BA Alum Logue Serializes Novel

Charles Dickens did it. And last year Jennifer "Goon Squad" Egan gave it a modern spin by presenting a short story via The New Yorker's fiction Twitter feed. Fiction serialization lives again this summer, thanks to BA alumna Mary Logue, who agreed to have her novel Giving Up the Ghost printed in chunks by The Star Tribune every day from June 9 to July 28 (it's also available as an e-book). "I just wanted to write a ghost story," Logue notes in an interview with Star Tribune books editor Laurie Hertzel. Logue is a Minnesota Book Award-winning author of mysteries, young adult fiction, and poetry.

5 X Friday: PhD Candidate Caitlin McHugh

This spring Caitlin McHugh won the Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, which allows her to take a break from teaching in 2013-14 to focus on finishing her dissertation. "I have two more chapters left to write," she explains. "I also need to travel to the Folger Shakespeare Library [in Washington D.C.] to look at a seventeenth-century prompt book, and the fellowship gives the time and the funds that I need to do so." A "prompt book" is a copy of a play production script that includes cues for speech, sound, and light; stage directions; and drawings of the set, among other essential information. McHugh's dissertation focuses on adaptations of Shakespeare in the Restoration era, which she feels have been unfairly maligned. This July, she'll be presenting her paper "The Linguistic Adaptation of Nahum Tate's King Lear," in Ann Arbor, Michigan, thanks to a travel grant she was awarded through the Association for Documentary Editing. More . . . .

1. What drew you to Minnesota?
I was looking for a PhD program that would offer me a lot of early modern faculty to work with, and I was looking for faculty members who would support my project on late seventeenth-century adaptations of Shakespeare. In particular, I really wanted to work with Katherine Scheil and John Watkins. It was a delight to visit Minnesota and discover firsthand what lovely people the faculty members are. Reading their work and meeting them in person made choosing a PhD program easy.
2. How did you become interested in your dissertation topic, entitled "The Afterlife of Shakespeare's Tragedies 1600-1700"?
My interest in late seventeenth-century adaptations of Shakespeare began in my MA program at Kent State University. I took a class on Restoration Shakespeare with Don-John Dugas, and I immediately felt that there was just a huge amount of research potential in that field. I was intrigued because late seventeenth-century adaptations of Shakespeare have such poor reputations: they have the "double whammy," so to speak, of not only being produced and written in a period that is sometimes described as crass and/or immoral, but also being adaptations, especially of an author so canonical as Shakespeare. As such, they are often treated as inferior versions of their originals. I strongly felt that many contemporary scholars neglected to recognize the merit of these works in their own right and to treat them individually. I wanted to see what I could add to the field. As of right now, my project is examining both adapted and unadapted Shakespearean tragedies in the context of the theory of tragedy in the late seventeenth century. I am exploring how aesthetic theories combine with economic realities as a justification for the stage in a period when it is by no means secure.
My passion for this topic was only enhanced when I took a class on Shakespeare in Performance with Dr. Scheil. That class helped me see that the adaptations I wanted to study had many performance issues as well, which prompted me to think how a performance could impact an adaptation and vice versa.
3. Two years ago you taught a summer session Shakespeare course, and this summer you're teaching Shakespeare through an online distance learning course. How receptive to the Bard do you find Minnesota undergraduates?
No matter what the method of delivery is, I always find that students are split in their opinions: they either love the Bard, or they are extremely skeptical about the value of reading work that is over 400 years old. I find that the best approach, and this goes for any type of literature, is to show my passion about the subject. I have always loved Shakespeare and found reading his works to be a very natural experience. I grew up in a family of readers, and one of my aunts teaches literature at a university. I think bringing my point of view to the students and being very open and accepting of their reading experiences is one of the best ways to make them, in turn, more willing and open in their educational experience. I win many of them over, and the ones that I don't at least have a better understanding of their perspective and still want to have a conversation about their experiences reading and viewing Shakespeare.
4. You're a member of the student-led Medieval and Early Modern Research Group (MEMRG). What role has that subfield played in your studies here?
MEMRG is another reason why I wanted to come to Minnesota. It is rare to be able to enter into a cohort of people in your area who are so welcoming and supportive. As a scholar, you know that you have a group of people to talk to who share your experiences. Each year, we typically invite one professor from outside the University to come give a lecture on his or her current work, we organize a roundtable presentation for one of our medieval or early modern faculty, and we host a spring colloquium to give our members a chance to share their work. MEMRG hits just the right balance between community and professional development.
5. It's been a typical day of grading papers, researching, and writing. How do you unwind?
I love to attend a variety of performances: plays, rock concerts, musical theater, comedy shows, opera, anything. Obviously, I enjoy seeing early modern plays performed, and there are a shocking number of opportunities to experience early modern drama here in Minnesota. But I'm open-minded, and I like to see a good variety of theater and music, and this city makes that experience really affordable to me as a graduate student. There are public rush lines at the Guthrie Theater and at the Minnesota Opera: anyone can buy unsold seats for a discount right before the show starts. There are many small theaters that have "Pay What You Can" performances. And there are free park performances. What more could you want?
Send us your story! Share your announcements, awards, and news.
For other 5 X Friday interviews, go to our news page.

