As the semester approaches its end, this might be a good moment to remind you of a few attentions to teaching systems required by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Don’t forget that we are no longer allowed to post grades openly on a door or to leave completed work in a pile for students to pick up since these are basic violations of a student’s right to privacy, which includes not allowing a student’s peers to see her or his grade on an assignment or course. See the handy Registrar’s office website for full details about FERPA, which also serves as a gateway for the university’s self-service FERPA quiz (the “FERPA Certification Course”), completion of which is necessary to have access to student records. On a different note, don’t forget the College’s guidelines on grading as we approach the end of the semester. There are still some who seem to view English faculty as soft graders and it is a reputation that probably serves us ill, since it probably encourages just those students who are least appealing to have in classes. And don’t forget the strongly upheld requirement that final exams only be given in their specifically dedicated time slot (see here for the policy and a link to the times).

Happy teaching for the final four weeks of classes, and I look forward to seeing you all at the events of intellectual engagement and administrative importance that are lined up for this last part of the semester!

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Claire Fox has received a second grant-in-aid from the Rockefeller Archive Center in order to conduct research toward her book on the cultural cold war in the Americas.

A poem by David Hamilton joined other short poems by local poets of all ages (including Chris Merrill and Paul Diehl) on the pages of the Press Citizen as part of an article about the “Poetry in Public” project.

In the fall of 2006, the National Science Foundation published a report written by Mark Isham (under the supervision of Chemistry Professor and Co-Chair Vicki Grassian of the University of Iowan) on a Sustainability and Chemistry Workshop held in Arlington, Virginia from May 30-June 1 2006 entitled "Chemistry and a Sustainable Future." On November 14, 2006, Mark, nominated by the women of Zeta Tau Alpha, received a Certificate of Appreciation at the University of Iowa Fraternity and Sorority Community's 5th Annual Faculty and Staff Appreciation Brunch. And in February 2007, Mark was a guest presenter on teamwork and team writing for the Xicotepec Service Learning-Project which brought Pharmacy, Engineering, Journalism, and other University of Iowa students together to provide medical treatments for school children and to build water projects for communities in Mexico.

Lia Purpura, Bedell Visiting Writer in the Nonfiction Program, recently won the Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books and her essay “On Form,” published in The Iowa Review, has just been awarded a Pushcart Prize and will be published in Pushcart Anthology XXXII. Her cycle of poems, "King Baby Poems," will be published next year. She was also awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Grant. New poems and essays will be forthcoming in Image, Agni Magazine, Field and The Touchstone Anthology of Creative Nonfiction.

Huston Matters

As of this week, Huston Diehl’s book Dream Not of Other Worlds: Teaching in a Segregated Elementary School, 1970 is available at bookstores and online book retailers or directly from the UI Press at 800-621-2736 or www.uiowapress.org. The UI news release about the publication is here. And here’s a link to the book’s page at the UI press.

Prairie Lights will have copies on hand on Tuesday, April 10 when Huston reads there on Tuesday, April 10 at 7:00 p.m. The UI news release about the reading is here.

NPR’s Morning Edition featured a report on Huston’s book on March 24. For the story, both Huston and one of her former students were interviewed. You can hear the interview and read an excerpt of the book at NPR’s website. The department (thanks to Mary Lynn Johnson) has also obtained a copy of the transcript. Please get in touch with Carolyn Jacobson (carolyn-jacobson@uiowa.edu) if you would like a copy.

Here is an excerpt from the news releases:

Ranking Matters

In the ever-invidious process of ranking graduate programs, the ranking produced by US News and World Report clearly has some real-world effect, if only because it is so well-publicized, even if the application of ranking criteria is absurdly reductive. Hence the following story is of some interest, even as most of us surely consider the list as mostly educationally bankrupt. USNWR has not re-visited English rankings, and so the English Department doctoral program comes in once again as 15th among public institutions, 28th among all universities. What they have done is add some additional programs to this year's rankings, which makes the list interesting reading as a crude snapshot of the perceived prestige of some of our surrounding disciplines. Fine Arts does remarkably well, with surrounding big departments mostly faring as one would expect. The UI summary of the complete story is here.

