Faculty News

Michaels Awarded University Scholar
Prof. Walter Benn Michaels has been selected as one of this years University Scholars. This is a three-year award that recognizes outstanding scholarly contributions to the university and to the academic profession as well as excellence in teaching.

With New Book, Feldman Makes Writing Matter
In Making Writing Matter, Prof. Ann M. Feldman explores how changing scholarship at engaged metropolitan universities offers an opportunity to redesign first-year writing classes in ways that make students better writers. An engaged university commits to a relationship with its surrounding metropolitan area, with faculty members undertaking collaborative research with community partners. The more vibrant, participatory role of an engaged university allows students to link their academic studies to important public issues and gain real-world experience, such as writing press releases and letters to organizations.

Mazza's Waterbaby Released
Cris Mazza’s new novel has been released from Soft Skull Press, an imprint of Counterpoint LLC.  Waterbaby is a story of a woman's conquest over the learned helplessness of her childhood.  "A gripping tale of compulsion, obsession, and forgiveness, set evocatively amidst the fogs and furies of the off-season Maine coast ... an intriguing exploration of the ways in which our ancestral pasts echo within our own psyches." (Lisa Alther, author of Kinflicks). Pre-publication reviews are on Amazon.  Other reviews are now beginning to appear, and a profile of Cris is in this month’s Time Out: Chicago. Read an interview with Mazza on Bookslut.com. Other Chicago area readings can be found listed at BookTour.com.

"Highway" to Hit the Big Screen
Professor Luis Urrea's 2004 non-fiction work, The Devil’s Highway, detailing one of the most horrific Mexico-U.S. illegal border crossings ever attempted, is scheduled to hit the big screen in 2008. The movie version of Urrea's story (El Camino del Diablo), is based on a screenplay adaptation co-authored by Oscar-nominated writer Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia, The Painted Veil) and stars Danny Trejo (Sin City 2, Halloween). According to FilmStew.com, the feature film version has been attached in unverified form to largely unknown Mexican actors and will be guided by a first-time director, Rudy Joffroy. Still, if it arrives in time for the fall of 2008, it will surely help amplify the ongoing U.S. Presidential Election debate about illegal immigration. Out of the 26 Mexicans who attempted to cross the border in the 2001 event profiled in Urrea’s book, 14 died, thanks in large part to the carelessness of their "coyote" guides and the harshness of the stretch of Arizona desert known as 'the Devil's Highway.'

"What an Educator Should Know" List Features Two UIC Publications
A recently-released New York Times list of recommended books from the past 50 years that examines issues related to the state of higher education in America included two publications from professors of English at UIC. The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality, by Walter Benn Michaels, and Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, by Gerald Graff, were featured on the list. According to its author, the NYT list presented some highlights from the last half-century of debate over what an educated person should know. Read the entire list here.

Thomas Completes "A Blessed Shore"
Professor Alfred Thomas recently completed his latest book, A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare. In The Winter's Tale, Antigonus announces that his ship has washed up on the shores of Bohemia. How and why landlocked Bohemia? Did Shakespeare not know his geography, or is something else at work here? Thomas answers these questions by exploring cross-cultural interactions between England and Bohemia from the fourteenth to the early seventeenth century. Click here to purchase the book from Cornell University Press. Click here to purchase the book from Amazon.com.

Cameron Contacts Policy, Social and Linguistic Inquiries In Latest Release
UIC Associate Professor Richard Cameron recently co-edited Spanish in Contact: Policy, Social and Linguistic Inquiries with Kim Potowski, covering a range of topics such as Spanish as a heritage language in the United States, policy issues, pragmatics and language contact, sociolinguistic variation and contact, and Bozal (Creole) Spanish. It will serve the interests of linguists, educators, and policy makers alike. It provides cutting edge research on varieties of Spanish spoken by children, teenagers, and adults in places as diverse as Chicago, New York, New Mexico, and Houston; Valencia and Galicia; the Andean highlands; and the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Tabbi, Shavers Combine on Paper Empire
Ph.D. Candidate Rone Shavers and Professor Joseph Tabbi have co-edited a collection of new essays, Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System (2007). The essays consider each of Gaddis's works in an awareness of the lifework and in light of contemporary thought and culture. These essays were written by a mix of established Gaddis scholars and emerging scholar-critics in contemporary literature, theory, and cultural studies; the project is international in scope with contributions from Germany, England, and Canada as well as the U.S. The volume is distinguished by the presentation, with each essay, of an illustration from the Gaddis Archive at Washington University, St. Louis.

