Graduate Program Summer Newsletter 2017

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Message from the DGS

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Congrats English PhDs

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A Warm Welcome

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A Message from the Chair

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Placement Congratulations

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Derek Bok Teaching Awards

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Prize Recipients

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2016-17 Department Bookshelf

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Fellowship Recipients

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Report from Lead Coordinator

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Note from COGS

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Note from Gwen Urdang-Brown

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2016-17 Scrapbook

A MESSAGE FROM DANIEL DONOGHUE, INTERIM DGS As the Old English maxim has it, wyrd bið swiðost “fate is most powerful.” We often think of wyrd as something ominous—Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters come to mind—but that’s not always true: it can be a welcome pleasure! In my case I embraced my wyrd as interim DGS for a second year, especially because it meant another year of advising the delightful sib-gedryht of our graduate students and collaborating with the duguð of Gwen Urdang-Brown, Lauren Bauschard, James Simpson, and Anna McDonald. The chance to continue my relations with older graduate students and to get acquainted with the G1s has been a gold-hord of delight, and I look forward to seeing all of you in the hring-sele of Barker Center next year. Drop by my office and say hello oft ond gelome: don’t be an an-haga!

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Congratulations English PhDs 2016-17 November 2016

Ari Hoffman, “This Year in Jerusalem: Israel and the Literary Quest for Jewish Authenticity” Stephen Tardif, “The Practice of Form: Arts of Life in Victorian Literature”

March 2017 Matthew Franks, “Stages of Subscription, 1880-1922”

May 2017

Trisha Banerjee, “Back Stories: Human Embodiment and the Novel” Alison Chapman, “The Ornamental Novel: Surface, Periphery, Excess in the Nineteenth Century” Maria Devlin, “Ethics and Renaissance Comedy” Adam Scheffler, “My Life is Only One Life: Turning To Other People in American Lyric Poetry After New Criticism” Michael Weinstein, “Device: The Objects of Russian and American Avant-Garde Poetry, 1905-1945” Annie Wyman, “The Comic Sphere: Readings in Dickens, Joyce and Lerner”

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A WARM WELCOME TO THE INCOMING CLASS OF 2017-18

Emma Adler Harvard College (AB, 2016) Trinity College Dublin (MFA, 2017) Interests: 19th-Century British/ Romantics/Victorian; 20th-Century British; 20th-Century American; Drama & Performance

Bryn Mawr College (AB, 2016) Interests: Early American (to 1900); Early American (pre1820); Criticism & Theory; African American Literature; Multiethnic Literature of the US; Gender Studies

Robert Brown

Ahmed Seif

Trinity College Dublin (BA, 2015; MA, 2017) Interests: Medieval; Renaissance/ Early Modern

Thomas Casalaspi University of Virginia (BA, 2011) Interests: Poetry; 19th-Century American; 19th-Century British/ Romantics; 20th-Century American

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Erin Saladin

University of Alexandria (BA, 2009) University of Mississippi (MA, 2016) Interests: Medieval; Renaissance/ Early Modern; The English Language; Digital Humanities; Comparative Literature

A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR, JAMES SIMPSON In this, my final year as Chair, I am privileged both to congratulate and to thank: I congratulate our graduating class Trisha Banerjee, Alison Chapman, Maria Devlin, Matthew Franks, Ari Hoffman, Adam Scheffler, Stephen Tardif, Michael Weinstein, and Annie Wyman, who have contributed so much to our program, our undergraduates, and the Department as a whole over the last six or so years. I thank, with gusto, Daniel Donoghue, who has done a simply brilliant job as “interim” DGS. Daniel’s curation of the program as a whole and its individuals has been flawlessly competent, tirelessly devoted, and, not least, wonderfully successful! I also thank Daniel’s co-workers Gwen Urdang-Brown (Graduate Program Administrator) and Lauren Bauschard (Graduate Program Assistant), both of whom have kept wheels well-oiled and spirits well balanced (no easy task!).

The graduates of our department teach our undergraduates with great accomplishment and dedication; they are also indispensable to the world class research culture we enjoy. It’s always a pleasure, and often a joy to work with such gifted teachers and scholars.

James Simpson 5

Placement Congratulations!

