Wednesday, 13 September2000
READING MATTERS Vol VI, No 4
Congratulations to. . .
David Hamilton and The Iowa Review
The Iowa Review is being honored at a 30th Anniversary Celebration to be held at the Columbia Club in New York on October 25. The program will feature remarks from David Hamilton and readings by some of the celebrated writers who have worked at The Iowa Review over the years.
30th Anniversary Celebration of
The Iowa Review Columbia Club, 15 W 43rd St, (between 5th and 6th
Avenues) NY NY Wednesday, October 25, 7:00 p.m. Free Event, Reception Following New York business attire (jackets for men) Featured Readers: Michael Cunningham, 1998 Pulitzer Prize for The
Hours, Farrar Straus & Giroux. Matthew Rohrer, 1995 National Poetry Series Winner,
A Hummock in the Malookas, W. W. Norton. Rebecca Wolff, editor of FENCE and 2000 National
Poetry Series Winner for Manderley, forthcoming
from the University of Illinois Press, 2001. Brian Lennon, 2000 AWP Winner for City: an
Essay, forthcoming from the University of Georgia
Press in 2001. Introduced and presented by David Hamilton, Editor
(since 1978) of The Iowa Review, with a few remarks on this magazine,
and on small magazines.
and to. . .Miriam Gilbert, whose Saturday Scholars Debut was a triumph!
Last Saturday Shakespeare and Miriam Gilbert fans fared much better than did Hawkeye football fans. When some of us--who will remain unnamed--did our Tailgaiting for the Mind gig, we attracted a good audience of eleven or twelve. Miriam's "Shakespeare Side By Side" not only completely filled Schaeffer 40, but had overflow audience sitting in the aisles, leaning against the sides of the room, perched on window sills, etc. All the tech worked perfectly and Miriam wowed the crowd with her CDs comparing scenes from different productions and with her performance-centered approach to the plays. It's hard to imagine how the English Department cpould have been better represented or how the Saturday Scholar's program could have gotten off to a more successful start. Remember that Horace will present "All that Jazz: Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington" in the Saturday Scholars series on October 14 in Schaeffer 40 at 10:00 am.
and to. . .
Tom Lutz, who just returned from being the featured scholar at the Faculty Seminar of the English Department of the University of South Carolina. Each year the English Department at South Carolina brings in a scholar to run a Faculty Seminar on a topic of general interest. Last year Elaine Scarry ran one on 'consent.' Tom's was on 'cosmopolitanism.' He also gave a public lecture titled 'Cosmopolitanism, Regionalism, and Literary Value.'
In July, Tom was the keynote speaker at the Amsterdam conference on neurasthenia in Europe, and that address is resulting in two publications, one "Neurasthenia: Patients, Doctors, and the Public" in Roy Porter and Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, eds., Neurasthenia and Society (Amsterdam: Rodolpi, 2001) and "The Birth and Prematurely Announced Death of Neurasthenia: Revisiting the Social Construction of Disease," in Psychologie & Maatschappij (Maastricht), Fall 2001.
Freedman Lecture Update!
Garrett writes. . .
The party never stops. As a run-up to the annual Sunday afternoon shindig, Sept. 24, we're piling on the festivities. On the preceding Thursday and Friday, the department will host the two-day visit of Deidre Shauna Lynch, Associate Professor of English from S.U.N.Y. Buffalo, for the first of the Freedman Lectures this fall in the Very Long 18th Century. She'll be followed Oct. 13 and 14 by Herbert Tucker, Victorianist at the University of Virginia.
Deidre Lynch won last year's First Book Prize of the MLA for her 1998 The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago). Here, from PMLA, is the commendation that accompanied her award:
Lying fallow for years under the retreat from humanist appreciation, character has its impressive comeback in Deidre Shauna Lynch's innovative cultural study. Her "pragmatics of character" strikingly integrates the paradigms of economic and literary history to discover the novelistic person at the interface between the social constructions of individuality and of literary fiction alike under the constraints of consumerist culture. Lynch builds on recent ferment in origin-of-the-novel studies to offer a powerful revisionary view that locates character in a paradoxical zone between undecipherable inwardness and legibility, each historically determined. Ranging commandingly across disciplinary borders from the pre-novelistic character sketch to the codes of pictorial caricature, from Lockean philosophy to retail advertising, and with a deft sense for literary negotiations throughout, this eloquent study detects the "inside story" of the novel in a consolidation of character that facilitates the bourgeois ascendancy the genre is ordinarily taken to rise from and reflect.
Where Deidre Lynch's book begins with the literary fallout from graphic depictions of character in the 18th-century popular press, one of Herbert Tucker's presentations will return literary representation at the heyday of the novel to the typographical disposition of the printed page itself. In light of our job search this year in association with the Center for the Book, it is worth noting that both speakers could have much to say about the material history of print literature as well as about the evolution of its narrative matter.
