Reading Matters, Vol. 13, Issue 14, April 17, 2008
After a flurry of last-minute changes, I believe that everything currently listed on ISIS for the summer and fall is now correct. Thanks, as always, to Sharry for enacting that complicated operation! At this stage, we have appointed a number of visitors who will be filling out our curriculum, with funding that we get from faculty on paid research leaves, leaves without pay, or to fill in for failed searches. Our visitors for next year will be recently graduated Ph.D.s Mike Chasar, Sean Scanlan, and Mimi Van Ausdall, each teaching three courses across the year. They will be joined by Jeff Doty in the spring, following his graduation in December, filling out our curriculum in the early modern period. In addition, Carol de St Victor will kindly be returning to teach a section of Shakespeare in both semesters, while Rebecca Clouse will join us to fill in some of the gaps in the medieval curriculum. Jo Ann Beard, author of The Boys of My Youth and a graduate of the NWP, will teach a graduate workshop in Nonfiction Writing in the fall, while Xu Xi will be the Bedell distinguished visitor in nonfiction writing in the spring. I look forward to welcoming all these visitors at our customary opening of the academic year meeting and reception on Sunday, August 24 at 7 p.m.
This will also be our opportunity to welcome Robyn Schiff, who will be joining us at the rank of associate professor to lead the undergraduate creative writing track. In relation to which, I should report that, with strong backing (and funding) from the Provost’s Office, we have now appointed four Writing Fellows for next year. These Writing Fellows are recent graduates of the various writing programs who will live in 111 Church Street, which will be a focus for community outreach centering on all aspects of writing. The Fellows will teach a course each semester that will contribute to the undergraduate creative writing track. This year we have appointed one each in Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Translation, including Andre Perry, who will be graduating this spring from the Nonfiction Writing Program. Congratulations, Andre!
Both the Ph.D. and MFA have been actively recruiting next year’s class and I believe at this stage we have the final count of those who have committed to come: 18 in the Ph.D./MA incoming class (matching 18 last year) and 14 in the MFA incoming class (matching 14 last year). Congratulations to Garrett Stewart, Kathleen Diffley, Eric Gidal, Kathy Lavezzo, Phil Round, Lara Trubowitz, and Doris Witt for their work in selecting the Ph.D. students and to Robin Hemley, Patricia Foster, Steve Kuusisto, Jeff Porter, Mary Ruefle, Bonnie Sunstein, and student rep Ryan Van Meter on selecting the MFA students. Garrett worked his magic in winning us six Presidential Fellowship offers, of whom, alas, none elected to come to Iowa, and six Dean’s Fellowship offers, of whom, I’m delighted to report, all six chose to come to Iowa! Thanks, too, to Claire Sponsler, who has been putting together the packages to finance the non-fellowship incoming students, and to Loren Glass and all who helped in arranging the visits by the prospective students that allowed them to see what an exciting intellectual community they would be joining! We will have more details on the incoming classes in the next Reading Matters.
And, as I predict the future, I should also add that I will be presiding over next year’s opening ceremonies as chair for the fall. Claire Sponsler will be on research leave for the fall semester, but we will be in close contact on chairly business, and she will step up from the beginning of January to serve as chair for the spring, when I plan to be away participating on the Montpellier exchange. Claire and I will work collaboratively this spring and summer on setting up the committee roster for next year and I am happy to report that we have already made a great start on this by securing our associate chairs. Dee Morris will continue as associate chair for faculty, providing valuable continuity from this year. Mary Lou Emery will step up as associate chair for graduate affairs, while Lori Branch will serve as associate chair for undergraduate matters. Brooks Landon will continue as Director of General Education Literature, while David Hamilton has kindly agreed to serve as Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program while Robin is off on his Guggenheim Fellowship for the year. Finally, Loren Glass will round out his stint as DGS by serving as summer chair. Many thanks to Dee, Mary Lou, Lori, Brooks, David, and Loren!