Cheers to Successful PhD Candidates

Between March and May, nine PhD candidates successfully defended their dissertations. Congratulations to Tai Coleman, Renee DeLong, Will Kanyusik, Eun Joo Kim, Chris Larkin, Heather McNeff, John Pistelli, Adam Schrag, Maurits van Bever Donker, and Jewon Woo!

5 X Friday: Professor Andrew Elfenbein

"English professors now study everything except English," argues Professor Andrew Elfenbein in his 2009 book Romanticism and the Rise of English (2009). By "English" he means the history of the English language--and how its particular forms at any one time influence how writers write. That volume, which won Outstanding Academic Book Award from Choice, sets out to brush off contemporary literary criticism's blind spot, specifically looking at how literary authors responded to new usage rules in the 18th century. In the book's afterward, Elfenbein confesses that his examinations of Romantic English are leading him into psychology "as a means of investigating language production, reading comprehension, and writing strategies." Sure enough, this spring he won an American Council of Leaned Societies Fellowship for 2013-14 to work on a project that brings together cognitive science and literary criticism. (Elfenbein also received a Grant-in-Aid of Research, Artistry & Scholarship this spring from the U's Office of the Vice President for Research.) How did he get interested in that topic? Where does he see literary criticism going? What does he love about teaching large survey courses? Read on. . . .

