English Department Alumnae E-Newsletter
December 2005

FROM MARY GORDON '71, DEPARTMENT CHAIR Welcome to the 2005 edition of the English alumnae e-newsletter, created in collaboration with the Office of Development & Alumnae Affairs. We hope this communication will keep you connected to the department, the College, and each other. It's been an exciting fall semester on campus for those who love language and writing. The first-ever "Great Writers at Barnard" conference in early November, featuring 75 celebrated alumnae writers, was a resounding success. It was also a testament to the extraordinary accomplishments of our graduates, of whom we are very proud. You can read more about that event, and much more, in this issue. Alumnae who responded to last year's e-newsletter told us that they want to know what fellow English grads are doing. I'm delighted to let you know that, as part of a major upgrade to the Barnard alumnae Web site, we will be instituting an alumna notes area that will be password-protected. You will be able to post your own news and find out what other alumnae are up to. We will let you know when this is available, probably sometime next spring. We eagerly await your feedback on this year's e-newsletter. E-mail us at newsletter@barnard.edu. And, if you are so moved, we hope you will consider funding something on our "wish list," consisting of items and initiatives to enhance research, teaching, and community within the English Department. Your support ensures that today's students receive the opportunities they need to follow in your formidable footsteps and make important contributions to societies across the globe. We hope to hear from you soon, and often. If you'd like to contact a professor directly, click here to visit the faculty directory. And, if you are in the New York area, we hope you will make a visit to campus or attend one of our events, such as our annual Book Party celebrating recent publications by the English faculty on Wednesday, May 3, 2006, from 4:00-7:00 pm in the Sulzberger Parlor (RSVP to lcoolidge(at)barnard(dot)edu). Best wishes, Mary Gordon '71 Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of Writing Chair, English Department

ALUMNAE WRITERS CONVENE FOR "GREAT WRITERS AT BARNARD" CONFERENCE
On Sunday, November 6, 2005, Barnard College brought together 75 celebrated writers—most of them Barnard alumnae—for Great Writers at Barnard, a daylong, open-to-the-public conference exploring current themes in writing and books. The conference, which featured Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award finalists, Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe winners, and New York Times Notable and Oprah Book Club authors, attracted 1,000+ guests and demonstrated the enormous collective achievements of Barnard women. Among the participants were Anna Quindlen '74, Ann Brashares '89, Edwidge Danticat '90, Jhumpa Lahiri '89, and Mary Gordon '71, novelist and chair of Barnard's English Department. Topics included post-September 11 books and movies; writing across cultures; writing for screen, stage, and television; and many others. To read about the program and the alumnae who participated, click here.

COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR PRAISES THE DEPARTMENT
In a recent article about academic majors at the university, The Columbia Daily Spectator announced that English is currently the most popular major at Barnard. The paper also commended the department's academic advisement program. According to the article, three of the eleven top English courses at the university are taught by Barnard professors: Jennie Kassanoff's American Fiction, Bashir Abu-Manneh's Cultures of Colonialism, and Mary Gordon's writing classes. To read the full article, click here.

ZORA NEALE HURSTON '28, OFFICIALLY "COOL"
Celebrated author and Barnard English alumna Zora Neale Hurston '28, Barnard's first African American graduate, is officially "cool." A London-based film production company, investigating the word "cool" for a documentary on word origins and usage produced by the BBC and the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), has determined that Hurston was the first to use the word in print in a 1933 short story, "The Gilded Six Bits." Currently, the OED lists the word's first usage in the 1950s, in association with the jazz musician Charlie Parker. But, as a result of this research, the OED will be corrected and Hurston will be the earliest, "coolest" author in the dictionary. Assistant Professor Monica Miller, a specialist in African American literature and organizer of the 2003 Gildersleeve conference on Hurston, was interviewed for the documentary, which should air in 2006. For more on the BBC series, click here; for more on Hurston, see the recent special issue of The Scholar & Feminist Online, "Jumpin at the Sun: Reassessing the Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston."

