ISSUE 5
English Accents
A Newsletter of the KU Department of English Spring 2018
Randall Fuller On Board
HERMAN MELVILLE DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR ENLIVENS KU’S INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITY
Inside the Issue n Cover Story n Year in Review n Alum Directs Yale Law Institute n Social Justice and Teaching n Recent Alum Achievements n SAGE Letter Randall Fuller, Melville Distinguished Professor of Nineteenth-Century American Literature
n Fundraising Statement
By Rachel Brown KU English warmly welcomes Randall Fuller, a scholar whose “work reaches deep into the archive and attends to the intellectual networks and vibrant communities that produced the rich literature of the nineteenth-century United States.” So begins Laura Mielke, KU English Associate Professor, who confesses that it is “hard to be concise” when describing Fuller’s presence at KU. “Randy writes in such a beautiful and humane way that he reaches a wide audience. Not surprisingly, he has already reinvigorated our intellectual community here by, among other things, establishing a nineteenth-century reading group for graduate students and faculty. I am delighted to have him as a colleague,” she concludes.
Randall Fuller is the inaugural Herman Melville Distinguished Professor of Nineteenth-Century American Literature, a position generously established by Elizabeth Schultz, Professor Emerita of English. Fuller’s career—already distinguished by three books (a fourth co-edited) and numerous chapters, essays, and editorials—reflects his graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned both his MA and PhD. Nineteenth-century subjects have driven Fuller’s scholarship ever since, particularly in relation to the “self and community.” Emerson’s Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists (2007), Fuller’s first book, conveys his early interest
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department of english College of Liberal Arts & Sciences