Reading Matters, Vol. 12, Issue 2

From (under) the Chair's Desk

I’ll keep this short as there seems to be a wealth of busyness going on at the moment. So far as I can tell, the department is humming away nicely – classes are getting taught, ideas are being thought and disseminated, research is getting written, inspiring lectures are being delivered, and, in the world of overseeing the practicalities, CDAs are getting applied for, reviews are getting going, curriculum for 07-08 is getting discussed, the gateway course is getting fleshed out, PARs have been filled out, and outcomes assessment is slouching towards us. At the College level, this is a moment of reflection with the CLAS executive committee currently undertaking a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, in the acronym-ridden language of management-speak). And Zadie Smith’s recent reading and conversation reminded me some of what is so great about our business in the first place.

I have one piece of news that isn’t yet official but is probably worth passing on: we will not, alas, be authorized to search for a Latino/a literature and culture position this year. We had put in a request under the rubric of special hiring initiative for which we appeared eligible, but it looks like the hiring near-freeze is pretty tight this year and it always appeared unlikely that such a robust department as ours would be authorized to mount a search in such straitened circumstances. The budget picture for next year remains completely unclear to me, but I believe that our Dean is going to ask departments to present their hiring priorities for 2007-08 before next summer. I hope that is a conversation we can have in the department as a whole in the spring, at which time the broad university fiscal context may be clearer. I’ll schedule the discussion once the deadlines are announced.

Current issues that are occupying my time include: trying to organize more visiting sections in the spring; investigating the flexibility of the College’s maternity leaves; processing departmental personnel needs; and keeping an eye on the budget. Issues that I expect to be turning to soon: looking at the website; moving on the review of journals; thinking through possibilities of graduate funding; making sense of the new food and drink procedures; pondering the writing university; and taking on outcomes assessment.

Meanwhile, I hope you are enjoying your classes, moving on your research, finding satisfaction in your service – and that you’ll all make it to Saturday’s fall reception to share the joys of English among ourselves!

Travel Matters

First off, let me congratulate you all on your active engagement in our profession as reflected in your travel plans. The Provost, the Dean, and the university at large want to see University of Iowa scholars active in their fields, giving papers at important conferences, and pursuing energetic research agendas – and our annual survey of travel plans suggests that English Department faculty are doing just that! Bravo!

But, second, I need to inject a note of fiscal caution. The College is giving us $33,000 to support professional travel this year, which doesn’t cover at a very useful rate the 80 or so conference trips and 40 or so research trips planned by English faculty this year, even when augmented with the $6,000 or so generated by the Glick fund for professional development. We can and will augment those amounts with monies returned to the department for our involvement in teaching in the summer program and in the Division of Continuing Education partnership, although those budget amounts are not yet known. In addition, I realize that many folks put down one or more trips that are tentative or that may not get taken. With all that in mind, I would like to peg the amount that the English Department can make available to support professional travel at the same rate as last year, namely $500 per trip, but with some gentle encouragement to shade costs downward.

Let me insert a gentle request here: if you have other sources of funding for your professional travel, please consider drawing on those sources first and not using the full $500 per planned trip from English if that is practical. Also, we will need to be strict in allocating split appointments their appropriate percentage in relation to their split (with the exception of 25% appointments in African American Studies, where all your travel allocation has come to English to handle this year and so you will be treated for travel money as 100% English). Finally, I need to set an absolute upper limit of trips that can be supported by the English Department for any one individual in this fiscal year at six.

I realize that $500 is probably never enough to fully fund a professional trip and so let me explain the rationale for the English Department fixed maximum per trip. I hope that this amount goes some meaningful way towards dulling the personal costs of professional travel. In most cases, the individual will need to pay for remaining expenses, but this amount can also serve as a start to leverage further support for more expensive travels. I strongly encourage all of you with international travel plans to seek further support from the Office of International Programs (here), who will want to see initial support from your home department; those of you who apply for research grants, such as AHI, to think about building in money for research travel into your application; and those of you with access to other professional development funds to consider drawing on those funds to support professional travel.

In summary, then, the English Department will support faculty up to $500 per trip for travel to conferences in order to deliver a conference paper (or other strong professional involvement) and for research trips, as listed on your submitted plans for travel, up to an upper limit of six trips within the year. All funding will be prorated for split appointments. We are, alas, in no position to fund simple attendance at conferences. If you discover that you won’t be taking a planned trip, please let Cherie R. know. If you discover you have further travel needs during the year, please apply to me with a copy to Cherie, but know that I won’t be able to approve extra expenses until the budget becomes more certain. As you know, all travel vouchers must be processed online and Cherie R. will be happy to help you.

