I’m currently completing an MFA in Book Arts, so you can bet that I judge a book by its cover. And binding. And paper. And overarching design. I won’t refuse to read an aesthetically displeasing book (I have spent many hours over the course of my life with a Norton edition in my lap, after […]
September
10
Why I’m an English Professor
posted by Stacy
Six years ago, I was in the blur of the first few weeks in a tenure track job – sleep deprived from all the lesson planning, nervous that I wasn’t smart/fun/“adult” enough to have this job… But I remember one specific Thursday afternoon amidst that stressful time: sitting in a circle of desks with twelve […]
September
06
Coming to the Table
posted by Ann
Our family table was once my grandmother’s. It is on the smallish side with a delicate finish. It has traveled with me my whole adult life. It is where my friend Rick and I ate BBQ pork and drank large cans of Bottington’s after a night class in Virginia. It is where my husband and […]
You Must Revise Your Life
posted by Laura
When I taught various sections of Interpretation of Literature in graduate school over the course of some years, my major texts would shift and change. Pride and Prejudice one semester. Frankenstein another. Love in the Time of Cholera one semester. Everything is Illuminated another. And drama? Never the same play twice. Swapping out texts was an opportunity […]
September
04
Welcome Ann!
posted by Laura
I am beyond delighted to announce that another lettered lady is joining the fray. We welcome Ann, who is (like a few other folks around here) an English professor in the Midwest. As her bio states, Her academic interests include Shakespeare & early modern theater, contemporary theater performance, book and textual studies, trauma studies, and […]
September
03
Leaning In without Falling Over
posted by Lynne Nugent
The only thing that stuck in my head from the media chatter that surrounded the release of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead earlier this year was the tidbit that Sandberg refuses to disclose the details of her childcare arrangements. Oh sure, I thought, this millionaire lady encourages ordinary […]
August
30
In memoriam: Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013
posted by Kate Krueger
Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm […]
Book-y Things
posted by Stacy
Like two other of my fellow Lettered Ladies, my research and teaching interests involve many aspects of Book Studies and Book Arts – publication history and medium, issues of authorship and readership, even variant book covers and title pages. My students know me as the professor interested in “book-y things” (my own sophisticated, academic term). […]
August
27
On Homesickness and Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic
posted by Kate Krueger
Most of the time, there is a veritable ocean of territory between where I am now and my childhood home. I am often struck by homesickness, a tilt in my gut. I strain to see snow and evergreen but come up against moss and magnolia instead. Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic was the last book I picked […]
August
22
What Laura is Reading Now
posted by Laura
Years ago, I was listening to an episode of This American Life when I heard a segment — and a voice — that I will never forget. It was my first encounter with David Rakoff. Part of an episode on “Frenemies,” the segment — a fictional wedding toast-in-verse given by the bride’s ex-boyfriend — was […]
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