Continued from page 1... in public intellectuals. “From being an Emersonian,” Fuller continues, “I’ve increasingly tried to see how communities grapple with ideas. My second book [From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature (2011)] is about the Civil War, and the third [The Book That Changed America: How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation (2017)] explores how natural selection affected an intellectual community.” Along with other canonical figures like Emerson and Thoreau, Herman Melville has exerted a “gravitational pull” on Fuller. “My longstanding research interests have been American literary production between 1830 and 1860,” Fuller says, “and Melville is such a towering figure from that period.” Fuller sees Melville “as an artist who is so attuned to the pulsating currents of his period and so gifted with exceptional language that he ends up tell-
ing us not only about the America of the 1850s, but also the America of today.” Moby-Dick is particularly resonant in post9/11 society, Fuller asserts, because it addresses the “classic problem of Ahab, who is an authoritarian on a democratic ship”; the “incredibly important facet” of race; and “issues of the post-human and human exceptionalism.” Fuller will continue to explore Moby-Dick and race in a literature course that coincides with Melville’s 2019 bicentennial, an event he will further commemorate by inviting key Melville scholars to present at KU and writing “a general interest reflection on Melville scholarship and why he is more relevant than ever.” A triangulation Fuller is also pursuing involves Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and theater. In his longest on-deck project, Fuller intends “to retell the story of Transcendentalism from the perspective of the women involved,” an endeavor in the spirit of Jill
Lepore’s Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (2013). Doing so, Fuller explains, will bring these previously obscured yet influential figures around the Transcendental intellectual community “into a shared light.” KU English is thrilled to work with Fuller, and Laura Mielke speaks for many when she says that “our great fortune in receiving the gift of the Melville Distinguished Professorship has been matched by our great fortune in having Randy join us in that position.” Fuller likewise feels “very fortunate to be in a department that is so smart and so collegial, unfailingly so. Everyone I’ve met has been both welcoming and fun to discuss ideas with.” Please join in our shared good fortune by welcoming Herman Melville Distinguished Professor Randall Fuller to KU English!
Alum Directs Public Interest Law Institute at Yale By Ellen Bertels Before Anna VanCleave was a law student, or a public defender, or the director of a distinguished public interest law institute, she was an English major. VanCleave chose to study English in part because she liked how books offer their readers a look into “alternate histories and geographies,” the opportunity to see different lives in different times. She also “just liked reading.” As an undergraduate at KU, she was particularly struck by Dr. Mary Klayder’s freshman seminar, “So You Want to Be a Writer, Huh,” because it made her think more about the precise details that go into a piece of writing. On the other end of the spectrum, she liked Dr. Joseph Harrington’s class on globalization because it asked her to think more broadly about the role of literature in the world. The political world and the literary world, she realized, overlap constantly; they “can’t be divorced” from one another. After graduating from KU, VanCleave attended the New York University School of Law as a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar. Her interest in the client service aspect of law led her to pursue a career as a public defender, first in Washington, D.C., then with the Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans, Louisiana. After Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans public defender system was forced to rely on unsteady sources of funding. VanCleave worked to assist with the city’s growing public defense workload as “people came together in the community . . . and figured out how to rebuild a stable and better-resourced public defenders system.” Later, as the Chief of the Capital Division of the Orleans Public Defenders, VanCleave represented individuals facing the death penalty. In order to get their charges reduced to non-capital charges, VanCleave had to reshape the public’s perception of her clients. To portray an accurate version of their lives, she had to learn “what the more thorough, more nuanced, more accurate narrative is” of each client’s story, then find the most compelling way to portray that narrative. It was a sort of storytelling that sought to “achieve justice for individuals and communities.” Now, VanCleave faces questions of access to justice on a larger scale. As the Director of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School, VanCleave helps attorneys, professors, and students promote equal access to justice through research, fellowships, colloquia, and workshops. The Center focused its most recent research on topics such as the policies surrounding solitary confinement and the housing available to death-sentenced prisoners across the U.S. While largely data-driven, the Liman Center’s research and advocacy work are reminders of the human impact that policies have. Much as she noted about her study of English, VanCleave’s work continues to investigate how the political and the narrative overlap one another, and how we can use both to promote justice.
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