DEPARTMENT OF College of Arts & Sciences Chuck Maland and ENGLISHMary Papke, Editors | http://english.utk.edu | [email protected] INSIDE THE FALL 2017 ISSUE HEADNOTE: 2016-17 2 By Allen Dunn lection is “deft and Faculty News wonderful”! elcome to the 2016-17 Eng- Also in the lish Department Newsletter. spring, we cel- We have had another eventful ebrated the life 8 year,W and I am happy to have the op- and work of the Recent portunity to share some of the highlights ever-popular Jane Faculty Books with you. At the start of last fall semester, Austen in Austen- first—year students read Margaret Dean’s fest, organized by Allen Dunn Leaving Orbit, her book about the Apollo Misty Anderson Space Program. After meeting with and Hilary Havens. It was a three-day ex- faculty members to discuss the book and travaganza that included films, lectures, its implications for future space explora- dramatic readings, high tea, period cos- 9 tion, these students were treated to a talk tumes, and a Regency ball with ballroom Welcome... by space shuttle astronaut Scott Kelly dancing. These events drew in numerous who then appeared with Margaret in a participants from the Knoxville com- In Memoriam: Allen Carroll | 12 question-and-answer session. Margaret is munity including the local high school currently co-authoring Kelly’s autobiog- and college students who took part in the Advanced Degrees Granted | 13 raphy which is due out from Knopf this Austenfest essay contest. Austenfest was coming November. Later in the fall, we followed by the Clarence Brown Theatre’s Alumni News | 14 held a reception at The Lighthouse to cel- production of The Busy Body by eigh- ebrate the arrival of poet Joy Harjo, our teenth-century American playwright Su- new Chair of Excellence. Besides being an sanna Centlivre. Directed by John Sipes accomplished poet, Joy is a talented musi- and produced and adapted by John Sipes cian who sings and plays both the saxo- and Misty Anderson, this comedy was phone and the flute. At the reception, she a smashing success: most of the perfor- combined forces with a band of Nashville mances sold out, and new performances musicians to produce a wonderful concert were added. It is clear that both Austen that included poetry, jazz music, and and Centlivre retain the power to speak song. As the evening concluded, I heard to contemporary audiences. During this more than one person exclaim, “Best time we also interviewed candidates for a English Department Party Ever!” Later position in Latino/a Literature which we in the year, we learned that Joy had won will be sharing with the Modern Foreign the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize which comes Languages and Literatures Department. with a $100,000 award and is bestowed The search culminated with the hire of on a living American poet for outstand- Liliana González who recently completed ing lifetime accomplishments. This is her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. Joy’s second major award in as many We are excited to welcome Liliana, who years. Last year she received the Wallace joined us this fall. Stevens Award which also recognized her There were also dramatic develop- Having a ball at the Austenfest lifetime of achievement. To complete our ments in the Department’s Writing Regency Ball, see page 10 Creative Writing trifecta, in the spring, division. Thanks in part to a generous Michael Knight published a collection of gift from Judi and James Herbert, the short stories entitled Eveningland which Writing Center will be able to signifi- received a glowing full-page review in the cantly expand the tutoring that it gives New York Times Book Review. According to the reviewer, the first story in the col- Headnote continued on page 9 . DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH FACULTY NEWS Misty Anderson was one of the plenary Americanists and the New Directions in speakers at the UCLA/Clark Center’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Scholar- conference on “Music and Theatre in the ship conferences. She also completed her 18th Century.” Also, her article “Zombie year in residence at the UT Humanities Sovereignty” was published in the fall Center as a Faculty Fellow. issue of Restoration. She is also happy to announce that the first volume of The This Spring, Dawn Coleman published Routledge Anthology of Restoration and two essays on Melville: “Melville and the Eighteenth-Century Drama, edited with Unitarian Conscience,” in Visionary of Danny O’Quinn and Kristina Straub, the Word: Melville and Religion, edited is now in print. The documentary she by Jonathan A. Cook and Brian Yothers is producing about the recent CBT (Northwestern UP 2017), and “Whales production of her adaptation (with John in Cincinnati,” in Leviathan: A Journal of Sipes) of Centlivre’s The Busy Body will be Melville Studies 19.1 (March 2017), on featured with the play in the anthology at two Moby-Dick-related art exhibitions http://theatre.utk.edu/the-busy-body/. in Cincinnati last year, one of which was the first all-woman Moby-Dick art show. Kirsten Benson’s article “‘What’s your She also continued to serve as the book