Reading Matters, Vol. 11, Issue 8

From (under) the Chair's Desk

Two items of the moment merit treatment in separate articles below. One is the latest statistical profile of the English Department. These statistics are compiled by the Registrar’s Office based on a snapshot of registration three weeks into the fall semester. The 2005 report was recently released and those details that concern the English Department are abstracted below. Meanwhile, the Vice President for Research and Office of the Provost has released its latest call for Arts and Humanities Initiative (AHI) proposals. This program has been a boon to many English faculty, successfully supporting their research efforts. I include details below aimed in particular at familiarizing those faculty who have not yet taken advantage of this program.

One other important piece of business is still developing with the end of the semester: the midyear salary raises. The Dean has now mandated that updated salary letters must be delivered to all tenure-track and tenured faculty on January 4, 2006. Letters will be available in your EPB mailbox on that date. For details about the process, see here and here. As these documents make clear, any midyear increment will come into effect on January 1 and will first be visible in paychecks dated February 1. Since these raises are a continuation of the summer 2005 raise, they are not applicable to new faculty. Provost and Dean emphasize that this is the first year of a planned four year emphasis on raising faculty salaries. While I am delighted to see more money go into this initiative, the midyear raises have been both awkward and relatively expensive to administer. I’m relieved to report that both the Dean and the Vice-President for Finances have emphasized that they do not foresee such midyear raises being part of the process in subsequent years.

In other news, I am delighted to report that the department’s offer of a tenure-track assistant professor position to Jeff Porter has been authorized. The offer is currently in process and I will notify faculty as soon as it is fully finalized. And congratulations to Florence Boos, who will be the commencement speaker at this week’s Graduate College commencement. Among those graduating with Ph.D.s will be three students from the department:

Statistics Matter

The latest Profile of Students Enrolled at Iowa has been released by the Registrar’s Office and contains a snapshot of our department. Here are the vital statistics.

We now have some 1018 declared undergraduate majors (compared with 998 last year), 438 men and 580 women. 851 of them declared English as their first major and there is additional statistical information about those students which indicates that 78 are minorities and 0 are foreign (compared with 56 and 1 last year). Those 1018 majors constitute some 6.4% of the 16,090 undergraduates registered in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The Department of English awarded some 246 B.A. degrees in 2004-05 (compared with 238 in 2003-04).

We now have 116 registered graduate students in the English Department, which includes the nonfiction writing program but excludes creative writing (compared with 111 last year) of whom 55 are men and 61 are women. 10 of these folks are recorded as minorities and 6 as foreign students (compared with 14 and 6 last year). Those 116 graduate students represent some 2.2% of the 5,347 registered in the Graduate College. In 2004-05, we awarded 10 M.A. and MFA degrees and 11 Ph.D.s (compared with 9 and 7 last year).

Faculty numbers are not part of the Registrar’s statistical profile, but in case these statistics have whetted your appetite, here’s my understanding of the current size and shape of English Department permanent faculty. We currently have 55 faculty with more than a 0% appointment in English, 22 full professors, 19 associate professors, 11 assistant professors, and 3 lecturers. A number of these folks currently have partial appointments in other departments or not full-time appointments. Taking only the percentage of the appointments in English, we have some 46.75 full-time equivalents, or 44.75 FTE tenured or tenure track faculty. That represents some 7% of the 637 tenured or tenure track FTE within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

I’ll try to keep giving you data about the English Department as it comes my way as one way of keeping track of a sense of ourselves as a group.

Research Support Matters

The Office of the Vice President for Research and the Provost have announced a call for applications for the 2006-07 Arts and Humanities Initiative (AHI). This is a wonderful initiative within the University of Iowa to support scholarship in the humanities and arts and I strongly recommend it to all English faculty. Application for projects to be conducted between July 2006 and June 2007 are due by February 6, 2006. Full details and a link to the electronic application form are available here.

