Reading Matters, Vol. 13, Issue 15, May 1, 2008
I hear that the departmental Undergraduate Honors Awards Ceremony was a resounding success—despite a tornado warning—bravo Mary Ann! See further below for a College listing of English Department students graduating with honors or distinction. I had to miss this year’s ceremony as I was attending a meeting of English chairs from the CIC, which is always an interesting forum for discovering what pressures our peers are facing. Among other things, I got the sense that many of our sister institutions are busy trying to beef up their undergraduate honors programs; that the release of dissertations and theses to the web has been an issue for many, with the option of a six year moratorium seeming to be the happiest compromise position; and that a few of our sister institutions have faced far tighter hiring conditions than our own (especially Minnesota). Most instructive, I thought, was Penn State, already something of a leader in faculty entrepeneurialism (following, I am sure, from their much diminished state funding role), whose “World Campus” teaches courses using new technologies to those off as well as on site. The rest of us marveled at the size and significance of this operation, even as it hints at what someone might be suggesting for our future.
Meanwhile, I am happy to report that students are flowing into our face-to-face courses both for next summer and fall. As in the past, the minimum enrollments for a course to run are 12 for an undergraduate class, 6 for a graduate class in the fall/spring semesters, 15 for an undergraduate class and 10 for a graduate class in the summer/winter semesters. As our 112 Ph.D. students, 44 MFA students, 992 majors, and hosts of non-majors jostle to get into our courses, I’m not expecting much problem with low enrolled courses, even as I have to report on those classes under threat on Monday. And expect soon a memo from Sharry as she starts up the process of scheduling Spring 2009 courses.
Happy wrapping up of the semester!
Visiting Assistant Professor Mike Chasar's review of Joan Shelley Rubin's book Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America appeared in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of American Studies. Mike Chasar's guest column "Obama's Bitter Muse: Frank M. Davis" appeared in The Iowa City Press-Citizen on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. That article was reprinted in The Des Moines Register on April 30 as "Bitterness Tempered by Hope: Exploring an Early Obama Muse."
On April 21, Ed Folsom lectured at the Des Moines University Medical School in the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program. He spoke on Whitman, Dickinson, and the Civil War in the context of “Making Art Out of Pain, Grief, and Mass Death.”
Patricia Foster has an essay "Bullies" forthcoming in the New Ohio Review, an essay "The Narcotic Couch" in Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture; and a story "The Accomplice" forthcoming in Arts & Letters.
Teresa Mangum has been selected as a recipient of the 2008 Michael J. Brody Award For Faculty Excellence in Service. This Faculty Senate award is given in recognition of the importance of faculty service to the quality of the University and honors members of our faculty who have made exceptionally effective contributions, over several years or over the course of an entire career, to the University and/or its external constituencies. Bravo, Teresa!
Christopher Merrill recited two of his poems, "A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball" and "Because" at the Jeddah Literary Club in the Al-Shati district on Sunday, April 20.
Dee Morris was quoted in the April 23 edition of The Daily Iowan regarding UI students and the issue of personal and social responsibility. A link to the article can be found here.
"UI writing programs assist doctoral student in Iraq" relates the story of how Robin Hemley and Christopher Merrill are assisting a doctoral student in Iraq by collecting much-needed books for dissertation research. The full story can be found here.
This year two English Department graduate students received Ada Louise Ballard and Seashore Fellowships: Amit Baishya, for “Rewriting Nation-State: Spectral Remainders and the Question of Ethical Responsibility” (Priya Kumar, dir.) and Joshua Gooch, for “Novel Multitudes: Credit, Capital, and the Creation of New Collective Subjects in the British Novel” (Garrett Stewart, dir.). Thomas Keegan received the English Department’s Seely Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship for "The Usual: Pub Space and Practice in Twentieth-Century Irish literature and Film" (Cheryl Herr, dir.) and Heidi LaVine received the English Department’s Dietz Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship for “Paradoxes of Particularity: Caribbean Literary Imaginaries” (Mary Lou Emery, dir.). Heidi also received the Prairie Lights/Sherman Paul Dissertation Fellowship, which is awarded for work on the contemporary period. Erica Daigle received the Malone Award for “Roiling, Surging, Seeping, and Turning: the Active Brain in Early Modern Literature” (Alvin Snider, dir.). June Melby received the Marcus Bach Graduate Fellowship for completion of her thesis and memoir, “little house on the astroturf”, about growing up on a miniature golf course. Ellicott (Cutter) Wood received the La Muse Inn Writing Fellowship. Bridget Draxler, Joanne Janssen, Emma Rainey and Lindsey Row-Heyveld were selected to be Obermann Graduate Fellows for the Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy. And Andre Perry was chosen as the recipient of the Nonfiction Writing Program’s Church St. Fellowship for 2008-2009.