ANNA QUINDLEN '74 ADDRESSES THE CLASS OF 2005 AT COMMENCEMENT
In May, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Anna Quindlen '74, who studied English at Barnard and currently chairs the College's board of trustees, challenged the graduating students of her alma mater to resist the country's "culture of conformity" and courageously embrace their own direction in life instead of following the "muddied messages of a timid world." To read the full text of her commencement address, click here.

WOMEN POETS AT BARNARD CELEBRATES ITS 19TH YEAR
Now in its 19th year, Women Poets at Barnard hosts free, public readings by both emerging and established poets. By presenting the work of writers with varied voices and styles, the program aims to broaden and challenge our vision of poetry's range and effects. Women Poets at Barnard is directed by Saskia Hamilton and sponsored by the English Department. This fall's series featured Carolyn Forché, Honor Moore, Michael Hofmann, and Dunya Mikhail. For more information about Women Poets at Barnard, click here.

ARCHIVAL DISCOVERY: W. CABELL GREET COLLECTION
A recent renovation of a faculty office revealed a trove of material collected by W. Cabell Greet (1901-1972), who taught at Barnard from 1926 to 1968. Though a specialist in medieval literature, Professor Greet also was known for his expertise in usage and pronunciation. He served as editor of American Speech from 1933 to 1952. As part of his research, Professor Greet made recordings dating back possibly to the thirties. We found carefully labeled samples of regional accents, including one for the Upper East Side. Those made before the invention of magnetic tape were cut directly onto records and stored on albums. He also recorded poets reading their own work. One of the most exciting items recovered was the steel master to stamp LPs of T. S. Eliot reading "The Wasteland." This material is now available for study at the Rare Books Library at Columbia.

ENGLISH PROFESSOR ACHSAH GUIBBORY RECEIVES TENURE
Achsah Guibbory, Professor of English at Barnard, joined the College last year as Visiting Professor of English from the University of Illinois. She received her doctorate from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1970 and taught at the University of Illinois for three decades. She is teaching courses in Milton and Donne and Renaissance love poetry and is currently working on a book, titled Imagined Identities: The Uses of Judaism in Seventeenth-Century England and completing The Cambridge Companion to John Donne. Guibbory is a recipient of many honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Research Fellowship (2001-02) and the Harriet and Charles Luckman Undergraduate Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Illinois (1995). She has served as president of the Milton Society of America and the John Donne Society. In addition to publishing numerous articles on seventeenth-century literature and culture, she has published several books, including The Map of Time: Seventeenth-Century English Literature and Ideas of Pattern in History and Ceremony and Community from Herbert to Milton: Literature, Religion and Cultural Conflict in Seventeenth-Century English Literature. Guibbory received her B.A. from Indiana University.

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT WELCOMES ELIZABETH H. SCHMIDT TO THE FACULTY
Elizabeth H. Schmidt, Lecturer, received her B.A. in English from Wesleyan University in 1989 and her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University in 2005. She has served as the Assistant Director of the Barnard Forum on Migration, taught the Americas section of Reinventing Literary History as well as Legacy of the Mediterranean, and served as the Administrative Coordinator and Guest Lecturer for the new course The Literature of the Middle Passage (2004) at Barnard. She selected poems for, edited, and wrote the introduction to the anthology Poems of New York (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002). She contributed an essay on Emily Dickinson, "A Mourner among the Children: Emily Dickinson's Early Religious Crisis" in The American Renaissance, edited by Harold Bloom (2004). At Barnard, she will be teaching Literary Criticism, First Year Seminar on the Americas, Reinventing Literary History, The Literature of the Middle Passage and Emily Dickinson and her Era.

