Publications

Eric Gardner (’89), who is Chair, Braun Fellow, and Professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University, has written a book that is stirring up the field of African American literature and history. Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature (University Press of Mississippi), recovers the work of early African AMerican authors and editors who have been left off maps drawn by historians and literary critics and calls for a large-scale rethinking of the nineteenth-century African American literary landscape.

“Unexpected Places is exactly the kind of book most needed in the field right now,” writes John Ernest, author of Chaotic Justice: Rethinking African American Literary History.”

According to Gardner, “The book was a natural outgrowth of my fascination with archival work—and so was several years in the making. When I ‘found’ Black journalist Jennie Carter and then early Black playwright William Jay Greenly in the midst of other scholars’ rediscoveries that have changed our sense of Black literature, I knew I needed to think through just why so many early Black writers still needed recovery and how that recovery might change . . . well, might change everything about the field.”

In addition to revisiting such better known writers as William Wells Brown, Maria Stewart, and Hannah Crafts, Unexpected Places offers the first critical considerations of several important figures, including Jennie Carter, Polly Wash, Lizzie Hart, and William Jay Greenly. The book’s discussion of physical locations leads to a study of how region is tied to genre, authorship, publication circumstances, the Black press, domestic and nascent Black nationalist idealogies, and Black mobility in the nineteenth century.

Gardner writes, “Geography was key to my thinking about this subject. Growing up in Illinois, I always assumed that I and my Midwestern ancestors were far from questions surrounding, say, slavery–and certainly far from the early development of Black literature in the urban centers of the Northeast. I was wrong—as were most critics in the field. Early Black struggles for literacy and literary culture happened across the nation. I’m hoping that the book will let folks in Ohio and Indiana and Missouri and Nevada and California and all sorts of other ‘unexpected places’ know that a Black literary past might be as close as their own backyard.

“I was already fascinated by historical digging when I got to Illinois Wesleyan, but when I had a chance to combine and build on those skills in one of Bob Bray’s classes to better understand an intriguing writer—Belle Owen, a little-known Illinois author—I was hooked on doing literary history.”

Walk into Barnes & Noble these days and you’ll see in the New Fiction section a copy of Spin, a first novel by Robert Rave (’96).

Rave, whose second novel, Waxed, will be released next summer by St. Martin’s, will be in Chicago on Nov. 4 for a booksigning, and he’ll return to IWU on Thursday, Nov. 5 to talk about Spin and his experience getting that first novel published. He’ll visit Professor DeVore’s 1:10 p.m. Senior Writing Project class, but other English majors are welcome to attend (location: Stevenson 103). Afterwards, Rave will answer questions. Spin (St. Martin’s Press) is based on Rave’s experience working PR in New York City. A reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly noted, “With its inside views of a corrupt yet glamorous lifestyle and its witty tone, the book is sure to please fans of the sub-genre.”

If you linger over the acknowledgments page you’ll notice that Rave includes Professor Kathie O’Gorman among those who’ve helped him along the way.

“I have many great memories of Dr. O’Gorman’s classes at IWU,” Rave said.  ”It’s where I discovered my love of Samuel Beckett and the theater of the absurd.  It’s where I trudged through Ulysses and made it to out alive—although just barely.  I met my lifelong best friend, Jennifer Gill in Dr. O’Gorman’s class.  Our fates were sealed as eternal friends when we both showed up wearing chocolate brown velour pants to British Literature. (Sad, but true).

“Synthetic fibers aside, Dr. O’Gorman’s class was where I began exploring the many layers of literature.  Not long after, I examined subtext like I had never quite done before. In fact, I was often looking for the subtext when none existed.   Yet one of the most valuable things that has stuck with me through today was repeatedly said by Dr. O’Gorman.  It was just a simple phrase that always proceeded an important point she was about to make: ‘the notion of.’  ’The notion of’ quickly became my catch phrase during my final two years of college especially when I tried to impress those who were, at the time, far beyond my intellectual reach.  Jennifer and I would attempt to use it in everyday conversation. I would ask her to grab a bite to eat and she would respond, “Let’s explore the notion of dinner,” much to my chagrin.  However, what started out as playful banter between two friends later evolved into something tangible. Whether I was simply reading for pleasure or researching ideas for a book I explored new ways of looking at the material and questioned the writer’s intent.  I kept hearing Dr. O’Gorman’s voice in my head “the notion of.”  So now, when I start a writing project I often think of challenging old notions or archetypes typically seen in books and I go against the grain.

“Many people were surprised I wrote a book, which some have dubbed “chick-lit,” with a male protagonist.  However, I liked the idea of challenging readers of the genre to open themselves to something different not only because he’s a guy, but he’s also flawed and by the end of the novel he becomes someone completely different from who we met at the beginning.  Dr. O’Gorman was the one who turned on the light switch for me.  She assigned material that I can say with great certainity that I would have never picked up at a library or bookstore. I feel that I am not only more enlightened as a reader and author because of it, but as a human being.  I can almost see the proverbial eye-rolling and hear the snickers from cynics from here.  But for me, it’s all true.  Simply because, with some prodding, I explored ‘the notion of.’”

It’s been two years in the making, but a book on the Bayeux Tapestry that Professor Dan Terkla co-edited with several colleagues finally arrives on August 20.

The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations features 11 news essays on the most famous medieval tapestry, along with an introduction and selective bibliography. Dan and his co-editors, Martin Foys (Assoc. Professor of English, Hood College, and Visiting Professor of English, Drew University) and Karen Eileen Overbey (Asst. Professor of Art History at Tufts University), feature critical essays that demonstrate the value of more recent interpretive approaches to this famous and iconic artifact by examining the textile’s materiality, visuality, reception and historiography, and its construction of gender, territory and cultural memory. According to a press release from Boydell & Brewer, the essays “frame discussions vital to the future of Tapestry scholarship and are complemented by a bibliography covering three centuries of critical writings.”

