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Al Filreis - c.v.
Al Filreis
Kelly Professor of English
Faculty Director, the Kelly Writers House
Director, the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing3805 Locust Walk
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6150
phone: (215) 573-9749; FAX: (215) 573-9750
electronic mail: afilreis[at]writing[dot]upenn[dot]edu
EDUCATION:
1978-1985 M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia
1974-1978 B.A., Colgate University
POSITIONS CURRENTLY HELD:
Kelly Professor (2002-present)
Director, Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (2003-present)
Co-Director, PennSound (2003-present)
Publisher, Jacket2 (2010-present)
Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House (1995-present)
POSITIONS PREVIOUSLY HELD:
Chairman, WXPN-FM Policy Board, 1999-2004
The Class of 1942 Professor of English, 1999-2002
Undergraduate Chairman, 1993-1996
Faculty Director, Arts & Sciences Segment of the Advanced Management Program, 2000-2005
Director, The Writing Program, 1996-98
Chair, Residential Faculty Council, 1996-98
Faculty Master, Van Pelt College House, 1995-98
Associate Professor of English, 1991-1995
Esther K. & N. Mark Watkins Assistant Professor in the Humanities, 1988-91
Assistant Professor of English, 1985-88
BOOKS:
- Counter-revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60 (University of North Carolina Press, 2008). (Sample review: PDF.)
- Modernism from Right to Left: Wallace Stevens, the Thirties, & Literary Radicalism (Cambridge University Press, July 1994), 365 pp. (This book was widely reviewed--by, among others, Paul Giles and Michael Coyle.)
From jacket copy: "A masterpiece of brilliant research and fresh analysis, Modernism from Right to Left is also a compelling conceptual breakthrough launching the study of mid-20th century U.S. poetry on an entirely new course. In a hitherto unprecedented synthesis, Filreis reinscribes a major canonical figure in the context of a 1930s leftwing poetry renaissance that has been largely obscured, ignored, and caricatured. He thus returns to history the contributions of many previously "lost" writers, as well as reconfigures the terrain of vital politico- cultural debates that nurtured, stimulated and troubled the mind and imagination of Wallace Stevens."--Alan Wald, University of Michigan
- Wallace Stevens and the Actual World (Princeton University Press, 1991), 350 pp.
- Tucker's People, by Ira Wolfert (first pub. 1943), University of Illinois series, "The Radical Novel in the U.S. Reconsidered" (1997). (The novel was republished as The Underworld in 1950.)
- Secretaries of the Moon: The Letters of Wallace Stevens and Jose Rodriguez Feo, with Beverly Coyle (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986).
ARTICLES:
Selection of essays published in Jacket2 in 2011-12: "To Keep You from Going: Notes toward a Definition of Modernism," April 21, 2012. "1974 Larry Eigner Recordings," March 23, 2012. "Know What Is Happening in Your Heart: Robert Penn Warren's Racism," February 10, 2012. "Learning, Not Teaching," February 3, 2012. "Gil Ott and Charles Alexander after 9/11," January 29, 2012. "Experiment is Exhausted and So It's Time to Interpret Rather than Explore: Louise Bogan's Cold War Anti-Modernism," January 9, 2012. "Return to the Tapeworm Factory: The Conceptualism of Darren Wershler-Henry," December 18, 2011. "Mere Alphabetic Adjacency: David Buun's Card Catalogue Art," November 23, 2011. "When the Right Thought of Itself as Poetry & the Left as Prose," November 2, 2011."Wallace Stevens of the New York School," in Wallace Stevens, New York & Modernism, ed. Lisa Goldfarb, Bart Eeekhout, Routledge, 2012 (forthcoming).
"Introduction to the poetry and poetics of 1960," Jacket2, April 27, 2011. Editor, Poetry & Poetics 1960, published in Jacket2: commissioned and edited essays by Erica Kaufman, Bob Perelman, Mel Nichols, Ron Silliman, Judith Goldman, Chris Funkhouser, Kristen Gallagher, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Charles Bernstein, Jerome Rothenberg, Josephine Park, Curtis Faville, Michael Hennessey, Fred Wah, David Wyatt, Marie Damon, Lisa Steinman, Anne Tardos
"The End of the End of Poetic Ideology, 1960," for Cary Nelson, ed., Handbook of Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, Oxford University Press (2011)
"The Baseball Fan," for Leonard Cassuto, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Baseball, Cambridge University Press (February 2011)
"The President of This Sentence: Bob Perelman's History," Jacket 39 (2010), special issue ed. Kristen Gallagher. [LINK]
"Modernist Pedagogy at the End of the Lecture," in Teaching Modernist Poetry, eds. Nicky Marsh & Peter Middleton (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). [links: 1 2 3 ]
"Stevens Regarding the Pain of Others," in "Selecting Three Poems by Wallace Stevens: A Roundtable Discussion" (with George Lensing, J. Donald Blount, Jacqueline Vaught Brogan, Stephen Burt & Eleanor Cook), Wallace Stevens Journal, Fall 2009, pp. 252-57. [ PDF
]"Descriptions without Places" (foreword), in Visiting Wallace: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Wallace Stevens, eds. Dennis Barone and James Finnegan (Iowa City, IA: Iowa University Press, 2009). [ LINKS: 1 2 3 ]
"The Stevens Wars," boundary 2 36, 3 (Fall 2009), American Poetry after 1975, Duke University Press, 0-8223-6719-X, [ISBN13 978-0-8223-6719-2], 225 pages. Ed. Charles Bernstein. [ LINKS: 1 2 3 ]
"Believing in the World Because It Is Impossible" [on George Oppen], Jacket 36 (late fall 2008) [ LINK ]
"Sounds at an Impasse," Wallace Stevens Journal, special sound issue edited by Natalie Gerber, Spring 2009, pp. 16-23. [PDF; Scholarly Commons link]
"Om PennSound" (or "Audio Archiving"), Audiatur Poetry Festival Magazine, ed. Paal Bjelke Andersen, Sepember 2007, Bergen (translated into Norwegian). MORE
"Modern Poetry and Anticommunism," in A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry, ed. Stephen Fredman (Blackwell, 2005), pp. 173-90. [PDF | Selected Works]
"What's Historical about Historicism," Wallace Stevens Journal (Fall 2004).