Placement Matters

Please join us in congratulating the following job candidates for their recently accepted positions. If you have additional information or corrections, please contact Barbara Eckstein, Director of Graduate Studies, or Kathy Lavezzo, Director of Placement.

Symposium Matters

The interplay of poetry and cultural studies will be the focus of a “A Poetries Symposium” that will be taking place April 5-7 on the UI campus.

In their introduction to the issue of the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies that serves as a companion to the symposium, Mike Chasar, Heidi Bean, and Dee Morris distinguish between a fixed sense of “Poetry” and the broader idea of “poetries” that is critical to the symposium: “In the plural, . . . poetries move around, switch sides, and multiply; they do things, have politics, say more than they know, and are free, like all forms of discourse, to be abysmal, ephemeral, territorial, or tentative.” The editors look at the long-standing tensions between poetry and cultural studies, and push forward into the fruitful territory that can be found through the use of the broad term “poetries”: “The umbrella term ‘poetries’ covers without conflating, much less obliterating, the imbricated realms of high culture, low culture, and subculture(s). With its coalition of interests in readers and users, makers and machines, performances, social formations, political ideologies, and everyday life, cultural studies is the most viable way not just to expose the hoaxes of Poetry but to reveal the robustness and flexibility of ‘poetries.’”

The Poetries Symposium will provide many opportunities to explore these ideas through a broad range of specific contexts. Organized by Dee Morris and Mike Chasar, the symposium begins with Cary Nelson’s keynote address “When Context Is All: The Specificity of Popular Poetry” (Thr., April 5, 7:30 p.m. in Gerber Lounge) and continues all day on Friday with a roundtable and talks on a range of issues connected to the current state of poetries today. Friday’s events will take place at various locations on the main UI campus. Saturday will be devoted to a roundtable at Oakdale campus.

The full schedule of the symposium is here. Complete details of the symposium are here. And many details about the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies “Poetries” issue can be found here.

Poetry Matters

And speaking of poetry, Mike Chasar published the following opinion piece in the Press-Citizen on Saturday, 3/31/07.

In February, The New Yorker ran an article ("The Moneyed Muse") giving readers an inside look at the newly wealthy Poetry Foundation, which, in 2002, was on the receiving end of a jaw-dropping $200 million donation from Ruth Lilly, heir to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune. Lilly made her bequest to Poetry—the Chicago "little" magazine founded in 1912 by Harriet Monroe—and overnight turned the first publisher of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" into one of the most highly endowed arts organizations in the U.S.

Since then, the transformation of Poetry into The Poetry Foundation has been the subject of much discussion: What should be done with the dough? What happens when poetry gets rich? Does American poetry need a corporate mogul to lead it into the 21st century? Does The Poetry Foundation's bulked-up, pharmaceutically enhanced profile spell disaster—or just more dividends?

Poetry started by doing whatever a business getting such a shot in the arm would do. It didn't share its windfall by giving grants or seed money. Rather, it moved into posh new digs, recruited a team of lawyers and accountants and hired a charismatic, market-savvy CEO. And then, trading on its new pill-pumping corporate credibility and enviable bank account, it started pitching its services as a poetry consultant.

You read it right: A poetry consultant.

"Over the past year," The New Yorker reports, The Poetry Foundation "has sent a dozen magazine editors mockups with poems superimposed on actual layouts from those magazines."

The Foundation not only approached Details and Good Housekeeping, but it also began funding a syndicated newspaper column edited by Nebraskan Ted Kooser, which "features poems on comforting American themes (neighbors, chores, raking)" and "runs mostly in regional papers in the Midwest and the South."

Now -- in marking the year anniversary of the P-C's "Poetic License" feature—I have to say plainly that I don't have any problems with poems appearing in newspapers or magazines. As this page's editor has indicated in his columns on the subject, ever since they came into being, papers and periodicals have printed poems, and it was only 40 years or so ago that they stopped doing so. When prominent poetry critic Randall Jarrell claimed in 1951 that Americans were "unused to any poetry" at all, "even of the simplest kind," he only had to look at The New York Times to see how wrong he was; on the very day he made that statement, The Times ran a poem alongside its letters on the Op-Ed page.

