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Peter Campion Awarded Rome Prize

The ALSC is proud to announce that Literary Imagination editor-in-chief Peter Campion has recently been awarded the Rome Prize, bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  This prize, which entails a one-year residency at the American Academy in Rome, is awarded each year to a select group of artists and scholars who represent the highest standard of excellence in the arts and humanities.  The Academy allows honorees to conduct independent study and advanced research in the spirit of artistic innovation and rigorous scholarship against the backdrop of the Eternal City. The Academy of Arts and Letters’ two hundred and fifty members nominate candidates, and a rotating committee of writers selects winners.  This year’s committee included ALSC members Edmund White (Princeton) and Rosanna Warren (Boston University).

Peter Campion is currently an Assistant Professor of Poetry at Auburn University.  His two collections of poems, Other People (University of Chicago, 2005) and The Lions (University of Chicago, 2009), have both met with critical acclaim.  Other accolades include a George Starbuck lectureship at Boston University, a Jones lectureship and Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, and a 2008 Pushcart Prize.

– Chelsea Bell

Work Begins on ALSC-sponsored Project on High School Literature Curricula

ALSC Councillor Sandra Stotsky has begun the work of collecting data for the long-anticipated ALSC-sponsored project on high school literature curricula in the U.S. The project has substantial support from the University of Arkansas, The Bradley Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities*, and partnerships with The Concord Review and the California Reading and Literature Project.

Dr. Stotsky has provided ALSC with a basic outline of the project. We hope members and non-members alike will be as pleased and excited about this development as the governors and staff of the Association are. Queries about the project (one of the products of which will be an issue of ALSC’s special topics journal, Forum) can be directed to Sandra Stotsky c/o the ALSC at alsc@bu.edu or 617-358-1990.

Literary and Non-Literary Works and Approaches Used in American High School English Classes.
Project Description: Based on recent surveys and observations, most American students graduate from high school with little literary knowledge and understanding. They also seem to have had minimal exposure to high quality historical nonfiction and other expository texts in their English or history courses. Their reading and writing skills are in decline, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress assessments in grade 12.

This study will gather data on what major literary and non-literary works are being taught in English classes in grades 9-11, how much class time is devoted to literary and non-literary study, and what pedagogical approaches teachers use. We seek to explore the extent to which high school students are sufficiently challenged by what they are assigned to read and write in grades 9-11 so that they can develop the reading and writing skills needed for authentic college-level coursework in the humanities.

Data collection for this study takes two forms. (1) A nationwide representative sample of English teachers in grades 9-11 (about 900) will be interviewed over the telephone by an experienced survey center on their assignments and approaches in teaching literary and non-literary texts. (2) Ten focus group meetings will be held during the fall of 2009 to explore in greater depth issues raised by the interview data. Each focus group will consist of 8-12 English teachers and school librarians.

Data analysis and interpretation will reflect the collaboration of an Advisory Board consisting of members of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. We anticipate being able to present an accurate picture of the central content of the high school English curriculum in this country at present. We will also make recommendations for a coherent sequence of reading assignments from grade 9 to grade 11 in order to strengthen the high school English curriculum for all students.

*N.B. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Website do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Rosanna Warren’s FABLES OF THE SELF

bookcover_warren-fablesoftheselfRosanna Warren’s Fables of the Self (Norton, 2008) is a richly idiosyncratic work, blending what Warren calls “occult autobiography” and a set of interpretative readings from her canon of Golden Oldies, as well as from 20th century poets. Warren confronts, and is affronted by, what she calls a culture of literalism and crude confession in recent American poetry. To it, she opposes her memoir of childhood in the South of France, in which the adventures of learning Latin and French and connecting imaginatively to an ancient world become a foundation for life, and for literature experienced as a complex, symbolic realm. Her studies of poetry from Ancient Greece and Rome, and from 19th and 20th century France, England, and the United States, establish still other models of rebuke to literalist poetics, and her “Coda,” a section of a Poet’s Journal, is a tissue of quotations from other writers rather than a diary of so-called personal life. Not surprisingly for a writer whose ethos is anti-Romantic and un-self-centering, the practice of translation assumes a key role in her thinking: for Warren, translation is an extension of, and an intensification of, other acts of reading and writing. Over and over, she reminds us, reading and writing are acts both solitary and intensely collective. Her book probes illusions of literary originality, as well as other fiction-making by which we live (and without which we would die, benumbed and stupefied).  This brilliant study is a must-read for anyone concerned with the fate of poetry, past and present, in the modern age.

