1 Newsletter of the Department of English University of Oregon April 2005 continued on page 2 Also In This Issue ? David V?zquez: American Ethnic Literature Specialist ? Michael Aronson: New Film Studies Specialist ? Swayne Scholars Program ? Notes from Warren Ginsberg ? Jeff Whitty and Avenue Q A. Kingsley Weatherhead Professorship in English Gloria and Robert Lee The UO English Department isextremely grateful to alumnus his wife Gloria, whose generous gift has established an endowed professorship of English in honor of UO English Professor Emeritus A. Kingsley Weatherhead. Professor Weatherhead was Robert Lee?s graduate advisor and dissertation director while he was a graduate student at the UO. Lee remembers Weatherhead as a mentor who helped sharpen his writing skills and provided a model of respectfulness towards students. ?I tried to take the same approach in my own teaching,? Lee comments. After finishing his PhD at the UO (writing his dissertation on the novels of George Orwell), Lee went on to a teaching position at the California State University in San Bernardino, where he taught courses in the humanities and later became a dean and eventually the coordinator of the university?s humanities courses. Mrs. Lee shares her husband?s passion for education, having taught first and second grade over the years. In that sense, their recent gift to the UO is only one demonstration, albeit a very generous one, of their continuing joint commitment to education. The Lees? gift will provide more than $1 million to the UO when fully funded from a charitable trust and a bequest. The Weatherhead Professorship will help support the work of an associate or full professor ?with a demonstrated commitment to teaching Shakespeare, especially at the undergraduate level.? In addition, the endowment establishes the Gloria Tovar Lee Scholarship in Art History. Professor Weatherhead took time after a recent trip to Norway to chat with us about the endowment, his career, and the UO English Department through the years. As British-born Weatherhead says, his academic career in America began with a gamble and an adventure. Having been hired by the Reverend Franklin Thompson, President of the College of Puget Sound, he came to the U.S. in the winter of 1950?1951: ?Thompson was interested in someone with an Oxford or Cambridge degree, and I had one. I came to New York in a small French steamer and, having come from gray, rationed London, I sat up in the University Club at night and could not cease to gaze on that most magnificent, mischievous city, which not to look on would be like death?as someone once said. Then I came out west on the Milwaukee Railroad through snow banked high on both sides of the track. I was and am always grateful to Thompson. He took on a bet?he didn?t know what he was getting into (I didn?t either, for that matter). But if he hadn?t hired me, I would have been a reporter for a small-town newspaper in provincial England in a dirty raincoat.? While teaching at the College of Puget Sound, Weatherhead obtained his doctorate at the University of Washington. Then, after a brief ENGLISH 2 continued from page 1 Professor Emeritus A. Kingsley Weatherhead Weatherhead Profesfsforsfhip interlude at the New Orleans branch of Louisiana State University, where he taught from 1958 to 1960, he settled at the UO in 1960, hired with NDEA funds by the new English Department Head Kester Svendsen. Thus Professor Weatherhead became one of the UO?s first modern literature specialists. Weatherhead began his career with a book on the novels of Henry Green, an author to whom he has returned, among many others, in his most recent book, Upstairs: Writers and Residences (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000). His critical attention has also focused on modern poetry, as his publications demonstrate. When asked which of his publications he would recommend and care to revisit, he says that he would not care to revisit any of them. Instead, he quickly shifts the conversation back to Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell, adding, ?Lowell came out here, you know, and Ralph Salisbury and I took him fishing. He was a lousy fisherman; we would have spent our time better reading Life Studies.? Of his initial reactions to the Department at the end of the Eisenhower era, Weatherhead says, ?They were an odd sort of people, like an English department should be.? In particular, he remembers, ?Bob Horn, the mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship, who must have nourished something like a passion for Dickens. He found two doors in England from Dickens?s house and had them sent back to the States? how do you wrap up a door? And then there was Frank Black, tweedy, and Harvard every inch. There was Stanley ?Stub? Maveety, as nearly purely free of ambition as a man could be. He had spent the Second World War removing the detonators from mines, and I think in a way he had already lived a life. Then there was John Sherwood, who got his exercise, he said, by winding the cuckoo clocks in his house, which screamed at him on the hour. And there was Gerry Moll, Australian poet laureate, behind whose enormous love of fun and party there flourished an exquisite lyrical sensibility.? Of this colorful crowd, Weatherhead says, ?This is the thing about working in academia?one gets to mix with interesting people. It?s an important feature about a career? that you are in constant touch with people you like, even admire in some cases. That makes a vast difference.? His most vivid memories of his early years in the Department, however, seem to be of the man who hired him and who so changed things with his arrival: ?Well, then, into this noiseless society came Svendsen, who had written Milton and Science, a big book, of which he at once ordered six copies for the library. He was vain, mischievous, and cheeky, and he got away with it because he was bright and witty and a lot of fun to be around. I liked him a great deal. One day a week he used to play golf, and a bunch of the Department then took up golf (not I). Things were more laid back then, it seemed.? Weatherhead?s fond memories also extend to former student Robert Lee: ?He was an excellent student. He knew a great deal, but he was modest about his ability. And he didn?t boast about his unquestionable superiority to most of his fellow graduate students. A nice man indeed. I was lucky to have known him under any circumstances.? Considering Weatherhead?s own commitment to teaching, it is no wonder that the Lees have decided to name their gift in his honor. Speaking of teaching in the UO English Department, Weatherhead says, ?Teaching is the point, and not just for the brilliant students but also the kid who is going to get maybe a C in English but get also a glimpse, a gleam like the flashing of a shield, of the wealth, the wonderful richness of this literature.? Because teaching will be a central point of the new endowed professorship, with its emphasis on the teaching of Shakespeare, it will help to ensure that students at the UO continue to get more than just a glimpse of the richness of his work over the ages. When asked if he was surprised that the Lees had decided to name a substantial part of their gift for him, Weatherhead responded, ?I was surprised that anyone in our trade would have a million bucks.? It was a flattering gesture, he says, and he put serious thought into his suggestion for the emphasis of the endowed professorship. Considering that he taught modern poetry at the UO, it might seem odd that he would choose Shakespeare as the emphasis for a professorship in his name, but not so, he assures: ?Well, first of all, of all literature written in English, Shakespeare is incomparably greatest in the use of language. No one has said it all so well. And language is what matters most. An English department must have courses in Shakespeare. Also, think of this: you have to designate the nature of a chair?you?ve got to be fairly precise. You can?t say ?modernism? or ?20th century? because these rubrics would let in almost anything. I might have said Chaucer or even Milton. How else to name a chair and ensure value? It?s the sheer amazing quality of the man?s work!? The Lees agreed, and thus we can rest assured that the education of generations of future students will, in fact, include rich resources in continued on page 8 3 Recounting his decision toreturn to graduate school after technical writer, new UO Assistant Professor of English David V?zquez evokes a memory within a memory: ?I found myself thinking back to the times when I was most happy. There was a little coffee shop on the campus where I did my undergraduate degree where all us disaffected English majors would sit and have arguments about books and philosophy. I realized that represented the kind of life I wanted to have, one more engaged with the life of the mind, thinking about complicated problems in complicated ways.? But becoming a specialist in American ethnic literatures was not always a simple road. ?As an undergraduate I was never exposed to any writing by or for Latinos or Chicanos. It was only in graduate school that I got to read some, and I found there were really striking things that compelled me in important ways.? During his time in the doctoral program in English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a department then attempting to develop its expertise in ethnic literatures, V?zquez participated in several graduate seminars that not only introduced him to Latino/a literature, but also familiarized him with innovative methodological approaches to the study of literature. ?Being a close reader and being a theory-head are sometimes seen in opposition, but when I took two seminars that I thought would embody that opposition (one on the Victorian novel, the other on the theories of Theodor Adorno and C.L.R. James), instead I found that they were able to inform one another in unexpected ways. I really value the theorizing we do as scholars but I always try to ground that process in close textual work. I regard authors as primary theorists?theory and texts should work together. We don?t often give authors credit for thinking through complex problems in ways David V?zquez: New Specialist in American Ethnic Literatures that are, consciously or not, very much in dialogue with theoretical models.? As V?zquez further refined his interests in Latino/a narratives of the self, an opportunity to work with an interdisciplinary group of scholars in the Ethnic Studies Department at UC San Diego presented itself, and he decided to relocate there, while still staying in the doctoral program at UC Santa Barbara. ?It made a lot of sense. The UC system allows graduate students to study at another university while retaining their affiliation to their primary institution. I decided to seek out an environment which would provide me with rich resources for my studies. . . . The three-seminar sequence I took in ethnic studies was enormously important for me. I really felt as though I had found my true cohort at that moment.? While he did not want to devote himself to the social science methodologies of