Deidre Lynch's visit will begin with a lecture at 7:30 pm on Thursday, Sept. 21, entitled "Still Love: Habit, Literary Attachment, and Cowper's Clocks." This is part of her new project on the rise of "loving literature" as a cultural phenomenon: the gradual institutionalization of literary affect. It will be followed by an open discussion of her work-in-progress the next afternoon, Friday Sept. 22, at 3:45, under the title "Romantic Novels, Classroom Romance, and Literary (Dis)affection." Both events are in the Gerber lounge, 304 EPB. An excerpt from The Economy of Character relevant to the new line of study will be available at Amy Faulkner's desk in the English department in advance of the Friday seminar. Extra copies of the book have also been ordered by Prairie Lights.
A reception will follow the Thursday evening lecture at our house 419 S. Summit.
Hope to see you there for all the events.
Search News
Final Wording of Literature of the Americas ad
Tenure-track assistant professor in the Literature of the Americas, with a specialty in one or more of the following: Latino/a, Chicano/a, and/or Asian American.
We are especially interested in a candidate whose work spans the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; focuses primarily on texts written in English; is informed by historical, cultural, and social research; examines border crossings of various kinds; and investigates the meaning and complexity of "the Americas."
Ph.D. by August 2001 and evidence of potential for outstanding teaching and research required. Send letter and CV to Professor Phillip Round, Literature of the Americas Search, Department of English, 308 EPB, University of Iowa. Iowa City, IA 52242.
Applications should be received by November 15, 2000. The University of Iowa is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applications from women and minorities.
Final Wording of Drama ad
Tenure-track assistant professor in English language dramatic literature since 1660. We are especially interested in a candidate whose work is informed by historical, cultural, and social research. We welcome applications from candidates whose work spans periods and national boundaries.
Ph.D. by August 2001 and evidence of potential for outstanding teaching and research required. Send letter and CV to Professor Teresa Mangum, English Language Dramatic Literature Search, Department of English, 308 EPB, University of Iowa. Iowa City, IA 52242.
Applications should be received by November 15, 2000. The University of Iowa is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applications from women and minorities.
Numbers Matter
Sharry writes. . .
We have a new system for class lists that is going to pose a problem for gathering numbers for future faculty reviews. Prior to this semester I had the final class lists for the English faculty teaching cross-listed courses. Now the cross-listed courses are all housed in the "administrative home" department and it will not be easy to track the number down later.Perhaps you could put a note in Reading Matters asking faculty to either keep copies of their final class lists or enter the number of students for each dpt cross-list in their grade book--they will need to supply these numbers to faculty reviewers several years later and this will eliminate the problem of tracking down those numbers when they are not easily accessible.
Fall Party
The Fall English Department Party will be on Sunday, 24 September at Garrett Stewart's from 4:00 to 6:00 PM. At 5:00 there will be a brief ceremony honoring Dee for being named our first John C. Gerber Professor of English and honoring John for lending his legend and his name to this professorship.
READINGS, LECTURES, WORKSHOPS, AND CONFERENCES
Sep 15 "Voices from the Prairie," a reading by Marvin Bell, Donald Justice, Mary Swander, and MIchael Carey, moderated by David Hamilton, on the Pentacrest in front of Old Capitol from 3 to 5. Humanities Iowa is sponsoring this event
Sep 21-22 Deidre Lynch Freedman Lecture and Seminar
Oct 5 John Kasson's lecture, "Strongmen and Escape Artists: The Male Body and the Crisis of Modernity in American Culture, 1893-1917" is set for for Thurs. Oct. 5 at 4 p.m. in the Gerber Lounge
Oct 6 Kasson will deliver another talk, "Houdini's Body, Magic, Masculinity, and Modernity" at noon in American Studies, 204 JB. Brown bag lunches will be served.
Oct 6 Joy Kasson will speak at 4:00 pm in American Studies 204 JB on Buffalo Bill -- no title yet.
Oct 7 Lauren Rabinovitz will present "Yesteryear's Wonderlands: How Amusement Parks Introduced Modernism to America" in the Saturday Scholars: Tailgating for the Mind series in 40 Schaeffer at 10:00 am
Oct 12-13 Herbert Tucker Freedman Lecture and Seminar
Oct 14 Horace Porter will present "all that Jazz: Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington" in the Saturday Scholars: Tailgating for the Mind series in 40 Schaeffer at 10:00 am
DEADLINES TO KEEP YOU FROM ATTENDING READINGS, LECTURES, & ETC. Sep 15 Proposals for semester assignment due in chair's office
Sep 15 Travel plans due to Amy
Sep 22 Proposals for Faculty and Global Scholars due in chair's office
Oct 1 Application Deadline for NEH 2001 Summer Stipends. NEH Summer Stipends support two months of full-time work on projects that will make a significant contribution to the humanities. For more information about this and other NEH programs please see http://www.neh.gov/pdf/guidelines/fellowships.pdf
Oct 16 Central Investment Fund for Research Enhancement (CIFRE) applications due by 5:00 in the Office of the Vice President, 201 Gilmore Hall
Oct 27 Applications for Instructional Improvement Awards due in the Provost's Office. Information available at www.uiowa.edu/~cot
READING MATTERS will appear on the web each Wednesday as a combination of memos from the chair, announcements of upcoming meetings, and notices of speakers, conferences, and visitors of interest to the Department. To be included in READING MATTERS, announcements should be on Amy's desk or in Brooks Landon's e-mail by Tuesday afternoon. Whenever possible, please send information in electronic form.
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