The newsletter of the Student Association of Graduates in English (SAGE)
at the University of Kansas

SAGE Advice

“You know Galileo, the world
does not revolve around you.”

Deb Olin Unferth is one of our newest faculty members, joining the staff just this year. She has an MFA from Syracuse in Fiction Writing. She says her specialties are contemporary and modern literature. She is the author of stories published in Harper’s, Fence, 3rd bed, NOON, StoryQuarterly, Shenandoah, and various other journals. And has been the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council, and a grant from the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She is also the founder and co-editor of the literary annual Parakeet.

Deb Unferth was born in Chicago, but growing up she spent a lot of time at her grandmother’s house in Cuernavaca, Morales, Mexico. Although she has not returned to the Mexican town much as an adult, she says “I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico and Central America pretty much all my life,” and she says that the two environments have both been influential on her writing.

She did her undergraduate work at the University of Colorado in Boulder, studying philosophy, and after graduation she lived in Denver for a year before attending Syracuse for graduate school. She has one good thing to say about our rival Big 12 school: “Boulder used to be more like Lawrence.” However, she strongly recommends Syracuse for anyone pursuing a graduate degree in creative writing, calling it “one of the best writing programs in the country, for sure.”

She has found adjusting to KU very easy. “Everything has been so great,” she says. “I really am so happy with my colleagues. And the students are just fantastic. I’m so happy with all of that. And there are so many opportunities

Although a little reticent to pin down her work, she notes that much of her previous focus has been on short-short stories. She says that “those could be characterized as playful, funny” with an emphasis on innovation, “trying out innovative structures and tones like a lack of sentimentality.” She believes that this emphasis has carried on into her novel, which, when pressed, she describes in one sentence as “A story about a lost man.”

Having just completed a successful job search, she has the following advice for people planning to go out on the job market in the near future: “Be prepared to spend an enormous amount of time on the job search. It’s like teaching 3 classes. . . . It was so baffling. It was so hard.” She also advises candidates to pay a lot of attention to your application letters. She says that overall the job search “is a nightmare,” noting that you have to put on your application persona, and saying that sometimes “you can’t believe the things that are coming out of your mouth. Not that you don’t believe them, but just the way you have to formulate them is so uncreative, really, it just feels kind of mind-numbing, and the letters you have to write are so mind-numbing.” However, she says “once you do have a job, it’s great.”

And it’s great for us having her here. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to stop in and say hello to Deb Unferth.

As most of you know, the office of graduate coordinator has changed hands. After three and a half years of dedicated service, Philip Barnard passed the baton on to me in January. As the new coordinator, most of my time in the past 2+ months has been spent with the many duties connected to admissions and fellowship applications, as well as with learning the answers to the numerous questions I get every day. (I’m quickly memorizing the Information For Graduate Students Handbook.) However, I’ve also met with the graduate committee, and we hope to have some significant changes to the Ph.D. comprehensive exam, as well as to the (mislabeled) Ph.D. Field Exam, proposed by the end of the semester. More information about these changes will be forthcoming. In the meantime, when you have a chance, come by to introduce yourselves and discuss any questions or concerns you might have.

I encourage all of you to take advantage of the opportunity to work this summer with two prominent visiting scholars, Trudier Harris and John P. Farrell. Dr. Harris is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English at the University of

John P. Farrell is professor of English at the University of Texas. His publications include Revolution as Tragedy: The Dilemma of the Moderate from Scott to Arnold and recent articles on Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy, and Charles Dickens. As the Holmes Institute Distinguished Professor, Dr. Farrell will be offering a course entitled “The Quest for Community.” This course will focus on the ways that Victorian writers such as Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, and (especially) Thomas Hardy struggle with the idea of community. For more information, contact Tom Lorenz.

As a new grad student, I'm sometimes stricken speechless when I encounter whiffs of academic greatness among my peers. So when I sat down to interview my fellow GTA newbie Todd Giles, I was glad that his eloquence overcame my frequent bouts of shock 'n' awe. Here's how the conversation went:

Micah Hawkinson: So, Todd, tell me about yourself. Where did you do your previous academic work?

Todd Giles: I got my bachelor's and master's degrees at Texas Tech.

MH: So, a back-to-back type of thing?

TG: No, not really. After getting my bachelor's in 1993, I was in public radio for a long time. I just got my master's degree last May.

MH: All righty; that makes sense. Kristin [Bovaird-Abbo] mentioned that you're involved with the William Carlos Williams Review. Could you tell me about that?

TG: Yeah. I actually got involved with the Review back at Tech. My mentor, Bryce Conrad, is the editor, and I worked with him on a lot of the format and planning for the first edition, which came out last fall.

MH: It's a new journal, then?

TG: No. The WCWR actually started in '75 as the William Carlos Williams Newsletter. It subsequently became THE platform for Williams scholarship. It's comparable in terms of prestige to the Wallace Stevens Journal or Paideuma [a journal of Ezra Pound scholarship].  The Review was discontinued in 1998, but Bryce and I worked to bring
it back.

MH: Who's publishing it now?

TG: Texas Tech University Press. It comes out twice a year: spring and fall. This past fall's edition included four book reviews and a lot from the 2003 MLA panel discussion of Spring and All.

MH: What's your role at the Review?

