Reading Matters, Vol. 12, Issue 1, September 1, 2006
From (under) the Chair's Desk
Welcome, once again, to the new academic year, and a special welcome
to Lena, Michael, Jeff, and Miriam (in absentia). And,
after a successful year of faculty reviews, congratulations to Barbara,
Patricia, and Judith on their promotion to full professor,
and to Lori and Kathy on their promotion to associate
professor with tenure. Our 55 faculty (47.85 FTE) are now comprised
of 24 full professors, 19 associate professors, 12 assistant professors,
along with two lecturers. Congratulations, too, to Horace Porter
for being named an F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor; to Claire
Fox, who will be beginning her Faculty Scholar research leaves
in the spring; to Judith Pascoe, who will be taking
an ACLS research fellowship all year; to Miriam Thaggert,
who will be researching as a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at
Yale for the year; to Kathleen Diffley, who won the
Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award; and to Barbara Eckstein,
who won the Brody Award for exceptional service to the UI towards the
end of last year. I look forward to sharing news of this year’s
achievements as they happen in the electrons of Reading Matters.
Last week’s Chronicle of Higher Education contained the Higher
Education Almanac, which provides an interesting framework for contextualizing
our department and university. Our 1027 majors are a small contribution
to the 17,272,044 students currently enrolled in universities and colleges
nationwide. I’m intrigued that some 46% of 2004 high school graduates
enrolled in college. The enrollment of minority students nationwide
at public 4-year institutions last year was 26.9%, while in Iowa that
figure was 8.4% The UI’s 25th position in the USNWR rankings looks
better knowing that there are 639 Public 4-year Institutions of Higher
Education. Our Fall 2004 enrollment of some 28,000 students made us
the 60th largest institution, smaller than most Big Ten schools and
dwarfed by Ohio State with its 51,000 students. Guess the institution
with the largest enrollment, though? The University of Phoenix online
campus, with 115,794 students makes even Ohio State look small. There’s
a number that must give pause to the UI’s Guided Correspondence
Courses! Our library ranks 31st in the nation, with some 4.5 million
volumes. Meanwhile, our departmental average time to completion for
the Ph.D. at about 8 years compares favorably with the median number
of years humanities Ph.D.s were registered as graduate students, namely
9.7 years! Look for more numbers in a subsequent Reading Matters as
the university makes an official count of its 2006-07 enrollment.
As you ponder the upcoming year, here’s a list of some of the
key issues that I see us needing to face as a department:
- Funding of graduate students. The end of the Block Allocation from the Graduate
College next year, and therefore the end of all funding for Research Assistants,
is likely to really harm our ability to recruit the outstanding graduate students
whose presence in the program we all so appreciate. We need to figure out
alternative sources of funding at a time when reviews of graduate programs
by both the Graduate College and CLAS will focus our attention in that direction.
- Outcomes assessment. We are going to need a statement of intended learning
outcomes for the major followed by a complete assessment plan during the academic
year. This is something we will discuss as a department and get started at
a full faculty meeting on Thursday, September 28.
- This year will see a review of the journals housed in the department, which
will be crucial to their continued funding, as the funding for their Research
Assistants otherwise comes to an end.
- The Gateway Course will be meeting throughout the year, chaired by Laura
Rigal and including Lori Branch, Matt Brown, and Rob Latham, turning that
idea into a reality, with a Gateway Course for English majors taught for the
first time in Fall 2007. We can expect the committee to report to the department
in spring.
- A new exchange with Strathclyde University is under development which may
be able to function alongside our existing exchange with the University of
Montpellier.
Meanwhile, have you noticed the big change that now greets you when
you reach the third floor of EPB? A noticeboard that declares the English
Department! How about that for self-definition?
Here’s looking forward to another year with never a dull moment,
as seen from underneath the chair’s desk.
Conviviality Matters
We now have partial clarification on the new policy around food
and drink. Here is Dean Maxson’s explanation:
Beginning September 30, expenditures for food, beverages, gifts, or other
purchases may be paid directly from UI Foundation accounts only if they
are directly related to fundraising activities. Please read carefully the
information on the Foundation’s website regarding this
new
policy.
For all other payments to be made with funds in UI Foundation accounts,
departments must first transfer the funds into UI accounts and then make
the payments from those accounts. If a purchase on a UI account is for food
or beverages, departments must obtain pre-approval from the Dean’s
Office, using the
form
on the CLAS website. The requirement of pre-approval will continue to be
strictly enforced.
It will continue to be the case that food can only be funded for somewhat
limited reasons and alcohol can only be funded from foundation accounts
and only served in non-teaching buildings; there is now the added requirement
that every single food and drink expenditure be pre-approved by the Dean.
The effect of this accounting change is to make all such expenses visible
and the Dean has explained that she will only authorize reasonable expenses,
i.e. things we don’t mind seeing on the front page of the Daily Iowan.
