Reading Matters, Vol. 12, Issue 11

From (under) the Chair's Desk

In addition to being the month of deadlines, this is also a good month for thinking through various aspects of our graduate program, with graduate admissions in full swing, finances coming to life, and many a comprehensive exam or dissertation meeting on the horizon. Tomorrow’s Departmental Meeting will center on the Ph.D. program, picking up suggestions and ideas floated by our graduate students at a recent meeting organized by Barbara Eckstein as Director of Graduate Studies. This may help inform a strategic assessment of our graduate programs that we need to submit with our hiring requests and that mostly picks over the statistical profile I shared in earlier issues of Reading Matters. Meanwhile, graduate programs are also an interest of our peer group of CIC schools (Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the eleven universities of the Big Ten along with the University of Chicago). Barbara and I attended a meeting of CIC English Department chairs and DGSes where we hashed out ways that the CIC could enhance the graduate experience for Ph.D. students in each of the institutions. The outcome of those discussions follows below as a report that is currently under consideration by the CIC Deans of Liberal Arts. While I can tell you that our own dean was somewhat discouraging when faced with the price tag (“That’s a great set of ideas, but we don’t have money like that just lying around! And if one department does it, why not others?”), definitive word from that group will follow their April meeting. You will notice, though, that while fiscal support is essential for organizing the CIC Summer Institute for English Studies, some of the other proposals can be introduced without any funding, and I hope we will be able to introduce them in a modest way soon. I’ll be meeting again with the CIC English Department chairs in early April, so let me know if you have any feedback on the proposals before then. And, meanwhile, I’ll look forward to seeing you all at the discussion of our own graduate program at tomorrow’s meeting.

CIC Matters

Proposals for Improved CIC English Department Graduate Student Programs and Recruitment,
and for Improved Coordination among CIC Graduate English Departments

CIC Heads of English and their directors of Graduate Studies, at a meeting hosted by the English department at the University of Illinois, Chicago, December 1, 2006, proposed strategies to implement the following aims: to improve the quality and quantity of graduate student recruits to CIC English studies programs; to enrich opportunities of students enrolled in CIC English studies programs; and to heighten the job placement value of CIC doctorates in English studies.

Participants at the Chicago meeting agreed that the proposed strategies promise new attention to the quality and resources of CIC English programs. The proposals are especially timely, given current widespread interest in academic program rankings and “name branding.”

The proposals depend upon an innovative coordination of CIC English graduate programs. The novel coordination will not compromise the unique character of each CIC English department, but it will give all departments opportunity to share in their individual strengths. While the proposals target improved opportunities for students, they include benefits for faculty teaching and research as well.

The proposals, and suggestions for ways to implement them, are as follows:

Proposals to be implemented most immediately:

Creation of an annual CIC Summer Institute for English Studies. A three-week Institute, to be taught each year by two CIC English faculty, and to include two visitors drawn from CIC English faculty, will offer CIC doctoral candidates in English Studies (two from each CIC member department) intensive tuition in a current scholarly interest. The Institute has no equivalent among national graduate programs in English studies, and will be a unique—and uniquely attractive—feature of CIC English studies programs. Participation in the Institute will provide doctoral candidates an occasion for studying with CIC faculty who are not at their home institutions, and for expanding their intellectual and professional networks to include graduate student peers and faculty at other CIC sites. Profiles of “graduates” of the Institute will add value to their potential for job placement. Prospects of participation in the CIC Summer Institute will be a magnet for recruits to CIC graduate programs in English.

Student participation in the CIC Summer Institute will be a result of competition for places. Access to the Institute therefore will be limited. To offset that limitation, general student access to the fruits of the annual Institute will be made possible by an annual CIC graduate student and faculty conference, on the subject of the Summer Institute, in the succeeding academic year. Student participants in the Summer Institute will produce and coordinate the conference. The coordinators will also judge conference papers that are eligible for CIC awards that will be initiated as an adjunct to the conference. The conference will be located at a member site other than the Summer Institute’s site. As with the Institute, the annual conference for CIC graduate students and faculty will increase the attraction of admission to CIC graduate programs in English studies.

Institution of a position of CIC Fellow, at each CIC department of English, to be filled by a post-doctoral graduate of a CIC English studies program from another CIC school. The CIC Fellow designation will be for a one year teaching position for post-docs who have not yet obtained a tenure-track position. Teaching duties for CIC Fellows are to be at reduced loads (and not to exceed a five-course load), and are to include teaching in the field of their dissertation subjects. The immediate benefit for CIC Fellows will be an enhancement of their prospects for placement, given that the Fellows’ teaching resume will include teaching experience at two CIC sites.

