Reading Matters, Vol. 12, Issue 4, October 12, 2006

From (under) the Chair's Desk

In what I suppose is a trick of selective forgetting, this semester certainly feels busier than last year. Here’s a list of some of the issues of the day:
  1. A request for new faculty searches for 2007-08 was just released by CLAS. We need to submit by mid-February a one-page 3-5 year hiring plan along with a one-page abstract and rationale for each position that we request, describing how the projected position meets the following College priorities:

    • to strengthen departments’ national ranking and visibility,
    • to build the strength of the General Education curriculum,
    • to address the needs of students in departmental undergraduate programs, and
    • to address the needs of graduate programs.

    I suggest that interested groups of faculty work together to articulate such a description for any positions that you see as important for next year. Area committees would be well-placed to make such requests, but some requests might come from other configurations of faculty. Please submit all requests by e-mail to me and I will share them all with executive committee, who will attempt to rank them and shape a hiring plan. This will then be the subject for the first full faculty department meeting of next semester.
  2. One criterion in considering faculty needs will be an assessment of the quality of graduate programs in CLAS. I think the English Department will be well served by this criterion in view of the clear excellence of our PhD and MFA programs, but we will, of course, be needing to articulate that excellence (see the call here).
  3. We will be discussing an English Department position on the Gender Equity Task Force report and recommendations at the next departmental meeting, next Thursday, October 19. I will circulate full details to all faculty later this week.
  4. The 2007-08 curriculum is currently getting massaged into shape. Thanks to Eric Gidal, ably supported by Sharry Lenhart, for taking the lead on this huge and complicated task, and to the curriculum committees, area committees, and all faculty for making this huge process function so smoothly.
  5. Next spring’s curriculum is currently undergoing its final corrections, with thanks to Sharry L. for organizing the practicalities and Elizabeth Curl for perfecting visitor contracts. In addition to the continuing visitors Megan Alter, Liz Corsun, David Dowling, and Anthony Enns, we will have one additional recent PhD teaching for us: E. N. Nieves will teach 008:082 Latina/o Literature. We will also be joined by our Montpellier exchange professor, Gerard Siary, teaching 8:86 Topics in Asian American Literature and 8:138 Topics in Postcolonial Studies. The Nonfiction Writing Program will be hosting Lia Purpura as the Bedell visiting professor, and also Jim McKean. Ania Spyra will be this year’s Seely Dissertation and Teaching Fellow teaching 008:164 Topics in Transnational Literature.
  6. Next spring’s offerings are now visible on ISIS (you need to switch the default semester). Doug Trevor and Anne Stapleton will be leading the trusty team of advisors, who will begin advising majors from Monday.
  7. We are currently interviewing to fill on a permanent basis the position of front desk receptionist. Thanks to Sharry Lenhart and Elizabeth Curl for taking the lead on this, and I expect to announce more soon.
  8. Outcomes Assessment is getting formulated in some more tangible form by the special committee – with thanks to Rob Latham and Kathy Lavezzo for volunteering to join Teresa and Brooks in this task. I will circulate to everyone the wording and suggestions provided by the committee well ahead of our next discussion of this on December 7. If you have suggestions, send them to the committee.
  9. Our three tenure and promotion reviews are progressing apace. Look forward to reading more about and by Matt Brown, Loren Glass, and Priya Kumar during much of November, with DCG meetings on November 16 and 30 .
  10. CLAS and Provost Office review of the journals is shaping up, with an unusually large group of editors and administrators currently getting assembled to visit in early spring and give us wisdom about good ways of funding and serving The Iowa Review, the M/MLA Journal, and PQ.
  11. So far one of my past students has written to congratulate me on becoming chair after reading Out of Iowa. It was nice to hear from her, but that one contact leaves me wondering whether any of our alumni read the other 9,999 copies. Do let me know if you hear from alums as a result of that mailing.
  12. And then there is the omnibus asking I’ve just forwarded to the Dean, looking for pre-approval for every cookie or sandwich, every meal or reception that the English Department ever anticipates sponsoring throughout the year. It looks pretty modest to me for an operation our size, but it’s nice to contemplate the year in food and drink!

Here’s to a convivial year for all!

Travel Matters

In a follow up from the earlier memos on faculty travel, here are the trips that will be receiving departmental support. Faculty can count on up to $500 per trip to conferences at which they will be delivering a paper or undertaking a comparable role (e.g. organizing and chairing a panel). Faculty indicating travel to conferences are Bloom (4), Boos (3), Branch (1), Brown (2), Creekmur (2), D’Agata (1), Diehl (1), Diffley (1), Eckstein (1), Emery (1), Folsom (4), Foster (1), Fox (2), Gidal (3), Glass (3), Hamilton (1), Hemley (1), Herr (2), Hill, L. (1), Hill, M. (1), Kopelson (1), Kruger (2), Kuenzli (1), Kumar (1), Kupersmith (1), Landon (1), Latham (1), Lavezzo (1), Mangum (4), Morris (3), Pascoe (3), Porter, J. (2), Raeburn (1), Round (3), Snider (3), Sponsler (2), Stapleton (1), Stecopoulos (2), Sunstein (3), Trevor (1), Trubowitz (2), Wilcox (3), Witt (1).

