New Pages

The department maintains a list of alumnae/i publications 2005-12.

Professor Charles Baxter
Gryphon: New and Selected Stories
Pantheon
(See review in CLA's current Reach by MFA candidate Sally Franson.)

Adam Barrows (PhD 2006)
The Cosmic Time of Empire: Modern Britain and World Literature
University of California Press

John Colburn (BA 1990, MFA 1996), edited with Michelle Filkins and Margaret Miles
Blink Again: Sudden Fiction from the Upper Midwest
Spout Press

Professor Maria Damon
Postliterary America: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries
University of Iowa Press

Eric Dregni (MFA 2007)
Vikings in the Attic
University of Minnesota Press

Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt (PhD 2002)
The Postcolonial Citizen: Intellectual Migrant
Peter Lang Publishing

Nuruddin Farah, CLA Winton Chair
Crossbones
Riverhead Press

Peter Geye (BA 2000)
Safe from the Sea
Unbridled Books

Will Hermes (MA 1995)
Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever
Faber & Faber

Patrick Hueller (MFA 2010) under pen name Paul Hoblin
Foul
Lerner Books

Sam Kean (BA summa cum laude 2002)
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the Periodic Table
Little Brown & Company

Arlene Kim (MFA 2008)
What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?
Milkweed Editions
Kim's debut poetry collection is a Hansel and Gretel-esque journey through mythology and tradition. The echoes are sometimes whispers, as in the section epigraphs from the 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel; elsewhere the poems echo other poems and writers, as in the aptly titled "Echo," after Paul Celan's "Death Fugue" or in the multi-layered "Translation Plundered." Kim uses the elements of fairy tales well; the images of spinning and sewing are particularly compelling, where the machine offers just the right amount of danger: "Outrun / the seam ripper. Her / husband the presser foot; her girls, small / bobbins. What was / left for her / but to be- / come / the /needle." In other moments, the danger is in the wandering itself, as in "Tracking" or "Occupation," with references to war. Kim often plays with more formal methods in her own way, such as rhyme and alliteration in "Answers to Proust Questionnaire," and the "fallen" sonnet of "Litany for Common Horses." The notes in the back of the book lead to deeper probing and interesting discoveries, such as Kim's use of a Markov text synthesizer in "the path come apart" (one cannot help but Google it). This collection invites exploration in a world full of beautiful, sharp edges. (Review by MFA candidate Kristin Fitzsimmons)

Marcela Kostihova (PhD 2004)
Shakespeare in Transition: Political Appropriations in the Postcommunist Czech Republic
Palgrave Macmillan

Ed Bok Lee (BA 1994)
Whorled
Coffee House Press

Professor Nabil Matar, authored with Gerald MacLean
Britain and the Islamic World: 1558-1713
Oxford University Press

Jim Moore (BA 1966)
Invisible Strings
Graywolf Press

Susan Niz (BA 1997)
Kara, Lost
North Star Press of St. Cloud

Sheila O'Connor (BA 1982)
Sparrow Road
Putnam Publishing

Carrie Oeding (BA 2000)
Our List of Solutions
42 Miles Press/South Bend Press

Anca Parvulescu (PhD 2006)
Laughter: Notes on a Passion
Short Circuit/MIT Press

Professor Paula Rabinowitz, edited with Cristina Giorcelli
Accessorizing the Body: Habits of Being I
University of Minnesota Press
Since 1995, Giorcelli has edited 10 volumes of essays about the meanings of clothing and accessories assigned by art and popular culture, especially in light of social, economic, and semiotic connotations. Now, with Professor Rabinowitz, Giorcelli has selected 40 of the best works from the Abito e Identita: Ricerche di storia letteraria e cultural series for a four-volume publication in English with the University of Minnesota Press. The editors are also adding newly commissioned pieces, including this volume's textile work by Professor Maria Damon. The book is framed both by a sleekly designed cover and by Giorcelli's and Rabinowitz's respectively crystalline and pun-knotted introductory and closing essays. In between, subjects range from Coco Chanel's savvy usurping of masculine "sporting clothes" to Jewish "accessorization" of the mandatory yellow star, from the aggressive high-heeled shoe in pulp-noir to the regulations on women's clothes in fascist Spain. If, as Rabinowitz writes, "the body is no-body without its dressings," the fluid and mutable play between dressings and identity richly illustrated here wets the appetite for the next three collections.

William Reichard (PhD 1997), editor
American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice
New Village Press

Associate Professor Katherine Scheil, edited with Randall Martin
Shakespeare, Adaptation, Modern Drama: Essays in Honour of Jill Levenson
University of Toronto Press
This 2011 collection includes contributions from major international scholars in Shakespeare and modern drama, such as Stanley Wells, Peter Holland, Alan Ackerman, Brian Parker, and John Astington. The book is a tribute to the scholar and editor Jill Levenson, the world expert on Romeo and Juliet, and past president of the Shakespeare Association of America and the World Shakespeare Congress. Scheil's own contribution is entitled "Shakespeare as Memoir," focusing on work by Globe Theatre director Dominic Dromgoole and others who have used Shakespeare as a structuring device for a memoir.

Ann Schultz (BA 1939)
Message in a Bottle
Artpacks

Nate Slawson (MFA 2008)
Panic Attack
YesYes Press

Shana Youngdahl (MFA 2006)
History, Advice, and Other Half-Truths
Stephen F. Austin State University Press