Cintron, Tabbi Awarded Fulbright
Congratulations are in order for Ralph Cintron and Joseph Tabbi, who were two of four UIC professors to earn a Fulbright grant. Cintron, an associate professor of English and Latin American and Latino studies, will teach at the University of Prishtina in Kosovo. His interdisciplinary courses will examine contemporary social issues intersecting rhetoric, ethnography, anthropology, and social, political, and urban theories. Tabbi, professor of English, will present two graduate seminars at the University of Munich. One seminar will analyze new media, electronic literature, and technology's impact on the creation and circulation of literary content. The other course will examine American writing in and about the current world system. Click here for the full story.

Winters Garners Guggenheim
Anne Winters received a Guggenheim fellowship for the 2006/2007 academic year. In addition, Winters' The Displaced of Capital was awarded the 2005 Lenore Marshall Prize of the Academy of American Poets. This award recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year. Winters also won the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America for The Displaced of Capital (2005).

Graff Rewarded for Work with MLA
Gerald Graff, Professor of English and Education, was recently elected to a three year term on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Graff will serve as Second Vice President for 2006, as First Vice President for 2007 and as President of the MLA for 2008. Graff also received an honorable mention for the Mina Shaugnessey Prize of the MLA for Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind (2003).

Urrea Earns Pacific Rim Prize
Luis Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter has won the Kuriyama Pacific Rim Prize. Urrea was also awarded the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for Non-Fiction, 2004 for Devil’s Highway (2004). The Devil’s Highway was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and the Kuriyama Pacific Rim Prize for Non-Fiction, and the winner of the Southwest Book of the Year Award, 2004 (Border Regional Library Association).

Student News

Gottschalk-Druschke Makes Big LEAP
PhD candidate Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke (English Studies, 2005) has received a National Science Foundation IGERT fellowship from the Landscape, Ecological, and Anthropogenic Processes (LEAP) Program at UIC. It is highly unusual for an English student to apply for – much less receive – an IGERT-LEAP fellowship. As explained on its website, "LEAP seeks to integrate a variety of scientific fields with relevant economic and social science disciplines to prepare students for careers in environmental science, policy, and conservation practice. With a focus on ecological and evolutionary processes in integrated human-natural landscapes, our students will develop new approaches to maintaining habitats and conserving biodiversity amidst human activities."

Year-End Awards Announced
The Department of English announced its year-end award winners at its annual year-end reception on Thursday, May 1. Among the graduate students receiving awards were: Ryan Brooks, Anne Hopewell Selby Award; Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke, Department of English Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award; Cynthia Barounis, Gender & Women's Studies Graduate Prize; Erica Bernheim (pictured left with Prof. Chris Grimes), Goodnow Award in Poetry for "Vanishing Room"; Megan Milks, Goodnow Award in Prose for "Yuri-G"; Sarah Ingram, Woods-Lindley Prize; Aneeka Henderson, Abraham Lincoln Graduate Fellowship; Harvey Partica, Kogan Bonus Award; Emilio Sauri, Provost's Award for Graduate Research; and Caleb Spencer, Dean's Scholarship.

Undergraduates receiving awards were: Jane Erb, Van Keuren Award; Vicky Lim, Campion Award; Elizabeth Gutierez, Critical Essay Award; Beatriz J. Ruiz, Creative Writing Award; Robyn Chang, Creative Writing Finalist; Tanya Sonna, Silver Award.

