Reading Matters, Vol. 13, Issue 7

From (under) the Chair's Desk

I am happy to report that we continue to be a strikingly productive faculty. Having looked over the curriculum vitae of the 52 tenure track faculty in English with more than a zero percent appointment (23 full professors, 22 associate professors, 7 assistant professors, 45.725 if you count by FTEs) with considerable care in relation to the annual salary review, I can now quantify some of our productivity. Collectively, we spread the reputation of Iowa’s English Department through 112 conference papers, guest lectures, or panel appearances in 2007 (compared with 71 in 2006), gave 19 readings (26 in 2006), and were the subject of 12 radio or tv interviews. Some of that scholarly buzz was about the 7 single-authored books published by Iowa English faculty (congratulations again to Matt Brown, Huston Diehl, Mary Lou Emery, Kevin Kopelson, Peter Nazareth, Jeff Porter, Garrett Stewart), along with the four edited journals, two journal special issues, two co-edited essay volumes, and one scholarly edition. We also shared our research and imagination in 30 scholarly articles published in 2007 (compared with 24 in 2006 and 52 in 2005), 9 short articles or encyclopedia entries, 17 nonfiction essays, and 4 short stories. Reviews, on the other hand, are perhaps something of a dying art, despite the MLA’s call for more reviews by tenure track faculty, with 12 published by us in 2007 (compared with 21 in 2006). For a fuller account of the range of English Department faculty vitality, see the short departmental profile for 2007 now on our webpage. And more on the likely salary increment as I learn of it.

Speaking of faculty in the media, I should give you a heads up that Ed Folsom will be a talking head in the Walt Whitman documentary that will air from 8 to 10 p.m. Monday, April 14, on PBS as part of the network's "American Experience" series. See faculty in the news below for more details.

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters

Visiting Assistant Professor Megan Alter has an article on Arthur Symons forthcoming in a collection entitled "Manipulations of Low Culture: Masterpieces of High Culture and Other Subversions of the Cultural Divide" (Cambridge Scholars Group).

Visiting Assistant Professor Mike Chasar, who won the Spriestersbach Prize in the humanities and fine arts for his dissertation, "Everyday Reading: U.S. Poetry and Popular Culture, 1880-1945," supervised by Dee Morris, and went on to win the nation's most prestigious honor for doctoral dissertations this year, the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS)/UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award, was recently honored in a Graduate College ceremony. More information can be found here. Mike was also was a Guest Columnist for the the Iowa City Press-Citizen on Saturday March 29. His article "Obama's legacy to another Wright" can be found here.

Barbara Eckstein’s review-essay “Spectres of the City” appeared in the most recent issue of the Journal of Urban History. A copy of the essay can be found here. Also, the final Iowa River tour and lecture in Barbara's Endangered Iowa River tour will occur April 18. The tour includes a visit to the Lucille Carver Mississippi Riverside Environmental Research Station and to the confluence of the Cedar and Iowa Rivers. Environmental Scientist Nancy Langston, from the University of Wisconsin, will read and lecture at the high school in Columbus Junction. All events are free and open to the public. More information can be found here. You can register at cory-sanderson@uiowa.edu.

Ed Folsom is featured in an upcoming documentary on American poet Walt Whitman. The program will air from 8 to 10 p.m. Monday, April 14, on PBS as part of the network's "American Experience" series. The film discusses Whitman as one of the most recognized figures in American literary history, but also examines failures he experienced during his lifetime -- failures to reach a general audience, to receive the honors he craved, or to curb the impending civil war. For details on the documentary please click here.

On March 28, 2008 Mark Isham presented an all day seminar on work place writing at the Delta Dental Plans Association in Oak Brook, Illinois (defining common writing problems, getting to the point, organizing around reader questions, using persuasion when appropriate, creating more effective sentences, choosing an appropriate style, and conveying difficult messages). He also trained Delta Dental staff as writing coaches and will work as a consultant to Delta Dental for the next six months examining correspondence and other documents.

In a March 14 New York Times op-ed piece, Stephen Kuusisto describes the challenges that David Paterson will face when he takes the oath of office in Albany, but also the special strengths and skills he will bring to this leadership position as a legally blind individual. Paterson will not only become the third African-American governor since Reconstruction, he will also be the first legally blind chief state executive, Kuusisto writes in an op-ed contribution that explores how he believes it's a safe bet that Paterson's visual impairment will be harder for the public to understand than his race. Click here to read the article. On NPR's March 17th "Talk of the Nation," Stephen Kuusisto, a University of Iowa creative nonfiction writing and disability studies professor who has been blind since birth, discusses his recent New York Times op-ed about David Paterson, the new governor of New York, who is legally blind. "New Yorkers once underestimated Franklin Roosevelt," Kuusisto wrote, "Now David Paterson can show how a legally blind person can lead." Click here to listen to the interview. On March 18th Steve also took part in a roundtable discussion of blind Americans on the show "On Point." A link to this discussion can be found here.

Phil Round's new book The Impossible Land: Story and Place in California's Imperial Valley has just been published by The University of New Mexico Press. More information can be found here, and a copy of the book is now available in the Zimansky Reading Room.

