Faculty

Professor Lynn DeVore says he’s not a fan of readings, and so he knew he had to do something different when Tributaries asked him to read from Feast of Light, his lyrical novel about the Vietnam War, based on his experiences. And so he adapted his novel for performance and enlisted the aid of four colleagues and two students to help him present a reader’s theater this past Thursday, Nov. 19, complete with a ’70s background soundtrack.

A nice crowd filled the Hansen Student Center and was clearly taken with the performance, which featured DeVore, students Mike Whitfield and Shanna Cardea, and professors Bob Bray, Alison Sainsbury, Spencer Sauter (from Art), and Mike Theune.

Robert Bray, R. Forrest Colwell Professor of American Literature, will deliver a lecture on “Lincoln and the Classics” on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 4:00 p.m. in Beckman Auditorium (Ames Library basement). He is this year’s speaker for The Ides Lecture & Performance Series presented by Greek and Roman Studies.

Professor Lynn DeVore will read from his Vietnam war-era novel, Feast of Light, at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 19 in the Hansen Student Center, followed by a Q&A on the creative process. This is the third event sponsored by Tributaries focusing on faculty and their writing. Thus far Professors Mike Theune and Alison Sainsbury have shared their creative work.

Both events are free and open to the public.

Professor Alison Sainsbury will read from her memoir, Lost River, and discuss the creative non-fiction process at an event sponsored by Tributaries, IWU’s literary journal. The reading, which is scheduled for 8 p.m., Tuesday, October 20 in the Hansen Student Center, is free and open to the public.

Recently, the paperback version of Professor Emeritus James McGowan’s translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal got a literal facelift and a new ISBN. Oxford University Press opted for a racier cover of the work, which, in his introduction, Jonathan Culler called “the most celebrated collection of verse in the history of modern poetry.” Since McGowan’s new translation appeared in 1993 it’s been a steady seller in the Oxford World’s Classics series. Les Fleurs du Mal, an acknowledged classic of French literature, contains 101 poems, many of which inspired debates on morality. It was published in 1857, 10 years before the poet’s death.

This past weekend, three English department faculty were on the program at three different events. Professor Joanne Diaz presented a paper on “‘The Rufull Register of mischief and mishap’: Penance and Juridical Testimony in The Mirror for Magistrates” at the First Annual Law and Literature Symposium, sponsored by the Villanova University (Pennsylvania) School of Law and Department of English. Meanwhile, yours truly presented a paper on “The Not-So-Great Diver: Intrusions (Authorial and Otherwise) in Tender Is the Night” at the 10th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference in Baltimore. And Professor Robert C. Bray, author of the award-winning biography Peter Cartwright, Legendary Frontier Preacher, delivered the Peter Cartwright Memorial Sermon at the United Methodist Church named for him in Pleasant Plains, Illinois. This October 10-13, Professor Dan Terkla’s paper on “The Duchy of Cornwall and Hereford Mappaemundi: Heritage, Patronage, and Commemoration” will be presented at the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Society for the History of Discoveries in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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.

At the 20th annual conference of the American Literature Association in Boston, Updike scholars got together to form The John Updike Society, a not-for-profit organization devoted to “awakening and sustaining reader interest in the literature and life of John Updike, promoting literature written by Updike, and fostering and encouraging critical responses to Updike’s literary works.”

The Society’s first roundtable, “John Updike: Fifty Years of Literary Influence,” featured myself as moderator, with Jack De Bellis (Lehigh University), Lawrence Broer (University of South Florida), Marshall Boswell (Rhodes College), and James Schiff (University of Cincinnati) participating. It was that core group, along with Updike’s Shillington, Pa., contact Dave Silcox, who founded the Society. At the first business meeting on Sunday, May 24, the brand-new organization—which launched with 40 members, many of them voting by proxy—approved bylaws and elected Plath to serve as President/Director. Schiff was elected to be editor of The John Updike Review and a director, while  Peter Bailey (St. Lawrence University) was elected Secretary/Director, and De Bellis, Boswell, and David Parker Royal (Texas A&M University-Commerce) were elected directors. In addition to publishing a journal of Updike studies, the Society plans to host conferences in Pennsylvania, Boston, and other places where Updike lived and worked. Pictured (l to r) are Royal, Schiff, De Bellis, Plath, Boswell, and Bailey. Not pictured is Judith Newman (University of Nottingham, U.K.), who was also elected to the board. The Society includes members from five different countries.

Illinois Wesleyan University will host the Society’s website. Updike received an honorary degree from IWU in February 2002, when he was featured speaker at a Founder’s Day Convocation celebrating the opening of The Ames Library.

At this morning’s Honor’s Convocation, Professor Wes Chapman was announced as the recipient of the 2010 Kemp Foundation for Teaching Excellence Award (formerly The Pantagraph Award for Teaching Excellence). In describing his selection, Provost Beth Cunningham noted that Wes thinks of himself in unassuming terms—a department workhorse—but that he’s had a special relationship with and a positive effect on so many students since coming to IWU in 1991. Singled out was the “literary boot camp” that he takes students through as they struggle with, then master literary theory in Practical Criticism. But as his students know, all of Wes’s classes could have been cited.

For those who are counting, Wes is the sixth in a department rich with excellent teachers to win the university’s highest teaching honor (the others being Professors Pamela Muirhead, Robert C. Bray, Kathleen O’Gorman, James Plath, and Mary Ann Bushman). Congratulations, Wes!

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!

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.