Brown's "Manna" Yields Award
Briery Creek Press announced that PhD candidate Garrett J. Brown was the 2009 winner of The Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry for his work, "Manna Sifting." Brown will receive an honorarium, a reading, a letter-pressed broadside of the title poem and publication by Briery Creek Press, to be released in Spring 2009. Judge E. Ethelbert Miller wrote of Brown's work: "I was impressed by the range, scope and nuance of Manna Sifting. This collection is a poetry museum with wonderful things on display, showcasing images that linger with the reader; see the last lines of 'In The Stories We Tell.' From John Cage to speaking Japanese, these are resonant well-crafted poems that embrace quality and excellence. The poet's words make love to a reader."

UIC Graduate Wins Fulbright to Teach English in Korea
Leigh Hellman, a UIC student graduating this month with a degree in creative fiction writing, will get a real-world lesson in cultural immersion this summer. One of 80 American students selected this year for a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to South Korea, she will begin teaching South Korean secondary school students English, most likely in a rural town or village. Hellman leaves for Korea in early July and after orientation and language courses will live with a family that speaks little-to-no English. She plans travel and cultural interaction in and around her Korean community as part of the experience.

Sherwood to Present at Film Conference
Justin Sherwood, a junior majoring in English and minoring in Moving Image Arts, is presenting at The Midwest Undergraduate Film Conference, April 11-12, 2008 at the University of Notre Dame. In the fall of 2007, Sherwood took Professor Hall’s English 232, History of Film I: 1890 to World War I.  With Hall’s urging, Sherwood reworked a paper from this class and applied to the conference. The title of the paper is “Into Great Silence: A Metaphorical Analysis.” In the paper, Sherwood analyzes Philip Gröning’s 2005 film, Into Great Silence about the Grand Chartreuse Monastery.  Sherwood integrated film criticism and film creation to explore Gröning’s use of basic cinematic language to portray life at the Monastery. The Honors College is funding Sherwood’s conference attendance.  Sherwood will also present his paper at the 9th Annual UIC Undergraduate Research Forum on April 18, 2008, at 725 W. Roosevelt Road. Sherwood’s future career goal is to attend a M.F.A. program in creative writing focusing on poetry.

Student Film Airs on Chicago Public TV
University of Illinois at Chicago student Pavan Bapu's film, "Sound Underground," was recently selected to premiere on WTTW-TV's "Image Union." The debut project of the young producer/editor documents Bapu's interactions and interviews with the subway performers he encountered during his daily trips on the CTA from Skokie to UIC. It meshes the CTA aesthetic -- the jumble of trains, signs and commuters -- with the performers' music and stories. With the help of English lecturer and internship coordinator Linda Landis Andrews, he arranged for an independent study course to classify the film project as a non-profit and academic endeavor. "Sound Underground" will air Jan. 17 at 10:30 and Jan. 20 at midnight. CLICK HERE to view the entire release.

Druschke Elected to RSA Board
PhD candidate Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke (English Studies, 2005) will spend the next 24 months bringing rhetoric to the forefront, as she was elected to the graduate student, two-year slot of the governing body for the Rhetoric Society of America.  The RSA is an organization of scholars dedicated to studying, teaching, and practicing rhetoric. Founded in 1968, it is an international interdisciplinary society whose members come from composition studies, English, communication, philosophy, linguistics, history, political science, sociology, visual arts, and other fields. "I feel that rhetoric, as a field, has been crucial to my development as a scholar and I'm eager to give something back," said Gottschalk-Druschke, who got into rhetoric via social work, and later, literature. Among the goals Druschke has for her position will be to strengthen the role of rhetoric on our UIC campus. "Rhetoric has been somewhat in flux here at UIC," she said. "I'm eager to showcase the fact that there are a number of rhetoric scholars here on campus who are doing groundbreaking and fascinating work."

Zabic Awarded Chicago Consular Corps Scholarship
Snezana Zabic (PhD 2005, Creative Writing) was selected as one of the 10 recipients of the 2007 Chicago Consular Corps Scholarships. The $1,000 scholarships are awarded to international UIC students, undergraduate and graduate, based on their academic merit. Students in all fields are eligible. Eligibility for the scholarship is limited to students who have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.5 (on a 4-point scale) when combining all post-high school grades.

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.