There are three different kinds of AHI awards. One which is particularly well suited for the needs of English faculty is the AHI standard grant, which allows you to apply for up to $7,500 in research support for pursuing a research project in the humanities. You may apply for up to $6,000 of this as summer salary to support your research. Virtually all English faculty are therefore eligible to apply for this salary to support precisely the research that we are all engaged in by virtue of being English faculty at a research institution. Other research expenses, including travel to collections or purchasing crucial material, can also be supported. Every English faculty member is eligible except for those who received an AHI award in 2005-06. Also available are AHI Conference Grants (for up to $10,000) and AHI Major Project Grants (for up to $50,000), details of which programs are on the website.

The application procedure for these awards is not very burdensome. You need to provide a project summary, a narrative of up to five pages describing the project, a budget, and an abbreviated cv (full details on the website). Gayle would be happy to help anyone with the budget and I would be happy to help anyone with the project narrative. Awards are competitive, but I know that English faculty have been well served by these awards in the past. I strongly recommend that everyone consider applying for a program that is one of this university’s great ways of supporting the humanities!

On a related note, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has launched a new part of their website dedicated to research (available with one click from their main home-page). In addition to highlighting current research in the College, this has a useful section on Funding Opportunities for research.

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Ed Folsom will be speaking at the "Editing Whitman" session at MLA on December 29 in a program arranged by the Association for Documentary Editing. His new catalog/commentary, Whitman Making Books / Books Making Whitman, is now available at the UI Art Museum store, and the "Whitman Making Books" exhibit at the museum continues through February 12.

Tom Lutz writes:

I have just accepted an invitation to join the board of PEN USA.

In June I will be doing a reading from Doing Nothing at the Los Angeles Public Library’s ALOUD reading series, during which, as a backdrop, my son Cody will lounge on a couch with his iPod in his ears, continually cycling through the TV dial with a remote; I will be in my writing uniform of PJs, bathrobe, bad hair, three days of beard, & slippers, to which, just for effect, I am going to add an oversized brandy snifter.

Center for the Book

Matt Brown sends news from the UI Center for the Book: “This fall has seen a number of activities reflecting the UICB’s diverse inquiries. We have initiated the Book Studies Workshop, a for-credit weekly meeting to discuss student art-work, present on-going research, hear from visiting speakers, and read book studies scholarship. Field trips led us to the UI Main Library’s Special Collections and Conservation Lab, and to TruArt, the job printing facility southeast of Iowa City. Readings for the workshop have included essays by George Bornstein, Johanna Drucker, James O’Donnell, Patricia Crain, and William Gass. The Whitman Making Books / Books Making Whitman symposium/exhibit was not only keynoted by the Center’s Brownell lecturer Ezra Greenspan, but also featured the work of current and former students and instructors. Certificate graduate Amy Hezel (2005) returned to give a paper at the symposium based on research for her UICB Final Project. Current Certificate student Sarah McCoy (SAAH MFA candidate) created the graphics for conference posters, while UICB Printing Specialist Sara Sauers designed the exhibit’s catalogue. Individual student achievements included Jessica DeSpain (UICB Certificate and English PhD candidate) receiving a Rare Book School scholarship to attend an RBS session in New York on 19th-century printing and Jeremy Chen (UICB Certificate and SAAH MFA candidate) exhibiting his print work at Kirkwood.”

Dec. 17 (Sat.), 4:30 p.m., FERAL!, 114 1/2 College St. (Hall Mall) - Poet Laureate of Iowa, Robert Dana, will read at an Open House and Benefit event for the Johnson County Humane Society. More details here.

Jan. 19 (Thr.), 5-7 p.m., Minnesota Room (No. 347), Iowa Memorial Union - Mbulelo Mzamane, South African scholar, author, and human rights activist, will discuss "The Pan African Movement and Cultural Affirmation." Sponsored in part by the English Dept. More details here.

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

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

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

Mar. 3 (Fri.), 4:00 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Talk by Mark Hansen, Univ. of Chicago

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. 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.

April 27 (Thr.), 3:30-5:00 p.m., State Room, IMU (Please note the change of location this year) - Undergraduate Honors Awards Ceremony

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 (the first issue of the Spring 2006 semester) by 5 p.m. on Tue., Jan 24. Thanks very much.