Alison Chapman: Preceptor in Expository Writing, Harvard University Laura Forsberg: Assistant Professor, Rockhurst University, Kansas City Matthew Franks: Lecturer, University of Warwick, UK Cara Glatt: Assistant Professor, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv Rebecca Kastleman: Lecturer in History & Literature, Harvard University Kathryn Roberts: Lecturer in English, Harvard University Adam Scheffler: Preceptor in Expository Writing, Harvard University Stephen Tardif: Assistant Professor in Christianity and Culture, St. Michael’s College, Toronto Michael Weinstein: Joint Lecturer in English and Slavic, Yale University

Derek Bok Center Certificates of Excellence and Distinction in Teaching Spring 2016

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Aparna Chaudhuri (English 41) Marissa Grunes (US-World 34) Eliza Holmes (English 66) Matthew Ocheltree (English 50A) Miles Osgood (Human 10b) Elizabeth Phillips (English 98r) William Porter (English 121cg) Chris Spaide (English 183ed & 190gn) Stephen Squibb (TDM 97) Teresa Trout (English 168d) Erica Weaver (English 40)

Fall 2016 Trisha Banerjee (English 168d) Alexander Creighton (English 168d) Helen Cushman (CB 45) Marissa Grunes (English 157) Nicholas Rinehart (English 166) Hannah Rosefield (English 151) Emily Silk (English 64) Annie Wyman (English 190we)

Prize Recipients, 2016-17 Boston Ruskin Prize 1st Prize: Michael Allen, “Trauma Theory and the Problem of Interpretation: Archeological Reconstruction in Sigmund Freud and W. G. Sebald” 2nd Prize: Carly Yingst, “‘Like looking into a bowl of quicksilver shaken’: Repetition and Expansion in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’ and ‘Binsey Poplars’”

Helen Choate Bell Prize (Essay) Evander Price, “Fact and Fiction: How Fitzgerald Still Haunts Flushing”

Helen Choate Bell Dissertation Prize Adam Scheffler, “‘My Life is Only One Life’: Turning to Other People in American Lyric Poetry After New Criticism”

Howard Mumford Jones Prize Stephen Tardif, “The Practice of Form: Arts of Life in Victorian Literature”

Francis James Child Prize for Excellence in Teaching Miles Osgood, for his fall tutorial Dena Fehrenbacher, for her spring tutorial

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Departmental Bookshelf 2016-17

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(From left to right) The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them, Steph Burt; The Muses on Their Lunch Hour, Marjorie Garber; Fast, Jorie Graham; Naming Thy Name, Elaine Scarry; Mansfield Park, ed. Deidre Lynch; What Was It For, Adrienne Raphel; The Prelude, eds. James Engell and Michael Raymond; A Dog’s Life, Adam Scheffler; Renaissance Suppliants, Leah Whittington; KĹymetli Seylerin Tanzimi, Sezen Unluonen

Fellowship Recipients Term-Time Fellowship Recipients Isabel Duarte-Gray, GSAS Merit Term-Time Fellowship Miles Osgood, GSAS Merit Term-Time Fellowship Aparna Chaudhuri, Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Alexander Creighton, Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Eliza Holmes, Dexter Term-Time Fellowship William Porter, Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Chris Spaide, Dexter Term-Time Fellowship Emmy Waldman, Dexter Term-Time Fellowship

GSAS Summer Pre-dissertation Fellowship Michael Allen

Dexter Summer Travel/Research Fellowship

Alexander Creighton

Elizabeth Phillips

Chris Spaide

Miles Osgood Nicholas Rinehart Janet Zong

Dissertation Completion Fellowships Amanda Auerbach Dena Fehrenbacher Marissa Grunes Elizabeth Phillips Adrienne Raphel Stephen Squibb

Teresa Trout Stella Wang Erica Weaver Porter White Janet Zong

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship Helen Cushman

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Report from the Lead Coordinator of the Graduate Colloquia, Nicholas Rinehart This year saw another packed schedule for the Department’s seven graduate colloquia, with colloquium coordinators expanding efforts to introduce new event formats, address questions of professional development, collaborate across subfields, and broaden the general scope of colloquium activity.