For 2008-2009, Rosanna Warren is a fellow at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library. She has recently published poems in The New Yorker, American Scholar, The New York Review of Books and The Yale Review, and a short essay in Threepenny Review.

– Clare Cavanagh

Report of ALSC Nominations Committee, March 25, 2009

The 2009 ALSC Nominations Committee collected suggestions for filling ALSC’s forthcoming leadership vacancies, and after deliberation and a unanimous sanctioning vote by the ALSC Council, nominates the following for confirmation by the membership:

  • For Vice President: Greg Delanty
  • For Council: Adelaide Russo, Helaine L. Smith, and John Talbot

Greg Delanty (BA University College Cork) teaches at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont.  His latest books are Collected Poems 1986-2006 (Oxford Poets Series, Carcanet Press, 2006), The Ship of Birth (Oxford Poets Series, Carcanet Press, 2003; LSU Press, 2007),  The Blind Stitch (Oxford Poets Series, Carcanet Press, LSU Press 2001), The Hellbox (OUP, 1998). Currently, he is editing a book for WW Norton with the working title of Living Poets Translate Anglo-Saxon Poems as well as an edition of poems titled The New Citizen Army, a book centering on complicity in our lives to be produced by Veterans Against War, who make the paper from US soldier uniforms. He is finalizing The Greek Anthology, Book XVII, a book of original poems which use the template of The Greek Anthology.  His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including the Norton Introduction to Poetry, Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, American Poets of the New Century, 20th Century Irish Poems, and Contemporary Poets of New England.  Individual poems have been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Statesman, the New Republic, American Scholar, the Irish Times, PN Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and our own Literary Imagination. His translations include Aristophanes’ The Suits (The Knights) and Euripides’ Orestes (U of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).  He has received many awards, most recently a Guggenheim for poetry (2007-08).  The National Library of Ireland just acquired his papers up to 2012.  The magazine Agenda devoted its most recent issue to celebrate his 50th birthday.

Adelaide Russo (BA Sweet Briar, PhD Columbia) is Professor of French Studies and Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she has taught since 1981. A student of Michael Riffaterre, she has published widely on late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French literature, and on contemporary French poetry. Her most recent book, Le Peintre comme modèle : Du Surréalisme à l’Extrême contemporain (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion—Collection « Perspectives », 2007) won both the Prix Debrousse-Gas- Forestier Académie des Beaux-Arts  2007 and the 2007 MLA  Aldo Scaglione Prize in French and Francophone Studies. Adelaide is also active in a range of professional activities: much involved in translation both from and to the French, she is presently serving on the MLA Executive Committee on Twentieth-Century French Literature and has participated in numerous interdisciplinary initiatives at LSU.

Helaine L. Smith (AB Boston University, MA Hunter College) is a teacher of middle and secondary school English.  She is the author of Masterpieces of Classic Greek Drama (Greenwood, 2005), an analytic text for high school and undergraduate use, and participated in the 2005 ALSC panel on “Mythology in the K-12 Classroom.”  She currently teaches English in grades 6-12 at The Brearley School in New York City, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1989.  Before that she taught grades 7-12 for 15 years (1974-1989) at Hunter College High School.  She has been a reader of AP Literature and AP Language Exams and of English Composition Tests for the College Board, and has taught electives in Shakespeare, Pope, Kafka and Becket, and Bishop, Hecht and Larkin.

John Talbot (PhD Boston University) teaches ancient and modern literature at Brigham Young University. His scholarship mostly concerns the relationship of ancient Latin and Greek to English literature; his publications on this topic include several articles and book chapters. A book-length study of contemporary poets’ engagement with Greek and Latin lyric meters is under contract from Duckworth. He is also a poet and translator whose verse has appeared in leading journals in both the US and Britain. His first volume of poems is The Well-Tempered Tantrum. Some of his verse translations will appear in the forthcoming Norton Anthology of Greek Verse, and his current project is a new version of Virgil’s Eclogues.

