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Department News
UIC English Department Moves Up National Rankings
The National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences has released its assessment of doctoral programs in all the major disciplines, and UIC English has done very well, both nationally and locally. The “cumulative” ranking places UIC above all other English programs in Illinois, including those at Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and University of Illinois. UIC English is similarly prominent when compared to other well-known English programs at Duke, NYU, and UCLA.
For more details, see the message below from our Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Walter Benn Michaels:
We’re very proud to have placed so high in the NRC assessments of Ph.D. programs, and prouder still of the graduate students and faculty whose efforts are reflected in these ratings. Our faculty, for example, ranks 10th nationally in publication per faculty member and that’s a direct consequence of a lot of hard work. And, as the homepage suggests, we’ve done remarkably well in “Overall Rating of Program Quality.” Here the NRC gives ranges rather than individual rankings. Locally, UIC English ranks 5-24; U of Chicago ranks 8-31, Northwestern ranks 9-33 and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ranks 23-53. Nationally, we also do extremely well; both Yale and Columbia, for example, are in the 5-23 range.
When you remember that in the NRC ratings from 1995 (which followed a different methodology and are thus only partially comparable but nonetheless provide a useful benchmark), we ranked 64th in Faculty Quality, you can see that we’ve come a long way.
But we also know that we still have a way to go. As you can see in this chart taken from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign website, we don’t do quite as well in the “Regression-Based” version of the “Overall” ranking as we do in the “Survey-Based” version. And, more generally, we need to find ways to support both graduate student and faculty research more generously. In fact, we hope that our performance in these rankings will help us do just that; when people see how well we do with such limited resources, we hope they will also see how much we could accomplish with a little more support.
Finally, we’re also very much aware of the fact that ratings like these are a limited tool. The real measure of a program’s quality is, of course, the quality of the work it’s doing – not only in publications, but in seminars, colloquia and the undergraduate as well as the graduate classroom. The NRC rankings only begin to get at that but, as everyone connected with UIC English will testify, it’s the intellectual intensity and seriousness of our everyday work that makes UIC English an exciting place. That’s what we’re most proud of, and that’s what we want to continue to build on.
Faculty news
Feldman, Mazza Collect University Awards
Professor Ann Merle Feldman won a 2011 UIC Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award recognizes distinguished contributions in teaching philosophy, teaching practice, curriculum development, and administration. Professor Cris Mazza won a 2011 UIC University Scholar Award. The University Scholars Program provides significant awards of funds to faculty members who “have demonstrated superior performance in scholarly activities in both research and teaching and who show great promise for future achievements.”
Cassidy Garners University of Illinois Distinguished Service Award
Lecturer Marsha Cassidy is this year’s recipient of the University of Illinois Distinguished Service Award. Established in 1972, the award is bestowed upon alumni, faculty, staff, or friends of the University of Illinois Alumni Association, on behalf of the University of Illinois. It is awarded to individuals who have consistently demonstrated extraordinary commitment, dedication, and service to the advancement of the University of Illinois.
Izenberg Awarded NEH Fellowship
Visiting Scholar Oren Izenberg has been awarded an NEH faculty research fellowship for the 2010-2011 academic year to work on his second book manuscript "Lyric Poetry and the Philosophy of Mind." Meanwhile, his first book: Being Numerous: Poetry and the Ground of Social Thought, is due out from Princeton University Press later this year.
Thomas releases latest work, Prague Palimpsest
Considering a wide range of writers, including the city’s most famous son, Franz Kafka, UIC English Professor Alfred Thomas's Prague Palimpsest reassesses the work of poets and novelists such as Bohumil Hrabal, Milan Kundera, Gustav Meyrink, Jan Neruda, Vítĕzslav Nezval, and Rainer Maria Rilke and engages with other famous authors who “wrote” Prague, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Ingeborg Bachmann, Albert Camus, Paul Celan, and W. G. Sebald. The result is a comparative, interdisciplinary study that helps to explain why Prague—more than any other major European city—has haunted the cultural and political imagination of the West.
Urrea Earns earns LAS Distinguished Professorship
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has announced that Professor Luis Urrea will be awarded the title of LAS Distinguished Professor, which is conferred by the Dean of LAS. This honor is intended to recognize tenured faculty who have demonstrated significant, distinguished, sustained scholarship within the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, or interdisciplinary fields represented within LAS. Recipients are presented with a medallion by the Dean at an inaugural lecture held in the recipient’s honor, followed by a reception hosted by the College. The title of Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor will be associated with the award winners for as long as they remain tenured members of the LAS faculty.
Freeman, Clarke awarded fellowships
Professor Lisa Freeman has has been awarded a NEH Fellowship at the Newberry Library for the 2010-2011 academic year to complete work on her book "Antitheatricality and the Body Public: From the Renaissance to the NEA." Professor Freeman will also be journeying to Richmond, Virginia in May where she has been awarded a Mellon Research Fellowship at the Virginia Historical Society for research on the Richmond Theater fire.
Student News
YEAR-END AWARDS ANNOUNCED
The Department of English announced its year-end awards at its annual year-end function. Below is a list of the award-winner.
University Awards
Dean's Scholar Award: Cynthia Barounis
Lincoln Fellowship Award: Aneeka Henderson
Provost's Award for Graduate Research: Danielle Christmas
Graduate Awards
Anne Hopewell Selby Award: Cynthia Barounis
Department of English Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award: Jennifer Moore
Gloria Fromm Award: Amy Gates
Kogan Bonus Award: Jennifer Berner
Paul Carroll Award in Creative Writing: Garrett Brown
Goodnow Award in Fiction: Cynthia Cravens
Undergraduate Awards
Robert and Corinne Silver Award: Mike Hartge
Ernest C. Van Keuren Award: Benjamin Reedus
Paul Carroll Award in Creative Writing: Benjamin Reedus (1st Place); Allison Funk (2nd Place)
Anne Hopewell Selby Award in Critical Writing: Jacob Cayia (1st Place); Thomas J. DeSalvo (2nd Place)
Anne Hopewell Selby Award for Undergraduate Research: Yocheved Saphire-Bernstein
English Education
Woods-Lindley Prize: Lindsay Zidek(student); Kim Kody (teacher)
Stephanie Boese (fifth-year PhD candidate) was recently awarded a Chicago Consular Corps Scholarship. Among a large pool of very strong applicants, Boese was chosen as a recipient of this prestigious award of $1000. The Office of International Affairs will be hosting the Chicago Consular Corps Award Ceremony on November 16 to honor the recipients and the Chicago Consular Corps for their generous donation.
Alumni News
Congratulations are in order for Janice Tuck Lively (PhD Creative Writing, 2006), who recently accepted a tenure-track position at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois. Lively’s hiring comes after working the last couple of years as a part-time instructor in Elmhurst’s English Department as part of the Preparing Future Faculty grant program. “My PFF Fellowship experience was directly related to my being hired as a tenure-track assistant professor this year,” said Lively. “The program gave me an opportunity to teach courses at the College, develop relationships with my current colleagues and ties to the College.” While studying at UIC, Lively worked closely with Cris Mazza on her dissertation, A Dress for Dorothy Dandridge. Lively will teach two courses this semester: Epics and Stories: Ancient and Modern; and a Fiction Writing course.