PROFESSOR ANTHONY KAUFMAN WILL EXPLORE STAGE COMEDY AS THE LUCYLE HOOK GUEST LECTURER IN SPRING 2006
Professor Anthony Kaufman has been awarded the Lucyle Hook Guest Lectureship next spring. Each semester, the English Department awards the lectureship to a distinguished scholar in the field. While in residence, the scholar gives a series of lectures on a special topic over a two to four week period. At Barnard, Kaufman will lecture on theories of comedy and how they are illustrated in four plays: Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest; Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular; Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw; and Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing. The lectures will take place on four Tuesday evenings (February 7, 14, 21, and 28) from 6:10-8:00 pm. Kaufman received his Ph.D. from Yale University and taught for many years at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Kaufman's courses include Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Drama and Comedy in Theory and Practice. He has written on early playwrights, Congreve, Behn, Wycherley, John Crowne, Thomas Southerne, and such later writers as Thurber, Salinger, and Barbara Pym. The series is open to alumnae, but enrollment is limited; contact Lucy Coolidge via email or at 212-854-2116 to sign up.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS BY ENGLISH FACULTY

Calvin Baker
Once Two Heroes. New York: Penguin, 2004.

Jim Basker
Ed., Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, 1660-1810. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Co-ed., Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America. New York: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2004.

Ed., Why Documents Matter: American Originals in the Historical Imagination. New York: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005.

Mary Gordon
Pearl. New York: Pantheon, 2005.

"Flannery's Kiss." The Michigan Quarterly Review 43, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 329-49.

Achsah Guibbory
"Recent Studies in the English Renaissance," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 45 (Winter 2005): 213-65.

"The Woman Question and the Jewish Question in Milton's Samson Agonistes," in Milton and Gender, ed. Catherine G. Martin. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Ross Hamilton
Intro. and notes for Henry Fielding, Tom Jones. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.

Saskia Hamilton
Divide These: Poems. Minneapolis: Greywolf Press, 2005.

Ed., The Letters of Robert Lowell. New York: Straus & Giroux, 2005.

"Conspecifics," Columbia Review 85, no. 1 (Fall 2004).

"Entrance," "Canal," "Divide These," "Year One." Literary Imagination 6, no. 3 (Fall 2004).

Maire Jaanus
Co-ed., Lacan in the German-Speaking World. New York: SUNY Press, 2004.

Introduction and notes, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.

"Esti ja Valu: Jaan Krossi Keisri hull" ("Estonia and Pain: Jaan Kross's The Czar's Madman"). Metamorfiline Kross. Tallinn, Estonia: Eesti TA Underi ja Tuglase Kirjanduskeskus, 2005.

Jennie A. Kassanoff
Edith Wharton and the Politics of Race. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004.

Ed. and intro., Henry James, Daisy Miller and Washington Square. Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.

Stephan Massimilla
"Almost Past That." Green Mountains Review 16, no. 2 (2004).

"Beachcomber," "Dreamed from the Hospital." The Bellingham Review 18, no. 1, issue 58 (Spring 2005).

"Crossing." Hawaii Pacific Review 14 (Fall 2004).

"Fishing at Sharkshead Bay." Carquinez Poetry Review 3, no. 3 (Spring 2005).

"Harbor's Edge." Solo 7 (Fall 2004).

"Lost Dust in Bora Bora," "Thinks Herself Precious, at a Price." Quarterly West, 2005.

"Motel." Confrontation, 2005.

"Night in Babel." Cumberland Review 23, no. 2 (Fall 2004).

"Reconnaissance." Cream City Review, 2005.

"Time." Porcupine 8, no. 1 (Fall 2004).

"Words' Worth." Provincetown Arts, 2005.

Monica L. Miller
"The Black Dandy as Bad Modernist." In Bad Modernisms, ed. Rebecca Walkowitz and Douglas Mao. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

"Dandy." The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History: The Black Experience in the Americas, ed. Colin Palmer. Woodbridge: Macmillan Reference, 2005.

Helen Pilinovsky
"Beyond Thrice Nine Lands: Baba Yaga's Domain and the Russian Fairy Tale." Realms of Fantasy (April 2004).