"Stevens and Communism," Cambridge Companion to the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, ed. John Serio (Cambridge University Press, 2007). [PDF]
"Kinetic Is as Kinetic Does: On the Institutionalization of Digital Poetry," in New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, ed. Adelaide Morris and Thomas Swiss (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 123-140.
"Tests of Poetry," American Literary History 15, 1 (Spring 2003), pp. 27-35, "A Cambridge Literary History of the US Forum: Poetry." (Word document version available through Adobe Share; [PDF])
"Stevens/Pound in the Cold War," Wallace Stevens Journal 26, 2 (Fall 2002), pp. 181-193; special "Pound/Stevens Revisited" issue, ed. Glen MacLeod.
"Some Remarks on the Institutionalization of E-Poetries," NC1 (Spring/Summer 2002), pp. 84-88; part of "New Media Literature: A Roundtable Discussion on Aesthetics, Audiences, and Histories."
"Making Good Books Possible: Remembering Jerre Mangione", Pennsylvania Gazette, November-December 1998
"'Spirit--a Word I Never Use': A Response to Jackson Mac Low and Andrew Levy", Phillytalks 12 (Autumn 1999)
"On Frets about the Death of the Book", CrossConnect, vol. 1, no. 2 (Fall 1995).
"Conflict Seems Vaguely Un-American": Teaching the Conflicts and the Legacy of Cold War", Review, volume 17 (1995), pp. 156-71.
"'This Posture of the Nerves': Modernism's Partisan Center," Journal of Modern Literature 18, 1 (Winter 1992): 49-64.
"Stevens, 'J. Ronald Lane Latimer,' and the Alcestis Press," Wallace Stevens Journal 17, 2 (Fall 1993), 180-202.
"Modernism from Right to Left: Stevens, Radicalism, and the 1930s" [chapter 2, part 1 of the book bearing that title], George Arent Library Courier 27, 2 (Spring 1992), 3-23.
"'Beyond the Rhetorician's Touch': Stevens's Painterly Abstractions," American Literary History, Spring 1992, 230-63.
"Stevens's Home Front," Wallace Stevens Journal 14, 2 (Fall 1990), 99-122.
"Still Life without Substance: Wallace Stevens and the Language of Agency", Poetics Today, "Art and Literature" issue, ed. Wendy Steiner 10, 2 (Summer 1989), 345-72.
"Voicing the Desert of Silence: Stevens' Letters to Alice Corbin Henderson," Wallace Stevens Journal 12, 1 (Spring 1988), 3-20.
"Words 'With All the Effects of Force': Cold War Interpretation," a review-essay on Peter Steinberg's The Great 'Red Menace' (1984) and Ellen Schrecker's No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism & the Universities (1986), American Quarterly 39 (Summer 1987), 306- 12. [PDF] (PDF version)
"Wallace Stevens and the Strength of the Harvard Reaction," New England Quarterly 58 (March 1985), 27-45.
"Wallace Stevens and the Crisis of Authority," American Literature 58 (December 1984), 560-78.