TG: I'm the book review editor. That means I select appropriate scholars to write a review of each new book and edit their review before it's published. I'm also the official William Carlos Williams bibliographer -- I keep the list of Williams scholarship current. We print it once a year in the Review.

MH: Does that involve a lot of work?

MH: Wow. Do you wear any other hats for the journal?

TG: Actually, I'm going to be the guest editor for the Fall 2005 issue.

MH: That sounds really exciting! What's in it?

TG: It'll be a decade-long retrospective on Williams scholarship from 1994-2004. Since the journal was out of print from 1998-2004, there are a number of significant books that need to be reviewed. We've got five different people writing review essays on a total of 30 books relating to various sub-fields of Williams scholarship. These will
include biographical information, critical guides, cultural studies, relationships between Williams and others, gender, and correspondence.

MH: Excellent. What's the best part of your job?

TG: It's been amazing to see the WCW community come together with the reinstatement of the Review. It's also really fun to work with some of the best scholars in the field. For example, I'm working right now with Emily Mitchell Wallace, one of the original founders of the Newsletter in '75. I've also had the opportunity to meet Christopher MacGowan, who is possibly the top Williams scholar in the world.

MH: So, are you planning to be with the WCWR for a while?

TG: Definitely. Who wouldn't? It's sweet -- like a massive foot in the door. Just to have met such influential scholars in the field is huge.

MH: Are you involved in any other scholarly pursuits beyond KU right now?

TG: I'm going to have a couple of articles in the William Carlos Williams Encyclopedia, which will come out in 2006. As of now, I'm one of 88 contributors. My entries will be on Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller.

MH: Sounds great, Todd. One more question before you go: What's your favorite work by Williams?

TG: Definitely The Great American Novel. My favorite poem is from Spring and All. It's the one that begins "The rose is obsolete."

MH: Thanks for the interview!

TG: No problem. Go have a sandwich.

Kristin Bovaird-Abbo presented her paper, "Truly an Emperor: Arthur in The Dream of Rhonabwy," at the XXIX Annual Mid-America Medieval Association in February.  Her paper explored various reactions to the Welsh story The Dream of Rhonabwy and she argued that "the dream is a carefully drawn portrait of Arthur as a powerful and effective emperor. He is in control of the situation; as others have noted, the battle between the squires and the ravens closely parallels what happens in the game between Arthur and Owein. What others fail to notice, however, is the immediate audience in the dream. Arthur and Owein construct a deliberate pageant that displays Arthur’s power and resolve. He is not moved by anger, as Owein is, but rather is cold and calculating in his moves. Arthur does not exert his energy on small matters; instead, he concentrates on the more pressing matter—the fight against Osla Big Knife. While his desire to play gwyddbwyll with Owein might strike some as dismissive and flighty, his behavior during the game reveals his willingness to sacrifice his own men to gain an advantage over his enemy. Thus it comes as no surprise that soon after Arthur reduces the gold playing pieces to dust with his hand, Osla Big Knife sends horsemen to ask a truce of Arthur."

And of course, a number of graduate students participated in the recent New Literacies Conference.  Here's a small sampling of the diverse topics upon which our members presented!

Lisa St. Ledger presented her paper, "From Osage Oklahoma to Oxford and Back: American Indian Identity and the Voices of Carter Revard."  Lisa writes, "Born in Osage County, Oklahoma, and eventually educated in the halls of Oxford, Carter Revard’s academic career and personal life have been a journey in negotiating the polyphony of voices that inhabit his world. Many of those voices, Osage and Ponca in particular, have gone unrecognized in mainstream discourses of what he names 'the Monoculturists,' and so in both of his autobiographical texts, Family Matters, Tribal Affairs and Winning the Dust Bowl, finding a way to viably blend his academic training and maintain meaningful connections to his American Indian roots becomes one of his major tasks. He accomplishes his goal in part through reworking canonized academic language as satire, through asserting (and inserting) the Oklahoma English and Osage of his boyhood as languages on par with academic language, and through placing his poetry and the poetry of contemporary American Indian writers alongside each other as equals. By taking on a multiplicity of voices in his own work, Revard simultaneously denies the unity of American literary identity and performs a self that would bridge worlds with words."

In "'The Myth of the Individual':  Tony Kushner's America," Richard Noggle examines "Kushner's vision of American identity--and the role of the artist in shaping it--through a look at his interviews and essays.  Claiming indebtedness to traditions of socialism and radical politics, Kushner's public statements serve as a strong critique of a contemporary America where over-emphasis on the individual has caused us to lose sight of the fact that positive change arises through collective action.  Kushner sees theatre as an empowering political force that may not provoke immediate action but leaves an audience more likely to act.  He wants his work to illuminate the interconnections between a disparate mix of conflicting ideologies and identities, believing that, appearances to the contrary, we can succeed in accepting difference without seeking to eliminate it.  A theatrical experience forms a community that temporarily links its diverse audience members through shared experience, and Kushner, whose work dissolves easy boundaries between race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, hopes his vision has an impact that does not end when the curtain falls."

Jenny Noyce and Julie Sorge participated in a session on service learning, "Performing Identity in Recovery: Community, Resistance, and Sameness."  Their paper, "Toward a Common Ground: Performing Sameness," examined the difficulties of the teacher/student role in the non-traditional "classroom" where the facilitators are most often outsiders, and how seeking common ground--"performing sameness"--aids all to identify with one another in spite of the obvious differences.