After a one-year term as Vice-President, beginning on October 10, 2009, Greg Delanty would become President of the ALSC as of the fall meeting of the incoming Council in 2010, and serve a final year thereafter as Immediate Past President for 2011. The nominated Councilors would also serve three-year terms, beginning on October 10, 2009. ALSC Bylaw, Article VII, provides: “Nominations may also be made through a petition signed by any fifteen members in good standing.” Additional nominations must be received at the ALSC office by April 3, 2009. If no additional nominations are received by that date, the above nominees shall be declared elected. The Nominations Committee wishes to thank everyone who submitted names for its consideration. Appointments for the standing committees on curriculum and publications will be announced in the summer issue of Literary Matters.

Respectfully Submitted,

Rachel Hadas
Sarah Spence

Addendum:

On February 20, 2009, our dear friend and colleague Susan Bullock died unexpectedly at home, leaving a great and in many ways unfillable hole in the ALSC Council. Susan’s obituary appeared in the February 25 issue of the Boston Globe (read the full text on our Website). Our tribute to her appears in the current issue of Literary Matters (2.1-2, Winter/Spring 2009). On March 19, after a brief-but-intense search, Council appointed ALSC Past President (2004-2005) Rosanna Warren to serve as Interim Councilor for the remainder of Susan’s term. Professor Warren, whose biographical statement appears below, will serve from March 20, 2009 until the fall 2010 meeting of the Council, the date of which has yet to be determined.

Please join us in thanking Professor Warren for undertaking this great responsibility.

Biographical Statement:

Rosanna Warren (BA Yale, MA Johns Hopkins) is the author of one chapbook of poems (Snow Day, Palaemon Press, 1981), and three collections of poems: Each Leaf Shines Separate (Norton, 1984), Stained Glass (Norton, 1993), and Departure (Norton, 2003). Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry, a book of literary criticism, appeared from Norton in 2008. She edited and contributed to The Art of Translation: Voices from the Field (Northeastern, 1989), and has edited three chapbooks of poetry by prisoners. With Stephen Scully, she translated Euripides’ Suppliant Women for Oxford University Press (1992).  She has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, ACLS, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Lila Wallace Readers’ Digest Fund, among others.  Stained Glass won the Lamont Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has won the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lavan Younger Poets’ Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the Award of Merit in Poetry from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. She was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 – 2005. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2004-2005 she was president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. Beginning in May 2009, she will be Secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities at Boston University.

ALSC Receives Major Funding from the NEH

We are thrilled to report that on March 10, the Association received a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities funded through the Division of Education Programs, continuing our recent run of great success in raising money for our programs and activities. Great thanks are owed to Immediate Past President Christopher Ricks for the indispensible role he played in presenting our case to the generous and hard-working program officers at the Endowment. We are very hopeful and optimistic that news of this award will help us in our continuing efforts to attract major support from other funding agencies and individuals. So please—spread the word!

N.B. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Website do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Daniel Hoffman Awarded L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award

The ALSC is proud to announce that longstanding member and Former Poet Laureate Daniel Hoffman was recently awarded the L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award for his latest collection, The Whole Nine Yards.  The prize, established to honor Louisiana State University Press’s director emeritus, Les Phillabaum (1936-2009), has been bestowed in past years on Marilyn Nelson, Henry Taylor, Elizabeth Seidel Morgan, and Betty Adcock.  The Whole Nine Yards offers poems spanning Hoffman’s long career.  They explore violence and transcendence in realistic, gothic, and comic modes, as they tell of war, cold war, domestic violence, bureaucratic oppression, and a compassionate rescue at sea.  Searching and lyrical suites celebrate the births of children, recoup a year in wartime France, and meditate on life and death, the seen and the unseen.  The result is a compelling collection from a distinguished poet.  Hoffman has been the recipient of the Hazlett Memorial Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize, and several grants and fellowships.  His collection Brotherly Love was nominated for the National Book Award as was his critical study, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe.

The Whole Nine Yards will be published by LSU Press in April.