WEB SITES
1. 1950s/cold-war culture
2. modern & contemporary American poetry & poetics
3. holocaust
4. PENNsound (with Charles Bernstein)
5. Jacket2 commentary [link]
PODCAST SERIES
1. PENNsound podcasts
2. Kelly Writers House podcasts
3. PoemTalk
BLOGS:
1. Jacket2 commentary
2. Al Filreis
3. 1960
INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED BY FILREIS:
Interview with E. L. Doctorow (March 2005) Interview with Richard Sieburth on recordings of Ezra Pound (May 22, 2007) Interview with Joan Retallack, on relations between innovative poetry and experimental teaching (February 28, 2001). Interview with Tony Kushner (February 12, 2001). "Wideman on Campus," interview with John Edgar Wideman conducted by Alan Filreis and Lorene Cary, April 24, 2000, The Pennsylvania Gazette, July 2000. Interview with Robert Creeley (April 11, 2000). Interview with Grace Paley (February 15, 2000). "A Conversation with Howard Fast, March 23, 1994, Conducted by Alan Wald and Alan Filreis," Prospects: An Annual of American Culture Studies, vol. 20 (1996), pp. 511-23; re-published in Contemporary Literarary Criticism 131 (Summer 2000). Interview with Edwin Torres (December 11, 1999). "An Interview with Stanley Burnshaw," with Harvey Teres, Wallace Stevens Journal 13, 2 (Fall 1989), 109-26. [text]
HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE NEW INTERMEDIA: NOTES, AWARDS, CITATIONS, PROJECT ADVISING
"The End of the Lecture as We Know It", June 9, 1999 (including text and RealVideo format) Citation/links in the "Reinventing Education" project, West Virginia Department of Education, non-profit program for creating internet-based lesson plans in English, science, math, and social studies (reinvent.k12.wv.us) "Ditch along the Superhighway," Talking Stick 16, 6 (March 1999), pp. 22-23 (published by the University of Michigan) The Best of the Net Award for "The American 1950s" web site, March 1998 Choice magazine review of 1950s web site Links2go Award given to Holocaust literature web site, July 1998 "Fast Forward The Digital Future of Higher Education", Higher Education, Autumn 1997 Advisor to the nonprofit "Close Up Foundation," a nonpartisan civic education organization
ESSAYS:
"Al Filreis on William Carlos Williams's 'At the Ball Game,'" Poetry Society of America, "Crossroads"/Poem Spotlight [link] "Seminar," in Selected Essays about a Bibliography: Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004, ed. Tan Lin (Edit Publications, 2010). [PDF] "Mending the Break in Time", exhibit catalogue of the Rosenbach Museum and Library project, which opened November 11, 2001, entitled "Finding the Words: Responses to crisis from the Marianne Moore papers & Philadelphia poets." The essay was first read at the "Finding the Words" event at the Kelly Writers House, November 7, 2001. LINK "Monologue on Silence," February 15, 1997, Live at the Writers House on WXPN-FM REVIEWS:
Review of Wallace Stevens across the Atlantic, eds. Bart Eeckhout and Edward Ragg (Macmillan, 2008), Modernism/modernity 17, 1 (Winter 2010), pp. 239-40. [ link ]Review of Alan M. Wald, Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Anti-Fascist Crusade, in Left History 12, 2 (Fall/Winter 2007-08). [PDF]
Review of Harold Kaplan, Poetry, Politics and Culture, Wallace Stevens Journal 30, 2 (Fall 2006), pp 235-36.
"Where Survival Is at Stake," review of Frederick Busch, A Memory of War in the New Leader, November-December 2002, pp. 50-52.
Review of Cary Nelson, Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left (Routledge, 2001), Modernism/Modernity, Fall 2002.
Review of Modernism, Inc: Body, Memory, Capital, eds. Jani Scandura, Michael Thurston (NYU, 2002), Against the Current, September 2002, pp. 100-103.
Review of Marjorie Perloff, Poetry On & Off the Page, in "Breakthrough Books," Lingua Franca, January 2000.
Reviews of David Jarroway, Wallace Stevens and the Question of Belief: Metaphysician in the Dark (1993) for American Literature and The Wallace Stevens Journal.
Untitled review of William W. Bevis, Mind of Winter: Wallace Stevens, Meditation, and Literature (1988), American Literature (June 1990).
Untitled review of B. J. Leggett, Wallace Stevens and Poetic Theory: Conceiving the Supreme Fiction (1987), American Literature 60, 1 (March 1988), 134-35. [text]
"The Problems of Biography," review of Milton Bates, Mythologies of Self (1985), Virginia Quarterly Review 62 (Summer 1986), 543-47.
Untitled review of Charles Berger, Forms of Farewell: The Late Poetry of Wallace Stevens (1985), The New England Quarterly 59 (March 1986), 531-33.[text]
NOTES:
"Stefan Sagmeister's Happiness Project," essay co-written by Robert Chaney, interim director of Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, for Stefan Sagmeister, 36 Difficult Questions for Stefan Sagmeister (ICA, 2012) pp. 10-13."Carl Rakosi: audio recordings," Jacket 25 (February 2004). (http://jacketmagazine.com/25/index.html)
In memoriam, Gil Ott (February 6, 2004)
jacket statement for Irene Gammel's Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity - a Cultural Biography (2002)
"A Note on Aaron Levy's Tombe" (May 2001) [links: 1 2]
"Cultural Aspects of Atomic Anxiety", June 1999, for use in discussion of Michael Frayn's Cophenhagen, Penn Reading Project 1999
"Covici-Friede," in American Literary Publishing Houses, 1900- 1980, ed. Peter Dzwonkoski (Detroit: Gale, 1986), pp. 92- 97.
INVITED LECTURES:
"Cold War Poetics," Franklin & Marshall College, Writers House/English Department, March 10, 2010."Planning to Stay, a Manifesto," Banff Centre, Literary Arts Program, Banff, Alberta, February 21, 2010, "Interventions" Conference. [ text ]
"Wallace Stevens as New York School Poet," paper delivered at the "Wallace Stevens, New York & Modernism" conference, Gallatin School, New York University, March 5, 2010.
"The Rago Era at Poetry," Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, April 2010.