ethnic studies at UC San Diego in place of those offered within literary studies, he describes his dissertation, ?Representing the Self, Re- presenting the Nation: Nations, Nationalism, and the Latino/a Personal Narrative,? as something of a ?hybrid? between traditional English and ethnic studies. ?My work is primarily focused on the literariness of texts, but I?m also interested in the social questions that are in dialogue with those literary texts.? In his dissertation he examines the relationships between self, community, and nation in fictional and autobiographical texts written by several Latino/a authors since the 1960s. ?With traditional autobiographical narratives in the U.S., oftentimes you have a protagonist who is opting out of society. You have Emerson and Thoreau expressing a sense of liberal individualism which has them departing from the mainstream into a different community, a community of their own, defined in terms of the need not to be related to others?their ?self- reliance.? With many, though not all, ethnic autobiographies, and many of the Latino/a texts that I deal with, the authors are looking to opt into a different sense of community. So even as they are articulating their own sense of individual subjectivity, they are always keeping an eye on how they are both shaping and shaped by their community. I believe that especially in the cultural nationalist period of the late 1960s and early 1970s these texts are leading to an articulation of a national consciousness that is located specifically within individual identity. So the individual leads to a community structure that can lead to a political formation that can be termed ?national consciousness.?? The courses in Chicano/a Literature, New Latino/a Writers, and Border Theory V?zquez has taught since arriving at the University of Oregon in 2003 have helped to diversify the Department?s curriculum. ?The Department as a whole truly wants to be inclusive when it comes to teaching American literature, and the faculty knows that necessarily means broadening the definition of what has traditionally been considered to fit into that category. I think that also means broadening the kinds of David V?zquez continued on page 8 4 Steven L. Swig Essay Award winner Matthew Hins, congratulated by Harry Wonham and Kellie Bond Last June 12th, the UO EnglishDepartment presented its honor of its graduating seniors and graduate students. In what has become a pleasant recurring accompaniment to the event in recent years, the Dover String Quartet once again provided an elegant selection of classical music. Candidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English were Carolyn Jane Bergquist, Mark Daniel Chilton, George Cusack, Liam Ethan Felsen, Alison Louise Ganze, Ronald Ganze, Sarah Judith Goss, Hilary Marie Hart, Matthew Christian Luskey, Susmita Mahato, Jillanne Michell, Andrew Daniel Morse, and Jennifer Margaret Shaiman. Candidates for the degree of Master of Arts in English were Kristy Bryant-Berg, Jeong Pil Chang, Rachel Elizabeth Duncan, Adrienne Elisabeth DuVall, Larissa M. Ennis, Nina Alexandra Forsberg, Craig Noel Franson, Matthew Webb Hawthorne, Joan Louise Herman, Alison Marie Hyytinen, Hiroaki Kishi, Daniel James Mackay, Amy Frances Matthusen, Chad Taylor May, Johnnie J. Mazzocco, Jason Prince, Raymond Matthew Rice, Carter Michael Soles, Joanne Elizabeth Titze, Dinh Thuy Vong, and Arin Lea Wallenius. Candidates for the degree of Master of Arts in Folklore included Adam Christopher Andrews, Jason Erle Arnesen, Kimberly Marshall Bohannon, Kathleen Diane Burk, Hillary Lyn Colter, Kalin Stanchev Kirilov, David F. Kosmatka, Cheryl Stephanie Lewman, and Jamie Lynn Webster. Graduate Teaching Fellow Nicole Malkin was the Graduate Teaching Fellow who won the Department?s Outstanding Composition Teacher Award of $500 for the 2003-2004 academic year. Graduating senior Matthew Hins was the recipient of last year?s Steven L. Swig Essay Award, an honor made possible by the generosity of Steven Swig (UO BA, 1963) and his wife, Mary Swig, of San Francisco. This award is presented in June each year for the outstanding essay written by an undergraduate English major, selected by a faculty committee from among entries submitted by professors in the Department during the academic year. Matthew Hins wrote his prize-winning essay, ?Reflexive Aesthetics,? in Drew Morse?s Twentieth-Century Literature class. Hins is shown in the photograph being congratulated by Professor Harry Wonham, Associate Department Head, and Kellie Bond, now Assistant Professor of English at Walla Walla College, who was Matthew?s UO Writing 122 instructor. Four graduating seniors, Jennifer Bok, Amanda Coplin, Meghann Farnsworth, and Sidney Lynn Steele- Long, wrote honors theses and fulfilled the requirements for the English Department Honors Program. Five other graduating seniors also wrote honors theses and fulfilled the graduation requirements for the Robert D. Clark Honors College: Nathan Mark Loveless, Aaron Craig Mullerleile, Kendall Michele Sand, Courtney Ginnan Sweet, and Luke Michael Zentner. Twelve graduating English majors were elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the national honors society: Jennifer Clair Aanderud, Jennifer Lee Bok, English Department Holds Commencement Exercises on June 12, 2004 Darlene Rose Hampton, Kendall Elizabeth Larsen, Nathan Mark Loveless, Kendall Michele Sand, Sydney Lynn Steele-Long, Courtney Ginnan Sweet, Kelly M. Thex, Gregory Matthew Vranizan, Cindy Ronelle Weigel, and Luke Michael Zentner. Graduating with Latin honors were the following eighteen seniors in English: Jennifer Clair Aanderud, Cum Laude; Jennifer Lee Bok, Cum Laude; Alexa Dreyer, Cum Laude; Meghann Tate Farnsworth, Cum Laude; Emily EunJin Haas, Cum Laude; Lori Kimiye Inai, Magna Cum Laude; Kendall Elizabeth Larsen, Summa Cum Laude; Nathan Mark Loveless, Cum Laude; Emily Regina Reed, Cum Laude; Katina Rae Saint Marie, Magna Cum Laude; Kendall Michele Sand, Cum Laude; Sydney Lynn Steele-Long, Cum Laude; Courtney Ginnan Sweet, Magna Cum Laude; Kelly M. Thex, Cum Laude; Gregory Matthew Vranizan, Magna Cum Laude; Cindy Ronelle Weigel, Cum Laude; Erin Kristy Whitlock, Magna Cum Laude; Luke Michael Zentner, Cum Laude. The following sixteen graduating seniors were candidates for the Department?s Certificate in Film Studies: Bryan Derek Akers, Joseph Dale Arney, Lindsay Megan continued on page 9 5 Michael Aronson: New Specialist in Film Studies When undergraduatestudents read Chaucer for a they expect intellectual work, new film specialist Michael Aronson explains. ?When they come to enjoy the efforts and rewards of that work,? he adds with a smile, ?it may come as a pleasant surprise. However, when students enroll in History of Motion Pictures their assumption may well be that it?s going to be pleasurable and even easy. After all, what kind of work could it take to watch Casablanca?? Such an assumption poses a particular challenge for film teachers: the sheer pleasure that students are used to experiencing as movie-goers tests the teacher?s ability to stimulate them to critically engage what they enjoy. ?My goal in teaching cinema is to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar, to give students a critical lens with which to step back from the culture they?re invested in, that is invested in them, that is designed to attach itself to them in all sorts of complex ways.? Not only is this difficult, but students may also actually resist losing the sense of pleasure they may receive from watching a movie uncritically. Giving up the viewing position of a casual movie-goer ?can be literally painful.? But when students do achieve a critical viewpoint, says Aronson, it can be both ?useful and genuinely moving.? And if ?seeing that light go on? is rewarding for teachers, then one hopes the pleasures of critical viewing more than make up for the loss of some of the consumerist pleasures of the cinematic text. Now mid-way in his second year as Assistant Professor of English at the UO, Aronson has taught undergraduate courses in New Digital Media, the Hollywood studio system, and The History of Motion Picture. It is his Cinema of the Jazz Age graduate seminar, however, with its emphasis on the culture of movie-going in the silent film era, that most squarely aligns itself with his principal research interests. This focus on consumption as opposed to production is a complementary balance for someone like Aronson who has spent a number of years helping to produce moving images professionally. After completing a B.A. in Film Production at Pennsylvania State University, where his parents both worked as academics and in the town where he was raised, Aronson relocated to Los Angeles with the intention of taking a one-year break from academics and ?getting a little life experience? practicing what he had been studying. Without industry connections, he started ?at the bottom? as a production assistant and worked his way up the photography hierarchy to assistant cameraman. For the next six years he freelanced in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean. ?What I worked on mostly was commercials. I did a lot of location work?Jeeps on tops of mountains with the sun going down, whales cavorting with kayakers. I did a lot of underwater photography. Very macho stuff!? Eventually he moved back to Pennsylvania and began graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh. The location proved decisive for his doctoral studies. ?Pittsburgh can be understood as a metonym for the history of industrial capitalism and for the relations between industrialization and immigration and ethnicity. Because of the mythology by which those concepts become attached to film?film as a working-class, mass medium that comes of age in the industrial period?they all seem to intersect in Pittsburgh. The city becomes a place in which you can test those ideas out to see how complicated and messy they actually are on the ground.? The topic for his dissertation at the University of Pittsburgh developed from a seminar paper he wrote on working-class movie-going. During his research for the paper he discovered a weekly trade journal for exhibitors and distributors called the Pittsburgh Moving Picture Bulletin, published between 1914 and 1923. ?As I read the journal, certain discourses and ideas seemed to be central to the exhibitors and therefore would affect the experience of seeing a movie: censorship, the production of the ?local view? genre of films, and promotion of ?feature? films at a local level.? The dissertation, ?Nickels and Dimes: The Movies in a ?Rampantly American? City ,? explores the complex manner in which ?the experience of watching a film is not simply what?s on the screen, but in the environment, your relationship to the people that you?re seeing it with, the ways it?s presented. All those things are aspects that I?m interested in.? Aronson never imagined a move back to the West Coast. But Eugene is definitely not Los Angeles, and he?s impressed by the setting of the town and the university. ?I can?t imagine a more beautiful geographical setting.? Besides his interest in digital media, Aronson?s current research on early film divides into two projects. One addresses the historiography of film, studying the Michael Aronson continued on page 8 6 Keith & Judy Swayne The UO English Department ispleased to announce the scholarship program for the 2004? 