If you are planning on spending any university money from any account on
any food or drink after September 30, please be aware that you now need
pre-approval signed by both myself and Dean Maxson.
And let me remind you of the English Department fall reception, before
that date, on Saturday, September 16, from 5:30 p.m. at my house, 404 Linder
Road.
Handy Matters
With copious thanks to Elizabeth, Gayle, Cherie, Sharry, and Linda for
their herculean efforts, the brand new ENGLISH FACULTY HANDBOOK
contains everything a faculty member could ever need to know. The handbook
is a Microsoft Word document on the shared English Department drive. To
view it from a computer in EPB:
• Open the shared drive (for Windows users that is the L: drive;
within Word, click on File Open, click on My Computer, click on "Department
on 'iowadata02iowa.uiowa.edu\Clas\English' (L:)").
• Open the English Handbook folder.
• Open the "English Faculty Handbook" file.
The table of contents was created using hyperlinks, and the web addresses
and email addresses within the document also have hyperlinks. Slowly move
your cursor over any of these items, and you will be able to "jump"
to any of these items by following the displayed tip.
Other files you will find in the shared English Handbook folder are:
• The Department’s Manual of Operations and Procedures
• Faculty Review Procedures
• The "Guest/Visitor/Lecturer Checklist"
• Departmental (including NWP) letterhead for both Windows and Macintosh
workstations
If you have difficulty opening any of these files, please contact Dianne
Jones (dianne-jones@uiowa.edu or 5-1693). Dianne can also help you add a
short cut to your desktop for any of these files. You can e-mail the handbook
file to yourself as an attachment if you would like a copy on your home
machine.
Research Support Matters
As we face severe limitations in the number of funded graduate Research
Assistants, the English Department will continue this year to provide an
undergraduate copying service for research materials for faculty.
English Department front desk student employees in 308 EPB will copy material
that is left for them by faculty for help with their research. You need
to leave material at the front desk along with your copying number and allow
at least a couple of days. Copying must be legal within the constraints
of copyright. In addition, a team of front desk and ITC lab student employees
will locate and copy materials in the UI Libraries to facilitate faculty
research. The copying team will comprise non-specialist undergraduate students,
some not English majors, who are taking full undergraduate loads and already
working 10+ hours in the English Department or ITC lab. Faculty will therefore
need to give precise reference information and allow significant time for
the work to be copied (i.e. about two weeks). To make use of the service,
faculty need to fill out a form available at the front desk of 308 EPB.
You can download the form as a Word
document or as a
fill-and-print .pdf document. All copying requested must be legal within
the constraints of copyright.
Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters
Ed Folsom will be giving the annual Walter Harding
Lecture at the State University of New York, College at Geneseo, on
September 21.
News Matters
The 2006 issue of Illumine, a publication of the Office
of the Vice President for Research, featured an article about
the Obermann Center's Interdisciplinary Research Seminar on animals
organized by Teresa Mangum and Jane Desmond.
The article, with its striking photos, is available here.
In July, the Daily Iowan ran two articles (available here
and here)
about the Horvat Collection of science fiction fanzines recently
acquired by the Special Collections at the University Library,
where the newly created Digital Collections Department is beginning
to digitize them. Rob Latham, who helped bring
the collection to the UI and who is now working on the collection,
describes the fanzine's unique value to scholars of Science Fiction.
This summer, the UI News Service reported:
UI Professors To Present 'A Wilde Night At The Theatre' In Des
Moines: "Two University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and
Sciences professors will be the featured speakers in the June
installment of the Terrace Hill Lecture Series at the Governor's
Mansion in Des Moines. Husband and wife team Corey Creekmur,
associate professor of English and cinema and comparative literature,
and Teresa Mangum, associate professor of English
and international programs, will present 'A Wilde Night at the
Theatre' at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 13, in the carriage house at
Terrace Hill, 2300 Grand Ave., Des Moines.
NWP Matters
8N:20 (the NWP intro course for nonmajors) was awarded Gen Ed
status in the Fine Arts Category. It's now known as "Introduction
to Creative Nonfiction." There will be a fairly modest number
of sections next year (four a semester), but the designation pretty
much assures that the course will be around for a long time. And,
of course, it's good for the NWP as a whole.
Aviya Kushner (MFA, 2005) sold her thesis- turned-book
"And There Was Evening, And There Was Morning" to Doubleday.
Whitman Matters
The Walt Whitman Archive, co-directed by Ed
Folsom, has won the 2006 C. F. W. Coker Award, presented
by the Society
of American Archivists, for "innovative development in
archival description" and for "setting national standards,
representing a model for archival description, and having a substantial
impact on national descriptive practice." The award singled
out the Whitman Archive's integrated guide to the poet's manuscripts,
which brings together thousands of poetry manuscripts from nearly
a hundred different archives and presents them in a "searchable,
browsable, comprehensible form through the use of Encoded Archival
Description." See their press
release for more details.