"Oppen's Antifascism: Guilt in 'Myth of the Blaze,'" George Oppen at 100 conference, April 7, 2008, Kelly Writers House
"Poetics & Learning," Franklin Inn Club, Philadelphia, April 6, 2007
"Poetics of Stanley Burnshaw: Eco-Lyricism and Environmental Radicalism in 'The Iron Land,'" symposium on the life and work of Stanley Burnshaw, CUNY Graduate Center, co-sponsored by CUNY and Harry Ransom Research Center of the University of Texas, October 20, 2006
"The Radical Poetry of New York City," Gotham Center for New York City History, CUNY Graduate Center, May 4, 2006.
A series of related talks on the politics of writing and the university at the University of Michigan co-sponsored by the College of Literature, Science & Art, the MFA Program of the English Depaetmwnt, the Sweetland Wroting Center, and the Alice Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, October 6, 2005.
"Modernism and Anti-Communism," English Department, Pennsylvania State University on October 18, 2004.
"Red Blue Guitar: Why Can't Modernism and Communism Get Along," Poetics Program, SUNY Buffalo (hosted by Susan Howe) on September 22.
"Modernism in Anti-Communism in the 1940s," National Poetry Foundation conference on the Poetry of the 1940s, University of Maine, June 2004
"What's Historical about Historicism?" a plenary session paper delivered at the Celebrating Wallace Stevens conference in Hartford, sponsored by the University of Connecticut, April 8-10, 2004
"The Politics of Scholarship in the Digital Era," Frye Leadership Conference hosted by the Council on Library and Information Resources and Emory University, at Emory University, Atlanta, June 13, 2001
"Magic thinking, unmediated access, instant solutions--not," Wayne State University, April 13, 2001.
"'You can't say it that way any more': poetry, lifelong learning, and technology," sponsored by the Liberal Learning Group of the University Continuing Education Association conference, Philadephia, April 13, 2001
"The medium is the message and other tall tales," Bard College, February 22, 2001
"'For occupation: This': The problem of the literary in Holocaust writing--Levi, Keneally, Wiesel, and Celan," United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, January 28, 2001
"Making a house an academic home," panel on architecture sponsored by the Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, November 2000 (with James Timberlake of KieranTimberlake Associates; John Patkau, Patkau Architects; and David Brownlee, History of Art
"Real Flowers Better than Virtual," "The Medium is Not the Message," two keynote lectures, Ohio Wesleyan University, October 24, 2000
"Fifties Culture," at The American Moments Project, July 14, 2000, Springfield (MA) Museum of Art
"Ten 'thou shalts' of information technology," Emory University, the Frye Leadership Institute, Atlanta, June 13, 2000
"A Thirties for the Twenties: Modern American Poetry in Transition," seminar/lecture given at a session of "The American Moments Project," July 19, 1999, Westfield College, Springfield, MA
"Innovative Poetics," lecture and presentation at the Poetry & Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary symposium, sponsored by the Institute for Writing & Thinking, Bard College, June 24-27, 1999
"Contextual Media and the New Writing," series of lectures, Universita' degli Studi di Trento, Trento, Italy, March 5, 1999
"Inventing the Wheel: 'distributed learning' in learning communities & other tall tales of the information age," Faculty Workshop on Teaching and Learning, Villanova University, February 25, 1999
"The Role of the Faculty in the Information Age," keynote talk, 5th International Conference on Living-learning Programs, Burlington, Vermont, October 1998
"Distributing the Core: The End of the Lecture as We Know It", Washington University, October 22, 1997
"Problems of Memory, Representation & Testimony," NEH Workshop on Teaching the Holocaust, Susquehanna University, February 21, 1997
"Beyond Cables & Jacks: ResNets and the Academic Mission", keynote address, with Daniel Updegrove, Resnet Conference, Wellesley College, June 22, 1997
"Cold War Legacy: Teaching Literature Today," April 5, 1995, Penn Lectures Series, College of General Studies
"Howard Fast & the Cold War," Symposium on Cold-War Culture, Van Pelt Library, March 1994
"Storm Center and the Culture of Anticommunism," symposium convened by the School of Library Sciences, Columbia University, May 9, 1991
"Wallace Stevens and the American Literary Left," Friends of Van Pelt Library, April 7, 1990
"The Fifties' Thirties," Miami University (Ohio), February 15, 1990
"Bringing 'Documentary' and 'Literary' Together: The Literature of the Holocaust," Facing History Foundation annual conference, Harvard University, April 28, 1988
CONFERENCE PAPERS:
"Poetry, Community and the Academy: Clearing a Space," paper given at "Poetry Communities & the Individual Talent" conference, April 12, 2012 (paper to be published later)."Emily Dickinson on Isolation," Kelly Writers House, "Seven Up in Isolation," March 8, 2012.
"On Primo Levi's 'Iron' and 'Carbon," Kelly Writers House, Jewish Writers Symosium, February 17, 2012.
"The Poetics of the Modernist Dead End," American Literature Association Conference, Boston, May 22, 2009.
"Sound in Stevens," MLA, December 2006.
"Text & University: Working against Conventions of Reading & Listening" International Association of Word and Image Studies: Elective Affinities conference, September 23-27, 2005, for a panel entitled "VVV-on-line: Verbal-Visual-Vocal Poetries in Hyperspace."