Improved utilization of the existing CIC website along three lines: for the sake of up-to-date posting of graduate course offerings in all CIC English studies programs; to enlarge possibilities and prospects of course sharing; and to facilitate exchanges of doctoral candidates whose course work or dissertation research might be improved by temporary study at a CIC English department other than their own.

Regular twice yearly meetings of CIC English and graduate heads for the sake of continuing cooperative pursuit of aims such as the present ones; for the sake of sharing information; and for the sake of discussing the character of CIC graduate programs in relation to the state of the discipline and the profession of English studies.

Modes of implementing the most immediate proposals:

Organization and cost of the CIC Summer Institute for English Studies. We envision a three-year pilot program for the Summer Institute. The Institute will rotate among member campuses; Ann Arbor has been proposed as the initial site, as early as summer, 2008. If the first institute is to be summer, 2008, CIC Heads and graduate directors in late spring, 2007, will issue a call to their faculties for competitive proposals for topics, teachers, and guests of the Institute. A meeting of Heads and graduate directors by the end of fall semester, 2007, will determine which proposal of topic, faculty, etc., shall be the leading one. Applications from students competing for a place in the Institute will be judged by their local directors of Graduate Studies and their local Graduate Studies Committees by the middle of spring semester, 2008. Cost: We estimate the cost of faculty salaries, guest honoraria, and graduate student transportation and housing, over the three-year pilot program, will require a commitment of $10,000-$13,000 per year per institution (a $10,000 commitment would be minimal). Enhancement of the profile of CIC graduate programs in English; and consequent enrichment of graduate student education, of graduate student recruitment, and of degree holders’ placement prospects, is well worth the cost.

CIC Fellows. Given current limited resources for this initiative, we have agreed to initiate the Fellows program immediately, to whatever extent may be possible, for the academic year 2007-2008. Accordingly, no later than April 1, 2007, CIC graduate directors in English will exchange information about degree holders who are available for possible designation and appointment as CIC Fellows. At a follow-up meeting in Chicago in late April, 2007, Heads of English and graduate directors will assess candidates for designation as Fellows, and will decide on the currently practicable sites of Fellows’ placements.

Utilization of the CIC website. Graduate directors of English are urged to make contact with the CIC site, to upload this year’s descriptions of graduate courses in English, and to explore, with their faculty and graduate students, possibilities of CIC English studies course-sharing and exchange of graduate students in the immediate future. For current course-sharing information, see web pages for Committee on Institutional Collaboration under “Academic Collaboration.” To set up a page of links to a CIC English department’s offerings, contact Amber Marks at CIC headquarters. The general email address for CIC is cic@uiuc.edu

Proposals for longer-range implementation:

Recruitment of graduate students. In order to improve recruitment of highest quality graduate students, CIC Heads of English and graduate directors want to target potential applicants from top-rated institutions that hitherto provide relatively few applicants to CIC graduate programs in English; no less importantly, we also want to target for recruitment minority students and financially poor students. As a strategy for realizing those aims, we propose an annual CIC English “road show”: a selected body of faculty recruiters, drawn from our institutions, making a tour of selectively designated sites on behalf of recruitment for the entire group of CIC graduate English departments. We additionally propose that CIC graduate directors of English negotiate for special top-off awards for applicants to CIC graduate programs who have been undergraduate Honors students at CIC institutions.

A CIC virtual Institute. We propose an online research project that will entail collaboration among scholars of all CIC English graduate programs. The project, to be called “Mapping the Midwest,” will explore and map hitherto under-examined or neglected literary, cultural, rhetorical, and library archives specific to the regions served by CIC institutions.

Visiting professorships as a result of faculty exchange. We hope to facilitate possible faculty exchanges among CIC English departments, to the benefit of curriculum, of English graduate student access to faculty at CIC sites other than their home campuses, and of enhanced attractions for student recruitment.

Towards implementation of long-range proposals:

Recruitment of graduate students. Success of the pilot Summer Institute program should precede the CIC group recruitment show. The proposal for top-off awards for recruits from CIC Honors undergraduates merits discussion as soon as possible among graduate directors, their budgetary supervisors and their colleagues.

