From (under) the Chair's Desk

I’m guessing that most of you didn’t spend much time with the University of Iowa’s Annual Report 2007-2008, “Our People, Our Promise” (or, rather, in the style du jour, our people | our promise).  The 34-page glossy has the expected financial information for the year tucked away in pie charts at the back, but mostly comprises short features about people and programs at the university.  But if you do look inside, it’s a delight to see what a high proportion feature people of the English Department.  Mike Chasar makes a brief appearance for his poetry scrapbook collections.  Steve Kuusisto has a full spread, “Questioning the definition of disability”; Barbara Eckstein another for her Iowa Rivers symposium under the heading “Connecting university, community, and environment”; and Chris Merrill a third under the heading “Sharing Iowa’s literary heritage.”  Add to this Chris’s photo on the front cover and Barbara’s on the back and you get the sense that the English Department may constitute the bulk of what is worth reporting for the year.

As well we might next year, too, in view of some of the exciting accomplishments of English faculty captured in this issue of Reading Matters.  Note, in particular, Garrett Stewart’s major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to offer graduate seminars in narrative theory in summer 2009 and 2011.  (In my opinion, us relatively-inexpensive humanists really notice as soon as grants can get articulated in terms of millions of dollars, and this one comes in at over a quarter a mill, dwarfed only by Ed Folsom’s on-going NEH-funded Whitman Archive work.)  This should boost our graduate profile, even as Robyn Schiff’s work has turned our undergraduate creative writing track into a reality, as laid out below.  English Department research is getting external funding in the likes of Robin Hemley’s Guggenheim and Matt Brown’s NEH/Library Company of Philadelphia.  (Do remember to route all external research grants that will need salary or benefit supplements through me to the College; see here.)  Meanwhile, English Department teaching is getting notice with Phil Round’s upcoming Fulbright Teaching Fellowship in Spain and with Teresa Mangum’s recent presentation to the Board of Regents on her innovative classes. 

I can feel that it is time to update the annual departmental profile that allows us to encapsulate our strengths in a two-page brag sheet.  Please remember to share your own accomplishments with Erin for Reading Matters, since this establishes a handy repository for use during that kind of exercise, as well as allowing us a sense of our collective achievement.

Doctoral Education Matters

Congratulations to Garrett Stewart, who has been selected to teach a Mellon Dissertation Seminar in summer 2009 and 2011, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the enhancement of doctoral education in the humanities to the tune of $293,000, on narrative theory.  Seminars are given out only to the most distinguished senior faculty across the humanities, who are handpicked to apply, with four funded in any given year.  Do point appropriate advanced graduate students to this opportunity.  The full press release follows. 

            Thanks to an initiative of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the enhancement of doctoral education in the humanities, with a three-year grant totaling $293,000, Garrett Stewart, James O. Freedman Professor of Letters in the Department of English within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been invited to direct a six-week Mellon Dissertation Seminar in the summer of 2009–one of only four such seminars funded nationwide this year.  Called “Story in Theory,” the colloquium (to be convened again with new participants in the summer of 2011) will focus on recent developments in narrative theory.  It is  designed to aid students from across the humanities in the fuller realization of their thesis projects wherever their writing stands to benefit from a considered infusion of such scholarship. Including visits from outside critics in the field, and enrolling a limited number of doctoral candidates from other campuses as well, the course will run from June 22-July 31, 2009, and will provide a stipend of $4500 for each student participant as well as additional funds for research materials.
            Narrative theory so successfully swept the disciplinary fields of the human sciences in the 1980s that it has aspired ever since to become a scientific discipline of its own–namely, narratology: the study of the essential structural ingredients of a narrative regardless of mode (fiction, testimony, autobiography, etc.) or medium (prose, film, comic strip, et. al.).  Work in this vein has brought powerfully to light the hidden plot assumptions of the hard and soft sciences alike (the tacitly Aristotelian beginning, middle, and end, for instance, of concern to evolutionary biology or astronomy; the linked paradigms of agency, turning point, and closure in historical writing; the quasi-novelistic models of mystery and solution in legal jurisprudence). 
            One result for dissertation writers in the humanities is that students of everything from Elizabethan allegory through sci fi film to postmodern Anglophone fiction, realist painting to opera scores, may all have an interest in the potential critical yield from a deliberative use of narrative theory.  Airing chapters of student work alongside an extensive syllabus running from Russian Formalism through structuralism to contemporary psychopoetics and cognitive narratology, the Mellon Seminar would seek to maximize this yield while also helping students develop a stronger narrative line in their own arguments.
            UI applicants at the dissertation-writing stage should supply a brief prospectus for their thesis, a cover note mentioning what courses they may have taken already that involve narrative theory, and, most important, a short speculative proposal (a page or so in length) highlighting those aspects of the dissertation–provisional claims or residual questions–they expect might profit from further work and discussion in the area of narrative theory.  Please direct inquiries to garrett-stewart@uiowa.edu; applications due by October 24, 2008, to cherie-rieskamp@uiowa.edu.   

