Reading Matters, Vol. 13, Issue 7

From (under) the Chair's Desk

Let me begin this week with two congratulations, to Mary Lou Emery on receipt of the President and Provost Award for Teaching Excellence and to Robin Hemley on his selection to a Guggenheim Fellowship. Bravo to both of you! It’s wonderful to see English faculty recognized with such major awards.

The Iowa English Department is making front page news in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education with a story about the release of MFA theses as open access documents that can be retrieved through search engines such as Google (“U. of Iowa Writing Students Revolt Against a Plan They Say Would Give Away Their Work on the Web” by Andrea L. Foster, available here. For all the slightly fevered headline, the story mostly gives a balanced sense of a dilemma that will surely become increasingly common in this information age, pitting desires for the free circulation of knowledge against authors’ desires for control of the distribution of their work. It is interesting how different it was when we released a thesis or dissertation in paper form to the library and UMI microfilms, thus allowing for open access by the tiny number who sought it out but maintaining a veil of obscurity, compared with release in any searchable form on the web. I’m sure there are straightforward compromises that can solve the present brouhaha—an electronic copy that is not released on the web and just serves as an electronic basis for interlibrary loans, perhaps?—but these are issues that surely will become more acute as circulation and searching on the web become more ubiquitous.

And, to watch English faculty weighing in on other issues in the news, you might want to check the Op-Ed page in Friday’s NYTimes, where we will be seeing a commentary by Steve Kuusisto about New York’s new governor, David Paterson, who among other things is legally blind. The article can be found here.

Enjoy Spring Break! Happy writing!

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Visiting Assistant Professor David Dowling has signed with UI Press to publish his book, Capital Letters: Authorship and the Antebellum Book Market. It examines responses to the commercialization of literature that took place during the market revolution of the late antebellum era. A history of the era’s literary economics introduces the book, with chapters dedicated to Wilson and Thoreau’s critiques of capitalism, Whitman and Fern’s innovative self-promotional tactics, and Davis and Melville’s visions of the future of women’s domestic and professional roles in light of profound economic transformations. Canonical ambition in a culture dominated by the commercial mass market frames the conclusion’s discussion of Melville and King, with implications for authorship in today’s global market for transnational and postcolonial authors Douglas Coupland and Hanif Kureishi. David Dowling will present research from his second book in progress on author-publisher relations in the nineteenth-century U.S. at the May American Literature Association meeting in San Francisco. The paper is entitled, “Capital Bonds: The Compassionate Partnership of E.D.E.N. Southworth and Robert Bonner.” David Dowling will also present research from his second book in progress on author-publisher relations in the nineteenth-century U.S. on the Thoreau Society panel, “Transcendental Economies of Circulation” at the December MLA conference in San Francisco. The paper is on the function of intermediaries in Thoreau’s career as an economy of circulation.

Mary Lou Emery has been selected by the Council on Teaching as a recipient of the 5th annual President and Provost Award for Teaching Excellence. Mary Lou joins past award winners Teresa Mangum and Ed Folsom to give this department an enviable record for winning this most prestigious of university teaching awards!

Ed Folsom will be appearing on the PBS “American Experience” series on Monday, April 14, from 8:00 to 10:00. He is a “talking head” in this two-hour film on Whitman’s life, times, and work. Folsom lectured on Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman at the University of Delaware on March 4, and he will be lecturing at Simon Fraser University’s Print Culture Program (Vancouver), in their “Archives: Theory and Practice” lecture series on April 1.

Visiting Assistant Professor Jeffrey Gore’s “Francis Bacon and the ‘Desserts of Poetry’: Rhetorical Education and the Advancement of Learning” appeared in the December 2007 issue of Prose Studies. His co-written article “A Previously Undiscovered Acrostic in Apuleius Metamorphoses and Cicero de Divinatione” will appear in the May issue of Classical Quarterly.

Robin Hemley has been selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship to support his writing in 2008-09. Congratulations to Robin! Robin Hemley had 3 readings this month at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he gave the keynote address at the 6th Annual Milwaukee Spring Writers' Festival.

Michael Hill and Lena Hill's new book, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A Reference Guide, was recently published by Greenwood Press. More information can be found here. A copy of the book is now available in the Zimansky Reading Room.

Rob Latham's review-essay "J.G. Ballard, Grand Master?" appeared in Science Fiction Studies in November 2007, his review of Thomas Pynchon's “Against the Day” in the journal Dead Reckonings in Fall 2007, and his review of a collection of interviews with David Cronenberg in the Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television in Spring 2008. He has submitted essays for publication in three anthologies slated to appear in Fall 2008: “Beyond the Reality Studio: Cyberpunk and the New Millennium”, “Red Planets: Marxism, Science Fiction, Fantasy”, and “The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction”. His 1000-word entry on "The Sexual Revolution" will appear in The Encyclopedia of the Culture Wars. He gave an invited talk, "The Urban Question in New Wave Science Fiction," at the University of California at Riverside earlier this month.

