Letter from the Chair

Last fall, we had a splendid Albert Wertheim Memorial Lecture. It was given by an IU Comparative Literature alumnus, Henry Schvey. Professor Schvey, who received his PhD on Comparative Literature here in 1977, has had a fantastic career as a professor, author, and director. He taught in Europe for many years as Professor of English at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and later at Washington University in St. Louis. There he was Chair of the Performing Arts Department and Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature. During his years in Leiden, he also founded the Leiden English Speaking Theatre and directed many plays. Later, back in the US, he also directed numerous plays, including much of Shakespeare.

This text appears when someone is browsing using assistive technologies. — David M. Hertz | Department Chair

Professor Schvey’s talk was based on the interrelations of Tennessee Williams’s plays and his little-known work as a visual artist. While a graduate student at Indiana, Henry had taught one of the classic comparative arts courses in our unit, C255 Literature and the Other Arts, working with Professor Ulrich Weisstein, one of the great pioneers of comparative arts studies. I was delighted to learn that Henry had carried this interest with him all through his distinguished career, and now he is developing a book on the topic of Williams’s writing and his (surprise!) painting. The great playwright’s evident talent as an artist was clearly displayed during the lecture. Artistic gifts, it seems, do move across art forms, sometimes within the single brain of one multitalented person such as the unique Tennessee Williams.

Following the presentation, IU participants held a roundtable discussion to further probe the rarely studied phenomenon of double-talented or even multi-talented individuals through the history of literature and the arts. Among the participants were Professor Alison Calhoun of the French and Italian department, graduate student Maggie McLaughlin and myself. Henry Schvey also participated and fielded further questions. Judy Wertheim, whose generosity has enabled the great Wertheim lecture series, also attended.

Following alumni demand and commitment, new undergraduate fellowships are to be established soon. Former students of Mary Ellen Solt recently contacted me. Professor Solt, who was a member of the IU Comparative Literature faculty for many years, was a highly respected concrete poet. It was great fun to learn about the fascinating careers of her still-devoted students, Deanna Shoss, Bruce Hattendorf, and Marvin Taylor, all of whom were undergraduate majors who worked with her. Marvin Taylor’s interests led to a career as a librarian and rare books expert for NYU. Bruce became a college administrator. Deanna Shoss, currently located in Chicago, is an author and marketing and communications executive, with special expertise in digital media. As Deanna wrote to me, “I can tie what I do directly back to my learning in comparative arts.” With their generous donations we will be able to fund prizes for undergraduate students who can compare different art forms to each other in fresh ways, but with literary studies at the center. I am also starting a modest Sarah Lehman Hertz Fellowship for students who have come to Indiana University from immigrant households and know a heritage language as well as English. These students who have can already read literature in more than one language can find educational opportunity in Comparative Literature.

In May of 2023 I had the great pleasure of meeting Robert Glick and Jackie Hein Glick, a fine pianist who happens to be a Steinway artist. Robert, another IU Comparative Literature alumnus, has had one of the most amazing careers in fundraising I’ve ever heard about, but, as I was intrigued to learn, his unique career developed partly as a result of his interest in teaching opera in a comparative arts context at Indiana University. Later, he taught similar classes around the country, opening up opera for general audiences. He has an early Ph. D. from IU Comparative Literature, working at first with the legendary Dorritt Cohen. Dorrit Cohen left IU for Harvard, where she became one of the first women tenured on the Harvard faculty. Glick later worked at the Folger Library (where he met Jackie, who was there to give a concert), then NYU, Columbia, the 92^nd St Y, and, eventually, for the Santa Fe Opera. Glick had fascinating stories about Comparative Literature during his time here.

Also in the 2022-23 academic year, Cynthia Shin worked with her colleagues and IU faculty to host a unique graduate student conference that took place in the spring of 2023. The lectures and talks were held in a beautiful classroom building located in the Hamilton Lugar Global School. Her comments are included in this issue of Encompass. I myself attended the events and was greatly impressed by the whole thing, most of which was held in our new Global Studies Building. Cynthia and her graduate student co-planners chose an excellent keynote speaker, Professor Joela Jacobs of the University of Arizona.

For the second year in a row we were also able to offer increased support to our graduate students. The Stallknecht, Fogg Highsmith and Newman Family fellowship recipients for 2023 are Meghan Murphy, Nathaniel Rudovsky-Brody and Maggie McLaughlin. All have demonstrated excellence in their research areas as they advance toward their PhD. degrees.

While our Comparative Literature department has a distinguished history, these days, the professors teaching in Comparative Literature are no slouches. Quite the contrary. The faculty is as good as it has ever been, and its intellectual range spans across the university. I learned a lot about IU Comparative Literature while preparing the extensive external review documents describing the intellectual life of our unit in the spring of 2023. When I asked Wen Qi, Director of Faculty Analytics, to run the algorithms, I learned that IU Comparative Literature stands out for its excellence. IU Comparative Literature has scored in the top five of the 43 listed Comp Lit units in the US in “citations per publication” and “citations per faculty.” If we incorporate our core and affiliated faculty (including adjuncts) into the measurement, we are ranked no. 1 out of 43 programs in terms of “articles per author.”

This is not surprising since we have had an explosion of new books and articles by younger faculty who are rising in our ranks, among them exciting new monographs by Sonia Velazquez, Akin Adesokan, and Jacob Emery. Their volumes, varied and intriguing, will be coming out in the new academic year. More information about these and other faculty publications will be available on our website.

I hope you will dip in and read them!

Also, in the spring Bill Johnston, a prolific translator, was appointed the first Michael Henry Heim Chair in Translation at Indiana University. Not least in all the good news, Sean Sidky, a recent IU Comp Lit Ph D., just won the Distinguished Dissertation Award for his recent doctoral thesis, No Letters Arrive Anymore: American Yiddish Holocaust Literature.

Once again, the comparative literature community, so diverse and so full of intellectual riches, really ought to stay in touch. I hope all colleagues, current and emeriti, and all alumni, far and wide, will send news.

We would love to hear from you.

David M. Hertz
Chair and Professor, Comparative Literature

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Department of Comparative Literature

Letter from the Chair