MLA conference, in December 2004, organized, chaired and participated in a panel on "Stevens in Contemporary Poetics" with Susan Howe, Charles Bernstein, and Peter Gizzi.
Keynote speaker, "New Media Poetry: Aesthetics, Institutions, and Audiences" conference sponsored by The International Writing Program, the English Department, and the Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry of the University of Iowa, October 10-13, 2002: "On the Institutionalization of E-Poetries"
Session chair, featuring Susan Suleiman, Norman Kleeblatt and Charles Dellheim, entitled "Holocaust: Art, Memory and History" at the "Modern Jewry at the Arts" conference, Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, April 30, 2001
"The Modernists are Coming! The Modernists are Coming!" in a panel (with Ron Silliman) entitled "Modernism in the 50s," Modernist Studies Association, New Modernisms II, October 12, 2000
"Before Organic Form Was a Weapon against Fragment: Pound/Stevens Revisited," Modernist Studies Association, October 14, 2000
"'no one to drive the car': Experimental Poetry across Time and Space," Modern Language Association conference, Washington, DC, December 2000 (panel sponsored by the MLA Poetry Division, convened by Charles Bernstein and chaired by Loss Pequeno Glazier)
"Human Nature--Human Rights," Penn Humanities Forum, March 20-25, 2000 (with Milicent Marcus, Barbie Zelizer, et alia)
"Anticommunism and the Political History of Modernism," paper delivered at the inaugural conference of the Modern Studies Association, Penn State University, October 7, 1999
"Mid-century Modernism and the Cold War," American Literature Association Conference, May 21, 1999
"Notes toward an Anticommunist Narrative Form," International Conference on Narrative (sponsored by the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature), Dartmouth College, April 29-May 2, 1999
Keynote speech, Annual Meeting of the American Association for History and Computing, Temple University Conference Center, April 23-25, 1999
"The Effect of the Cold War on American Scholarship," Mellon-funded "Seminars in the Theories and Practices of History," September 9, 1996
"Generation Envy: Poets, Modernism & the Cold War", division of poetry session convened by Marjorie Perloff, Modern Language Association conference, December 1995
"Teaching with Technology," EDUCOM 1996, October 10, 1996 (with James O'Donnell)
"Popular-Front Poetics," National Poetry Foundation conference, Univ. of Maine, June 1993
"'The Alabama of New England': Stevens's Poems' Hartford & the Demographics of Race," American Literature Association conference, May 28, 1993
"The Politics of Limited Editions," NEMLA, April 1992
"Anglo-American Accommodations of the East: Snow Man in Sri Lanka," Modern Language Association, December 1990
"Subversive Language and the 'Science' of Law: Where Science and the Humanities Won't Meet," Eleventh Annual Humanities & Technology Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, October 24, 1987
"Wallace Stevens and the Problems of Biography," Collation Address, University of Pennsylvania English Department, September 1986
"Santayana and the Closed Door," Wallace Stevens Society, Modern Language Association convention, December 1985
"Wallace Stevens: Resisting the Intelligence," American Literature Section, South Atlantic Modern Language Association convention, Atlanta, November 3, 1985
"'Is Lunar Habana the Cuba of the Self?': Jose Rodriguez-Feo and Wallace Stevens," Modern Language Association, December 1984
CONFERENCE:
Higher Education in the Information Age, invited participant and subject (June 2-3, 1997)
HONORS AND AWARDS:
named the Class of 1942 Professor, 1999
Carnegie/CASE Pennsylvania Professor of the Year, 1998-99
The Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award for Faculty Excellence, 1996
Ira Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching, 1995
Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, 1992
Esther K. & N. Mark Watkins Humanities Chair, 1988
INTERVIEWED
- for "Poetry Off the Shelf," April 2009, by Curtis Fox, "Telephony Is So Retro It's Cool" (MP3)
- for the syndicated NPR program The Best of Our Knowledge, recorded on February 22, 2001, originating from WAMC 90.3 FM, Albany (a recording is available here in MP3 format)
SAMPLING OF PRESS REPORTS
- Bill Keller New York Times Magazine essay on poetry and national political rhetoric, August 12, 2011 [links: 1, 2]
- Washington Post article about text messaging, Sunday, February 22, 2009, page 1.
- "A Haven on an Ivy Campus", by Alan Finder, New York Times, December 5, 2007, page B7
- local TV news story on online advising of pre-matriculants (WPVI, Fall 2001) [video]
- "Influences: What Shapes the Minds that Make the News," profile in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, January 28, 2007, p. C2.
- "Building the Archives," Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, September 28, 2005 (on PennSound)
- "Professor Establishes Repository for iPod Poetry", Chroncile of Higher Education, January 21, 2005.
