CLASS Newsletter: English
Faculty Publications
Dorothy Z. Baker
Dorothy Z. Baker has two recent books projects. The Soft and Silent Communion: The Conversion Narratives of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill appeared in 2005 with the University of Tennessee Press. She edited the collection with former graduate student, Sue Lane McCulley, and wrote the introduction. America's Gothic Fiction: The Legacy of Magnalia Christi Americana will appear in 2007 with Ohio State University Press.
John McNamara
John McNamara was translator and editor of Beowulf: A New Translation for Barnes & Noble Classics. (2005) The project developed out of three decades of teaching the work in the original language to graduate students, as well as numerous conference papers and articles.
Antonya Nelson
Antonya Nelson, Dept. of English, published a collection of stories with Scribners in March of 06 (Some Fun). In addition, she published stories in The New Yorker (Sept. 4, 06), O Magazine (July 06) Tin House (Summer 06) and has entries in the Barry Lopez edited anthology Home Ground (Fall 06).
Irving N. Rothman
Irving N. Rothman published a unique study of Gulliver's Travels in the 2006 Annual Report of the Institute for Space Systems Operations (ISSO). The article, "Science and Invention in Literature-Divergent Views of Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift," shows that experiments satirized by Jonathan Swift are actually carried out at NASA. Dr. Rothman is also chief textual editor for the Stoke Newington Daniel Defoe Edition, which in 2006 published An Essay on the History of Apparitions (1726), edited by Kathleen Kincade, with AMS Press, Inc., of Brooklyn, New York.
Daniel Stern
The late Daniel Stern’s novella, "The Advancer," was published by the Kenyon Review in spring, 2006.
Lois Parkinson Zamora
Lois Parkinson Zamora published The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction with the University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Awards and Honors
Dorothy Z. Baker
The Stowe Society will celebrate its tenth anniversary at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers in Philadelphia in November 2006. At that time, the Society will honor its founding officers, Dr. Joan D. Hedrick of Trinity College and Dorothy Z. Baker.
Carl Lindahl
In October, Carl Lindahl received a Cultural Arts Council of Houston award for developing a series of radio programs based on research conducted by the Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston projects. Articles appearing in the Los Angeles Times (September 16) and the Houston Chronicle (June 16) featured his work on the projects. On August 22 and 25 Dr. Lindahl was featured on two NPR programs, first on Talk of the Nation as a speaker on Katrina stories and healing, then as co-producer of a program on All Things Considered narrated by Katrina survivors from the “Surviving” project. This work led him to be featured in Time magazine (October 2) as one of 5 “Innovators” in storytelling.
Irving N. Rothman
Irving N. Rothman was honored by Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK) national leadership honor society with the national Eldridge Roark Meritorious Service Award, commemorating 50 years of service to ODK. He had previously been named by the national ODK officers in 2005 as a recipient of its distinguished Five-Star Award.
Lois Parkinson Zamora
Lois Parkinson Zamora new book, The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction, won the Harry Levin Prize awarded by the American Comparative Literature Association. The Harry Levin Prize is one of this country’s most prestigious book awards in the discipline of comparative literature. The prize was awarded at the ACLA’s annual conference in April.
The book was also selected as a "Book of the Year" by the Times Literary Supplement. The British cultural historian Marina Warner wrote:
...it has been a lift to read Lois Parkinson Zamora’s The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction, beautifully produced by the University of Chicago Press. She argues exhilaratingly that an aesthetic of fusion, adornment and exuberance rose phoenix-like in the aftermath of the conquest, shaping an influential mode of fantasy, as in the art and architecture of Mexico and the marvellous fictions of Borges.
Other News
Margot Backus
In February 2006, Margot Backus, with Eavan Boland, a premier Irish poet and critic at Stanford University, was keynote speaker for two conferences held conjointly at the University of South Carolina. The University's annual, national women's studies conference was titled "Transnational Feminisms," and it was coordinated with the annual meeting of the Southern Region of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Her talk, "Transnational laundries, transnational trauma, transnational feminisms," commented upon the “relative invisibility of magdalene laundries in Northern Ireland, in comparison to their iconic status in the Irish Republic.”
Carl Lindahl
Carl Lindahl was invited speaker and inducted member of the Social Science Research Council’s Katrina Task Force and presented results of his research in New Orleans, October 7. He delivered the keynote address at the Harvard University Conference: Performing Folklore and was featured speaker at the Center for Research in Festive Cultures, Newberry Library, Chicago.
Antonya Nelson
Antonya Nelson was a featured reader in the New Yorker Festival last October.
Lois Parkinson Zamora
Lois Parkinson Zamora organized the annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in Puebla, Mexico, April 19-22, 2007
Dudley W. Reynolds
Dudley W. Reynolds was invited to be a featured speaker at the Symposium on Second Language Writing at Purdue University in June, giving a presentation titled "Beyond Texts: A Research Agenda for Quantitative Research on Second Language Writers and Readers." He was also recently asked to join the editorial board for the Journal of Second Language Writing published by Elsevier Press, and was appointed the Associate Chair for the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).
Daniel Stern
The late Daniel Stern was honored with a Festchrift published in December. It contains forty contributions including poems by Edward Hirsch, Adam Zagajewski, Mark Doty, essays and appreciations by Elie Wiesel, Frank Kemode, Edward Albee, Molly Haskell, Pam Diamond, Morris Dickstein and others.