"The Conference with a Thousand Faces" (with Gregory Frost). Realms of Fantasy (December 2004).

"Conventionalism and Utopianism in the Commodification of Rossetti's Goblin Market." Extrapolations 45, no. 1 (Spring 2004).

Anne Prescott
"Shakespeare" and "England." Rabelais Encyclopedia, ed. Elizabeth Chesney Zegura. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Frances Richard
See Through. New York: Four Way Books, 2003.

FILM

Larry Engel
Conjoined at the Head. Director and cinematographer. National Geographic Channel. Produced by Advanced Medical Productions, 2005.

Cannibals. Cinematographer. History Channel. Produced by Engel Brothers Media, 2005.

Split Second: Tragedy at Sea and Split Second: Arctic Void. Producer, director, and cinematographer. National Geographic Channel. Hosted by Brian Horner and produced by Engel Brothers Media.

Architecture & Design of Man and Woman. Cinematographer (rock climbing sequence). Discovery Channel. Produced by Tiger Tigress Productions.

SPRING 2006 COURSES AVAILABLE TO ALUMNAE AUDITORS
Continue the Barnard experience by auditing a course! Barnard alumnae may attend most Barnard classes for no credit and free of charge, including courses offered by the English Department. (Auditors have the privilege of attending the class and listening, but are asked to refrain from participating in classroom discussions or other activities.) Barnard magazine recently highlighted the College's alumnae auditing program—you can read it by clicking here. For technical instructions regarding how to audit a course, visit the Alumnae Affairs auditing web page. The following English courses are available to auditors during the Spring 2006 semester, with the instructor's permission (click here for the faculty contact information):

SUPPORT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT—BUY AN ITEM ON OUR "WISH LIST"
We constantly strive to give our students the best possible experience at Barnard—by offering research opportunities, inviting guest lecturers, and showing our support in other ways. Alumnae can help make a difference to today's students by funding an item on our "wish list," consisting of items we'd love to have but can't afford, given the department's limited funds. Here are some of the things we wish for:

• Funding for a student worker to organize the department's library $100
• Ergonomic desk chairs for professors (4 needed) $250 each
  
• Group tickets to a play or opera for a First-Year Seminar $320 per seminar
  
• New lateral filing cabinets (4 needed) $700 each
  
• Replace carpeting in faculty offices (multiple needs) $1000 per office
  
• A guest lecture series featuring prominent writers and scholars $5,000
  
• Funding for undergraduates to pursue collaborative research with professors $5,000

Your support is much needed and deeply appreciated. To fund an item on the wish list, or to make a general gift to the English Department (your gift will make a difference, no matter the size), please contact Amy DeRobertis in the Office of Development by email or at 212-854-2004. Or, to make a gift to The Barnard Fund, which helps meet critical needs throughout the College, click here.

JOIN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT'S E-MAIL LIST
Join English-L, the English Department Listserv for students, faculty, and alumnae! Receive announcements via e-mail about department events, upcoming courses, and more. To sign up, click here.

CURRENT ENGLISH MAJORS SEEK INTERNSHIPS
Do you or someone you know have an internship that would be perfect for a Barnard English major? If so, please let us know! The English Department web site includes a page dedicated to internship opportunities for current students, and we are always looking for new listings. Please call 212-854-2116 or e-mail Lucy Coolidge with information about your internship.

ALUMNAE DIRECTORY AND MORE AT BARNARD'S ONLINE COMMUNITY
English alumnae may search for friends and make new connections through Barnard's Online Community. Membership is free and exclusive to alumnae. All you need to do to take advantage of everything this resource has to offer is to establish a User ID and password. The service also offers free permanent e-mail forwarding for Barnard graduates. To register, click here.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?
If you have questions or comments about the Barnard English Department's Alumnae Newsletter, please send an e-mail to newsletter@barnard.edu.