- "Is e-mail ruining writing?", AP wire story (carried by many newspapers) by Kathy Matheson, December 12, 2005
- in a Chronicle of Higher Education article about Penn's "pilot curriculum, May 10, 2002 [experimental pedagogy is described]
- in Patricia Leigh Brown, "Armageddon Again: Fear in the 50's and Now," New York Times "Week in Review," December 23, 2001, p. 10 [quoted on the cultural meaning of cold-war fall-out shelters]
- James O'Neill, "Teaching Revolution," Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, August 5, 2001
- Robert Daniel, "Caught in the Web," Jerusalem Post, June 8, 2001
- newspaper article on hyperlinked literature, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 3, 2001
- Chronicle of Higher Education on electronic poetry, July 28, 2000
- "eCollege and PennAdvance Pass eLearning's Double-Secret," by NELIA ROBBI October 12, 2000, Alentis Trade Journal
- "A Web Site Grows New Poems, Sometimes Right Before Readers' Eyes: SUNY-Buffalo's Electronic Poetry Center connects poets and scholars from around the world", by Zoe Ingalls, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 28, 2000
- "Online orientation", Washington Post, July 23, 2000
- Kelly Writers House Fellows program (January 2000)
- e-seminar for university pre-matriculants - New York Times, July 1, 1999
- Choice review of 1950s web site (1998)
- "Survey Shows a Sharp Rise in Net-Savvy Academics," Pamela Mendels, New York Times, November 4, 1998
- "Classes on the Web," by Jeff Young, Chonicle of Higher Education
- "Alumni of Penn reconnect with academic life..." by Martha Woodall, Philadelphia Inquirer
- "A Course of a Different Color," by John Bowers, NetGuide
- Local article about Penn mortgage plan, November 1998, Philadelphia Business Journal
FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS (selected):
For 2004-2007: William Penn Foundation grant to support fund-raising for the Kelly Writers HouseFor 2001-2002 - University of Pennsylvania Distributed Learning Venture Fund
For 1999-2000 - University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation Grant, "Anticommunism and Poetry"
For 1998-2001 - Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant ($448,000), Collaborative Writing Groups, "Cost Effective Teaching with Technology" category
For 1996-97 - University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation Grant, "The Literature and Culture2 of the Cold War, 1945-60"
For 1995-96 - the year's recipient of the Edmund J. & Louise W. Kahn Fund for Faculty Excellence (School of Arts & Sciences)
For 1995-96 - Center for Community Partnerships Program Grant, "Teaching the Holocaust as a Model for High School-University Partnerships"
For 1994-95 - Pew Charitable Trusts Grant for instituting the English department's new communications network and integrating electronic and traditional pedagogies and curricula
For 1993 - NEH "Travel to Collections" grant, to travel for two weeks to Stanford University for work in the archives of the Hoover Institute
For 1991 - University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation Grant to travel for two weeks to the unpublished George Oppen papers in the New Poetry Archives, University of California at San Diego
For 1990 - Huntington-Mellon Grant, for two months' work at the Henry E. Huntington Library;
Prior to 1990:
Research Grant, Esther K. & N. Mark Watkin's Chair
Educational Development Fund (course development)
Threshold Grant (academic computing)
A.C.L.S. Research Fellowship (declined)
NEH Research Fellowship (full year, 1987-88)
A.C.L.S. Grant-in-Aid (archival research)
Huntington Library Fellowship (1986)
FOUNDER:
The Penn-Edison Partnership (a tutoring program involving Penn English faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate majors at the Edison-Fareira High School in North Philadelphia)
ACADEMIC SERVICE:
Current (selected):
Past (selected):
- Director, the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (2003-present) [ LINK ]
- Faculty Director, The Kelly Writers House (1995-present)
- Member, School of Liberal and Professional Studies Executive Committee, 2010-present.
- Chairman of the Policy Board, WXPN-FM, 1999-2006
- Member, Provost's Council on Arts and Culture, 2000-present
- Member, Committee on Open Access, 2009-10
- Member, Provost's Committee on the Continuum of Education, 2002-03
- Member, Committee on Graduate Education: Preparation for Teaching, 2002-03
- Member, Board of Trustees for the new KIPP Collegiate Charter School in West Philadelphia (2003-2006)
- Member, Chaim Potok Literary Award Selection Committee, Jewish Community Centers of Greater Philadephia, 2003-2004
- Member, College of Arts & Sciences Admissions Committee, 2001-2007
- Faculty Liaison, Trustee Committee on Student Life, 2001-03, 2006-present
- Member, Univerity Council Committee on Communications, 2001-02, 2009-present
- Chairman, Continuum of Education Committee, Stategic Planning for the University, 2001-02; member, Strategic Planning Steering Group
- Member, Provost's Advisory Board for Computing, Committee on Distance Learning, 1999-2000
- Member, Provostial Search Committee for Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, 2011-12
- Memeber, Museum Faculty Advisory Board, 2011-present
- Member, Provostial Search Committee for Director of Graduate Center, 2001
- Member, SAS Committee on Distributed Learning, 1998-2000
- Member, SAS Committee on Learning and Technology, two-year term, 2000-2003
- Member, Committee for Campus Development ("Student, Faculty, Administrative Life; Neighborhood & Community Life")