In all the excitements of next year, don’t forget a couple of high points yet remaining in this semester. Mary Ann Rasmussen will preside over the undergraduate Honors Award Ceremony on the afternoon of Friday, April 25, in the State Room of the IMU. Loren Glass will preside over the Graduate Awards Ceremony on Friday, May 2, at 3:45 p.m. in the Gerber Lounge, 304 EPB, an event which will include the unveiling of a new portrait of Bob Irwin—particularly appropriate as we will also be giving out the two Irwin awards for outstanding graduate student teachers. And then, of course, there’s all the excitement of teaching, grading, exams, and the end of term (teaching term ends May 9, exam week ends May 16), not to mention the service work to make this all run smoothly, and the research that informs all our activities. Happy end-of-semester sprint!
Visiting Assistant Professor Mike Chasar's poem "Man Faces Jail for Smuggling Iguanas in His Prosthetic Leg" appeared in the Press-Citizen on Wednesday, April 16. A link to the poem can be found here.
Teaching Green! Barbara Eckstein and Laura Rigal were both interviewed in a recent Daily Iowan article regarding the effort to bring sustainability courses to the University of Iowa. The article can be found here.
Ed Folsom's presence on the PBS Whitman program last Monday was preempted here in Iowa for a program on “Americans at Prayer.” Iowa Public TV will be airing the program NEXT Monday (April 21) from 9 to 11 p.m. (Iowa was the only state in the country where you couldn’t see Whitman on Monday night!). More information can be found here.
Congratulations to Robin Hemley who was awarded the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship. More information on this prestigious award can be found here. Bravo, Robin!
Steve Kuusisto was featured on the front page of Wednesday's Press-Citizen for his work bridging the humanities and medicine. Congratulations to Steve, whose course enrollments will surely soar with such healthy publicity! A link to the article can be found here.
A delegation of American writers and teachers are visiting Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as part of the Middle East Reading and Lecture Tour hosted by the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa was one of the delegates. More information can be found here.
Horace Porter shares the following regarding his upcoming guest Trudier Harris:
Professor Trudier Harris, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, will deliver the F. Wendell Miller Lecture in Gerber Lounge on Thursday May lst at 4:00. Her lecture: “Southern Horrors: How Tayari Jones Tames the Monster of the South in Leaving Atlanta” is taken from her forthcoming book. Professor Harris has lectured and published widely in her specialty areas of African American Literature and folklore. Her books include: Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin, 1985 and Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison, 1991. Her memoir, Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South, was published in 2003. In addition to lecturing throughout the United States, she has lectured in Jamaica, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, England, and Northern Ireland. In 2005, she received the John Hurt Fisher Award of the South Atlantic Association of Departments of English (SAADE) for the outstanding contributions she has made to the field of English scholarship throughout her career. For additional information please contact Horace Porter.
Lara Trubowitz invites you to the following Jewish Writers Series:
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
IT REALLY DOES! If you are applying for any external grants or fellowships and you want the institution to top up your salary and/or benefits, it is CRUCIAL that you route your initial application both through UIRIS and through the DEO to CLAS. CLAS wants to encourage external grant-getting and is keen to try to top up external awards, but it will only do so if the grant application was routed through them IN ADVANCE so that they can build appropriate supplements into their budget. The policy on Stipend Supplement/Fringe Benefit Support in Conjunction with External Research Fellowships is laid out here, which also includes links to the necessary forms. The process is a bit cumbersome, and I realize it is tempting to skip it, but it really is crucial if you will be asking for any kind of supplement. Gayle Sand or I will be happy to help you through the necessary form-filling. I figure this reminder may be particularly timely as we approach the deadline for NEH fellowship grants, which are due on May 1. See here for full details of the NEH fellowship program, for which we are all eligible. And the Dean always reminds me that it is more prestigious to have faculty applying for grants and not getting them than to have no-one applying. So, please, apply away!
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.
Everett Hamner (dir. Claire Fox and Garrett Stewart) has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor in English and Humanities at Western Illinois University (Moline, 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.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.
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.
UI Master Calendar of Events | UI Academic Calendar | The Writers Workshop Reading Schedule | The International Writing Program Calendar
The next and last issue of Reading Matters for the academic year will be on Wednesday, May 7. Please send submissions for the next issue by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, May 6 to erin-hackathorn@uiowa.edu.