Wednesday, 27 September2000
READING MATTERS Vol VI, No 6
Congratulations to Anthony Enns and David Banash, organizers of the Craft, Critique, Culture Interdisciplinary Conference on Writing in the Academy.
An Interdisciplinary Conference on Writing in the Academy
September 28-October 1, 2000
University of Iowa
The "Craft, Critique, Culture" Conference happening this week is free and open to the public. We would like to invite everyone to come out and support your colleagues, as well as meet visiting professors and graduate students. The conference will consist of a series of keynote presentations as well as scholarly panels, performances, and round-table discussions which will investigate the changing shape of writing in the academy, charting its history, its current status, and its possibilities and challenges in the future. Many of the panels broaden this discussion to include such varied topics as hypertext, pedagogy and pleasure, popular culture, and the museum, and there are two panels specifically devoted to the study of Walt Whitman. Conference participants include not only local faculty members and graduate students from such departments as English, American Studies, and the Writers' Workshop, but also writers and scholars from across the United States and abroad.
The conference will begin on Thursday evening, September 28th, at 8pm in the Gerber Lounge with Alan Golding's keynote presentation, "'The Avant-Garde Is Always Pedagogical': Experimental Poetry and/as Pedagogy," which will be of special interest to students of poetry and instructors of General Education Literature. Alan Golding is Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Studies in English at the University of Louisville. He is the author of From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in American Poetry (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), a CHOICE Best Academic Book Award winner, and serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary Literature, American Literary History, and the University of Alabama Press Modern and Contemporary Poetics series. Work-in-progress includes a gathering of essays on issues in the reception and sociology of poetry and on individual Language writers.
The conference will continue Friday evening, September 29th, with Mark Levine's keynote presentation, "Writing It: Some Observations on the Poetics of Territoriality," at 7pm in Shambaugh Auditorium. This event will be immediately followed by Bob Perelman's keynote presentation, "Selves and Schools: Poetic History and Paradigm Shifts," at 8pm. Mark Levine is Professor of Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of two books of poetry, Enola Gay (University of California Press, 2000) and Debt (Morrow/Avon, 1993), as well as various articles in The New Yorker and other magazines. Bob Perelman is one of the founding members of the West coast school of language poetry and author of more than ten books of poetry, including Virtual Reality (Roof Books, 1993), Captive Audience (The Figures, 1988), Face Value (Roof Books, 1987), The First World (The Figures, 1986), and a.k.a. (The Figures, 1984). He has also written two critical studies, The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (Princeton University Press, 1996) and The Trouble with Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein and Zukofsky (University of California Press, 1994). Bob Perelman is currently Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. A reception at Fitzpatrick's will follow these two events.
On Saturday, Seer 30th, panels and performances will begin at 9am in the Iowa Memorial Union, and the morning sessions will be followed by Kevin Kopelson's keynote presentation, "Critical Virtuosity," at 1pm in the Gerber Lounge. Panels and performances will resume at 2pm in the Iowa Memorial Union and continue until 5pm. On Saturday evening at 7pm Bob Perelman will give a poetry reading in Shambaugh Auditorium.
On Sunday, October 1st, panels will begin at 9am in the Iowa Memorial Union with the last session concluding at noon, followed by a round-table discussion moderated by Dee Morris at 1pm in the Gerber Lounge.
For more information, please see the conference webpage at www.uiowa.edu/~agse. We hope to see you there!
English Department faculty meeting on Thursday, October 26, at 3:45 in the Gerber Lounge.
This meeting will once again take up the Report of the Task Force on Teaching and work toward agreeing on the precise policies that will apply to mentoring and evaluation of teaching.
Web links to the Report and to the Teaching Statement are below (both documents are drafts). Suggested revisions will be posted next week.
English Department Teaching Statement
More Meeting Matters:
Area Committee Meetings
John Harper writes. . .
Every year in October, the department meets in area groups todiscuss and propose course offerings for the following academic year.
This year's meetings are scheduled as follows:
Nonfiction Writing: Monday, Oct. 9th, 3:30pm, Gerber LoungeTheory & Criticism: Tuesday, Oct. 10th, 3:45pm, Gerber Lounge
American Literature: Wednesday, Oct. 11th, 3:30pm, 331 EPB
18th/19th Century British: Monday, Oct. 16th, 3:30pm, Gerber Lounge
Medieval/Early Modern: Tuesday, Oct. 17th, 3:45pm, Gerber Lounge
20th Century Literatures: Wednesday, Oct.18th, 3:30pm, 331 EPB
These are all open meetings. Faculty are encouraged to attend meetings of all areas in which they have potential teaching interests. Graduate students are invited to attend and to provide input.