What makes me uneasy, rather, is the large-scale brokering of poetry by a single institution like The Poetry Foundation. Readers don't need a centralized agency—be it Poetry or Hallmark—telling them what poems they should read and why.

Who does The Poetry Foundation think it is to tell me that I, as a Midwesterner, find chores and raking to be comforting? Who even says I need to be comforted?

We should cast a sideways glance indeed when poetry starts coming to us (or to Good Housekeeping and Details for that matter) by way of a slick office building in Chicago, no matter how folksy its mouthpieces might be.

A year into its history, "Poetic License" is proud to say that it is not measured or maintained in any way by The Poetry Foundation but by the people of Iowa City and Johnson County (and the Gannett News Service, which has given no indication that "Poetic License" even exists).

Just like the poems on the downtown kiosks, buses, sidewalks, independent publications, music scenes and poetry slams of Iowa City, the every-Monday poems of "Poetic License" are written and delivered by local Iowans who may or may not find chores and raking to be comforting themes, although here they at least have the chance to say so. It may not be the cure for what ails you, but it might be the cheapest one you can get.

Mike Chasar is a regular contributor to "Poetic License." He does not like raking leaves. He can be contacted at mchasar@yahoo.com.

Craft Critique Culture Matters

The seventh annual Craft, Critique, and Culture Conference will be held on the UI campus next week, April 13-15. The focus of this year's gathering is "Sex in Public/Sex in Private," and the invited speakers include Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor of English, University of Chicago., David Valentine, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, and Sasha Waters, Associate Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa. The conference website is here, and the complete schedule is here. The UI news release for the conference is here.

Graduate Matters

Nicole Buscemi has been awarded one of two Marcus Bach Fellowships for Graduate Students in the Humanities for 2007-08. She will use the fellowship to complete her dissertation, "Diagnosing Narratives: Illness, the Case History, and Victorian Fiction."

Jen McGovern received a First Place Award for the 2007 Outstanding Graduate Student as Mentor Award, now the Sandra H. Barkan Mentor Award, for her work in the Writing Center.

NWP Matters

The winners of this year's Museum Writer-in-Residence competition are:

Elena Passarello
Colleen Kinder
Ashley Butler
Amelia Bird

This year’s judge was Michelle Herman, a graduate of the Writers Workshop, and a professor of Creative Writing at Ohio State.

Katherine Jamieson (NWP, 2008) has won the 2006 Lantern Books Essay Contest with her essay "Too Much of One Thing Ain't Good For Nothing: Lessons from a Non-Throw Away Society." The essay contest carries an award of $1000.

Undergraduate Matters

CLAS has announced the winners of its 2007-08 scholarship competitions. As we have come to anticipate, the winners include several English majors, and so please congratulate the following when you see them in class:

Tara M. Kramer (English), F. C. Denkmann Liberal Arts & Sciences Scholarship
David R. Drustrup (Economics and English), Bill and John Fenton Scholarship
Amy E. Mattson (English and Pre-Medicine), Ralph K. and Maxine J. Hibbs Scholarship
Angela P. Murillo (English and Spanish), Ralph K. and Maxine J. Hibbs Scholarship
Lindsey B. Delavan (English and Art), Mary Pelechek Scholarship in the Arts

Staff Matters

Next week, April 9-13, is Student Employee Appreciation Week. We’re fortunate to have wonderful student employees in the department who greet and assist anyone who walks into the English Department office and who help keep the office operations running smoothly. Student employees also monitor the EPB ITC in room 210. Please stop in next week and let them know they’re appreciated! We’ll have a more formal celebration on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 10, when we’ll have cake in the office after 1:30 p.m.