– Chelsea Bell

NEW ALSC PODCAST: Putnam on Bishop, Hopkins

We are proud to announce the release of our latest ALSC podcast. In this installment, Phoebe Putnam (Harvard University) speaks on “‘We can stroke these lovely bays’: Vast Vistas and The Lyric Reach of G. M. Hopkins and Elizabeth Bishop.” This was recorded during a local meeting of the ALSC at the Editorial Institute, Boston University, on November 12, 2008.

Click here to download the episode.

And, if you’d like to join us for our next local meeting, please come to the Editorial Institute at Boston University tomorrow at 5 p.m. to hear Paul Mariani (Boston College) speak on “Giving the Dead Their Living Voices: The Case of Gerard M. Hopkins.”

Lennon Talks Mailer on NYRB Podcast

On February 16, the New York Review of Books featured a podcast with ALSC member J. Michael Lennon.  Lennon is currently working on an authorized biography of Norman Mailer, who was the guest speaker at the Eleventh Annual ALSC Conference in 2005.  In the interview, Lennon discusses Mailer’s fascination with uncovering “new pockets of American reality,” his relationships with other authors as a young man, and his tremendous ambition to write the Great American Novel.  Arguably more famous for his two Pulitzer-prize winning works of non-fiction, Mailer insisted that even those were works of fiction, reasoning that “there are no histories; we’re all just making it up.”

The podcast can be accessed for free at http://www.nybooks.com/podcasts.

In Memoriam: Susan Bullock – 1959-2009

This is a reprint of the obituary that ran in the Boston Globe on February 25, 2009. A tribute to Susan will appear in a forthcoming issue of Literary Matters.

Poet Susan Bullock of the Back Bay section of Boston died unexpectedly at home on Friday, February 20th, 2009. Beloved daughter of Joan Bullock of Camden, ME and Rodway Bullock of Elizabeth, NJ, sister of Stephen Bullock and his wife Deborah of New Bedford, MA and Christopher Bullock and his wife Mary of Huntington, CT, and beloved aunt to Ashley and Alysha Bullock of Huntington, CT. She also leaves behind her cherished companions Pushkin and Luba. Born in Somerville, NJ in 1959, Susan graduated Somerville High School in 1977 and Wellesley College in 1981, after which she lived in Europe. Returning to the States, she then studied modern lyric poetry. Her poems have appeared in Persephone, Harvard Review, Princeton Theological Review, English, Ars Interpres, Stand, and Literary Imagination. She has received fellowships from the Thomas Watson Foundation and Four Oaks Foundation. An avid world traveler, Susan’s poetry reflected her immersion in the places she visited. She is the author of Selected Poems, an anthology of her work. Susan was Director of Community Relations and Internal Communications at Pioneer Investments in Boston. She served on the Board of Directors of the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, On the Rise, a women’s shelter in Cambridge, and New England Home for Little Wanderers. Her biggest fundraising effort through Pioneer Investments was for the Roberto Bazzoni Onlus, a charity supporting the Luisa Guidotti Hospital in Mutoko Zimbabwe. A memorial service will be held Saturday, February 28th at 12PM at Houghton Chapel, Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley MA 02481. In lieu of flowers, donations in her name can be sent to The Roberto Bazzoni Onlus-Project Zimbabwe, c/o Pioneer Investments, 60 State Street, Boston, MA 02109 or Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481.

Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest

Through the generosity of an anonymous patron, Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies is able to sponsor the fifth annual Evelyn Waugh Undergraduate Essay Contest. The editors welcome essays on any aspect of Waugh’s life or work. Essays should normally be no longer than 5000 words or 20 pages. The prize is $250. The deadline is 31 December 2009. Submit essays to Dr. John H. Wilson, English Dept., Lock Haven University, Lock Haven PA 17745, or jwilson3@lhup.edu.

ALSC Members Present at AWP Conference in Chicago

Several ALSC members are presenters at this year’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, held February 11th to 14th at the Hilton in Chicago, Illinois. The AWP Annual Conference is an essential gathering for writers and those in the literature field. Featured readers this year include ALSC members Andrew Hudgins (The Ohio State University), Heather McHugh (University of Washington) and David Yezzi (The New Criterion). Reginald Gibbons, Professor of English at Northwestern, will participate in a featured tribute to Thomas McGrath.