Faculty can also count on up to $500 for each trip to a research library. Faculty who have scheduled research trips are Bloom (1), Bolton (1), Boos (3), Branch (1), D’Agata (2), Eckstein (1), Emery (1), Folsom, (2), Fox (3), Glass (3), Hemley (2), Hill, M. (1), Kruger (1), Kumar (1), Landon (1), Lavezzo (2), Morris (1), Pascoe (2), Porter, J. (1), Rigal (1), Round (2), Simmons (1), Snider (1), Sponsler (2), Stecopoulos (2), Sunstein (1), Trevor (2), Trubowitz (1).

Faculty with joint appointments, or less than 100%, will receive proportional allocations of the above, and should check with their other department for availability of further funds. This applies to conference and research travel for Brown, Creekmur, Kuenzli, Latham, H. Porter, Raeburn, Rigal, and Sunstein.

This allocation spends completely funds available for faculty travel and so further trips can only be funded if some of these planned trips are not taken. 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 some of this budget frees up. As you know, all travel vouchers must be processed online and Cherie R. will be happy to help you.

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Lori Branch's first book, Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment and Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth, has very recently been published and is now available at Prairie Lights. As a point of interest, the cover features, courtesy of Lady Shaftesbury and family, the John Closterman portrait of the third earl of Shaftesbury and an unidentified man, never before reproduced in color. (See the third-floor bulletin board for a bigger version of the cover image.) The coda to chapter 3 purports to unravel the identity of this mystery figure.

 

 


News Matters

The Daily Iowan covered the recent visit of Paula Gunn Allen.

NWP Matters

Robin Hemley will be directing an Overseas Writing Workshop in Hong Kong and Macau. The application deadline for the workshop is December 1, 2006, and more details are available here.

Lynne Nugent (NWP '04) has published a piece in the New York Times Modern Love Column (NYT login required).

The slideshow of the NWP's trip to France is now online. Also available on that page is a link to the NWP's 2005 trip to the Philippines.

Animal Matters

A series of exhibitions, lectures, and films called "Animals/Arts/Iowa," organized by the Obermann Animal Studies Group, which is co-directed by Theresa Mangum, will begin Oct. 13 and last through March, 2007.

The events include

A UI News release on the series of events is here.

The image used above is "Lion Devouring a Horse" (1844), by Eugène Delacroix, a gift of the Friends of the Museum of Art.

Grad Matters

The Graduate Steering Committee will meet to consider graduate students’ applications for candidacy—otherwise known as quals. Any faculty member is welcome to attend this meeting. When the list of applicants is confirmed, that list will appear in Reading Matters.

Barbara Eckstein writes:

At the instruction of the Executive Committee, I want to give each area committee the opportunity to present a proposal that would support graduate student professional development in your area. These would be opportunities outside the University of Iowa. One model for such opportunities is the Dickens Universe, in which the department currently participates (See http://english.uiowa.edu/dickens/index.htm). Individual proposals could cost up to $7,500 a year.

The Graduate Steering Committee will choose the best proposals from the area committees based on their quality, the need for balance across fields, and the available funding. Depending upon cost, some events may be offered in the same year or the various opportunities may be offered in rotation. And, of course, students will compete for a chance to participate in any one of these external events, as they do with the Dickens Universe.

Please give your one-page proposals to Cherie by Monday, November 6. The Graduate Steering Committee will consider the proposals at its November 13 meeting.

 

Department Calendar

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 meeting has been moved to Oct. 20.

Oct. 13 (Fri.), 8 p.m., Shambaugh Auditorium – 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. More information is available here.

Oct. 16 (Mon.), 3 p.m., E205 AJB – An informal discussion of the question "Is there a correct use of philosophy in the political field?" with Alain Badiou. For more on Badiou, please see below. A reception follows in the lobby of BCSB

Oct 17 (Tue.), 4 p.m., 101 Becker Communication Studies Building – "Contemporary Materialism and its Division: Bodies, Languages, Truths" with Alain Badiou. For more on Badiou, please see below.

Oct. 17 (Tue.), 7:30 p.m., Shambaugh Auditorium – Distinguished Visiting Professor Alain Badiou will present the Ida Beam Memorial Lecture titled "What is Philosophy? A Creative Repetition." Among Badiou's recently published works in English translation are Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (2003), Handbook of Inaesthetics (2004), Think Again: Alain Badiou and the Future of Philosophy (2005), and Alain Badiou and Cultural Revolution, a special issue of the journal Positions: "East Asia Cultures Critique" (2005). A reception follows in the lobby of Becker Communication Studies Building (BCSB). This event is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Department of Communication Studies, in conjunction with the Departments of English, Cinema and Comparative Literature, and the Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI).

