Department of English Profile for 2007

The University of Iowa English Department promotes the study of literature as an art form, as an expression of cultural preoccupations, and as a means of participating in civil society.  Our writing and our teaching range across long-celebrated masterpieces by familiar American and British writers as well as provocative reclaimed works from the past and new works that are shaping the future. Our classes explore the power of language in work that speaks from and about diverse U.S. ethnicities and Anglophone communities.  Our scholarship engages literature and its relation to culture in all sorts of contexts as well as the analysis and production of creative nonfiction writing in all its variety.  

While the English Department is small in relation to its peers in the Big Ten, it is large in relation to other departments on campus, comprising (in 2006-07) some 53 tenure track faculty and two lecturers (47.85 fte), 113 PhD students, 44 MFA students, 992 undergraduate majors, and some 10,000 course enrollments, and oversight of the General Education Literature program.  

Teaching

Departmental teaching initiatives in 2007: 

• articulating an undergraduate mission statement and goals (http://english.uiowa.edu/undergrad/index.html);
• a new gateway course (008:005 Introduction to the English Major: the Theory and Practice of Literary Study) that gives our majors a common set of basic literary critical terms, insight into the centrality of critical theory and critical debates to the field, familiarity with periods of literary history, and understanding of the research skills essential to the practice of literary criticism; 
• collaborating with the Writers’ Workshop on the introduction of a selective Creative Writing Track within the English major, now approved to begin in the 2008-09 academic year;   
• restructuring the MFA requirements and undergraduate courses in the Nonfiction Writing Program.

The Department continues to offer outstanding classes in a range of configurations, including first-year seminars and first-year honors seminars; courses with service learning components (e.g. on the stories of Vietnam veterans, taught by Barbara Eckstein); and international courses (e.g., Victorian London, taught by Florence Boos, and the Overseas Writing Workshop, taught by Robin Hemley in Hong Kong and Macau).  

The success of our teaching has been recognized in many recent awards:

• President and Provost Award for Teaching Excellence: Mary Lou Emery (2008), Ed Folsom (2006), Teresa Mangum (2004);
• Collegiate Teaching Awards:  John Raeburn (2007-08); Linda Bolton (2006-07), Laura Rigal (2004-05), and Eric Gidal (2003-04);
• Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award (awarded biennially in the humanities): Mary Lou Emery (2007), Kathleen Diffley (2005), and Florence Boos (2003);
• Office of the Provost Outstanding TA Awards to four graduate students in English.  

Our teaching success is reflected in achievements of English Department graduate students in 2007:

• Mike Chasar, Graduate College D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize and the Council of Graduate Schools/University Microfilms International Distinguished Dissertation Award (dir. Dee Morris);
• Ania Spyra, Mellon Foundation/ACLS Early Career Fellowship award (dir. Claire Fox,  Mary Lou Emery);
• Everett Hamner, a Newcombe/Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship (dir. Claire Fox, Garrett Stewart); 
• Eve Rosenbaum, a Capitol Fellowship from the US Capitol Historical Society (dir. Kathleen Diffley);  
• Three Ballard/Seashore dissertation awards and a Marcus Bach Graduate Fellowship.  

To further support the excellence of our graduate students, in 2007 the Department

• established a second Dissertation Research-Teaching Fellowship (funded by donor money); 
• expanded support for graduate students to attend discipline-appropriate summer institutes; and  
• introduced a non-teaching semester after the PhD comprehensive exam, pilot effort funded by Graduate College.  

Our undergraduate students are also very successful in receiving institutional support: 

• 5 undergraduate majors won competitive CLAS fellowships;
• 7 won University Honors Program scholarships;
• 4 students who graduated with English honors accepted fellowships at highly competitive graduate programs in English (Duke, Emory, Johns Hopkins, and Michigan);
• a graduating major won a Fulbright Fellowship to teach in South Korea.  