The ALSC is well-represented in the Conference’s numerous panels, forums, and readings by such distinguished poets and literary professionals as Paul Breslin (Northwestern University), Molly McQuade, Don Share (Poetry magazine), A. E. Stallings, and Rosanna Warren (Boston University).

For a complete listing of Conference events and exhibits, and for more information about the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, please visit www.awpwriter.org.

– Richie Hofmann

Carole M. Watson Appointed Acting Chairman of the NEH

ALSC congratulates Carole M. Watson on her appointment to the position of Acting Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. President Obama made the appointment on February 10. Read the NEH’s press release here.

Outgoing Chairman Bruce Cole, who served the NEH tirelessly and with great success for an unprecedented 7 years, stepped down on January 1 (read the NEH’s press release here). Cole, who is now serving as President and CEO of the American Revolution Center, was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President George W. Bush on November 17, 2008. This is the second highest honor that can be conferred on an American civilian. ALSC commends Chairman Cole on his great service to the Humanities and the country.

ALSC Celebrates Lincoln’s 200th

ALSC celebrates the memory of arguably the greatest American president. We invite our members and Website visitors to view streaming video from the seminar “Masters of English Prose: Johnson, Lincoln, Churchill,” which ALSC co-sponsored in July of 2007 with the National Endowment for the Humanities and Boston University. The video features a lecture by ALSC Past President Jim Engell of Harvard University. The seminar was directed by long-time ALSC member John C. Briggs (University of California, Riverside)–author of Lincoln’s Speeches Reconsidered (Johns Hopkins UP, 2005), a uniquely extensive close reading of Lincoln’s pre-presidential and presidential speeches—and co-directed by fellow ALSC members Paul Alkon (University of Southern California) and Bruce Redford (Boston University). Members will also know Dr. Briggs’ work from the inaugural issue of ALSC’s special-topics journal Forum, “Writing Without Reading: The Decline of Literature in the Composition Classroom.”

For a wealth of Lincoln-related articles, visit the archive found on the Website of the New York Times.

Robert Pinsky to Speak Tonight in Chicago

A reprint of a press release of interest.

Art Beyond Borders: Robert Pinsky
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 6 PM

Fullerton Hall
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Free admission

While serving as U.S. Poet Laureate for an unprecedented three terms from 1997 to 2000, Robert Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, which gave a resonant voice to America’s vigorous and varied poetry audience. Pinsky has been active as a critic, poet, translator of verse, and recently authored a prose book, The Life of David (2005). His newest book—his seventh—is Gulf Music (2007), winner of the 2008 Theodore Roethke Prize. Pinsky is a professor at Boston University and the poetry editor for the online magazine, Slate. He has also written the “Poet’s Choice” column for the Washington Post, and has been a regular commentator on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 2003, he made a cameo appearance on the popular television show The Simpsons.

Co-sponsored by Poetry Foundation and Art Institute of Chicago

360 DEGREES: ART BEYOND BORDERS
brings together Chicago’s leading cultural institutions—Poetry Foundation, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Chicago Council on Global Affairs—to celebrate cultural, social, and political life around the world. Leading museum directors, renowned musicians, poets from around the world, and cultural leaders explore the role of art and culture in our ever-shrinking globe.

www.poetryfoundation.org

Oxford UP Announces New Book by Willard Spiegelman

cover of Imaginative Transcripts by Willard Spiegelman
cover of Imaginative Transcripts by Willard Spiegelman

A reprint of a press release of interest.

Oxford University Press is thrilled to announce the release of Imaginative Transcripts by Willard Spiegelman.

Considered one of the finest critics of poetry writing today, Willard Spiegelman brings his trademark engaging and stylish prose to this collection of his best work on the subject. Spiegelman takes readers on a tour of the rich and diverse landscape of British and American poetry, providing nuanced, insightful readings of works by William Wordsworth, John Keats, Robert Lowell, and others, and offering essays that span his entire career and chart his changing relationship to the elusive form.

Click here to order the book.