This year the recipients of the Department’s Best Essay Prize were Heidi Bean, for “Repeating Gertrude Stein: Language, Performativity, and Hypermediated Theater,” Text and Performance Quarterly, 27.3 (July 2007): 168-193, and Mark Bresnan, for “The Work of Play in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest,” forthcoming in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction.
The following students received external fellowships or awards: Jen McGovern has received a William Reese Company Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia for research in American bibliography and the history of the book in the Americas. She will conduct research for her dissertation, “Captive Audiences: (Re)Visions of Indian Captivity in the Literary Marketplace,” (Kathleen Diffley, dir.). Eve Rosenbaum has received a White House History Fellowship from the Organization of American Historians and the White House Historical Association for 2008-2009, as well a Capital Fellowship for 2007-2008 from the United States Capital Historical Society and the Architect of the Capital. Both are for work on her dissertation, “The Shifting City Street: Writing the Civil War in Washington, D.C.” (Kathleen Diffley, dir.). Chad Wriglesworth has received a Formby Research Fellowship with the Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University for 2008-2009. Colleen Kinder received a Fulbright for Mexico, and a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation for this summer in Iceland. In August 2008, Margaret MacInnis will be a fellow at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in France. Maggie McKnight received a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant for her book-in-progress (“Misconception: The Story of a Family”--from which her thesis is excerpted). She also received third place in the Fine Arts division at the Jacobsen Conference and received an honorable mention grant from the Astraea Foundation Lesbian Writer's Fund for her book-in-progress. Dave Peters was selected as a finalist in Third Coast Magazine's Nonfiction Contest. Spring Ulmer has won a Fulbright Fellowship to fund her research in Rwanda. Emma Rainey received the John Woods Scholarship, which will fund her involvement in the Prague Summer Writing Program, the P.E.O. Scholar Award, and she is a finalist for the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award for an essay titled, "Freaks." Ryan Van Meter was named a finalist for the 2008 Third Coast Creative Nonfiction Award and the Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize, and he won second prize in the Fine and Performing Arts division of the 2008 James F. Jakobsen Conference. He was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
The following students received post-comps course release fellowships from the Graduate College’s Strategic Initiative Funds:
Amit Baishya
Benjamin Basan
Judith Coleman
Joshua Gooch
Joanne Janssen
James Lambert
Matthew Low
Deborah Manion
Ann Pleiss Morris
Lindsey Row-Heyveld
Chad Wriglesworth.
The following students received Graduate College Summer Fellowships:
Nicole Buscemi
Jennifer McGovern
Sucheta Choudhuri
Eve Rosenbaum
Douglas Dowland
Chad Wriglesworth
Heidi LaVine.
The following students will be Writers-in-Residence at the UI Museum of Art:
Gabriel Houck
Spring Ulmer
David Peters
Ellicott (Cutter) Wood.
The following students received departmental funding to attend institutes this summer:
Deborah Manion and Lynne Nugent for the Dickens Universe
Amit Baishya and Elisabeth Shane for the School of Criticism and Theory
Mark Bresnan and Joanna Davis-McElligatt for the Futures of American Studies.
The following students presented papers at professional conferences: Marta Holliday presented “To be Young, Tragic and Mixed: Nella Larsen’s Passing and 20th Century Fetishization of the Mulatta Body” at the College English Association’s 39th annual conference; Joanne Janssen presented “Fissures in the Indian Opal: Empire as Disrupting Family Relationships in The Argosy Magazine” at the British Women Writer’s Conference; Chad Wriglesworth presented “Father and Son: Water and Work in Raymond Carver’s Poetry” at the 2007 Raymond Carver Symposium in Chicago, Illinois; Nick Kowalczyk will lead a nonfiction panel and give a reading from his MFA thesis, “The Story of Home,” at the annual conference for the Society of Midwest Literature this May; Emma Rainey participated in the panel presentation for “A Changed Workshop: Creative Writing in the Writing Center” at the conference of the Midwest Writing Centers Association, as well as “A Brief History of Solo Writing Act Morphing into a Pas de Deux: Tutors Tutoring Tutors,” a collaborative panel discussion.
