President—James Plath, Professor & Department Chair, Illinois Wesleyan University (jplath {at} iwu(.)edu).
Jim Plath has been involved in Updike criticism and scholarship since the Eighties, when he wrote his dissertation on “The Painterly Aspects of John Updike’s Fiction” at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His essays on Updike subsequently have been included in Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ Novels, John Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace, and The Cambridge Companion to John Updike. He is the editor of Conversations with John Updike and professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, where he received the university’s highest teaching award in 2004. He is also a Hemingway scholar, and the author of Remembering Ernest Hemingway and Historic Photos of Ernest Hemingway.
Editor, The John Updike Review—James Schiff, Associate Professor & Director of Undergraduate Studies, University of Cincinnati (schiffja {at} ucmail.uc(.)edu).
Born and raised in Cincinnati, Jim Schiff received his B.A. from Duke University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University. He is the author or editor of five books on contemporary American fiction, including John Updike Revisited, Updike’s Version: Rewriting the Scarlet Letter, Updike in Cincinnati, and Understanding Reynolds Price. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Tin House, American Literature, Critique, Boulevard, Studies in American Fiction, The South Atlantic Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. He is also a regular reviewer of books for newspapers, magazines and journals, and a consulting editor of Critique. He has served on various boards, including the Duke University Trinity Board of Visitors, the University of Cincinnati Foundation, The Seven Hills School, WCET-TV, and the Mercantile Library.
Secretary—Peter Bailey, Piskor Professor & Department Chair, St. Lawrence University (pbailey {at} stlawu(.)edu).
Peter Bailey attended Kenyon College before receiving his B.A. from the New School College, New School of Social Research. The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars provided him with an M.A., and his Ph.D. in English is from the University of Southern California. He is the author of Reading Stanley Elkin(1985), The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen (2000) and Rabbit (Un)Redeemed: The Drama of Belief in John Updike’s Fiction (2006)—as well as articles on contemporary American literature and film.
Director—Marshall Boswell, Associate Professor, Rhodes College (boswell {at} rhodes(.)edu).
A member of the Rhodes English Department since 1996, Marshall Boswell teaches courses in 20th Century American literature and fiction writing. He is the author of John Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion and Understanding David Foster Wallace. In addition, Marshall has published two works of fiction, the story collection Trouble with Girls (Algonquin 2003), which was an April 2003 Book Sense 76 pick, and the novel, Alternative Atlanta (Delacorte Press 2005), both of which are now available in paperback. Most recently, he completed work as editor and primary contributor for the final volume of a forthcoming four-volume Encyclopedia of American Literature. His stories have appeared in Playboy, Shenandoah, New England Review, The Missouri Review, and New Stories from the South. In 2002 he won the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Teaching, while in 2007 he won the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity.
Director—Jack De Bellis, Emeritus Professor, Lehigh University (Bjd1 {at} lehigh(.)edu).
Jack De Bellis is best known for two invaluable resources for Updike scholars: The John Updike Encyclopedia and (with co-author Michael Broomfield) John Updike: A Bibliography of Primary & Secondary Materials, 1948-2007. He is also the editor of John Updike: The Critical Responses to the “Rabbit” Saga and an earlier bibliography, and an essay of his appears in Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike’s Rabbit Novels.
Director—Judith Newman, Professor of American Studies, University of Nottingham (Judith.Newman {at} nottingham.ac(.)uk).
Judie Newman is the author of John Updike, Saul Bellow and history, Nadine Gordimer, Alison Lurie: A Critical Study, The Ballistic Bard: Postcolonial Fictions, and Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter. She has published widely on American and Postcolonial literature, and recently edited a special issue of Slavery and Abolition on Public Art and Monuments in Atlantic Slavery. She is a recipient of the Arthur Miller Prize in American Studies, a former Chair of the British Association for American Studies, a Founding Fellow of the English Association, and an Academician, Academy of Learned Sciences in the Social Sciences.
Director—Derek Parker Royal, Associate Professor & Director of Liberal Studies, Texas A&M Commerce (Derek_Royal {at} tamu-commerce(.)edu).
Derek Parker Royal received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Purdue University. His area of doctoral specialization was American literature after 1865, and his primary areas of research include contemporary American literature, American multi-ethnic literature (particularly Jewish American literature), graphic narrative, and narrative theory. Though he’s published mostly on Jewish American writers and is executive editor of Philip Roth Studies, he has also written on Updike: “An Absent Presence: The Rewriting of Hawthorne’s Narratology in John Updike’s S.” for Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. He is currently at work on two large projects: a manuscript on narrative and identity in the later fiction of Philip Roth, and an updated annotated bibliography on Roth.