Graduate Matters
On July 28, 2006, Sean
Scanlan took part in a live call-in show on Minnesota Public Radio
on 100 years of consumer spending and nostalgia titled: "Return of
the Good Old Days." The catalyst of the show was a recent government
study that shows Americans earn more, spend less on necessities, and have
a much higher standard of living than they did 100 years ago. So why do
people tend to view the past as a simpler, easier time? Sean was invited
due to his research on nostalgia--see Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies
5 (fall 2004). Kerri Miller hosted two guests besides Sean: Meg Jacobs,
Associate professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and Michael Dolfman, Regional commissioner for the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, based in New York. You can listen to the archived show here.
Sean also recently wrote two editorials for the Press-Citizen: Bicycling
Is Street Legal and Lance
and RAGBRAI: Who Cares?
Teaching Matters
Mark Ishham has written a short piece about his experiences
in the Service Learning Institute this summer. He begins: "This summer
I participated in the Service Learning Institute sponsored by the University
of Iowa Center for Teaching. I did not anticipate how much service learning
would involve me in thinking deeply about the nature of education (learning)
and connections with the community (service). Another unanticipated result
of my service learning involvement was how much I begin thinking about my
old teacher Sherman Paul and the Emersonian tradition." You can read
Mark's entire piece here.
Centennial Matters
The following memo is from Dean Maxson concerning celebrations
of the centennial of the School of Art and Art History
and of the School of Music.
September 8, 2006
Please join the School of Art and Art History (http://www.art.uiowa.edu/)
in a celebration of one hundred years of instruction in
the visual arts and of the dedication of the spectacular
new art and art history building, Art Building West, on
Friday, September 8, 2006. Special activities will include
a faculty auction benefit exhibition, an online exhibit
of alumni work, and a symposium with architect Steven
Holl, sculptor Vito Acconci (MFA ‘64 English), and
Professor Michael Bell of Columbia University. The symposium
runs from 1:30-3:00 p.m. and the dedication will begin
at 4:00 p.m. Both the symposium and dedication will be
held in the second floor auditorium. Self-guided building
tours will take place from 3:00-4:00 p.m. and from 4:30-5:30
p.m. Art Building West is located directly across Riverside
Drive from the UI Museum of Art.
September 9, 2006
On Saturday, September 9, 2006, the School of Music will
kick-off a year-long celebration of its centennial with
an open house in the Voxman Music Building featuring a
gallery opening of a permanent art display in the Clapp
Hall lobby. This will be followed by a banquet and a concert
in Hancher Auditorium featuring the UI Symphony, Band,
Choirs, and the Johnson County Landmark. A commemorative
program book will feature Professor Emeritus Fredrick
Crane’s history of the school. Ticket information
is available online at www.hancher.uiowa.edu/tickets.
The year’s complete schedule, which showcases many
of the department’s alumni, is available at http://www.uiowa.edu/~music/.
Know the Score LIVE! on September 8
In addition, on September 8 from 5:00-7:00 p.m., the live
radio program, Know the Score LIVE! on KSUI 91.7 FM, will
focus on both the School of Music (from 5:00-6:00 p.m.)
and the School of Art and Art History (from 6:00-7:00
p.m.). http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/events/2006/09/8kts.shtml
2006 Saturday Scholars Series Begins September
2
Dorothy Johnson, Roy J. Carver Professor and Director
of the School of Art and Art History, will lead off the
fall line-up of the college’s annual public lecture
series, Saturday Scholars. Her talk, “Architecture
as Art: Steven Holl’s New Home for the School of
Art and Art History,” will take place on September
2 at 10 a.m. in 40 Schaeffer Hall. Two School of Music
faculty will help celebrate the School of Music centennial
during the series. John Rapson will speak on September
16 on “The Curious Appearance of Jazz and Improvisation
in the 20th Century” and Timothy Stalter’s
lecture, “Waving Your Arms: A Conductor Struggles
to be Understood” will take place on October 14.
See http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/alumni/saturday_scholars/index.shtml
for more information.
Sept. 1 (Fri.) – Spring developmental reports due. Details
here.
Sept. 8 (Fri.) – Career Development Award Applications due.
Details here.
Sept.
8 (Fri.), 10 a.m., The Java House – Tom Lutz will discuss
his latest book, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers,
and Bums in America, and perform with his band Blue Tuna during the weekly
broadcast of "Talk of
Iowa Live from the Java House." The show will also be broadcast live
on WSUI, 910 AM.