Undergraduate Writing Matters

Congratulations, too, to Robyn Schiff on making a reality of the Undergraduate Creative Writing Track.  The latest clarification of this track, as released to interested students, follows here.  For further information and answers to some Frequently Asked Questions and a copy of the application form, see the website.

The Department of English announces a new selective-admission Undergraduate Creative Writing Track. Creative Writing Track will be indicated on the transcripts of those students who successfully complete the requirements. Admission to the Track is application based. Application forms are available (here). Applications for Spring Semester, 2009 are due by 3pm on Wednesday, October 15, 2008. Please bring completed applications to the English Department Office, 308 EPB.
 
All students who will have Junior or Senior standing (more than 60s.h.) by spring semester ’09, and who have successfully completed, or are on schedule to complete the prerequisites this semester, are invited to apply.

Prerequisites:
At least 9 s.h. in University of Iowa English courses and an additional two writing courses on the introductory level, resulting in a cumulative GPA in English of at least 3.33. Introductory-level courses must be chosen from the following list:

08C:023 Creative Writing 3 s.h.
08C:097 Fiction Writing 3 s.h.
08C:098 Poetry Writing 3 s.h.
08N:080 Nonfiction Writing 3 s.h.
08N:090 Intermediate Nonfiction Writing 3 s.h. [prerequisite 08N:080]
048:078 Undergraduate Translation Seminar 3 s.h.
048:079 Undergraduate Translation Workshop 3 s.h.
049:062 Playwriting I 3 s.h.
049:063 Playwriting II 3 s.h. [prerequisite 049:062]
08C:167 Undergraduate Writers Seminar 3 s.h. [only if taken in Fall ‘08]

Track Description and Requirements:

The hub of the Writing Track is a cluster of intimate Writers’ Seminars that will give students the opportunity to creatively engage the relationship between reading and writing and to explore questions of craft, literary traditions, and aesthetics in a manner that is both inspiring and rigorous. Students will learn how to read literature with a writer’s gaze through discussions and workshops. In Spring Semester ‘09 the Writing Track will offer Seminars in Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction, as well as an exciting Literary Translation Seminar that will address the writer as translator. Each Seminar will meet independently for 3 s.h. to address a variety of issues relevant to its own genre; in addition, all of the Writers’ Seminars will also gather together once a week to form the Writers’ House Seminar, a related, co-required 2 s.h course, where all of the Seminars will share a stimulating and demanding common experience that includes a roster of readings, talks, performances, master classes, and class discussions that will prepare us for attentive participation at events led by visiting writers. The curriculum for the Writers’ House Seminar will largely consist of works by or about the visiting writers, as well as literature that will help contextualize our reading series, and students will respond creatively and analytically in exercises designed to heighten their involvement at events. The Writers’ Seminar and Writers’ House Seminar must be taken together in the same term, and will provide Creative Writing Track students the opportunity to work intensively in their chosen genre while they participate in a multi-genre community experience that draws on the richness of the creative writing tradition at The University of Iowa, and in Iowa City at large.

The Writers’ House Seminar is listed in ISIS as course number: 8WS:120/ ENGL: 3600
The Writers’ Seminars are listed in ISIS under the following course numbers:
            8WS:121/ ENGL3601 Writers’ Seminar: Fiction
            8WS:122/ ENGL3602 Writers’ Seminar: Poetry
            8WS:123/ ENGL3603 Writers’ Seminar: Nonfiction
            8WS:124/ ENGL3604 Writers’ Seminar: Literary Translation
Registration to all Creative Writing Track courses requires special permission, which will be granted to successful applicants after the application deadline each semester. The application deadline will always be scheduled prior to preregistration.
 
To graduate within the Creative Writing Track, students must take the co-required Writers’ Seminars and Writers’ House Seminar twice (though not necessarily consecutively, and not necessarily in the same genre). Additionally, to graduate within the Creative Writing Track, students must meet the normal requirements of the English major, choosing from a variety of inspiring literature courses that will enrich their lives as writers. As students proceed through the English Department requirements, Creative Writing Track students must include one advanced writing course chosen from the following list:

08C:166 Undergraduate Writers Workshop Poetry  3 s.h.

08C:163 Undergraduate Writers Workshop Fiction 3 s.h.

08N:120 Advanced Nonfiction Writing 3 s.h.

08N:130 Special Readings in Nonfiction 3 s.h.

08N:150 Undergraduate Essay Workshop 3 s.h.

049:165 Advanced Playwriting 3 s.h.

08:198 Undergraduate Honors Project [creative thesis] 3 s.h.

As the Creative Writing Track grows, additional advanced creative writing courses will be added to the catalog to supplement the current offerings.

The students who have taken the Seminars twice, and who are on course to complete the major requirements are the only students who have the privilege to pursue an Honors Thesis in Creative Writing. (Students wishing to work on an Honors thesis must also meet the normal requirements of the Honors Program.)

Publications, Presentations, and other Faculty Matters