Graduate student news

Photo by Kristen Taylor

John Carlson was one of three scholars chosen to present on their recent work at the 2nd Annual Nebraska Digital Workshop in October. He also notes that his essay “Scribal Intentions in Medieval Romance: A Case Study of Robert Thornton” (originally presented at the department’s graduate conference several years ago) will be published in Studies in Bibliography 58. He has also delivered papers at the following conferences: the International Medieval Congress (Kalamazoo), May 2008; Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) Digital Dialogue (invited talk), March 2008; the 20th Anniversary TEI Members' Meeting (U Maryland), Nov. 2007; Invited talk at the New Horizons Teaching and Research Conference (UVA), May 2007; the International Medieval Congress (Kalamazoo), May 2007; the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities sponsored Johns Hopkins University/University of Virginia Medieval Manuscript Digitization Workshop, March 2007. Finally, John notes that he has been hired to fill a one-year, Mellon-funded project editorship at the UVA Press’ Rotunda Digital Imprint; among other things, he will be sharing primary responsibility for digitizing the 33 volumes of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson and the 19 volumes of the Documents of the Ratification of the Constitution.

Jennifer Chang was recently awarded a 2007 Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship for $5000 and the Philip Guston and Musa McKim Endowed Residency from Yaddo, which she will hold from December 2007 to January 2008. Her first book of poems, The History of Anonymity, will be out in March 2008 from the University of Georgia Press/VQR Poetry Series.

Ryan Cordell presented two conference papers recently. At the PCAS/ACAS (Popular Culture & American Culture Associations of the South) conference in Jacksonville this September he presented “‘Dim and Wondrous Imagery’: Uncle Tom's Cabin at the End of TIme.” At the PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) in November he presented “‘The Light Which Puts Out Our Eyes’: The Spring Apocalypse in Thoreau’s Walden.” 

Mike Genovese was a Visiting Fellow at the Chawton House Library (right down the street from Jane Austen’s house!) for the month of October.

Sarah Ingle is going to present “The Declaration of William Wells Brown: Naming Jefferson and Self-Naming in Clotel” at the Modern Language Association convention in Chicago in December.

Ileana Popa will present two papers in February 2008: “Beyond Sterne’s Legacy: Jacques the Fatalist or the Story Which Never Gets to Be Told,” at the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference in Auburn, Alabama and  “Rapes, Moveables and Literary (In)visibility: Giles Jacob and the Judgment of Pope” at the South Central Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference in New Orleans. Even more impressively, her book entitled Cultural Stereotypes: From Dracula’s Myth to Contemporary Diasporic Productions will be published by the German Publishing House VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. As she describes it: “The book is focused on a highly topical theme which aims at investigating a remarkable phenomenon of identity-shaping and cross-cultural exchange. Starting from an analysis of Dracula as the epitomized image of the Balkans (and of Romania, more specifically) abroad, it provides a comprehensive historical and (con)textual investigation of the myth, enlarged to incorporate it into the fictions of exile, and to draw the reader’s attention to the ‘demonic’ dimension of the Balkan area in general, and the Romanian area in particular. By redefining the notion of cultural stereotypes, understood as stereotypes impressed upon us through a cultural channel (books, movies, cartoons, computer networks, musicals, etc.), this study points to the fact that they depict a movement in double direction: not only do cultures generate their own stereotypes, but they also perpetuate the stereotypes created by the ‘significant Other,’ urging us to reconsider categories such as ‘central’ and ‘marginal’ from a more complex perspective.”

Brian Roberts’s essay “Lost Theaters of African American Internationalism: Diplomacy and Henry Francis Downing in Luanda and London” was accepted for publication in African American Review.

At the recent Modernist Studies Association conference in Long Beach (November 1-4, 2007), Amanda Sigler presented a paper entitled “The Art of Advertising and the Advertising of Art in Modernism’s Magazines.” The paper drew upon her summer research at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation. This summer, she also received a fellowship to attend the Trieste Joyce School (July 1-7, 2007).

Bradley Tuggle presented the paper “Poetry, Movement, and Emotion in Elizabethan England” at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Minneapolis on October 27, 2007.