- Member, Advisory Board on Security & Safety, 1999-2001
- Faculty Director, The Writing Program (July 1996-July 1998)
- Chair, Residential Faculty Council, 1996-98
- Member, Jewish Studies Faculty, 1991-
- Member, Graduate Group in American Civilization (term July 1998-July 2003)
- Member, Residential Communities Planning Group (1997-98)
- Member, Residential Operations Board (1997- )
- Undergraduate Chairman, English department, Sept. 1993-July 1996
- Chairman, Provost's Classroom Facilities Review Committee (1993-1998)
- Member, Residential Communities Planning Group (charged by President, Provost, and EVP), 1997-98
- Member, University of Pennsylvania Alumni Society (UPAS) Communications Committee (overseeing the Pennsylvania Gazette), 1997-
- Member, WXPN (radio) Policy Board
- Member, Research Foundation Humanities Review panel, 1996-97
- Member, Collegiate Planning Board (21st Century Project), 1995-96
- Member, Design Team, Restructuring Computing at Penn, 1995-96 (and co-leader, Communications Committee); Steering Committee, 1996-97; founder and creator of Penn's residential computing support project
- Member, Residential Faculty Council, 1995-96
- Member, Faculty Senate Communications Committee (through May 1997)
- Member, College of Arts & Sciences Writing Committee
- Member, Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) 1993-95
- Member, Information & Computing Services Faculty Advisory Committee
- Member, ISC/DCCS Campus Wide Information Services Committee
- Member, American Civilization Executive Committee (1995-96)
- Member, SAS Academic Computing Advisory Committee
- Member, Pre-Freshman Program Faculty Executive Committee
- Member, Committee on Study Abroad
- Member, College of General Studies Executive Committee (1994-96)
- Member, Electoral Board, Executive Committee of Phi Beta Kappa, 1989-92, 95-97
- Faculty Liaison to the Trustee Committee on Facilities & Campus Planning (selected by Senate Executive Committee)
- Member, Univ. Council Committee on Facilities, 1994-96
- Member, Senate Committee on Conduct (until April 1995)
- Member, American Civilization & Comp Lit Grad Groups
- Advisor to American Civilization Graduate Students
- Judge, College of Arts & Sciences/College Alumni Society Undergraduate Research Awards (1994-95)
Member, University Committee on Classroom Facilities, 1991-92
Departmental Committee to Review the Undergraduate Major, 1991-92
Departmental Library Committee, 1991-present
Departmental Executive Committee, elected to two- year term, 1988-90
Departmental Senior Search Committee, 1988-89
Departmental Junior Search Committees, 1987-88, 1988-89
Departmental Committee on the New Distributionals, Summer 1986
Faculty Freshman Advisor for the College, 1988-present
Elected Member, Executive Committee of Faculty Senate (1991-93 term)
Member, Van Pelt Library Special Collections Advisory Committee
Faculty Supervisor, restructuring the English component for the Summer "Pre-Freshman" Program, 1991
Lecturer in "Pre-Freshman" Program, 1992-94
Advisor to Philadelphia public school teacher studying American fiction as a "1988 Philadelphia Fellow for Independent Study in the Humanities" under the U. S. Council for Basic Education
Faculty Fellow in residence, Van Pelt College House, 1991-92
Adjunct Faculty Fellow, Stouffer House, 1985- present
Founding Teacher/Scholar, Innovative Study in Teaching and the Humanities (ISTAH), a program designed to "support and develop communication and collaboration between secondary school teachers at urban high schools and scholars at Penn"
Judge, Phi Beta Kappa Essay Prize, 1991
Reviewer of fellowship applications for Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, 1988
Reviewer of Mellon Fellowship applications, Humanities Coordinating Committee, 1987, 1989, 1994
Reviewer, NEH Summer Seminars at Penn, 1991, 1994
ACADEMIC SERVICE (professional)
Member of the Board of Spoken-Web 2.0 Digital Humanities Project, Concordia University (Canada). Appointed by Mayor Nutter to serve as member of 4-person committee to create Phialdelphia Poet Laureateship and then to appoint the first recipient, 2011-12. Member of the Board, The Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics (CAAP) (hosted by Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing) in partnership with Wuhan University), 2008- Member, review panel evaluating funding proposals for the NEH (October 2002) Member, editorial board for MAPS, the American literature web site sponsored by Cary Nelson and the University of Illinois and Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Cary Nelson, editor (Oxford University Press, 2000), 1247 p. Member, Academic Advisory Board, New Forum Publishers and Beyond Books Member, Advisory Board, IMEJ of Computer-Enhanced Learning, a quarterly journal (ed. Jennifer Burg, Chair of the Department of Computer Science, Wake Forest University) Advisor to development of new web site for teaching modernism hosted jointly by Modernism/Modernity and the Modernist Studies Association
Member, Abraham Lincoln Brigrade Archives (ALBA)
Member, Historians of American Communism (HOAC)
Founding participant, "Penn Advance: with Sylvan Academy and Caliber" program in distributed learning
Member, Nominating Committee for the Board of Directors, Parent-Infant Center (PIC), West Philadelphia (Spring 2000) Advisor, PBS/WGBH-TV Frontline secondary and higher education outreach through technology program (Fall 1998)
Member, Advisory Board, Pennsylvania Humanities Council's six-part program, "American Memories/American Visions: The 1950s," 1997-98
