Elizabeth Spiller wins Kirby Prize for work in science

Professor Elizabeth Spiller's article "Shakespeare and the Making of Early Modern Science: Resituating Prospero's Art," which was published in the Winter/Spring 2009 issue of the South Central Review, won the 2009 Kirby Award for best article in the journal's 2009 issues. Spiller's article, which appeared in a special issue on Shakespeare and Science, edited by Carla Mazzio, argues that "art" provided the philosophical mechanism through which early modern culture shifted from Aristotelian scholasticism to modern fact-based experimental science and situates Shakespeare's play The Tempest within that larger epistemological shift. The award, which was selected by the editorial board at the South Central Review and awarded by the South Central Modern Language Association, is named in honor of Professor David Kirby's father, Thomas A. Kirby.

David Kirby receives starred review in Booklist for Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll

Professor David Kirby's new book, Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll (Continuum, 2009), bops into bookstores November 2, but the biography on the flamboyant performer is already garnering applause. Ray Olson is an editor for the American Library Association, and in the October 2009 issue of Booklist, the ALA's book review publication, he writes:

In the poem "The House of Blue Light"—whose eponym is where Miss Molly does her rockin', dontcha know—Kirby says that when he, à la Whitman, hears America singing, it "sounds like Little Richard." He sticks to his line in this high-spirited, ambulatory meditation on Richard's America. Ambulatory literally as Kirby pinballs mostly around Macon, Georgia, Richard's hometown, but also New Orleans, where Richard recorded his first big hit, and L.A., home of Specialty Records, which Richard made a major independent label. Ambulatory spiritually, too, because Kirby adopts Greil Marcus' canny conception of Old, Weird America—poor, superstitious, culturally "backward," but always striving—as the homeground of rock 'n' roll (along with the other vernacular American pop musics: gospel, blues, country) to explain Richard's artistic roots. Kirby insists that that first big hit, "Tutti Frutti," a cleaned-up "paean to heinie-poking" howled by "a gay black cripple from a town nobody ever heard of," is the first 100-proof rock 'n' roll song and devotes the central chapter here to its creation and impact. Kirby packs his prose as fully as he does his verse and likewise runs it on high octane, pedal to the metal. He beats all the professional rock scribes hollow with this light-footed but profound little book.

Elaine Treharne elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries

Professor Elaine Treharne has been elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, one of the oldest and most prestigious Royal Societies in the world. The Fellows are an international body whose charter dates from 1751, and to be elected persons shall be "excelling in the knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other nations" and be "desirous to promote the honour, business and emoluments of the Society," according to the organization's web site (http://www.sal.org.uk/). The society maintains one of the leading archaeological libraries in the UK, publishes books and learned journals, conducts a weekly lecture series in London, and operates a number of annual grant programs. Treharne specializes in late Old English and early Middle English manuscripts, their cultural contexts, contents and language. She is currently completing two books, Cnut: Viking Warrior, Anglo-Saxon King (forthcoming 2009), and Living Through Conquest: The Ideology of Early English (Oxford UP, 2009). Her major new project entitled "The Architextuality of Early English" seeks to uncover the polysemy of TEXT in various manuscript contexts from c. 1000-1300. She is also working on early Medieval Welsh Literature, and a History of British Manuscript Studies.

Early Americanists receive honors

FSU Assistant Professor Cristobal Silva received the Society of Early Americanists' tenth annual Essay Prize at last month's sixth biennial SEA conference. This prestigious award recognized his paper "Appropriating Epidemiology: Tisquantum and the Etiology of Buried Plague," which he delivered in 2008, at an SEA-sponsored conference on early Native American studies.

During last month's awards ceremony, FSU Associate Professor Dennis Moore received a plaque recognizing his six years' "devoted service as an elected SEA officer, rendered with wit and generosity of spirit." Moore, the group's immediate past president, has also recently received the Reese Fellowship in American Bibliography and the History of the Book from Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, in support of his continued work on the late-18C writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur.

 

Robin Goodman wins Developing Scholar Award

Professor Robin Goodman is the recipient of a 2008-2009 FSU Developing Scholar Award, one of six winners this year. The Council on Research and Creativity selects the honorees, and Goodman is one of only three faculty members from the Humanities to have won this award in the last three years. Goodman is the author of five published or forthcoming books, most recently Feminist Theory in Pursuit of the Public: Politics, Education, and Public Life, forthcoming from Palgrave, and Policing Narratives and the State of Terror (SUNY: 2009), a literary study of the privatization of law enforcement in relation to the nation-state. A former Global Fellow in the International Institute at UCLA and present Editorial Board Member for The Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies, Goodman is a second-year Associate Professor specializing in feminist theory and postcolonial literature and culture.

Gary Taylor speaking out about Shakespeare

Professor Gary Taylor's name has been popping up in various media over the past few months, appearing in interviews for print, television, and radio. Taylor was featured in the Winter/Spring 2009 edition of Research in Review, the university's magazine devoted to campus research and scholarship. In the article, "The Other Shakespeare," Taylor explains how he began the process of introducing the literary world to Thomas Middleton, a contemporary of Shakespeare. Thanks to Taylor's research, scholars are now placing Middleton and Shakespeare in the same league. In addition, his interview for a documentary on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" aired in February on the "South Bank Show," an influential arts program on British television. It is the longest running show of its kind in the UK. Also on the topic of Shakespeare, Taylor was recently interviewed for an Italian radio show. Taylor is the editor of the Oxford edition of Shakespeare's complete works and author most recently of Buying Whiteness: Race, Culture, and Identity from Columbus to Hip Hop (Palgrave: 2005).

Magazine interview: http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/issues/2009winter/feature02_a.asp

Radio interview: http://www.escualotis.com/ltdm/?p=83