Reading Matters, Vol. 13, Issue 6

From (under) the Chair's Desk

Exciting news: the Registrar has just released the latest Profile of Students at the University of Iowa, based on Fall Semester 2007. The headline news for English is -- that we are pretty much stable in terms of size.

We now have 990 majors (down a hair’s breadth from 992 last year, 1018 in Fall 2005, and 998 in Fall 2004), 408 men and 582 women. These are statistics based in each case on registration in the third week of the fall semester. Of the 844 who declared English as their first major we get additional information telling us that 65 are members of underrepresented minorities (compared with 81 last year) and 2 are foreign (same as last year). English proves to be the fourth most popular major in the university and the third most popular in CLAS, following Business, Engineering, Psychology (this year Communication Studies is just behind English for numbers of majors, whereas last year it was just ahead). Our 990 English majors constitute some 6% of the 16,492 students enrolled in CLAS.

In another way of measuring our undergraduate activity, we awarded 252 B.A. degrees in 2006-07 (compared with 262 in 2005-06, 246 in 2004-05, 238 in 2003-04), constituting some 11% of the 2,412 BAs awarded in CLAS. We awarded 47 minors in 2006-07 (compared with 65 in 2005-06, 57 in 2004-05).

In terms of graduate numbers, in the third week of Fall semester we had 110 graduate students enrolled in the Ph.D. program (compared with 113 in Fall 2006, 116 in Fall 2005, and 111 in Fall 2004), 48 men and 62 women. Of these, 17 are members of underrepresented minorities and 5 are foreign (same as last year). Those numbers make us the tenth most popular graduate major on campus and give us some 2% of the 5388 students enrolled in the Graduate College. The Nonfiction Writing Program has 38 enrolled MFA students (compared with 44 in Fall 2006, 40 in Fall 2005, and 32 in Fall 2004), 14 men, 24 women, of whom 5 are members of underrepresented minorities and 2 are foreign.

In general, all those numbers suggest to me that we are remarkably stable in terms of our size. Presumably the growth of African American Studies as an independent major may draw a few away from English, although the numbers there may be small. The new Gateway course may serve to draw in a few more undergraduates as they see laid out before them the exciting possibilities of our discipline. Meanwhile, the developing Creative Writing Track within the English Major may lead to a significant increase in our flow of students interested in writing, although that is as yet unknown.

Faculty numbers are not included in the Registrar’s Statistical Profile, but those are somewhat easier to keep track of. English currently has 52 faculty with more than a 0% position (7 assistant, 22 associate, and 23 full professors), along with two lecturers. When due calculation is made for joint appointments, English has 45.73 FTEs. In terms of crudest calculations, we therefore have a student:teacher ratio of approximately 22:1 majors:tt faculty (compared with an average CLAS ratio of about 28:1). The two graduate programs combined add some 3.2:1 graduate student:faculty ratio.

In one final set of statistics, CLAS calculates the credit hours of instruction provided by all English faculty, including our teaching assistants, at 28,847 in 2005-06 (the latest for which I have the calculation). While I’m not sure of the basis for that calculation (presumably including GenEdLit, I suppose), that suggests just under 10,000 students are enjoying our classes in an academic year. No wonder we fill the building and more! I’m continuing to push to get decent electronic screening facilities (computers + media players) in all EPB classrooms to benefit those students, which is an initiative that the College supports and is slowing effecting. Meanwhile, the College is continuing its gentle push to get one or two additional classes taught on Fridays (see last week’s Reading Matter and now the website at http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/faculty/teaching/new_friday_form.shtml), which for us means experimenting with the occasional class meeting on Fridays after 3:30 p.m., since we use every classroom to the full before then. The executive committee will continue discussion of this idea, and let Sharry know if you would like to give this a go in 2008-09.

Thank you for your continuing work to educate those 990 majors and all the other students drawn to the wide and diverse range of learning offered by the Iowa English Department!