2005 academic year designed to aid incoming undergraduate students who have expressed an interest in literature or a related field. The purpose of the Swayne Scholars program?funded by UO College of Arts and Sciences alumnus Keith Swayne and his wife Judy?is to offer financial and academic support to 20 first-year UO students as they make the transition to university life. The Swayne Scholars program is only the latest effort by the Swaynes to help out undergraduate students who may find college life financially and academically daunting. As you may remember reading in previous editions of English, the Swaynes have also funded recent English Department Native American Summer Bridge Programs. Each year that program provided eight to ten incoming students who had a strong commitment to multicultural issues the opportunity to get a head start on their university career by bringing them to the UO campus during the summer before official matriculation. The purpose of that all-expenses-paid Summer Session was to prepare these students, most of whom were from underrepresented groups, for the rigors of undergraduate life and to make sure that their university experience started out on a positive note. The curriculum emphasized Native American literature and culture and also included an expository writing class. The success of the Bridge students?the first cadre graduated from UO last June?has been truly impressive. Keith and Judy Swayne?s desire to help an even larger number of entering students led them to propose the Swayne Scholars program for 2004-2005. Twenty new UO students with strong interests in the humanities were selected to be Swayne Scholars this academic year and each received $1500 to help defray tuition costs. Along with this financial support came the opportunity to enroll in a special seminar-size section of English 208, Introduction to the Works of William Shakespeare, taught this winter by Renaissance specialist Professor Ben Saunders. Each Swayne Scholar is also receiving special advising support during and after the period of the scholarship. Professor Harry Wonham, English Associate Department Head, notes that ?the Swaynes? generous donation makes it possible to help a variety of entering humanities students who might well have otherwise found their first year of college life considerably more difficult financially and academically.? Wonham cites both the rise of tuition and the large size of typical lower- division university classes as possible sources of frustration for many first- year students. The financial assistance offered by this scholarship and the individual attention provided in the limited-enrollment Shakespeare class are designed to make the first year a significantly more positive one for these lucky students. The UO English Department, wanting to build on the already very evident success of the Swayne Scholars Program, is currently seeking donors to keep the program going beyond this academic year. Anyone interested in the project should contact either English Department Head Warren Ginsberg (warren@uoregon.edu) or Associate Department Head Harry Wonham (wonham@uoregon.edu). Swayne Scholars Program Off to a Good Start Annual Giving reminder: If you should receive a letter or tele- phone call from UO Annual Giving and decide to make a contri- bution to the university, consider designating the English Depart- ment as a recipient of your gift. Such gifts make a great differ- ence in what the Department can do to enhance educational opportunities for our students and provide valuable research and instructional resources for our faculty. If you wish to make a contribution now, please make your check payable to the Univer- sity of Oregon Foundation, designated for the Department of English, and send it directly to the UO Foundation at 1787 Agate Street, Eugene, OR 97403. Thank you! 7 Notes from Department Head Warren Ginsberg Warren Ginsberg One night this February, Benjamin Bagby, founder of Sequentia, the best performers of medieval music I have ever heard, gave a dramatic reading of Beowulf at Beall Hall. Accompanying himself on a six-string lute, similar to the ancient bard?s instrument, Bagby chanted, sang, and at times harumphed about 1000 lines of the poem, from memory, and in Old English. (For those whose Anglo-Saxon is a bit rusty, a running translation was flashed on a screen.) Bagby?s recital was electrifying; the poem pulsed with the energy he gave it. One passage he delivered with particular relish will be familiar to all of you who took the Introduction to the Major sequence or who have read Beowulf in other circumstances. When Grendel flees Heorot, he leaves behind his shoulder, arm, and claw- hand; the following morning, the Danes mount it on a rafter in the hall. This trophy is a sign of victory, but it is also a gruesome reminder that danger still hangs over their heads. As Bagby performed the lines, I thought this image can summarize the triumphs and challenges we have experienced this past year. Although the economy seems to have stabilized, we have had to grapple with the effects of nasty cuts in resources. To cover the decreased funding from the state (now only 14% of our operating costs), we lost $60,000 from our budget. As a result, we have had to struggle hard to preserve programs that sustain the intellectual vitality of the Department; in some cases, we?ve been forced to make strategic retreats. To mention just one instance: we have suspended our recruitment of 2-year post- doctorate appointments. These reductions continue to hang threateningly over us. Like Beowulf, however, we have faced down adversity, in no small part through the generosity of alumni who have donated to the English Endowment through UO Annual Giving. More than ever your support has been crucial in allowing us to continue to support the Northwest Review, research and conference travel, supplemental fellowships for graduate students, publication of the English major?s journal Peripeteia, and many other initiatives. The University is now in the active phase of its major capital campaign; if you are contacted, you can mention if you wish that you would like your contributions to go to the English Department. We would be very grateful. Within the Department, we certainly have remained undaunted; indeed, we have had a year of remarkable achievements. Through the generosity of Professor Robert Lee and his wife Gloria Lee, we will be able to add a new named professorship. As you can read in the lead article of this newsletter, the Lees have endowed this position in honor of Professor Emeritus A. Kingsley Weatherhead. The holder of the Kingsley Weatherhead chair will be an expert in Shakespeare. We also continue to add first-rate scholars and teachers to the Department. This year we welcomed Sangita Gopal, who was appointed after a national search for an expert in Postcolonial Studies. We have just concluded a search for a specialist in 19th-century fiction written in Britain and/or its colonies and are delighted that Deborah Shapple, who recently received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, will join us next fall to fill this position. Two further searches are currently in progress; before long we hope to hire a new Assistant Professor in folklore and make our first appointment of the Moore Distinguished Visiting Professor. These professors will become colleagues of a faculty whose excellence continues to be recognized both at the University and around the nation. The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences asked two of our professors to direct other important programs: Lisa Freinkel is now Director of the Program in Comparative Literature; Karen Ford is Director of the Creative Writing Program. Steve Shankman, of course, continues as Director of the Oregon Humanities Center. Last year, two members of the Department were promoted to the rank of Full Professor: Richard Stevenson and Harry Wonham. Seven faculty either published a book or had a manuscript accepted for publication: they are Harry Wonham (Oxford University Press); Ben Saunders (Harvard University Press); Dan Gil (University of Minnesota Press); Richard Stevenson (Bucknell University Press); Karen Ford (University of Alabama Press); Gordon Sayre (University of North Carolina Press); John Witte published his second collection of poems, The Hurtling, with Orchises Press. Karen Ford has just been awarded a prestigious American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for 2005-2006 to conduct research for a new book on ?Race and Form in American Poetry.? Gordon Sayre has won a $100,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Editions Grant to prepare with collaborators an edition of the Memoirs of Jean- Fran?ois Benjamin Dumont de Montigny. Many other colleagues published volumes of essays they had edited or articles in major continued on page 8 8 V?zquezcontinued fron page 3 continued from page 2 Aronsfon Shakespeare studies. Weatherhead?s advice for those students? ?Well, I would tell them to continue studying Shakespeare.? Then he adds, ?Whatever fashionable things the Department goes after, whatever false gods, there?ll be this person guarding the lares and penates?he or she?s going to be teaching Shakespeare. That?s what I thought.? methodological approaches that are being brought to bear on texts, which is why there is an increasing emphasis on interdisciplinarity here.? V?zquez?s research projects include producing a book manuscript of his dissertation, examining the neo- colonialist discourse in contemporary surf travel narratives, and a close reading of self-narratives in other media such as film. Completing his train of thought regarding his own narrative of return to literary studies, V?zquez says, ?I think the thing I appreciate most about life in the academy is that you have opportunity to engage with smart people and have really interesting conversations on an almost daily basis.? journals. In addition, the Department will host two professional conferences: the Western States Folklore Society will meet on campus this April; the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment will meet this summer in Eugene. When I became Head, I asked Harry Wonham to be the Associate Head of the Department, Paul Peppis to become the Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Anne Laskaya to be Director of the Composition Program. I cannot describe to you how grateful I am to these colleagues; they each bring indefatigable energy and devote untold hours to their offices. This year Gordon Sayre has become the new Graduate Director. Gordon has done wonderful work to keep the program at the same high level that Karen Ford had lifted it during her six years as Director. We continue to receive a large number of applicants and are able to bring outstanding graduate students to the University. We are also in the process of