Happy and productive travels to all!

Books Matter

Indeed, books matter so much in our discipline, that it makes sense to use our modest financial support for professional development to support the production of books as well as to support faculty travels. The good news is that the Office of the Vice President for Research is helping us in this, providing book subvention support up to $2,000 for costs that come to a faculty author. Faculty need to read the information and follow the directions for applications here. I strongly encourage you to apply to this fund for any book production costs, including trying it for such expenses as copyright permissions and reproductions costs. Indeed, let me encourage such applications by saying that the English Department will try to support any expenses that the VPR doesn’t cover, to the extent that we are able to on our professional development funds.

Research Support Matters

And it’s nice to get it funded with external grants wherever possible. This is a reminder that such external grants will likely be supplemented by the university to reach the level of your salary, but only if you route the grant application in advance through me to the Dean and through sponsored programs as indicated here. Happy applying!

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

This summer, Robin Hemley went back to camp and wrote about the experience in "Big Man on Camp," published in New York Magazine. This won't be his only return to the past, however. Robin and Little Brown have plans for a book, Do-Over, based on his experiences returning to kindergarten, taking part in an elementary school play, attending a senior prom, and revisiting other events from his past.

Kevin Kopelson has written a book on David Sedaris that will be published next year (University of Minnesota Press).

Rob Latham's article "Sextrapolation in New Wave Science Fiction" was published in the July issue of Science Fiction Studies. His essay "New Worlds and the New Wave in Fandom: Fan Culture and the Reshaping of Science Fiction in the Sixties" will be published in the summer issue of Extrapolation. Another article, "Biotic Invasions: Ecological Imperialism in New Wave Science Fiction," is forthcoming in a special issue of The Yearbook of English Studies. All are derived from his current book project on (you guessed it!) New Wave science fiction.

Daniel Weissbort (our emeritus colleague) and Astradur Eysteinsson have published Translation—Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader (Oxford University Press). Its 650 pages include a short section on Old English Translation (introduced and newly translated by Jonathan Wilcox).

News Matters

"Vampire Boot Camp" in the Iowa Alumni Magazine describes Rob Latham's summer course with some wonderful pictures.

UI Professors Ungar, Merrill Honored By France: Two professors in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have been honored as knights by the French government for promoting the French language and francophone culture through teaching, publishing, research and creative work. Steven Ungar, professor and chair of cinema and comparative literature, was named a chevalier in l'Ordre des Palmes académiques (Order of Academic Palms) and Christopher Merrill, professor of English and director of the International Writing Program, was named a chevalier in l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters).

Folsom: Whitman Self-Reviewed (International Herald Tribune, Sept. 11): As Web communities mature into complicated structures where persistent identities - pseudonymous or not - become recognized and trusted within the group, writers are increasingly discouraged from trying to mask their identities for purposes of praising themselves or their work, a practice referred to as "sock puppetry." The writer of the article wonders whether authors famous before the Internet might have indulged in this practice were they still alive, including poet Walt Whitman, who was a prolific reviewer of his own work. Ed Folsom, the Roy Carver professor of English at the University of Iowa and a director of the Walt Whitman online archive (whitmanarchive.org), pointed to one critic who, in 1856, condemned Whitman for setting himself up as "this rough-and-ready scorner of dishonesty," only to perpetrate "a lie and a sham" on his readers. The article originally ran in the New York Times.

A recent Daily Iowan article focused on the creative writing opportunities for undergraduates at UI.

NWP Matters

Eula Biss, NWP '06, and Colleen Kinder have essays in the anthology Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers.

NWP Director Robin Hemley has a story, "Devotion," in the new anthology, 20 Over 40, which also features Gish Jen, Antonya Nelson, David Leavitt, and Ron Carlson.

Colleen Kinder also has a piece on Salon.com, "One man's prison: Cuba's leading dissident plans for life after Castro, and a Salon reporter gets hands-on experience with smuggling and the secret police” and an essay, “The Sympathy Test,” in this fall’s Ninth Letter.

Nick Kowalczyk’s NonfictioNOW interview with Ander Monson is in the fall issue of Gulf Coast, "Form Forcing Content: A Conversation on Experimental Nonfiction with Ander Monson."

Margaret MacInnis' essay, "Red" appears in the current issue of the Gettysburg Review.