NonfictioNow Conference Matters

The second NonfictioNow conference was a resounding success, from the introduction by President Mason to the concluding talk by visiting keynote speaker Richard Rodriguez. See http://english.uiowa.edu/nonfiction/nonfictionow07/index.html for full details. The session in honor of Carl Klaus was a particular treat, making up for the retirement party that he declined some ten years ago. Congratulations to Miriam and others who contributed to that tribute: it is such a delight to see the enduring after-glow of a great teacher! Thanks to Robin and all the NWP faculty for their work in carrying off this major undertaking and especial thanks to Cherie and Elizabeth for taking the lead in supporting the conference organization. Thanks, too, to Barbara Bedell for her generous sponsorship of the conference. She was so impressed by the proceedings that, I am delighted to report, she has expressed an interest in continuing to support the event into the future. Expect another groundbreaking nonfiction writing conference in two years!

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Megan Early Alter has an article on George Du Maurier’s Trilby appearing in the spring issue of Genre and has had an article on 19th-century ballerina Fanny Elssler accepted to a forthcoming special issue on Regency Studies in Studies in the Humanities.

Mike Chasar's recently-completed dissertation was selected as first-place winner for this year's "Distinguished Dissertation" award in the humanities and fine arts by the Council of Graduate Schools. "Everyday Reading: U.S. Poetry and Popular Culture, 1880-1945" (directed by Dee Morris, with Ed Folsom, Garrett Stewart, Loren Glass, and Kembrew McLeod making up the dissertation committee) was defended by Mike this summer and then selected for the Graduate College's D.C. Spriestersbach award for the best Iowa dissertation in the Humanities, which made it our institution's nomination for the national award. Mike is currently a visiting assistant professor in the department, teaching undergraduate courses this year in poetry and American literature and culture.

Barbara Eckstein writes:

The first Iowa River Journey on October 19 went forward with a bus full of registrants, from undergraduates to seniors. Creekside in the corn-moors of South Amana, the group heard and experienced the connection between this isolated yet sophisticated water testing site and the labyrinthian federal farm bills written by Senator Harkin and his colleagues. Following the river down the back roads to Hardin County, the bus took us through the interior of the new Iowa where corn is bulldozed into enormous piles, for ethanol production, guessed our docent. Past lovely Pine Lake, at our destination, we saw the falls, or hydropower dam, that now gives Iowa Falls its name. As we descended the 100 steps to the rushing water, many on the journey were surprised to hear water falling with that force in Iowa. The bad news about the dam is that its construction in 1925 displaced an operating mill dam and a church campground and it defaced some of the most beautiful limestone bluffs and rivulets of that river scene. The good news is that the dam, recently purchased by North American Hydropower, is having its turbines rebuilt and is still contributing to Iowa’s electrical grid, joining much larger hydroelectric facilities on Iowa’s border at the banks of the Mississippi. At the Iowa Falls public library, the travelers from Iowa City joined fifteen or twenty residents of Hardin County. They were standing at the podium ready to address us, as I entered the room, as though they had been waiting at the library for years, hoping for a bus full of people ready to listen. While our featured speaker environmental historian Ted Steinberg told us about a systematic federal deregulatory policy from the late nineteenth century to the present—with the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the 70s primarily the source of overwhelming backlash--, the local people of Hardin County told us about life under this system. They are 17,000 people in a county of 1 million swine and 25 million poultry. These animals, housed in conditions they cannot survive on their own, are kept alive, as needed, with antibiotics that pass through their bodies and into the river. Carol Sweeting, an employee of the Iowa City water treatment plant, told us that the water treatment facilities have no means to remove these pharmaceuticals from the drinking water. She also told us that to produce 1 gallon of ethanol requires 7 gallons of water, a process if undertaken on a yet larger scale, will exhaust, she declared, the Iowa and all other rivers in the state.

If you need further impetus to join us on the next journey in Johnson County, February 8, let me know. I have other stories to tell.

Patricia Foster will give a reading from Just Beneath My Skin at the University of South Alabama on November 28, 2007.