creating a new structured emphasis in ethnic studies in our PhD program; this initiative reflects our commitment to developing and supporting this work in our department. The Undergraduate Program is thriving. We have maintained our Writing Associates and Reading Assistants programs for distinguished majors, under the expert guidance of Paul Dresman. Our Writing Associates work with faculty in specific classes to provide undergraduates with extra help on their writing; our Reading Assistants work with faculty in specific classes to provide help grading. We have also continued to offer our capstone seminars for advanced majors (ENG 407). These seminars, which vary in topic, are capped at 15 students. This year we have offered seminars on Modern Theater (fall), Aesthetic Experience (winter), and Sex, Race, and Rock and Roll (spring). As usual a number of our majors are pursuing Honors in English. These students take two capstone seminars and write a BA thesis of 35-50 pages, which they then defend in an hour-long oral presentation to their two faculty directors. Finally, the Undergraduate English Association remains active and will again publish its journal of work by majors, Peripateia. Under Anne Laskaya?s leadership, the Composition Program remains a resource and model for other programs throughout the region and nation. Senior faculty from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia recently visited campus to seek Professor Laskaya?s advice about how they might revamp some aspects of their undergraduate general education courses. Our own Program is also exploring ways to improve. A group of experienced writing teachers is currently studying the use of longer and more challenging reading assignments within the Writing 122/ 123 curriculum. A number of legendary faculty have recently begun the transition into retirement. This year Rich Stevenson and Sharon Sherman are teaching a reduced number of classes. They join Jim Boren, who began the process last year. We are enormously grateful they are all still active members of the Department, but we miss their presence at meetings as much as they, I am sure, are relieved that they no longer have to attend them. One other faculty member has moved on in her career, and it is with both great regret and best wishes that we say goodbye to Sara Guyer, who is now at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. In spirit and achievement, then, I think we can claim that we have been Beowulf-like, undeterred by the depredations of the day. As I said earlier, you are part of our family and your encouragement has helped us enormously. Please keep up your connection with the Department and send us your news, addressed to Newsletter Editor English Department University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, or, if you prefer email, UOEng@darkwing.uoregon.edu. I and all of my colleagues look Head Notesf continued from page 7 forward to hearing from you. Warren Ginsberg Distinguished Professor and Head Department of English continued from page 5 ways in which the history of film and popular culture have been imagined and written, while the other is an investigation of regionally produced early 20th-century films viewed in terms of how they fit into patterns of mass production and consumption, with emphasis on ?the production of the local as a global phenomenon.? These research areas will no doubt be reflected in Aronson?s future courses at UO, which are providing important new approaches in the Department?s offerings on cinema. Weatherhead Profesfsforsfhip 9 English Department Honor Roll of Donors 2004 Anne Heltzel Aberg ?59 and Robert Aberg Kimberly Ackerman ?99 Jacqueline Donnell Amos ?65 and Arthur Amos Jr. ?70 Regina Anctil ?81 Jean and Theodore Andra ?73 Rebecca ?82 and Mark Ankeny ?97 Jeannine ?65 and George Antypas Charles Aria ?79 Barbara and Sheldon Arnett Roseanne Backstedt Robert Bainton ?68 Nancye and Jim Ballard Carol Bangs ?77 Catherine Barlow David Bartel ?74 Ralph Batie ?95 Angelika Bayley ?70 and Harold Huestis ?72 David Beery ?54 Nancy Bennett ?88 Constance ?63 and David Bennion Betty Lewis Bezzerides ?68 and Theodore Bezzerides ?67 Edwin Bingham Dennis Bjelland II ?87 Parle Blake Mary Craig Boardman ?60 and Albert Boardman ?60 Emily Boldman ?02 Anne Mautz Booth ?59 Gwyneth and Brian Booth ?58 Maria Borella ?85 and David Nebel ?85 Mison Hickey and Andrew Bowden ?84 Montie Boyer ?87 Patricia Brandow ?76 and Bill Williams Catherine Zigrang Brickey ?74 and Michael Brickey Kathleen ?64 and Ronald Brinegar ?63 Marilyn Gander Bunger ?66 and Donald Bunger ?64 Carol and William Burke ?71 Jan Schrieber Butler and Vido Butler ?94 Kimberly Carlson ?85 Kathleen Wiley and Robert Carolan Heather Dine Carter ?88 and Greg Carter William Casto ?72 Cecelia Castro Judith and Colin Chisholm ?56 Elizabeth ?52 and J. Max Christian Robert D. Clark David Cohn ?91 Lisa Cole ?90 Maribeth Collins ?40 Bonnie Allingham Colpitts ?64 Janell ?63 and Carlton Conner Hugh Cook ?49 Nancy Cooper ?60 Katharyn Wood Crabbe ?67 and John Crabbe ?70 Catherine and Jerry Crandall ?57 Donna Crawford ?78 Nancy Devitt Cross ?70 and Carlton Cross Penelope Damaskos ?83 Mariana Simmons Damon and John Damon ?74 Pamelyn ?92 and Michael Dane Jewel Darby ?76 Faye Darnall ?83 Gayle Davies ?73 Glee and Dwight Davis ?65 Susan ?81 and Henry De Lessert Christian deMaagd ?94 Susan ?88 and Harry Dennis Jr. ?90 Ellen and Robert Dent ?40 Diane and Richard Dillman Jr. ?78 Ann Dobyns ?83 Betty Sutton Donnelly ?43 and John Donnelly Judith Drais ?62 Rachel Dresbeck ?92 and Thomas Bethel Laurie Grigg Dunn ?90 Jan?l Thomas Earnshaw ?78 and Stanley Earnshaw Joseph Easton ?90 continued fron page 4 Commencement Ballweber, Carrie Leigh Barron, Carle Chrystin Brinkman, Stacy Clare Carleton, Leigh Cook, Justin Michael Davis, Tynan Wells Van Hook De Long, Julie Christine DeSousa, Ana Moria Haase-Reed, Darlene Rose Hampton, Jess Robert Kappeler, Nathan Mark Loveless, Matthew Ryan Nolan, and Colleen Amanda Young. Candidates for the Department?s Certificate in Folklore were Gwendolynn Garland Amsbury, Joseph Dale Arney, Heather Marie Charlton, Anya Helene Janowsky, and Elizabeth Jean Simonsen. Winners of the UO?s Centurion Dean?s Award for ?Dedication and Outstanding Service? were Kimberly Evans, Jennifer Bok, Emily Regina Reed, and Elizabeth Thomas. English Department Reading and Writing Associates for 2003-2004 were Jennifer Aanderud, Jessie Cooper, Christina Delgado, Alexa Dreyer, Elizabeth Ellison, Jacob Falk, Emily Hass, Jerrod Johnson, Casey Kovacic, Melisse Kuhn, Tristan Linquist, David Morrocco, Sabrina Mossberg, Emily Reed, J. Michael Rogers, Katina Saint-Marie, Jennifer Beth Smithers and Tracy Ellis ?81 Janet English English-Young ?79 and Carl English-Young ?78 Cheryl and John Evans Laurie Evans ?90 Sarah Holloway Evans ?31 Mo and Richard Eversole ?61 Barbara Zumwalt Farnam ?53 and Keith Farnam ?54 Kathleen ?67 and Dennis Farster Tammy Ferrell ?92 Marjorie Ferry ?93 Elise Fischer ?91 Josephine ?70 and Michael Flachmann Jennifer ?95 and John Ford ?94 Stephen Frey ?88 Jane and Kenneth Friesen ?63 Helen Jackson Frye ?53 Stephanie ?92 and Jeffrey Furuta Patricia Harland Gaffney ?41 Robin and John Gage Judith Williamson Garling ?67 and John Garling III ?66 Jane Bunch Gayman ?48 and Danny Gayman John Gennerella Cathie Wallmark Glennon ?71 and Daniel Glennon ?73 Sandra Clark ?86 and Gary Gnirrep Virginia Conrad Grant ?39 Lindsay Green Greta and Richard Greenfield Thelma Nelson Greenfield ?44 Julie ?74 and Alan Griesinger ?74 Susan VanLom Gutgesell ?75 and Bruce Gutgesell ?76 Lisa Hacker ?82 and Patrick Murphey Louis Hall ?58 Elizabeth ?61 and Bruce Hankins ?61 Lila Marz Harper ?96 and James Harper ?80 Smith, Sydney Steele-Long, Courtney Sweet, and Cindy Weigel. One of the true high points of the ceremony was Department Head Warren Ginsberg?s spirited reading of Geoffrey Chaucer?s description of the ideal student?the Clerk of Oxenford?from The Canterbury Tales, ending in the familiar lines, ?And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche,? a sentiment nicely summing up the spirit of the day?s festivities for students, faculty, and attending parents and family members. continued on page 10 10 Honor Roll Hannah Harrison ?91 Janette and David Harwood John Hausman ?50 Katherine Berry Hedman ?64 and Kenneth Hedman ?63 J. Richard Heinzkill Dorothy Earl Helliwell ?68 and Roger Helliwell Kathryn Hildreth ?93 Ann Hill ?60 Lucie and David Hinden John Hoffman Lynne Hoffman ?87 Pamela Hoffman Sandra Reay Holbrook ?63 and Frederick Holbrook ?63 Elizabeth ?89 and Mark Holden James Holman ?74 Paula ?79 and Seymour House ?78 Bette Workman Howard ?42 Laura Girardeau ?88 and Christopher Hundhausen ?93 Rachel Hunt ?03 Crystal Huntington ?52 Linda Hill Huston ?68 Ann and Daniel Hyde ?70 Jo Anne and Joseph Hynes Jr. Kelly and Gregory Jacob ?68 Jane Pearson Jacobi ?79 Fred Jacobsen Debbie Johnson Gloria and Gerald Johnson Jean Ostby Johnson ?44 Peggy Johnson ?71 Page Mahler Jones ?62 Cathryn Kirchner Jordan ?74 and John Jordan ?82 Susana Jordan Christine Sellai ?90 and Joseph Kaniewski ?90 Julia Keizur ?70 Karen and Thomas Kervin ?75 Norma Haxby Kesey ?59 Susan and Richard Koe ?79 Robert Koppelman ?93 Patricia and John Kranitz Philip Krohn Cherilyn Krumins-Beens ?96 Arlene Johnson Kummer ?47 and John Kummer George Lane ?66 Melinda ?67 and Daniel Langmeyer ?68 Carolyn ?42 and Thomas Larson Lydia and Benjamin Lawrence Peter Leineweber ?93 Constance Davis Limperis ?75 and Robert Limperis Karen ?70 and Arthur Lindenberg ?67 Sandra Lindsey ?67 Teresa ?94 and Hamilton Link ?97 William Little ?89 Christine Fischbach Logue ?73 and Michael Logue ?73 Penni Loomis Rhoda Moore Love ?80 and Glen Love Jane Love ?78 Mary-Ann Mowery Luce ?55 Stephanie Lynch ?85 Brigit ?81 and Michael Madonick ?81 Caryl Delzell Mangan ?48 Karen Gavce Martin ?86 Michael Martone Mary Krier Mason ?61 Thomas Mason Elaine ?88 and Patrick Maveety ?74 James May Jr. Bruce McClellan Cindy and Kevin McCormick ?77 Jennifer McDonald ?82 and Daniel Miller Keiko ?71 and Charles McDonald Janis Smith McDowell ?90 and Michael McDowell ?92 Tracy McElhinney ?78 Elizabeth ?40 and L. Frank McFarlane Ruth Van Buskirk McGuire ?45 Kristine Grant McLean ?69 and Peter McLean Michael McMenamin Sharon Simkin Meinhoff and Michael Meinhoff ?64 Catherine and Robert Melich ?74 Mary Orr Mellish ?53 Terry Melton ?64 Katherine ?85 and Jonathan Mertz Camille ?88 and James Michel ?89 Jordan-Lee Miller ?96 Susan Miller ?95 Patricia and Edward Milowicki ?68 Becky and Gary Mimnaugh Rebecca and Mark Mizell ?88 Joan ?50 and Richard Moll ?50 Leslie Moore-Krous ?75 Patricia Chapman Morton ?64 and James Morton ?64 Christopher Mumford Meloni Craig Murph ?82 and Jeffrey Murph Brian Murphy ?84 Ruth Woolery Newberry ?80 and Frederick Newberry Robin Hiatt Nicol ?67 and Gorham Nicol George Norris ?74 Kathleen and Charles O?Neil Andrew Oberriter ?99 Sharon and Don Oberriter Toni Cooper ?92 and Andrew Oldham ?91 Afton McFarland Olsen ?51 Billie Olson ?69 Susan Wilcox Osborn ?89 and Eric Osborn ?89 Phyllis Thorson Osborn ?64 and Walter Osborn Erica Osterman ?94 Julie Painter ?91 Mary Parliman Roberta Partney ?83 