The Long Eighteenth Century and Romanticism Colloquium and Renaissance Colloquium, for example, co-hosted a reading and discussion group on “17th-Century Moon Voyages,” featuring selections from Ben Jonson’s News from the New World Discovered in the Moon (1620), Aphra Behn’s Emperor of the Moon (1687), and Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World (1666). In partnership with the program in Theater, Dance & Media, the newly-renamed Theater and Performance Colloquium and Race and Ethnicity Colloquium co-sponsored a lecture by Princeton scholar Brian Herrera, who later spoke with undergraduates of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) about “non-traditional casting.” The Theater and Performance Colloquium also sponsored a trip to see Anna Deveare Smith’s one-woman show “Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education” at the American Repertory Theater in September. In addition to several graduate student workshops, the American Literature Colloquium co-sponsored a talk by Jennifer Fleissner (Indiana University) on “Vitalizing the Bildungsroman” with the Mahindra Humanities Center’s Novel Theory Seminar, while the Renaissance Colloquium sponsored a workshop on the social history of paper, signcutting, and signsewing—followed by a lecture co-hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center’s History of the Book Seminar—with Juliet Fleming (NYU). The Medieval Colloquium once again sponsored two panels at the Annual Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, “With Patricia Dailey: Affective Transformations” and “With Jessica Brantley: Devotional Luxury, Literary Necessity,” promoting dialogue among junior and senior scholars in the field. Several colloquia also turned their attention to issues of professionalization and job market preparation: The British and Anglophone Literature Colloquium—selected as one of the Mahindra Humanities Center’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Workshops—hosted a panel on journal article publication featuring graduate students and recent PhDs from the Department; the Long Eighteenth Century and Romanticism Colloquium also collaborated with Professor Andrew Warren’s “Kaleidoscopic Romanticism” graduate seminar on a workshop dedicated to academic publishing, conference paper proposals and presentations, and professional development.

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Among the highlights of colloquium activity were the annual Graduate Symposium and Graduate Prospectus Conference and Teaching Workshop. Organized around the theme “How to Do Things with Disciplines,” the Symposium hosted Heather Love—an alumna of Harvard College and Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania—as the invited keynote speaker. The following day featured three graduate student panels, which gave nine students at various stages of the program an opportunity to present their works-in-progress. The Symposium panels, for which Love served as respondent, were attended not only by fellow graduate students in the Department, but also some departmental faculty, visiting scholars, and students in the American Studies and African and African American Studies programs. The panels were preceded by a catered lunch and followed by a casual reception at the Barker Center Arts Cafe. In the spring, the Prospectus Conference allowed current G3s to discuss the prospectus-writing process and strategies for productive summer work on the first stages of the dissertation. The Teaching Workshop provided an all-too-rare opportunity to discuss pedagogy across the cohorts in an informal, town hall setting, and covered various topics from leading section discussions to time management and student development in the English concentration. We look forward to expanding colloquium programming in the coming year!

COGS Report, Tess McNulty & Hannah Rosefield It’s been a great year for the graduate community. We kicked off the fall semester with a party at Charlie’s Kitchen and a symposium on “How to Do Things with Disciplines.” Throughout the year, we presented our work at departmental colloquia, relaxed at COGS happy hours, and crossed paths at national conferences, from MSA in Pasadena, to MLA in Philadelphia, to Kalamazoo. In the spring, we celebrated the arrival of a new set of prospective students, and discussed pedagogy at our teaching symposium. We also congratulated our recent graduates, many of whom secured positions inside and outside of the academy.

Over the course of the year, we’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to discuss with many students their experiences of and hopes for the graduate program at town hall meetings and happy hours (thank you to our “fun czar,” Michelle Taylor, for making these events possible). As COGS reps, our priorities have been keeping channels of communication open between faculty and students and fostering a sense of community among graduate students. We’re excited to work on these goals in the coming year, starting by welcoming our incoming students and hosting an event to meet the new DGS, Professor Glenda Carpio. We’re also hoping to develop a COGS website containing information helping students navigate the milestones and opportunities of the program. Finally, we’re looking forward to handing on the baton to new reps who will keep COGS going strong for another year.

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A Note from Gwen Urdang-Brown, Graduate Program Administrator This has been a year full of wonderful accomplishments for the graduate program and its constituents (most notably, congratulations to our newly minted PhDs!). Deepest gratitude to Daniel Donoghue, who generously agreed to take on another stint as “interim” DGS in 2016-17. It is clear from the many successes achieved this past year that Daniel’s care and concern for the graduate program and its students is anything but interim! Profound thanks also to James Simpson for his steadfast support of all things graduate, and for the countless contributions he has made to the program throughout his entire chairmanship. Many thanks as well to Steph Burt and Beth Blum (Placement Directors), the members of COGS (lead by Tess McNulty and Hannah Rosefield), the Colloquium Coordinators, Nick Rinehart (Lead Colloquium Coordinator), Stephen Tardif (Departmental Teaching Fellow), and to all of the graduate students who helped tirelessly with admissions recruitment and so many other endeavors throughout the year. And, of course, infinite thanks, as always, go to Lauren Bauschard for her expert assistance (including the production of this newsletter!), innovative ideas, and unwavering commitment to the success of the graduate program. Finally, I would like to extend a very warm welcome to Glenda Carpio as incoming DGS, to Nicholas Watson as incoming Chair, and to the new group of students joining us in the fall—here’s to a wonderful year ahead, and a very happy summer to all! ~Gwen Urdang-Brown

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Scrapbook 2016-17

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