CIC virtual Institute. Further discussion of the virtual Institute should begin with the meeting of Heads of English and graduate directors in Chicago in late April, 2007.

Visiting professors as a result of faculty exchange. Heads and graduate directors are asked to investigate who among their colleagues might be interested in a form of faculty exchange beginning 2008-2009. Further discussion of visiting exchanges should be taken up at the Chicago meeting, April, 2007.

The preceding proposals are recommended by the following CIC English department administrators:

Bill Brown, Chair, English, University of Chicago
Elaine Hadley, Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, English, University of Chicago
Walter Benn Michaels, Head, English, University of Illinois, Chicago
Mark Canuel, Director of Graduate Studies, English, University of Illinois, Chicago
Martin Camargo, Head, English, University of Illinois, Urbana
Stephanie Foote, Director of Graduate Studies, English, University of Illinois, Urbana
George B. Hutchinson, Chair, English, Indiana University
Ranu Samatrai, Director of Graduate Studies, English, Indiana University
Jonathan Wilcox, Chair, English, University of Iowa
Barbara Eckstein, Director of Graduate Studies, English, University of Iowa
Sidonie Smith, Chair, English, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Gregg Crane, Director of Graduate Studies, English, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Stephen Arch, Chair-elect, English, Michigan State University
Ellen Pollak, Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, English, Michigan State University
Paula Rabinowitz, Chair, English, University of Minnesota
Lois Cucullu, Director of Graduate Studies, English, University of Minnesota
Wendy Wall, Head, English, Northwestern University
Barbara Newman, Director of Graduate Studies, English, Northwestern University
Valerie Lee, Chair, English, Ohio State University
Clare Simmons, Director of Graduate Studies, English, Ohio State University
Robert L. Caserio, Head, English, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Robert R. Edwards, Director of Graduate Studies, English, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Irwin Weiser, Head, English, Purdue University
Shaun Hughes, Director of Graduate Studies, English, Purdue University
Michael F. Bernard-Donals, Chair, English, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jacques Lezra, Director of Graduate Studies, English, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Huston Diehl will be reading from her new book, Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School, 1970, at Prairie Lights on Tuesday, April 10th. Dream Not of Other Worlds, which will be released on April 1, will also be featured on NPR’s Saturday Morning Edition with Scott Simon, who will interview Huston and one of her former elementary students from the segregated, rural Virginia school where she taught in 1970. The date of this broadcast has not yet been announced.

Huston's book is also featured in the February 2007 issue of Iowa Alumni Magazine, which includes a number of photos.

Center for the Book Matters

2007 Mitchell Lecture in the Art of the Book

Richard Minsky: "Material as Metaphor"

Friday, March 2, 5:00 pm
116 Art Building West
Reception to follow

Richard Minsky's book art has been exhibited in major art galleries and museums around the world. He bought his first letterpress in 1960, and was trained in traditional craft bookbinding. He was the founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City and still serves at Chairman. In this illustrated talk he will show how his work evolved and changed the way we see books. Learn more about Richard's work at http://www.minsky.com. The UI news release about Minsky's visit is here.

Graduate Matters

You may have noticed that the Graduate College website, includes a rotating profile of a couple of graduate students. This week, the burden of representing the nature of graduate study across the university is borne in part by our own Mike Chasar, who does a remarkably good job at it! See his profile here.

Jeff Doty recently won a $300 travel grant from the Shakespeare Association of America to attend their conference in San Diego this April. His paper is titled "The Politics of Popularity in Thomas More's Richard III."

News Matters

Picturing Eden: A series of events tied to "Picturing Eden," an exhibit currently on display at the UIMA, may be of interest, particularly given the exhibit's ties to this year's 18th/19th-Century Interdisciplinary Colloquium speakers. More information is available on the UIMA's exhibit webpage and in a Daily Iowan article praising the exhibit—and including brief interviews with this semester’s 18th/19th-Century Interdisciplinary Colloquium speakers Adriana Méndez-Rodenas and Nick Yablon—and a Daily Iowan review.

Feb. 22 (Thr.), 4:00 p.m., Univ. of Iowa Museum of Art—Adriana Méndez-Rodenas will give a talk titled “Through the Green Threshold: 19th-Century Naturalists and the Romance of the Jungle” on Thr., Feb. 22 at 4:00 p.m. at the UIMA, and Nick Yablon will give a talk titled "Trouble in Eden: Fantasies of Ruin on the American Urban Frontier, 1825-37" on Thr., Mar. 29 at 4:00 p.m. at the UIMA. More details about both talks can be found below in the calendar.