The Iowa Review will be involved in two upcoming readings in New York City. The first of them, on Nov. 13, is sponsored by CLMP (Coordinating Council of Magazines and Presses) and will feature three magazines, each introducing a new writer. The Iowa Review writer will be Stellar Kim, the winner of The Iowa Review Award in Fiction last year, whose story was also chosen for the most recent collection of The Best American Short Stories. (Two other stories from the Review last year received honorable mention in that same volume.) The second reading will be an Iowa Review night at a downtown bookstore, Housing Works, on Nov. 15. Four readers will represent the nearly four decades of the Review: Marvin Bell, Susan Choi, Chimamanda Adichie, and Matthew Rohrer. David Hamilton will introduce the authors and moderate.

Mark Isham gave a seminar in "Workplace Writing: Business Writing for Engineering Professionals" on November 2, 2007 at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids.

Words without Borders had a special tribute to the IWP in honor of their 40th anniversary. Their IWP page includes a number of links, including one to a piece by Chris Merrill, titled "Only Connect," that includes the following:

For all the romantic mythology about the solitary artist it turns out that most poets and writers are social creatures—especially after a spell of working in solitude. We need to test our ideas and discoveries, to trade opinions and impressions, to explore aesthetic boundaries, to find kindred spirits. At its best the IWP fosters such friendships.

Peter Nazareth's book launch will take place on Nov. 8, 5:00 p.m. at Shambaugh House, 430 N. Clinton St.

Kirpal Singh, an alumnus of the International Writing Program (IWP), will introduce Creating a Nation Through Poetry, Peter Nazareth's new book on the work of Singaporean poet Edwin Thumboo (IWP ’77). In addition to Thumboo’s poetry, the book contains Peter’s 1977 interview with the author. The book is also part of the Interlogue series, which features Singaporean authors who write in English.

Nazareth has published several books of fiction and criticism, including the novel In a Brown Mantle. Educated at Makerere University and Leeds, he is Professor of English. His course, Literatures of the African Peoples, received the Distinguished Independent Study Course Award from the National University Continuing Education Association. His second novel, The General Is Up, was reprinted by TSAR Books, Toronto. A collection of critical essays on the work of Ngugi is forthcoming. His work has been translated into Hungarian, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Bengali, Hebrew, Arabic, Serbo-Croatian, Portuguese, and Konkani. He teaches a widely-publicized course on Elvis as Anthology at the University of Iowa.

Singh has written and published three collections of poetry and edited many literary journals and books. He was a founding member of the Centre for Research in New Literatures, Flinders University, Australia in 1977, the first Asian director of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1993 and 1994, and chairman of the Singapore Writers' Festival in the 1990s. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Singapore Management University.

Refreshments will be served.

Blake Matters

The following, taking from a UI news release, describes the month-long celebration of Blake's 250th birthday.

In November the University of Iowa School of Music, the Department of English, the School of Art and Art History and UI Libraries will celebrate the 250th birthday of the visionary English poet and printmaker William Blake, who was born Nov. 28, 1757.

Free events will include a concert of musical settings of Blake's poetry, an exhibit of illustrated books, a reading of favorite Blake poems and a birthday party:

-- For approximately four months, from Nov. 12 through February, the UI Main Library will present "William Blake at 250," an exhibition focused on Blake's illustrated books, in the library's North Lobby.

-- At 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, in Clapp Recital Hall, faculty and students from the UI School of Music will present a celebratory concert of musical settings of Blake's poetry. The concert will be followed by a reception with the performers and organizers of the Blake celebration.

-- At noon on Wednesday, Nov. 28 -- Blake's actual birthday -- the library will host a birthday party, with cake.

-- And at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 28, Prairie Lights bookstore will host a celebration of the release of the revised Norton Critical Edition of "Blake's Poetry and Designs," edited by Mary Lynn Johnson (Grant), special assistant emerita from the UI President's Office, and John E. Grant, UI professor emeritus of English. For the event, faculty from UI writing programs and the English department will read their favorite Blake poems.

The celebration grew out of early discussions among several UI faculty and staff members about the Blake anniversary. Mary Lynn Grant explained: "The idea began in conversations I had with Eric Gidal and Judith Pascoe in English, Dorothy Johnson in Art and Art History, and Sid Huttner in the libraries' Special Collections."

