A Year in Review 2014 2014--2015 Harvard English Graduate Program SUMMER 2015 | VOLUME IV
A Message from the Interim DGS In December, Martin Puchner’s distinguished service as Director of Graduate Studies was cut short by his appointment as founding chair of Harvard’s concentration on theater, dance, and media; the new concentration’s gain is the English graduate program’s loss. Stepping in as Interim DGS, I was lucky to be shown the ropes by Gwen UrdangBrown, who continues to advise faculty and staff colleagues as judiciously as she counsels graduate students. Thanks must be extended as well to Alex Koktsidis who has been assisting the graduate program with skill and enthusiasm throughout the year; in particular, Alex learned in record time to handle the highly complex and sometimes opaque admissions process. Across the profession, this year was marked by a dismal job market, or lack thereof. Faced with that challenge, Deidre Lynch and Derek Miller brought energy and imagination to bear on graduate placement, crafting a guide to the presentation of work in digital humanities and helping students think about careers both within and beyond college English departments Taking a longer view, Marjorie Garber and Stephen Tardif launched third-year graduate students on their professional careers in the Teaching Colloquium. As inaugural Lead Colloquium Coordinator, Maria Devlin helped graduate-run seminars in individual fields work more closely together, notably in a spring semester Teaching Workshop where faculty, teaching fellows and librarians engaged in lively discussion of pedagogical innovations. Maria also helped lead the way in organizing the very successful symposium, “Evidence: Questions of Methodology in Literary Studies”, which was conceived and organized by English graduate students, with a lecture delivered by Prof. Jonathan Culler, in a plenary address entitled "Lyric Evidence.” This spring was marked by growing engagement with the digital humanities on a number of fronts. Events included talks and workshops by Franco Moretti, Matthew Jockers, and Dan Shore, PhD ’08, as well as a semester-long group led by Prof. Derek Miller that explored text analysis using the Python programming language, and a project on ECCO led by Prof. Stephen Osadetz; and an expansion of the cross-departmental Digital Teaching Fellow initiative which enhanced the digital toolkits of undergraduates as well as of their teaching fellows and professors. Looking ahead, in order to help our students compete on an increasingly tight job market, the department voted to require future cohorts of English department students to submit an article to a scholarly journal by the end of their 5th year. At the same time, in order to support our students’ intellectual and professional development, as well as the need to publish, the department voted to establish a writing workshop, which will be inaugurated this coming year by Amanda Claybaugh, with special attention to crafting journal articles based on seminar papers or dissertation chapters. I am also pleased to report that the department voted to add Old English to the list of languages ordinarily accepted to fulfill a language requirement. And last but not least, the generosity of current graduate students who hosted newly admitted students helped us attract an incoming class of eight brilliant scholars. We look forward to seeing them in September, when Deidre Lynch will welcome them as incoming DGS. Until then, happy reading and writing— Leah Price, Interim DGS (Spring 2015)
1
GSAS Commencement November 2014 PhDs Kaye Wierzbicki “Garden Work: The Horticultural Formation of American Literature, 1850-1930” Joanna Grossman “Shakespeare Grounded: Ecocritical Approaches to Shakespearean Drama”
May 2015 PhDs Heather Brink-Roby “Typical People in the Nineteenth-Century Novel” Margaret Doherty “State Funded Fictions: The NEA and the Making of American Literature After 1965” Marie Henson “Representations of Counsel in Selected Works of Sir Philip Sidney” Seth Herbst “Milton and Music” Daniel Williams “Hap: Uncertainty and the English Novel” Catherine Reedy Woodring “Revenge Should Have No Bounds: Poison and Revenge in Seventeenth Century English Drama”
2
Placement Congratulations Lauren Brozovich, Assistant Professor, University of Houston
Alexis Becker, Harper-Schmidt Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Chicago
Seth Herbst, Assistant Professor, West Point
Cassandra Nelson, Visiting Assistant Professor, West Point
John Radway, Maimonidis School, Brookline, Mass.
Laura Wang, Iolani School, Honolulu, Hawaii
Daniel Williams, postdoctoral fellowship, Harvard Society of Fellows
3 3
Fellowship Recipients Aparna Chaudhuri, GSAS Summer Pre-Dissertation Fellowship Erica Weaver, GSAS Summer Pre-Dissertation Fellowship
Taylor Cowdery Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Maria Devlin, Winthrop Sargent Prize Term-Time Fellowship Matthew Franks Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Rebecca Kastleman, Merit/Graduate Society Term-Time Fellowship Marissa Grunes, Helen Choate Bell Prize Term-Time Fellowship Stephen Squibb Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Rachel Stern Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Julia Tejblum Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Elizabeth Weckhurst Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Michael Weinstein Dexter Term-Time Fellowship
William Baldwin
Trisha Banerjee Nicholas Nardini
Ari Hoffman
Alex Lindhardt
Misha Teramura
Calista McRae
Annie Wyman