NWP Matters

Amelia Bird had a paper about Teen Adventure Quaker Camp accepted as part of an environmental education panel at the New River Symposium taking place at Radford University in Radford, Virginia in late May.

Andrea Jonahs has an essay, "Waking Us All" in the current issue of Marginalia.

Colleen Kinder, currently a graduate student in the NWP, recently gave a talk as part of the International Monday Lecture Series. Kinder is the author of Delaying the Real World: A Twentysomething's Guide to Seeking Adventure, which pulls together the stories of students who have put off more conventional post-graduation plans to, as the cover of the book puts it, "roam the world," "find a cool job," and "make the world a better place." After graduating from Yale Univ., Kinder spent a year in Cuba on a public service fellowship. A Daily Iowan article about her Feb. 5 talk is here. In addition, her Confessions of a High School Word Nerd, co-edited with Arianne Cohen, was published early this month by Penguin.

Yiyun Li (NWP '05) won the Guardian First Book Prize for her book, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. It was also chosen as one of Slate.com's best books of 2006. More about the book is available here.

Margaret MacInnis' essay "Carrier" was chosen by Mid-American Review as an Editor's Choice in their recent nonfiction contest, and the essay will be published by MAR in an upcoming issue. An excerpt from her essay "Days Before Seatbelts," which appeared in the Potomac Review (Fall/Winter 2005-2006) will be published in Hacks, the Grub Street 10-year anthology.

Mia Nussbaum (NWP '06) will lead "The Art of the Letter," an four-week course for older adults beginning April 14. The class is offered as part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Iowa Center on Aging, and the UI news release announcing the class is available here, and more details are available here.

Andre Perry's essay "American Gray Space" has been selected for the N-Word panel at the upcoming Obscenity conference presented by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies on Friday, March 2nd at 10:30 a.m. in the IMU.

Bonnie Rough ('05) has won a prestigious McKnight Fellowship from Minnesota. This year's McKnight Fellowships were judged by Jane Hamilton, and the fellowship carries with it a $25,000 award.

Rebecca Sheir (NWP '06), had her University of Iowa MFA thesis—a three-part radio documentary titled "The End as Beginning: An Audio Exploration of the Jewish View of Death"—aired on January 13 as an hour-long special on Chicago Public Radio's show, Re:sound. Rebecca also had a story on Weekend America, the live weekend magazine-style show from American Public Media.

Alumni Matters

The University of Iowa Alumni Association has identified the twelve individuals who will receive Distinguished Alumni Awards at a ceremony on June 9, 2007. Six of the twelve come from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and one—Glenn Schaeffer—received his MFA from the English Department in 1977.

Department Calendar

Feb. 15 (Thr.)—Deadline for NRC faculty questionnaires

Feb. 15 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Department Meeting: discussion of graduate matters

Feb. 15 (Thr.), 6:00 p.m., UI Museum of Art—Reading by members of earthwords, the UI undergraduate literary review, including English major Molly Gallentine

Feb. 15 (Thr.), 7:30 p.m., UI Museum of Art—Nick Kowalczyk, writer-in-residence at the UI Museum of Art and a student in the Nonfiction Writing Program, will giving a reading with Russell Valentino and John D'Agata. More details are available here. The DI story on the reading is here, and here is a photo of Nick from the DI.

Feb. 16 (Fri.)—Fall developmental reports due. Details here.

Feb. 22 (Thr.) - Feb. 24 (Sat.)—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."

Feb. 22 (Thr.), 4:00 p.m., Univ. of Iowa Museum of Art—Adriana Méndez-Rodenas will give a talk titled “Through the Green Threshold: 19th-Century Naturalists and the Romance of the Jungle.” The respondents to her talk will be Julie Hochstrasser, School of Art and Art History, and H. Glenn Penny, Department of History. Professor Mendez is in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Director of Caribbean, Diaspora and Atlantic Studies. Professor Mendez’ talk is a collaboration of the Obermann-Stanley Fellow Program, International Programs, Interdisciplinary 18th and 19th Century Colloquium, 18th and 19th Century Fauna and Flora Series, and the UIMA. This talk is a part of a series presented in connection with the UIMA exhibition Picturing Eden (Feb. 4-May 13). More information is available here.