Andre Perry has two pieces in the cultural criticism site, PopMatters: “Plush Safe He Think: Shaping the Black Modern Rocker" and “Running a Different Race.”

Bonnie J. Rough, NWP 05, attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference this summer as the B. Frank Vogel Scholar in Nonfiction. She also was named the winner of The Iowa Review Award for Nonfiction. The winning essay, “The Birdmen,” will appear in the next issue.

Alex Sheshunoff has a piece in the anthology Tales from Nowhere.

NWP faculty member Bonnie Sunstein’s FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research, informed by her 14 years of teaching “The Ethnographic Essay” in the NWP, will see its third edition published on September 14. Look for cameos by NWPers Maggie McKnight, Nick Kowalczyk, Courtenay Bouvier, Rick Zollo, Karen Downing, Sam Samuels, Pappi Tomas, Mimi Harvey, Sarah Townsend, Elyse Fields, and Leah Williams.

The FieldWorking website also got a facelift this summer, courtesy of Nick Kowalczyk and Andre Perry.

Library Matters

Kathy Magarrell was chosen to receive the Arthur Benton Excellence in Reference Services Award this year, after being nominated by six faculty members from English and American Studies. The nominators were Teresa Mangum, Jane Desmond, Kim Marra, Judith Pascoe, Maryann Rasmussen, and Kathleen Diffley. The award is given every two years and is funded by an endowment created by Dr. Arthur Benton, Emeritus Professor of Neurology at the UIHC. Teresa Mangum writes, "For many professors in the English Department, Kathy Magarrell has been not only an outstanding reference librarian but a teaching partner. During the "TWIST years," Kathy helped faculty members to locate web resources that were tailored to specific classes. She regularly holds class sessions to guide students through the research process and the array of print and electronic sources available. In addition, she works individually with undergraduates, grad students, and faculty members alike on their individual research projects. She's a model of reference knowledge, patience, inventiveness, persistence, and good humor, for all of which the English Department is most grateful."

Graduate Matters

Seven graduate students had the opportunity to attend the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism/North American Victorian Studies Association (NASSR/NAVSA) conference August 31 through September 3 at Purdue University, thanks to a sponsorship from the English department. Katherine Bishop, Laura Capp, Jessica DeSpain, Joanne Janssen, Lynne Nugent, Amy Southwood, and Anna Stenson attended four days of panels and lectures in the fields of Romantic and Victorian studies. Highlights included a plenary address by Catherine Gallagher and a showing of the silent film Nosferatu with organ accompaniment. Thanks are due to Jon Wilcox for providing the departmental sponsorship; Garrett Stewart, who contributed research funds for travel; Teresa Mangum for organizing the trip; and Eric Gidal and Teresa Mangum for superb motorpool van driving.

Sept. 14 (Thr.), 2:30-3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Curriculum Committee Meeting: Nonfiction Writing (Hemley)

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. 19 (Tue.), 4:00-5:15 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Curriculum Committee Meeting: Transnational Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Eckstein)

Sept. 20 (Wed.), 4:00-5:15 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Curriculum Committee Meeting: Literary Theory and Interdisciplinary Studies (Trevor)

Sept. 21 (Thr.), 2:30-3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge - Curriculum Committee Meeting: Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Culture (Wilcox)

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. 25 (Mon.), 4:00-5:30 p.m., International Commons (UCC 1117) – Marie Krüger will be giving one of two presentations on the arts in East Africa. Her paper will be titled: "Festival of the Dhow Countries: Zanzibar's Success as a Transnational Film Festival." She will be followed by Hilary Anne Frost-Kumpf, University of Illinois at Springfield, talking on "Theatre in Tanzania: Challenges and Opportunities." The event has been organized by the African Studies Program. For more information, contact Edward Miner at edward-miner@uiowa.edu or 335-5883.

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

Sept. 29 (Fri.), 2:30-4:00 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss "Hamlet's Melancholy Character" by Eric Gidal. The chapter is available for copying in 308 EPB or by attachment by emailing Eric.

Sept. 29 (Fri.), 5-7 p.m., University of Iowa Museum of Art's Lasansky Gallery and the Nancy and Craig Willis Atrium – John Raeburn will join other guests discussing Aaron Copland's music and Martha Graham's ballet "Appalachian Spring" in anticipation of the Oct. 3 performance by The Martha Graham Dance Company at Hancher Auditorium. The discussion is part of the series "Know the Score LIVE!" Admission to the program, hosted by Joan Kjaer, is free of charge, and the show will be broadcast live on KSUI-FM 91.7 (101.7 FM in Dubuque). It will be rebroadcast on KSUI 3-5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1, and 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 4. You may also listen to the broadcast on the Internet at http://ksui.uiowa.edu.