An article on Peter Nazareth was featured in the March 9th Sunday Nation edition of NationMedia.com. The article, "Nazareth: A Citizen of the World", can be found here (website registration is required - and temperamental).

Lara Trubowitz invites you to the following Jewish Writers Series:

Please come to the University of Iowa’s Jewish Writers Series for a reading by mystery writer, Laura Lippman (author of the Tess Monaghan mysteries).
Date: Monday, March 31, 2008 at 7:00 p.m.
Location: Prairie Lights Bookstore

Title of Event: RACHEL ZUCKER with poet, ARIELLE GREENBERG
Time: Monday, April 7, 2008 7:00 PM
Location: Prairie Lights Bookstore

Title of Event: EUGENE DRUCKER
Time: Saturday, April 12, 2008 4:00 PM
Location: Prairie Lights Bookstore

Title of Event: MICHAEL CHABON
Time: Sunday, May 4, 2008 2:00 PM
Location: Prairie Lights Books

Title of Event: MICHAEL CHABON
Time: Sunday, May 4, 2008 4:00 PM
Location: Buchanan Auditorium

M/MLA Matters

Kathleen Diffley shares the following M/MLA news:

You have been so engaged in M/MLA matters during recent months that I thought you might be interested in a significant development, now that the association's Executive Committee has deliberated. It is a pleasure to announce that, after more than 40 years at the University of Iowa, the Midwest Modern Language Association will be moving in January 2009 to Loyola University Chicago.

Frankly, every university that submitted a reaffiliation proposal deserves to be commended. In an era when the Humanities seem to lose ground daily to the greater institutional muscle of other disciplines, the sharp interest in welcoming the M/MLA has been heartening, and our shared future has suddenly seemed brighter and more capacious. At Loyola University Chicago, proffered resources will be numerous, staff experienced, and administrative enthusiasm palpable, thanks to supporting letters from several deans, the provost, and the university's president.

Beginning in January 2009, then, you can anticipate a new executive director and editor in David Posner (dposner@luc.edu), Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature in Loyola's Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. He is the author of The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge UP, 1999) as well as essays in such journals as Modern Philology, Renaissance Studies, Renaissance Drama, and Montaigne Studies. In addition to articles in the MLA's Profession and the Annals of Scholarship, he has delivered invited lectures at Renaissance colloquia across the country. He has also held fellowships at the Newberry Library, the Villa I Tatti, and an NEH Summer Institute, and he has recently launched a vocational training program for AIDS orphans in Tanzania under the auspices of the NGO Global Alliance for Africa.

Professor Posner will be assisted by Steven Venturino (sventur@luc.edu), PhD and Adjunct Professor in Loyola's Department of English. Editor of Contemporary Tibetan Literary Studies: Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, 2003 (Brill, 2007), he has also published essays in the Midwest Quarterly, boundary 2, World Literature Today, and Social Semiotics, among other journals and collections. He is currently completing an anthology of world readings from antiquity to 1949, and he has contributed to an NEH faculty development seminar on "Supranationalism: The Ethics of Global Governance," which was directed by the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.

The warm welcome you might extend to Professors Posner and Venturino has been enabled by Provost Christine Wiseman and (most especially) Professor Pamela Caughie (pcaughi@luc.edu), a longtime M/MLA member who has found hours she didn't really have to bring about this transition. The M/MLA's Executive Committee and, well, all of us are deeply beholden to her for her alacrity, her resourcefulness, and her sheer magic.

It may help to know that the arrangements now endorsed will be reviewed in seven years at the request of Provost Wiseman. This extended grace period is in part the result of letters written during the past year by M/MLA members, and the M/MLA's uninterrupted success already owes much to their continuing interest and professional commitment, the marvel of other regional MLAs. My thanks for your recent willingness to lend an ear and to offer departmental support.

Shared Reading Matters

Downing Thomas, Director of the UI Center for Human Rights, sends the following information about UICHR’s One Community, One Book program, which this year is more ambitious than ever, centering on Ishmael Beah’s novel, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Downing writes: “I just wrote to Brooks about our expanded One Community, One Book program (see below), but thought that in addition to the GE courses he supervises the program might be a good fit for other courses in English. Since we are going to give the book to all 4300 or so incoming students this fall, it will have high profile with freshmen; but I am also hoping to get other students involved. I am wondering if you would be willing to talk to faculty involved and/or TAs to urge them to incorporate the book into their teaching in some way. They wouldn't have to teach the entire book, of course, but perhaps use a section, or whatever makes sense topically, geographically, and historically; or create an extra credit option associated with the book.” The official description of the program follows.

Since 2001 the UI Center for Human Rights (UICHR) has sponsored the One Community, One Book project (OCOB), founded by Dorothy Paul and Burns Weston. I am delighted to announce that, with support from Tom Rocklin, we are moving forward with an expanded campus-and-community program for 2008, using the OCOB planning committee’s selection for this year, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah (see summary below).