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

Oct. 18 (Wed.), 8 p.m., Buchanan Auditorium of the John Pappajohn Business Building – Fiction writer Michael Chabon will present an Ida Beam Lecture. More details are available here. The English Department is a co-sponsor of this event.

Oct. 19 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Full Department Meeting

Oct. 20 (Fri.), 2:30-4:00 p.m., 331 EPB – The Early Modern Reading Group will discuss "Milton and Oneness" by Doug Trevor. A copy of the essay will be available in the Zimansky Reading Room after Oct. 13. For an electronic copy, please email douglas-trevor@uiowa.edu.

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"

Oct. 24 (Tue.), 10 a.m., Gerber Lounge – Heidi Julavits, founding editor of The Believer magazine, an ad-free monthly publication of cultural and literary commentary by the makers of McSweeney's, will hold a Q&A about the magazine, freelancing, independent publishing, and anything else that can fit into an hour. The Believer was established in 2003 in response to what its editors perceived to be a growing commercialization of book reviewing. Its first issue's manifesto, which Heidi Julavits wrote, can be found here.

Oct. 25 (Wed.), 3:30 p.m., Gerber Lounge – “Show me the Money!”: Tips and Strategies for Finding External Funding Opportunities for Graduate Students, by Diane Crosby, Division of Sponsored Programs

Oct. 26 (Tue.), 4-5 p.m., Lasansky Room, UI Museum of Art – Teresa Mangum will give a talk titled “Penned In: Animals and Genre in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Art.” Dorothy Johnson, Roy J. Carver Professor of Art History, and Kim Marra, American Studies and Theatre Arts, will respond. The half-hour lecture will be followed by brief responses that launch a discussion both of the paper and of interdisciplinary framings and reframings of the topic. This is the first lecture in the 2006-07 Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Studies Colloquium. The topic for this year’s events is Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Fauna and Flora.

Oct. 26 (Tue.), 8 p.m., Lecture Room 2, Van Allen Hall – Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate, a distinguished alumnus of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, will present a free Ida Beam lecture. More details are available here. The English Department is a co-sponsor of this event.

Oct. 27 (Fri.), 7:30 p.m., UI Museum of Art – Gallery Talk on the exhibition "Animal Expressions: International Perspectives from the Collection." See flyer for more details.

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. 6 (Mon.) – Deadline for area committees to submit graduate student professional development proposals to Cherie Rieskamp. The Graduate Steering Committee will consider the proposals at its Nov. 13 meeting.

Nov. 6 (Mon.), 10:30 a.m., 331 EPB – The Graduate Steering Committee will meet to consider graduate students’ applications for candidacy—otherwise known as quals. Any faculty member is welcome to attend this meeting. When the list of applicants is confirmed, that list will appear in Reading Matters.

Nov. 8 (Wed.) – Instructional Improvement Award proposals due. See here for details.

Nov. 8 (Wed.), 7:30 p.m., 107 EPB – The Geneva Lecture Series presents David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology at the University of Glasgow. His talk is titled “Asceticism as a Way of Love: The Life and Loves of a Desert Saint,” and the respondent for the talk will be Lori Branch. Dr. Jasper is the author or editor of ten books, including The Sacred Desert: Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture (2004).

Nov. 10 (Fri.), 1:30 p.m., Gerber Lounge – Colloquium: “Literature and Religious Studies: Challenges and Opportunities for New Interdisciplinary Work.” This event, featuring David Jasper, Professor of Literature and Theology at the University of Glasgow, will reflect on the problems and possibilities for the study of religion and the arts in the 21st century.

Nov. 13 (Mon.) – Proposal deadline for The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies' Interdisciplinary Research Grants for collaborative scholarship or creative work to be conducted at the Obermann Center during summer 2007. Details available here.

Nov. 13th (Mon.), 10:30 a.m., 331 EPB – The Graduate Steering Committee will meet to discuss the Marcus Bach Fellowship and graduate student professional development proposals.

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. 16, 2007 – Fall developmental reports due. Details here.

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

March 15, 2007 – Submission deadline for the 7th annual Craft Critique Culture Conference. Details available here.

Apr. 5-7, 2007 – Poetries Symposium, beginning with a keynote lecture by Cary Nelson

Apr. 13-15, 2007 – 7th annual Craft Critique Culture Conference. Details available here, or on the conference's website.

Apr. 19 (Thr.), 2007 - 3:45-5:15 p.m., Ritchey Ballroom, IMU - The Graduate Awards Ceremony

Nov. 1-3, 2007 (Thr.-Sat.) – NonfictioNOW Conference

 

Other Calendars

UI Master Calendar of Events | UI Academic Calendar | The Writers Workshop Reading Schedule | POROI Calendar

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., Oct. 25. Thanks very much.