Making Waves Newsletter for the Department of English University of Southern California Chair: Bruce R
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making waves Newsletter for the Department of English University of Southern California Chair: Bruce R. Smith Graduate Studies: Anthony Kemp Undergraduate Studies: Viet Nguyen Literature and Creative Writing Ph.D.: Susan McCabe Admissions: John Carlos Rowe Placement: Rebecca Lemon ISSUE 4 , NUMBER 2 SUMMER 2007 Making the Transition: NINE GRADUATES ACCEPT JOB OFFERS, POSTDOCS USC graduate students have once again been doing the de- band, 2002 USC PhD Arnab Chakladar, who will be assum- partment proud in their job placements. Rebecca Lemon, ing a tenure-track assistant professorship Placement Director, reports that 12 students had a total of 70 in Carleton’s Department of English. interviews at MLA or elsewhere. These interviews resulted in 25 campus visits, five tenure-track offers, four post-doctoral Molly Engelhardt, who has been a fellowship offers, and five non-tenure-track offers. Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A & M, Corpus Christi, for three years, American Studies graduate Jenny has successfully competed for a newly Stoever, who wrote her disserta- opened tenure-track line in TAMCC’s tion, “The Contours of the Sonic English Department, where she will Color-Line: Slavery, Segregation, now be full-time Assistant Professor in and the Cultural Politics of Listen- Victorian studies, feminism, and post- ing,” under the direction of former English Professor Carla Kaplan, is very excited to be moving to continued on pg. 2 New York where she’ll assume a tenure-track job at SUNY, Bing- hamton. Faced with an enviable panoply of options, including two JOHNSON JOINS ENGLISH tenure-track offers and two postdoctoral fellowships, William Taper Hall is not altogether unfamiliar territory to Dana “Memo” Arce is taking a two-year post- Johnson, who will be joining English as an Assistant doctoral fellowship at Bowdoin College Professor of Creative Writing in the fall. Dana, a na- in Maine (Nathanial Hawthorne’s alma tive of Los Angeles, holds a BA in journalism from USC. mater). He will hold a dual appointment After working as a journalist in LA, she entered the MFA pro- in English and Latin American Studies, gram at Indiana U, where she quickly made the transition from and be premiering a course on the Mid- student to faculty member. From there she migrated to Cre- dle East wars in Kuwait, Afghanistan ative Writing at UC Riverside. In the meantime, she wrote a and Iraq as reflected in U.S. literature, collection of short fiction, Break Any Woman Down, published an offshoot of his dissertation, directed in 2001 by U Georgia P and winner of the 2000 Flannery by Teresa McKenna, on the construc- O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. The book was also a finalist tion of nationhood in Latino/Chicano for the first Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award war literature. and for the Patterson Fiction Prize. Dana’s reading from her more recent work during her campus vis- A specialist in drama, performance, it in February wowed the crowd in the Ide and Asian-American studies trained by Room and sent a few listeners straight David Román, Sun Hee Lee received to the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas. both a tenure-track position at U Colo- rado Boulder and a two-year postdoc- A call for applicants whose writing focus- toral fellowship with the possibility of a es on ethnic experience brought in a huge third year of teaching in English at Car- number of applications. Aimee Bender leton College in Minnesota (Carleton is chaired a hard-working Search Com- currently the nation’s top-ranked private mittee. Dana emerged as first choice of college). She has opted for the latter, four finalists, making her acceptance an where she will be joined by her hus- occasion for rejoicing. MAKING THE TRANSITION NEW SEMINAR AT THE continued from pg. 1 HUNTINGTON LIBRARY colonial literatures. At USC, Molly Assistant Professor Emily Anderson, along with Felicity worked under the direction of Jim Nussbaum of UCLA, has created an interdisciplinary program Kincaid and Joseph Boone. at the Huntington Library devoted to fostering discussion and community for eighteenth-century scholars. James Penner has been appointed to a two-year Visiting Assistant Pro- “The Long Eighteenth-Century Seminar at the Huntington” fessor position at Dickinson College features work and speakers from all aspects of the period. in Pennsylvania, where he’s excited Funded by the Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI), it is a to be in charge of designing five collaborative effort among the Huntington, UCLA, and USC. new courses in drama. He wrote his The Seminar hosts three speakers each year, generally featur- dissertation on “Pinks, Pansies, and ing local scholars and scholars visiting the Huntington Library. Punks” and the rhetoric of masculin- ity under Leo Braudy’s direction. The first guest of the series, Joseph Roach, the Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater & English at Yale Meanwhile, first-time job seekers University, presented work from his new book It, a study of Bridget Hoida and Marci McMahon celebrity culture and star power throughout history. The next are taking non-tenure track positions speaker is UCLA professor of musicology Olivia Bloechl, at UC, Irvine and Scripps College, re- whose most recent book, Native American Song at the Fron- spectively. A creative writer in fiction tiers of Early Modern Music (Cambridge, 2007), traces the and scholar of the “California novel,” influence of European colonial representation of Amerindian Bridget will music on Europe’s own music cultures. be teaching in Irvine’s Anderson extends her thanks to Prof. Nussbaum, as well Humanities as to Prof. Peter Mancall (director of the EMSI), Roy Ritchie Core De- (Director of the Huntington Library), and the Huntington staff, p a r t m e n t ; and also extends an invitation to all to join in the fun and attend she’s currently shopping her novel the interdisciplinary talks. The Beauty Guide to Save Yourself from Drowning. As a Visiting Lec- turer in the Hispanic Studies De- ENGLISH INSTITUTE partment at Scripps, Marci will be teaching Chicana/o Literature, Cul- FEATURES BRUCE SMITH tural Studies, and Theatre. Marci’s dissertation on domesticity and Latina culture was directed by Every fall the Harvard English Institute, a consortium of univer- Teresa McKenna; Bridget’s directors were Bill Handley and sities, invites a handful of literary and cultural criticism’s most Percival Everett. distinguished professors to gather in Cambridge, MA, to pres- ent papers on a selected topic at a three-day symposium. The latest news comes from Kevin Pinkham, who—lucky guy—has This past October, the author was Shakespeare (specifically managed to skip the entire job market the sonnets), the genre was “forms of address,” and the topic process and be appointed Instruc- was “pronouns,” and Bruce Smith, continuing interim depart- tor at Nyack College in New York, a ment chair, was one of nine authorities invited to present his position that will be converted to a work. Entitled “The Pro- in Shakespeare’s Pronouns,” Profes- tenure-track assistant professorship sor Smith’s multidimensional talk incorporated a video of Chris upon completion of his PhD on al- Garcia, an American Sign Language specialist from Los Ange- coholism, prohibition, and American les. Garcia signed Shakespeare’s sonnet 29 and explained literature, directed by Carla Kaplan. to Smith how he had turned Shakespeare’s words into ges- Kevin’s wife Michele has just been tures. In particular, Garcia focused on how he had managed made Dean of Students at Nyack, to insinuate the pronouns “I,” “he,” “they,” and “you” into his which is Kevin and Michele’s alma interpretation. The focus of Smith’s presentation, on the be- mater, and their jobs come with a lovely house with views of ginnings of communication in bodily gestures rather than in the Hudson and additional teaching opportunities for Kevin on words, builds on the work he has been doing on materiality, the Manhattan campus. poetry, and sound over the last several years. English extends its heartfelt congratulations to these students USC English’s last participant in the Institute was Jim Kincaid. for making a successful transition from student to professori- Nancy Vickers, a formerly familiar face at USC and president ate status and wishes them well in the future! of Bryn Mawr College, sits on the the English Institute’s board of directors. 2 ENGLISH DEPARTMENT ALUMNI FILL THE BOOKSHELVES WITH NEW PUBLICATIONS Despite the notorious difficulty of making inroads into the in- Lowther Memorial Award. Naomi has recently received grants creasingly strapped academic publishing industry, worthy dis- from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Constance sertation projects do occasionally make the transition into suc- Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts as well as an Artist’s Fel- cessful scholarly publications, we are happy to note, as several lowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. recent USC Ph.D. graduates have demonstrated. Paul Hansom, Ph.D. 1999, has Katie Mills, a 2000 Ph.D. who teach- turned his talents into editing impor- es at Occidental College, has had tant volumes, including Literary Mod- her book, The Road Story and the ernism and Photography (Praeger Rebel: Moving Through Film, Fic- Press, December 2002), Twentieth- tion, and Television, recently issued Century European Cultural Theorists: by Southern Illinois UP (2006). Filled First Series (Thompson Gale 2001) with dozens of illustrations, it traces and Second Series (Thompson Gale an ambitious arc from the Beats and 2004), and 20th Century American “Route 66” through 1970s New Hol- Cultural Theorists (Thompson Gale lywood films like “Play It As It Lays” 2002). A visiting professor of Ameri- and “Easy Rider” to gender rebellion can literature at Ithaca College in up in contemporary road stories like “Thelma and Louise” and State New York, Paul also serves as new intermediated “avenues” of transit in digital formats.