William Harris Arnold and Gertrude Weld Arnold Prize Matthew Franks | “Cut and Paste: Joe Orton, Oscar Wilde, and the Farce of Biblio-Vandalism” Helen Choate Bell Prize, 2nd place Michael Weinstein | “Objects and Objections: Williams, Fried, and the Limits of Minimalism” Helen Choate Bell Dissertation Prize Kaye Wierzbicki| “Garden Work: The Horticultural Formation of American Literature, 1850-1930” Howard Mumford Jones Dissertation Prize Daniel Williams | “The Hap of Things: Uncertainty and the English Novel” Francis James Child Prize for Excellence in Teaching Matthew Ocheltree | Fall tutorial “Narrative Odysseys: Oceanic Literature and Political Anthropology from Homer to Conrad” Winthrop Sargent Prize William Porter | “Cinthio on the Rack: Iago’s Torture and the Afterlife of a Source” Boston Ruskin Prize Alison Chapman | “Ornament and Distraction: Peripheral Aesthetics in the Nineteenth Century” Emmy Waldman | “Loving in the Shadows: Cast Shadows, Erotic Projection, and the Origin of the Image” 4
Derek Bok Center
Certificates of Excellence and Distinction in Teaching Spring 2014
Fall 2014
Alison Chapman (English 178x)
Trisha Banerjee (English 168d)
Taylor Cowdery (Ethical Reasoning 37; Culture & Belief 51)
Taylor Cowdery (Hum 10a)
Maggie Doherty (English 178x)
Maria Devlin (Aesth & Intp 20)
Carra Glatt (English 178x)
Marissa Grunes (English 157)
Marissa Grunes (English 67)
Elizabeth Phillips (Hum 10a)
Joey McMullen, Ad Hoc (Culture & Belief 51) Calista McRae (English 160b; Aesth & Intp 38) David Nee (English 124d)
Helen Cushman (English 115b)
John Radway (Cultr & Blf 45) Stephen Squibb (English 157) Rachel Stern (English 145a) Stephen Tardif (English 350)
John Radway (Aesth & Interp 12)
Julia Tejblum (English 56)
Margaret Rennix (English 178x)
Teresa Trout (English 111)
Stephen Squibb (English 170a)
Erica Weaver (English 102h)
Michael Weinstein (Aesth & Intp 12)
Elizabeth Weckhurst (Music 194r, English 115b)
Annie Wyman (English 53 & English 98r)
Porter White (English 102h)
5
Welcome, Class of 2015 2015--16! Congratulations! Samuel Diener
Sophia Mao
UC Berkeley( BA, 2015)
UC Berkeley (BA, 2014)
Interests: 18h C. British, maritime
Interests: Transnational Anglophone
humanities, poetry Thomas Dolinger
Tess McNulty
Harvard (AB, 2012)
Yale (BA, 2013)
Interests: Poetry
Oxford (M.St. 2014) Interests: 20th C. British
Holst Katsma Stanford (BA, 2013)
Josephine Reece
Interests: the novel, digital humanities, literary theory, Bakhtin
Hendrix College (BA, 2013)
Cecilia Mancuso Johns Hopkins (BA, 2015) Interests: Critical Theory
Interests: Poetry Sezen Unluonen Harvard (AB, 2012) Interests: 19th C. British
6
Best Tweets from @English _Harvard
7
Scrapbook
COGS Note This year saw the re-invention of the English graduate student organization: the Committee of Graduate Students! This group is here to build grad community and support student initiatives. We were happy to host happy hours every other week in the bookstuffed mead-hall of Child Library in Widener. We are also working to open up better channels of communication between graduate students and the Faculty Graduate Committee. Additionally, we worked to collaborate as a grad student body on suggestions for the Generals Exams process and to create better resources for grading student essays. We hope that this organization grows this semester and really hope that you’ll join us in making the English Department a better, more collaborative place for grads, undergrads, and faculty. Please reach out to Julia at jtejblum@fas.harvard.edu with questions, suggestions, or for more info.
8
Scrapbook
9 Photo Credits: Gwen Urdang-Brown and Henry Vega Ortiz
A Note of Thanks The graduate program is extremely grateful to Leah Price for jumping in as the interim DGS this past spring. We occasionally found ourselves sailing into uncharted territory, but with her wise and patient guidance at the helm, the voyage was a great success. Sincerest thanks to Leah for taking on the DGS-ship (pun intended!) with such care and concern for the graduate program and its constituents. And, of course, Martin Puchner deserves much gratitude and recognition for his tenure, and his impressive legacy, as DGS. Thank you, Martin! Thanks as well to James Simpson, for his tireless support of the graduate program and for the major part he plays every day in the program’s many achievements. With his help, we hope to move forward with an even greater focus on ensuring the utmost success for all of our graduate students. A great many thanks also to Alex Koktsidis for all of her enthusiastic assistance with the day-to-day operations of the graduate program (including the production of this newsletter!), as well as for her help with the department’s push to increase its social media presence. And finally, I would like to thank the entire staff of the English Department: Lauren Bimmler, Aubrey Everett, Case Kerns, Sol Kim-Bentley, Sean McCreery, Anna McDonald, Lea Sabatini, and Henry Vega Ortiz. In many different ways, each and every member of the staff plays an important role in supporting both the graduate students and the graduate program, and for that I am deeply grateful. Enjoy the rest of the summer! —Gwen Urdang-Brown
10
A Message from the Chair 2014-15 was, for the Graduate Program, a normal year; an impressive year; and an inspiring year. Normal: exams were sat, chapters completed, papers presented. Impressive: graduate teaching evaluations were in many cases exceptionally strong (the English Department couldn’t do without its great graduate instructors!). And inspiring: the Teaching Exchange held in April 2015, the first of its kind, turned out to be extraordinarily illuminating. Graduates and faculty face identical challenges in the classroom. At the Teaching Exchange, faculty heard from graduates, graduates heard from faculty, all on an even playing field. Play was fast, often brilliant, and always interesting. - James Simpson, English Department Chair
Important Dates, August-September 2015 Monday Aug 24
Tuesday 25
Wednesday 26
9—International Student Orientation
Thursday 27
Friday 28
9-5— General Exams (G2s) 9:30-1:30— GSAS Orientation for New Students
31
Sept. 1
10—Departmental Orientation for incoming students 7
Language Exams, 10—12
8 LABOR DAY
2
3
4
Library Orientation
First day of classes
12:30
9
10
11
Study Card Day
For updates, subscribe to our Google Calendar → 11