Advisor, Pennsylvania Humanities Council's "Technology, Communications, and Community" Project, 1996-98
Advisor, "Women Who Resisted," a documentary on women who resisted Nazism during the Holocaust, to be made for broadcast and in the classroom
Member, Editorial Board, Review
Member, Editorial Board, Other Voices: The (e)Journal of Cultural Criticism Member, Editorial Board, The Wallace Stevens Journal
Advisory editor, second edition of the Heath Anthology of American Literature, modern American literature section (1992)
Chair, Wallace Stevens Society allied- organization session, Modern Language Association convention, December 1988 (the papers presented here became the basis of a special "Stevens and Politics" issue of the Wallace Stevens Journal [see Stanley Burnshaw, "Reflections on Wallace Stevens," Wallace Stevens Journal 13, 2 {Fall 1989}, 126n1])
Member, American Association of University Professors
Member, committee to plan Fall 2000 "Modernisms II" conference of the Modernist Studies Association conference
Member, Editorial Advisory Board, CrossConnect. My involvement is described in Tom Harper's 'CYBERSPACE LITERATI CHALLENGE "BIG DOGS"' (CrossConnect, 2, 1 (1996). Reviewer for articles submitted to American Literary History, The Huntington Library Quarterly, South Central Review, American Quarterly, PMLA, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (see JAMA Mar. 12, 1997, 841)
Reviewer of book manuscripts for the University of Pennsylvania, Southern Illinois University, University of Illinois, University of Mississippi, University of South Carolina, Susquehanna University, Cambridge University, Duke University and Princeton University Presses
Reviewer, proposal to Polity Press series for a textbook covering 20th-century literature (summer 2000)
Reviewer, proposal submitted to the Editions category of the "Texts Program," National Endowment for the Humanities, July 1991
Outside reviewer for City University of New York, Committee on Research Awards, December 1989
Outside evaluator for academic promotions (including tenure review) at Marquette University, University of Cincinnati, Princeton University, St. Olaf College, Syracuse University, Temple University, the University of Michigan, M.I.T., University of Iowa, University of Hawaii, and more
TALKS and SESSIONS at Penn (a small selection [see an additional list of early programs]):
Talk on isolation: "Emily Dickinson's society," February 2012 [video recording] Poetry seminar for high-school students, April/May 2009 [ LINK ] "Collecting the Unconscious" conference sponsored by the Graduate Humanities Forum, faculty respondent to a panel on early American literature, March 3, 2005. "How You Say What You Say: Rhetoric and Form," Fox Leadership Program, February 25, 2003; "The Holocaust and Human Behavior," Hill College House, January 25, 2001; "Ezra Pound at the University of Pennsylvania," Ware College House, October 28, 2000 "Teaching and graduate professionalization," Career Services Forum, September 20, 2000 "Telling it 'well' in the medium: video testimonies of Holocaust survivors", Penn Humanities Forum, March 22, 2000 - part of PHF's symposia on human nature "Protest and Civic Disobediance in the Literary, Performance and Visual Arts," Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Celebration & Symposium on Social Change, January 26, 2000 webcast series on modern & contemporary American poetry (Fall 1999) webcast symposium on William Carlos Williams with Bob Perelman, Kristen Gallagher, and Shawn Walker (July 8, 1999) "The End of the Lecture as We Know It," part of the "60-Second Lecture" series, Summer 1999 "The Good Fight," September 15, 1998, presentation of documentary on the Spanish Civil War, Writers House "Holocaust Survivor Testimonies," March 26, 1998, Penn "Jewish Renaissance Project" preceptorial "Serving Penn's People: Some Glimpses of the Future," lecture before the Benjamin Franklin Society, Penn Club, April 1, 1997 "The Teacher with the Blue Guitar: Disagreement at the Undergraduate Experience at Penn," Philomathean Society, March 3, 1997 "Educating in the Information Age" 1996 ALUMNI WEEKEND, School of Engineering and Applied Science, May 17, 1996 "World War II Books: Schindler's List," Penn Club, October 21, 1995 "The Internet & Universities", November 1995. Moderator, CUE Colloquy, "How Important Is Teaching at Penn?" April 13, 1994 "Should the DP have published the Holocaust 'revisionists'?" April 5, 1992, Van Pelt House "The Persian Gulf War--A Discussion," February 26, 1991, sponsored by Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority "Yes, But Is It Art?--Experimental Poetry & the 'Limits of Taste,'" discussion, September 25, 1990, Stouffer College House "Academic Freedom & the 'New Racism,'" with Peter Stallybrass, April 4, 1989 (at Stouffer House), April 11, 1989 (at Van Pelt College House) "Is There a Classroom Politics?" invited talk, PARSS Graduate Workshop, "Scholarship and Society: Teaching, Research and Social Change," January 27, 1989 "The Problems of Vietnam Testimony," American Civilization colloqium, October 25, 1988 "Professional Ethics," a discussion led with Mary Johnson, Facing History Foundation, sponsored by College House Programs, Ware College House, April 29, 1987 "Are Your Teachers Teaching You 'the Truth'?" a talk, Stouffer House, February 13, 1986 TEACHING:
"Representations of the Holocaust in Literature and Film", part of the College of Arts & Sciences "pilot curriulum," co-taught with Millicent Marcus of Italian Studies, Fall 2000, 2001, 2002.
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