Here are our student employees: Danielle (Dani) Karczewski is a English and Theatre Arts double major and works in the English Dept. office. Julie Eslick, recently back from a semester in Italy, is an English and Classical Languages double major and works both in the English office and the EPB ITC. Andrew Hatcher also works in both the English office and the ITC and is an English and Journalism double major. Alicia Kopitzke does double duty in the English office and the ITC and is an English major. Kate Stanislawski is an English and Journalism double major and can be found working in the ITC or in the English office. Ryan Dennis is an English and Environmental Science double major who is the student coordinator for the ITC and also works in the English office. Justin Slocum is a Finance major who works in the ITC when not working as an intern at AEGON in Cedar Rapids. And Kristin Slocum, who also works in the ITC, is a Pharmacy major.

Schedule Matters

The next issue of Reading Matters will appear one day earlier than usual: on Wed., April 18 (rather than Thr., April 17). Please submit any items for inclusion by the end of the day on Tue., April 17.

Operation Manual Matters

On April 1, the UI website announced the following: “University Operations Manual Now Available As Podcast.” The details of this noteworthy project are as follows:

University of Iowa administration today announced that the university’s very popular Operations Manual is now available on the UI web site as a podcast. The development, administrators say, means that the hundreds of rules and operating procedures that govern every facet of UI daily life are now readily available to everyone. Sam Samuels, University Relations director of online multimedia services, says that students, staff, faculty, and alumni alike all affectionately refer to the collection of rules as “the Opmanual.”

“We’ve seen the Opmanual go from a heavy ringbinder to a thick paperback to a vast website. This project has taken it that one step farther. We are prepared for very heavy downloads,” Samuels says.

In the year-long effort to produce the podcast version, University Relations Editors worked closely with the Playwright’s Workshop, the University Symphony Orchestra, the Opera Workshop, and radio station WSUI on dramatic readings of each of the manual’s 158 chapters.

“It was an exciting process,” Samuels says. “The production style appropriate to ‘Summary of Steps in Reclassification of a Merit Position to a P&S Staff Position’ just isn’t going to be the same as for ‘Use Of Campus Outdoor Areas Other Than The Pentacrest,’ or ‘Guidelines for Accounting for Equipment That Is on Trial, Loan, Demonstration, or Evaluation from a Vendor and Not Owned by the University.’ Some cry out for music. Others, not so much.”

The University is now working on a podcast version for the hearing impaired, which will use specially trained signers interpreting the Manual using American Sign Language.

Department Calendar

Apr. 5-7 (Thr.-Sat.)—Poetries Symposium, organized by Dee Morris and Mike Chasar with a keynote lecture by Cary Nelson and featured appearances by Maria Damon, James Sullivan, and Robert von Hallberg. The complete schedule for the symposium is here.

Apr. 5 (Thr.), 7:30 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Cary Nelson (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), will give the keynote address for the Poetries Symposium. His talk is titled “When Context Is All: The Specificity of Popular Poetry.”

Apr. 6 (Fri.), 10:00 a.m., Gerber Lounge—The Poetries Symposium continues with a panel titled “The Futures of Poetry Studies,” featuring Melissa Girard (Univ. of Illinois) speaking on “Backward Glances: The Sentimental Poetess at the Height of Modernism,” Stephan Healey (Univ. of Minnesota) speaking on “Notes on the Value of Poetry, or, What's the Difference Between an MFA Candidate and a Prisoner,” and Matthias Regan (Univ. of Chicago) on “Embodied Politics, or, the Poet as Perceiver and Improviser.”

Apr. 6 (Fri.), 1:30-2:30 p.m., Room 2032, Main Library—James Sullivan (Illinois Central Coll.) will give a talk titled “Poetry Broadsides: Looking at the Printed Poem, Holding It in Your Hands” as part of the Poetries Symposium.

Apr. 6 (Fri.), 2:45-3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Maria Damon (Univ. of Minnesota) will give a talk titled “Poetry and Cultural Studies: (im)Plausible Pre-histories and Futures” as part of the Poetries Symposium.

Apr. 6 (Fri.), 4:00-5:00 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Robert von Hallberg (Univ. of Chicago) will give a talk titled “The Recovery of Sentiment in Popular U.S. Poetry of the 1940s and 1950s: Sinatra; Doo Wop” as part of the Poetries Symposium.