Feb. 22 (Thr.), 7:00 p.m., Prairie Lights Bookstore—Lia Purpura, Bedell Visiting Writer in the Non-Fiction Writing Program, will read from her latest collection of short essays, On Looking. More information is available here.

Feb. 26 (Mon.), 3:30-5:00 p.m., International Programs Commons Room, 1117 University Capitol Centre—Talk by Barbara Mooney, Dept. of Art & Art History, University of Iowa, “African American Slave Architecture: Issues and Opportunities.” This talk is part of the Caribbean, Diaspora and Atlantic Studies Program’s Spring Lecture and Performance Series: Caribbean Discourses and Contrapuntal Modernity.

Feb. 26 (Mon.), 7:00 p.m., Prairie Lights Bookstore—Robin Hemley will join current NWP student Brian Goedde and recent NWP grads Bonny Rough (NWP ’05) and Kerry Reilly (NWP ’03) to read from Modern Love: 50 Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion, a collection of pieces from the New York Times Modern Love column. More details available here.

Mar. 1-4 (Thr.-Sun.)—Obermann Symposium "Obscenity," organized by Loren Glass. The UI news release on the symposium is here.

Mar. 1 (Thr.), 3:30 p.m., Lucas Dodge Room in the IMU—Valerie Smith, Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature and director of the Center in African American Studies at Princeton University, will present "The Futures of African American Studies." The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be preceded by a reception at 3 p.m. in the same location. The UI news release for the event is here.

Mar. 2 (Fri.), 9:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m.—The "Restoring Wildness" symposium will explore the human relationship with the wild. The symposium is part of the Iowa Project on Place Studies. A UI news release on the event is here.

Mar. 2 (Fri.), 2:30-4:00 p.m., 331 EBP—The Early Modern Reading Group will meet to discuss " 'Onely Fit Me to Heare, and Keepe': Authorship, Agency, and the Publication of Mary Wroth's Urania" by Stacy Erickson.

Mar. 2 (Fri.), 4:00 p.m., Conroy Reading Room, Dey House—James Galvin of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop will present a free public lecture on William Faulkner's writing. This event has been moved to March 23.

Mar. 2 (Fri.), 5:00 p.m., 116 Art Building West—Robert Minsky will present "Material as Metaphor," the 2007 Mitchell Lecture in the Art of the Book. A reception will follow. Richard Minsky's book art has been exhibited in major art galleries and museums around the world. He bought his first letterpress in 1960, and was trained in traditional craft bookbinding. He was the founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City and still serves at Chairman. In this illustrated talk he will show how his work evolved and changed the way we see books. Learn more about Richard's work at http://www.minsky.com. The UI news release for Minsky's visit is here.

Mar. 7 (Wed.), 3:30-5:00 p.m., International Programs Commons Room, 1117 University Capitol Centre—Talk by Julia Cuervo Hewitt, Dept. of Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, The Pennsylvania State University, “Ñañas, Jungle, Monte: An Afro-Caribbean Discourse.” This talk is part of the Caribbean, Diaspora and Atlantic Studies Program’s Spring Lecture and Performance Series: Caribbean Discourses and Contrapuntal Modernity and is co-sponsored with UI Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese.

Mar. 7 (Wed.), 7:00 p.m., Prairie Lights Bookstore: Essayist Ander Monson, a guest of the NWP, will read from Neck Deep and Other Predicaments: Essays. Listen to the reading live on the Internet at http://writinguniversity.uiowa.edu, or visit to find when the reading will be broadcast on NPR. A UI news release about the reading is here. The publisher's page for Neck Deep, which includes an excerpt, is here.

The free reading will be recorded for broadcast on the “Live from Prairie Lights” series originating on University of Iowa radio station WSUI, AM 910. Hour-long “Live from Prairie Lights” productions, hosted by Julie Englander, air at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturdays, and 7 p.m. Sundays on AM 910 WSUI in Iowa City, AM 640 WOI in Ames and AM 1010 KRNI in Cedar Falls. A program is also broadcast at 5 p.m. Sundays on 91.7 FM KSUI in Iowa City.

Mar. 8 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Department Meeting: report on the Gateway Course and (if time) continued discussion of Outcomes Assessment

March 15 (Thr.)—Submission deadline for the 7th annual Craft Critique Culture Conference. Details available here.