There are two principal ways in which graduate student ideas can beincorporated into the process. One is by attending these meetings, and suggesting specific course offerings to the group. The other is by collecting 5 or more signatures on a request for a specific course to be offered, and giving it to John Harper, who chairs the Curriculum Committee, by October 20th.
Steve Ungar writes to announce a symposium on issues of graduate student professionalization:
TRANSITIONS: GRADUATE STUDIESAND PREPARING FOR A PROFESSION
3:30 p.m. Steve Ungar: welcome & introductory remarks
3:35 Anne Donadey: opening statement & mention of MLA task force
POSITION STATEMENTS
3:40 Judith Pascoe on writing the dissertation in no more than two years
3:50 Judith Aikin on Expectations for Promotion & Tenure
4:00 Downing Thomas on working with colleagues
4:10 Tom Lewis, "Beyond Professionalization"
RECENT UI PH.D.S REPORT
4:15 Aletha Stahl, Asst. Professor of French, Earlham College
4:35 Elizabeth Dietz, Visiting Asst. Professor of English, U of Iowa
BREAKOUT SESSIONS
5-5:30
The New Media Coalition announces a PBS Teleconference on Oct 12
Wondering where academe is headed with on-line learning? Will there be a cyber-you in the next decade? What's in store for faculty who enter the arena of on-line education? The UI New Media Coalition invites you to hear answers tothese and other questions in a special PBS satellite teleconference:
Are You History? Faculty Job Security in an Online World
Thursday, October 12, 2000, 1:30 - 3:00 PM 301 Lindquist Center South
Topics
* The demands of "anywhere, anytime" learning* Technology as a threat to faculty or an opportunity
* The basic job description of a professor in the future
* The "unbundling" of faculty teaching functions
* The implications of reducing in-person contact in education
* Traditional liberal arts education vs. professional training
Panelists:
Mary Burgan, general secretary, Amer. Assoc. of University ProfessorsLaura Palmer Noone, president of the University of Phoenix
Frank Newman, visiting professor of public policy/sociology, Brown Univ.
More information and free registration at:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~nmc/als>http://www.uiowa.edu/~nmc/<http://www.uiowa.edu/~nmc/als>als
This teleconference is the first in a series that will include:
With a Little Help from My Friends... Implementing Information Technologyinto the Curriculum (December 7, 2000, 1:30 - 3:00 PM, 301 LC South)Control, Conflict and Courseware: Intellectual Property in Distance Education (February 8, 2001, 1:30 - 3:00 PM, Information Arcade, Main Library)
Staying the Course: Retaining Online Students (April 19, 2001, S401 PBB)
Bill Decker, Associate Vice President for Research, writes:
You likely are aware of the growing number of interdisciplinary, campus-wide conversations that have been taking place around the subjects of informatics, computational science, and information science. Provost Jon Whitmore and Vice President David Skorton have convened an "Informatics Study Committee" to assess our opportunities in these areas, to determine the challenges posed for the University, and to recommend some possible steps that might be taken to respond to or capitalize on faculty interests in these areas.
Interim Vice Provost Les Sims and I are co-chairing the committee. A website has been created for this endeavor which may be found at:
Here you will find summaries of committee meetings, a committee roster, links to other institutions' related websites, and, perhaps most importantly, a public forum through which interested UI faculty and staff may join our discussion or make comments for the committee to consider. Please share this URL with your faculty and staff. We encourage everyone to participate. You may also contact me directly at
5-3899 or bill-decker@uiowa.edu.
Oct 3 The Department of French and Italian invites you to attend a public lecture by Professor Mary Lydon of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to be held on Tuesday, October 3 at 3:30 p.m. in the Gerber Lounge (304 EPB). The lecture, entitled "Waiting for Godot, Listening to Krapp: Samuel Beckett's Theatre," is being presented in conjunction with The Gate Theatre's upcoming performances of Beckett's two plays, Waiting for Godot and Krapp's Last Tape (October 4-7, Hancher Auditorium).
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
Oct 20 CCL symposium on graduate students and professionalization: TRANSITIONS: GRADUATE STUDIES AND PREPARING FOR A PROFESSION. The English Department is participating in this symposium and will be represented by Judith Pascoe, Elizabeth Dietz, and a graduate student or two yet to be named
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 10 Supplemental travel allocation requests due to the dean
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 20 Nominations due for Collegiate Teaching Awards
Oct 20 Dean's Scholars applications due
Oct 27 Applications for Instructional Improvement Awards due in the Provost's Office. Information available at www.uiowa.edu/~cot
Nov 1 Educational Computing Proposals due to: Student Computing Fee Committee, College of Liberal Arts, 240 S H
Nov 3 CLA Alumni Fellows nominations due to the dean