Oct. 1 (Sun.), 5 p.m., Prairie Lights Bookstore – Nonfiction Writing Program graduate student Brian Goedde and Writers' Workshop graduate students Lauren Shapiro and Monica Bergers will give a reading as part of events sponsored by the International Writing Program.

Oct. 3 (Tue.), 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., 331 EPB – Carla Zecher, Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library and author of numerous articles on music and poetry in sixteenth century France, will be the guest of the Early Modern Colloquium and will present and discuss some of her recent work on "Marc Lescarbot: The French Hakluyt." For more information, contact Connie Berman at constance-berman@uiowa.edu.

Oct. 3 (Tue.), 4:30 p.m., Art Building Auditorium – "Against Ekphrasis: a talk by writer and theorist Barrett Watten," jointly sponsored by the English Department, the Writers Workshop, and Intermedia/The School of Art & Art History. More about Barrett Watten is available here.

Oct. 3 (Tue.), 5:30-7:00 p.m., W151 John Pappajohn Business Building – Talk titled "Demythologizing Pocahontas" 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. 4 (Wed.), Noon-1:00 p.m., 327 EPB – The Medieval Reading Group will discuss Sir Orfeo, which will be available in advance in the Zimansky Reading Room.

Oct 4 (Wed.), 4 p.m., location TBA – Carla Zecher will give a presentation about the Newberry Library, where she is the Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies. A potluck dinner will follow. For more information, contact Connie Berman at constance-berman@uiowa.edu.

Oct. 5 (Thr.), Noon-1:30 p.m., Women's Resource and Action Center – Paula Gunn Allen will be reading from her poetry. This is a brown bag presentation, so feel free to bring your lunch

Oct. 12 (Thr.), time and location TBA – Denis Johnson will give the Paul Engle Memorial Reading, which honors the long-time head of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and co-founder of the International Writing Program.

Oct. 12 (Thr.), 8 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Margaret J. M. Ezell, John Paul Abbott Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A & M University, will present the Center for the Book's fourteenth annual Brownell Lecture in the History of the Book with her talk, "Performance Texts: Publishing Prophets in the Interregnum.” A reception will follow.

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. 13 (Fri.), 2:30-4:00 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss "Milton and Oneness" by Doug Trevor.

Oct. 18 (Wed.), Noon-1:00 p.m., 327 EPB – Meeting of the Medieval Reading Group

Oct. 20 (Fri.), 3 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Talk by John Carlos Rowe, Univ. of Southern California, titled "Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho"

Nov. 1 (Wed.), Noon-1:00 p.m., 327 EPB – Meeting of the Medieval Reading Group

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. 15 (Wed.), Noon-1:00 p.m., 327 EPB – Meeting of the Medieval Reading Group

Nov. 16 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge – DCG Meeting to discuss promotion and tenure cases

Nov. 17 (Fri.), 2:30-4:00 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss "Dream Loops and Short-Circuited Nightmares: Redrawing The Tempest in Post-Communist Bulgaria" by Katy Stavreva, Cornell College.

Nov. 29 (Wed.), Noon-1:00 p.m., 327 EPB – Meeting of the Medieval Reading Group

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. 1 (Fri.) – Deadline for submissions to the Obermann Symposium "Obscenity."

Dec. 7 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Full Department Meeting: Outcomes Assessment

Dec. 8 (Fri.), 2:30-4:00 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss a chapter from "Collaboration in the Marketplace: Writers, Publishers, and Printers in Early Modern London" by Stacy Erickson.

Jan. 9-15, 2007 – Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy, directed by Teresa Mangum (English) and David Redlawsk (Political Science)

Feb. 22 (Thr.) - Feb. 24 (Sat.), 2007 – Studies in Sound: Listening in the Age of Visual Culture, an interdisciplinary graduate conference hosted by the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature. The conference will feature Caryl Flinn as the keynote speaker as well as "The Audible Picture Show," a performance of sound works for a "dark screen." The Call for Papers is available here.

Mar. 1-4, 2007 – Obermann Symposium "Obscenity," organized by Loren Glass

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 Thursday, and submissions should be received by 5 p.m. the day before. Please send submissions for the next issue by 5 p.m. on Wed., Sept. 27. Thanks very much.