In addition to co-editing the book and compiling the bibliography, Dan also contributed an essay on “From Hasting to Hastings and Beyond: Inexorable Inevitability on the Bayeux Tapestry.” Other essays included are “Problematizing Patronage: Odo of Bayeux and the Bayeux Tapestry (Elizabeth Carson Pastan and Stephen D. White), “Auctoritas, Consilium et Auxilium: Images of Authority in the Bayeux Tapestry” (Shirley Ann Brown), “Taking Place: Reliquaries and Territorial Authority in the Bayeux Embroidery” (Overbey), “On the Nature of Things in the Bayeux Tapestry and its World” (Valerie Allen), “Making Sounds Visible in the Bayeux Tapestry” (Richard Brilliant), “Anglo-Saxon Women, Norman Knights and a ‘Third Sex’ in the Bayeux Embroidery” (Madeline H. Caviness), “Behind the Bayeux Tapestry” (Gale R. Owen-Crocker), “Embroidery Errors in the Bayeux Tapestry and Their Relevance for Understanding Its Design and Production” (Michael Lewis), and “Pulling the Arrow Out: The Legend of Harold’s Death and the Bayeux Tapestry” (Foys).

The 248-page book comes with 45 illustrations, 34 of them in color, and is selling on amazon.com for $59.85.

Dan is a recognized expert on the Bayeux Tapestry. He was invited to co-organize “The BT @ the BM: New Research on the Bayeux Tapestry: An International Conference at the British Museum” in July of 2008, and he co-organized a conference on the Tapestry for the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, England. A frequent nominee for Student Senate Professor of the Year, Dan joined the IWU English department in 1995.

The Spring 2009 Tributaries are in, so next time you’re at the English House stop by the front desk and grab a copy. Illinois Wesleyan University’s creative arts journal features poetry and prose by Holly Aldrich, Jessica Block, John Brotherton, Nadia Danilovich, Alex Iorio, Jordan Jeffers, Samantha Long, Matt Katch, and Leila Ann Whitley, and artwork by Emily Jaster, Samantha Kopas, Linda Marie Martin, Laurie Peterson, and Erinn Tobin. 

Congratulations to editors Jessica Grace Block and Leila Ann Whitley and their staff—Holly Aldrich, Emily Akins, Andrew Dorkin, Amy Fairgrieve, Kaz Frankiewicz, Matt Katch, Hannah Kiefer, Caitlin Milligan, Laurie Peterson, Kristen Piotrowski, Stephanie Rosenbaugh, Nicole Travis, Erin Vogel, and Mike Whitfield—on another fine-looking issue.

All the world’s a blog, and Professor Michael Theune has found a virtual second home on James Geary’s blog, “All Aphorisms, All the Time.” Mike has just posted his latest batch of aphorisms. But be warned, before you check them out: if you read them, you’ll probably also want to write a few!

The Delta, IWU’s undergraduate journal of literary criticism, is now available for the asking at the English House. The spring 2009 issue, co-edited by Kaelyn Riley and Teresa A. Sherman, contains six student essays:

“Putting the ‘Oh!’ in Othello: The Tragic Consequences of Iago’s Unnamable Desires,” by Emily Franzen

“Can Dan Schneider Save Poetry?” by Drew Barringer

“Reading into Conceptual Metaphor,” by Linda Martin

“The Construction of Intellectual Women in Victorian Society,” by Leann Stuber

“The Meaningful Balance of Being,” by Marie Huey

“Reality, Checked: The Impact of As You Like It’s Aberrational Conclusion,” by Paul Morello

The Delta is a completely student-run publication of the English department, with Prof. Wes Chapman serving as faculty adviser and Kerry Devitt, Marie Huey, Ashley Jaconetti, and Heather Lindquist filling out the editorial board. Congratulations to all on a fine-looking issue.

Copies of Historic Photos of Ernest Hemingway (Turner Publishing Company, 2009) are now at the IWU Bookstore. Last year the press approached me about organizing and identifying some 200 photos and writing captions, a preface, and chapter introductions for a book on Hemingway. Sure, I said, because it struck me as an interesting challenge:  to write, in effect, a fluid biography of the writer that made sense even though it was in the form of captions—200 of them. Although Turner has a huge “Historic Photos of” series, including famous individuals, this is the first volume devoted to a writer. That underscores, for me, just how iconic Ernest Hemingway is in American culture. Heck, Mark Twain doesn’t even have a volume in this series yet!

On April 19, I’ll talk about the project and sign books at The Hemingway Museum in Oak Park, Ill., where the author lived as a child.

The fall issue of Tributaries is finally back from the printer, and the editors are wasting no time. The launch party (complete with refreshments) will be this Sunday, February 8, 7-10 p.m. in the Underground at Memorial Center, just off Starbucks. People who have work published in the issue should come prepared to read. Copies will be distributed at the reading/party to all in attendance, after which students and faculty can pick up a copy in the English department office.

Professor Brandi Reissenweber went to Africa last year as part of the Ayual Community Development Association to assess development needs in Southern Sudan. Though known mostly for her fiction, Brandi wrote an article about her trip and the Lost Boys of Sudan that was published in “The Literary Life” department of Poets & Writers Magazine. “Crazy with Song: Discovering Story in Southern Sudan” delves into the relationship between storytelling and survival. It appears in the January-February ‘09 issue, which is in bookstores now!

Professor Michael Theune’s poetry and aphorisms were were featured in this week’s Seven Corners, an online journal of poetry and ideas.  Here’s the link.