name, kid?’: The Acousmatic Voiceovers review editor of Leviathan and presented of Private Edward P. Train in The Thin a paper at MLA in Philadelphia, drawn In January 2017, Amy Elias was Red Line,” co-written with Clint Stivers from her second book project, on the appointed the new Director of the (English Ph.D., 2012), appeared in POST dynamics of women’s religious skepticism University of Tennessee Humani- SCRIPT, 34.2-3, 36-52. She also presented in Henry Adams’s 1884 novel Esther. ties Center [http://artsci.utk.edu/ a paper entitled “New College Composi- dialogue/elias-appointed-as-new- tion Teachers and the Challenge of Devel- In the summer of 2016, Michelle director-of-ut-humanities-center/] oping Professional Identity” at the Council Commander gave a keynote address on The UTHC represents nine de- of Writing Program Administrators confer- Afro-speculation for Freie Universität’s partments in the College of Arts ence in Raleigh, NC, in July 2016. Graduate School for North American and Sciences and hosts faculty Studies’ International Graduate Confer- and graduate-student residential Wendy Braun’s entries for “Curan- ence (Berlin, Germany), “Flows and fellowships, research seminars, dera,” “White Slavery Hysteria,” “As- Undercurrents—Dimensions of (Im)mo- a distinguished lecture series, sociation of Southern Women for the bility in North America.” She also gave graduate internships, and other Prevention of Lynching,” “Hispanic a paper presentation at the International forms of humanities research sup- Women’s Council,” “Alice B. Toklas,” James Baldwin Conference (American port. Amy follows Tom Heffernan “Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education University of Paris) entitled “On the as director as the UTHC enters Network,” and “Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez” Limitations of Expatriation: Breath and its second stage of development. were published in Women in American Social Life in Baldwin’s Proto-Specula- In addition, she co-edited, with History: A Social, Political, and Cultural tive Thought and Reginald McKnight’s Joel Burges, Time: A Vocabulary of Encyclopedia and Document Collection, I Get on the Bus.” In addition, Michelle the Present, a collection of twenty edited by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne saw published her “The Space for Race: keyword essays about time in Welch for ABC-CLIO. Black American Exile and the Rise of contemporary culture; the collec- Afro-Speculation” in the September tion was published by NYU Press Katy Chiles published her essay entitled 2016 issue of ASAP/Journal. in summer 2016. She gave an “Tribal Sovereignty, Native American invited talk at Ohio State Uni- Literature, and the Complex Legacy of Bethany Dumas presented “Language versity in Fall 2016 concerning Hendrick Aupaumut” in Stories of Na- Sensitivity and Clients” at “Ethics and her own essay, “Past/Future,” in tion: Fiction, Politics, and the American Professionalism: Exploring Bias,” a Sym- that volume; and with Jonathan Experience, edited by Martin Griffin and posium hosted by the Tennessee Journal Eburne she hosted two panels at a Christopher Hebert. In addition to giv- of Race, Gender, and Social Justice and fall 2016 conference at Penn State ing an invited talk to the City of Knox- co-sponsored by the College of Law and University. She is the co-author ville Equity Committee, she presented the Tennessee Law Review, February 26, of an interview with the interna- conference papers at the Society of Early 2016, Knoxville. tionally known visual artist Fred 2 Wilson that appears in issue 2.1 Journals (CELJ) and launched a new funded by a Hodges Summer Research (January 2017) of ASAP/Journal. online, open-access supplement titled Grant and with the help of research assis- In Fall 2016, she served on the ASAP/J http://asapjournal.com/. Her tants funded by the Office of Undergradu- Executive Committee of the In- own research work has included a co- ate Research. ternational Society for the Study edited interview with the artist Fred of Narrative, serving this year on Wilson in ASAP/Journal, issue 2.1 Martin Griffin attended the four-week its “Graduate Student Essay Prize” and an invited plenary talk at Queen NEH Summer Institute on “Ernest J. Committee and the “Best Article Mary University, London, for the Gaines and the Southern Experience” at Published in NARRATIVE” Com- symposium “New Media and Con- the University of Louisiana in Lafayette mittee. At UT, among her other temporary Literature.” during June 2016. He also presented work, she continues to serve as a paper on “The German Intellectual: Core Faculty [with Jered Sprecher Stan Garner’s joint review of Rhonda Transatlantic Idealism and the Irony of (Art) and Dan Magilow (MFLL)] Blair and Amy Cooks, eds., Theatre, Rejection in Howells’ A Hazard of New of the Contemporary Arts and Performance, and Cognition: Languages, Fortunes and Warren’s Wilderness” at Society Research Seminar at the Bodies and Ecologies and Clelia Falletti, the Transatlantic Studies Association in UTHC, and she was a panelist for Gabriele Sofia, and Victor Jacono, eds., Plymouth, UK, July 4-6, 2016.