The exhibition at the UI Library will feature handmade facsimiles of Blake's illuminated books, fine reproductions of his illustrations of Milton and other poets, and first editions of books with his commercial engravings.

John and Mary Lynn Grant, Gidal, and Pascoe from the English department are curators of the exhibition, which will be coordinated by Gregory Prickman from UI Libraries.

The concert was organized by Katherine Eberle from the voice area of the UI School of Music. Performers will be Eberle, mezzo-soprano; John Muriello, baritone; Stephen Swanson, baritone; Kelsey Williams, soprano; Lynn Maxfield, tenor; Mark Runkles, oboe; and Rene Lecuona, piano. Eberle, Muriello, Swanson and Lecuona are members of the UI faculty; Williams, Maxfield and Runkles are students in the School of Music.

The program for the concert will include songs both well known to singers and obscure. As Eberle explained, a lot of the research turning up the songs was done by Marilyn Swanson, wife of baritone Stephen Swanson and a staff member of the UI Center for Disabilities and Development.

"Marilyn Swanson graciously searched the School of Music Library for every possible song settings of the poetry of Blake for low voice," Eberle explained. "She had the idea of us performing a group of songs on the poem 'The Lamb,' which has been set to music by several composers.

"Thanks to Marilyn we will have a very unique evening of songs which have not been frequently heard by Iowa City audiences. We also invited student performers to join us who will add their artistry to the faculty presentations. This collaboration with Rene Lecuona at the piano will be a treat to the ear!"

The complete program for the concert will comprise the following songs:

-- "Dream Valley," "The Wild Flower's Song" and "Daybreak" by Roger Quilter;

-- "Cradle Song," "Memory" and "The Lamb" by Theodore Chanler;

-- "Cradle Song" by Gustav Holst;

-- "Leave, O Leave Me to My Sorrows" from "An Island in the Moon" by Nicolas Flagello;

-- "In a Myrtle Shade" by Charles T. Griffes;

-- "The Divine Image," "Tiger! Tiger!" and "The Land of Dreams" by Virgil Thomson;

-- "Infant Joy," "The Piper," "The Shepherd" and "The Lamb" by Ralph Vaughn Williams;

-- "The Lamb" by Lee Hoiby;

-- "Little Lamb" by Robert Lindsey Nassif; and

-- "Jerusalem" by Hubert Parry.

UI faculty members participating in the Nov. 28 reading at Prairie Lights bookstore will include Mary Ruefle and John D'Agata from the Nonfiction Writing Program; Eric Gidal from the Department of English; Dean Young from the Writers' Workshop; and John and Mary Lynn Grant. Information about the Norton Critical Edition of Blake's works can be found here.

News Matters

An 80hours story in the Daily Iowan gave lots of coverage to Teresa Mangum and the Votes for Women! event. The article is also available as a .pdf file.

NWP Matters

The University of Iowa Museum of Art will present a reading by writer-in-residence Colleen Kinder and David Hamilton, editor of the Iowa Review, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8. A UI news release is here.

Graduate Matters

Ania Spyra was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. A UI news release is here.

The dates for the next Craft Critique Culture Conference have been set for April 11-13, 2008. The topic will be "Objective Witness: Performance, Document, Memory," and keynote speakers will include Cornell University’s Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Michael Kammen; University of Iowa’s Professor of American Studies and Cinema and Comparative Literature, Lauren Rabinovitz; and University of Indiana’s Associate Professor of Law, Jody Madeira. Here's the CFP (in .pdf form).

Department Calendar

The calendar is now housed on its own page, and both the calendar and Reading Matters are now available via links from the main English Dept. webpage, making it easier to access them. You can find a full listing of upcoming events at the English Department Calendar.

Other Calendars

UI Master Calendar of Events | UI Academic Calendar | The Writers Workshop Reading Schedule | The International Writing Program Calendar

Future Issues

Please send any items for Reading Matters or the departmental calendar to Carolyn Jacobson at carolyn-jacobson@uiowa.edu. Reading Matters appears every other Thursday during the semester, 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., Nov. 28. Thanks very much.