Scholarship and Publication 

Collectively, English faculty published 8 single-authored books, 4 essay collections, 30 articles, 17 nonfiction essays, and 12 reviews, while giving 71 conference papers or guest lectures and 31 readings.  A list of the single-authored books gives a good sense of the range of scholarly impact:

• Matthew Brown, The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading Rituals and Book Culture in Early New England 
• Huston Diehl, Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School, 1970  
• Mary Lou Emery, Modernism, the Visual, and Caribbean Literature 
• Kevin Kopelson, Sedaris , on modern satire
• William Kupersmith, Roman Satire in the Eighteenth Century 
• Peter Nazareth, Interlogue, on the work of Singaporean poet Edwin Thumboo
• Jeff Porter, Oppenheimer Is Watching Me, a memoir on growing up during the Cold War
• Garrett Stewart, Framed Time: Toward a Postfilmic Cinema

The 47 articles and essays included two in PMLA, the flagship journal for the profession (by Matt Brown and Ed Folsom), not to mention an op-ed article in the New York Times (by Judith Pascoe, on the fate of Napoleon’s penis).  English faculty continue to edit The Iowa Review, The Journal of the M/MLA, Philological Quarterly, and Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.  The online Whitman Archive, co-directed by Ed Folsom and supported by a major NEH grant, continues to reach a very large audience (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/). 

Scholarly recognition:

• Horace Porter was named to an F. Wendell Miller Chair in 2006-07, joining three other named chairs—Garrett Stewart (James O. Freedman Chair in Letters), Ed Folsom (Roy J. Carver Professor), and Dee Morris (John C. Gerber Professor)—and two Collegiate Fellows, Brooks Landon and Huston Diehl.
• Dee Morris received a 2007 Regents Award for Faculty Excellence. 
• Loren Glass was named a 2007-09 CLAS Dean’s Scholar.
• Claire Fox continues as a UI Faculty Scholar.  
• Ed Folsom’s research was recognized with a 2007-08 Guggenheim Fellowship.
• Miriam Thaggert held a 2006-07 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Diversity Fellowship.
• John D’Agata was recently recognized with the award of an NEA Fellowship.  
• Claire Fox was awarded a grant-in-aid from the Rockefeller Archive Center. 
• Christopher Merrill was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France for his work with the International Writing Program.

Events organized/presented by English faculty and graduate students in 2007 included

• Obermann Symposium on Obscenity: An Interdisciplinary Discussion, organized principally by Loren Glass; 
• Craft Critique Culture Conference on Sex in Public/Sex in Private, organized by graduate students; 
• Poetries Symposium on the interplay of poetry and cultural studies, organized principally by Dee Morris;
• The second biennial NonfictioNow conference, organized by Robin Hemley and the NWP, and sponsored by a substantial donation from alumna Barbara Bedell;
• Graduate institute on engagement and the academy, co-organized by Teresa Mangum; 
• summer workshop on terrorism and mass media for middle and high school educators, led by Corey Creekmur; 
• “An Endangered River Runs through Us: Three Iowa River Journeys,” presented in three venues statewide by Barbara Eckstein;
• Keynote address at the conference “Art Beyond Sight: Multimodal Approaches to Learning, Creativity and Communication,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, by Steve Kuusisto;
• The University’s Spring commencement address, delivered by Horace Porter;
• CLAS Saturday Scholar presentation, “Ethical Activism in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich and Mary Oliver,” delivered by Linda Bolton.

Service

English Department faculty engaged fully in the running of the university and our profession.  English faculty served on the recent presidential search committee and continue to serve on Faculty Council, the CLAS Executive Committee, and the CLAS Educational Policy Committee, as well as other major elected and appointed bodies.  We provided a Co-Director for the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (Teresa Mangum) and an interim Associate Provost for Administration (Barbara Eckstein), who was recognized with the 2006-07 Michael J. Brody Award for faculty excellence in service.