We will give copies of A Long Way Gone to all incoming undergraduates when they arrive on campus. The Rhetoric Department will integrate this year’s selection into the courses they teach to satisfy the General Education requirement in Rhetoric. We also plan other events, both curricular and extra-curricular, to create a campus-wide presence for the program during the fall semester. With support from the UI Lecture Committee, we hope to be able to bring the author to Iowa City sometime in the fall.

This year’s selection is an especially good match for the UICHR because it connects with our long-standing strengths in the area of child labor. One of the products of that research effort, supported by a U.S. Department of Education contract, was the creation of a K-12 teaching module on child soldiers, which we can provide to teachers across the community.

We are excited about new opportunities for interaction, both in and out of the classroom, between students and faculty members, and also between students and members of the community. Because it focuses on human rights issues in a global context, A Long Way Gone sets exactly the right tone by encouraging students to reflect on citizenship and engagement.

Publisher's Weekly had this to say about A Long Way Gone in a starred review:

This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army-in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs. The process marks out Beah as a gifted spokesman for the center's work after his "repatriation" to civilian life in the capital, where he lives with his family and a distant uncle. When the war finally engulfs the capital, it sends 17-year-old Beah fleeing again, this time to the U.S., where he now lives. (Beah graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.) Told in clear, accessible language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide. (Feb.)

Graduate Student Matters

Jeff Doty will present a paper, "Shakespearean 'Popularity' and the Early Modern Public Sphere," at the Shakespeare Association of America Conference in Dallas, March 13-15.

Next year's Museum Writers-in-Residence have been announced: Gabriel Houck, Spring Ulmer, David Peters, and Cutter Wood. The judge this year was Meghan Daum. Congratulations to you all! And remember, the next museum writer-in-residence reading is April 17th!

Placement Matters

As this year’s job season continues, some English Ph.D.s are beginning to accept positions. We will run a cumulative list in Reading Matters until the end of the semester of placement information about graduating and recent Ph.D.s. If you have additional information or corrections, please contact Jon Wilcox or Erin Hackathorn. And warm congratulations to each of the following:

Steve Almquist (dir. Barbara Eckstein and Peter Nazareth) has accepted a tenure track assistant professor position at Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL.

Jessica DeSpain (dir. Ed Folsom) has accepted a tenure track assistant professor position at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

Kate Henderson (dir. Teresa Mangum) has accepted a visiting assistant professor of English at the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN.

Joyce Kelley (May 2007, dir. Mary Lou Emery) has accepted a tenure track assistant professor position at Auburn University at Montgomery, AL.

Eddie Mallot (July 2005, dir Mary Lou Emery and Priya Kumar) is moving from his tenure track position at Rhodes College to take up a tenure track assistant professor position at Arizona State University.

Matt Miller (July 2007, dir. Ed Folsom) has accepted a tenure track assistant professor position at Yeshiva University in New York City.

Ania Spyra (dir. Mary Lou Emery and Claire Fox) has accepted a tenure track assistant

Identity Matters

We all need to do our bit in ensuring the protection of our colleagues and students from identity theft. In particular, please make sure that you do not have Social Security Numbers in your files. The university is developing systems to help us check whether we are inadvertently holding such SSN's, ruling that we should not keep these on a university computer unless there is specific need. Below is the policy statement from the ITS experts, and I think we will be hearing more about this.

All collegiate and administrative unit IT support groups have been asked to coordinate scanning of all University computers and file servers, and to facilitate the removal of SSN's as needed. It is important that you be involved in this process and analyze the results of these scans in a timely manner.

There is significant risk to individuals from departmental, faculty, and staff computers containing SSN's, as evidenced by security breaches here at Iowa such as laptops being stolen, or intrusions on desktop computers and servers. An important step in eliminating this risk is to identify systems that have SSN's stored on them. To help find SSN's on computers, the University has licensed a software tool called Identity Finder.

It is imperative that this software be used on University computer systems and personal equipment that holds University data. Identity Finder will flag files that contain SSN's and other sensitive information so that you can take appropriate action. All identified files that are no longer needed should be deleted as soon as possible, but no later than June 30. If you keep files with SSN's on-line, you must apply for an exception to the University Social Security number policy. If a requirement exists to keep files identified with SSN's, recommended options are to move them onto external media (i.e., tape, CD, DVD) and keep them in a secure, locked location; or replace the SSN's with another identifier (i.e., University ID or sequential number) within the files. Other options are described at the web site listed below.

Expect follow-up communications from your college or unit with additional information about the strategy and procedures developed for your area to complete this effort. If you have questions, contact your local IT support, or the University SSN Committee (univ-ssn@list.uiowa.edu).

Additional information is available at http://cio.uiowa.edu/ssn.shtml

Alumni Matters

Lisa Thompson, who received a BA in English in 1995, has won an award at the International Women's Day Film Festival in Boston for her documentary on the daily struggles of a young Malian girl. The article from The Des Moines Register can be found here and a preview of the documentary here.