The following students published articles, stories, or poems. Chad Wriglesworth’s essay, “Theological Humanism as Living Praxis: Reading Surfaces and Depth in Margaret Edison’s Wit,” is forthcoming in the Summer 2008 edition of Literature and Theology. Tom Fleischmann has a poem ("reasons for inking") in Hayden's Ferry Review, an essay ("fist") in Pleiades, and an essay ("instructions to self") in Pebble Lake Review. Jenna Hammerich has an essay forthcoming in Quarterly West. Jeremy Jones has an article called "Fiddlin' in the Grove" coming out in the May issue of the magazine, Our State: Down Home in North Carolina. Colleen Kinder has an essay forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review. Nick Kowalczyk will have an essay/profile, “As I Lay Dying,” in the spring/summer issue of Ninth Letter. Margaret MacInnis has essays forthcoming in The Briar Cliff Review, Calyx, and Colorado Review, and she is in the current issue of River Teeth. Cheyenne Nimes has two pieces forthcoming in Ninth Letter, and Cannot Exist- coming out in June-will feature three pieces on global warming. She also has work in the current Hamilton Stone Review. Emma Rainey published an article with Carol Severino and Matt Gilchrist, titled “Second Language Writers Inventing Identifies through Creative Work and Performance.” Ryan Van Meter’s work appeared in the Indiana Review, the Iowa Review, and the Colorado Review, and is forthcoming in The Southeast Review, Pebble Lake Review, and Agni Online. One of his essays was also printed in the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to Present, edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone, and published in December. A feature article was also published in Massage Therapy Journal.
Many graduate students received teaching awards this year. Deborah Manion and Chad Wriglesworth both received the W.R. Irwin Award for Excellence in Teaching General Education Literature; Mark Bresnan received the John C. Gerber Award for Excellence in Teaching General Education Literature; and Adam Bradford, Laura Capp, Erica Daigle, James Lambert and Wanda Raiford received UI Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards.
This year the following students passed their qualifications and advanced to candidacy:
Erica Bazemore
Katherine Bishop
Eric Conrad
Brian Deutschendorf
Gabriel Downs
Bridget Draxler
Dorothy Giannakouros
Berneta Haynes
Adele Holoch
Jacob Horn
James Lambert
Matthew Lavin
Jessica Lawson
Matthew Low
Stephanie Norris
Chris Vinsonhaler
This year the following students passed their comprehensive exams:
Adam Bradford
Joshua Gooch
Katherine Gubbels
Chad Hines
Joanne Janssen
Deborah Manion
Joshua Matthews
Ann Pleiss Morris
Lindsay Row-Heyveld
Chad Wriglesworth
The following students graduated this year with terminal MA’s:
Elise Cook
Shawn Doyle
Scott Newton
Amy Southwood
Stephen West
The following students graduated this year with MFAs:
Ashley Butler, “The Book of Concealed Hearts” (John D’Agata, dir.)
Ori Fienberg, “The Insomniac's Almanac: stories, recipes, activities and information for the long nights ahead” (Bonnie Sunstein, dir.)
April Freely, “Built on Nothing Less.” (David Hamilton, dir.)
Riley Hanick,“Attic Centriole” (John D’Agata, dir.)
Katherine Jamieson, “Love in the Land of Many Waters” (Susan Lohafer, dir.)
Andrea Jonahs, “Body Fluids” (Bonnie Sunstein, dir.)
Colleen Kinder, “Before There Was After In Havana” (Susan Lohafer, dir.)
Nick Kowalczyk, “The Story of Home” (Patricia Foster, dir.)
Maggie McKnight, “Misconception: The Story of a Family” (Robin Hemley, dir.)
Elena Passarello,“A Very Fine Piano: Essays on the Voice in Performance” (John D’Agata, dir.)
Andre Perry, “Indie Rock Stripes” (Susan Lohafer, dir.)
Alex Sheshunoff, “Paradise Misplaced” (Patricia Foster, dir.).
The following students graduated (or will graduate) this year with PhDs:
Steven Almquist, “Linguistic Safari: Reading The Diaspora Through Kiswahili” (Barbara Eckstein, dir.)
Jessica DeSpain, “Steaming Across the Pond: Travel, Transatlantic Literary Culture and the Nineteenth-Century Book” (Ed Folsom, dir.)
Mark Dowdy, “The Wayward Stage: Mobility and Identity in Early Modern Drama” (Huston Diehl, dir.)
Ted Genoways, “Whitman's Lost War: American's Poet During the Forgotten Years, 1860-1862” (Ed Folsom, dir.)
Everett Hamner “Spectacles of Faith: Technology, Religion, and Modern American Fictions”(Claire Fox and Garrett Stewart, dirs.)
Katherine Henderson, “Making Room: British Women Writers, Social Change, and the Short Story, 1820-1940” (Teresa Mangum, dir.)
Vickie Larson, “The Pious Fringe: Julian of Norwich’s Readers and their Books, 1373-1843” (Claire Sponsler, dir.)
William Ness, “Burning With Star-Fires: The National Flag in Civil War Poetry” (Ed Folsom, dir.)
Sean Scanlan, “Narrating Nostalgia: Literary Homesickness and the Rise of Modern New York, 1809-1925” (Laura Rigal, dir.)