1. Your ACLS Fellowship project, entitled "The Gist of Reading," combines science and literary criticism "to provide scholars for the first time with models and vocabulary for describing the reading strategies and mental processes of nineteenth-century readers." How did you become interested in this interdisciplinary work?
My journey into cognitive science began after reading a book on reading written by two literary critics. It provided an overview of reader response theories, and it made me feel that the field had become stuck. Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish, Janice Radway, and others had done important work on reading, but the terms of the debate had stagnated. At the same time, Alan Richardson had pioneered the field of cognitive literary studies. Although I had mixed feelings about the results of such studies, they raised the profile of cognitive science as a possible resource for literary critics. I took the simple step of looking in the online course guide for courses on reading at the U that were offered outside of English. I found a course by Paul van den Broek (now at the University of Leiden) on reading comprehension, offered by the Department of Educational Psychology. I wrote to Paul and asked him for the syllabus; he kindly invited me to consider auditing the course, and I did. I was lucky to find in Paul a brilliant scientist, teacher, and colleague. His course encouraged me to start a long and continuing process of re-educating myself in the theories and methodologies of a new discipline. Along the way, I have worked with a series of extraordinary scientists, many of whom participate in the Textgroup sponsored by the Center for Cognitive Sciences here at the university. Although cognitive literary study has flourished since I began my work, my particular area, the psychological study of reading, has received little to no attention. As a result, my work does not look like much of the other work in the field, because I am asking fundamentally different questions.
2. The Department of English this year hired two 18-19th century English literature professors, Elaine Auyoung and Amit Yahav. You chaired the search committee last fall. Reading the applications must have been like getting a wide angle view of your field: what surprised or energized you? What do the two selected bring to the table?
The quality and the volume of the applications were overwhelming: we found ourselves turning down even applicants with books from prestigious presses. In general, I felt that some of the historicist paradigms that have energized the fields in the past several decades are beginning to give way to new alternatives. I was particularly impressed by candidates asking new questions about realism and the novel that depended less on unmasking its ideological underpinnings and more on understanding realism as a technique. Auyoung and Yahav are two exceptional, very different critics who will bring an incredible wealth of knowledge and creativity to our department. Both combine intense engagement with literary texts with unusual and unexpected approaches to familiar questions: I am thrilled that they will be joining us.
3. I witnessed you teaching the large survey class Brit Lit II with a fascinating lecture on Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Even when you randomly selected people to answer your questions, they had articulate and thoughtful responses. Do your students just know they have to come prepared, or are there sometimes moments of "I don't know; I didn't read it"? What do you enjoy about teaching a large class, as opposed to a seminar?
Lecturing at the U is one of the huge privileges of my job. I work with students to create an atmosphere of mutual trust, so that they know that when they speak in class, I will treat them with respect and interest. I really care about what they have to say. That particular lecture class is a historical introduction to British literature (it even carries CLE credit in history), so it differs from a seminar because I spend a large amount of time discussing British history. I also enjoy the chance to model for students what a sustained literary interpretation looks like, though I stress that my reading is not the best or the only possible reading.
4. You are the current Chair of the James Russell Lowell Prize Committee, which is charged with selecting the best book of literary criticism of 2012 by a current member of the Modern Language Association (the main U.S. professional association for literary scholars). Chairing and serving on the committee seems like both an honor and a lot of work! What's the process?
We receive over 110 books and have to choose one winner. The MLA has designed the process well so that the members of the committee have a fair division of labor. It's a chance to get an overview of some of the best and most compelling work in the discipline.
5. What non-academic book have you read and enjoyed recently?
I'm loving Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow: it's a fine overview of the work he did with Amos Tversky on heuristics. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in how people make judgments.
Send us your story! Share your announcements, awards, and news.
For other 5 X Friday interviews, go to our news page.

5 X Friday: BA Alum Ellen Boschwitz

Ellen Boschwitz may have taken the long road to a BA in English, starting out at Brown University, with stops at Barnard in New York City and Lawrence in Wisconsin, but she met an important deadline: She earned her degree before any of her four kids got to college (in 1976, the same year her oldest graduated from high school). Her favorite teacher at the U? Political science professor Mulford Q. Sibley, a controversial pacifist and socialist--and a surprising choice for the wife of former U.S. Senator (and Republican) Rudy Boschwitz. But Ellen has led an extraordinary life: from World War II refugee to early activist for children with learning disabilities to business manager and marketer. Read on . . . .

Promotions for Scheil and Campion

The Department of English is pleased to announce the promotion of two of our faculty members: Peter Campion to Associate Professor with tenure, and Katherine Scheil to Professor. Campion will publish his third collection of poetry, El Dorado, this October with the University of Chicago Press. Scheil published her second monograph, She Hath Been Reading: Women and Shakespeare Clubs in America (Cornell University Press) last fall, and has a third, The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway, in progress. Congratulations!

5 X Friday: MFA Alum Ethan Rutherford

When Seattle native and fiction writer Ethan Rutherford moved to Minneapolis to attend the Creative Writing Program, he brought along a small career as singer-songwriter, with an album known, he thought, by few people outside his mother and sister. One night, at a Minneapolis coffee shop, he heard a stranger singing a familiar song, his song, a track from his CD. How could they not start a band together? Six years later, Pennyroyal (including MFA alum Jake Mohan, as drummer) is mastering its second album for September release. But back to the fiction: Rutherford graduated from the writing program and this spring published his acclaimed debut story collection, The Peripatetic Coffin (Ecco). For more about the book (and its mysterious title), read on. . . .