Azar Nafisi Interviewed by Goodreads.com

In conjunction with the January 2009 release of her second memoir, Things I’ve Been Silent About, author and teacher Azar Nafisi gives an exclusive interview to Goodreads.com for their popular “10 Questions With…” series.

In the interview, Nafisi shares her motivations for writing the book and answers questions about the difficulties of writing to an international audience. She eagerly emphasizes the significance of storytelling “as a way to communicate with the world” and learning how “to deal with books… [as] a participatory process.” Ms. Nafisi’s book is not just about Iran, or just about the personal memories she has of her mother: it is about the boundary between fact and fiction, and what she calls an “entry permit” into literature whose appeal is universal. “I hope that people in Iran understand that this is not about dirty secrets,” she says; “I hope they will read it as a desire to discover some truth and as a celebration of individual lives.”

Her fundamental message of connecting through literature and culture resonates particularly strongly in the current partisan atmosphere, and she maintains that “the simplistic notions that politics creates about other people is all negated through reading books.”

Ms. Nafisi is certainly well qualified to speak and write on the subject, having experienced firsthand the evolution of Iranian society under the new regime. She has written extensively about Iranian culture and is celebrated for what she calls her “obsession” with liberal arts and culture, but also for her strong belief in education, which fuels the plot of her memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Azar Nafisi will be the featured speaker at the Fifteenth Annual ALSC Conference, to be held in Denver Colorado, October 2009.

Goodreads is the largest social network for readers in the world, allowing members to review books, contact authors, hold discussion groups, post original writing, and more.

– Chelsea Bell & Erin McDonagh

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Free Copies of POETRY

A reprint of a press release of interest from the Poetry Foundation.

You supply the readers, we’ll supply the poems!

A limited number of free copies of the April 2009 issue of Poetry will be given to book discussion groups that request them by March 1. You’ll be able to consider the thought-provoking commentary and poems—or simply read them aloud. All we ask in return is that you send us a brief account of your discussion.

Requests for free issues must be received by March 1. Only one address per book group, please. Because of the cost of shipping and handling, each group is limited to ten free copies. Additional copies are available for $1.75. Issues will ship late-March. Requests can be made on online only at: www.poetryfoundation.org.

2009 Conference Featured Speaker to Speak in Texas on March 12

An event of note.

As a preview for the Fifteenth Annual ALSC Conference, to be held in October 2009 in Denver, Colorado, we are pleased to note that our featured speaker Azar Nafisi will be speaking at the Harry Ransom Lecture on March 12th of this year.  The Harry Ransom Lectures are held in Austin at the University of Texas and sponsored by the University Co-operative Society, in memory of former Chancellor Harry Huntt Ransom. Azar Nafisi has taught at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai, and is currently a Visiting Professor and the director of the Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.  Ms. Nafisi is the celebrated author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003); another work, Things I Have Been Silent About, appears this month in print.  While teaching in Tehran, she endured dismissal and a six-year teaching hiatus for refusing to wear a veil in the classroom, and her work concerns both criticism of the Islamic regime and self-criticism in the vein of Pride and Prejudice.  She has been greatly distinguished for her studies and promotion of culture and human rights, especially in the Middle East, most recently in 2006 by the Persian Golden Lioness Award for literature, presented by the World Academy of Arts, Literature, and Media.  We celebrate her acclaim in Texas as we anticipate her weekend with us this fall.

– Erin McDonagh

Marilyn Hacker and Edward Hirsch Elected to AAP Board of Chancellors

From a press release of some interest.

We are thrilled to announce two new elections in the Academy of American Poets: current ALSC member Marilyn Hacker and former member Edward Hirsch were elected to the Board of Chancellors earlier this month.  Marilyn Hacker is an accomplished poet and translator of poetry and the recent recipient of the Robert Fagles Translation Prize for her translation of Marie Etienne’s King of a Hundred Horsemen (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008).  Edward Hirsch is currently president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the co-editor of The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology (2008), among other titles.  The American Academy of poets, founded in 1934 to foster appreciation and support for contemporary poets and poetry, sponsors various prizes, publications, and events, including National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; past chancellors of the Academy include W.H. Auden and Robert Lowell.  For more information, please visit www.poets.org.

– Erin McDonagh