Jaye and Robert Passage Barbara Collins-Perry ?88 and Jeffrey Perry Susan Nelson Peters ?65 and James Peters Kathleen and Ronald Peterson Pamela Philips ?82 Rebecca Anshutz Phoenix ?81 and Charles Phoenix ?77 Betty ?45 and Marden Pillette Sally Bunting Pitts ?67 Susan and Leland Poague ?73 Anthony Pond ?76 Brian Pope ?81 Caren and Bill Prentice Marie Collier Ragland ?38 Karen Morgan Raleigh ?73 Persis ?73 and William Ramroth Jr. ?73 Richard Rapport Carol ?62 and Donn Rawlings Helen Reed ?70 Vicky and David Reyes Judith Ridderbusch ?66 Deborah and Gordon Riedel Margaret Chase and Bruce Robbins ?77 Sherri ?71 and B.R. Roberts Patricia Roby Donalee and Robert Rodger ?88 Jo Ann Sloan Rogers ?54 Susan Ashley ?82 and Matthew Roudane ?75 Jean Rowell ?64 Jodine Ryan ?67 Willa Fortuine Ryan ?85 and Kevin Ryan ?83 Dianne Fallon Sadoff ?67 Eleanor Salisbury ?71 Esther Scherich ?70 Catherine and Allan Schmitt Mina and Jordan Schnitzer ?73 Dee Schofield ?73 Mary Burke Scully ?60 and John Scully Mary Martin Seitz ?64 Glenn Settle ?65 B. Jacobson Seymour ?85 Gary Shaw ?57 Ryan Sherman ?03 Diana Shook ?89 The Newsletter of the University of Oregon English Department Please e-mail us with your news or comments at: UOEng@darkwing.uoregon.edu Or c/o Newsletter Editor Department of English University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1286 English is published annually by members of the UO Department of Engli This year?s newsletter was prepared by: Alastair Hunt and Tricia Oman, Writing and Editing Susan Dickens, Pagemaker Layout Richard Stevenson, Faculty editor and photography 11 Karen Ford New Books from English Department Faculty Karen Ford?s Split-Gut Song:Jean Toomer and the Poetics Alabama Press, 2005) will be coming out this spring. This engaging study of the evolving literary aesthetic of one of the first avant-garde black writers in America looks closely at what it means to be African American and modernist by analyzing Jean Toomer?s main body of work?his groundbreaking creation Cane. When first published in 1923, this pivotal work of modernism was widely hailed as inaugurating a truly artistic African American literary tradition. Yet Toomer?s experiments in literary form are consistently read in terms of political radicalism?protest and uplift?rather than literary radicalism. Ford contextualizes Toomer?s poetry, letters, and essays in the literary culture of his period and, through close readings of the poems, shows how they negotiate formal experimentation (imagism, fragmentation, dialect) and traditional African American forms (slave songs, field hollers, call-and-response sermons, lyric poetry). At the heart of Toomer?s work is the paradox that such poetry is the saving grace of African American culture and that this is a poetry that cannot survive modernity. This contradiction, Ford argues, structures Cane, wherein traditional lyric poetry first flourishes, then falters, then falls silent. The Toomer that Ford discovers in Split-Gut Song is a complicated, contradictory poet who brings his vexed experience and ideas of racial identity to both conventional lyric and experimental forms. Toomer exhibits a literary radicalism as he struggles to articulate his perplexed understanding of race and art in 20th- century America. Walter Kalaidjian, author of American Culture Between the Wars: Revisionary Modernism and Postmodern Critique, has praised Karen Ford?s book as ?a major event in the reception of Cane. . . . Split- Gut Song examines Toomer?s experimental aesthetics and the difference they made to modern racial representation. Her book considers the tension in Cane between, on the one hand, poetic form, idealism, and hope in the utopian past versus, on the other hand, prose realism, modernity, and a tragic vision of the urban present.? Liz Bohls Liz Bohls and Ian Duncan have edited a volume of British travel accounts entitled Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology (Oxford World?s Classics), to appear later in the year. With a critical introduction by Professor Bohls, the collection is divided into six parts: Europe and Asia Minor, the British Isles, Africa, the Caribbean, North America, and Australia and the Pacific. Each part is then subdivided under a range of interesting headings, such as ?Debating the Tour,? ?Revolutionary Tourism,? ?Picturesque Tourism,? ?The Slave Trade,? ?Explorers,? ?Natural History and Aesthetics,? ?Manners and Morals,? ?The Coming of the Missionaries,? and so on. With widely varied motives? scientific curiosity, commerce, colonization, diplomacy, exploration, the Grand Tour?British travelers Connie & William Shreffler ?68 Margaret Hammill Simpson ?67 Stacey & Shaun Smith ?93 Kathleen Sniezko M. Bingham Solberg ?77 & Harry Solberg Nancy Spens ?83 Janice Moore Stark ?68 & Bruce Stark ?56 Lina & David Steadman Nan Hagedorn Stearns ?57 & Peter Stearns Henry-York Steiner ?63 Ann & Charles Sullivan III ?76 Jacqueline ?56 & Jack Sullivan Judy & Stephen Swanson ?64 Judy & Keith Swayne ?62 Mary & Steven Swig ?63 Ignace Tatala ?74 Margaret Smith Tate ?83 & Bruce Tate Judith Thelander Taves ?71 Colleen & James Temple ?78 Christine ?84 & Lynn Thompson Deborah Thompson ?82 Robert Thompson ?73 Brooke Toscano ?03 Margie ?65 & Ronald Tosi Bianca Tredennick ?02 Susanne ?83 & Robert Truelove Shirley Saunders Tschuy ?81 & Eric Tschuy ?77 Michelle ?90 & Erik von Heideken ?93 LaDonna Stanley Wallen ?74 & Carl Wallen Gary Weinstein ?64 Sarah Spangler Wentker ?95 & David Wentker Louise Westling ?74 & George Wickes John Wieber ?89 Jane ?71 & Robert Wilson ?71 Jeanne ?42 & Ray Wing Mary & H. Harbour Winn III ?73 Christine ?74 & Richard Woodard Carol Gabriel Woodward ?68 & Eugene Woodward Lori & Thomas Wraith Kenneth Wright ?00 Carol Sorenson Zaworski & James Zaworski ?75 Eugene Zumwalt ?48 12 fanned out to every corner of the world in the period the Critical Review labeled the Age of Peregrination. The Empire, already established in the Caribbean and North America, was expanding in India and Africa and founding new outposts in the Pacific in the wake of Captain Cook?s voyages. Travelers? letters, journals, and books gave first-hand descriptions of exotic lands and beautiful scenery, encounters with strange peoples and dangerous wildlife. They conducted philosophical and political debates in print about slavery and the French Revolution. And travel writing often affords unexpected insights into the writers themselves. This anthology brings together the best writing from authors such as Daniel Defoe, Mary Wollstonecraft, Olaudah Equiano, Mungo Park, Maria Nugent, and many others to provide a comprehensive selection from this emerging literary genre. Faculty Booksf John Witte?s new book of poems, The Hurtling, was published this January by Orchises Press. Witte, who teaches literature and literary editing in the Department, has had poems published widely?in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, and The Norton Introduction to Literature, to name a few. Writing in this collection about the discovery of the extraordinary in the ordinary, he often focuses on everyday occurrences and emotions?human encounters with animals, for example, or moments of human frailty?and through that focus provides moments of insight. ?Focus is at the heart of it,? Witte says. ?I think of the poem as a sort of prism, a crystalline arrangement of words that refracts the light and reveals its hidden colors. Animals make particularly good subjects. They show us how frail and confused we are. They are at home in the world, and so we look on them with wonder, even envy. The animals in my poems act as prisms to refract the human, and reveal it for what it is.? The form of Witte?s poems is also striking. Always in tercets, each stanza comes with a short first line, a longer second line, and a very long third line, usually without punctuation, a form that one editor described as ?whiplash triplets.? Ursula LeGuin has commented on the ?fierce, controlled, inventive, forward- rushing? quality of his poems, ?refusing punctuation to make free with syntax.? She goes on to note that ?John Witte?s cycle of severely unrepetitive three-line-stanza poems left me with endless questions and a durable satisfaction. There are poems here??As If? is one?which I will never forget.? Lucia Perillo points to the same intensity in these poems when she observes that ?Witte has invented a new form to be his signature and along with it a language of his own. Thrilling and reckless in their speed, too urgent for conventional punctuation, Witte?s lines hurtle us through experiences? giving blood, seeing a car head the wrong way down a one-way street? as if these were the matters of life and death that they in fact are.? Witte will read from The Hurtling Saturday, April 23, 5:00 p.m., Tsunami Books, 2585 Willamette St., Eugene. GOAT Not a baby bleating in the shed his voice calling me out of sleep to kneel and cradle his head in my lap just a goat stinking unable to stand just the vet unsheathing a needle probing the jugular not a prayer his agonal gasp not a holy place the shed the wet straw the berries of goatshit not a paean not a poem not a child flopping in my arms so heavy it?s hard to lift him wrapped in an old sheet not sleepy not swaddled though it is the season bright lights in the mall and singing every hand greased with money not about to speak this goat telling me it wasn?t so bad that he is ready to go into the ground now a different death for each of us a sleep or sacrament a man staggering forward bearing the body of his child his childhood. John Witte John Witte 13 Professors Dianne Dugaw andBill Rossi have been named ch Fellows by the Oregon Humanities Center, Dugaw for fall, 2004 and Rossi for fall, 2005. The Ernest G. Moll Faculty Research Fellowship in Literary Studies was established in 2002 by English Department alumna Maribeth Collins (BA 1940), and is currently supported through annual gifts from Mrs. Collins. Mrs. Collins was a student of Gerry Moll, the legendary UO English professor/poet who taught in the Department from 1928 to 1966 and has often been the subject of reminiscences in this newsletter. Besides being her favorite college professor, Moll played a Dianne Dugaw and Bill Rossi named Moll Fellows ?Clutching a Rainbow, Frying a Rat: Walden?s Double Evolutionary Narrative.? The Oregon Humanities Center honored Mrs. Collins and Ernest Moll?s family last April 23rd (on Shakespeare?s 440th birthday) with a reception in Gerlinger Lounge that included live Elizabethan consort music and presentations by several former students and colleagues of Moll?s, including Thelma Greenfield, Kinsgley Weatherhead, and Ginny Reich (a daughter of Robert D. Clark). Several members of the Moll family were in attendance, including Professor Moll?s son Richard and his wife Joan, Moll?s daughter Carolyn, and his granddaughter Judy. The Moll Fellowship is awarded to the applicant with the most outstanding proposal for a Humanities Center Research fellowship in the area of literary studies. The first Moll Fellowship was awarded to Evlyn Gould of Romance Languages in 2003-04. Dianne Dugaw significant role in the development of