Sept. 12 (Tue.), 7 p.m., Prairie Lights Bookstore – Tom Lutz
will read from Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers,
and Bums in America on Live
from Prairie Lights. The show will also be broadcast live on WSUI, 910 AM.
Sept. 15 (Fri.) – Faculty Scholar Awards (and Global Scholar)
Applications due. Details here.
Sept. 15 (Fri.), 4 p.m., Old Capitol Senate Chambers – A lecture by former
assistant professor in our department, currently Professor Emeritus in English
and Comparative Literature at Yale, Geoffrey Hartman, on the
occasion of his winning the 2006 Truman Capote Prize in Literary Criticism.
Champagne reception to follow.
Sept. 16 (Sat.), 5:30 p.m., 404 Linder Rd. – English Department
Fall Reception
Sept. 22 (Fri.), 3-4 p.m., North Exhibition Hall of the Mail Library –
Reception for Kathy Magarrell, coordinator of Instructional
Services at the UI Libraries, recipient of the Arthur Benton Excellence in Reference
Services Professional Development Award
Sept.
26 (Tue.), 7 p.m., Prairie Lights – David Hamilton will be reading from
Ossabaw,
his collection of poems, on Live
from Prairie Lights. The show will be broadcast live on WSUI, 910 AM.
Sept. 28 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Full Department Meeting:
Outcomes Assessment
Oct. 3 (Tue.), Time and location TBA – Talk by Paula Gunn Allen,
Ida Beam Visiting Scholar. She is the author of many works in American Indian
Studies, including the recent Pocahontas:
Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (Harper Collins, 2003). Her
visit is being organized by the American Indian & Native Studies Program.
Oct. 13 (Fri.), 3 p.m., Gerber Lounge – David Shumway
will give a talk titled "A New Kind of Star: Rock & Roll and the Politicization
of Celebrity." Shumway is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at
Carnegie Mellon Univ., and one of the founders of the Cultural Studies Association
of the US. He is author of Creating American Civilization: A Genealogy of
American Literature as an Academic Discipline (Minnesota) and Modern
Love: Marriage, Intimacy, and the Marriage Crisis (NYU), and he is completing
a book to be called Classic Rockers: The Cultural Significance of the Stars.
Oct. 12 (Thr.) – Margaret Ezell will give the Brownell
lecture.
Oct. 19 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Full Department Meeting
Oct. 20 (Fri.), 3 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Talk by John Carlos Rowe,
Univ. of Southern California
Nov. 2 (Thr.), 7:30 p.m., Gerber Lounge – This year's Freedman Lecture
will be given by Bill Brown, Univ. of Chicago. His talk will
be titled "Novel Objects: Object Relations in an Expanded Field."
Professor Brown is the author of The Material Unconscious: American Amusements,
Stephen Crane, and the Economics of Play (Harvard, 1996) and the award-winning
A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature (Chicago,
2003), as well as the similarly award-winning PMLA essay on the theological
overtones, in part, of Freedman veteran Fredric Jameson’s work, called
“The Dark Wood of Postmodernity (Space, Faith, Allegory)” (May 2005),
plus any number of influential position papers on materialist cultural studies,
both in Critical Inquiry, which he co-edits, and elsewhere. A reception
at 419 S. Summit St. will follow.
Nov. 3 (Fri.), 3:45-5:30, Gerber Lounge – Open seminar with Bill
Brown (see above) on the subject of "Commodity Nationalism and
the Lost Object"
Nov. 16 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge – DCG Meeting
to discuss promotion and tenure cases
Nov. 30 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge – DCG Meeting
to discuss promotion and tenure cases and fifth-year reviews.
Nov. 30 (Thr.), 7:30 p.m., Art Building West, Auditorium – Robert
Rosenblum will give a lecture titled “From Stubbs to Delacroix:
Animal Liberation in Romantic Art.” Professor Rosenblum is the Henry Ittleson,
Jr., Professor of Modern European Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University,
and Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of Twentieth-Century Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum. His lecture is linked to the UI Art Museum "Animal Expressions"
exhibit and is hosted by the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary
Colloquium, International Programs, the UI Museum of Art, and the School of
Art and Art History. All are invited to attend a reception in the Willis Atrium
of the Museum after the lecture.
Dec. 7 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Full Department Meeting:
Outcomes Assessment
Jan. 9-15, 2007 – Obermann Graduate Institute
on Engagement and the Academy, directed by Teresa Mangum
(English) and David Redlawsk (Political Science)
Feb. 16, 2007 – Fall developmental
reports due. Details here.
Mar. 1-4, 2007 – Obermann Symposium on Indecency
and Obscenity, organized by Loren Glass
Nov. 1-3, 2007 (Thr.-Sat.) – NonfictioNOW Conference
Other Calendars
UI Master
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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. the day before. Please send submissions for the next issue
by 5 p.m. on Tue., Sept. 12. Thanks very much.