Lara Trubowitz invites you to the following Jewish Writers Series:

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

Representation Matters

The English Department will be particularly richly served after the recent elections to Faculty Senate. Current English Department Senators Teresa Mangum (2007-10) and Dee Morris (2006-09) are being joined next year by Eric Gidal, Claire Sponsler, Harry Stecopoulos, and myself. Teresa Mangum also serves as a member of Faculty Council, effectively the Executive Committee of Faculty Senate. Meanwhile, Laura Rigal was voted onto another important consultative body, the Graduate Council, which advises the Graduate Dean and the Graduate College. And we have representation on a couple of key CLAS committees with Miriam Gilbert continuing on the Educational Policy Committee and myself on the CLAS Executive Committee. English faculty are also on a number of special committees, such as Teresa Mangum participating on the CLAS Task Force on the Future of Modern Language, Literature, and Culture Studies and Claire Sponsler serving on the Collegiate Committee on Faculty Promotion and Tenure. It looks like representative government within the university often features English Department faculty!

Copyright Matters

The release of theses and dissertations in machine searchable form on the web continued to stir much interest in the last fortnight. Provost Lopes wrote an interestingly balanced reflection on the issues in last Sunday’s Press-Citizen (see here), matched by a thoughtful P-C editorial (see here), not to mention a poem by our own Mike Chasar (see here). At the end of all this, the Provost is setting up a University Task Force on Electronic Access to Theses and Dissertations to consider the broad range of issues and make recommendations. Loren Glass, who was thrust into the middle of these issues as our Director of Graduate Studies, is a charter member of the committee. If others of you would like to be serve, let me know and I will nominate you.

Graduate Student Matters

Mark Bresnan received a third place award in the Humanities division at last weekend's University of Iowa Jakobsen Graduate Forum for his paper "Chris Bachelder's 'Bear v. Shark' and the Triumph of Fan Speculation," as did Jeff Doty for his paper, "Shakespearean 'Popularity' and the Early Modern Public Sphere."

Joanna Davis-McElligatt will be reading a paper titled "Just when do men that have different blood in them stop hating one another?": The Culture of World War I America in William Faulkner's Light in August" at The Society for the Study of Southern Literature conference in Williamsburg, VA. The conference dates are April 17-20.

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.

Nick Kowalczyk (May 2008, dir. Patricia Foster) has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at Ithaca College, NY.

Vickie Larsen (dir. Claire Sponsler) has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at the University of Michigan at Flint.

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 professor position at Butler University in Indianapolis, IN.

Identity Matters

You should have received or be receiving from Dianne Jones a computer program called Identity Finder. This sneaky little program will work over all the files you have on your computer and let you know where you have saved Social Security Numbers. My strong recommendation is that you delete all those files—or, in the terms of the program, shred them. If this program can find them, I would worry that some intrusive hacker could find them leading to identity theft. I particularly recommend using the program on any laptop you own. Laptops get stolen or lost with horrible regularity, and we are responsible for notifying anyone whose personal information is compromised in that way.

I’ve never kept student grades organized by SSN on my computer, so I wasn’t expecting to have many matches. I was therefore surprised to see 692 hits! An awful lot were in directories that I had received or mailed back in 2005 which I had no idea were still on my machine. I’m happy to say those are now all shredded!

If you want advice on what to keep and what to get rid of, feel free to approach me or Gayle. In general, student grades are now safely and securely accessible in OSIRIS and there is no point and considerable risk in keeping materials that are vulnerable to identity theft, especially SSNs.

Alum Matters

Michele Morano's "Grammar Lessons," a collection of 13 personal essays published by the University of Iowa Press, was included in the New York Public Library's list of 25 "Books to Remember from 2007." More information can be found here.

Timing Matters

A new solution to the challenges of binge drinking, not to mention the constraints of space utilization, was bruited by the administration this week:

UI considers adding night courses (Chicago Tribune, April 1)

The UNIVERSITY OF IOWA plans to offer late-night courses that officials hope will help thwart underage and binge drinking. Officials say the classes could begin at 10 p.m. and last until 1:30 a.m. or 2 a.m.

I notice that this was a story with legs, so to speak, that made it into Inside Higher Ed as well as the local Press-Citizen, apparently spread by the Associated Press:

UI plans late-night courses, activities for students (Inside Higher Ed, April 2)

The UNIVERSITY OF IOWA is planning late-night recreational courses (starting at 10 p.m. and lasting as late as 2 a.m.) to create alternatives to bars for students, the Associated Press reported.

I suspect we’ll be lining up for the honor of bringing the humanities into such a scheme: Beowulf works so much better in the wee hours!

Department Calendar

The calendar is now housed on its own page, and both the calendar and Reading Matters are now available via links from the main English Dept. webpage, making it easier to access them. You can find a full listing of upcoming events at the English Department Calendar.

Other Calendars

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

Future Issues

Please send any items for Reading Matters or the departmental calendar to Erin Hackathorn at erin-hackathorn@uiowa.edu. Reading Matters appears every other Thursday during the semester, and submissions should be received by 5 p.m. the day before. Please send submissions for the next issue by 5 p.m. on Wed., April 16. Thanks very much.