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. 6 (Fri.), 8:00 p.m., Danforth Chapel—The NWP Third-Year Readings Series presents Puja Birla, Nate McKeen, and Steve McNutt reading from their work.

Apr. 7 (Sat.), 1:15 p.m., Room 2229 of the Seamans Center for the Engineering Arts and Sciences—Cary Nelson, national AAUP president and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will present a talk titled "The End of Education: Globalization and Academic Freedom," followed by a panel discussion and questions and comments from the audience. This talk is the keynote lecture of a combined meeting of the University of Iowa chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Iowa AAUP State Conference. The meeting and lecture are free and open to the public.

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. A UI news release about the reading is here. You can attend the reading, listen live on the Internet at http://writinguniversity.uiowa.edu, or catch a broadcast on the WSUI's "Live from Prairie Lights" series. Hour-long episodes 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.

Apr. 11-14, Old Capitol Museum—The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges will be celebrated at the Inaugural Conference of the UI Borges Center, titled "The Place of Letters: The World in Borges." The events are free and open to the public. The schedule is here.

Apr. 11 (Wed.), 7:00 p.m., Prairie Lights Bookstore—Robin Hemley will read from Invented Eden. A UI new release about the reading is here. You can attend the reading, listen live on the Internet at http://writinguniversity.uiowa.edu, or catch a broadcast on the WSUI's "Live from Prairie Lights" series. Hour-long episodes 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.

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. The UI news release for the conference is here.

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. 13 (Fri.), 4:00 pm, 704 JB—Noliwe Rooks, the Associate Director of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University and the 2007 Albert E. Stone Distinguished Alumni Speaker in American Studies will give a talk titled "Black is Not a Primary Color: African American Studies and Higher Education."

Apr. 13 (Fri.), 7:00 p.m., Prairie Lights—Michele Morano, who has an MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program and a PhD in English from Iowa, will be reading from her book Grammar Lessons: Travel Stories from Spain, an essay collection published by U of I Press. A UI news release about her reading is here. You can attend the reading, listen live on the Internet at http://writinguniversity.uiowa.edu, or catch a broadcast on the WSUI's "Live from Prairie Lights" series. Hour-long episodes 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.

Apr. 13 (Fri.), 8:00 p.m., Danforth ChapelApr. 13 (Fri.), 8:00 p.m.The NWP Third-Year Readings Series presents Kirsten Giebutowski, Janani Sreenivasan, and Jessica Harriman van Eerden reading from their work.

Apr. 17 (Tue.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Steve Kuusisto will speak on "Creative Nonfiction and Dramatic Irony."

Apr. 18 (Wed.), 4:00-5:00 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Hanna Griff, Director of Programs, Eldridge Street Project, New York City, will give a talk titled “If These Walls Could Speak: Diaspora & the Power of Sacred Space.”

Apr. 19 (Thr.), 3:45-5:15 p.m., Richey Ballroom, 3rd floor, 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. 20 (Fri.), 8:00 p.m., Danforth Chapel—The NWP Third-Year Readings Series presents Elizabeth Cowan, Bernadette Esposito, and Rossina Liu reading from their work.

Apr. 24 (Tue.), 3:45 p.m., Gerber Lounge—Department Meeting: discussion and vote on appointing Steve Kuusisto

Apr. 26 (Thr.), 3:30 p.m., Old Capitol Senate Chamber—Executive Vice President and Provost Michael J. Hogan will give his spring address in an event sponsored by the Faculty Senate.

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.

Apr. 27 (Fri.), 8:00 p.m., Danforth Chapel—The NWP Third-Year Readings Series presents Rebecca Butorac, Matthew Davis, and Brian Goedde reading from their work.

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

Other Calendars

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

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. The next issue, however, will be an exception to this general rule, and will appear a day earlier than scheduled, on Wed., April 18. Because of this altered date, please send submissions for the next issue by 5 p.m. on Tue., April 17. Thanks very much.