Mrs. Collins?s life-long interest in and love of poetry. Near the end of Professor Moll?s life he and Mrs. Collins struck up a correspondence which was very meaningful to her. She wanted to honor his memory with this fellowship which, in addition to providing a term of residence at the Oregon Humanities Center, also awards a $1000 research fund to be used during the year of the fellowship to support the Fellow?s project. Professor Dugaw?s project is entitled ?The Hidden Baroque in Britain and the Gendering of Literary History?; Professor Rossi?s project is entitled E Ernest ?Gerry? Moll English Department Notes Faculty News Michael Aronson?s article,?A Cinema of Production and the Local View,? was published in Beyond the Bowery: Cinema in Rural America from Its Origins to the Multiplex (2004). Aronson has been awarded a UO Humanities Center Research Fellowship for 2005-2006. Martha Bayless?s article, ?Alea, Taefl, and Related Games: Vocabulary Bill Rossi and Context,? was published in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. Katherine O?Brien O?Keeffe and Andy Orchard (University of Toronto Press, 2005). Another article, ?Simulation and Dissimulation in the Snow-Child Sequence (Modus Liebinc),? was published in Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 40 (2005). Her article on medieval board games, ?Tabletop Tactics,? was published in Archaeology Jan-Feb. 2005 (a popular magazine). Bayless also appeared on the British archaeological TV show, ?Time Team? (starring Tony Robinson, who was Baldric in Blackadder), talking about the board game found in the newly excavated ?Prittlewell Prince? royal burial in England. She served as advisor to the Southend Museum, which is displaying the Prittlewell Prince artifacts, and to the National Geographic Society in their drawing of the finds. Liz Bohls?s book, Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716-1818 (Cambridge 14 Faculty Newsf 1995) came out in paperback this year. It was also translated into Japanese by Professor Junko Nagano of Kobe University, published by Arina Shobo Inc. (2004) and favorably reviewed in Asahi Shimbun by Professor Ikegami Toshu of Tokyo University (Oct. 10, 2004). Her article entitled ?A Long Way From Home: Slavery, Travel, and Imperial Geography in The History of Mary Prince? was just published in Women on the Verge of Home, ed. Bilinda Straight (SUNY). Bohls received a CSWS Faculty Research Fellowship to finish her book, Sites of Slavery: Writing Identities in the Colonial British Caribbean, 1770- 1833. She also received a CoDaC (Center on Diversity and Commu- nity) Reading Group Award as the faculty sponsor of an interdisciplinary reading group on travel and culture, including graduate students and faculty from Philosophy, East Asian Studies, the Honors College, and English. Ann Ciasullo has been appointed Associate Director of Composition and Acting Director of the Center for Teaching Writing for 2004-2005. Suzanne Clark has been awarded a UO Faculty Summer Research Award for 2005. Jim Crosswhite?s article entitled ?Rhetoric in the Wilderness: The Deep Rhetoric of the Late 20th Century? was published in A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism, ed. Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted (Blackwell, 2004). Crosswhite gave the keynote address, ?Rhetoric and Violence,? at the UO Fall Composition Conference. Karen Ford was honored by the English Department last May as her term as Director of Graduate Studies (1998-2004) came to an end. Under Ford?s skillful guidance a complete program transformation, mandated by several years of departmental debate and planning, took place?a transformation, in the words of Department Head Emeritus John Gage, producing ?the best possible graduate program for this department.? Ford is currently Director of the UO Creative Writing Program and has just been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for 2005-2006 in support of her next book project, ?Race and Form in American Poetry.? Lisa Freinkel has been appointed Director of the Comparative Literature Program. She spent fall term in Siena, Italy teaching two courses for NCSA (Northwest Council on Study Abroad): ?Shakespeare?s Italy: Fantasy and Improvisation? and ?Italy and the Renaissance.? John Gage taught two courses in Siena, Italy during winter, 2005 for NCSA: ?A Poet?s Italy: Ezra Pound and Italian Culture? and ?Travel Writing: Reflecting on Culture and Experience.? Daniel Gil?s book, Before Intimacy: Asocial Sexuality in Early Modern England, has been accepted for publication by the University of Minnesota Press and is due out next fall. Sangita Gopal, who received her PhD from the University of Rochester (2000) and held a position as Assistant Professor of English at Old Dominion University, joined the UO English Department this past fall as Assistant Professor of English. Sara Guyer has resigned from the Department and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Donovan Gwinner, UO English Department Post-Doctoral Fellow (2002-2004), has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of English at Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois, where he is presently teaching writing, literature, and interdisciplinary studies. Shari Huhndorf recently published three articles: ?Atanarjuat the Fast Runner: Culture, History, and Politics in Inuit Media? in American Anthropologist (December 2003); ?Indigeneity, Colonialism, and Literary Studies? in English Studies in Canada (June 2004); and ?Culture and Colonialisms: Ngugi?s Relevance for Native American Studies? in Ngugi in the Americas (2004). Kathleen Karlyn gave a plenary talk entitled ?Identity and Its Discontents: Neo-Humanism and The Lord of the Rings? at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom during a conference last April on ?Interrogating Post-Feminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture.? Karlyn?s article, ??Too Close for Comfort?: American Beauty and the Incest Motif,? was published in Cinema Journal 44.1 (2004): 69-93. An article entitled ??I?m not my Mother?: Scream, Popular Culture, and Feminism?s Third Wave,? first published in Genders Online Journal (formerly Genders), was selected for reprinting in Hollywood Motherhood, forthcoming from Wayne State University Press. Karlyn will be presenting a paper entitled ?Citizenship, Neo-Humanism and The Lord of the Rings at the national Cultural Studies Association conference in Tucson this April. David Leiwei Li, Collins Professor of the Humanities, has published three articles: ?Yi-Yi: Reflections on Reflexive Modernity in Taiwan? in Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (2003); ?The State of Asian America: Transnational Discourse in Recent Criticism? in The Regenerative Spirit: Polarities of Home and Away, Encounters and Diasporas in Post-Colonial Literatures (2003); and ?On Ascriptive and Acquisitional Americanness: The Accidental Asian Sangita Gopal 15 and the Illogic of Assimilation? in the Spring 2004 issue of Contemporary Literature (45.1: 106-34). Margaret McBride gave a talk on improving business reports at the annual meeting of the Oregon Land Planners Association during fall term. She also chaired the jury for the Tiptree Award for 2004. The panel, which included award-winning author Ursula Le Guin of Portland, recognizes a science fiction or fantasy writer whose work is ?thought- provoking, imaginative, perhaps infuriating, and bold enough to contemplate shifts and changes in gender roles.? Paul Peppis presented a paper, ??Writing the Modern Homosexual,? Havelock Ellis?s Sexual Inversion and E. M. Forster?s Maurice, at the Annual Modernist Studies Association Conference in Vancouver B.C. His essay, ?E. M. Forster and England,? is forthcoming as a chapter in the Cambridge Companion to E. M. Forster, ed. David Bradshaw (Cambridge 2005). William Rockett published ?Wolsey, More, and the Unity of Christendom? in the Sixteenth- Century Journal 35 (2004). He also delivered ?More, Heresy, and the Law? at the April 2004 Renaissance Society of America conference in New York City, and he reviewed Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie?s The Beginnings of English Protestantism in the Dutch Review of Church History 83 (2003). Bill Rossi published ?Following Thoreau?s Instincts? in the Fall 2004 issue of Nineteenth-Century Prose. Ralph Salisbury has received a Fulbright Senior Specialists grant in U.S. Studies?Literature. He will use the two- to six-week grant at the University of Freiburg and at Carl- Schurz-Haus of the German- American Institute, Freiburg. Salisbury was the subject of an interview article in the Bloomsbury Review titled ?The Big Seminar We Call Time,? written by Marilyn Krys (UO English, ?64). Ben Saunders?s new book, Desiring Donne: Poetry, Sexuality, Interpretation, has been accepted for publication by Harvard University Press. Saunders has also been awarded a UO Summer Research Award for 2005. Gordon Sayre is the Department?s new Director of Graduate Studies. His ?Melodramas of Rebellion: Metamora and the Literary Historiography of King Philip?s War in the 1820s? was published in the Summer 2004 issue of the Arizona Quarterly. Sayre?s ?Prehistoric Diasporas: Colonial Theories of the Origins of Native American Peoples? has appeared in Writing Race Across the Atlantic World: Medieval to Modern, ed. Gary Taylor and Philip Beidler (London: Palgrave, 2005) 51-75. His ?Azakia, Ou?bi, and Sarah Apthorp Wentworth Morton: A Poetic Romance from the Early American Republic? appeared in the Princeton University Library Chronicle, Winter 2003: 313-332. Sayre also presented an invited lecture as part of a symposium on Colonial American Literary Studies at the University of Chicago last April: ?The Death of Serpent Piqu? and the Value of Life at Natchez.? Along with Carla Zecher of the Newberry Library and Shannon Dawdy of the University of Chicago, Sayre has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to produce a scholarly edition of the manuscript Memoire of Jean-Fran?ois Benjamin Dumont de Montigny. This 450-page autobiographical narrative of Dumont?s adventures as a soldier and planter in Louisiana, where he lived from 1718 to 1737, is housed in the Newberry Library and has never been published. According to the current plan the Memoire is to be published in French by Septention/Presses Universit? de Paris-Sorbonne. Steven Shankman?s article, ?War and the Hellenic Splendor of Knowing: Levinas, Euripides, Celan,? appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Comparative Literature; another article, ?Katharsis, Xing, and Hua: Aristotle and Confucius on Poetry?s Affective Power,? appeared in Faculty Newsf Ex/Change: A Publication of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies, October 2004; ?Justice, Injustice, and the Differentiation of the Monotheistic Worldview: Reflections on Genesis 18, 22, and 24,? appeared in International Readings on Theory, History, and Philosophy of Culture (St. Petersburg, Russia), No. 19 (2004) 201-12. Also appearing in International Readings on Theory, History, and Philosophy of Culture, No. 16 (2003), 171-79, is Shankman?s ?Who is