Mar. 23 (Fri.), 4:00 p.m., Conroy Reading Room, Dey House—James Galvin of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop will present a free public lecture on William Faulkner's writing. A UI new release about this talk is here.

Mar. 26 (Mon.), 3:30-5:00 p.m., International Programs Commons Room, 1117 University Capitol Centre—Talk by Mary Lou Emery, “Arts of Seeing: Transatlantic Modernism and Anglophone Caribbean Literature.” This talk is part of the Caribbean, Diaspora and Atlantic Studies Program’s Spring Lecture and Performance Series: Caribbean Discourses and Contrapuntal Modernity.

Mar. 29 (Thr.), 4:00 p.m., Univ. of Iowa Museum of Art—Nick Yablon will give a talk titled "Trouble in Eden: Fantasies of Ruin on the American Urban Frontier, 1825-37." The respondents to his talk will be Joni Kinsey, School of Art and Art History, and Susan Scheckel, Department of English, State University of New York at Stony Brook and Visiting Scholar at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Assistant Professor Yablon is in the Department of American Studies. His talk is a collaboration of International Programs, Interdisciplinary 18th and 19th Century Colloquium, and the UIMA. This talk is a part of a series presented in connection with the UIMA exhibition Picturing Eden (Feb. 4-May 13).

Apr. 2 (Mon.)—Deadline for proposals for Fall 2007 CLAS First-Year Seminars

Apr. 5-7 (Thr.-Sat.)—Poetries Symposium, beginning with a keynote lecture by Cary Nelson

Apr. 6 (Fri.), 4:00 p.m., 40 Schaeffer Hall—Talk by Sidney Mintz, Dept. of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, "Emerging Creole: Creolization and the Construction of Culture." This talk is part of the Caribbean, Diaspora and Atlantic Studies Program’s Spring Lecture and Performance Series: Caribbean Discourses and Contrapuntal Modernity and is co-sponsored with the Dept. of Anthropology.

Apr. 9 (Mon.)—Deadline for proposals to design and direct the Obermann Summer 2008 Research Seminar

Apr. 10 (Tue.), 7:00 p.m., Prairie Lights Bookstore—Huston Diehl will read from her new book, Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School, 1970.

Apr. 11 (Wed.), 7:00 p.m., Prairie Lights Bookstore—Robin Hemley will read from Invented Eden.

Apr. 12 (Thr.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Department Meeting: discussion of the possible new Creative Writing Track within the English Major

Apr. 13-15 (Fri.-Sun.)—7th annual Craft Critique Culture Conference.

Apr. 13 (Fri.), 2:30-4:00 p.m., 331 EPB—The Early Modern Reading Group will meet to discuss an article by Jailyn Moreland. A copy will be available for photocopying in the Zimansky Reading Room. Please contact Stacy Erickson (stacy-erickson@uiowa.edu) for more details.

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

Apr. 19 (Thr.), 7:30 p.m., UI Museum of Art—Riley Hanick, writer-in-residence at the UI Museum of Art and a student in the Nonfiction Writing Program, will giving a reading with Robin Hemley and Patricia Foster.

Apr. 27 (Fri.), 3:30-5:00 p.m., the Museum of Art's Lasansky Print Room and Willis Atrium—Undergraduate Honors Award Ceremony. Thesis advisors: Please note this date on your calendars and that this year the event is scheduled on a Friday rather than a Thursday as has been the tradition in the past.

May 2 (Wed.), 3:30 p.m., Harper Hall, Voxman Music Building—Steeldrum workshop and presentation by Ray Holman, composer and performer from Trinidad. This event is part of the Caribbean, Diaspora and Atlantic Studies Program’s Spring Lecture and Performance Series: Caribbean Discourses and Contrapuntal Modernity and is co-sponsored with the School of Music.

May 4 (Fri.), 2:30-4:00 p.m., 331 EPB—The Early Modern Reading Group will meet to discuss a paper about King Lear by Doug Trevor. Please contact Stacy Erickson (stacy-erickson@uiowa.edu) for more details.

May 5 (Sat.), 3:00 p.m., Clapp Recital Hall, Voxman Music Building—World Percussion Concert with Ray Holman. This event is part of the Caribbean, Diaspora and Atlantic Studies Program’s Spring Lecture and Performance Series: Caribbean Discourses and Contrapuntal Modernity.

Nov. 1-3 (Thr.-Sat.)—NonfictioNOW Conference