Jennifer Sherer, “Mining America: Antiquarian Authorship and U.S. Empire, 1800-1855” (Laura Rigal, dir.)
Mike Smolinsky, Alimentation and Aesthetics: The Metaphor of Taste in Early Modern Drama (Huston Diehl, dir.)
Anna Spyra, “Cosmopoetics: Multilingual Experiments in Transnational Literature” (Mary Lou Emery and Claire Fox, dirs.).
Finally, the following individuals got jobs this year:
Steven Almquist (Barbara Eckstein, dir.) has accepted a tenure track position at Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL
John Craig (Adalaide Morris, dir.) has accepted a teaching position at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
Jessica DeSpain (Ed Folsom, dir.) has accepted a tenure track position at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL
Kate Henderson (Teresa Mangum, dir.) has accepted a teaching position at the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN
Nick Kowalczyk, (Patricia Foster, dir.) MFA 2008, has accepted a position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College
Matthew Miller, (Ed Folsom, dir.) has accepted a teaching position at Yeshiva University, New York, NY
Anna Spyra (Mary Lou Emery and Claire Fox, dirs.) has accepted a tenure track position at Butler University, Indianapolis, IN
Jeffrey Swenson (Laura Rigal, dir.) has accepted a tenure track position at Haram College, Hiram, OH.
Don’t miss The Graduate Awards Ceremony this Friday, May 2 at 3:45 in the Gerber Lounge. We will announce the awards and achievements of graduate students from both the MFA and PHD programs. This year, the ceremony will also include the unveiling of our new portrait of Bob Irwin, whose generous donations to the department have supported numerous graduate students over the years. Eat, Drink, and Listen to Short Speeches.
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.The following is a list of the Ph.D. students that will be joining us in the fall:
Nellene Benhardus, BA Union University. Victorian Literature.
Johanna Brinkley, BA Valparaiso University. 19th c. American Literature.
Chad Cripe, BA Cornerstone Univ/MA Grand Valley State. Late 20th c. American Literature.
Daniel Davis, BA Kansas State. 20th C. US/African-American Literature.
Melissa Bagley, BA/MA University of Kansas. British Modernism.
Jonathan Freitas, BA Western Connecticut State. Medieval/Early Modern Literature.
Catherine Garnet, BA Bard College. 19th & 20th c. Poetry
Robert Gillespie, BA University of Iowa, 20th c. American Lit/Postmodernism
Josh Grinolds, BA University of Minnesota/MA University of St. Thomas. Medieval
Sonia Johnson, BA/MA Victoria University of Wellington. 20th c. American Literature.
Katherine Montgomery, BA Williams College. Victorian Literature.
Elizabeth Sanders, BA St. Olaf. Victorian Literature
Michael Sarabia, BA Montana State. Law and Literature
Eric Siegel, BA University of Vermont. 19th c. American Literature
Taryne Taylor, BA/MA Florida Atlantic. Victorian/Postmodern
Angela Watkins, BA DePaul University. African-American Literature
Andrew Williams, BA University of Iowa. 18th c. British Literature
Melissa Schomers, (MA Program) BA University of Iowa.
Below is a College listing of English Department students graduating with honors or distinction, high distinction, or highest distinction (for the top 10%, 5%, and 2% gpa of those graduating this year).
The CLAS Commencement Honors Celebration is Friday, May 16, 4:30-5:30 p.m. in the Second Floor Ballroom of the IMU. For further details click here.
Dean Curto has added a document listing tips on how to write a CLAS-style curriculum vitae; see here. In general, I see this document as codifying existing practices while also allowing a little extra flexibility to acknowledge the variety of experience that we encapsulate in our cvs. For example, this version suggests that you organize publications in categories, but encourages you to select those categories that make most sense for your published record. It implies some similar discretion in the categorizing of conference presentations and guest lectures. Particularly valuable are the precise definitions offered for “In Press,” “Forthcoming,” “Accepted,” “Submitted,” and “In Progress,” which I would suggest that we all try to follow.
Don't forget to run the Identity Finder program to locate all Social Security Numbers that may be hiding on your computer. Instructions for Windows XP and Vista users can now be found on the departmental L:\ drive in the Identity Finder folder. Mac users will need to use Virtual Desktop to scan their computers. 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 your own copy of materials that are vulnerable to identity theft, especially SSNs. More information can also be found on the ITS website by clicking here.
Sean Ross Meehan (Ph.D., 2002) has recently published a book with the University of Missouri Press. More information about the book, titled Mediating American Autobiography: Photography in Emerson, can be found here.
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
This is the last issue of Reading Matters for the academic year. Reading Matters will start up again when classes resume next fall. Please feel free to send calendar dates throughout the summer.