Zabalawi? The Wisdom of the Creator, the Reason of Daedalus, and Ethics in Mahfouz.? Shankman?s ??Nom de Dieu, quelle race!? The Saying, the Said, the Betrayal of Charity in Mongo Beti?s Le pauvre Christ de Bomba? appeared in Thamyris/Intersecting Place, Sex and Race, 11 (2003) 19-33. Shankman has just begun a three-year term as advisory editor of Eighteenth- Century Studies and was on the steering committee for the UNESCO- associated conference, ?Unity and Diversity in Religion and Culture,? held at the Seattle Center January 27- 30, 2005. Recent talks include ?Prosaic Profundity: The Dream of the Red Chamber and Clarissa as Higher Narratives,? International Comparative Literature Association, Hong Kong, August, 2004; ?The Promise of Language in the Depths of Hell: Primo Levi?s ?Ulysses Canto? and Inferno 26,? St. Petersburg, Russia, August, 2004; ?Monotheism and Violence: Rembrandt, Levinas, and the Binding of Isaac,? invited lecture for series on Religion and Violence, Ohio State University, February, 2004. Sharon Sherman presented the Archer Tyler Memorial Lecture (keynote address), ?Film and Video: Fieldwork Tools for Surviving in the 21st Century,? last April at the California Folklore Society conference in Northridge. Richard Stevenson was promoted to the rank of Full Professor last spring. Molly Westling?s article, ?Monstrous Technologies in Silko, Castillo, Ortiz, and Solnit,? has been 16 Faculty New Arrivals Congratulations to ShariHuhndorf and Enrique Lima Rita Azul, born on December 9 at 4 A.M. and weighing 7 pounds, 6 ounces. Congratulations also to Michael Aronson and Keri Aronson, whose daughter Ruby was born on January 17 just before midnight, weighing in at 8 pounds, 1 ounce. Graduate Student News published in Space?Place? Environment, edited by Lothar Honninghausen, Julia Apitzsch, and Wibke Reger (T?fbingen: Stauffenberg Verlag, 2004). Westling gave a plenary lecture, ?Darwin in Arcadia: The Human Animal Dance from Gilgamesh to Virginia Woolf,? at the founding conference of the Australia-New Zealand Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in Melbourne, March 31, 2005. George Wickes gave four public lectures on James Joyce?s Ulysses in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday (June 16, 1904) and subsequently spent Bloomsday in Dublin while attending the International James Joyce Symposium, observing the occasion, like Mr. Bloom, with a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy at Davy Byrne?s tavern. Daniel Wojcik chaired a panel, ?Boundary, Space and Self,? and presented a paper, ?Visionary Artists, Vernacular Traditions, Trauma, and Creativity,? at the California Folklore Society conference in Northridge last April. Harry Wonham was promoted to the rank of Full Professor last spring and spent winter quarter, 2005, in London teaching courses on ?Mark Twain?s England? and ?Wordsworth and the Lake District? for NCSA (Northwest Council on Study Abroad). Amanda Adams?s article, ?TheUses of Distinction: Matthew to present a paper at the College English Association conference in Indianapolis this spring. Jennifer Dare presented ?The Art of War: Exploring the Aesthetic Impulse of Warhammer Miniature Armies? for the ?Boundary, Space and Self? panel of the California Folklore Society conference at CSU Northridge last April. Gini Davis received a 2004 Departmental Citation for Excellence in Teaching and a $150 honorarium. Janet Fiskio presented ?Perspectives on the Future of Environmental Ethics? at the Joint Environmental Philosophy Meeting, ?Future Trends in Environmental Philosophy,? in June 2004 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Craig Franson was awarded a UO general scholarship for 2004? 2005. He has also been appointed Assistant Director for the Composition Program and the Center for Teaching Writing. Julia Hammond presented ?Safekeeping: Homey Things and the Forces of Capital? as part of the Boundary, Space, and Self panel of the California Folklore Society conference at CSU Northridge in April 2004. Ryan Hediger received a 2004 Departmental Citation for Excellence in Teaching and a $150 honorarium. He presented ?Ecological Transformation in Gary Snyder?s Mountains and Rivers Without End? at the 5th Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in Boston in June 2003. He also gave a paper titled ?Terry Tempest Williams?s Physical Language? at ?The West of the 21st Century,? the 38th Annual Western Literature Association Conference in Houston in October 2003. And he presented ?A Breath of Environmental Ethics in Emmanuel Levinas? at ?The Question of the Animal,? the Mesa Verde Colloquium, at the UO in February 2004. Alastair Hunt organized two Mesa Verde events in 2004: ?The Question of the Animal? winter colloquium and Professor Emeritus Realism,? was published in the Fall 2004 issue of American Literary Realism. Amanda was also chosen by the Department to attend the 24th annual Dickens Project Research Institute and Conference??Victorian Terrors??in August at UC Santa Cruz. Tiffany Beechy received a $500 Graduate School Research Award to attend the Sigurpartialdiffr Nordal Institute in Reykjavik, Iceland during summer 2004. She also was awarded a grant from the Medieval Association of the Pacific to present ?Poetic Interpretation and the Sinews of ?Deor?? at the 39th International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan last May. Gary Bodie presented a paper titled ?What Makes Beowulf Beowulf? Essential Digressions in the Epic Form? at the 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo in May 2004. Matthew Branch (Folklore) presented ?Reading the Green: Interpreting Oral Histories from an Environmental Perspective? at the California Folklore Society conference at CSU Northridge in April 2004. Marci Carrasquillo was awarded a $500 2004-2005 Graduate Research Award from the UO Graduate School to present a paper at the American Writers of Color conference in Baltimore last November. Ulrick Casimir?s short documentary, ?Breaking in Eugene,? which he produced for Sharon Sherman?s production seminar in 2003, was shown on North Carolina Public Television?s ?Second Cinema? in February. Teresa Coronado was a presenter for and Chair of the ?Sea Literatures? II panel at the American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association National Convention in San Antonio, Texas last April. In the same month she was also a panelist at the University of Oregon History Guild?s ?Questions of Identity? conference. Teresa was awarded a $500 2004-2005 Graduate Research Award from the UO Graduate School Faculty Newsf 17 Graduate Newsf Glen Love?s spring presentation of his recent book Practical Ecocriticism: Literature, Biology, and the Environment (University of Virginia Press, 2003). Sarah Jaquette (English/ENVS) presented her paper, ?Off-Roading Back to Nature: The Cultural Politics of SUV Advertising,? at the American Society for Environmental History conference in Victoria, BC last April. Her attendance at the conference was funded in part by a $200 Graduate School Research Award. Michelle Kohler?s article, ?Vision, Logic, and the Comic Production of Reality in The Merchant?s Tale and Two French Fabliaux,? has been accepted for publication in The Chaucer Review. Kom Kunyosying won the Spring 2004 Sarah Harkness Kirby Award for his essay, ?Form and Love in Los Bros Hernandez?s Love and Rockets,? written for David V?squez?s English 660, Latino/a Identity, Nationalism, and Personal Narrative. Kom has also been appointed Assistant Director of the Composition Program and the Center for Teaching Writing. He received a $500 Graduate School Research Award toward his expenses in attending the Northeast MLA Conference in Pittsburgh last March; he presented a paper, ?Absent Camera, Absent Interviewer, Absent Interviewees: The Violence of Suture in Anna Deveare Smith?s Twilight: Los Angeles.? He delivered ?What Threatens: Thai Protective Culture in the Ages of Industrialization and Information? at the 2004 California Folklore Society Conference at CSU Northridge last April. He also presented ?Virile Europeans and Flaccid Asians: Maintaining the Structure of Asian Stereotypes to Assert Female Subjectivity in Shanghai Baby? at the 2004 Association for Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast conference at the UO this past June. Kristi Lodge chaired a panel on ?Depictions of Nakedness in Medieval Literature? at the 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo last May. Nicole Malkin was the recipient of the Department?s 2004 Outstanding Composition Teaching Award, which is accompanied by a stipend of $500. Elle Martini, Director and Producer, and Ilsa Spreiter, Editor, along with three UO undergraduates, Tahira Hayes, Susan Stolberg, and Martina Roberge, produced ?Crossing the Abyss: A Journey From Auschwitz to Oregon,? a nine-minute documentary that was shown on OPB directly after ?Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State? this past January 26th. Elle and Ilsa are Masters candidates with emphasis in Film Studies. Chad May is the recipient of the English Department?s 2004 Ernst Dissertation Fellowship. He presented ?Dreams and Tales of Long Ago: Realism and Christina Rossetti?s Use of the Fantastic? at the Dickens Universe Winter Conference at UC Riverside in February, 2004. Sarah McFarland?s essay, ?Of Bears and Women: The Ethics of Gender in Barry Lopez?s Arctic Dreams,? was published in Essays in Philosophy (a special issue on Animal Ethics) for June 2004. Her essay, ?Invisible Birds: The Erasure of the Domestic in Terry Tempest Williams?s Refuge,? appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of Southwestern American Literature. Sarah also presented ?Penetrating Bear Country: Gender and Power in Doug Peacock?s Grizzly Years? at the Western Literature Association conference in Houston in June 2003. Russell Meeuf has received two Sarah Harkness Kirby Awards for best seminar paper, each including a $150 stipend: for Winter 2004 for ?Lego Animation and the Politics of Postmodernism,? written for Daniel Wojcik?s English 680, Folk and Visionary Art, and for Fall 2004, for ?Collateral Damage: Terrorism, Melodrama, and the Action Film on the Eve of 9/11,? written for Kathleen Karlyn?s English 695, Film Theory and Cultural Studies. Tara Montague has been awarded a $500 2004-2005 Graduate Research Award from the UO Graduate School to present a paper at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo this spring. Anthony Robinson continues to edit The Canary, a nationally distributed poetry journal, which recently published its third issue and has been well received by the poetry community. Tony?s poems and reviews have been published in Atlanta Review, Mid-American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Court Green, Skein, Octopus, and other journals, and his poetry manuscript, ?lucky error,? was a semifinalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, an annual book contest sponsored by Ahsahta Press at Boise State University. Michelle Satterlee received a 2004 Oregon Humanities Center Graduate Research Fellowship. Her article, ?Representations of Trauma in Clinical