloquium. More details here.

Mar. 3 (Fri.), 4:00 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Mark Hansen, Professor of English at the University of Chicago and author of Embodying Technesis and New Philosophy for New Media, will give this spring's Freedman Lecture. Professor Hansen will speak on the phenomenology of real-time media in a lecture and video presentation entitled "The Politics of Presencing."

Mar. 3-4 (Fri.-Sat.) - 2006 Liberalism and Its Legacies: A Conference on Latin American History in Honor of Charles A. Hale. Conference information and program available here. Organized by Claire Fox.

Mar. 20 (Mon.), 12-1:30 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss Doug Trevor’s "Quaker Love: The Case of Margaret Fell."

Mar. 20 (Mon.), 4-5 p.m., 315 Phillips Hall - Talk by Caroline Webber, Professor of French at Barnard College, Columbia University: “Marie Antoinette’s Catastrophic Costumes.” This talk is part of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Colloquium. More details here.

Mar. 28 (Tue.), 7 p.m., Shambaugh Auditorium - Carl Klaus will read from his new book Letters to Kate: Life after Life at Live from Prairie Lights. The reading will be broadcast live on WSUI, 910 AM.

Mar. 29 (Wed.) - Talk by Walter Benn Michaels: “Never Again: Neoliberalism and the Persistence of the Holocaust." Michaels is Professor and Chair of the English Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is author of The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History, Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism, The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism, and numerous articles on American literature, literary theory, and cultural studies.

Apr. 3 (Mon.), 12-1:30 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss Alvin Snider’s "Lucy Hutchinson and the Lucretian Body: Order and Disorder."

Apr. 25 (Tue.), 7 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Talk by Susan Bernstein, Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison: "Roomscapes: Women Writers in the British Museum from George Eliot to Virginia Woolf." This talk is part of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Colloquium. More details here.

April 27 (Thr.), 3:30-5:00 p.m., Willis Atrium, UI Museum of Art (Please note the change of location this year) - Undergraduate Honors Awards Ceremony

May 1 (Mon.), 12-1:30 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss Mark Dowdy’s "Vagrancy and the Professional Theater."

Other Calendars

Future Issues

Please send any items for Reading Matters or the departmental calendar to Carolyn Jacobson at carolyn-jacobson@uiowa.edu. Reading Matters will appear every other Wednesday, and submissions should be received by 5 p.m. on the preceding Tuesday. Please send submissions for the next issue by 5 p.m. on Tue., Feb. 21. Thanks very much.