Psychology and Fiction? (written with R. Goldsmith), appeared in The Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 5.2; ?Seeing Local Nature: Interview with John Daniel? was published in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 11.2. She presented ?Trauma and Identity in Indigenous North American, Australian, and New Zealand Fiction? at the Association for Pacific Rim University Doctoral Conference in Sydney, Australia last August, and ?Trauma and Place in Asian American Fiction? at the Rocky Mountain MLA conference in Boulder last September. Michelle was also chosen to be a 2004?2005 Executive Committee Member of the Doctoral Student Network for the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. Neal Schlein (Folklore) presented ?The Oral Formulaic Square Dance: Spontaneous Choreography in a Literate Genre? at the California Folklore Society conference at CSU Northridge last April. Dan Shea presented ?Woman and Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man: Olive Schreiner?s Feminist Revision of Engels? at the Marxist Literary Group?s Institute on 18 Culture and Society at UC Davis in June 2003. He was selected by the Department to attend the Dickens Project Research Institute and Conference last July at UC Santa Cruz, and he presented ??The Reproduction of Everyday Life?: Women?s Writing, Maternity, and the Critique of Capitalism in the Works of Two Socialist-Feminist Novelists? at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association?s Annual Conference at Reed College in November 2004. Dan also received the 2003 Emerging Labor Leader of the Year Award from the Lane County Labor Council for his work as co-chair of the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network/Jobs with Justice. And he just accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Houston, Downtown Campus. Carter Soles received the Sarah Harkness Kirby Award for best seminar paper for Fall 2003. His essay, ?Containing the Crippled/Feminine: Figurations of Liminality in Lon Chaney?s The Penalty,? was written for Michael Aronson?s English 695, Cinema of the Jazz Age. Arwen Spicer?s poem ?The End? appeared in the 2004 issue of Timberline. She presented a paper entitled ??It?s Bloody Brilliant!?: The Undermining of Metanarrative Feminism in the Season Seven Arc Narrative of Buffy? at the Slayage Conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Nashville last May. Kelly Sultzbach presented ?Composing a Living Line: The Relationship Between Modern Art Theory and Ecocritical Perception in Virginia Woolf?s Short Stories? at the 14th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf in London in June. She presented ?The Ecology of Empire in E. M. Forster?s A Passage to India? at the Rocky Mountain MLA in Boulder in September, an essay which also won Kelly the 2004 Jane Campbell Krohn Essay Prize, accompanied by a $300 check, awarded annually for the best essay in the field of literature and the environment submitted by a second- year graduate student in English. Thomas Swensen received a CoDac (Center on Diversity and Community) Summer Research Fellowship to study the way the Alutiiq people and their history are accounted for at Fort Ross in Sonoma County. Hannah Tracy has been appointed Assistant Director for the Composition Program and the Center for Teaching Writing. Hannah has also been awarded a $500 2004-2005 Graduate Research Award from the UO Graduate School to enable her to attend the W. B. Yeats International Summer School in Sligo, Ireland. Rosanna Walker?s essay, ?To Die Will Be an Awfully Big Adventure: Peter Pan and the Lost Boy in The Professor?s House,? has been accepted by Scarecrow Press for a forthcoming collection of articles in honor of Peter Pan?s centenary. Alumni News Jennifer Aanderud (BA 2004)has been appointed a 2004 Member. Lawrence Backstedt (DA 1970) retired after 30 years in service teaching English at The Fashion Institute of Technology in The State University of New York system. He used the teaching method founded by the philosopher and poet Eli Siegel as the basis for his teaching. He served as chairperson from 1986 to 1991. Backstedt looks back fondly on his classes with Glen Love, Gerry Moll, Bill Cadbury, and others. Kellie Bond (PhD 2002) has accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of English specializing in 20th-century American literature at Walla Walla College in College Place, Washington. Tom Campbell (PhD 1981) received the 2003?2004 Faculty Excellence Award for Teaching at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington where he is Professor and Chair of English. Alexis Easley (PhD 1998), who has been an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alaska Southeast, has just accepted a tenure- track assistant professorship at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her book, First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, 1830-1870 (Ashgate Press, Nineteenth-Century Series, 2004) examines the importance of both anonymous periodical journalism and signed authorship in nineteenth-century women?s literary careers. Alison Ganze (PhD 2004) is an Assistant Professor of English at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. She gave a paper at the International Medieval Congress entitled, ??And many a mayde?: Dorigen?s Virgins in the Franklin?s Tale,? in Kalamazoo in May. She also organized and chaired a panel on ?Teaching Difficult Texts.? Ronald Ganze (PhD 2004) is an Instructor of English at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. His article, ?From anhaga to snottor: The Wanderer?s Kierkegaardian Epiphany,? will appear in Neophilologus. He presented ?The Transformation of Augustinian Interiority in Alfred?s Soliloquies? at the 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in May. Emily Haas (BA 2004) has been appointed a 2004 Teach for America Corps Member. Joan Herman (MA 2004) has accepted a tenure-track position teaching English at Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington. Roxanne Kent-Drury?s (PhD 1998) book, Using Internet Primary Sources to Teach Critical Thinking in World Literature (Libraries Unlimited Professional Guides) is coming out this spring. Melisse Kuhn (BA 2004) is enrolled in the Steinhardt School of Education at NYU pursuing a Graduate Newsf 19 Master?s degree in Secondary English Education. She writes that ?life in New York City is a daily adventure in the realm of the aesthetic and the senses; one could never be without something to do, see, or experience. However, I?m still looking for a good cup of coffee . . . .? Gwendolyn Maddy (MA 2003) is living in Katsutadai, Japan, where she is an English teacher for the Margaret Institute of Language. Her contract is renewable for up to three years. Susmita Mahato (PhD 2003) has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whitman College this year, teaching Victorian and 20th-century literature. She will begin in a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound next fall. Amy Matthusen (MA 2004) has been accepted into the New York City Teaching Fellows Program. She will earn a Masters in Education and has been offered a job teaching 10th- grade writing at the Bronx Academy of Letters, a new school that focuses on writing. Johnnie Mazzocco?s (MA 2004) MA project, a video titled I?m Too Much, premiered at the Bijou Cinemas in Eugene last May. Amy Mills?s (MA Folklore 2003) videos Fire Dance?which won an award?and WOW! What a Building were shown at the Vitas Film and Folklore Festival at UCLA last May. Tison Pugh?s (PhD 2000) book, Queering Medieval Genres, is being published by Palgrave Macmillan. Carol Spellman (MA Folklore 2002) supervised five students in the Oregon Folklife Program whose videos?Moccasin Making in Warm Springs and Baile Folklorico?were shown at the Vitas Film and Folklore Festival at the UCLA last May. Bianca Tredennick (PhD 2002) holds an appointment as Assistant Professor of English at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, where she teaches courses in literature and composition. Alumni Newsf Jeff Whitty (BA 1993) won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Avenue Q, which also earned Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Score. A 1989 graduate of Marshfield High School on the central Oregon coast, Whitty majored in English and graduated with Honors from the Robert D. Clark Honors College. His honors thesis dealt with the history of solo performance and included a one-man show in which he played eight different characters. Whitty also performed in several University Theatre productions, including Assassins and Into the Woods. After graduating from the UO, Whitty went on to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where he earned a master?s degree and then worked off-Broadway and in film and television. When he returned to campus last October, Whitty chatted with us and spoke enthusiastically of his experiences in the English Department and Clark Honors College, remembering especially his work with Linda Kintz, Michael Clark, and Frances Cogan, all of whom were on his thesis committee. ?I have a lot of fondness for the University,? he said. ?This is where I found my feet as a writer. I came to UO feeling cocky. This is where I learned honesty.? Whitty is presently working on a number of projects, including a feature film for Warner Brothers that will star Jennifer Aniston, a series pilot for Fox television network, and a ?dark children?s musical about a band of outcasts.? Plays he has already completed are The Plank Project, Balls, and The Hiding Place. Avenue Q is the story of a young man named Princeton who, freshly graduated from college, moves to New York City with ?big dreams and a tiny bank account.? He soon finds that the only neighborhood he can Jeff Whitty, Creator of Avenue Q, Returns to Campus afford is Avenue Q, where he meets an amazingly diverse group of young people seeking their destinies, some of whom are puppets (strongly reminiscent of the Muppets on Sesame Street). This cast of characters includes Trekkie Monster, an internet addict, Brian, an unemployed comedian, and his therapist fianc?e Christmas Eve. As critic Roy Sorrels has observed, Princeton ?begins to have one young-New Yorker experience after another in a world that is a delicious mix of pithy reality and hilarious fantasy. The Muppets have grown up. The music is lively and toe- tapping, and the lyrics are anything but off-the-shelf. Each song is a gem, treating with wit such subjects as coming out as a young gay, racism, and the complexities of loving someone you sometimes hate. ?Everyone?s a Little Bit Racist,? ?There is Life Outside Your Apartment,? and ?I Wish I Could Go Back to College? stand out. Perhaps the funniest is a song that explores the word for the day . . . , ?Schadenfreude,? a lively ode to the sin no one ever admits committing: finding pleasure in the misfortune of others. ? Jeff Whitty 20 Department of English 1286 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1286 Address Service Requested This newsletter is printed on recycled paper. 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